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Oldest recorded transaction

avi.im

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Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#101

Post by IAmBroom »

namenotrequired wrote: post #79
jcims wrote: post #59

I'm 52 years old and it has been this way since I can remember but for some reason I can't make it not bug me. Any time we have the biggest/oldest/smallest/fastest/etc example of something, it's described without any qualification of seen, known, observed, etc. For example, this isn't oldest recorded transaction, it's the oldest widely known record of a transaction (probably). Why does that still bother me? Obviously…

It can be the oldest without being the first, if the earlier ones no longer exists

No, then it would be the "oldest surviving". Which is a qualifier, which is what the poster above you asked for.

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#102

Post by IAmBroom »

alluro2 wrote: post #68
Podrod wrote: post #5

And here's the oldest recorded customer complaint https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/complaint-tablet-to-ea...

This also sparked a somewhat widespread meme, that I find very amusing: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir

My favorite was the cosplayer dressed as Ea-nasir.

Found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReallyShittyCopper/comments/179wi32...

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#103

Post by IAmBroom »

ceejayoz wrote: post #51
DaveZale wrote: post #2

beer drinking goes waaaay back

Even kids drank (weak) beer, in part because the alcohol content kills pathogens. Even today clean water can be tough to find for some folks.

That's an old theory, but the whole "water was unsafe to drink" thing has been debunked pretty well.

The bigger reason is that beer provided an excellent way to consume a lot of calories fast, in a moderately shelf-stable (~3 days) format. You could carry your meal in a water container, which you needed to take anyway.

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#105

Post by rkomorn »

IAmBroom wrote: post #104
kragen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a thing.

You don't believe in Belgium? Delaware, sure. But I'm pretty sure Belgium exists.

I don't know anybody who calls the French spoken in Belgium "Belgian" (if only because it becomes ambiguous since Belgium also uses Dutch and German).

I'm pretty sure that's what the comment was implying.

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#106

Post by jeanlucas »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #90
jeanlucas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible to truly know. Writing may well have started with doodles, notes, even jokes on materials like leaves or wood that didn’t survive. What survives are the "important" texts because you would deliberately put them on durable material. That creates a bias where early writing looks purely transactional. Same reason we think of pyramids when we think of ancient architecture: stone lasts, wood doesn’t.

That's true we don't know anything about markings that were made on organic materials. We do know that art and other markings date tens of thousands of years before the first proto-writing. Writing is specifically about markings that form a language. So doodles and visual jokes (e.g. phalluses) wouldn't count. I don't know what you mean by notes, but writing notes without a language would be difficult I suspect. But…

Exactly, it's not a good theory, but it's the best one we have.

We just need to keep in mind that and not word it as if it is a fact that writing stated with accounting

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#107

Post by kragen »

rkomorn wrote: post #105
IAmBroom wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't believe in Belgium? Delaware, sure. But I'm pretty sure Belgium exists.

I don't know anybody who calls the French spoken in Belgium "Belgian" (if only because it becomes ambiguous since Belgium also uses Dutch and German). I'm pretty sure that's what the comment was implying.

Exactly. Hergé wrote Tintin in French, not in "Belgian".

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#108

Post by croisillon »

rkomorn wrote: post #105
IAmBroom wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't believe in Belgium? Delaware, sure. But I'm pretty sure Belgium exists.

I don't know anybody who calls the French spoken in Belgium "Belgian" (if only because it becomes ambiguous since Belgium also uses Dutch and German). I'm pretty sure that's what the comment was implying.

no, my parent comment was about the museum location: if Hergé was from Québec he might have mentioned a museum in Montreal, if he was from Tahiti he might have mentioned Papeete... since he was from Belgium (a thing) he mentioned Brussels (the capital city of the thing)

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#109

Post by rkomorn »

croisillon wrote: post #108
rkomorn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anybody who calls the French spoken in Belgium "Belgian" (if only because it becomes ambiguous since Belgium also uses Dutch and German). I'm pretty sure that's what the comment was implying.

no, my parent comment was about the museum location: if Hergé was from Québec he might have mentioned a museum in Montreal, if he was from Tahiti he might have mentioned Papeete... since he was from Belgium (a thing) he mentioned Brussels (the capital city of the thing)

Replacing "French" with "Belgian" in the comment you replied to is the only way to take your "* Belgian" comment.

Re: Oldest recorded transaction

#110

Post by croisillon »

rkomorn wrote: post #109
croisillon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, my parent comment was about the museum location: if Hergé was from Québec he might have mentioned a museum in Montreal, if he was from Tahiti he might have mentioned Papeete... since he was from Belgium (a thing) he mentioned Brussels (the capital city of the thing)

Replacing "French" with "Belgian" in the comment you replied to is the only way to take your "* Belgian" comment.

they didn't say "the original in French" but "the original French"
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