Why did Europeans never invent writing, but Mexicans did?
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Date: February 5th, 2013 12:33 PM Author: Stirring Opaque Alpha Party Of The First Part
Kinda weird that Euros had to import writing from the Middle East as well as concepts such as zero and so on, but the Mayans discovered that shit on their own
Mesoamericans also did performed much more impressive feats of domestication and breeding than the Europeans did. Corn was way more productive than anything the Europeans had (and most of their domesticated crops and livestock came from outside of Europe anyway)
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573179) |
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Date: February 5th, 2013 2:39 PM Author: Swollen Jap Coffee Pot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmec#Social_and_political_organization
"Nonetheless, Olmec society is thought to lack many of the institutions of later civilizations, such as a standing army or priestly caste.[81] And there is no evidence that San Lorenzo or La Venta controlled, even during their heyday, all of the Olmec heartland.[82] There is some doubt, for example, that La Venta controlled even Arroyo Sonso, only some 35 kilometres (22 mi) away.[83] Studies of the Tuxtla Mountain settlements, some 60 kilometres (37 mi) away, indicate that this area was composed of more or less egalitarian communities outside the control of lowland centers.[84]"
You realize that small egalitarian communities with no standing army or organized religion typically aren't counted as civilizations by anthropologists, right?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573927) |
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Date: February 5th, 2013 2:32 PM Author: Fiercely-loyal office
WHAT SCHOLARSHIP!
Wrong. Mesoamericans have been literate for 2900 years. Northern Europeans? At most 1900 years, and stolen from Southern Europeans who stole it from Middle Easterners.
www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/world/middleeast/obama-to-visit-israel-in-spring.html?hp
Mesoamerican writing is definitely real writing, as real as Chinese writing.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573893) |
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Date: February 5th, 2013 2:45 PM Author: Swollen Jap Coffee Pot
it's a system of pre-hieroglyphic visual communication, you can't use those kinds of language systems to convey grammar, indicate pronounciation, or do anything else a written langugage is supposed to do.
also, if you want to count that kind of shit as writing, there are tons of undeciphered european scripts from before the arrival of phoenician script in europe, such as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitovo_inscription
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573954) |
Date: February 5th, 2013 1:14 PM Author: shaky bearded temple
"europe" didn't exist, historically. the greeks and romans were part of a mediterranean/near-eastern complex that included the earliest farmers and the first writing systems. it would have been weird if the greeks and romans had discovered any of that stuff on their own since those things were cultural commonplaces in their milieu before they emerged as distinct societies
the greeks didn't invent 0 but they did invent calculus (calculation via infinitesimals) and steam engines and the antikythera mechanism and stuff, so i think they're still ahead
once greek and roman culture had diffused to northen europe, it catalyzed a round of ethnogenesis in northern europe that resulted in part in the modern european ethnicities -- french, british, dutch, etc., all of which came into being within the last ~1200 years (you could argue the french were earlier, but it took a while for the franks, gallo-romans, etc to become "french" in any meaningful sense)
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573412) |
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Date: February 5th, 2013 1:24 PM Author: shaky bearded temple
europe occupies a strategic position. on the one hand, it's shitty land on the whole; on the other, it's the natural crossroads of the middle east, central asia and africa -- just look at the waves of central asian invaders, everything from aryans to near-eastern early farmers right down to ottomans as recently as the 17th century
northern europe has always had a fairly advanced level of material culture, like with metallurgy and writing and stuff, but was such shitty, unproductive land that state formation still wasn't complete in some parts of it 1,000 years back. as for the med basin, the western med was hick territory for a long time, but there was always a degree of civilization there, too
the achievements of the maya are pretty impressive considering how isolated the americas were, beyond that you can't compare them to the layers and layers of old world civilizations going back to the dawn of history
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573464) |
Date: February 5th, 2013 1:21 PM Author: Walnut brunch
i don't remember the history class where euros borrowed writing from the middle east. i think it was just invented 5000 years ago and spread organically.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573444)
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Date: February 5th, 2013 2:27 PM Author: swashbuckling transparent idea he suggested
Europeans didn't need to invite writing because they borrowed it from other civilizations.
Mayan writing was pretty fucking primitive, it was basically pictograms meaning it was where writing in the rest of the world was around 2500 BC.
And if Mesoamerican civilization was so great and highly developed, how come they hadn't even invented the wheel yet by the time Europeans arrived in 1500?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22573866) |
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Date: February 5th, 2013 2:54 PM Author: shaky bearded temple
now quote the part where he talks about how much the aztecs loved cannibalism
diaz makes for weird reading in general, i wasn't expecting him to talk up montezuma so much
also, cortez was a straight gangster. i love the part where they're retreating from the noche triste, like a few days after iirc, and they run into another spanish army sent from cuba and just fucking roll them over even though they're outnumbered like 6 to 1 and just got their own asses badly beat a few days before
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22574009) |
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Date: February 5th, 2013 11:34 PM Author: Rambunctious national
if you think europeans are bad, you're in for a big surprise when we're gone bro
*whites go extinct*
*azns still blaming whites for their inability to get laid*
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22577912) |
Date: February 6th, 2013 8:26 AM Author: chest-beating trip elastic band
I find that debates about history focusing on questions like 'who achieved 'x' sign of advanced civilization first' have a tendency to degenerate into nationalistic type disputes over fairly inconsequential things.
As somebody mentioned above, when we think of a 'civilization' we usually think of cities, but you can have cities without much in the way of a materially advanced culture, and a fairly advanced material culture without cities.
Europeans do appear to have been somewhat behind many other parts of the world in terms of urbanization and literacy, though they were also pretty far ahead in terms of metal production and certain other manufacturing techniques like shipbuilding; the first copper furnaces, for example, were found at a site in Serbia, and the oldest smelted gold alloys were found in bulgaria.
I think the past 500 years of western supremacy have been somewhat of an anomaly in the sense that you don't usually find one civilization that's just miles ahead of the others across every organizational, material and 'intellectual' axis, it's usually more like different regions have different advantages and disadvantages, derived largely from the landscape they find themselves siutated on.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2176255&forum_id=2)#22579184) |
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