Iran's Wolf Wall, Second-Longest in the World, Is Still Shrouded in Mystery

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2018/07/27/gorgan-wall-iran-second-longest/#.W1vFmRZE2Ec

by curtis • 8 years ago

219 79 8 years ago

blogs.discovermagazine.com

xeromal• 8 years ago

Iran is definitely under-represented in western education. I came across this the other day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l

Iranians constructed these deep structures that engineered in a such a way to grow ice in the winter and keep the ice for the entirety of summer. They made a kind of sorbet as a dessert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faloodeh

Thanks for sharing this! Great read!

msaharia• 8 years ago

Thanks for posting this!

mavelikara• 8 years ago

I had always wondered how they came up with Faloodeh, for a community that had very hot summers. Thanks for posting, this explains it!

BTW, love Faloodeh! Also, not to be confused with Falooda (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda).

walrus013• 8 years ago

If you like Faloodeh you might like Firnee:

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=fir...

cheez• 8 years ago

There will be a comment about how Persians didn't really come up with the concept and the basic idea was created by <some culture that _is_ covered in western education>

dang• 8 years ago

Please don't post flamebait. It causes the very problem you're talking about, i.e. taking threads in a bad and needless direction.

walrus013• 8 years ago

Yakhchāl is also used in Dari (Afghan version of Farsi) to refer to ordinary household refrigerators. Or if you were going to be really specific, Yakhchāl barqee which means electrical fridge.

There's also these, which are marvels of desert engineering:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

MarkPash• 8 years ago

To avoid confusion, it is also used in the same way in standard Iranian Farsi too. And while Yakhchāl barqee makes sense, I've never heard that before, at least in an informal setting anyway.

rezashirazian2• 8 years ago

I always think the European border would have extended all the way to Iran (and thus more fairly represented in western cultures) if it hadn't fallen to the Arabian conquest.

endisukaj• 8 years ago

Fallen and stayed*. Andalusia too was part of the muslim caliphate and yet....

Mediterraneo10• 8 years ago

Before the Arab invasions, there was a state of constant hostility and sometimes outright war between Byzantium and Persia. I think that even had the Arab conquests not happened, Christian Europe would still have seen Persia as "other".

enitihas• 8 years ago

Or the Persian(Iranian) border may have extended all the way to Europe had Persia defeated the greeks.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

zaarn5• 8 years ago

To my knowledge, a countries education tends to focus on the country itself.

American education teaches a lot about the US but little about the history of specific European countries and in turn EU countries teach little about American history ( IIRC during my education we covered the entirety of the US history in half a year and then went back to more local history )

It's always quite amazing to realize that other countries mostly have just as much of a rich history as your own.

rezeroed3• 8 years ago

Focus of education can be split even further than country. My step brothers and I went to different schools, and I remember being surprised to discover my history lessons focused on the historical relevance of one city, theirs on the history of another. Public vs private schools.

mariusmg• 8 years ago

IIRC during my education we covered the entirety of the US history in half a year

And whats wrong with this ? It shouldn't take multiple years to teach the history of a country who's been around for ~250 years now.

Radim2• 8 years ago

Understandable, but also somewhat proportional? There's 250 years of US history vs thousands of years for many European countries. Of course you need more time to cover that.

On topic: Iran is an absolutely stunning country. Second to none with respect to its nature, people and history. What happened there with the Arab conquests (and especially since the Islamic Golden Age), their sad and unsuccessful struggles for independence, is a crying shame. But still one of the proudest, most beautiful regions of the world.

mattmanser2• 8 years ago

This wasn't true in the UK when I was at school 20 years ago.

Admittedly, the 'general' history we did in the first 3 years of secondary school (11-14) we covered mostly western history, but it covered Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. We did some English history (Boudicca, Alfred, is all I can remember now).

In the optional GCSE History I did (14-16) we did little English history as far as I remember and covered inter-war Germany + rise of Hitler, Vietnam war, Chinese Communist Revolution, formation of Israel, Cuban Missile Crisis and probably some more I've now forgotten.

EDIT: I actually now remember we did cover Cromwell + English Civil war as well as William the Orange and the Suez crisis, probably at least one of those in GCSE. Slightly modified to reflect this.

A lot of those do directly impact the UK, although when we covered China, it was still fairly weak compared to its present position in the world.

rezeroed3• 8 years ago

Interesting. Reminded me of the Kew Gardens Ice House, a far more modest Georgian England version.

foota• 8 years ago

The Yakhchal reminds me of this strategy for preserving a water supply through summer in the Himalayas https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/22/the-ice-...

senorjazz• 8 years ago

Am half way through Dan Carlins King of Kings podcast all about the Persian empire and and hefty chunk on what came before in the region.

Thoroughly recommended, as you say I was fairly ignorant to most all the history of this region

Alex3917• 8 years ago

Iran is definitely under-represented in western education.

The British destroyed a lot of their advanced ancient technology, which is probably why it's not taught as much.

jaza• 8 years ago

Fascinating, I had never heard of this wall before. There are also numerous impressive and under-explored archaeological sites north east of Golestan, in modern day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, see this overview of them that I wrote a few years ago: https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2014/10/forgotten-realms-of...

nafey3• 8 years ago

Personally I have felt that the fascination of Western archaeologists with Roman History is explained by the necessity of the American "aristocracy" to establish a cultural heritage of exceptionalism. This has led to an extremely detailed view of Roman History.

The history of other regions and civilisations serve no such similar purpose and have been ignored.

sumedh5• 8 years ago

The history of other regions and civilisations serve no such similar purpose and have been ignored.

