What is the earliest-referred to event?

[RedRalph]

Involving humans and not mythological/religious?

 

[Theige]

"Referred to event"?

Do you mean recorded history?

That would coincide with the first people to develop writing, the Sumerians.

 

[RedRalph]

"Referred to event"?

Do you mean recorded history?

That would coincide with the first people to develop writing, the Sumerians.

They would be my first guess alright. Did they ever refer to anything from really far back?

 

[Ajidica]

There are some Sumerian steles showing battles that don't have Sumerian cuniform on them, possibly indicating they pre-writing, but that is chancy at best.

 

[Theige]

They would be my first guess alright. Did they ever refer to anything from really far back?

I think most of the tablets refer to administrative stuff; deaths, commemorative achievements of kings, records relating to foodstuffs, livestock, numbers of people, etc

 

[Cynovolans]

The first thing that comes to mind is the Narmer Palette, a big stone with a picture of an Upper Egyptian king killing a dude on one side and a picture of that same king only wearing the crown of Lower Egypt instead. It's thought by a lot of Egyptologists to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into one nation, or maybe a war with a Libyan tribe. Bob Brier called it the first historical document in the world, but others argue it could just be a depiction of a myth.

There's also a lot of similar artifacts from Mesopotamian cities from the same time, and a few probably older, but it's hard to know whether they depict actual events or myths too.

 

[sophie]

In b4 the lolJaredDiamond reference.

 

[Luckymoose]

Probably the American Revolution.

 

[Glassfan]

Involving humans and not mythological/religious?

Define your terms, please.

 

[bombshoo]

Involving humans and not mythological/religious?

The earliest recorded event that also has other means of evidence to back up the specific event might be a better way of asking the question. Otherwise you could probably make a decent argument that some cave painting of some guys killing an animal is the oldest. Look at it this way, though we might not know the exact time or place, or the results of some mammoth hunt, we do know that it definitely happened and they apparently recorded it.

 

[Lord Baal]

If we're going by something we actually know that dates of, in a written language we can understand, it's probably the Akkadian list of their kings. Like the list of Roman rulers though, it gets mythological as it goes further back in time, and no-one knows who the first 'real' ruler is.

 

[Smellincoffee]

What about the Mesopotamian flood referred to in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew scriptures? The Hebrew progenitor was supposed to have been from the Sumerian region (Ur), so it's likely they were referring to the same localized event -- or is this too much on the mythological side?

 

[cybrxkhan]

So far that would either be Egyptian or Mesopotamian. For both of them, the earliest known writing dates from the late 3000s BCE. I don't know much about Mesopotamia, but I do know that the Narmer palette (as stated above) dates to around 3000 BCE (ranging from 3150-2950 BCE depending on the scholar/source). The piece of pottery (or whatever it is) depicting King Scorpion (as scholars call him) probably dates from the generation before Narmer, but I dunno if you'd count that. Still, even before these two artifacts, there has been scanty evidence of other Egyptian leaders who ruled before the supposed unification of Egypt, some of them dating a century or two before Narmer/Menes/Hor-Aha/Scorpion/whoever you believe was the first pharaoh of Egypt, although these evidences (so far as I know) don't really refer to any events per se.

 

[Luckymoose]

What about the Mesopotamian flood referred to in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew scriptures? The Hebrew progenitor was supposed to have been from the Sumerian region (Ur), so it's likely they were referring to the same localized event -- or is this too much on the mythological side?

We should go ahead and include all those mythological dynasties in China while we're at it.

 

[Blue Emu]

We should go ahead and include all those mythological dynasties in China while we're at it.

... except that the thick layers of sediments from the flood were found in three Mesopotamian ruined-city excavations as long ago as the 1800's. The mythological accounts were based on a signifigant real-life event, but with the usual exaggerations added.

Another candidate would be various eclipses and conjunctions. The ancient astrologers were often quite meticulous in recording them, and modern computer-assisted astronomy can pinpoint them right to the hour.

There was a particular battle in the Middle East that was called off due to "anger of the Gods" (an eclipse), and this might be the earliest battle that can be specified right to the day and hour.

 

[Flying Pig]

There was a particular battle in the Middle East that was called off due to "anger of the Gods" (an eclipse), and this might be the earliest battle that can be specified right to the day and hour.

There were quite a few of those, as I recall - Alexander the Great called off one of his for the same reason.

 

[Smellincoffee]

We should go ahead and include all those mythological dynasties in China while we're at it.

I'm not religious, if you have the idea that I'm referring to a biblical flood. It's entirely probable to my secular brain that the Tigris and Euphrates flooded at one point, destroyed city-kingdoms along their banks, and that people later wrote about them (albiet in a legendary form).

 

[Verbose]

Involving humans and not mythological/religious?

Do you mean as referred to in later sources, or oldest actual record of a specific event?

Poking around, found this attempt by someone to have a go at comparing dates and records for the early Egyptian and Mesopotamian stuff. Seems to me to be about as far as we can push things.
http://www.friesian.com/notes/oldking.htm

One of the problems here is that we DO have early commemorative implements, with short inscriptions, at least from Egypt. The problem is rather that we have zero ancillary information available to work out what the devil these things actually refer to? We guess, because we know something apparently happened, but have no way of corroborating if we're guessing right as to the meaning of things.

 

[Luckymoose]

I'm not religious, if you have the idea that I'm referring to a biblical flood. It's entirely probable to my secular brain that the Tigris and Euphrates flooded at one point, destroyed city-kingdoms along their banks, and that people later wrote about them (albiet in a legendary form).

There is no evidence that such a flood took place, it is entirely possible that it is just a story, like all the other civilizations that TELL THE EXACT SAME STORY. While I don't doubt that floods happened, they did and we know that, the myth isn't related to any specific flood. We might as well talk about how great the Xia were if we start talking hypotheticals.

 

[GoodGame]

I think it's pretty challenging, since how don't you need to collaborate that a recorded event was real and not mythic?

A good one would be a text about the founding of Jericho, perhaps dedicated to some deity, and unearthed in the ruins of Jericho. Anything like that actually found?