Compendium of Fake Tech and Wonder Quotes

[diamond geezer]

Haha. I started in computer science and changed to archaeology. Slight regret when it comes to work and pay though. Oh well. I guess sabre-toothed cats goes under megafauna anyway.

Sabre-toothed cats pre-date by tens of millions of years even the earliest stone age, even though they were also contemporary. To call them "great beasts of the stone age" is at best misleading...

 

[Gorbles]

They existed for around 42 million years, up until around 11,000 BC (according to Wikipedia because anything more than that is really too much effort right now).

Three million years is quite a bit of overlap. Certainly from the perspective of mankind (which is what Civilisation obviously focuses on).

 

[Gub]

A. I don't think that historical accuracy was ever a goal ..
B. In either case, according to steam civilization has 10 localization with full voice and probably more in the works. The idea that this content will be changed is not grounded in reality.
C. Is there any quote mods? or any suggestion for a historical cartography quote?

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I'm pretty sure this exact issue has already been covered. I could be confusing threads, though. Maybe it was raised elsewhere, and not here, hah.

That said it depends on what you class as upright steps. In historical terms, homini ancestors were capable of using stone tools, and Wikipedia defines the Stone Age as dating back some 3.4 billion years or so (I'm sure it's sourced, so I wouldn't worry) and has records of homo habilis (and ancestors thereof) listed. So, upright steps would most definitely come after this stage in our evolution.

It's a contestable topic (apparently the "homo" in homo habilis has long been debated, which is fascinating. My interest in paleontology was predictably from the earlier eras; the dinosaurs fascinate most children, right? I studied extensively with the aim of majoring in Archeology but homini ancestry was never my focus), so I would be very careful with what you expect Firaxis to get right.

I am not an anthropologist, but I am interested in human evolution and have studied it a bit. Here's my understanding on this issue:

Australopithecus Afarensis (the species most famous for "Lucy"), which lived about 4 million years ago, had definite inclinations toward bipedalism. Relative to the common ancestor of humans and chimps, it had a bunch of adaptations to help it walk on two feet: an angled femur, a broader pelvis, a big ankle bone and an arched foot to bear weight, shorter toes, and knees that could lock in place to stand upright comfortably. On the other hand, it didn't have all of a modern human's adaptations toward bipedalism: its toes were curved, it didn't have a modern human S-shaped spine, and it had relatively longer arms than legs. Its foremin magnum (the hole in the base of the skull to which the spinal cord is attached) is not centered, as a human's is, but it's not all the way back, as a chimpanzee's is. It's somewhere in between.

So it sort of depends on how exacting your standards for "biped" are. I think it's pretty clear that this species, while not a perfect biped, at the very least spent a lot of time walking on two feet. There is also evidence of fossilized footprints further testifying that Australopithecus Afarensis was bipedal.

As for stone tools, the earliest clear and systematic evidence only comes with Homo Habilis (2.4-1.4 million years ago). There have been suggestions that Australopithecus Afarensis used stone tools, or that various other earlier hominins did so, but the evidence is all very weak and circumstantial until Homo Habilis.

The fact that bipedalism probably predates widespread stone tool use, at least as best we can tell from the current evidence, has some evolutionary significance. It would testify against the idea that hominins became bipedal in order to have their hands free to use tools. The chronology doesn't work for that. (The question of why bipedalism evolved, incidentally, is very much an unsolved mystery.)

 

[diamond geezer]

So what Firaxis say is "From the first stirrings of life (i.e. about 4bn years ago), to the great beasts of the stone age (beasts that evolved a very considerable time before the stone age, but were still around at that point) to man's first upright steps (which at best was roughly contemporary with the stone age and was quite possibly earlier, and both of which were around 3m years ago).

Having one event that pre-dates the other two by so much and having those two so close to one another (see here that stone tools may pre-date genus Homo) is, shall we say, inelegant. Given that there are greater beasts that lived at a much earlier date, it would surely have made more sense to reference these.

Given we have the first part of the sentence occurring a long, long, long, while before anything approaching human, I am unconvinced by the argument it was chosen due to the perspective being of mankind. Indeed, if you wished to do it from a perspective of mankind, it would make sense to actually start with man's first upright steps...

 

[Bowman in a Bad Mood]

Disappointing, considering how brilliant Alpha Centauri was.

 

[jmrathbun]

"From the first stirrings of life beneath water to the great beasts of the Stone Age to man taking his first upright steps..." seems muddled. Of course hominids walked upright in the Stone Age, which was when they began making and using tools. The real "great beasts" of this story died out aeons before hominids arose.

 

[Takfloyd]

Don't know if anyone has said this, but the Chichen Itza quote is simply taken from some random person's travel blog. It happens to be the first thing that pops up if you google "chichen itza quotes": https://isladeb.com/2011/02/06/chichen-itza/

 

[Plus Ultra]

I would prefer Firaxis to take its own game a little bit more seriously.

Oh well.

 

[diamond geezer]

Already a thread that discusses this inter alia.

