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[MetalSlimeHunt]

"Cultural relativism" in that sense is essentially a strawman, nobody not an extremist really believes that people should be free from judgement over beating women or raping children because it's culturally normal for them. But a person is not a culture and a culture is not a person. You can't apply personal responsibility to act decently towards that which isn't actually personal. What I'm saying to you is that the method by which your are choosing to judge culture isn't intelligible.

It wasn't that long ago that European cultures had practices similar or orthogonal in nastiness to what you have an issue with about Middle Eastern cultures. It was less than a century ago that British girls without wealth were expected to become domestic servants for pathetic wages in 16-hour or greater workdays and health-destroying conditions to hold up the estates of the wealthy. Until the Nazis gave it a bad name there were a lot of countries where anti-Jewish pogroms were your youth entertainment. What does it say about Europe's culture that it's people basically tried to take over the world and enslave everyone, more than once, and be the site of the most deadly wars...ever!

Is a sympathy towards child rape worse than jingoism so extreme it segues headlong into industrialized genocide and war severe enough that there are still volitile shells everywhere? But of course, that isn't a fair question, which is my point.

The cultures you're criticizing here aren't in a vacuum. Their conditions and values are derived from the world around them and the history they've experienced. It's the way humans are. As LW points out, pedophilia seems disturbingly common among rich and powerful people of all cultures. And why is that? Does bathing in dollars make you a pedophile? Does pedophilia come with a free stock trading mastery? Or is it that the radical freedom provided by wealth in a capitalist world encourages people to develop their sickest impulses and carry them out?

Women's rights suffer in countries where women lack political autonomy, and flourish in countries where they have it. Men can get away with using women to their own benefit, and so they do so. So if you're concerned about the values of particular cultures, what you really ought to be concerned about the founding conditions of the culture, which is constantly being recreated by the people who hold it. Take away the motive, take away the behavior.

[Helgoland]

I don't see how it's a controversial statement. Yes, German culture has negative aspects. For example, its almost pathological self-hatred. But not all cultures are created equal. I don't buy the idea of cultural relativism. Cultures absolutely can be better or worse than other ones. If you ask me to rank them from top to bottom, I don't have that answer for you. But I do know that most European cultures are absolutely superior to most Middle Eastern cultures. And I know I would not want European cultures to be damaged by integrating parts from Middle Eastern cultures, even if Middle Eastern cultures do have positive aspects to them (and they do, I do not deny that). But their positive aspects are outweighed by their negative.

That looks like a dog whistle, and sounds like one too. Especially if you consider that "integrating parts from Middle Eastern cultures" includes Arabic numerals, chemistry, and just about half the culture of Southern Spain. Oh, and IIRC Maltese, one of the official languages of the EU.

Oh, and also Judaism. And Christianity. The whole monotheism thing, really. And growing grain, I think. And beer. And so on and so on...

[redwallzyl]

-

Exactly.

[Reelya]

The cultures you're criticizing here aren't in a vacuum. Their conditions and values are derived from the world around them and the history they've experienced. It's the way humans are. As LW points out, pedophilia seems disturbingly common among rich and powerful people of all cultures. And why is that? Does bathing in dollars make you a pedophile? Does pedophilia come with a free stock trading mastery? Or is it that the radical freedom provided by wealth in a capitalist world encourages people to develop their sickest impulses and carry them out?

There might be something in that, that whatever is gained too easily loses meaning. e.g. if you can have it all, what becomes valuable is that which you cannot have. e.g. how taboos become fetishes, and to someone super-rich who could in effect have all the sex they want, the only value becomes in that which you cannot have - the remaining taboos.

[Maximum Spin]

That looks like a dog whistle, and sounds like one too. Especially if you consider that "integrating parts from Middle Eastern cultures" includes Arabic numerals,

Myth, those are from India.

chemistry,

Also mostly a myth; the word is from Egyptian, essentially nothing about the concept is

Oh, and also Judaism. And Christianity. The whole monotheism thing, really.

Really not seeing the benefit there.

[smjjames]

That looks like a dog whistle, and sounds like one too. Especially if you consider that "integrating parts from Middle Eastern cultures" includes Arabic numerals,

Myth, those are from India.

chemistry,

Also mostly a myth; the word is from Egyptian, essentially nothing about the concept is

Oh, and also Judaism. And Christianity. The whole monotheism thing, really.

Really not seeing the benefit there.

