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Ancient Civilizations

sooda

Veteran Member
10 Oldest Ancient Civilizations Ever Existed
https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/ancient-civilizations/10...
  • Author: Saugat Adhikari
    1. Mesopotamian Civilization. Civilization Name: Mesopotamia. Period: 3500 BC -500 BC. Originated …
    2. Indus Valley Civilization. Civilization Name: Indus Valley Civilization. Period: 3300 BC -1900 BC. …
    3. Ancient Egyptian civilization. Civilization Name: Egypt. Period: 3150 BC – 30 BC. Originated …
    4. Mayan Civilization. Civilization Name: Mayan Civilization. Period: 2600 BC-900 A.D. Originated …
    See all full list on ancienthistorylists.com
 

sooda

Veteran Member
This is an alphabetically ordered list of ancient civilizations. It includes types of cultures, traditions, and industries as well as more traditionally defined civilizations.

List of ancient civilizations
 

sooda

Veteran Member
Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes, proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C. Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Mesopotamia. The Hammurabi code of laws, a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and
and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. Hammurabi’s Code was carved onto a massive, finger-shaped black stone stele (pillar) that was looted by invaders and finally rediscovered in 1901.

Hammurabi
Hammurabi was the sixth king in the Babylonian dynasty, which ruled in central Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) from c. 1894 to 1595 B.C.

His family was descended from the Amorites, a semi-nomadic tribe in western Syria, and his name reflects a mix of cultures: Hammu, which means “family” in Amorite, combined with rapi, meaning “great” in Akkadian, the everyday language of Babylon.

In the 30th year of his reign, Hammurabi began to expand his kingdom up and down the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, overthrowing the kingdoms of Assyria, Larsa, Eshunna and Mari until all of Mesopotamia was under his sway.

Hammurabi combined his military and political advances with irrigation projects and the construction of fortifications and temples celebrating Babylon’s patron deity, Marduk.

The Babylon of Hammurabi’s era is now buried below the area’s groundwater table, and whatever archives he kept are long dissolved, but clay tablets discovered at other ancient sites reveal glimpses of the king’s personality and statecraft.
One letter records his complaint of being forced to provide dinner attire for ambassadors from Mari just because he’d done the same for some other delegates: “Do you imagine you can control my palace in the matter of formal wear?”

What Is the Code of Hammurabi?
The black stone stele containing the Code of Hammurabi was carved from a single, four-ton slab of diorite, a durable but incredibly difficult stone for carving.

At its top is a two-and-a-half-foot relief carving of a standing Hammurabi receiving the law—symbolized by a measuring rod and tape—from the seated Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. The rest of the seven-foot-five-inch monument is covered with columns of chiseled cuneiform script.

The text, compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, is less a proclamation of principles than a collection of legal precedents, set between prose celebrating Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. Hammurabi’s Code provides some of the earliest examples of the doctrine of “lex talionis,” or the laws of retribution, sometimes better known as “an eye for an eye."

Did you know? The Code of Hammurabi includes many harsh punishments, sometimes demanding the removal of the guilty party’s tongue, hands, breasts, eye or ear. But the code is also one of the earliest examples of an accused person being considered innocent until proven guilty.

The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an ox, then he must pay back 30 times its value. The edicts range from family law to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the propertied class, freedmen and slaves.

A doctor’s fee for curing a severe wound would be 10 silver shekels for a gentleman, five shekels for a freedman and two shekels for a slave. Penalties for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if the victim was a slave.

Stele of Hammurabi Rediscovered
In 1901 Jacques de Morgan, a French mining engineer, led an archaeological expedition to Persia to excavate the Elamite capital of Susa, more than 250 miles from the center of Hammurabi’s kingdom.

There they uncovered the stele of Hammurabi—broken into three pieces—that had been brought to Susa as spoils of war, likely by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the mid-12th century B.C.

The stele was packed up and shipped to the Louvre in Paris, and within a year it had been translated and widely publicized as the earliest example of a written legal code—one that predated but bore striking parallels to the laws outlined in the Hebrew Old Testament.

The U.S. Supreme Court building features Hammurabi on the marble carvings of historic lawgivers that lines the south wall of the courtroom.

Although other subsequently-discovered written Mesopotamian laws, including the Sumerian “Lipit-Ishtar” and “Ur-Nammu,” predate Hammurabi’s by hundreds of years, Hammurabi’s reputation remains as a pioneering lawgiver who worked—in the words of his monument—”to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak and to see that justice is done to widows and orphans.”

