New Project: Comprehensive List of World Civilizations

ParkCungHee said:

So, I thought the criteria was self-identification, and loads of Franks thought of themselves as Roman.

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There were plenty of Gallo-Romans under Frankish rule in the early years. But the Franks themselves aren't on the list.

But you just identified them as the French, so they are on the list. And I wasn't talking about the Gallo-Romans, I was talking about the Franks, many of whom self-identified as Roman.

ParkCungHee said:

I feel really bad about this, because it's very clear you've put a lot of effort into this project, but this project is built on a flawed base, and until you fix that base, no amount of effort can overcome these flaws.

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I don't particularly care about the base, at least not at the moment.

It's just a big, raw list, nothing more. If I feel like categorizing them more precisely in an orderly fashion with subheadings and superheadings and disclaimers, I'll do that sometime later.

Right now, as I've said, I'm just looking for additional content.

ParkCungHee said:

But you just identified them as the French, so they are on the list. And I wasn't talking about the Gallo-Romans,

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Note that I have a late starting date on the French. French culture is a fusion of Gallic, Latin and Frankish elements. I placed them at the point where their uniquely different fusion of cultures began to emerge as an individual element. But this is really just pointless quibbling about nomenclature again.

ParkCungHee said:

I was talking about the Franks, many of whom self-identified as Roman.

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Heh, I'd define that as some political posturing on the part of the Pope and/or Big Chuck himself. (Esp. considering there was a fuss over who the real heirs of the Romans were. The Byzantines didn't particularly like the Franks' making that claim.)

Alezander01 said:

Note that I have a late starting date on the French. French culture is a fusion of Gallic, Latin and Frankish elements. I placed them at the point where their uniquely different fusion of cultures began to emerge as an individual element. But this is really just pointless quibbling about nomenclature again.

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And yeah, this brings us back to my original point that at that point, the inhabitants of France were thought of Romans.

Heh, I'd define that as some political posturing on the part of the Pope and/or Big Chuck himself. (Esp. considering there was a fuss over who the real heirs of the Romans were. The Byzantines didn't particularly like the Franks' making that claim.)

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So is self-identification the standard or isn't it?

ParkCungHee said:

And yeah, this brings us back to my original point that at that point, the inhabitants of France were thought of Romans.

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Yes, at one point there were Romans in France. That doesn't mean that the French from CE 900 to the present are necessarily Roman too. I've already described them as a fusion of Celtic, Latin, and Germanic elements, which is what they are.

ParkCungHee said:

So is self-identification the standard or isn't it?

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I don't recall ever saying that it was. The Eastern Empire at Constantinople never called itself Byzantine, they considered themselves heirs of Rome.

Again, this is arguing about nomenclature and categorization which aspects were only ever intended as a secondary focus.

Look, my primary focus here was never to achieve a perfect categorization of all world civilizations that would please everybody. (Because I doubt that's even possible.)

It was just to make a big list that would cover as wide a range as possible to assist in further study.

Alezander01 said:

I don't particularly care about the base, at least not at the moment.

It's just a big, raw list, nothing more. If I feel like categorizing them in an orderly fashion with subheadings and superheadings and disclaimers, I'll do that sometime later.

Right now, as I've said, I'm just looking for additional content.

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Oh, well that's easy. Here's some you missed:

Newgrange People
Uí Néill
Ulster Plantation
Meath
Lienster
Connacht
Dublin
French Dublin
Mann

I'll add some more later.

ParkCungHee said:

Oh, well that's easy. Here's some you missed:

Newgrange People
Uí Néill
Ulster Plantation
Meath
Lienster
Connacht
Dublin
French Dublin
Mann

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Sigh. Is there any evidence of the Newgrange people living in cities? Because those are the groups I'm currently looking at.

As for the others you listed, those all count as Irish (or occasionally Norse-Gaelic), which I'd consider a Celtic subculture (and thus already included on the big list). Gaelic/Goidelic and Brythonic could potentially be broken off as subgroups (the former would include the Irish).

I'm not sure how much any of those Irish groups differ from each other culturally with the possible exception of "French Dublin," which I assume you mean to refer to the Norman occupation?

At some point I will probably consider more subcultures, but right now I'm really looking for areas that are not yet covered at all.

