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Records of Ancient Civilizations

Gladiator

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There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

 
Babylonia was near the city of Ur, in Iraq. Advances in studying ruins, is probably leading to more information on old cities and writings.

Babylon writing date for 2500 BC.

 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

Greece is sometimes called the cradle of western civilization. But the first human civilization was Sumeria, in what is now modern Iraq. It started several thousand years before Greek civilization. This is where the first cities, specialization of labor, a system of coins and currency, systems of writing, trade and commerce, and other signs of civilization first developed.
 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

You were taught wrong. Probably by euro-centric people. There were cities in the Indus Valley and in China millennia before Greece. 'Civilisation' being rooted in 'civil', city. There was civilization in the Americas too, maybe before Europe.
 
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Newgrange, Ireland. Older than Stonehenge and the pyramids.

dsYL4zH.jpg
 
Newgrange, Ireland. Older than Stonehenge and the pyramids.

dsYL4zH.jpg
Yes, there are a lot of large and interesting structures built before the dawn of civilization.

The structures below were built around 11,000 years ago in what is now modern day Turkey.


But such structures, while impressive achievements, do not by themselves define civilization.
 
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Turkey/Syria, Pre-Dyanastic Egypt and NW India had older civilisations than the City States of Ur, Uruk, and Sumer or the neighbour states of Elam. The oldest Greek civilization we know of was the Minoan civilisation centred on the Islands of the southern Agean Sea, especially Crete. But the Turkey/Syria, Pre-Dynastic Egyptian and NW Indian civilisations were older by thousands of year than any Greek based civilisation.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.
 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

The Greeks were one of the more recent civilizations. Civilization sprung up in various places millennia before the Greek were on the scene.

You might find this a worthwhile read (I've read it twice, it is very enlightening):

 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

You were taught wrong. Unless, you're speaking strictly in terms of European civilization.

But still, in that neck of the world most would still start at the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (Babylon).
 
I recommend The History of the World Podcast. It's basically a doctoral thesis on the history of human civilization back to early primates. It is an awesome podcast.
 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

We learn new things all the time. Perhaps you ought to check out Göbekli Tepe. It dates back to around 9000 BC.


It definitely had to have been built by a civilization that predates Ur or Sumer. Ur was working with mud bricks, Gobeki Tepe was in carved stone. Archaeologist have only dug in one of the circles. There are an estimated 20 of them or more. Early civilization included Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River. But none comes close to Gobekli Tepe. No one knows who built it.

Of course Gobeki Tepe is but one site and isn't considered to be a cradle of civilization like Egypt, Mesopotamia, The Indus or the yellow river. But whoever built it, had all the hallmarks of an advance civilization. I do believe there were more ancient civilizations around the world that have been forgotten about and not rediscovered as yet if they ever will be.
 
Yes, there are a lot of large and interesting structures built before the dawn of civilization.

The structures below were built around 11,000 years ago in what is now modern day Turkey.


But such structures, while impressive achievements, do not by themselves define civilization.
I read an article not long ago that the animals on the stone pillars are actually constellations--so astronomy as well as advanced enough physics to raise those pillars. And an organized civilization that used the site for hundreds upon hundreds of years, recorded their astronomical observations symbolically... They are beginning to hunt around for where all the people lived (it wasn't at Gobekli Tepe). Very interesting stuff ! The date of civilization moves further back all the time.
 
We learn new things all the time. Perhaps you ought to check out Göbekli Tepe. It dates back to around 9000 BC.


It definitely had to have been built by a civilization that predates Ur or Sumer. Ur was working with mud bricks, Gobeki Tepe was in carved stone. Archaeologist have only dug in one of the circles. There are an estimated 20 of them or more. Early civilization included Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River. But none comes close to Gobekli Tepe. No one knows who built it.

Of course Gobeki Tepe is but one site and isn't considered to be a cradle of civilization like Egypt, Mesopotamia, The Indus or the yellow river. But whoever built it, had all the hallmarks of an advance civilization. I do believe there were more ancient civilizations around the world that have been forgotten about and not rediscovered as yet if they ever will be.
But none of those civilizations actually died. The people moved on, took their language, learning and culture with them, and the echoes are still there in the new places they inhabited, their myths and legends. I like to think the story of civilization probably goes back MUCH farther than we think, but the physical evidence is gone beneath cataclysms, glaciers, coastal changes.
 