The Arabs did contribute a heck of a lot to the field of mathematics, but the orgin correction is besides the point that helgo was making.

The word 'chemistry' may also have a Greek origin, though the Greek and Egyptian words themselves are actually pretty similar to each other.

[Reelya]

Greeks and Egyptians go way back. e.g. there are artworks in Egypt dates from around 1600BC that are clearly Minoan in origin and were originally dated to the Hyksos period. The Hyksos were foreign invaders and the Minoan frescos turn up in their capital city in Egypt. So there were probably significant levels of communication / settlement and conquest all across the Eastern Mediterranean for 1000 years before the "classical greece" era. Races are BS. Everyone around the meditteranean is related to everyone else.

Interestingly, the "modern-era" history books (written from the 18th-19th centuries by "aryan" scholars mainly in England and German) discount basically all cross-cultural connections between Europe, Africa and Asia before around 700BC. Mainly because they wanted to set the Greeks up as a "pure aryan" race who invented everything for themselves and didn't need earlier cultures to learn from.

If you read 20th century history books it's full of this racist bullshit, such as I picked up a book by historian H. D. F. Kitto (who wrote what was considered a standard text for college-level ancient history) after hearing about the "aryan whitewashing" of Greek history and it had statements such as "the Greeks invented vowels, and it is vowels which make rational thought possible". I kid you not, that's what his books were full of. The reason for this statement was that it's impossible to deny that the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenecian alphabet, so they have to say "yeah but the Greeks did it better".

Additionally, I looked up in a kid's history book maps of Greek vs Phoenician settlements across the meditteranean. They were equally spread out everywhere, from Spain to the Black Sea except ... within the borders of modern Greece. Apparently no Phoenician ever settled in that area. And that area alone. Again, it's the aryan whitewashing of Greece by 19th century scholarship, which was anti-african / anti-semitic. Note that the Greeks themselves had legends of certain Greek cities that originated as Phoenecian or Egyptian settlements. Also classics scholars were adamant about saying stuff like "well the Greeks went to the Phoenecians and got the alphabet. The Phoenecians didn't bring it to them!" when the Phoenecians were already everywhere to the east and west of Greece and had huge fleets that the Greeks lacked. They could get to Spain but never visited the Aegean? Get real. "scholars" discount the possibilty that Phoenecians themselves brought their writing to Greece via e.g. trade or settlement, because saying that wouldn't highlight the "go get them" attitude of the Greeks. Classics history books are basically a massive irrational blowjob for Greek superiority over everyone else.
 
The scholars of the "classics" school of thought wanted to seriously downplay the contributions of both the Phoenecians and Egyptians to early Greek/European culture because of anti-African and anti-semitic beliefs, and the rise of Eurocentrism in the 18th/19th centuries. Basically all the history books about ancient Greece are heavily compromised by centuries of "white washing".

[Teneb]

-snip-

Oh man, school textbooks are the most delicious bullshit ever when it comes to history. I am actually having to do comparisons between various books as part of a class in my history course due to a moralist shitstorm that is going on in my country (I won't go into details since this is the EU thread, anyone who wants details can PM me).

[Loud Whispers]

Interestingly, the "modern-era" history books (written from the 18th-19th centuries by "aryan" scholars mainly in England and German) discount basically all cross-cultural connections between Europe, Africa and Asia before around 700BC. Mainly because they wanted to set the Greeks up as a "pure aryan" race who invented everything for themselves and didn't need earlier cultures to learn from.

England and German? U wot. The European colonial powers pick up racialist discourse in the 19th century and spread it through their colonial systems, and they picked it up from the USA - which gave it its modern meanings in the late-18th century. It's only until the mid-19th century that they even coined the term ayyyyryan lmao m9, before then they argued between all chaotic messes of disciplines over sons of Japheth and Shem and Antediluvian things, even the very term Caucasian was picked because Blumenbach liked the skull sample he found in the Caucasus the most. Even Blumenbach noted that there weren't clear lines of distinction between the categories of man he had made, and that they blended insensibly between one another. It's oddly enough not the 18th-19th centuries, but from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th centuries that Race in discourse becomes what we know, odd because it's surprising that such a concept that seems so inseparable from modern political strife, is such a young idea. But anyways, I'm questioning whether there isn't some serious and grievous anachronism going on m9

If you read 20th century history books it's full of this racist bullshit, such as I picked up a book by historian H. D. F. Kitto (who wrote what was considered a standard text for college-level ancient history) after hearing about the "aryan whitewashing" of Greek history

Yeah you get what I mean, it's from this period that racialist discourse is really born.

and it had statements such as "the Greeks invented vowels, and it is vowels which make rational thought possible". I kid you not, that's what his books were full of.

