What about Mesopotamia?!

[civ_king]

Also the Babylonians were the "last" of those true Mesopotamians before the Persians steamrolled in.

Though personally even though Mesopotamia is one of the cradles of civilization, I'm okay with them being left out; just as long as they're in the expansion packs, of course. I think the reason Mesopotamia wasn't necessarily included in Civ4 (and possibly Civ5) is because Firaxis wanted to put in some more "different" and "exotic" civilizations. Of course Babylon and Sumer are nothing like Persia, but in the common conception of them, they're too close; it'd be more 'interesting' (and thus marketable) to have a different civ in, like the Incas or what not, even if the Mesopotamian civilizations are more or less one of the ultimate examples of "civilization".

With India and China being the other two?

FYI India has a city dating back 9,500 years... Beat that Gilgamesh!

 

[Louis XXIV]

I'm pretty sure Jericho is older, it predates agriculture, afterall.

BTW, out of the places in the world that independently invented agriculture, China and Mesopotamia are all but conclusive. However, India likely got it from Mesopotamia.

 

[cybrxkhan]

With India and China being the other two?

FYI India has a city dating back 9,500 years... Beat that Gilgamesh!

India, China, Egypt, somewhere in Mexico. I may be incorrect in terminology, but what I meant with "Cradle of Civilization" is a place where civilization started independently.

 

[bite]

Well there are still 6 more Civs to be revealed, so there is still a chance for Mesopotamia to be in Civ 5 vanilla

 

[civ_king]

I'm pretty sure Jericho is older, it predates agriculture, afterall.

BTW, out of the places in the world that independently invented agriculture, China and Mesopotamia are all but conclusive. However, India likely got it from Mesopotamia.

India developed agriculture concurrently too IIRC
Yeah Jericho is old, by a couple hundred years

 

[PTM]

My vote is for Sumer, although I acknowledge that the more likely candidate given Civilization's pandering to popular knowledge is Babylon.

Civilization has always emphasized the western medieval era with respect to their civilization selecting, I feel. I believe that this is the case because such civilizations are really all people think of when asked about "historical civilizations." Everyone knows France (although little about the actual history of the territory that became modern-day France or the various peoples that lived there throughout time), "the Vikings" (lol), etc. The farthest you can expect people to "go back" in history is really the classical era, with maybe the one exception to that being Egypt. I don't think (American) school even taught us anything about anything other than what I listed above.

 

[Ribannah]

There must be a civilization to represent the Mesopotamian area!

I expect the area to be present as a number of city states.

 

[Louis XXIV]

India developed agriculture concurrently too IIRC
Yeah Jericho is old, by a couple hundred years

To quote Guns, Germs, and Steel:

Another area where local domestication appears to have followed the arrival of Southwest Asian founder crops is the Indus Valley region of the Indian subcontinent. The earliest farming communities there in the seventh millennium B.C. utilized wheat, barley, and other crops that had been previously domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and that evidently spread to the Indus Valley through Iran. Only later did domesticates derived from indigenous species of the Indian subcontinent, such as humped cattle and sesame, appear in Indus Valley farming communities.

Don't worry, there are only three or four places of definitively independent developments of agriculture in the world. The fact that India isn't one of them isn't unique (Egypt wasn't either).

 

[Gedemo]

There would be an expansion pack that focus on ancient civilizations: sumer, babylon, hittites, nubia, maya...

 

[Pangur Bán]

If the developers do their city-lists properly (in the past the city-lists have been very poor), Harun al-Rashid's capital will be Baghdad. No, it's not ancient Mesopotamia, but it is Mesopotamia.

 

[awesome]

Absolutely true, but I don't think Mesopotamia is too vague - it seems quite distinct, though maybe your right.

well, no, i'm not saying that "mesopotamia" is as vague as "the middle/near east," i was just kind of exaggerating to prove a point.

 

[Iván de España]

Why 'Babylon' and not 'Sumer'? Babylon makes me think of that semi-transitory Hammurabic empire and that Chaldean abomination that survived for less than a century. Even the Kassites lasted longer. Sumer is much better.

Because Sumer was never a kingdom but the name of a territory ruled by a plenty of different city-states.

 

[Iván de España]

Curiously, Babylon and Persia won't be included in Civ V and, nowadays, they are Iraq and Iran, traditional enemies of the US.

