The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by haltingproblem » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #44

karlp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds really deep, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to it? Wikipedia mentions internal problems and conquest by a neighboring kingdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush I don't understand why make up stories when there are more than enough material with the colonial history.

One of the most frustrating aspects of these liberationist counter-narratives is the pretense that whoever conquered or succeeded certain civilizations/cultures, did so by a unique application of force. Roughly: 'our people were good and peaceful until evil warlike invaders with wholly-different human motivations wiped us out.' We should aim to fix injustices in the world. But building false narratives of differentia…

How does an invasionary force conquer a foreign land where they are outnumbered other than by being warlike?

Lets define warlike as those who have achieved a high degree of skill at warfare.

The Mongols who conquered cities and states were famously warlike. So were the Macedonians/Greeks under Alexander.

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

#62

Post by pueblito » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

robk wrote: post #13

Meroe is spectacular and virtually no tourists and overall rather safe compared to the other three quadrants of the country. I can recommend that and scuba diving in Port Sudan highly. https://www.robk.com/2013/08/21/sudan-2012/

What are the square structures in the back of the 2nd to last photo?

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

#63

Post by ruined » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #3

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

Against the Grain by James Scott.

another +1, excellent book

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

#64

Post by legerdemain » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

"Kushi" is still a current slur against black people in Israel and other Hebrew-speaking areas.[1] It's a bit like calling someone a "chinaman." Also, some people point out the sound similarity of קוֹף (monkey) and כושי (Kushite).

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/chief-rabbi-compares-african-a...

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

#65

Post by makomk » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #45

rsynnott wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's probably fair to say that it's been ignored by the general public, but then so have most really old civilisations; in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. > hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong. ... eh, until last century it was fashionable to attribute it to…

> in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. Really? The Romans are known for their expansionism. Who were they conquering? Who was everybody fighting against in 300 ?

In the popular imagination? The Romans were conquering barbaric tribes that aren't worth talking about in detail, I think. Certainly not civilizations. The actual details of those civilizations seem to be as niche and obscure as knowledge of the Kush.

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

#66

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #51

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Human beings definitely did and still do very awful things. But that word race, as we understand it today, isn't really the thing they used to justify it.

The question is whether "race" as we understand it today was understood that way then. And it wasn't. Not that we can see.

19th century pseudo-anthropology and earlier built up a whole concept of race which essentially defined humanity into subspecies. There was Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, etc. and these were then attached to specific supposedly scientifically defined traits that went far beyond the colour of skin or shape of eye. That is what is generally meant by race, _still_. And it turns out this is complete and total bunk. There's more genetic diversity and difference within Africa between "blacks" than there is between non-Africans and Africans. So the category of race is of absolutely no use except as a historical or ethno-linguistic-cultural designation, and there as well, it's a pretty crappy one. What do Kenyans and West Africans and African Americans have in common other than skin colour? Very little -- not linguistically, not genetically, and not much culturally, either, but they do share a history of being categorized together as "black" by Europeans.

By saying "people always did this" you're ignoring a very specific meaning of race that has been used to justify, and still is, some pretty stupid _specifically_ awful crap. By calling "race" into question, we try to deal with that crap.

Yes, humanity has always used difference as a way of justifying oppression. But this specific kind of imagined difference, it's important to analyze because it's a very _modern_ designation, without a scientific basis, and it had a very specific purpose, and still does for people who like to peddle pseudo-scientific superiority theories around it.

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

#67

Post by philwelch » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

karlp wrote: post #36

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,…

It sounds really deep, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to it? Wikipedia mentions internal problems and conquest by a neighboring kingdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush I don't understand why make up stories when there are more than enough material with the colonial history.

People spin history to try and enhance the prestige of groups they identify with. Even when their group identities don’t really make sense in contexts that existed thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away. For instance, “were the ancient Egyptians black?” is a deep rabbit hole.

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

#68

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #65

thaumasiotes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. Really? The Romans are known for their expansionism. Who were they conquering? Who was everybody fighting against in 300 ?

In the popular imagination? The Romans were conquering barbaric tribes that aren't worth talking about in detail, I think. Certainly not civilizations. The actual details of those civilizations seem to be as niche and obscure as knowledge of the Kush.

> In the popular imagination? The Romans were conquering barbaric tribes that aren't worth talking about in detail, I think.

There was plenty of interaction, but the thing about those insignificant barbaric tribes is that they aren't worth conquering either.

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

#69

Post by bitdizzy » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #56

haltingproblem wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think the quote in the OP is talking about Plato's works or conduct, but how Plato figures into a modern person's, Geoffrey West's, relationship to history. In that context, I don't understand the relevance of your comment.

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

#70

Post by sevensor » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

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,…

I'd be really interested to hear more about the literature of ancient Kush or Timbuktu -- what language it was written in, what kind of scholarly tradition it had. My education covered (at least superficially) Europe, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India, and East Asia, but Africa south of the Sahara is a big blank spot...

So I went and looked it up on Wikipedia, and it turns out that Kush had an alphabetic script. Many inscriptions remain but little of the language (Meroitic) has been decoded. Although they would have had access to paper as a result of contact with Egypt and the Hellenistic world, there's no indication that any books written in Meroitic have survived.