And then the Welsh vomit y's onto the alphabet

The reason for this statement was that it's impossible to deny that the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenecian alphabet, so they have to say "yeah but the Greeks did it better".

Denying that the Greeks didn't add innovation is about as foolish as saying because the Abbasids did not invent Algebra or Philosophy their innovations do not count either. Pls

Additionally, I looked up in a kid's history book maps of Greek vs Phoenician settlements across the meditteranean. They were equally spread out everywhere, from Spain to the Black Sea except ... within the borders of modern Greece. Apparently no Phoenician ever settled in that area. And that area alone. Again, it's the aryan whitewashing of Greece by 19th century scholarship, which was anti-african / anti-semitic. Note that the Greeks themselves had legends of certain Greek cities that originated as Phoenecian or Egyptian settlements.

Spoiler: m9 (click to show/hide)

When the Greeks and Phoenicians tried settling the same space it often ended with armed conflict to drive one of them out. They had two different goals in mind, one with spreading Hellenic civilization, the other with spreading the reach of their Trading Empire. There exists no evidence to my knowledge that Phoenicians decided to colonize an area infamous for its mountains, cliffs and clusters of powerful city states, where we do see them make colonies in Anatolia alongside the Greeks. So if there are Egyptian or Phoenician colonies in Greece you know about, I desperately want to know, as I don't. We do have evidence for example that the Greeks set up a colony in Egypt, and historians like Herodotus talk of how the Greeks got their alphabet from the Phoenicians or Papyrus from Egypt and so on, the cultural exchange being extraordinary - but I should really hope that people do not go completely overboard with the current fad of killing the white philosophers because they're white. It's honestly painful when I have to read people saying England is African because the Romans brought Phoenician auxiliaries (??why live??).

Also classics scholars were adamant about saying stuff like "well the Greeks went to the Phoenecians and got the alphabet. The Phoenecians didn't bring it to them!" when the Phoenecians were already everywhere to the east and west of Greece and had huge fleets that the Greeks lacked. They could get to Spain but never visited the Aegean? Get real. "scholars" discount the possibilty that Phoenecians themselves brought their writing to Greece via e.g. trade or settlement, because saying that wouldn't highlight the "go get them" attitude of the Greeks. Classics history books are basically a massive irrational blowjob for Greek superiority over everyone else.

You acknowledge generalizing the inequities of race based then do so for an entire discipline. Absolutely shamful display I commit sudoku now.
 

The scholars of the "classics" school of thought wanted to seriously downplay the contributions of both the Phoenecians and Egyptians to early Greek/European culture because of anti-African and anti-semitic beliefs, and the rise of Eurocentrism in the 18th/19th centuries. Basically all the history books about ancient Greece are heavily compromised by centuries of "white washing".

END ME FAST D:

I don't see how it's a controversial statement.

Basically it's controversial because in order to make such statements you must quantify on what metrics you judge and place cultures on an objective standard, wholly independent on your own subjective preferences. So in arguing that x culture is better than y culture, you have to explain in what is x culture better than y culture.

[Reelya]

Greek sources say more than just that they acquired phoenician alphabet by "papyrus". The Greek legendary figure Cadmus was said to be of Phoenecian origin who created the settlement that became the city of Thebes. Why would Theban Greeks say they the city had a non-Greek founder if it didn't really? This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

https://phoenicia.org/cadmus.html

Also the dynasty that ruled Argos was said to be derived from Egyptians. People visiting Argos in antiquity (during the literate period) related stories about the founder/king Danaus, who came from Egypt after losing a civil war, as if they're well known fact (or believed to be fact) by the locals. Again, they'd have little reason to say their royal family had been founded by foreigners if it really hadn't been.

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

That one of the points, and there are textbooks about this.

