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Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

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Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#171

Post by wqaatwt »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #116
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…

I don't know about "required" but in ancient times walls were what typically defined the city as a "city" rather than simply an undefined agglomeration of dwellings / farms They were absolutely necessary as protection for stores of food (food storage being a defining feature of a city)

So Sparta (they famously claimed that they don’t need walls) wasn’t a city?

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#172

Post by wqaatwt »

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.

Rome itself effectively didn’t have walls during its peak (the city expanded well past the old walls and they weren’t really maintained). IIRC same applies to many other Roman cities which weren’t close to the borders or in less safe areas.

Knossos or other Minoan cities didn’t have walls either. Sure they were in an island but Crete is large enough for there to be enough opportunities for large scale internal conflicts, yet it implies that their societies were relatively peaceful.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#173

Post by wqaatwt »

mistercheph wrote: post #56
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.

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

Knossos didn’t have any walls and it might have had up to 100k people at its peak. Even if the population was 10x lower it would still have been a major city

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#174

Post by insane_dreamer »

wqaatwt wrote: post #171
insane_dreamer wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about "required" but in ancient times walls were what typically defined the city as a "city" rather than simply an undefined agglomeration of dwellings / farms They were absolutely necessary as protection for stores of food (food storage being a defining feature of a city)

So Sparta (they famously claimed that they don’t need walls) wasn’t a city?

Sparta was more a collection of villages rather than a city like Athens or Rome.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#175

Post by someotherperson »

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 kind of did. They gave the Egyptians their tool for agriculture. They basically civilized them.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#176

Post by lukan »

verisimi wrote: post #169
lukan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, outside of philosophy class, I do consider it a known fact, that the earth is round, just like I consider my birth to be a known fact, even though I have not personally witnessed both.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#177

Post by saghm »

mistercheph wrote: post #56
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.

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

That's a good point; how do we know that the cities without walls didn't just get ruined over time to the point that we don't know about them (or assume they were much smaller)?

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#178

Post by shakna »

WalterBright wrote: post #158
shakna wrote: 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.

We haven't altogether decoded them, so the answer to that is up in the air. However it does appear to use something akin to decimal for numbers, but the encodings use numbered knots, colours, and positioning within a larger weave. Around 60k variations have been found. However, there can also be some thousands of braids within larger weaves.

The depth of the information contained can be debated, but as the Spanish utilised the related quipu following their invasion, for their own record keeping needs, it is "of use". (The Spanish used those for tracking crop growth, timelines, deliveries, royal decrees, family trees, and spread of illnesses in remote areas. They're also still used in some religious sects today.)

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#179

Post by adastra22 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #164
adastra22 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "monu…

Thanks for the context and explanation. I'll have to read up on Childe and Osborne.

Re: Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system

#180

Post by dyauspitr »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #147
weavie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

If you’ve ever seen a sheep you would know it’s impossible to pluck one. It’s akin to pulling out clumps of your hair.
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