Another one of those strange but good things one may find while cruising the internets. A structure that we can visit today, made of stone that has lasted for millennia, is not the only sign of civilization. according to the anthropologist.

“A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon.

Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.”

A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend.

Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.”​


― Ira Byock, MD
 
Another one of those strange but good things one may find while cruising the internets. A structure that we can visit today, made of stone that has lasted for millennia, is not the only sign of civilization. according to the anthropologist.
Awesome.
 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

You were taught wrong, or perhaps you totally forgot was you were taught....
 
But none of those civilizations actually died. The people moved on, took their language, learning and culture with them, and the echoes are still there in the new places they inhabited, their myths and legends. I like to think the story of civilization probably goes back MUCH farther than we think, but the physical evidence is gone beneath cataclysms, glaciers, coastal changes.
I think your correct. Göbekli Tepe had to be built by a very sophisticated and advanced civilization for that time, 9000 BC or there about. It is said those who built it, buried it on purpose and moved on. To where no one knows. I'm sure glaciers, the rise in sea levels, etc. destroyed much of the evidence of even more advanced ancient civilizations. Then too, one must know where to dig to find anything. A lot of our discoveries are totally by chance like a Shepard tripping over a rock or something akin to that.

There's a lot of myths out there dealing with ancient civilizations, but it is said each myth has a grain of truth to it,
 
I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization.

You should find your old teacher and beat them around the head and neck with a history book.
 
Greece is sometimes called the cradle of western civilization.

And it was to a very high degree.
Not measured by agriculture, buildings, or stargazing, but rather by philosophy, history, science, and law in records that were passed down. The Greeks acted as a nexus for that and more.
Older records from further afield were only discovered by Westerners much later, long after the cradle stage. Egyptology for instance, only got started when it did because Napoleon brought a few nerds along with him to Egypt.
 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations


You were taught the "Greece" was the first civilization?

What did your teachers and texts characterize to be "The Cradle of Civilization"?
 
There was a video presentation on Cable TV today, about Ur, Iraq, at about 3800 BC. Did a search of DP and did not find much.

I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.


An old DP Thread listing old civilizations

Greeks were definitely not the first. However, they did form the basis for our Western Civilization.
 
It seems Cunieform characters, written in clay tablets, formed the record of some ancient civilizations. So the records of some early civilizations is held in the symbols pierced into clay tablets.

"Cuneiform[note 1] is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East.[4] The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era.[5] It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form its signs. Cuneiform originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Along with Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is one of the earliest writing systems.

Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages linguistically unrelated to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record.[6][7] Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language sometime around the 17th century BC.[8][9] The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian."





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It seems Cunieform characters, written in clay tablets, formed the record of some ancient civilizations. So the records of some early civilizations is held in the symbols pierced into clay tablets.

"Cuneiform[note 1] is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East.[4] The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era.[5] It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form its signs. Cuneiform originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Along with Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is one of the earliest writing systems.

Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages linguistically unrelated to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record.[6][7] Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language sometime around the 17th century BC.[8][9] The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian."





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Yeah, Sumer.

 
I was taught in school that Greek was the first civilization. There may be things to learn from other civilizations.

The first "modern civilization", but hardly the first.

The Pre-Dynastic Period of Egypt was over 5,000 years ago. And the Pre-Dynastic period of Sumer may go back almost 7,000 years.

The problem here is that we are reaching the end of the period of written records. And when most construction was still mud bricks and wood, along with animal skins. Agriculture and animal husbandry was just developing, which was needed before a group could decide to plant themselves in a single location and become "civilized".

What Greece had which sets it apart was not only advanced writing and math for the era, they also had a leadership that was neither an absolute despot or theological in basis. They would spawn the first modern city-states, and eventually Democratic styles of government. Which later inspired Rome to follow their concepts and create the modern Republic. Meanwhile, in that region they remained primarily despotisms and advanced little from absolute rule.
 
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