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

The first volume of Black Athena describes in detail Bernal's views on how the Ancient model acknowledging Egyptian and Phoenician influences on Greece came under attack during the 18th and 19th centuries. Bernal concentrates on four interrelated forces: the Christian reaction, the idea of progress, racism and Romantic Hellenism.[2]

The Christian reaction. Already Martin Luther had fought the Church of Rome with the Greek Testament. Greek was seen as a sacred Christian tongue which Protestants could plausibly claim was more Christian than Latin. Many French students of Ancient Greece in the 17th century were brought up as Huguenots.[3] The study of Ancient Greece especially in Protestant countries created an alliance between Greece and Protestant Christianity which tended to exclude other influences.

The idea of progress. The antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia had previously made those civilizations particularly worthy of respect and admiration, but the emergence of the idea of progress portrayed later civilizations as more advanced and therefore better. Earlier cultures came to be seen as based on superstition and dogmatism.

Racism. The Atlantic slave trade and later European colonialism required the intellectual justification of racism. It became paramount to divorce Africans and Africa from high civilisation, and Egypt from Africa itself. Ancient Greeks would be divorced from Ancient Egypt through the concept of the Greek Miracle, and would be reclaimed as whites and Europeans.

Romanticism. Romantics saw humans as essentially divided in national or ethnic groups. The German philosopher Herder encouraged Germans to be proud of their origins, their language and their national characteristics or national genius. Romantics longed for small, virtuous and "pure" communities in remote and cold places: Switzerland, North Germany and Scotland. When considering the past, their natural choice was Greece. The Philhellenic movement led to new archaeological discoveries as well contributing to the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman empire. Most Philhellenes were Romantics and Protestants.

The bit "especially in protestant countries" is where the "English and German" part is relevant. The scholars promoting this "new" view at the time hailed predominantly from those two nations. It mentions so in the book cited. English and German thinkers latched onto this for different reasons. English because eurocentrism backed up the justification for empire and conquest, and the Germans were trying to forge a unified national / racial identity.

Also the point is, and Martin Bernal's book is full of direct quotes to show this, that these scholars were attacking previous views of the type I'm talking about. The sheer amount of writing they did attacking those counter-views is in fact proof that the counter-views existed and were widespread enough that the people who didn't like those views were mounting full-scale ideological warfare against those views.

And this was centuries ago, before any sort of liberal "cultural relativism" thing even existed. So they weren't attacking liberal historical revisionism, they were the historical revisionists. The cross-cultural origins of Greece were in fact the previous mainstream viewpoint in scholarship.

Anyway here's a quote from an opponent of Bernal:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/25/books/rescuing-the-greeks.html

The standard scholarly position on Egypt and the Greeks goes as follows: The Greeks had great respect for Egyptian culture, which was older than theirs, and they observed parallels in their religion and thought to what they found in Egypt. So they supposed that they had borrowed from the Egyptians. However, in the 20th century we can show with the analytical tools of scholarship (above all, source criticism and documentary material such as inscriptions, coins and papyri) that they were wrong. I subscribe to this position, but we have to admit that it cannot be promulgated as proven fact.

So ... the "standard model" of Greek history studies is that the Greeks were great and supersmart and invented everything themselves. And if the Greeks tell you otherwise, well that's just because the Greeks were dumb and didn't know their own history, and just made shit up about having gotten stuff from other earlier cultures, just like they made shit up about having Phoenecian and Egyptian settlers/conquerers who founded cities. Great theory there, fellas. Super-fucking-consistent logic. Can you see why the standard model is getting the piss taken out of it?

BTW here's an allusion to the idea that "[Greek] vowels made rational thought possible" that I mentioned before.  Page 54-56 here critiques the concept, which shows that it was a widespread concept in academia among those "logical" scholars who set up the standard model that the guy above subscribes to:

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WeHPGhIfgrYC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=the+greeks+invented+vowels+which+make+rational+thought+possible&source=bl&ots=ZI06cB5IB4&sig=fWBS7oqfSs-gRHcNzZaeJ4HB3ks&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii5uKVjYzXAhWMFpQKHfz0D44Q6AEINzAC#v=onepage&q=the%20greeks%20invented%20vowels%20which%20make%20rational%20thought%20possible&f=false

[smjjames]

Not surprised that there would be cultural exchanges given their proximity and how much easier plying the Mediterranean is compared to plying the Atlantic.

And then theres the stuff about Atlanteans or Greeks or what have you crossing the Atlantic and giving civilization to MesoAmerica, like the natives are too primitive to develop civilization. That's the same BS that came out of the same historical ideological stuff.

