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Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

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Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#51

Post by austin-cheney »

davoneus wrote: post #45
austin-cheney wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walls are generally not a formal requirement, but are implied so due to their commonality. All ancient cities, especially pre-civilization, had walls though, often several layers of walls built on top of each other as the given cities were pillaged and rebuilt. Its not confusing to anybody vaguely aware of ancient history.

IIRC, the Sumerians (through the Akkadians perhaps) left records stating they had to build walls around their cities. Which to me certainly implies the Sumerians had cities without walls for some time. Pretty big deal that, to have recorded it.

Don't assume things not stated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#52

Post by adrian_b »

ordu wrote: post #49

> the symbol for “woman,” a downward-pointing triangle with a notch at the bottom tip It is curious. Today a pictogram of a woman is an upward-pointing triangle with some small details added, while a downward-pointing triangle with the same details is a man. Sumerians would use a wrong bathroom all the time. Or we would use a wrong sumerian bathroom if we time traveled there.

The symbol is a pubic triangle, so it is quite accurate in showing the distinction between a female and a male (the "notch" mentioned above is the cleft between the labia majora).

Similarly, the Egyptian symbol for male was just a relatively accurate drawing of the male genital organs.

The modern symbols shy from drawing the body parts that distinguish males from females, hence the drawing of the entire body with the addition of features that are sometimes, but not always, associated with gender.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#53

Post by Koshkin »

skapa_flow wrote: post #50

"...Created the World’s First Writing System" that we know of. They used burned clay, which lasts forever. I am sure there have been writing systems before, they just rotted away.

Yes, there must have been a long pre-history of writing proper, like, leaving marks on trees or soil as a guide, a warning, etc. But it takes a civilization to start writing on a scale comparable to that of the Sumerians, and such a civilization cannot be lost to time so completely as to leave behind some evidence if its writing - especially given that they would likely use different media, including clay and stone.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#54

Post by adrian_b »

skapa_flow wrote: post #50

"...Created the World’s First Writing System" that we know of. They used burned clay, which lasts forever. I am sure there have been writing systems before, they just rotted away.

This does not seem very likely, because earlier than this people did not really need a writing system. More precisely, they had no reason to believe that a writing system would be useful, so there was no pressure to invent one.

In Mesopotamia we can see the evolution over many hundreds of years and even a few millennia from an accounting system that used a few symbols for the things that were recorded, to a full fledged writing system that was able to record any spoken sentence.

Before the societies of Mesopotamia and Egypt, which required a complex management of the available resources, there was no need for accounting with written records for great quantities of varied goods.

It is likely that for tens of thousands of years people have been able to make drawings that recorded useful things, like maps, and they probably have used some sets of symbols for various important things, like kinds of humans, kinds of animals, kinds of plants and so on.

Nevertheless, it is very unlikely that any such set of symbols used in the distant past has ever been able to record any complete sentence spoken in their language, with all the grammatical markers that do not have a concrete meaning.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#56

Post by mistercheph »

austin-cheney wrote: post #38
saghm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are walls really a requirement for something being considered a city? Off the top of my head, I've been to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston and don't recall anything I'd describe as a "wall" around any of them. Is not having walls just an American thing? I could imagine the historical definition of "city" not being consistent with modern cities, but if that's the case, it's no wonder that this…

Walls are generally not a formal requirement, but are implied so due to their commonality. All ancient cities, especially pre-civilization, had walls though, often several layers of walls built on top of each other as the given cities were pillaged and rebuilt. Its not confusing to anybody vaguely aware of ancient history.

*All ancient construction that we've found and called cities had walls

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#57

Post by zackmorris »

whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #31
zackmorris wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was growing up in the 1980s, the government provided public services like this and more. Somewhere along the way a government of the people, by the people, for the people, perished from the earth. Not from just one ailment like trickle-down economics, but from a thousand cuts delivered retroactively by revisionist history, until even the youth became their own wardens, and hope was finally lost.

