Just how old is civilization?
- Thread starter innonimatu
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Zardnaar
Deity
Civilization as we would identify it is roughly 3500BC imho although 4000-3200BC gets thrown around a bit.
It's likely writing predates our oldest known examples of it by a few decades or maybe a century.
And they'll probably find older examples eventually.
It's likely writing predates our oldest known examples of it by a few decades or maybe a century.
And they'll probably find older examples eventually.
What difference does the King list make? There are multiple versions of the list that don't always agree and some contain antediluvian kings who lived thousands year lives.
Henri Christophe
L'empereur
Many ancient text of no correlated origins speak about a time where the humans lived thousand of years, it is possible to see also at the bible or at the vedas.
We may thinking or age have the live expectancy high up, but maybe, just maybe it have low down.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
In ancient texts, whether actual script or inscriptions, any number over 100 really means "more than I can count". Furthermore, if the number was translated from one language to another, it frequently got mis-translated by at least a factor of 10. People living 1000s of years simply means "People living longer than anybody I've ever met". The concept of numerical exactness, outside of the very rare mathematical or astronomical text like Euclid or Ptolemy, is entirely absent.
If that were true then it would show in histological analysis of ancient bones. But it doesn’t.
Harv
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This is the very first I have ever heard of this and I find the idea very interesting, because of how it relates to my early life. If I asked my mother what time it was and she said 4:00, and if I looked at a clock and it was only 3:58, then I considered that to be inaccurate. We will also note that in later life, I have not been consistent with this. If I am off work at 5:00, there is a good probability I will just leave at 4:53.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Numerical Fudging is wide-spread and extends from most ancient texts to the present day - witness Trump still claiming he had the largest crowd at his inauguration in 2017 despite clear statistical and photographic evidence to the contrary.
So, for instance, with very few exceptions, any numbers given for armies on a battlefield in ancient, classical, medieval or Early Modern (renaissance) times are usually SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guesses) except for individual organized units whose commander managed to get his figures into the record. For example, at the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE), Alexander's climactic victory over the Persian Empire, there are pretty exact (to the nearest 100, anyway) figures for numbers of troops by unit in Alexander's professional army, but only vague numbers (to approximate 1000s) for the 'mercenary' and auxiliary Thracian and Greek forces with him. There are names of the types of units in the Persian front line, but only approximate numbers for them, and not even that for the mass of conscripted peasants in the Persian second line - and this despite having a translation of the Persian Order of Battle/Order of March to the battle provided in Arrian's account! In fact, Gaugamela is probably the best-attested battle in the ancient/classical world, because we have evidence of at least 2 different eye-witness narratives that made it into the historical record of Diodorus, Curtius, and Arrian. Most battles from that period we are lucky to have single second-hand account of anything about the battle, and are left guessing as to what actually happened and who done it and how many of them there were.
This is by no means limited to ancient battles, as I said. The Battle of Blenheim (1704 CE) is generally agreed to have been between an outnumbered Allied force and a French/Bavarian force, but when you examine the actual Orders of Battle, the numbers of regiments on each side require that the French units be much larger than the Allied battalions to achieve even numerical parity, and they started out smaller (by about 50 - 100 men per battalion) and were far more worn down by marching and campaigning through the Black Forest and western Bavaria before the battle. Even in 1704 CE, the numbers declared by the contemporary accounts simply don't Add Up.
For 20th century armies it isn't much better. Having studied the subject for over 30 years, I can state flatly that any casualty figures from any army in World War Two are Inaccurate. From having served as a First Sergeant in the US Army I can also state flatly that no military unit ever went into battle with all of its assigned troops, so anybody who says X unit had 500 men because that's how many were assigned is Blowing Smoke: some of those 500 were detached to higher headquarters to dig a latrine, some fell out sick on the way to the battlefield, and quite possibly some where left behind on purpose because they were so crazy/incompetent/clumsy they were considered too dangerous to take along. And that is all true whether the unit commander was named Gilgamesh or Guderian and the troops carrying spears or javelins or Javelin antitank missiles.
It's not true, though. Well, not true in the sense that it wasn't there before Euclid (that's 300 BC, more than 300 years after Thales) - Ptolemy is much much later, in AD.
There's a nice comment in one of the socratic dialogues, where (probably) Socrates makes fun of the idea that Homer was being true to fact when he claimed that the greek armies didn't bother to count the total number of their ships. Plato argues that it would have been impossible to not calculate such things when you are organizing an expedition. Of course by the time we get to Thales - which is a few centuries after Homer - it's pretty clear that calculations are not just exact but proof-backed.
When one refers to lack of large numbers, it'd be concerning actually massive numbers (like billions), for which there was some use in math (well, or in sand-reckoning
) so Archimedes developed a system for such.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
The mathematics/arithmetics required for accurate counts seems to have originated even before written 'language', and for certain there were 'accountants' that knew how to keep accurate measures of quantities of goods in all the Mesopotamian and Anatolian empires long before the Classical Era. But accurate accounts of numbers of people seem to be much less common, and especially in fluid, temporary conditions like field, military or combat situations.It's not true, though. Well, not true in the sense that it wasn't there before Euclid (that's 300 BC, more than 300 years after Thales) - Ptolemy is much much later, in AD.