It's not impossible for some ships to get blown off course or something and make it to the Americas (at this point, it's not who has visited the Americas, it's who hasn't), but the whole "bringing civilization to the uncivilized savages"? Come on.

[Reelya]

That's my point, nobody (except a few whackos) is saying that "everything" in Greece owes it origins to other nations, Bernal & Co are just saying not to discount the existing, known evidence that there has been cross-fertilization.

And he provides a ton of evidence that there was a concerted effort of anglo/german scholars who systematically tore all this down over a couple of centuries of scholarship, often with the most flimsy of logical bases for doing so. Like the citations above show, the main rationales for doing so were to create justifications for religious, racist, colonialist and nationalist ideas.

Basically if you write history books that appeal to the powers that be, then they are the ones that are going to be taught and elaborated on, just like historians who butter up to a king are the ones who get paid to write history books by the king.

[Loud Whispers]

Greek sources say more than just that they acquired phoenician alphabet by "papyrus".

Yeah m9, you misread my sentence. I said they got papyrus from the Egyptians, and their alphabet from the Phoenicians, not the alphabet by papyrus xD
No we're in agreement, Herodotus explicitly says the Greeks were noalphabet before learning it from the Phoenicians

The Greek legendary figure Cadmus was said to be of Phoenecian origin who created the settlement that became the city of Thebes. Why would Theban Greeks say they the city had a non-Greek founder if it didn't really? This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Legendary Phoenician prince =/= Phoenician colony. Pretty cool, but I reckon looking into why people make foundation myths, and I'd like to just quote from Herodotus:

These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus and of whom the Gephyraeans were a part brought with them to Hellas, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which had been unknown before this, I think, to the Greeks. As time went on the sound and the form of the letters were changed. At this time the Greeks who were settled around them were for the most part Ionians, and after being taught the letters by the Phoenicians, they used them with a few changes of form. In so doing, they gave to these characters the name of Phoenician, as was quite fair seeing that the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece. The Ionians have also from ancient times called sheets of papyrus skins, since they formerly used the skins of sheep and goats due to the lack of papyrus. Even to this day there are many foreigners who write on such skins. Link. Now the Dionysus who was called the son of Semele, daughter of Cadmus, was about sixteen hundred years before my time, and Heracles son of Alcmene about nine hundred years; and Pan the son of Penelope (for according to the Greeks Penelope and Hermes were the parents of Pan) was about eight hundred years before me, and thus of a later date than the Trojan war. Link.

Cadmus then is estimated by Herodotus as having appeared 1,600 years before him, with Herodotus himself writing at 440 B.C..

This order of events in the semi-historical, semi-legendary Greek past conflicts with the fact that the Cadmeian alphabet has not been found in Greece before about the middle of the eighth century. Furthermore, because of certain characteristics in their form, the earliest Cadmeian letters bear the best resemblance to the Phoenician letters.
https://phoenicia.org/cadmus.html

Hence why it's chronologically impossible for a legendary Prince to have been the one who brought the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks. Foundational legends are important as they are today as they were back then, for much the same reasons. They give a legitimacy and awe to why you are where you are, a reason to be, much as the same way the American foundation myth today is of being a shining beacon of liberty and opportunity - there need not be reality in the legend ;]
So the Cadmus legend gave Thebes' ruling families legitimacy in hereditary rule. Cadmus shows up, gives the Greeks the alphabet, slays the water-dragon and sows its teeth into the ground to make the Spartoi, then the Spartoi kill each other until the strongest 5 remain - and those 5 aid Cadmus in founding Thebes, becoming the 5 founding families. Maybe there's something behind the Spartoi and Cadmus but evidence is scarce beyond the legend, which is legendary. Look at the Dorian invasion arguments going on for example, with scholars still trying to figure out today whether the Dorians invaded or mass migrated, or whether they had connections with the sea peoples that invaded Egypt, or whether they had actually invaded at all and weren't just a cultural evolution of Greece. Whether the Dorians truly did invade will hopefully be confirmed or reevaluated by future archaeological discoveries, but regardless of the veracity of the legend, it offered the same sort of legitimacy to such peoples as the Laconians as to why they were allowed to conquer and enslave Achaean Greeks. Simple: They were Dorian Greeks, descendants of Heracles.

Also the dynasty that ruled Argos was said to be derived from Egyptians. People visiting Argos in antiquity (during the literate period) related stories about the founder/king Danaus as if they're well known fact (or believed to be fact) by the locals. Again, they'd have little reason to say their royal family had been founded by foreigners if it really hadn't been.

