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The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

smithsonianmag.com

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

#101

Post by bsanr »

wl wrote: post #92
marc_abonce wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kushites did have writing though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroitic_script .

It's not writing that's well understood. There's no parallel texts like the Rosetta Stone. Also, Meroitic isn't closely related to any other language we have knowledge of. As a result, we can read a few names and little else.

I think that wraps around to the issue one of the other comments raised, which is the contention that less effort has been put into this area compared to, say, the civilizations whose languages are represented on the Rosetta Stone. Who's to say that there isn't one for Kush, buried in some undiscovered site? Or, what about using ML to investigate similarities in construction and form between the languages conveyed in Meroitic and other languages?

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

#102

Post by nojokes »

torstenvl wrote: post #94
monadic2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not race. Ethnicity and race are distinct concepts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Ethnicity and race are distinct concepts. Come out of your bubble, the world is not US. It is an important distinction to understand what is really going on in the world.

I make very arbitrary example. Lets take Poles and Russians. Both usually pale skinned, slavish people. Still they have such huge cultural and historical differences that they could not by any change form a single political entity.

Still there could be individuals among them that could argue that darker skinned people who are descendants of their nationals are not really Polish, Russian because of their skin color.

These people are racists. The people who argue that Poles are not Russians are not racists. These are just rational persons.

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

#103

Post by scottlocklin »

monadic2 wrote: post #34
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.

I mean they literally invented race to enslave entire groups of people. And it's hardly like Europe stopped interfering or exploiting even with the 21st century.

"I mean they literally invented race"

Who is "they?" Are you referring to some distinct race of people?

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

#104

Post by Ericson2314 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #53
kaitai wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We studied all the big Eurasian civs...except for Persians. I never understood why the omission. Certainly not cause modern regime given the woke trappings adorning the rest of the curriculum.

It's an extra bummer quite simply because civilizations in the middle interact with more civilizations, and so are a great way to tie together everything else one remembers into a coherent whole.

(Umayyads conquer Sassanids and 100-200 years later have a big only-old-school-military-historicans-think-it-matters one-off battle with the Tang dynasty in like modern Tajikistan or something. What a great flashcard!)

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

#105

Post by phist_mcgee »

theobeers wrote: post #10

I was starting to worry that the author would omit one of the classic factoids on this topic: that there are more pyramids in what is now Sudan, than there are in what is now Egypt. And not by a small margin! (This is mentioned, pretty far into the article.)

And here is a fact to add to your repertoire of non-factoids! Factoid, is in fact a fact which is not actually true, but has been so often repeated it is accepted as true! (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid)

Unless of course you are referring to the other meaning of factoid, which is the opposite meaning..

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

#106

Post by akkartik »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #32
hogFeast wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work is in proportion to the amount of documents that are retained today. The reason why Rome and Greece are "popular" is they determined intellectual thought from the fall of the Western Rome until, probably, humanism (some one millennia later) so much of what they wrote down has been retained (or, more accurately, wasn't destroyed). As an example: we know Carthage was a huge civilisation...until Rome razed it s…

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…

Wonderful to see an archeologist here!

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

#107

Post by legerdemain »

fortran77 wrote: post #52
throwaway590007 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tangentially, it's funny how some brands name themselves after historical or semi-mythological figures. Tziporah sells makeup (as Sephora). Lady Godiva sells expensive chocolates.

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

#108

Post by Natsu »

legerdemain wrote: post #97
drorco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what happens is that overtime certain groups have taken "ownership" over the word by using it as a racial slur but originally it just means "someone from Kush". In Hebrew if you take a location and add "I" as a suffix it means someone originating from that place, e.g: "Americai"-> someone from America, "Kushi"-> someone from Kush which is a country occasionally used in the bible to refer to Africa. I guess in…

Look, this is just childish equivocation. A lot of words that are considered offensive also have (or used to have) other, innocuous meanings. What you're doing is like a child saying "Nah-uh, this word just means happy !" A word is offensive in polite society because a population of people finds it hurtful, or because another population of people uses it in an intentionally hurtful way. Usually it's both. Innocent wo…

This is just the euphamism treadmill in action. The name for an outgroup becomes a slur over time because it refers to an outgroup.

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

#109

Post by nl »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #105
theobeers wrote: post #10

I was starting to worry that the author would omit one of the classic factoids on this topic: that there are more pyramids in what is now Sudan, than there are in what is now Egypt. And not by a small margin! (This is mentioned, pretty far into the article.)

And here is a fact to add to your repertoire of non-factoids! Factoid, is in fact a fact which is not actually true, but has been so often repeated it is accepted as true! ( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid ) Unless of course you are referring to the other meaning of factoid, which is the opposite meaning..

I think the opposite meaning of factoid (ie: a small, very specific fact) is actually the more common usage.

I've never heard anyone actually use the original meaning, but frequently hear the "small fact" usage - except to point out the opposite meaning. (I've done some work in question answering, and the "small fact" usage is exclusively the way I've seen it used in that field)

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

#110

Post by sellyme »

nl wrote: post #109
phist_mcgee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here is a fact to add to your repertoire of non-factoids! Factoid, is in fact a fact which is not actually true, but has been so often repeated it is accepted as true! ( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid ) Unless of course you are referring to the other meaning of factoid, which is the opposite meaning..

I think the opposite meaning of factoid (ie: a small, very specific fact) is actually the more common usage. I've never heard anyone actually use the original meaning, but frequently hear the "small fact" usage - except to point out the opposite meaning. (I've done some work in question answering, and the "small fact" usage is exclusively the way I've seen it used in that field)

I find that the most common usage is for someone describing what they think is a small, very specific fact, but is in fact just a repetition of an old wives' tale with no veracity whatsoever. So maybe the original definition isn't intentionally used that often, but it does end up being relevant quite a lot!
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