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Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

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Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#71

Post by biorach »

mtalantikite wrote: post #61
canjobear wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously no one is claiming that nothing happened before writing. Historians use “history” as a technical term for events recorded in written and other durable records. They use “prehistory” for events recorded in oral traditions and archaeology.

I'm aware, but it seems silly to me to say oral traditions aren't durable and that writing is the only way to get at history. As linked above as an example, there's recent scholarship that points to oral traditions that encode history perfectly well across enormous timelines. Even in written form, we have vague translations in ancient Buddhist texts that require cross referencing multiple sources to get at a meaning,…

> I'm aware, but it seems silly to me to say oral traditions aren't durable and that writing is the only way to get at history.

no one said that

but there is a definitional issue here - to reiterate the previous poster's point:

> Historians use “history” as a technical term for events recorded in written and other durable records.

That's how the word is defined by historians. It's not a value judgement on oral traditions.

Your post is using the word "history" in a different way. You have some good points to make, but as long as you're using "history" in a different way to everyone else you're not going to get very far in conversation.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#72

Post by shrubble »

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.

I am reminded of the Polynesians creating a sort of "map" using the stick chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands_stick_chart

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#73

Post by biorach »

austin-cheney wrote: post #32
7thaccount wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the evidence of cities existing 45,000 years ago? I thought the earliest we had was around 10,000 years ago in Turkey?

According to Wikipedia it is 25,000 years ago and in Eastern Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedentism#Requirements_for_per... The 45,000 years ago number I referred to earlier comes from sources that are not online. Either way, the start of human settlement occurred on the Eastern European plain during the ice age, which is far before anything in Anatolia or Mesopotamia.

> According to Wikipedia it is 25,000 years ago and in Eastern Europe

The person you were replying to was asking about cities. The article you are posting is about Sedentism - "the practice of living in one place for a long time". The figure of 25,000 years ago is for the first evidence of permanent settlements. These do not fit anyone's definition of a city.

The first evidence of cities are from Sumer, which is what this whole thread is about.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#74

Post by lores »

quotemstr wrote: post #16

I've always wondered whether the Sumerians knew they were the first. Past empires, lost civilizations, and ancient artifacts have always fascinated us. The first museum emerges is Mesopotamia around 530 BC; the Egyptian obelisk installed next to the brand-new Colosseum in Rome was older then than the Colosseum is now; legends of giants and heroes of bygone ages are literary universals. We hunger for the past. But the…

The Epic of Gilgamesh references him gloriously restoring ancient cities destroyed by the Flood. Of course, by the time is was written, Sumerian civilisation was already ~2,500-3,000 years old, so it's hard to tell if Sumerians thought those cities were theirs, or someone else's.

The ever-scholarly answerers on r/AskHistorians think that yes, they believed they were the first: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8oskfv/did_a...

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#75

Post by yieldcrv »

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…”

a significant portion of the US population believes the earth is 6,000 years old, tied to their religious sect and identity

concepts such as Neolithic and Paleolithic fall on deaf ears

getting just some people out of that funnel only to still have a static version of events is counterproductive as you are subverting a competing understanding of the world

you are replacing unfalsifiable appeals to a Sky Daddy authority with falsifiable observations where a challenge is simply neglected

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#76

Post by seanw444 »

n4r9 wrote: post #12
francisofascii wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, I think it depends on the certainty. I am just about 100% certain Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon, so "first" makes sense. Hillary and Norgay were the first "confirmed" climbers of Everest. The "confirmed" part is needed because it is reasonable that others before them made it without evidence. I am open to the possibility a civilization had a writing system before the Sumerians, an…

I'm more than open to the possibility - I think it's very likely that something existed beforehand which we don't (yet) know about.

I'm intrigued by the possibility of Sumerian-level civilization existing prior to the Younger Drias.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#77

Post by austin-cheney »

biorach wrote: post #73
austin-cheney wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia it is 25,000 years ago and in Eastern Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedentism#Requirements_for_per... The 45,000 years ago number I referred to earlier comes from sources that are not online. Either way, the start of human settlement occurred on the Eastern European plain during the ice age, which is far before anything in Anatolia or Mesopotamia.

> According to Wikipedia it is 25,000 years ago and in Eastern Europe The person you were replying to was asking about cities. The article you are posting is about Sedentism - "the practice of living in one place for a long time". The figure of 25,000 years ago is for the first evidence of permanent settlements. These do not fit anyone's definition of a city. The first evidence of cities are from Sumer, which is what…

Look, I know this is confusing (no, it isn't).

The person I replied to replied to me. I never mentioned city, but they injected the word city nonetheless probably because they had no idea what they were replying to or what the words meant. What qualifies whether any fixed permanent or semi-permanent settlement is actually a city, town, hamlet, or village is entirely subjective.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#78

Post by Hikikomori »

blululu wrote: post #48
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Which party is that? The one that constantly tries to cut the funding or the one that constantly tries to reward and excuse failure? The republicans in congress threatening to cut programs they don’t like is probably not helping things. But there are numerous state and local governments that are the exclusive domain of the democrats that do a lousy job without any Republican boogeyman in sight.

Plenty more republican states on federal welfare. California should stop paying for their laziness.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#79

Post by abeppu »

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).

And in particular, I'm always curious -- how much of what we know of cuneiform is just because using clay tablets made examples more likely to survive to the present day? You can kind of imagine there being a soft temporal horizon for different kinds materials and artifacts -- far enough in the past, there are some kinds of things we should expect probably can't be discovered. If the people at Gobleki Tepe (or any other really old site) were writing by making marks on leaves or tree bark, we probably never know right?

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#80

Post by [deleted] »

biorach wrote: post #71
mtalantikite wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware, but it seems silly to me to say oral traditions aren't durable and that writing is the only way to get at history. As linked above as an example, there's recent scholarship that points to oral traditions that encode history perfectly well across enormous timelines. Even in written form, we have vague translations in ancient Buddhist texts that require cross referencing multiple sources to get at a meaning,…

> I'm aware, but it seems silly to me to say oral traditions aren't durable and that writing is the only way to get at history. no one said that but there is a definitional issue here - to reiterate the previous poster's point: > Historians use “history” as a technical term for events recorded in written and other durable records. That's how the word is defined by historians. It's not a value judgement on oral tradit…

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