Danaus wasn't a historical figure nor was he the founder King of Argos, in his myth he fled to Argos - descending from Io, a Priestess of Argos who Zeus turned into a cow. Because Zeus is a bellend.
Anyways Argos's foundation myth was that it was founded by Argos, son of Zeus, and the city itself (if you'll pardon using Wikipedia) 7,000 years old today. At any rate, by comparison the Danaus legend takes place 1,400 years after Agamemnon ruled Argos and Diomedes set forth to stab two gods in one day. Personally I subscribe to the theory that Argos was simply named Argos because the area it was founded in was a highly fertile plain, and the name Argos signifies an agricultural plain.
The legend of Danaus is interesting, and honestly I think Japan is normal compared to Ancient Greek myth, but yeah Danaus is the twin brother of Aegyptus, King of all Egypt and Arabia, both grandsons of Poseidon and great grandsons of a cow. Aegyptus inherits Egypt and conquers Arabia, Danaus rules over Libya, and Aegyptus has 50 sons while Danaus has 50 daughters. Naturally Aegyptus commands Danaus to give his 50 daughters to his 50 sons in marriage, to which Danaus refuses. Danaus elects to flee instead, building the first ship ever, fleeting to Argos where he has a divine connection owing to his descent from the Priestess Io. Also, he is credited as having brought wells by Pliny to Greece at the same time. Owing to the power of Aegyptus, as he shows up later, Danaus is forced to give their hands in marriage, but commands each daughter to slay her husband on the marriage night. 49 of them kill their husbands except Hypermestra, who spares her husband Lynceus. At first Danaus is furious, but then relents, and as he can't find suitors for his 49 widowed daughters offers them as prizes in a footrace - though their is another tradition of the legend which recounts that Lynceus kills Danaus & his daughters, thereupon seizing the throne of Argos. At any rate whether Lynceus usurps or inherits the throne, the 49 daughters are tasked in Hades with filling a vessel with water, but the vessels all have no bottoms. This represents the rivers and springs of Argolis drying up in Summer. Also whatever the outcome, Lynceus becomes the next legendary ancestors of the Royal Line of Argos, which then counts Perseus and Heracles in their number. I had to double check, but they have no connection with the Argo and the Argonauts ;]

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

The first volume of Black Athena describes in detail Bernal's views on how the Ancient model acknowledging Egyptian and Phoenician influences on Greece came under attack during the 18th and 19th centuries. Bernal concentrates on four interrelated forces: the Christian reaction, the idea of progress, racism and Romantic Hellenism.[2]
The Christian reaction. Already Martin Luther had fought the Church of Rome with the Greek Testament. Greek was seen as a sacred Christian tongue which Protestants could plausibly claim was more Christian than Latin. Many French students of Ancient Greece in the 17th century were brought up as Huguenots.[3] The study of Ancient Greece especially in Protestant countries created an alliance between Greece and Protestant Christianity which tended to exclude other influences.
The idea of progress. The antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia had previously made those civilizations particularly worthy of respect and admiration, but the emergence of the idea of progress portrayed later civilizations as more advanced and therefore better. Earlier cultures came to be seen as based on superstition and dogmatism.
Racism. The Atlantic slave trade and later European colonialism required the intellectual justification of racism. It became paramount to divorce Africans and Africa from high civilisation, and Egypt from Africa itself. Ancient Greeks would be divorced from Ancient Egypt through the concept of the Greek Miracle, and would be reclaimed as whites and Europeans.
Romanticism. Romantics saw humans as essentially divided in national or ethnic groups. The German philosopher Herder encouraged Germans to be proud of their origins, their language and their national characteristics or national genius. Romantics longed for small, virtuous and "pure" communities in remote and cold places: Switzerland, North Germany and Scotland. When considering the past, their natural choice was Greece. The Philhellenic movement led to new archaeological discoveries as well contributing to the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman empire. Most Philhellenes were Romantics and Protestants.

