# Are any parts of Europe considered "flyover country"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 10, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349 "2009-06-10T16:54:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![rivulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rivulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rivulus)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/61 "2009-06-15T16:56:24Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > Let me just say that, growing up in the Midwest, you can drive 100’s of miles and find one crappy little town after another, separated by one corn field after another, with absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever; it has nothing to do with white people vs Native Americans. Try driving back and forth from Southern Illinois University to the Chicago area about 60 times and we will talk. Carbondale? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/62 "2009-06-15T17:02:30Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Without endorsing the conflation of historiography and history, I give you [Maya script - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script). It’s not a conflation. Peoples with no written language are by definition prehistoric (or protohistoric, depending on who knows about them). ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/63 "2009-06-15T17:12:12Z")
_raises hand meekly_ I know this is because I hardly ever get to fly anywhere, but I _like_ the patchwork quilt effect of flying over farmland. I’m a farm girl, to realize those fields that I’m so used to on the ground look so different from so far up is awesome. Then again, I also don’t mind driving through endless amounts of prairie, so maybe I’m just weird. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/64 "2009-06-15T17:13:40Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It’s not a conflation. Peoples with no written language are by definition prehistoric (or protohistoric, depending on who knows about them). Depends. There are a couple dozen indigenous peoples who live in the Russian Federation, who (if they are educated and/or literate) mostly use Russian when writing because that’s what they were taught in school, but whose native languages do not have a written form (or only acquired a written form in the last few decades, and which may or may not have extensive publications or be taught in schools). Does that mean these peoples are prehistoric? because I think they’d take exception to that. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/65 "2009-06-15T17:24:24Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > Depends. There are a couple dozen indigenous peoples who live in the Russian Federation, who (if they are educated and/or literate) mostly use Russian when writing because that’s what they were taught in school, but whose native languages do not have a written form (or only acquired a written form in the last few decades, and which may or may not have extensive publications or be taught in schools). Does that mean these peoples are prehistoric? because I think they’d take exception to that. Of course they’re not. It doesn’t matter whose language they use to keep written records - the important thing is that they do. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/66 "2009-06-15T17:26:17Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > This isn’t precisely correct. You have London, and maybe at an order of magnitude less, you have Paris. Everything else–Berlin, Milan, Moscow, Barcelona–may be lovely cities, but they are the continental equivalents of Denver and Atlanta. I don’t know who told you this, but this is not true. Even if you look only at education and not at other measures (e.g. art, since theater was mentioned, or classic music, or avantgarde…), and if you acknowledge that english-language surveys will be skewed towards native–English places like UK and Ireland in favour of all other European nations, then Paris, Berlin, Munich, Upssala, … etc are excellent centers of learning and research and study. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/67 "2009-06-15T17:33:34Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Actually, in America history did begin when the white people showed up, almost by definition, since nearly all (all?) of the Native American tribes had no written language. Huh? Is that the American definition of history - only what’s written down? No oral history passed over the generations? Because you loose a lot of Middle-East history that way, for example. Before the Bible was written down, it was passed on orally. I thought historians in the past decades had started researching the oral history of people who, for various reasons, had previously no written records, but nevertheless knew their history. Eg. the African-Americans were prevented from learning reading and writing and thus could not write things down; the Native Americans in the US (the mezo-and south American big civilasations were obviously a different thing) had a different attitude towards writing, though they had some way of keeping records for important things, like painting on buffalo hide. Wampun belts that sealed treaties or agreements often contained the important parts in pictograms, also. The Cherokee took quite well to writing once Sequoah had developed a syllable-alphabet for them, proving that it wasn’t lack of intelligence or anything that had prevented them from writing before. It simply hadn’t been necessary to the extent that other civilsations did. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/68 "2009-06-15T17:34:50Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > I don’t know who told you this, but this is not true. Even if you look only at education and not at other measures (e.g. art, since theater was mentioned, or classic music, or avantgarde…), and if you acknowledge that english-language surveys will be skewed towards native–English places like UK and Ireland in favour of all other European nations, then Paris, Berlin, Munich, Upssala, … etc are excellent centers of learning and research and study. Not that I found any of your earlier arguments as compelling as they were childishly provocative, but if you really contend that Upssala is a world city on the order of London, then I’d say you’ve shot your credibility on this topic. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/69 "2009-06-15T17:36:17Z")
> [@kushiel](#): > > _raises hand meekly_ I know this is because I hardly ever get to fly anywhere, but I _like_ the patchwork quilt effect of flying over farmland. I’m a farm girl, to realize those fields that I’m so used to on the ground look so different from so far up is awesome. Nobody said that looking at the country isn’t pretty. It’s just that there’s not much else. > [@](#): > > Then again, I also don’t mind driving through endless amounts of prairie, so maybe I’m just weird. Oh, the prairie has an interesting history, and the prarie tribes of Native Americans certainly also lifed for riding through the prarie, so I wouldn’t call it weird, just unusual from the average American, who prefers to sit in a McDonald and watch TV instead of looking at the landscape. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/70 "2009-06-15T17:41:26Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Huh? Is that the American definition of history - only what’s written down? That is, as far as I recall from school, the actual definition of the word _history_. Everything that happened before the written language is prehistory and is a different, but no less important, topic. Historians study things that were written down; if it wasn’t, it’s studied by archaeologists or other scholars. Is that an American-only thing? ---