There's a nice comment in one of the socratic dialogues, where (probably) Socrates makes fun of the idea that Homer was being true to fact when he claimed that the greek armies didn't bother to count the total number of their ships. Plato argues that it would have been impossible to not calculate such things when you are organizing an expedition. Of course by the time we get to Thales - which is a few centuries after Homer - it's pretty clear that calculations are not just exact but proof-backed.
When one refers to lack of large numbers, it'd be concerning actually massive numbers (like billions), for which there was some use in math (well, or in sand-reckoning
I am by both profession and nature a military historian, so that's where a lot of my data originates. And while one would think that the accountants keeping track of military equipment (the lists of chariot parts in both Middle Eastern Empires and Mycenean sites, for instance) would require exact numbers, the fact is that those accountancy figures rarely find their way into battle accounts. The best that one usually finds is a listing of the general origins of the men/units, as in the compilation of the Persian cavalry line at Gaugamela, but numbers of troops in any unit or line or group are virtually always round numbers, and frequently suspect round numbers at that. And frequently, of course, the numbers are not intended to have any relationship to reality, because they are for the purpose of a good narrative, not 'history' or accuracy. Neither Xerxes nor any other leader in ancient history ever moved 1,000,000 men and their horses and baggage anywhere, but numbers in the 100s of 1000s and 1,000,000 or more show up time and again in the accounts for the purpose of making political, social, patriotic, religious or other points, not as an accurate accounting.
Herodotus might have been the 'Father of History', but it had a very long gestation period before the degree of accuracy considered acceptable to modern historians was ever approached, and to this day a great deal of 'history' is really Polemics designed for the same purpose as many of the ancient/classical accounts - to make a narrative point, not accurately describe what happened.
Henri Christophe
L'empereur
Each civilization have a random number to mean a huge number, for example, in the West it can be a thousand.
But in Chinese , the random number to mean a huge number is ten thousand, they even have a character just to this quantitity
But in Chinese , the random number to mean a huge number is ten thousand, they even have a character just to this quantitity
Caesar of Bread
Trans Gordon Ramsay
Maybe we go back to the ancient days of Catal-Hoyuk, 12000 years ago.
And the intro to the Lego Ninjago TV shows and the intro to Star Wars. But does the Lego Ninjago TV show or Star Wars count as a credible source for when civilization began? No. The same is for the Bible and the Vedas and so on…
I'd have no issue if you didn't specifically bring proof-based math in it, mentioning Euclid (who already is late to the scene) and also Ptolemy
Also, when speaking of "large numbers" in antiquity, at least in greek math, it's misleading to speak of the likes of 1000 or 10000. Remember that the height of the great pyramid was calculated by Thales (7th-6th century BC) and a good approximation of the Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes (lived generally at the time of Euclid, was a bit younger). The numbers go to rather large size ^^
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
To be more precise, then, I guess my concern is less with large number measurements in general than with the measurement of numbers of people in specific situations, such as field military groups, which are almost always (NOT just including Classical Greece) either outright impossible or extremely general or at least suspect. This, I suspect, is as much due to the nature of the approximator as it is ability to measure and record the numbers: enemy numbers are always exaggerated - right down to the present day - and difficulties also expanded numerically for 'shock and awe'. Taking the great pyramid as an example, as early as Solon's time locals were already vastly expanding the numbers of workers and amount of work required to build it, since 'Pyramid Tourism' appears to have already been a well-established livelihood in Egypt.I'd have no issue if you didn't specifically bring proof-based math in it, mentioning Euclid (who already is late to the scene) and also Ptolemy
Also, when speaking of "large numbers" in antiquity, at least in greek math, it's misleading to speak of the likes of 1000 or 10000. Remember that the height of the great pyramid was calculated by Thales (7th-6th century BC) and a good approximation of the Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes (lived generally at the time of Euclid, was a bit younger). The numbers go to rather large size ^^
And I repeat: in 'historical' accounts, numbers are almost always suspect regardless of their sources from any period. I could go on for pages on the fudged numbers in accounts by all the military forces in World War Two, from numbers of men, equipment and weapons to casualties to amount of damage received and dealt out. In that respect, we are all too often still counting "one, two, three, many . . ."
Remorseless1
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To me, civilization is still a theory. We're technologically adept apes who can write things down, but the way humanity acts (murder, wars, slavery, misogyny) is totally against the grain for higher functioning animals. Hardly any other species spends so much time and effort to slaughter other humans. Most animals aren't trying to push their species toward extinction.
mitsho
Deity
Bullfeathers. The most important trait that make humans adept at what we achieved is copying, meaning we look at what other humans or animals are doing and learn it that way. That means only one human needs to learn how to break open a coconut, and everyone else can learn from her or him. Language closesly follows and all that makes us a very empathetic species. We tend to overestimate all the wars and destruction, cause those are memorable. But to destroy something, it first needs to be built.
In the end, this is a general debate over a pessimistic or optimistic view on History (which one is Hegel again?) and so open to debate. But I recommend "Humankind" by Rutger Bregman where he takes apart a lot of very popular misconceptions and bad examples for humanity, like "the lord of the flies" or "the Standford experiment". It's worth a read and gives you hope for humanity!
