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Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

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Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#161
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither ancient Rome nor Sparta had walls for centuries after their rise to prominence. A number of per-Colombian Andean cities didn't have walls. Tenochtitlan didn't have walls and it doesn't look like Cholula did either. And in the Indus Valley Civilization Harappa and Mohenjo-daro didn't have walls.

Tenochtitlan didn't have walls because it already had natural defenses (water); so that's a particular case.

Neither of the other city states in the Aztec Triple Alliance had walls either and they weren’t built on islands.[1] They seem to have had some walled precincts to separate sacred spaces from common areas but now broader system of defensive walls. Much like Ancient Rome they had large and well organized armies.

[1] https://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/1-CompleteSet/MES-SAA-0...

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#162
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mayans were writing with knotted rope around 1900BCE, so I would very much say it wouldn't be beyond possibility. Most of the early use was for tracking the seasons for religious rites - a pressure for developing writing that would exist across most early cultures.

I wonder about the knotted rope. How much information could it contain? Not very much. It's hard to imagine it being very useful.

Not sure which technology OP is talking about, but quipu at least are can store information like census records and dates. Similar concept.

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

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#163
"A representational writing system has significant limitations. It is not practical to have a symbol for everything. The symbols must mean the same to all who use the writing. Users must memorize thousands of these symbols and must also be familiar with that which is being expressed. Tenses, cases, and voices are mostly impossible to depict."

No icons for me. I'm more evolved!

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

I still don't understand your intangible mental aspects claim. That seems a nonphysical, and really nonscientific subjective evaluation. You didn't go back in time and interview the builders, so how do you know what the intangible mental aspects were? It's guesswork. Physical size isn't necessary, and I didn't mean to clean that it was. The more fundamental connection would be labor expenditure, and directed organiza…

    That seems a nonphysical, and really nonscientific subjective evaluation.
Inferring mental intangibles from material remains is one of the central problems in archaeology. Most interesting research involves it in one way or another. It's one of many reasons why archaeology isn't fully a science, despite some overlap.

We're talking past each other a bit because we're referring to different things with our use of "monumental" though. I'm talking about monumental as a way of understanding how the structure was perceived and used by humans. You're using monumental as a way of understanding to the social organization of the society that constructed it. This is much more in line with Childe's use that I mentioned earlier.

Part of the problem is that the scale and sophistication of social organization associated with the classical mesopotamian states is not at all reflective of what would have been going on with Gobekli Tepe. In other words, we wouldn't traditionally call the GT builders a "civilization" (civilization being a bad word that makes archaeologists cry).

So let's go back to the scale and grandeur thing. If we have to understand the intention, that's one of the tangibles encapsulated in my definition. What I'm saying is that it's the mental relationship between the human, the structure and the context that gives rise to monumentality. The physical structure can facilitate that creation by intentional design (e.g. large imposing size, etc), but it can also arise naturally or change over time.

We don't actually understand enough of the ancient world to definitively establish monumentality everywhere because our understanding of those intangibles is so patchy. The tower of Jericho was thought to be monumental for many years because of the obvious size and labor investment it represents. The thinking nowadays is that it had more utilitarian purposes and probably wasn't monumental. The structure is the same either way, the only thing that's changed there is our understanding of how ancient people would have engaged with it.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#165
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither ancient Rome nor Sparta had walls for centuries after their rise to prominence. A number of per-Colombian Andean cities didn't have walls. Tenochtitlan didn't have walls and it doesn't look like Cholula did either. And in the Indus Valley Civilization Harappa and Mohenjo-daro didn't have walls.

Tenochtitlan didn't have walls because it already had natural defenses (water); so that's a particular case.

I'm not sure Tenochtitlan was technically a city.

The defining characteristic of a city is that it can't feed itself. (Hence the "urban" vs "rural" dichotomy.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Tenochtitlan was a closed system and used to have farms on the lake and the islands.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#167

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.

I'd argue that it is pragmatic and useful to distinguish between 'know' and 'believe' (or 'hypothesise').

But yes, some people do use 'know', 'think', 'believe', 'feel', etc almost interchangeably. I think this cannot help but lead to confusion.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#168
post #134

The Chinese assert that they in fact started the first civilization, before the civilizations of the Tigris/Euphrates, Nile, or Indus. I never had the time to really dig into it to evaluate the arguments, but I don't think it's correct because the Shang Dynasty is usually placed around 1600 BC while Sumer is dated around 3000 BC (or even earlier). So I don't know how the Chinese claim they were first. But I can tell…

China has a lot of fertile ground for archaeological discovery. "The tomb, designated M27, is located in the Wangzhuang ruins in Yongcheng city and dates back to the middle and late periods of the Dawenkou Culture (4000 BCE-2600 BCE), a Neolithic culture in ancient China." https://archaeologymag.com/2024/10/5000-year-old-royal-tomb-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawenkou_culture

Having neolithic ruins doesn’t mean your civilisation developed from those societies. For example the UK didn’t evolve from whoever built Stonehenge.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#169
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Outside philosophy class, do you not distinguish between those things you have personally experienced, characterising them as things that are known (to you), and between those things that you've seen on a screen or heard, characterising them as (mere) possibilities to you, yet to be experienced/verified?

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#170

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.

> during the ice age

Is there any actual evidence of that? Even the tiniest amount?

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