Ornery Trivia: earliest civilizations

[cimorene]

Don't you love when some random tidbit makes you go "That doesn't sound right, but I have to go to Wikipedia to disprove it!" so you end up in a wiki spiral about cattle in Viking culture or the separation of West Virginia or the 18th century postal service?

Thanks to one of those moments claiming that Methos was "about as old as civilization", I can now declare with confidence that several Nile valley civilizations considered the precursors of dynastic Egypt existed in the 4th and 5th millennia bce, and while evidence from Mesopotamia is fragmentary, it's known that there were many city states there prior to the first known rulers around 2600 bce. Danubian or Linear Pottery culture dates to around 5500 bce and the oldest known civilization from China, the Jiahu culture, about 7000 bce. There's a Stone Age city in Turkey dating from around 7500 bce, and the Australian Aboriginal culture goes back to at least 50,000 bce.

Methos is about as old as Gilgamesh, though, slightly older, and around the age of cuneiform, which is still the earliest known form of writing.

Comments

[stranger]

Methos/Hammurabi. Discuss.

I guess there's a general validity to claiming Methos is as old as history (meaning written records). Not sure if China didn't pre-date him there, too.

[cimorene]

Yeah, exactly. The earliest records of Sumeria/Mesopotamia are often considered the roots of OUR (tradition of) civilization because it used to be believed that Mesopotamian civilization was like an "ancestor" of the Hellenic civilization which was supposedly then passed down to Western Europe, but that's really only true of the writing systems.

I feel like somebody should have written something like that - or at least, something with SOMEWHERE(when) in ancient Mesopotamia - but I haven't found it. There are definitely some Good Omens fics in the period, so maybe that's what I'm thinking of.

My understanding is that cuneiform is still the earliest known writing. There is no firm evidence of writing in China before then, although there are drawings/symbols from the Jiahu culture. The earliest definite Chinese characters are from ca. 1250-1050 bce, apparently, and they are extra badass because they're carved in bones.

[lazaefair]

The oracle bones! If you ever go to Taiwan, make sure to visit the Palace Museum. They have some of those.

[lazaefair]

Just looked up the settlement of the Americas and Wiki says 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. Which of course implies the existence of people in Asia prior to that migration, too.

Thanks for going down this rabbit hole - while reading your post I realized that I *had* been unconsciously thinking of Mesopotamia as the beginning of civilization thanks to 20 years of Sunday School propaganda in my early life, and it's another thing I need to deprogram myself from.

[cimorene]

I think the definition of "civilization" is flexible, but it seems archaeologists mean cultures that left cities. There are some of those older than approximately 3000 bce in the Americas, but most of the coolest archaeological sties in the Americas are from later than that. And of course we know that there were a lot of nomadic cultures as well, which probably don't leave as much trace for archaeologists to find...

[lazaefair]

I guess my personal definition of "civilization" is "evolved enough that people can have leisure time to create art." Because the entire point of human progress is art and creation. This is in no way based on any kind of academic knowledge or understanding. I just know that I have a lot of conditioned baggage around the connotations of "civilized" and "civilization" that I'm trying to move away from. Anyway! All this is to say, this has been interesting to think about this morning.

[phosfate]

"Did I ever tell you about the absolute WORST copper dealer in the world?"

[cimorene]

OK now I kinda want to track down wherever Highlander is still having fests or challenges just to throw this in.