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Lies in the Encyclopedia After reading Ishmael, I was roaming through the encyclopedia looking for related articles to see what they say. Some of the things I found were appalling. Not only do they say things that I know aren't true, but they contradict themselves in many places. Here are some of the things I've read in the encyclopedia and what's wrong with them. Note: It is not the authors of these articles who is lying; they don't know what they are saying. It is Mother Culture lying to us through them. World Book Encyclopedia (Edition 1991) "Agriculture" "[Hunter-gatherers] had to search for food continually, which left them little time for other activities." This is absolutely not true. Hunter-gatherers spend about 2-3 hours a day procuring their food, compared to the 8 or more hours spent by those who rely on agriculture. The person who wrote this must not have done any research on the subject and just pulled it out of their head. Also compare the above quote to what it says in the "Bushmen" article: "Anthropologists believe that even in the rugged Kalahari Region, the Bushmen needed only about two hours a day to hunt and collect their food." Not only are they wrong, but they directly contradict themselves! "...About 9000 BC, people took the first steps toward agriculture." All people? "China" "By about 10,000 BC, a number of New Stone Age cultures had developed in this area." This is just flat out factually wrong. New Stone Age or Neolithic people were farmers, so the people in China would have had to have started farming to be a New Stone culture. Farming was first used by some people in the Middle East in 8000 BC, and even later, about 7000 BC, in Southeast Asia. In 10,000 BC, every single culture in the world was a Paleolithic culture. This is according to archeologists, anthropologists, and the "Prehistoric Peoples" article. (Note: I recently checked the 2000 edition of World Book, and it says the same thing.) "Culture" "After large animals became scarce, some people had had to turn to planting crops and raising animals for food. They became the first farmers." Compare this to what it says in the "Prehistoric People" article, that people in the Middle East "had enough wild plants and animals to provide food for large numbers of hunters. Because food was plentiful, these people did not have to move far to search for it. They often settled in permanent villages for years at a time and so had a better opportunity than other peoples to develop planting and herding." Which is it? Was there not enough food, or was there plenty? "Important steps in the growth of culture include (1) the development of tools, (2) the start of farming, (3) the growth of cities, and (4) the development of writing." As though all cultures go through these steps--not all cultures have farming, cities, and writing, and there's no reason to believe that all cultures will develop them. This a noticeable fallacy shared by the "Human Being" and "Prehistoric Peoples" articles as well. In all of these non-agricultural people are referred to as "hunters". This term is extremely inaccurate, because most hunting-gathering societies rely much more on plant foods than animal foods; in some cases plant foods represent 80% or more of their total food supply. Very few rely more on meat than plants, and those are ones who live in the Arctic where plant foods are less available. In the American Museum of Natural History's book Traditional Peoples Today, it says of hunter-gatherer societies, "Over the years hunting has appeared to outsiders to be more important than it is simply because it is a predominantly male activity and, therefore, something the men like to talk about. Early travelers and investigators tended to spend most of their time talking to men, and they therefore reported the men's interests in their writings." "Human Being" "Human culture has developed in three major phases. These phases have been based on (1) hunting and gathering societies, (2) agricultural societies, and (3) industrial societies." Also, there is a set of pictures showing these three phases. In the first one, bearded men wearing skins are hunting an ox-like animal with clubs and spears. In the second, which is larger, a man and a woman are planting crops with some huts in the background. The third, which is twice as large as the second, shows rows of people wearing different types of clothes to show their professions, with large buildings, electric lines, power plants, airplanes, and launching spacecrafts in the background. First of all, industrial societies are agricultural societies. How can they separate them like that? And, as above, NOT ALL SOCIETIES GO THROUGH THESE PHASES. This is simply a model of what OUR culture went through. "These primitive people [hunter-gatherers] wandered over large areas in search of food." Hunter-gatherers do not have to "wander in search of food." This suggests that it is difficult for them to find, that food sources are few and far between, and that's just not true. Even in the harshest of landscapes, hunter-gatherers