Ancient Civilizations

[Polymath257]

I love the connections that exist in our world today. A person originating from central Kansas is given suggestion to visit a place in southern Illinois by a person from Norway.

To add to the effect, I was with my graduate student, who was from Russia.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

To add to the effect, I was with my graduate student, who was from Russia.

The world is such a large, small place these days. Full of diverse and interesting people.

In graduate school, as a white male of European ancestry, I was in the minority for the first time in my life. It had no negative effect on me and I am the better for having known those friends and colleagues.

I suppose that and other experiences, including my family history have lead me to embrace that and not to crawl under a rock and demand walls be erected. Sorry. The closest to a political position I have for today. Sometimes, these things blossom in my mind and I feel the need to mention it.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

There was a program of active planting during the dust bowl of the 1930's that produced tree lines all over Kansas (and, I would guess Nebraska).

Yes. Another piece of history, lying dusty, in the recesses of my mind.

My first trip into Kansas was started at night under the notion that there was not much to see there. Subsequent visits revealed how flawed and ignorant that notion was. It is certainly different from where I grew up, but it has a unique beauty of its own that I have come to recognize.

There was a small, local museum in Oakley, Kansas, that I found fascinating. It was raised in honor of a local woman that collected fossils left from the ancient shallow seas. She displayed them and used them in her own version of crafts. I will have to look it up, but I think it was the Fick Museum, named after the family of the woman mentioned.

 

[sooda]

Cool. I need to get out more.

As a child, we ate figs available at the post commissary, but outside of the Newton form, I have not eaten any in some time.

I ate that Mulberry fig in the Middle East as a child.

 

[Shad]

Did I mention reality isn't determined by vote? Well, in any case, it's not determined by credentials either.

Reality is determined by reason and logic; the study of anomalies. Most of these anomalies rather than being studied are just being pronounced "mysteries' and it's gotten to the point that EVERYTHING about ancient Egypt is a mystery because Egyptology REFUSES TO STUDY THEM. My credentials are my arguments because nothing more is needed. When Egyptology can address the facts and logic that compose my argument then they'll probably know that there is a discontinuity in Egyptian and world history at 2000 BC caused by an event we know only as the "tower of babel" where Homo Sapiens became extinct and were replaced by a unique species of stumble footed bumpkins who believe they are intelligent and exist because they think.

This is nothing but grandstanding. RF is not an archaeologist website. Your demand is absurd. If you had real concern rather than merely protecting your religion thus ego you would be submitting your views to those in the relevant fields not random people on RF. Also it is hilarious and ironic that your support the Bible while never putting your own views to the test and standard you demand from archaeology.

Found the tower of Babel yet?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I ate that Mulberry fig in the Middle East as a child.

I appreciate your first hand knowledge of these things. I had a growing notion that you were either from or had lived in that area of the world.

When I was young and someone mentioned New York, the only image in my mind was of the great city and nothing more. As I grew older and my ignorance abated, I came to realize how limited and incorrect that image was and there was much to the state beyond the city. I know that this has occurred in my image of the Middle East. I am always glad to discover more reasons not to maintain the world of childhood ignorance.

We have a tree here called the mulberry--actually a few species of the same genus--that produce a small, edible fruit. We had several of these trees on my parents property and I grew up eating those. It is in the same genus as the food plant of the silkworm.

I am told that in the green, unripened state, it has some narcotic or hallucinogenic properties. I do not recall experiencing that and never experimented with that. Of course, this particular piece of knowledge is more recent and did not exist at the time for me to use or not.

Common names often create confusion, since they are not historically applied in any systematic way, but I am curious about the common name of the fig and the mulberry. It could be largely due to a lack of understanding of biology by the people naming them or some similarity that I could not guess at.

Still, the connection sort of brings this story around again.

 

[cladking]

This is nothing but grandstanding. RF is not an archaeologist website. Your demand is absurd. If you had real concern rather than merely protecting your religion thus ego you would be submitting your views to those in the relevant fields not random people on RF. Also it is hilarious and ironic that your support the Bible while never putting your own views to the test and standard you demand from archaeology.

Found the tower of Babel yet?

My beliefs are irrelevant. The location in time and space of the origin of the Tower of Babel is irrelevant.

What is relevant is how ancient civilization arose and thrived. What is relevant is why "recorded history" didn't begin until 1200 years after the invention of writing.

How would you propose affecting a field of study where each individual believes reality is determined by vote and only peers have a say or a vote?

 

[sooda]

My beliefs are irrelevant. The location in time and space of the origin of the Tower of Babel is irrelevant.

What is relevant is how ancient civilization arose and thrived. What is relevant is why "recorded history" didn't begin until 1200 years after the invention of writing.

How would you propose affecting a field of study where each individual believes reality is determined by vote and only peers have a say or a vote?

