More than a
few Europeans live in 500 year old _houses_, and 1000 year
old cities. So yes, that's probably the difference in perception.
Incidietnaly, I've visitied old churches here, and had the amazing
feeling that I am walking where people have walked for over 700 years.
The oldest continuously occupied buildings in America, Taos Pueblo and
Acoma Pueblo, are only about 1000 years old.
But, many people ascribe "oldest house" to colonial buildings!
It's really the same as EVERY "first computer" claim.
Similarly, most people ignore the asian immigrants and Leif Erickson's
real estate scams ("GREENland" was an early variantof "Water-front"
swamp
land) , in order to say that Columbus "discovered" America.
(Columbus never "set out to prove that the world is round", as we were
taught in history class. At the time, it was well known that the world
was (is?) round, with a circumference of about 24000 miles (it is far from
perfectly spherical). The only people who thought that it was flat, are
the same people who still think that. The bit with Columbus, was that he
had a crackpot idea that the world was about half the size that the
experts knew it to be. The experts agreed that you could get to India by
going west, but they knew that it was just TOO DAMN FAR that way.)