can almost always find all the food they need in a short period of time. Farmers have a harder time getting their food than hunter-gatherers do. "Prehistoric Peoples" "Hunters built shelters only if they found enough food in an area to last a few weeks or months." I highly doubt that people in such regions as the glacier-covered Europe and the Arctic regions of Asia and the Americas slept out in the open most of the time, or for that matter, even some of the time. It's possible that they didn't build very sophisticated shelters, but a shelter is a shelter, and I'm sure they slept in one every night. Even in the deserts of central Australia, Aborigines build windbreaks each night, no matter how many nights they are in the area. I can't even imagine why the author of this article thought this. In the section on food, four paragraphs are devoted to hunting and meat, and only a paragraph is about plants. This would suggest to readers that most of their food is meat, and, as stated above, this is not true at all. There are three pictures of humans in this article, one of Neanderthals, one of Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers, and one of New Stone Age farmers, and they are all white. This is a common fallacy in our culture--whenever ancient Stone Age people are depicted, they are always white--and why is that? Do people think that other races didn't exist or something? (Also, if you look at the Neanderthal picture, you'll see that there is a man trying to start a fire--but he's not going to get very far, because he's not holding down the fireboard with his foot, and more importantly, there's no notch for the coal to fall through onto the tinder!) On the timeline depicting the development of prehistoric people, all the humans and ancestors of humans shown are male. This is another cultural fallacy; you never (and I mean NEVER) see women on a chart showing the evolution of humans. Miscellaneous If you look at the history section of any state but Hawaii, you will see that there is a single paragraph on the Native Americans of that area, entitled "Indian Days", and multiple pages devoted to what happened in that state after whites arrived. Microsoft Encarta 95 "Agriculture" "Over the 10,000 years since agriculture began to be developed, peoples everywhere have discovered the food value of wild plants and animals and domesticated and bred them." People everywhere have domesticated plants and animals? "Cave Dwellers" "Gradually people learned to grow food, rather than forage for it....Once agriculture became important, people established villages of permanent houses and found new uses for caves, mainly as hunting and herding campsites and for ceremonial activities." "People" learned to grow food? What about all those who continue to forage for food? "Evolution" The explanation of how life forms evolved is remarkably similar to the explanation given by the student in Ishmael. First, there is a basic description of how life may have originated, then it goes on to discuss the appearance of single-celled organisms, the first multi-cellular organisms, primitive animals, vertebrates, primates, and finally, humans! The only real difference is that this version mentioned plants, although only in reference to how important they were to the first land-dwelling animals. "Food Supply, World" "For about 99 percent of human history, human beings were hunters and gatherers of food, responding to their environment and also restricted by it. The variety of food items they used had the potential to provide essential nutrients, but the quantity varied greatly, thus limiting the number of people that could be adequately supported on a given land area. "During the remaining 1 percent of the total period, however, dynamic changes--the so-called cultural revolution--occurred. Humans began to recognize the advantages of organizing families into small social groups, and this resulted in cooperative efforts among individuals and the birth of the rudiments of governmental and social organization. Consequently, humans began to gain a degree of control over their environment." As though before agriculture, no one had social structure! As though before agriculture, no one had any control over their environment! (For thousands of years, many Native Americans used fire to control their environment, using controlled burning techniques to promote new plant growth and thereby increase the amount of prey and plant foods available. And even non-human animals have control over their environment.) As though today, we are not restricted by our environment! "Native Americans" The "Food" section mentions crops, hunting, and even animal domestication, which was not practiced in North America, and barely practiced at all in South America, but says absolutely nothing about gathering wild plants, the chief food supply for many hunting-gathering tribes, and an important food supply for many semi-farming tribes. If you have seen any lies in another encyclopedia, or if you have something to add to these, please with the name of the encyclopedia and the article, or sign the guestbook.