Before pointing fingers at the West, does Iran take an extremely detailed view of its Persian History, that would not go well with Islamic Iran.

barking• 8 years ago

I don't understand how the study of Roman History as opposed to any other Empire's History would make America feel more exceptional.

simion314• 8 years ago

Romans left a lot of writings so you get a detailed history of some periods where other population like the Dacian that did not have writing we get just a few details about them and some of those details are from Roman or Greek writings.

pyrale2• 8 years ago

Interest in roman history predates the US by a couple cennturies... I doubt there is much exceptionnalism here besides trying to explain everything with US motives.

pjc50• 8 years ago

See Said's argument about "Orientalism".

skissane• 8 years ago

the fascination of Western archaeologists with Roman History is explained by the necessity of the American "aristocracy" to establish a cultural heritage of exceptionalism

That seems a very US-centric viewpoint. Plenty of Western archaeologists aren't Americans. For many European countries, the Roman Empire is an important chapter of their own history, so it is unsurprising that archaeologists in those countries would be interested in it-and their interest has nothing to do with the United States. (Even many of those parts of Europe which never were subject to Roman rule were nonetheless enormously influenced by Roman culture, through the spread of Christianity.)

olavk3• 8 years ago

This is not something particular to America. Europeans have always stressed the continuity from antiquity. The pope uses the title "Pontifex Maximus" which was one held by Ceasar. Emperors (like the Holy Roman Emperor and the Zar) claimed to be the legitimate emperor of Rome. The Enlightenment thinkers were also heavily inspired by Rome and Greece, although preferred republican Rome to the time of the emperors.

The reason we know so much about Rome and Greece is that we have a lot of written material - histories, literature, poetry, letters, laws etc. Archeology is a relatively new science, while history (the study of written accounts) have existed since antiquity.

History is not just a question of what happened, but also about the effect of what happened. For example the Egyptian or Sumerian literature and philosophy might be just as magnificent as the Roman, but since those languages were lost it simply did not have the same effect on subsequent culture as Rome had.

walrus013• 8 years ago

It is kind of interesting how you can find people who know are not history majors, that know way too much about the Roman empire, but they know dick about the Mughal empire. Or even if you say "Travancore" to them, they have no idea what you're talkin gabout.

sumedh5• 8 years ago

Or even if you say "Travancore" to them

Why would people learn about some random kingdom which was a vassal under British rule?

boomboomsubban• 8 years ago

It is so much easier for a casual fan of history to learn about Rome than most other areas. For an example of this, browse the history audiobook section someplace like Audible.

I remember looking for books on the history of Japan a while ago there. Fifty books about the glorious defeat of Japan in WWII, a few hour long books on their complete history, and a great courses lecture series.

muro• 8 years ago

I think that (know too much about Roman Empire) applies to me :). For Europe, it was the main "event" that defined the culture, religion and scholarship of the entire continent for 2000 years. Law, medicine and biology still use latin, Christianity continues to be the main religion in Europe. Apart from the north-east, all countries have some Roman history. After Rome, each country becomes more isolated. Of course it's the period/Empire that is the most interesting to read and learn about.

unit91• 8 years ago

Why can't people have interests? We all like certain activities, programming languages, etc. -- can't we think certain cultures are interesting too?

My (WASP) uncle learned Japanese and moved to Tokyo because of a personal interest in that specific culture. I'm happy for him, glad he had a good experience. Should I now chastise him for not doing that with other cultures?

This `personal interest == bigotry` attitude is a problem.

casefields• 8 years ago

Here's another thorough article: http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/staff/supporting_files/esauer/irani...

melicerte• 8 years ago

thanks for sharing. This is more interesting and more detailed than the original post.

potopoto• 8 years ago

This structure is impressive but I'm surprised the longest wall in the world is not even mentioned in western education

The walls of Benin were 4 times longer than the wall of China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin

The ignorance of this structure is partially due to the racism of the time and Britain's determination to erase Benin from history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897

rezeroed3• 8 years ago

But it doesn't exist anymore - not as useful for show and tell.

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

I'm surprised the longest wall in the world is not even mentioned in western education

It's no surprise it's not mentioned in the US. Thanks to a bunch of college students and religious extremists (granted they look like the Amish compared to more recent extremists but in the day they were certainly extremists) 40yr ago Iran went straight to the bottom of the priority list and there's never enough time to teach everything so only the highest priority items get covered.

Eupolemos• 8 years ago

Gotta love Benin's flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Benin

jcranmer2• 8 years ago

The walls of Benin were earthworks; the Great Wall of China is a massive, impressive stone fortification. The latter tends to captivate people's attention much more (most people don't realize that the modern, stone walls of the Great Wall of China are not how it existed for most of history).

DiabloD32• 8 years ago

Although this article is very interesting, the author seems to have very little knowledge of Middle Eastern history.

raarts• 8 years ago

If someone made such a statement about an article you wrote, wouldn't you want to see it substantiated?

Alir3z4• 8 years ago

If you enjoy that, you may like "a masterpiece of creative genius", the [Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System][0] as well, it's one of its kind and I'm still amazed how and using what technology they were able to make tunnels and canals into the rock under the city, of course how they did stop the stream until they finished the construction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushtar_Historical_Hydraulic_...

haloux• 8 years ago

Gorgon, also the species of Medusa. . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon

Iran's Wolf Wall, Second-Longest in the World, Is Still Shrouded in Mystery

Related Stories