Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Imaginary Geography

I was watching Discovery HD's hour-long feature on the Nubian Empire when I was struck by a major errror in the episode. Midway through, when they wanted to show readers just how expansive the Nubian Empire was, they showed a map of modern-day Northern Africa and the Middle East with several countries superimposed to show where they were in relation to the old Nubian Empire. One country they showed, on the southern edge, was Sudan... no problem there. The other country they showed, to the northeast, was Palestine.

Problem is, there is no country of Palestine. It doesn't exist in today's world. There is a country of Israel, and there are Palestinian-dominated regions, but there is no Palestine.

Dropped the Discovery channel a not about the error, but haven't heard back from 'em. Don't know that I will. There seems to be a major push among several elements to treat Palestine as if it's a country, even though it's not, so I'm left to wonder if this was a simple error or not...

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