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The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

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Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#41

Post by cmrdporcupine »

elefanten wrote: post #39
monadic2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean they literally invented race to enslave entire groups of people. And it's hardly like Europe stopped interfering or exploiting even with the 21st century.

This is such an intellectually impoverished notion of racism. It's mired in 20th-century theory goo. You can rest assured that racist reasoning ran rampant throughout world history long before someone coined the word "race" or before 18th/19th century political narratives used it in whatever particular ways.

I challenge you to go find a description of race based on skin colour in old Roman texts. The colour of someone's skin is barely commented on in them, more of a novelty about the person, and is not described as being related to "race." And yet they had an empire which spanned from North Africa to Northern Europe.

Race as a category was an invention to justify the form of slave trade during the settling of the Americas.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#42

Post by hogFeast »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #32
hogFeast wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work is in proportion to the amount of documents that are retained today. The reason why Rome and Greece are "popular" is they determined intellectual thought from the fall of the Western Rome until, probably, humanism (some one millennia later) so much of what they wrote down has been retained (or, more accurately, wasn't destroyed). As an example: we know Carthage was a huge civilisation...until Rome razed it s…

The work of archaeologists is absolutely not in proportion to the amount of surviving documents. Most of my digs have been in places and periods with few to no written records, for example. As for the comment about Europeans, I was talking about modern academics (particularly of the early through late 20th century). The leading archaeologists of that period primarily came from European and American traditions. I have…

That wasn't the claim. You should read the reply chain but the point isn't about archaeology but our interpretation of civilization outside Rome and Greece. You wanted to know why these civilizations get that share of work...the reason why is that their thought was more relevant to us (again, most Europeans believed in Aristotelian science until humanism). And, again, these civilizations were more African than European...it is nothing to do with racism (which was the implication).

That wasn't the claim. I will explain, although you would do just as well to go back and read what I said more closely...again. The point is: many people who are perceived to be part of the European tradition (i.e. Rome/Greece) are not Europeans. So when someone says: Europe has got a disproportionate share of work, these regions are ignored, their civilizations are ignored...this is wrong. Most of these civilizations were mutli-culutural/multi-national, and included Africa (the other big contributor would be the Middle East). Again, attempting to read the current political view onto the past. And the point about Augustine is that he was African, the point about academics who say things like: we are too Euro-centric is that they define Europe in a way that makes no historical sense (unsurprisingly, as they are usually arguing about things in the present, not anything related to history...the concept of Europe itself is not something with a clear historical meaning).

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#43

Post by Ar-Curunir »

simonsarris wrote: post #3
Cactus2018 wrote: post #2

Recommend sources for human culture/civilization history from 10,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C.? Most of the top search results and Wikipedia entries tap out on cultures prior to ~5,000-~3,000 B.C. Of course there are stand alone pages such as Neolithic_founder_crops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture Chalocolithic Period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic

Against the Grain by James Scott.

+1, it's excellent

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#44

Post by elefanten »

karlp wrote: post #36
CrackpotGonzo wrote: post #23

"Be, be-fore we came to this country We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys There was empires in Africa called Kush Timbuktu, where every race came to get books To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans Asian Arabs and gave them gold, when Gold was converted to money it all changed Money then became empowerment for Europeans The Persian military invaded They heard about the gold, the teachings,…

It sounds really deep, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to it? Wikipedia mentions internal problems and conquest by a neighboring kingdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush I don't understand why make up stories when there are more than enough material with the colonial history.

One of the most frustrating aspects of these liberationist counter-narratives is the pretense that whoever conquered or succeeded certain civilizations/cultures, did so by a unique application of force.

Roughly: 'our people were good and peaceful until evil warlike invaders with wholly-different human motivations wiped us out.'

We should aim to fix injustices in the world. But building false narratives of differential demonization will only recreate problems in the long run.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#45

Post by thaumasiotes »

rsynnott wrote: post #19
stakkur wrote: post #11

I think it's fair to say that Kush has never been 'forgotten'--in fact, it's been heavily researched, documented, debated. This article title is a bit clickbait-y, and hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't acknowledge/appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong.