Didn't it?

History of writing. The Sumerian archaic (pre- cuneiform) writing and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3100 BC, with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC .
History of writing - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing

 

[sooda]

I appreciate your first hand knowledge of these things. I had a growing notion that you were either from or had lived in that area of the world.

When I was young and someone mentioned New York, the only image in my mind was of the great city and nothing more. As I grew older and my ignorance abated, I came to realize how limited and incorrect that image was and there was much to the state beyond the city. I know that this has occurred in my image of the Middle East. I am always glad to discover more reasons not to maintain the world of childhood ignorance.

We have a tree here called the mulberry--actually a few species of the same genus--that produce a small, edible fruit. We had several of these trees on my parents property and I grew up eating those. It is in the same genus as the food plant of the silkworm.

I am told that in the green, unripened state, it has some narcotic or hallucinogenic properties. I do not recall experiencing that and never experimented with that. Of course, this particular piece of knowledge is more recent and did not exist at the time for me to use or not.

Common names often create confusion, since they are not historically applied in any systematic way, but I am curious about the common name of the fig and the mulberry. It could be largely due to a lack of understanding of biology by the people naming them or some similarity that I could not guess at.

Still, the connection sort of brings this story around again.

Ficus sycomorus sycomorus - FigWeb

 

[cladking]

40,000 years of science?

There are two kinds of sciences.

Ancient science was based on observation > logic instead of observation > experiment. It worked! It worked because consciousness is the tool provided by God/ Nature to survive and reproduce. This consciousness is formatted in both language and the wiring of the brain which mirror one another. In all animals this language is binary, metaphysical, and inherently logical just like the way the brain formed. In humans there was a mutation that created complex language 40,000 years ago. This mutation caused a closer connection between the speech center and the higher brain functions. Humans became more able to "think" about what they were saying and hearing. This new complexity of language allowed far more complexity in communication which allowed learning to be passed from generation to generation. The human race was engaged.

Because the language was metaphysical it became geometrically more complex as knowledge accumulated arithmatically. By 3200 BC the language started being too complicated for dummies. Writing was invented for the pidgin forms of the language that were used for dummies since we still needed to communicate with the entire population. Without writing too much drift occurred in meaning like chinese telephone. As the centuries went by fewer and fewer individuals could speak the official language so it had to be abandoned at an event we know only as babel.

But make no mistake; humans invented agriculture and cities by means of science just as termites invented agriculture and air conditioned cities. All progress before the invention of modern science was an invention of "natural" science or "consciousness". This metaphysics is remarkably simple. It merely seems strange to modern humans because we're so different. Rather than modelling reality we model our beliefs. Rather than seeing anomalies, we see what we expect. If we tried pulling this crap before the invention of agriculture we'd have quickly become extinct because it requires consciousness and science to survive and not beliefs and trial and error.

This will someday be seen as patently obvious but we can't see it because of poor perspective and that we already know everything.

 

[sooda]

There are two kinds of sciences.

Ancient science was based on observation > logic instead of observation > experiment. It worked! It worked because consciousness is the tool provided by God/ Nature to survive and reproduce. This consciousness is formatted in both language and the wiring of the brain which mirror one another. In all animals this language is binary, metaphysical, and inherently logical just like the way the brain formed. In humans there was a mutation that created complex language 40,000 years ago. This mutation caused a closer connection between the speech center and the higher brain functions. Humans became more able to "think" about what they were saying and hearing. This new complexity of language allowed far more complexity in communication which allowed learning to be passed from generation to generation. The human race was engaged.

Because the language was metaphysical it became geometrically more complex as knowledge accumulated arithmatically. By 3200 BC the language started being too complicated for dummies. Writing was invented for the pidgin forms of the language that were used for dummies since we still needed to communicate with the entire population. Without writing too much drift occurred in meaning like chinese telephone. As the centuries went by fewer and fewer individuals could speak the official language so it had to be abandoned at an event we know only as babel.

But make no mistake; humans invented agriculture and cities by means of science just as termites invented agriculture and air conditioned cities. All progress before the invention of modern science was an invention of "natural" science or "consciousness". This metaphysics is remarkably simple. It merely seems strange to modern humans because we're so different. Rather than modelling reality we model our beliefs. Rather than seeing anomalies, we see what we expect. If we tried pulling this crap before the invention of agriculture we'd have quickly become extinct because it requires consciousness and science to survive and not beliefs and trial and error.

This will someday be seen as patently obvious but we can't see it because of poor perspective and that we already know everything.

They weren't dummies.. In your travels have you seen how ancient peoples coped with their environment? They were damned clever and probably as inherently intelligent as we are.

 

[cladking]

What is relevant is why "recorded history" didn't begin until 1200 years after the invention of writing.

