Let’s admit that our world history was often made up and retold until it is challenged with a new perspective. There have been many cycles of on and off. Always, majority leaders, culturally or politically, used their narratives until they became unquestionable fact, or should I say unchallenged narrative. The history of our own has been repackaged to satisfy political and ambitious cultural purposes. While we are all aware of this very trap, we are caught up by the biased and framed interpretation of our own history. Repetitious narratives do that all. When a certain country or region has gone through traumatic experience and major cultural challenges, the disinformation and misinformation become common tools to form a new scenario. Yes, history has repeated.

I found a book that reminds me of this very trap of “history.” The book is “How The World Made The West – A 4,000 years history” (2024) by Josephine Quinn. And it put all the new scientific research that gives us the new perspective of the so-to-speak West.

Quinn has been teaching ancient history at Oxford and this year 2025 she became the first woman to hold the Chair in Ancient History at Cambridge. She challenged the way the West thought about itself. The West owes its history of innovations and traditions to societies from all over the world. She makes a case that the West has been influenced by many other regions and people beyond Greek and Roman. The West has been more inter-connected to the rest of the world than commonly taught.

This book opened up my awareness of the world history that should be viewed from a variety of point-of-views.