A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
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Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
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Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#3[flagged]
There's a lot of such political takes in the article, for all that it does make a legitimate point about factuality.
Probably the most significant (non-superficial) problem is that it just assumes that local dictators are better than centralized dictators.
Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#4I've thought about this idea a lot. It seems like the idea we have of the centralized empires of the past is mostly based on movies and fiction - and maybe from the actions of the last remaining empires in the 19-20th century. I think we take for granted advancements in communications and transportation that allowed for the governance of large areas of land in more recent history.
Are maps of ancient empires even accurate? What do they even mean. If you went back in time to some backwater village on the edges of some Empire map and asked the villagers who was the emperor could they even tell you? Or would they still name some king from 50 years ago?
Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#5[flagged]
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Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#6There are interesting ideas here, but also a lot of presumption. Just because a people lacked stone writing and centralisation doesn't mean they were free of local tyrants and internecine tribal warfare.
Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#7I've thought about this idea a lot. It seems like the idea we have of the centralized empires of the past is mostly based on movies and fiction - and maybe from the actions of the last remaining empires in the 19-20th century. I think we take for granted advancements in communications and transportation that allowed for the governance of large areas of land in more recent history. Are maps of ancient empires even acc…
That really depends. I have been reading a lot recently on early Indian civilization, and really most of what we know in terms of historicity, aka writing in the earliest times, is only in the north, the Indus, the Ganges plains and so on. However there were many cultures living in the subcontinent south. Some of those “tribes” were deep in forests and survived relatively intact to the current day, with at least some features unscathed.
Then there is the trade of the early CE time. Trade between India and the Roman Empire over sea was of incredible proportions. Recently a sanskrit brahmi script was uncovered in an old Egyptian harbour port. So there must have been also a large group of people exposed to trade and exchange of ideas.
So I don’t think any broad sweeping statements can be made. To answer your question, it totally depends on the place and time you want to look at.
Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#8I've thought about this idea a lot. It seems like the idea we have of the centralized empires of the past is mostly based on movies and fiction - and maybe from the actions of the last remaining empires in the 19-20th century. I think we take for granted advancements in communications and transportation that allowed for the governance of large areas of land in more recent history. Are maps of ancient empires even acc…
It's true. Control of many fringe regions was tenuous at times.
For example, the Annals of Sennacherib show the Assyrians had to re-conquer areas that drifted after previous subjugation.
But how do you draw those boundaries between subjugations?
In the Bible, it shows that Nebuchadnezzar's armies had to repeatedly return to Israel to re-subjugate it between rebellions.
No doubt similar rebellions could occur in many different areas all at once.
Boundaries were likely never as neat as the boundaries we show today.
Plus, it's not like they were surveying their boundaries and monitoring them via a supranational body like the U.N.
Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#9There are interesting ideas here, but also a lot of presumption. Just because a people lacked stone writing and centralisation doesn't mean they were free of local tyrants and internecine tribal warfare.
I was thinking the same thing. I don't think there's evidence of anyone ever trying to flee from an Empire where they lived, at least if they were not there as slaves brought from another area. If the "outside" was so great, you would expect people to try to move there... everything I've read so far makes me believe the exact opposite has been true. People tend to want to move to more prosperous areas, just check the world today.
Re: A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations
#10Like these guys' fascinating book, The Dawn of Everything, this article introduces but over-interprets some exciting new data.
A lot of what we're told about is new locations for urban life. But the claim that they weren't empires is arguing from absence of evidence. We mostly don't know what they were.
For an interesting pairing, see Bryan Ward-Brown on the fall of Rome, interviewed here by Razib Khan (https://www.razibkhan.com/p/bryan-ward-perkins-the-material-...). There we do know what happened when an empire ended, and it was very bad for the people in it. That's because big empires are usually not replaced by anarchy, or by democratic nation-states, but by small empires, which have fewer economies of scale and therefore more taxation and exploitation.