I’d be interested a concrete example of how you believe the 1980s was somehow different as far as government services today - and our course what country.

It was USA. It's hard to explain how the national debt eroded the government's ability to provide public education and other government services like it used to, but here's an attempt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_policy_of_the_Ronald_...

The irony is that we're still debating this after 40+ years with new calls to eliminate the Department of Education, so in a way, things haven't changed. That's not to say they didn't change, just that any progress made has been eroded back to square one. That's the tragedy I was trying to convey.

I'd like to touch on how your tactic of undermining my point by asking me to do your legwork, then waiting for me or someone else to jump in and defend it, and then claiming victory when no one shows up, creates a climate of fear and ignorance.

I can't find a logical fallacy for it:

http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html

On the one hand, it's up to me to defend my point. But on the other, widespread criticism of the experiences of people who were there promotes division. Allowing the divide and conquer strategy to sway people into voting against their own self-interest, undermining democracy and the rule of law.

The way these debates used to play out was that the academic position was held in high regard. Because it covers a broad context. Asking for specific answers that were already generally known was considered a distraction, or a rhetorical question used to distract from the speaker's main point.

Ask yourself what common knowledge is known about education, where it receives its funding, who teaches and who attends. How that's changed in recent decades due to socioeconomic forces. Who might benefit from such changes, and who suffers due to them. And would I state something that can't be backed up by overwhelming evidence in the public record?

Those critical thinking skills used to be prerequisites to winning debates. Now it's easier to just dismiss arguments because others don't have time to get involved, or just want to keep their heads down.

I'd like to see a term for your tactic get added to the logical fallacies list. I just don't know what to call it. It's analogous to argumentum ad logicam, where you're implying that what I said was false, not because my argument was invalid, but because I omitted evidence that anyone could add or fact-check.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#58

Post by mistercheph »

adrian_b wrote: post #54
skapa_flow wrote: post #50

"...Created the World’s First Writing System" that we know of. They used burned clay, which lasts forever. I am sure there have been writing systems before, they just rotted away.

This does not seem very likely, because earlier than this people did not really need a writing system. More precisely, they had no reason to believe that a writing system would be useful, so there was no pressure to invent one. In Mesopotamia we can see the evolution over many hundreds of years and even a few millennia from an accounting system that used a few symbols for the things that were recorded, to a full fled…

How do you know so much about the motivations of people that have been dead for tens of thousands of years? Maybe you can speak to the dead?

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#59

Post by mistercheph »

frutiger wrote: post #3
datadeft wrote: post #2

* that we are aware of as of 2024. I think most historical discoveries should be prefixed or suffixed with this because as we dig up more things we might learn that there was an even older writing system (in this case).

Isn’t that redundant? It’s like asking everyone to prefix every statement with “As far as I know…”

We should openly discuss the epistemological standing of our claims.

"The first day ever was last Thursday, according to this calendar."

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#60

Post by adrian_b »

openrisk wrote: post #17

Lots of interesting details around the beginning of writing systems but it seems to overdramatise the conditions and role of Sumer in kickstarting civilization as we know it? > the original organized, literate, urban culture was produced by a far crueler and more challenging environment than either of those (Indus, Nile) Egypt and the Nile don't seem particularly different as an environment. Dry desert with regular r…

That phrase is rather imprecise.

What can be attributed to the Sumerian cities is the first appearance of several professions which are not directly productive and which have remained important until today.

By profession, I mean an activity that was all that a certain human did in order to obtain all the resources required for living. Before Sumer, those activities were done by certain people, but only occasionally, besides their main craft, e.g. a shaman was likely to also act as a medical doctor when needed and a chief of tribe was likely to also judge conflicts.

Among the professions that have first appeared in Sumer during the third millennium BC, are: judge, medical doctor, accountant, musician, prostitute.

The equivalent of priests and kings, though only at smaller scales, e.g. for a tribe or a confederation of tribes, have certainly existed much earlier than Sumer and Egypt. "Chief" is likely to be the oldest profession, as that exists at many social animals, including apes.

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