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Author: nikau

Jan 2nd 2010 at 3:51:16 AM

The Islamic Golden Age of the 9th to 13th centuries doesn't get much play outside of the Crusades. Successive Persian empires are largely absent also.

Though if you want really ignored, try the Khmer Empire from the same time frame.

Basically to Hollywood South East Asia doesn't exist prior to the Vietnam War or, if you are very very lucky, the arrival of European traders. "Asia" then means feudal China, samurais, ninjas and kung fu. I can't recall many Hollywood movies set "now" in SE Asia either (at least ones that don't think the whole area is mired down in some form of guerrilla war), though countries in the region do have fairly active local film industries.

And poor old Central Asia only began to exist in 2006 when a hairy man donned a mankini. Well, prior to this they were ruled by the MIGHTY GHENGIS KHAN for many hundreds of years, up until becoming the stock "screwed up place run by warlords to provide some necessary tension between the US and Soviets/Russians for the initiation of ass-kicking" if Berlin, the Middle East or some ultra secretly secret new technology was already booked out.

And the Indian sub-continent definitely didn't exist prior to the arrival of the British.

At least that is what I can gather from movies, literature may be able to take place on more than 3 pages of an atlas.