 

[civ_king]

To quote Guns, Germs, and Steel:



Don't worry, there are only three or four places of definitively independent developments of agriculture in the world. The fact that India isn't one of them isn't unique (Egypt wasn't either).

This Ancient Indian city was found AFTER GGS was written so naturally the new information hasn't impacted yet

 

[Carver]

Leader: Saddam Hussein?

 

[bob rulz]

As I'd rather have Scandinavia than Vikings and I'd rather have Turks than Ottomans, I'd prefer simply "Mesopotamia" to specifically Babylon or Sumer, not identifying with a specific state (or group of city states) gives a timeless aspect to the Civ you're playing (and we mustn't confuse timeless Civilizations with the comparatively short lived States that ruled them). It would be suitable at any epoch in history, at the dawn of time you have Sumer, later you have Babylon and then in the Modern Age you have Iraq.

But these states represent vastly different empires, time periods, and cultures.

Using the civilization "Mesopotamia" to represent the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Akkadians, etc, and the later Arabs and modern Iraqis would be as wrong as using the "Europeans" to represent Ancient Rome, the Celts, the Vikings, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, etc. It would be asinine.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Babylon itself is a merging of Sumerian and Akkadian culture. I think "Mesopotamia" is fairly reasonable instead of Sumer AND Babylon. The game after all goes over 6000 years, so there's gotta be room for cultural change of some kind. Plus, new civs are limited. Two here is one less distinctive civ somewhere else.

And with Persia and the Arabs, Mesopotamia can definitely be said to be well represented!

 

[Louis XXIV]

This Ancient Indian city was found AFTER GGS was written so naturally the new information hasn't impacted yet

Which ancient Indian city? Was the society around it agricultural? The issue has more to do with what crops and how they arrived. We'll never know anything for sure, but, afaik, the probability still leans against them inventing it independently.

 

[civ_king]

Which ancient Indian city? Was the society around it agricultural? The issue has more to do with what crops and how they arrived. We'll never know anything for sure, but, afaik, the probability still leans against them inventing it independently.

The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.

Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.

The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years. The site was discovered by chance last year by oceanographers from India's National Institute of Ocean Technology conducting a survey of pollution.

Using sidescan sonar - which sends a beam of sound waves down to the bottom of the ocean they identified huge geometrical structures at a depth of 120ft.

Debris recovered from the site - including construction material, pottery, sections of walls, beads, sculpture and human bones and teeth has been carbon dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old.

Lost civilisation

The city is believed to be even older than the ancient Harappan civilisation, which dates back around 4,000 years.

Marine archaeologists have used a technique known as sub-bottom profiling to show that the buildings remains stand on enormous foundations.

Author and film-maker Graham Hancock - who has written extensively on the uncovering of ancient civilisations - told BBC News Online that the evidence was compelling:

"The [oceanographers] found that they were dealing with two large blocks of apparently man made structures.

"Cities on this scale are not known in the archaeological record until roughly 4,500 years ago when the first big cities begin to appear in Mesopotamia.

"Nothing else on the scale of the underwater cities of Cambay is known. The first cities of the historical period are as far away from these cities as we are today from the pyramids of Egypt," he said.

Chronological problem

This, Mr Hancock told BBC News Online, could have massive repercussions for our view of the ancient world.

"There's a huge chronological problem in this discovery. It means that the whole model of the origins of civilisation with which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from scratch," he said.

However, archaeologist Justin Morris from the British Museum said more work would need to be undertaken before the site could be categorically said to belong to a 9,000 year old civilisation.

"Culturally speaking, in that part of the world there were no civilisations prior to about 2,500 BC. What's happening before then mainly consisted of small, village settlements," he told BBC News Online.

Dr Morris added that artefacts from the site would need to be very carefully analysed, and pointed out that the C14 carbon dating process is not without its error margins.

It is believed that the area was submerged as ice caps melted at the end of the last ice age 9-10,000 years ago

Although the first signs of a significant find came eight months ago, exploring the area has been extremely difficult because the remains lie in highly treacherous waters, with strong currents and rip tides.

The Indian Minister for Human Resources and ocean development said a group had been formed to oversee further studies in the area.

"We have to find out what happened then ... where and how this civilisation vanished," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm

Something five miles long and two miles wide is quite impressive, the resource to build that would be tremendous, I do not believe that is possible from only fishing,n the only thing that could sustain a city that big would be Agriculture...

 

[Thormodr]

Thanks for that article. The implications of this archeological find are huge.