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi
 

Earthling

David Henson
10 Oldest Ancient Civilizations Ever Existed
https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/ancient-civilizations/10...
  • Author: Saugat Adhikari
    1. Mesopotamian Civilization. Civilization Name: Mesopotamia. Period: 3500 BC -500 BC. Originated …
    2. Indus Valley Civilization. Civilization Name: Indus Valley Civilization. Period: 3300 BC -1900 BC. …
    3. Ancient Egyptian civilization. Civilization Name: Egypt. Period: 3150 BC – 30 BC. Originated …
    4. Mayan Civilization. Civilization Name: Mayan Civilization. Period: 2600 BC-900 A.D. Originated …
    See all full list on ancienthistorylists.com

You, uh . . . you really take this sort of thing seriously don't you? This sort of thing always incites me to question. How do they come to that conclusion? How do they date this sort of thing? No other civilizations existed simultaneously with the Mesopotamian Civilization's origin? What constitutes a civilization?

Take . . . England for example. Is that a civilization? When did it start? How long did it exist before qualifying as a civilization? Is it still a civilization?
 

sooda

Veteran Member
You, uh . . . you really take this sort of thing seriously don't you? This sort of thing always incites me to question. How do they come to that conclusion? How do they date this sort of thing? No other civilizations existed simultaneously with the Mesopotamian Civilization's origin? What constitutes a civilization?

Take . . . England for example. Is that a civilization? When did it start? How long did it exist before qualifying as a civilization? Is it still a civilization?

Here's a pretty good definition of civilization.


A civilization or civilisation (see English spelling differences) is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.

Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labour, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming and expansionism.

Historically, civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in contrast to smaller, supposedly primitive cultures.

Similarly, some scholars have described civilization as being necessarily multicultural. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies or hunter-gatherers, but it also contrasts with the cultures found within civilizations themselves. As an uncountable noun, "civilization" also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure.

Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

Civilization - Wikipedia

There are plenty of footnotes..
 

SomeRandom

Still learning to be wise
Staff member
Premium Member
You, uh . . . you really take this sort of thing seriously don't you? This sort of thing always incites me to question. How do they come to that conclusion? How do they date this sort of thing? No other civilizations existed simultaneously with the Mesopotamian Civilization's origin? What constitutes a civilization?

Take . . . England for example. Is that a civilization? When did it start? How long did it exist before qualifying as a civilization? Is it still a civilization?
Carbon dating mostly. There’s other techniques to cross reference with, obviously. Like written records found, the types of tools/utensils found in the areas etc. But carbon dating is the most common.

History is sort of like a spin-off of archaeology. So just think of it like that.
 

whirlingmerc

Well-Known Member
10 Oldest Ancient Civilizations Ever Existed
https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/ancient-civilizations/10...
  • Author: Saugat Adhikari
    1. Mesopotamian Civilization. Civilization Name: Mesopotamia. Period: 3500 BC -500 BC. Originated …
    2. Indus Valley Civilization. Civilization Name: Indus Valley Civilization. Period: 3300 BC -1900 BC. …
    3. Ancient Egyptian civilization. Civilization Name: Egypt. Period: 3150 BC – 30 BC. Originated …
    4. Mayan Civilization. Civilization Name: Mayan Civilization. Period: 2600 BC-900 A.D. Originated …
    See all full list on ancienthistorylists.com

Interestingly, most of these ancient civilizations are in warmer areas which may go along with a post flood short ice age pushing civilization to warmer climates for a time

what d'ya think?
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
This is very interesting. In some Archeological things I have read, certain researchers assert that humans have been around for around 200,000 years. I wouldn't know, would I? Some things I see seem to indicate that there is a great deal about ancient history that we don't know and are not likely to learn. I lived most of my life with those who insisted that the Earth was 6,000 years old, and was cast out by them because of my assumed wicked ways.

These days I remain firm that a Creator exists. We don't know much about his purposes. I write Science Fiction that at times seems more plausible than religious "truth".
 

sooda

Veteran Member
Interestingly, most of these ancient civilizations are in warmer areas which may go along with a post flood short ice age pushing civilization to warmer climates for a time

what d'ya think?

Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, the Arabian Peninsula and Ireland were never underwater. In fact, there are no ancient cities that were interrupted by a flood.
 

SomeRandom

Still learning to be wise
Staff member
Premium Member
This is very interesting. In some Archeological things I have read, certain researchers assert that humans have been around for around 200,000 years. I wouldn't know, would I? Some things I see seem to indicate that there is a great deal about ancient history that we don't know and are not likely to learn. I lived most of my life with those who insisted that the Earth was 6,000 years old, and was cast out by them because of my assumed wicked ways.

