Posted on 02/19/2022 8:36:01 AM PST by MNDude
As long as I have been alive, the The Mesopotamian Civilization has been considered the oldest civilization. I'm curious what is the criteria to be considered a civilization? Is it really the oldest, or is something that archeologists do not wish to update their books after spending a lifetime devoted to this teaching.
The Mesopotamian civilization dated back to 6500 BC, but the Jiahu in China dated back to 7000 BC.
Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey, was a temple was built along a grand geometric plan in 9000 BC.
I'm curious to hear an opinion from any archeology\ anthropology experts here.
Probably the best place to start is the Bible which places the beginning of civilization around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq which I think is considered where Mesopotamia was.
In short, common culture, literacy, property; generally rising from religion, trade, and law. Each, respectively, tends to enhance the other, e.g., trade is good for literacy and literacy is good for trade. Similarly, religion, trade and law are all mutually reinforcing.
There seems to be a critical number for human organization, a theory advanced by, among others, Antony Jay in Corporation Man. A good working number for a committee, a mammoth hunt, a board of directiors, a corporation, a municipality, etc. It's this I'm referring to when I say "grows beyond the range of a tribe." Beyond a certain level of complexity, you need abstract thinking. It also helps to have a vehicle -- horse, wheel, boat. And finally you need to be successful in colonizing (spreading your common culture).
That's the best I can do before lunch!
I see it as the definite beginning of Western Civilization. I don’t know the early dates for China, but they ‘were a far away land’ and unknown to the Mesopotamians, as far as we current know. And as Cuban Leaf said, we trace, though the Bible our beginnings there.
I was in a museum exhibit in Taipei some years ago. The placard stated that the Chinese writing system could be dated to approximately 11,000 years BC.
They had artifacts purported to be of that age with archaic inscriptions.
Our picture of the civilization timeline is very incomplete.
As far as we know currently, Gobekli Tepe was not a part of any civilization. Mesopotamia had a network of cities bound (loosely by our standards) by culture and trade.
That said, I suspect those creatures depicted on the GT pillars were totem animals, representing not prey but tribes of humans. This would suggest GT was a meeting place, a primitive “summit.”
We still do totems, and not just for sports; it may be pre-installed in us.
Check your taskbar or dock, count the animal icons :)
“Civilization” apparently implies urbanization, political organization and writing. If I understand correctly, Gobekli Tepe and Catalhoyuk didn’t have writing or much of a political organization. I wonder if territorial extension also matters. Sumerian civilization was composed of many independent city states spread out over the Tigris/Euphrates valley. If Gobekli Tepe is a one-off it’s less likely to be considered a civilization.
What marktwain said -- civilization means the building of cities; the difficulties continue as people argue/discuss what constitutes a city.
In the Nile Valley there's a 15,000 year old site that was a very large settlement. It was apparently attacked and burned to the ground, and the terminal ash layer was filled with thousands of arrowheads and spearheads, showing the population must have been pretty large. There's no writing AFAIK.
The Sumerian cuneiform writing system arose by 3200 BC and was adapted for Akkadian (Old Assyrian), and later for other spoken languages and diplomatic communication, not falling out of use until the 1st c AD. Alphabetic script as a concept isn't quite that long lived.
Interestingly, tantalizingly, there's a full set or alphabet of "runic" script characters found among the ice age cave paintings, almost as if the artists were signing their work. It's ridiculously unlikely that, even if truly a script, it will ever be deciphered.
Thanks BenLurkin for the ping.
One of the definitions of civilization is the process by which a society or place reaches an advanced stage of social and cultural development and organization. I’m not quite sure how the people that determined the existence of a civilization defined it. What is an advanced stage? For all intents and purposes the garden of Eden, if you follow religion, could be considered a civilization because it flourished and was self containing but had no culture as it was not needed. Yet two people flourished in it.
Is an existence of anything but the ability to survive safely required to call it a civilization? If that’s the case, the first two resemblance of people that came from the sea would be one for as long as they survived. So we’re back beyond Cro-Magnon and down on all fours. Need a better, single definition of civilization to consider the answer to the question.
wy69
One of the definitions of civilization is the process by which a society or place reaches an advanced stage of social and cultural development and organization. I’m not quite sure how the people that determined the existence of a civilization defined it. What is an advanced stage? For all intents and purposes the garden of Eden, if you follow religion, could be considered a civilization because it flourished and was self containing but had no culture as it was not needed. Yet two people flourished in it.
Is an existence of anything but the ability to survive safely required to call it a civilization? If that’s the case, the first two resemblance of people that came from the sea would be one for as long as they survived. So we’re back beyond Cro-Magnon and down on all fours. Need a better, single definition of civilization to consider the answer to the question.
wy69
In college introductory archaeology class, I dimly recall learning the definition of civilization according to Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/urban-revolution
Childe identified 10 formal criteria that, according to his system, indicate the development of urban civilization: increased settlement size, concentration of wealth, large-scale public works, writing, representational art, knowledge of science and engineering, foreign trade, full-time specialists in nonsubsistence activities, class-stratified society, and political organization based on residence rather than kinship. He saw the underlying causes of the urban revolution as the cumulative growth of technology and the increasing availability of food surpluses as capital.
(However, I can easily imagine that this definition has undergone significant tweaking by TPTB in recent decades...)
islam forbids the consumption of any alcoholic beverage. Q.E.D.
There are pretty compelling sets of evidence suggesting it's a 12,000 year cycle.
The last disaster was about 12,000 years ago...
You would certainly have to live a long time because they are intentionally not going to dig the whole site. They are aware of the importance of the site and know that todays tools and techniques arent sufficient and as such want to leave it for future generations more capable.
We’re lucky he was on our side.
# It’s because there weren’t simply a few potamians, there was a whole Mesopotamians
Well played! LOL
I've heard Elvis never caught Harappans. Anyway, rimshot, there may have been some kind of cultural commonality between the Harappans and the Sumerians, possibly through trade or even geographical origin. The Sumerians own origin story was that they came from the sea, and they preserved the preexisting placenames and river names rather than giving their own.
And there you have it.
So it took 12,000 years of human settlements before we developed writing? Even though there was rudimentary writing in caves.
There must be some evidence of the starts & stops of writing among the earliest civilizations [or should I say settlements]. Perhaps it is writing itself that delineates the difference between a settlement and a civilization.
The past is revealed by the future.
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