Alezander01 said:

As for the others you listed, those all count as Irish (or occasionally Norse-Gaelic), which I'd consider a Celtic subculture (and thus already included on my list). Gaelic/Goidelic and Brythonic could potentially be broken off as subgroups (the former would include the Irish).

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I thought categorizing comes later?

ParkCungHee said:

I thought categorizing comes later?

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I give up.

Alezander01 said:

You however have a habit of interjecting curse words (which makes your assertions seem more hostile) as well as labeling those who disagree with you with derogatory adjectives. This makes it difficult for me to converse with you.

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Damn isn't a curse word, or at least I don't use it as such. I use damn for emphasis and when I'm being coy. I'm sorry if that comes off aggressive.

I'm not writing my dissertation here, just looking for a friendly chat on a discussion board. If you're going to make me an offender for a word, how I am ever to discuss anything? I'd like for us to be able to move past obfuscating arguments about less-important things like categorization and nomenclature. Look, I get that you don't like how I've got things set up. I really do. But the thing is, I'm not really all that attached to that setup. Should I continue on with the project, it'll likely go through countless revisions and clarifications. (Though even then I'll bet you won't like it. )

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We can do that, just stop trying to claim that this is a scientific exploration of world civilizations and thereby dismiss anybody's contributions that you don't agree with.

When one disagrees with another, the best course of action is to engage in reasoning to attempt to persuade the other party to accept your argument. Simply tearing down the other person, on the other hand, is more likely to just cause them to desire an end to the interaction with you. "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

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I'm just asking honest questions here.

I find this quite amusing. We're having this discussion on a site called "Civilization Fanatics."

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For the record I don't think the Civilization games do it any less arbitrarily than you do.

Professional critiques do not equal personal attacks. Courtesy, accuracy and constructive criticism are more than welcome, but discourtesy and invective are bad form. We can have a pleasant discussion if you're willing.

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Haha, you have a lot to learn about the world of history then.

Alezander01 said:

There were plenty of Gallo-Romans under Frankish rule in the early years. But the Franks themselves aren't on the list.

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The distinction between "Frankish" and "Roman" was not a cultural one, but a civil-military one. Families that were eligible to provide military service were "Franks" under the law, and everybody else was "Roman". This did not match up with language even in the earliest days of the Merovingian state, when the military was effectively made up of the former Roman field army based on the Loire River - a field army that may very well have been comprised in large part by men who had family ties to the Frankish tribes to the northeast, but which was also manned and officered by many men who had no such ties, who had been born in the Empire, and who spoke a variety of Latin. Such men and their descendants were designated "Franks" despite never having lived on the far side of the Rhine. Frankish identity fit well in part because the late Roman army in all parts of the Empire adopted elements of an identity that the Romans ascribed to the "barbarians" because that identity included many martial qualities that the military found it expedient to play up - so when elements of Roman identity, such as the allegiance to centralized Roman imperial authorities, became less and less of a draw due to the weakness of those authorities in the mid-to-late fifth century, many Roman soldiers elected to emphasize other layers of their identity, bringing "Frankish" to the fore.

Within a few decades of the creation of the Merovingian polity, the cultural differentiation between those "legal" Franks that had antecedents external to the former Empire and those that did not continued to decrease - the adoption of Chalkedonian Christianity and the prominent use of Latin being the most obvious of these. To be sure, many others did not; for instance, the Frankish military aristocracy spent a great deal of time fighting each other (so much so that it can reasonably be called a social activity), something that did not tend to happen much under the Roman state. And it became politically expedient to continue to disassociate themselves from the Empire due to the activities and conquests of Ioustinianos in the sixth century. But these activities were not particularly uniquely Frankish, either, and don't really constitute the sort of differentiation that lends itself to the classification of "civilization". I mean, I guess you could try, but it'd seem pretty forced.

Owen Glyndwr said:

Haha, you have a lot to learn about the world of history then.

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Owen, this makes you sound like an abrasive, unhelpful dick. We're all aware that the whole project is flawed because of the problems inherent in defining what a "civilization" is. So forget that and just concentrate on sharing knowledge and helping each other learn about this stuff.