 

[qadams]

I would prefer Firaxis to take its own game a little bit more seriously.

Oh well.

Yeah, me too. It's kind of depressing how little thought and effort they put into this...

 

[Archaelicos]

The Monty Python quote about the Lady of the Lake is also wrong. This is the least excusable of them all. If you work in IT for a video game company and you can't get a Monty Python quote right, you deserve to be fired on the spot. It'd be like quoting Star Wars as, "I don't have a very good feeling about this."

 

[Jabulani]

Civ vi quotes are atrocius, I bet they have been choosen by the same devs who made the AI. Is there a mod to inject own quotes ? Maybe the web has also some wav too

 

[isau]

I don't like some of the quotes but NOTHING comes close to the earbleed from the Civ 4 BTS expansion when you get that "Art for art's sake is an empty phrase..." quote. Argghh.

 

[Gorbles]

The Monty Python quote about the Lady of the Lake is also wrong. This is the least excusable of them all. If you work in IT for a video game company and you can't get a Monty Python quote right, you deserve to be fired on the spot. It'd be like quoting Star Wars as, "I don't have a very good feeling about this."

I don't think you have a very good grasp on what is grounds for being fired in a non-theoretical IT job.

 

[God of Kings]

I don't like some of the quotes but NOTHING comes close to the earbleed from the Civ 4 BTS expansion when you get that "Art for art's sake is an empty phrase..." quote. Argghh.

...or the classic Civ IV quote from the wise words of Sputnik, "Beep. Beep. Beep."

 

[PhilBowles]

Why? I actually like it.

It's not obviously any more or less inspired than "Put your shoulder to the wheel". "Wisdom and virtue are the two wheels of a cart" has the advantage of being less cliched and is my favourite of the Wheel quotes, but it doesn't actually have anything to do with the invention.

"Look for a quote that has the word wheel in it" seems to have been the extent of the effort they've put into finding an appropriate quote for The Wheel in every Civ game to date.

As of the last patch there seem to have been a lot more alternative quotes enabled (I presume they were already part of the game since they wouldn't have Sean Bean record new quotes for a patch), and I haven't come across any new ones I object to - sadly all the old ones are still there.

 

[Gub]

Disappointing, considering how brilliant Alpha Centauri was.

I am pretty sure most of these were fictitious, written to fit common tropes. Which is not a bad thing.

 

[Arui_Kashiwagi]

Hi OP, first of all thank you for your interesting research. I'm making a similar attempt at Japanese Civ6 Wiki, and I'd like to share my results.

Wheel - "The wheel turns slowly, but it turns." - Lorne Michaels (Misattributed)
There is no source that Michaels said this.
Henry Miller used this phrase in his book "The Wisdom of the Heart" (1947), which is obviously earlier than Michaels. Although I'm not sure if this is the first appearance of this saying or not.

Stirrups - "Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I asked, mercy I found." - William Camden (Misleading)
This quote actually appears in Camden's book, but it's not his word. It's from one of the anonymous epitaphs Camden collected.

Banking - "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." - J. Paul Getty (Misattributed)
No source for Getty.
Apparently Keynes had the same concept prior to Getty. But as Keynes also stated, it should be called as "the old saying" with unknown origin.

Astronomy - "Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." - Plato (Misleading)
The quote is real, but it's not what Plato want us to believe. This is the view of Glaucon, the disciple of Socrates, and Socrates immediately negates it right after this sentence. Appears in "Republic" Chapter 7.

Guidance Systems - "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you were heading." - Lao Tzu (Fictitious)
I checked the original Chinese text and found nothing close to this.
I have an assumption that it MAY be a very twisted & unorthodox translation of the first sentence of Chapter 27, but the gap between them is too large anyway. It's safe to say that this quote is entirely fictitious.

Foreign Trade - "Every nation lives by exchanging." - Adam Smith (Altered)
This quote can be found in Book 1 Chapter 4, but it actually starts with "Every man", not nation.

Natural History - "Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe." - Nelson Algren (Misattributed)
This is the paraphrased sentiment of Alfonso X of Castile, reported by Thomas Carlyle.
Nelson Algren is not related to this quote in any sense. Probably they consulted a paper dictionary such as Oxford, and confused the name with the adjacent one? (See this preview)

 

[demidyad]

Guidance Systems - "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you were heading." - Lao Tzu (Fictitious)
I checked the original Chinese text and found nothing close to this.
I have an assumption that it MAY be a very twisted & unorthodox translation of the first sentence of Chapter 27, but the gap between them is too large anyway. It's safe to say that this quote is entirely fictitious

It also seems to run totally counter to something Lao Tzu would actually say. His philosophy would be something more like, "Whether or not you think you decided to change direction, you will end up where you were heading all along". ... Okay, that was a pretty embarrassing attempt by me to come up with some daoist wisdom off-the-cuff, but the concept of wu wei is in conflict with the above quote, which sounds more like the kind of pseudo-motivational aphorism that tech startups like to hang above their desks.