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Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

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Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#141

Post by hosh »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #136
adastra22 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What monumental architecture is older than Göbekli Tepe?

That's a very different question than what I said. The word "monument" in archaeology denotes a mental relation between the human and the space modified by the structure. It's not something inherent to the structure itself. You can have structures that are monumental that we can't easily identify as such today (many burial mounds were like this), structures we see as monumental that the original inhabitants would not…

"I'm just emphasizing that Gobekli Tepe isn't a totally standalone precursor that's wildly distant from anything else we've found. It's an old and beautiful site that existed within the broader context of an entire landscape of early neolithic structures."

I think that suggests to me a greater level of sophistication for neolithic cultures than we give credit for in our current histories.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#142

Post by Aloisius »

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.

Mohenjo-daro (built circa 2500 BCE) did not have a city wall.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#143

Post by blululu »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #137
blululu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please, as if you have to ask. You’re already defensive about it, defending your chosen side with whataboutisms . I’ll say it again: full of shit .

In the interest of this being a place for discussions: I have frequently heard the slogan that the republican efforts to cut federal programs is a major cause of why these programs failure. As I mentioned above, I am sure that such policy is not helping these programs, but as a bigger point, there is just not a good correlation between such policies and the actual effectiveness of various government programs. The military/dod is a great example of a part of the government that has received bipartisan budget increases for more than two decades running (it always escapes republican calls for fiscal responsibility) and yet the military is a pretty bloated and ineffective operation. Meanwhile the parks service, department of interior, EPA, etc are all constantly getting squeezed by the republicans and yet they are all pretty good at what they do and deliver a lot on a tight budget. If anything I would say that the effectiveness of government programs is inversely correlated with the intensity of republican assaults on them. Meanwhile in solidly blue areas there are plenty of government programs that just plain suck and plenty that work very well. If it were a simply matter of one party being the difference then you would not see so much variance. There is a lot more to what makes a government program effective than whether it is well funded. Saying that government is incapable of delivering core services is clearly a nonsense position, but blaming the failures of government on the republicans doesn't really seem to be supported by any evidence.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#144

Post by adastra22 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #136
adastra22 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What monumental architecture is older than Göbekli Tepe?

That's a very different question than what I said. The word "monument" in archaeology denotes a mental relation between the human and the space modified by the structure. It's not something inherent to the structure itself. You can have structures that are monumental that we can't easily identify as such today (many burial mounds were like this), structures we see as monumental that the original inhabitants would not…

At least when I took world history and anthropology classes, the academic term for 'monumental architecture' was quite well defined: large-scale man-made structures that are built to impress and convey symbolic meanings. Göbekli Tepe is definitely that. The definition you offer seems quite subjective, and maybe more suited to art history than archeology.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#145

Post by adastra22 »

verisimi wrote: post #139
adastra22 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? We have no records of other writing systems that have been conclusively dated to be earlier, and in this case (unlike others, e.g. Chinese) we DO have a very clear record of the development of the script, from accounting symbols to pictograms to ideograms to phonetic transcription. It definitely did not derive from an earlier script, as we see the progression of development in isolation. So why can't we call it…

The emphasis is on 'know'. This is epistemology and logic. Do you know you are sitting on a chair? Yes. Do you know your birthday? No, in so far as you cannot personally verify it, as you do not recollect that time. It is fine to assume all sorts, that your birthday is as your parents say, that sumerians are the oldest civilization, etc, but history, esp. ancient history is not knowledge, and can never be 'known'. Us…

Outside of a philosophy class, 'know' takes on quite a bit more pragmatic meaning which is perfectly appropriate here.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#146

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#147

Post by thaumasiotes »

weavie wrote: post #21
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…

They believed their writing was gifted to them by the Gods. According to them they were not the first, they were just the next in line after the Gods.

> They believed their writing was gifted to them by the Gods.

This is an essentially universal belief in the past, and not just about writing. People are able to notice that their lifestyle depends on technologies, and that the only way to learn those technologies is for someone else to teach you. So they decide that the technologies on which their lives depend - pressing olives, farming grain, writing, harvesting wool*... - were taught to their ancestors by the gods.

In the case of writing specifically, the ancient Greeks attributed it to Cadmus, who was not personally a god. But (1) he was a hero with descent from Poseidon, (2) Greek heroes receive prayers and sacrifices and grant supernatural blessings just the same way gods do, and (3) they credited him with introducing writing from Phoenicia, not inventing it out of whole cloth.

* In early records, sheep are not yet sheared - they're plucked. The sheep we have today aren't the sheep they had then.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#148

Post by lukan »

adastra22 wrote: post #145
verisimi wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emphasis is on 'know'. This is epistemology and logic. Do you know you are sitting on a chair? Yes. Do you know your birthday? No, in so far as you cannot personally verify it, as you do not recollect that time. It is fine to assume all sorts, that your birthday is as your parents say, that sumerians are the oldest civilization, etc, but history, esp. ancient history is not knowledge, and can never be 'known'. Us…

Outside of a philosophy class, 'know' takes on quite a bit more pragmatic meaning which is perfectly appropriate here.

And inside philosophy class, I would argue, that the knowlege of the chair your are sitting on, is also not so much more confirmed and solid knowledge, than ones own birthday.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#149

Post by AlotOfReading »

adastra22 wrote: post #144
AlotOfReading wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very different question than what I said. The word "monument" in archaeology denotes a mental relation between the human and the space modified by the structure. It's not something inherent to the structure itself. You can have structures that are monumental that we can't easily identify as such today (many burial mounds were like this), structures we see as monumental that the original inhabitants would not…

At least when I took world history and anthropology classes, the academic term for 'monumental architecture' was quite well defined: large-scale man-made structures that are built to impress and convey symbolic meanings. Göbekli Tepe is definitely that. The definition you offer seems quite subjective, and maybe more suited to art history than archeology.

I'm an archaeologist (or was?) who's specifically done work on the Neolithic transition. I don't know much about art history, so I couldn't say whether they'd use a similar definition.

What's often taught in introductory classes is usually more of a basic outline of actual archaeological thought rather than a perfect reflection of literature. Not knowing your curriculum, level, or when you were in school, but it probably came up with either Childe's 10 traits or from Trigger's definition. Childe's definition is basically anything that shows off power. Trigger's definition is anything that's elaborated beyond practical function, either in size or ornamentation. The common examples when teaching both of these are large structures, but that's mainly a bias in common examples. Size isn't the sole factor, just one of several and the easiest to observe because of the inherent labor costs. It also makes for a nice exercise to have students wander around campus looking for monumental architecture and explaining why different structures are or aren't.

Over the last 20ish years people have moved away from emphasizing the size aspect because it doesn't encompass what we want to include, particularly as we look at things a little more exotic than classical centers like southern Mesopotamia. Joyce Marcus had an explicit response to Trigger that's pretty well known de-emphasizing size, Rosemary Joyce (unrelated) argued that the size aspect was a category error in monumentality of early mesoamerican pyramid construction, and Osborne gave a definition that's very similar to what I said above. I'm doing the same thing here to make it clear that the actual physical size of the structure isn't what's important, the intangible mental aspects are.

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