[WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[geni]

On 29 March 2010 19:18, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> How so? Number of countries is 193 (roughly), but even if you factor
> in the fact that some countries share languages and some countries are
> a bit, well, small, you still have something that could approach a
> factor of x10 (i.e. an order of magnitude).

Because once you move outside Western Europe and north America you
don't have to go back very far before record have been lost,
destroyed, never kept or kept by Western Euorpeans.

Take Ghana for example. Records are extremely thin (the odd islamic
report, Portuguese
 and Dutch reports from the cost from the 15th century onwars). Solid
records of the whole area don't appear until the British set fire
to/pacified it in the 19th century.

Take Asamani an accra chief. Managed to capture Osu Castle back the
1690s. A few records exist of that and reports of European traders who
apparently had no problems trading with him while he occupied the
castle. Other than that he hardly seems to exist.



-- 
geni