It was during early 2006 that Alicia Alvarez handed me a book saying: this is our bible. I then read “Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina” (Open Veins of Latin America) by an author unknown to me then called Eduardo Galeano. I took that book when travelling through Argentina and the more I read the more I came to understand that we needed a shift not only in South America but also in other places like my birth country, Portugal. In it I could read how good and valuable people we stripped out of their good ideas and values by greedy people. But that’s not big news…
I will not make a synopsis of the book or anything. Actually I want to take your attention to another book he is about to publish and to an excerpt called “History is an Errant Paradox”.
On it you can read things like this:
When they were evicted from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve moved to Africa, not Paris. Some time later, when their children had embarked on their ways in the world, writing was invented. In Iraq, not Texas.
Algebra was invented in Iraq too, by Mohammed al Jwarizmi, 1,200 years ago, and the word ‘algorithm’ was derived from his name.
The three novelties that made the European Renaissance possible – the compass, gunpowder and the printing press – were invented by the Chinese, who also invented almost everything that Europe reinvented.
The Hindus knew before anybody else that the world was round, and the Mayans created the most precise calendar ever devised.
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