However, as Eric Wolf pointed out in his ironically titled Europe and the People Without History , the spread of European commerce did not wipe out local cultures, but elicited creative new responses based on local realities. Even after contact with northwestern European capitalism, Russia, Africa, Latin America, and Asia developed in different ways based on local contexts. Modernization, in the sense of homogenization, is, then, imperfect. Furthermore, as outsiders represent local customs as quaint or antique, locals may take advantage of these images for their own purposes, to gain resources or power. We may also define ancient in another way, as the formative or classic achievements of the past.
Achievements are formative if they have helped create our way of life.
We will examine other examples of early writing systems among the Maya and the Indus River Civilization on Thursday and Wednesday, respectively. Other formative achievements are the domestication of plants and animals, the invention of the wheel and agricultural implements, and metallurgy. We can also speak of the classic Maya in America, the Benin in Africa, or the Sung dynasty in China, for example, as achieving pinnacles of excellence in the crafts of culture. Competing religions and subcultures may create crosscutting interpretations of the same ancient cultural landscape, generating problems both for historians and for politicians trying to minimize conflict. Contemporary Yugoslavia presents examples of this phenomenon, but examples may be found almost everywhere, including the Middle East, the Maya realm, South Asia, and Russia.