These days I remain firm that a Creator exists. We don't know much about his purposes. I write Science Fiction that at times seems more plausible than religious "truth".
That’s why I prefer the boffins to religious inquiry. At least in this stratosphere. We will never truly 100% complete our knowledge of ancient history. But the scholarly snooty elite seem more pleased by this. Because it means they can’t see a time when investigating will be over for them. They have a seemingly endless supply of new information to learn and discover.
A lot of the religions, IMO, work the opposite way. They seem to give up, praise their deity and just look for ways to confirm their creator’s existence. There seems little passion in actually learning something. Whereas the eggheads are seemingly fueled by it.
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
That’s why I prefer the boffins to religious inquiry. At least in this stratosphere. We will never truly 100% complete our knowledge of ancient history. But the scholarly snooty elite seem more pleased by this. Because it means they can’t see a time when investigating will be over for them. They have a seemingly endless supply of new information to learn and discover.
A lot of the religions, IMO, work the opposite way. They seem to give up, praise their deity and just look for ways to confirm their creator’s existence. There seems little passion in actually learning something. Whereas the eggheads are seemingly fueled by it.

For me, no insult intended, the knowledge of a Creator is "written in my genes". Admittedly most of the religions are disrupted by dark forces, and in casual investigation, I often wonder if they have been the most murderous force in the world? It has been tremendously disillusioning to find that my beloved KJV of the Bible was authorized by one of the most murderous kings that England ever had.

The more I study, it becomes clear to me that the Creator's wishes for humanity are simple. We humans create our own hell.
 

Earthling

David Henson
Carbon dating mostly. There’s other techniques to cross reference with, obviously. Like written records found, the types of tools/utensils found in the areas etc. But carbon dating is the most common.

History is sort of like a spin-off of archaeology. So just think of it like that.

Well, archaeology is extremely interpretive. Two quotes come to mind. History is written by the victors and history is a set of lies agreed upon.

Carbon dating . . . yeah . . . not very reliable. Sometimes the best we have isn't very good.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
Well, archaeology is extremely interpretive. Two quotes come to mind. History is written by the victors and history is a set of lies agreed upon.

Carbon dating . . . yeah . . . not very reliable. Sometimes the best we have isn't very good.

Carbon dating is only part of what they use to date something.. Strata and what is found with the object is also evaluated.
 

Earthling

David Henson
Carbon dating is only part of what they use to date something.. Strata and what is found with the object is also evaluated.

Strata is very unreliable as well. It's all guess work. If, in 2000 years, they discover the viking amulet some guy bought online for 16 bucks, or clams or whatever you call them along with their laptop they would assume they are both from the same period leaves a hell of a margin of error.
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
I've often felt that Scientists are at times more closed minded than Religionists. I feel that Science and Religion are only two parts of a much larger puzzle, and that humans are so lacking in reasoning power that we 'don't even know what we don't know'. I was just reading an article that said we had never seen dark matter, yet it makes up most of the Universe? From my own very basic understanding of Quantum Physics, it seems plain that even in one room that there could be all sorts of realities, or existences. The Bible mentions it but they did not understand the significance of what some of the characters had experienced.

And, it is my opinion that some of the ruins in Iraq, Syria and places in South America might just be a layer over much older civilizations. I am sure that what I am saying could be interpreted as Mythology. That is why my Science Fiction stories at times make much more sense than what others interpret as reality.

Asimov's original "Foundation Trilogy" could be more factual than we know?
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Well, archaeology is extremely interpretive. Two quotes come to mind. History is written by the victors and history is a set of lies agreed upon.

Carbon dating . . . yeah . . . not very reliable. Sometimes the best we have isn't very good.
Carbon dating is very reliable. When its data matches with other totally independent dating methodologies (like electron-spin-resonance dating, fission track dating etc.) then the results become ironclad.
 

Earthling

David Henson
Carbon dating is very reliable. When its data matches with other totally independent dating methodologies (like electron-spin-resonance dating, fission track dating etc.) then the results become ironclad.

Well, you say it is and I say it isn't. That's where we are right now. Not much there.
 

Earthling

David Henson
yes. I am cool with that. I am not interested in changing your mind unless you want to.

Okay . . . lets just kick it around a little bit and see what happens. How do you know that any form of dating now is accurate? How do you test the accuracy of it?

Edited To Add: Keeping in mind that we have wandered a wee bit off topic to say the least.
 
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