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The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

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Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#51

Post by merpnderp »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #41
elefanten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an intellectually impoverished notion of racism. It's mired in 20th-century theory goo. You can rest assured that racist reasoning ran rampant throughout world history long before someone coined the word "race" or before 18th/19th century political narratives used it in whatever particular ways.

I challenge you to go find a description of race based on skin colour in old Roman texts. The colour of someone's skin is barely commented on in them, more of a novelty about the person, and is not described as being related to "race." And yet they had an empire which spanned from North Africa to Northern Europe. Race as a category was an invention to justify the form of slave trade during the settling of the America…

You do realize that slavery, racism and every despicable thing imaginable was the normal state of humanity for 99.999% of our 200,000+ year history? How many languages have names for a group of people based on some common attribute of that people, far before the 17th/18th century? A lot.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#52

Post by fortran77 »

throwaway590007 wrote: post #25
stakkur wrote: post #11

I think it's fair to say that Kush has never been 'forgotten'--in fact, it's been heavily researched, documented, debated. This article title is a bit clickbait-y, and hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't acknowledge/appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong.

Looking at a strain of thought that seeks to attribute the current differences in outcomes and 'accomplishments' between Africans and Europeans to the inherent qualities of their populations, thereby discarding the possibility that such outcomes could have been different not so long ago, and seeing this strain of thought dominate HN and HN-adjacent communities (in the form of "we should dig into at'uncomfortable ques…

> I'd say that yes, Kush has largely been forgotten by the general population, even that part of which who likes to call itself 'educated'.

The Kingdom of Kush, and the people who came from there are well known to Jews. Moses wife Tziporah was a Midianite (as was Jethro) and he had a second wife from Kush.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#53

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kaitai wrote: post #46
CBLT wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. Doesn't seem true to me; people seem aware of the Mayans and some of the stuff going on in Asia at the time (though generally not all).

In school, we (I'm in the US) spent a whole high school semester on Greece and Rome. In elementary school we had a unit on Mayans/Aztecs/the Inca, and we had a unit on ancient India, but not in high school. For some reason Chinese history was really ignored so I didn't get that until I chose to take a class in college. Since we don't have a national curriculum in the US, I'm sure it's different in different places. I…

This is a continuation of the 19th century American bias towards Greek classicism as the hallmark of democracy. Conflict with the Ottomans generated a lot of sympathy toward Greece and that was reflected in fads of fashion, architecture, place names, and education.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#54

Post by jandrese »

It's pretty common for archeology to be scanty when a civilization doesn't leave behind any writings to study. If you want to be remembered you gotta write stuff down, and do so in a way that survives the ages.

It also helps to be closer to the modern era. Complaints that the Greek and Roman empires are better known seem a bit silly when you consider that they were in their peak closer to the present day than they were to Kush.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#55

Post by AlotOfReading »

hogFeast wrote: post #42
AlotOfReading wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work of archaeologists is absolutely not in proportion to the amount of surviving documents. Most of my digs have been in places and periods with few to no written records, for example. As for the comment about Europeans, I was talking about modern academics (particularly of the early through late 20th century). The leading archaeologists of that period primarily came from European and American traditions. I have…

That wasn't the claim. You should read the reply chain but the point isn't about archaeology but our interpretation of civilization outside Rome and Greece. You wanted to know why these civilizations get that share of work...the reason why is that their thought was more relevant to us (again, most Europeans believed in Aristotelian science until humanism). And, again, these civilizations were more African than Europe…

It seems like there might be a misunderstanding of what I wrote. Quoting myself:

> ..the 3 classical areas of Rome, Greece, and Egypt have gotten a very disproportionate share of work...

Greece and Rome (in the sense of the empire) are literally the "classic" in so-called classical archaeology [1]. Egypt is included because it's comparable for this particular case and there's a pretty substantial overlap with "core" classical archaeology.

Again, I've written nothing about whether these areas encompass parts of Africa nor whether they were wholly European. I also haven't implicated racism as the reason for that disproportionate amount of study. The things you're criticizing aren't my views and trying to put words into my mouth isn't appreciated.

[1] https://lsa.umich.edu/classics/undergraduate-students/majors...

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#56

Post by dr_dshiv »

haltingproblem wrote: post #40
CrackpotGonzo wrote: post #23

"Be, be-fore we came to this country We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys There was empires in Africa called Kush Timbuktu, where every race came to get books To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans Asian Arabs and gave them gold, when Gold was converted to money it all changed Money then became empowerment for Europeans The Persian military invaded They heard about the gold, the teachings,…

Nas was ahead of the times. I can't believe that these lyrics are from 2003. Always inspiring to hear them. These lyrics bring home the point that so much of culture is historical narrative. I was reading Scale by Geoffrey West who is a particle physicist. Every 5-10 pages West brings up Plato/Aristotle. This was baffling to me till it dawned on that Greek history is the author's historical narrative, his cultural id…

Plato isn't the best philosopher of all time because he is white and male. The Enlightenment is open and inclusive. Plato used to be a slave and elevated a woman to the highest philosophical position in the Symposium.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#57

Post by JackFr »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #2

Recommend sources for human culture/civilization history from 10,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C.? Most of the top search results and Wikipedia entries tap out on cultures prior to ~5,000-~3,000 B.C. Of course there are stand alone pages such as Neolithic_founder_crops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture Chalocolithic Period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicame...

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#58

Post by elefanten »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #41
elefanten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an intellectually impoverished notion of racism. It's mired in 20th-century theory goo. You can rest assured that racist reasoning ran rampant throughout world history long before someone coined the word "race" or before 18th/19th century political narratives used it in whatever particular ways.

I challenge you to go find a description of race based on skin colour in old Roman texts. The colour of someone's skin is barely commented on in them, more of a novelty about the person, and is not described as being related to "race." And yet they had an empire which spanned from North Africa to Northern Europe. Race as a category was an invention to justify the form of slave trade during the settling of the America…

As expressed by sibling comments -- skin color is irrelevant to my point.

If it's not skin color, it's "those people beyond the mountains" or "the river folk to the south" or "the Babylonians" or whatever.

I'm talking about tribal/identitarian discrimination that ascribes essential natures/behaviors to "other" peoples.

This narrowly-defined and elevated notion of racism along the lines of skin color, Atlantic slave trade dynamics, state-building/citizenship discourses of the last few century, scientific racism and all other fashionable targets of criticism is ultimately just that: a narrow subset of a larger human problem.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#60

Post by dragandj »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #2

Recommend sources for human culture/civilization history from 10,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C.? Most of the top search results and Wikipedia entries tap out on cultures prior to ~5,000-~3,000 B.C. Of course there are stand alone pages such as Neolithic_founder_crops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture Chalocolithic Period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic

Europe Between The Oceans, by Barry Cunliffe. On The Ocean, by Barry Cunliffe
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