The bit "especially in protestant countries" is where the "English and German" part is relevant. The scholars promoting this "new" view at the time hailed predominantly from those two nations.

he book also ignited a debate in the academic community. While some reviewers contend that studies of the origin of Greek civilization were tainted by a foundation of 19th century racism, many have criticized Bernal for what they perceive to be the speculative nature of his hypothesis, unsystematic and linguistically incompetent handling of etymologies and a naive handling of ancient myth and historiography. The claims made in Black Athena were heavily questioned inter alia in Black Athena Revisited (1996), a collection of essays edited by Mary Lefkowitz and her colleague Guy MacLean Rogers.
Critics voice their strongest doubts over Bernal's approach to language and word derivations (etymologies). Cambridge Egyptologist John D. Ray has accused Bernal's work of having a confirmation bias. Edith Hall compares Bernal's thesis to the myth of the Olympian gods overwhelming the Titans and Giants, which was once thought of as a historical recollection of Homo sapiens taking over from Neanderthal man. She asserts that this historical approach to myth firmly belongs in the nineteenth century.
Others have challenged the lack of archaeological evidence for Bernal's thesis. Egyptologist James Weinstein points out that there is very little evidence that the ancient Egyptians were a colonizing people in the third millennium and second millennium BC.[7] Furthermore, there is no evidence for Egyptian colonies of any sort in the Aegean world. Weinstein accuses Bernal of relying primarily on his interpretations of Greek myths as well as distorted interpretations of the archaeological and historical data.
In 2001 Bernal published Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to Critics as a response to criticism of his earlier works.
Thomas McEvilley concluded in 2002 that while Bernal's "analysis of earlier periods of anti-Semitic attitude in regard to ancient Near Eastern culture may remain valuable, his attempt...to derive Greek philosophy from Africa seems so glaringly unsupported by evidence that it is likely to pass without leaving a trace

Really gets the ol' neurons networking

That's my point, nobody (except a few whackos) is saying that "everything" in Greece owes it origins to other nations, Bernal & Co are just saying not to discount the existing, known evidence that there has been cross-fertilization.

Bernal is one of the whackos asserting without evidence that Greece owes its origins to other nations. Cultural exchange =/= Egypt is the birthplace of Greek civilization

And he provides a ton of evidence that there was a concerted effort of anglo/german scholars who systematically tore all this down over a couple of centuries of scholarship, often with the most flimsy of logical bases for doing so. Like the citations above show, the main rationales for doing so were to create justifications for religious, racist, colonialist and nationalist ideas.

Someone being wrong does not make you right.

Basically if you write history books that appeal to the powers that be, then they are the ones that are going to be taught and elaborated on, just like historians who butter up to a king are the ones who get paid to write history books by the king.

And I agree, and Bernal remains wrong, and it continues to be wrong to annihilate an entire discipline and history based off of your own anachronisms and selections.

*EDIT
As peace offering to ensure good cultural exchange I offer you a fresh meme Reelya

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We xenia now

[Reelya]

"annihilate an entire discipline and history" yeah over-reacting much?

That's pretty much an appeal to consequence / appeal to emotion right there. If he writes something then it's just a book. If a whole discipline implodes because of him just writing a book, that's their problem, not his. Anyway they're all stuffy old academics, it's not your normal shtick to give a damn about their cosy little theories. I'm skeptical that you of all people are suddenly feeling bad for some academics who've had their ivory tower rattled.

Also note that I've read Bernal's book, and at no point does he cite "large scale Egyptian colonization of the Aegean". So any disproof of that would seem to be a red herring / straw man. The Bernal critics suffer from one main flaw - they're often debunking stuff he never wrote rather than taking apart his actual argument. And the stuff they're debunking is often completely at odds with what is in his books.

e.g. the writer I cited above showed the Egyptians weren't black and and says "Bernal was wrong" despite ... "Black Egyptians" not having the slightest thing to do with anything Bernal wrote.

[Loud Whispers]

"annihilate an entire discipline and history" yeah over-reacting much?

Sadly not, the state of classics is in a right fucking mess and in danger of going extinct in most classrooms. The subject is dying and the recent push to further erase what traces of it remain in other disciplines because Plato and Socrates are white will fuck it right up even further. To put things into context, classics, ancient Greek, Latin, even classical civilizations, all are declining in both state and private - for example in Scotland 2014 a grand total of 28 students studied advanced level Latin in the entire country, state and independent combined.

Hence why I'm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because it is kill
On the bright side the topic remains popular if the study does not. Have you read A Secret History by any chance? It's a positively moist/moist book, and one of the best I've ever read. Gives me hope that perhaps across the Atlantics there are weird culty classics students doing bacchanals in American Universities.