**Author:** ![Teacake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Teacake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teacake)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/71 "2009-06-15T17:43:08Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > This isn’t precisely correct. You have London, and maybe at an order of magnitude less, you have Paris. Everything else–Berlin, Milan, Moscow, Barcelona–may be lovely cities, but they are the continental equivalents of Denver and Atlanta. I live in London and have visited every city you mention and many you’ve probably never heard of. I disagree totally with your position here. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/72 "2009-06-15T17:48:01Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > …, but if you really contend that Upssala is a world city on the order of London, then I’d say you’ve shot your credibility on this topic. Good thing I didn’t say anything like that, then. I was referring to only education when I mentioned Uppsala. But just because you haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean its university isn’t good. What kind of ranking would you accept - Wall Street Journal, Business Week (with a European section apart from the US ranking), by the Europeans? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/73 "2009-06-15T17:52:55Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > That is, as far as I recall from school, the actual definition of the word _history_. Everything that happened before the written language is prehistory and is a different, but no less important, topic. Historians study things that were written down; if it wasn’t, it’s studied by archaeologists or other scholars. > > Is that an American-only thing? I don’t know if it’s the official US defintion, or simply how things are taught at US schools. You have never heard of “[Oral History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_history)” then? [Wiktionary](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/history) gives this definition: > [@](#): > > history (plural histories) > > 1. The aggregate of past events. > > 2. The branch of knowledge that studies the past; the assessment of notable events. > > 3. A record or narrative description of past events… So every record about the past, whether written down or told orally. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/74 "2009-06-15T17:58:17Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Huh? Is that the American definition of history - only what’s written down? That is _the_ definition of history (and what I was taught in school _in Britain_). By definition, it’s a written record of events. Oral history isn’t quite the same because it changes in the telling. That isn’t to say, of course, that written history is always accurate, just that you can read it 2,000 years later and the words are the same. > [@](#): > > the Native Americans in the US (the mezo-and south American big civilasations were obviously a different thing) had a different attitude towards writing, though they had some way of keeping records for important things, like painting on buffalo hide. Wampun belts that sealed treaties or agreements often contained the important parts in pictograms, also. > The Cherokee took quite well to writing once Sequoah had developed a syllable-alphabet for them, proving that it wasn’t lack of intelligence or anything that had prevented them from writing before. It simply hadn’t been necessary to the extent that other civilsations did. Pictograms recording events would count, I imagine. I’m not making a value judgment here; the most important use of written records was to denote ownership, and as most Native American peoples did not entertain the concept of ownership it makes sense that they wouldn’t bother writing things down. I was simply referring to the statement that “history doesn’t begin when white people show up,” which, though obviously true in spirit, is technically inaccurate in the case of most Native (North) Americans. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/75 "2009-06-15T18:24:04Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > That is _the_ definition of history (and what I was taught in school _in Britain_). By definition, it’s a written record of events. Well, for me history is simply the study of past events. > [@](#): > > Oral history isn’t quite the same because it changes in the telling. Not oral history of people without written records. Those were passed on very differently from todays stories in a society which relies on written records, and thus pays far less attention to the accuracy of oral stories. > [@](#): > > That isn’t to say, of course, that written history is always accurate, just that you can read it 2,000 years later and the words are the same. So? You still need the complete context to understand the text. Cecil did a few columns, e.g. the Ius prima noctae is now believed by most historians to be a later satire, and not an accurate historical account. Or the story in the Bible about drunken Noah and his shame - context has been lost in the written version, and we simply don’t know how to interpret it today. > [@](#): > > I was simply referring to the statement that “history doesn’t begin when white people show up,” which, though obviously true in spirit, is technically inaccurate in the case of most Native (North) Americans. That’s only technically inaccurate for the narrow defintion of history as written record. For the general context (see my wiktionary link) of a record of past events, or the study of past events, it’s true. I mean, you surely aren’t implying that nothing important happened just because the Native Americans didn’t build a civilsation similar enough to the white man to be recognized, that they were uncivilised? The five nations had elaborate systems. Some historians have recently suggested that the model of American democracy comes not so much directly from the Romans and Greeks, where only an elite was allowed to speak and vote, but from the Native Americans nearby, where every adult had a vote and a voice in the tribal assembly. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/76 "2009-06-15T18:39:07Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Good thing I didn’t say anything like that, then. I was referring to only education when I mentioned Uppsala. But just because you haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean its university isn’t good. What kind of ranking would you accept - Wall Street Journal, Business Week (with a European section apart from the US ranking), by the Europeans? Funny, I thought we were talking about “flyover country,” not the quality of Swedish universities. I guess “staying on topic” is another pernicious American thang, ain’t it, Fritz? ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/77 "2009-06-15T18:42:29Z")
> [@Teacake](#): > > I live in London and have visited every city you mention and many you’ve probably never heard of. I disagree totally with your position here. Well shut mah mouth! I really don’t care whether you, personally, agree or disagree in whatever fraction with me. My claim never purported to be “a fact about Teacake.” It does happen to be true that, compared to London or Paris, places like Bratislava or Tromso are the equivalents of Omaha or Minot or other location you haven’t even dreamed of not knowing about. ---
**Author:** ![SmellMyWort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SmellMyWort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmellMyWort)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/78 "2009-06-15T18:54:33Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Nobody said that looking at the country isn’t pretty. It’s just that there’s not much else. > > Oh, the prairie has an interesting history, and the prarie tribes of Native Americans certainly also lifed for riding through the prarie, so I wouldn’t call it weird, just unusual from the average American, who prefers to sit in a McDonald and watch TV instead of looking at the landscape. I think your perception of the “average American” is pretty messed up. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/79 "2009-06-15T19:29:03Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > I don’t know if it’s the official US defintion, or simply how things are taught at US schools. " then? It isn’t what I was taught at U.S. schools. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349/80 "2009-06-15T19:34:06Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > It isn’t what I was taught at U.S. schools. Looking over **constanze** ’s posts, I am starting to get the impression that the only thing there is to do in Bavaria is obsess about the United States. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-parts-of-europe-considered-flyover-country/499349.md?page=5)