America, betwixt and between Europe and the frontier, the colonialists who broke free from the motherland and brought civilization to the savages, in search of the moral high ground.
|
|
Archived online In Hispanic eyes, Atlantis had a more intimate interpretation. The land had been a colonial power which, although it had brought civilization to ancient Europe, had also enslaved its peoples. Its tyrannical fall from grace had contributed to the fate that had overtaken it, but now its disappearance had unbalanced the world. This was the point of view of Jacint Verdaguer's vast mythological epic L'Atlantida (1877).
|
|
Antlers owes its existence to the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad—also known as the Frisco Railroad—which opened in June 1887. The railroad, which was built north to south through the mountains and virgin timberlands of the Choctaw Nation of the Indian Territory, brought civilization to the wilderness—three passenger trains operated daily in each direction, plus two freight trains, making for a total of ten trains per day. To support this industrial infrastructure section houses were established by the railroad every few miles. The houses assumed responsibility for maintaining the railroad track and right-of-way in either direction of each location.
|
|
Identified with U-an, a half- human creature from the sea (Abgallu, from ab=water, gal=big, lu=man, he was considered to have brought civilization to the city during the time of King Alulim. In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was the home of the Abzu temple of the god Enki, the Sumerian counterpart of the Akkadian god Ea, god of deep waters, wisdom and magic. Like all the Sumerian and Babylonian gods, Enki/Ea began as a local god who, according to the later cosmology, came to share the rule of the cosmos with Anu and Enlil. His kingdom was the sweet waters that lay below earth (Sumerian ab=water; zu=far).
|
|
Alulim (Cuneiform: ，Sumerian: a2-lu-lim; , Aloros; , ') was both the first king of Eridu and the first king of Sumer, according to the mythological antediluvian section of the Sumerian King List. Enki, the god of Eridu, is said to have brought civilization to Sumer at this point, or just before. The Sumerian King List has the following entry for Alulim: In a chart of antediluvian generations in Babylonian and Biblical traditions, Professor William Wolfgang Hallo of Yale University associates Alulim with the composite half-man, half-fish counselor or culture hero (Apkallu) Uanna-Adapa (Oannes), and suggests an equivalence between Alulim and Enosh in the Sethite genealogy given in Genesis chapter five. Hallo notes that Alulim's name means "stag".
|
|
The society created conceptions of social status based on the groups' traditional pursuits: the Twa, working most directly with the earth (through pottery), were considered impure; the Hutu, still working with the ground but less so than the Twa, were in turn considered less pure than the above-ground Tutsi. When Germany, and later Belgium, colonized the kingdom, they interpreted the local division of races or ethnicity through the Hamitic hypothesis. European authors such as John Hanning Speke wrote of the Tutsi as being of Hamitic origin, having originated from modern-day Ethiopia and migrating southwards, and having brought "civilization" to the Negroid races of Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, the colonial administration favored the Tutsi at the expense of Hutu and Twa.
|
|
The missionaries argued that human bondage didn't reflect a Christian society, and believed it highlighted native people's laziness, cruelty, and resistance to "civilization." In the 1820s a heated debate over whether to allow slaveholding Choctaw into mission churches occurred, but a final decision was made with missionaries not wanting to alienate slaveholding Native Americans as potential converts and so received them at prayer meetings and granted church membership with the hope of enlightening them through discussion and prayer. During this time, missionaries did see Choctaws and African Americans as racially and intellectually inferior; converted Africans were regarded as intellectually and morally sounder than non-Christian Native Americans. Cyrus Kingsbury, a leader of the American Board, believed that missionaries had brought civilization to the Choctaw whom he deemed as uncivilized people.
|
|
Examining how to establish a new order, Hitler argued that the greatness of powerful organizations was reliant on intolerance of all others, so that the greatness of Christianity arose from the "unrelenting and fanatical proclamation and defence of its own teaching". Hitler rejected a view that Christianity brought civilization to the Germanic peoples, however: "It is therefore outrageously unjust to speak of the pre-Christian Germans as barbarians who had no civilization. They never have been such." Foreshadowing his conflict with the Catholic Church over euthanasia in Nazi Germany, Hitler wrote that the churches should give up missionary work in Africa, and concentrate on convincing Europeans that is more pleasing to God if they adopt orphans rather than "give life to a sickly child that will be a cause of suffering and unhappiness to all".
|
|
But by the 1930s, under the influence of Shin Chaeho's histories, the Jizi Korean founding story became less popular than that of Dangun, the son of a tiger and a bear – the latter being common in Japanese folklore – who brought civilization to the Korean peninsula. Shin and the other historians who promulgated this myth had been influenced by Daejonggyo, a new religious movement which worshipped Dangun, but attacked pre-annexation textbook narratives of Dangun which portrayed him as the brother of the Japanese god Susanoo. To Shin, Dangun was both the founder of the Korean minjok and the first Korean state (kuk), and thus the necessary starting point for Korean history. In response to a challenge by the Japanese scholars Shiratori Kurakichi and Imanishi Ryū of Dangun as a fabrication by the author of the Samguk yusa, nationalist historian Choe Nam-seon attacked Japanese mythology as being built upon fabrications.
|
|