Well, it's probably fair to say that it's been ignored by the general public, but then so have most really old civilisations; in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. > hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong. ... eh, until last century it was fashionable to attribute it to…

> in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD.

Really? The Romans are known for their expansionism. Who were they conquering? Who was everybody fighting against in 300?

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#46

Post by kaitai »

CBLT wrote: post #35
rsynnott wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's probably fair to say that it's been ignored by the general public, but then so have most really old civilisations; in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. > hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong. ... eh, until last century it was fashionable to attribute it to…

> in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD. Doesn't seem true to me; people seem aware of the Mayans and some of the stuff going on in Asia at the time (though generally not all).

In school, we (I'm in the US) spent a whole high school semester on Greece and Rome. In elementary school we had a unit on Mayans/Aztecs/the Inca, and we had a unit on ancient India, but not in high school. For some reason Chinese history was really ignored so I didn't get that until I chose to take a class in college. Since we don't have a national curriculum in the US, I'm sure it's different in different places. I think we know about the Mayans because Americans like to fly to Cancun.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#47

Post by tremon »

hogFeast wrote: post #27
AlotOfReading wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Sudan hasn't been totally ignored, but the 3 classical areas of Rome, Greece, and Egypt have gotten a very disproportionate share of work, with France and the Levant/near east as second fiddles. On that scale, I think it's fair to describe Sudan and other outlying areas (like the Caucasus) as effectively ignored. The article also isn't talking about "Europeans are racist and didn't appreciate black people". It's…

The work is in proportion to the amount of documents that are retained today. The reason why Rome and Greece are "popular" is they determined intellectual thought from the fall of the Western Rome until, probably, humanism (some one millennia later) so much of what they wrote down has been retained (or, more accurately, wasn't destroyed). As an example: we know Carthage was a huge civilisation...until Rome razed it s…

north of Rome wasn't Europe as today, it was just a bunch of tribes

This is a mischaracterization in the same class as what's described in the article. Early Rome was just as tribal as the rest of Europe, and Greece has been tribal for almost its entire (ancient) existence. The major difference is that the tribes of Northern Europe seem to have been much less well documented, but they didn't live in isolation. There's ample evidence of trade routes spanning from the Iberian peninsula to the Carpathians, and across the British isles, the Nordic and Baltic states.

The "bunch of tribes" encountered by the Romans was actually a vast Celtic empire, which was itself preceded by other societies such as the Bell Beaker or Corded Ware cultures. But they've largely disappeared from the record because of the written legacy from the Greek and Roman empires.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#48

Post by eagsalazar2 »

stakkur wrote: post #11

I think it's fair to say that Kush has never been 'forgotten'--in fact, it's been heavily researched, documented, debated. This article title is a bit clickbait-y, and hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't acknowledge/appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong.

Your "see it has been researched" rebuttal is dodging the actual point which is that it has been systematically under-researched and under-appreciated, not that it hasn't been researched at all. Similarly no one is saying all Europeans are racists and you trotting that out is just a straw man. Your proposal that European/American civilization having a major problem now and historically of exploiting and marginalizing the brown world in every single way is "of course wrong" is completely insane and, honestly, an example of exactly the systematic racism you are denying.

Re: The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago

#49

Post by torstenvl »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #41
elefanten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an intellectually impoverished notion of racism. It's mired in 20th-century theory goo. You can rest assured that racist reasoning ran rampant throughout world history long before someone coined the word "race" or before 18th/19th century political narratives used it in whatever particular ways.

I challenge you to go find a description of race based on skin colour in old Roman texts. The colour of someone's skin is barely commented on in them, more of a novelty about the person, and is not described as being related to "race." And yet they had an empire which spanned from North Africa to Northern Europe. Race as a category was an invention to justify the form of slave trade during the settling of the America…

Herodotus narrates the Athenians promising that they would never betray the Spartans because they are the same race ("homaimos" → "same blood").

I don't know off the top of my head whether the Romans widely knew of the Histories, but it certainly undercuts your claim that these broader categorizations are a recent invention. The Athenians and Spartans clearly recognized a racial idea broader than the cultures of their individual polities.

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