Hey guys, I know this is weird and off the wall but a few weeks ago a friend was bargain hunting at the bookstore and scored a book for me about the 1000 Most Important/Influential people in the last 1000 years.

Now, at first I thought it was a joke since I don't really buy the "Great Individual" or "Great Leader" stuff but then I started reading the blurbs and realized it was a great exercise just for the study of history and famous events and people.

This is true because most of the people listed are either figures who serve as placeholders for major world events or else obscure people who at worst make for decent trivia.

For instance, Columbus as the figurehead for the "Iberian voyages of discovery" or Gutenberg as the herald of the Reformation/Renaissance/Enlightenment or Gehghis Khan for the Mongol Empire (which also connects up indirectly with the Black Death by unifying most of Eurasia and allowing for easy transit -- including microbial travel)

Almost no Africans make the list, despite the importance of the golden age of Islam during the so-called Dark Ages and very few Asians either while a loser like William of Normandy is in the top 10 for conquering the most backwards corner of the world 1000 years ago.

I'm not really interested in making a list because that is decidedly NOT have history plays out in fact, but I was pretty surprised at how much I found out while thumbing through the book. I was prompted to look up some person unknown to me more times than I can remember.

One thing that was especially ridiculous was the choice of Renaissance polymaths/geniuses. Honestly, what is Da Vinci's lasting contribution beyond being the archetypal "Renaissance Man"? I almost went to his museum exhibit last week called "The Genius" but is that really a legacy? I could tick off probably 100 polymaths from the Song Dynasty and early Islamic scholars who were not only his equal but his superior by a large margin especially when it comes to implementing or puttting their ideas into practice. And some of these scholars were well known in Europe by the 1200s for sure -- Avicenna, Averroes, etc

PS if I had to pick one exemplar of industrial capitalism it wouldn't be Watt or Edison or Rockefeller or Ford. I think it would be Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I don't even think either he or his predecessor George Stephenson made the list, but the cheap flow of goods everywhere in the world due to extremely reduced shipping costs and Transatlantic shipping was vital to global expansion. But again, Stephenson and Brunel both actually had checkered careers that were visionary in some ways and a failure in others.

So, trying to allocate all of the significance to one guy is more of a mental expedience than historical statement but it surprised me because if nothing else it helps to focus the mind. A friend of mine sort of got in on the act but he put Neil Armstrong, some guy who "invented the internet" (not Al Gore), and Steven Spielberg on his Top 10 list.

Armstrong for being the modern day Columbus and one of the most likely people to be remembered 1000s of years from now in pop history, and Steven Spielberg for being the greatest entertainer of all time just in terms of raw numbers.

While I'm babbling, another huge omission is Werner Von Braun. The guy was a shitbag slave driver Nazi, but he was also the man most responsible for the missle program/space race during the Cold War since he "emigrated" to the US after WWII. Total piece of shit but the father of ballistic missiles (start with the V2) with all of the negatives that carries with it.

I have never heard of Brunel but that seems a sound choice for capitalism. Strangely enough, I am famaliar with the concept of the importance of the cost of transit to capitalism through the sf novel 'Nova' by Samuel Delaney. Makes sense and points up the irrationality of capitalism, that European firewood and cheap socket sets from Asia are somehow economically viable here.

for his entire career. Or else I woulda never heard of Brunel or Stephenson either -- although I guess thats odd since most track is called "Stephenson Guage" still today. Interesting the BBC took a poll and Brunel was voted the second greatest Briton. Sadly, he was behind Winston Churchill at #1 not Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare or even Cromwell.

My friend insisted I make a top 10, but with no socialists since he figured I'd put Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin-Mao as my top 5 or something, ha!

I really had no idea how to incorporate writers, pioneers in medicine, thinkers, people in the arts or religious figures, scientists, and polymaths let alone political and military figures.

Mostly I suppose its a stupid thought-game. But I can tell you for a fact that Jung Hu (its not spelled like that -- I think its Zhang He) was the greatest explorer of all time. He was also a monumental figure as the turning point in not only the course of China from 1500 onward but also the world, Old and New.

Because Chinese society was fracturing, he never went to the New World despite commnading fleets that Europe would not come near to matching until the 1800s. His vessels were 400 feet long and he transported Giraffes back from Africa to China. By comparison Columbuses ships were less than 100 feet long. He had 100s of ships and about 30,000 crew. Columbus had 100 crew for his 3 ships/

Yet not long after his death, China fell apart and it became a CAPITAL CRIME to even build a ship with more than 2 masts and eventually every ocean-going vessel was destroyed completely.

So thus a piker like Portugal aslong with Spain came to dominate the New World before following China's exqample and giving way to the Dutch and Brits a little later on.

I've been reading about this extensively although the other stuff I'm reading is not at all related to great figures in history. We should talk about it sometime because it has alot to do with "economic determinism" and "base/superstructure"