Alezander01 said:

I'm not looking for the most minute list. Honestly I was posting here on the off chance that people would have some good suggestions for Africa and South America and maybe some more detail on India, but everybody always gets hung up on Europe.

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I think everyone else has covered it, but the hostility here is mostly driven by the fact that you're basing this on the idea of "civilization", which is a very non-concrete and arbitrary measure.

I can see what you're trying to get at with your list, but you're going to need to come up with a better definition to work by, something more specific. I can't really think of anything off the top of my head, but it needs to be something that will allow for somewhat blanket terms so as to not get too minute, but at the same time not too blanket as to just group these "civilizations" into massive geographic areas.

It's tough, but then again, history isn't easy

and if they're Germanic tribe now, why are they French?

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Just replace "G" with "F", reverse "e" with "r", remove "ma" and "i" and add "h" at the end.

That's why.

Arrrr. I was gonna say where did you put Tartessos after reading the list, but I saw later that I had just missed it. Also, why not include the Iberians as in the pre-Roman tribes that lived in settlements of hundreds or in some cases thousands along the Eastern half of Spain?

JoanK said:

Also, why not include the Iberians as in the pre-Roman tribes that lived in settlements of hundreds or in some cases thousands along the Eastern half of Spain?

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Because the people that inhabited pre-Roman Iberia were generally not all that similar culturally or linguistically, and certainly not politically united. He might as well mash up all of the "Germanic" people in Germania Magna.

...oh, wait.

What do you have against Ethiopia OP?

I think that the anciet empires of the Indian sub-continnent can't be called The Indian Civilization.
Today they are united under the defenition of India, but back then it was just a crazy idea.
It was like the terms Mesopotamian Civilization, or North African Civilization.
As far as I know, the united national defenition of Indian people became common during the British tule.
Before that, India was mainly a geographical term.
You can clearly see the difference between several groups in the indian history.
The problem is how to name them. So this is my suggestion:
- Magadha, which mainly includes the Mauryan Empire and the Gupta Empire....
- Kannada, which mainly includes the Rashtrakuta Empire, the Chalukya Empire, the Vijayanagara Empire, kingdom of Mysore...
- Tamil, and I see you have already put them in.
- There are much more smaller groups, but I assume you got the idea...

I think that the term Indian Civilization can only refer to the modern and unified indian people.

Owen Glyndwr said:

But it's still arbitrary. Why did you group "Iberians" rather than dividing it up into Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Gallatian, and Portuguese? Why are the Dutch so important when there were plenty of other cultures/language groups in that region? Why not Frisian or Danish or Low Saxon or the hundred other languages that have come out of what we now refer to as "The Low Countries" Why did you group a whole bunch of entirely disparate languages and cultures into "Amerindian"? What the hell are "The Indians"? You might as well also include "The Europeans" and "The Chinese". These are massive regions representing hundreds if not thousands of different cultures, languages, and polities. I just don't understand how you're trying to do this.

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Because they invented the modern capitalist nationstate and are the first truly Western civilization as we know the west today. The only reason we don't learn this extensively in school is that not enough people speak Dutch outside the Netherlands to have significantly translated their history.

Alezander01 said:

the Burmese (200 BC) - southeast Asian civilization in Myanmar

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The Pyu weren't Bamar.

Alezander01 said:

the Vietnamese (200 BC) - southeast Asian civilization located in Indochina

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Why include the Viets and exclude the Chams?

Alezander01 said:

the Khmer (AD 100) - various southeast Asian polities in Cambodia and the surrounding region

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Funan conceivably wasn't a Khemr polity.

Alezander01 said:

the Indonesians (AD 600) - southeast Asian civilization based in the Malaysian peninsula and Indonesian archipelago

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"Indonesians" is about as useful a descriptor as "Europeans" even now.

Alezander01 said:

the Polynesians (AD 1100) - oceanic civilization consisting of multiple tribes spread across the Pacific Ocean, including the Tongans, Samoans, Hawaiians and Maori

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Tribes?

Hygro said:

Because they invented the modern capitalist nationstate and are the first truly Western civilization as we know the west today. The only reason we don't learn this extensively in school is that not enough people speak Dutch outside the Netherlands to have significantly translated their history.

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You ought to stop using "modern" "capitalist" "nation-state" and "Western" like they have precise meanings or universally accepted "firsts".