Didn't it?

History of writing. The Sumerian archaic (pre- cuneiform) writing and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3100 BC, with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC .
History of writing - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing

There is no historic record of anything from before 2000 BC. There are no books about science or current events before 2000 BC. There is no comprehensible non-fiction of any sort from before 2000 BC other than one word titles and the like.

Recorded history didn't start until 2000 BC (Merer's Diary notwithstanding).

 

[cladking]

They weren't dummies.. In your travels have you seen how ancient peoples coped with their environment? They were damned clever and probably as inherently intelligent as we are.

Only some couldn't follow the Ancient language.

 

[sooda]

Only some couldn't follow the Ancient language.

What does that mean and how do you know it?

 

[sooda]

There is no historic record of anything from before 2000 BC. There are no books about science or current events before 2000 BC. There is no comprehensible non-fiction of any sort from before 2000 BC other than one word titles and the like.

Recorded history didn't start until 2000 BC (Merer's Diary notwithstanding).

The story of Sinuhe dates to 1900 BC.

B425 Ugarit and the Bible - Quartz Hill School of Theology
www.theology.edu/ugarbib.htm
B425 Ugarit and the Bible. Ugarit experienced a very long history. A city was built on the site in the Neolithic period around 6000 BCE. The oldest written evidence of the city is found in some texts from the nearby city of Ebla written around 1800 BCE. At that time both Ebla and Ugarit …

Danel was a Syrian poem written about 1500 BC.

 

[sooda]

Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk in Mesopotamia best known from The Epic of Gilgamesh (written c. 2150 - 1400 BCE) the great Sumerian/Babylonian poetic work which pre-dates Homer’s writing by 1500 years and, therefore, stands as the oldest piece of epic world literature.

 

[cladking]

What does that mean and how do you know it?

It means everybody didn't fail to understand what was said to them as evidenced by the fact that writing was invented and the numerous other points already stated.

 

[We Never Know]

There is no historic record of anything from before 2000 BC. There are no books about science or current events before 2000 BC. There is no comprehensible non-fiction of any sort from before 2000 BC other than one word titles and the like.

Recorded history didn't start until 2000 BC (Merer's Diary notwithstanding).

What are you defining as recorded history?

Cuneiform is a system of writingfirst developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamiac. 3500-3000 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE.

Cuneiform

 

[sooda]

It means everybody didn't fail to understand what was said to them as evidenced by the fact that writing was invented and the numerous other points already stated.

I still don't understand what you are saying. A lot of early clay tablets were recordings of business transactions...

 

[Dan From Smithville]

There are two kinds of sciences.

Ancient science was based on observation > logic instead of observation > experiment. It worked! It worked because consciousness is the tool provided by God/ Nature to survive and reproduce. This consciousness is formatted in both language and the wiring of the brain which mirror one another. In all animals this language is binary, metaphysical, and inherently logical just like the way the brain formed. In humans there was a mutation that created complex language 40,000 years ago. This mutation caused a closer connection between the speech center and the higher brain functions. Humans became more able to "think" about what they were saying and hearing. This new complexity of language allowed far more complexity in communication which allowed learning to be passed from generation to generation. The human race was engaged.

Because the language was metaphysical it became geometrically more complex as knowledge accumulated arithmatically. By 3200 BC the language started being too complicated for dummies. Writing was invented for the pidgin forms of the language that were used for dummies since we still needed to communicate with the entire population. Without writing too much drift occurred in meaning like chinese telephone. As the centuries went by fewer and fewer individuals could speak the official language so it had to be abandoned at an event we know only as babel.

But make no mistake; humans invented agriculture and cities by means of science just as termites invented agriculture and air conditioned cities. All progress before the invention of modern science was an invention of "natural" science or "consciousness". This metaphysics is remarkably simple. It merely seems strange to modern humans because we're so different. Rather than modelling reality we model our beliefs. Rather than seeing anomalies, we see what we expect. If we tried pulling this crap before the invention of agriculture we'd have quickly become extinct because it requires consciousness and science to survive and not beliefs and trial and error.

This will someday be seen as patently obvious but we can't see it because of poor perspective and that we already know everything.

You have an interesting and imaginative belief here.

I only know of one science and it has been sufficient to to achieve the level of knowledge and technology that we now possess.

If there is no recorded history prior to 4,000 years ago, how do you know any of the claims that you made here regarding developments older than that date actually happened as you claim?

If humans had used modern science, 14,000 years ago to invent agriculture, it would have radically changed the last 14,000 years and probably eliminated a lot of mythology. Agriculture developed through trial and error and not through a formalized process of the scientific method. I recognize that a form of science can be and has been used by cultures that are not technologically advanced, but I do not agree with your claims of modern science.