Week 4 Internship Blog
Hello everyone, this is Patrick
Callaghan posting another blog for indeed another week. This week was mostly focused
on the other classes in my schedule finishing up the weekly quizzes and
discussions they required including a substantial amount of reading. Through
this external learning I wanted to discuss in this blog an interesting question
I have thought about that relates to the Olustee project itself.
One of my classes I am taking is
Ancient Near Eastern Societies where we study and discuss the ancient
civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and more. The discussion that caught my eye
that relates to the Olustee project is the restrictions these current day
countries place on uncovering these ancient societies. Especially in Egypt,
archeologists can only look through funerary cites or tombs and nothing of the
habitation cites. Although the Battle of Olustee is not an ancient civilization,
it is a battle lost by the Union (the current government of today) that has
records about what happened, who fought and who were left on battlefield and buried
in a mass grave. The question I have that relates to both the ancient
civilizations and the Olustee project is why the governments of today, with the
knowledge that these sites and the events occurring, refuse to do anything
about them. In the case of the ancient Egyptian societies, the aura that plays
into their tourism is built on the knowledge of these tombs and funerary cites
and uncovering the habitation cites may affect that. However, in the case of
Olustee, not only is it the soldiers of the Union (who won the war) but the
efforts to honor them today are being blocked by groups related to the
Confederacy. When restrictions or groups keep people from honoring or
discovering the realities of battles and societies there is an issue. As of
today I think the past notion of “victors write history” has changed to “modern
governments edit or ignore vital information and history to mold the perception
of themselves.”
I do not see this question as
incredibly far reaching. But I hope this rant does not make you think I do not
like learning or thinking about such things. In fact, quite the opposite. The
mystery of the cites and the events yet to be uncovered creates theories of a thousand
possibilities that for all we know even aliens could have been apart of, at
least until we find the truth.
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