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Arksulli, what are your thoughts on this?
Posted on 12/4/24 at 2:08 pm
Posted on 12/4/24 at 2:08 pm
quote:
5,000-year-old artifacts in Iraq hint at mysterious collapse of one of the world's 1st governments
LINK
I fricking love history
2
Posted on 12/4/24 at 2:13 pm to teamjackson
The cradle of civilization.
Posted on 12/4/24 at 4:18 pm to teamjackson
Well, the first thing of note is that the person who wrote the headline is not a stickler for details. These are not 5000 year old bowls. They are 7000 year old bowls. 5000 BC and then another 2000 AD. 4,800 BC to 4,600 BC seems a likely date for the very oldest.
Could this be an early city? Enh, it seems more likely this was a village. We do know that when it first started (and likely continued for thousands of years) grain farming wasn't its major occupation. The area it is in, despite being along a major tributary river to the Euphrates, suffers from sporadic rainfall, some years you get enough for a crop... some years you are out of luck. That suggest that herding was the primary food source. Probably goats. The only place in the ancient world without domesticated goats was the Americas... a region that got the shitty end of the stick when it came to useful domesticated animal species. Much better luck with crops than animals.
Around about this time period it became increasingly common place for large scale distribution of food from a centralized location to a labor force that worked the fields, built houses, and the first monuments (temples), It was especially common in the South of Iraq and Iran where the soil (at the time) was exceptionally fertile and large populations could be fed.
So why did Shakhi Kora turn their back on becoming an ever growing village? Well, to be honest, they kinda didn't and kinda did. The area has been inhabited fairly constantly till this day. Bowls, some tools, and lots of flowerpots have been discovered in the area covering a very long section of time. And, yes, flowerpots.
But... for a community that mostly survived by herding you don't really need a massive town, a small village (today small town) to serve as a place to trade will suffice. As our favorite rancher OK Roughneck can attest too.
So, for the inhabitants of that area, large scale centralization not only wasn't a great choice, it would have been a disastrous goal to try and attain. The region simply can't sustain a large enough population.
Here is an odd factoid. While slightly more advanced the areas we associate with ancient civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China) weren't greatly more advanced than right here in North and Central America. We had a thriving trade in copper goods from the Great Lakes throughout much of the modern US... and, when we finally showed up to crash the party that region was just beginning to experiment with forging.
Our lack of domesticated draft animals (the best we got was llamas and they aren't large enough to do diddly squat) didn't put us that far behind back then because at the time large domesticated animals were just starting to be used in large numbers.
In fact some of the largest "cities" in the ancient world when civilization really started to take hold... were right here in the US, in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Suck it New York! Seriously though, some of the mound complexes are on such a massive scale they rival all but the very largest structures in Egypt and China.
Not a bad article, the much longer and in depth article it is based on explains things better but it ain't exactly a light fun read.
An important thing to remember is that the ancient world was prone to dramatic changes while being insanely stable at the same time. When something went wrong, it really went wrong, but for the most part everything continued along like normal.
Think of it this way. We are talking about a world wide population 40 million back then. 6000 years later (1000 AD) it had only grown to about 300 million people. Less than the current population of the United States.
Could this be an early city? Enh, it seems more likely this was a village. We do know that when it first started (and likely continued for thousands of years) grain farming wasn't its major occupation. The area it is in, despite being along a major tributary river to the Euphrates, suffers from sporadic rainfall, some years you get enough for a crop... some years you are out of luck. That suggest that herding was the primary food source. Probably goats. The only place in the ancient world without domesticated goats was the Americas... a region that got the shitty end of the stick when it came to useful domesticated animal species. Much better luck with crops than animals.
Around about this time period it became increasingly common place for large scale distribution of food from a centralized location to a labor force that worked the fields, built houses, and the first monuments (temples), It was especially common in the South of Iraq and Iran where the soil (at the time) was exceptionally fertile and large populations could be fed.
So why did Shakhi Kora turn their back on becoming an ever growing village? Well, to be honest, they kinda didn't and kinda did. The area has been inhabited fairly constantly till this day. Bowls, some tools, and lots of flowerpots have been discovered in the area covering a very long section of time. And, yes, flowerpots.
But... for a community that mostly survived by herding you don't really need a massive town, a small village (today small town) to serve as a place to trade will suffice. As our favorite rancher OK Roughneck can attest too.
So, for the inhabitants of that area, large scale centralization not only wasn't a great choice, it would have been a disastrous goal to try and attain. The region simply can't sustain a large enough population.
Here is an odd factoid. While slightly more advanced the areas we associate with ancient civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China) weren't greatly more advanced than right here in North and Central America. We had a thriving trade in copper goods from the Great Lakes throughout much of the modern US... and, when we finally showed up to crash the party that region was just beginning to experiment with forging.
Our lack of domesticated draft animals (the best we got was llamas and they aren't large enough to do diddly squat) didn't put us that far behind back then because at the time large domesticated animals were just starting to be used in large numbers.
In fact some of the largest "cities" in the ancient world when civilization really started to take hold... were right here in the US, in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Suck it New York! Seriously though, some of the mound complexes are on such a massive scale they rival all but the very largest structures in Egypt and China.
Not a bad article, the much longer and in depth article it is based on explains things better but it ain't exactly a light fun read.
An important thing to remember is that the ancient world was prone to dramatic changes while being insanely stable at the same time. When something went wrong, it really went wrong, but for the most part everything continued along like normal.
Think of it this way. We are talking about a world wide population 40 million back then. 6000 years later (1000 AD) it had only grown to about 300 million people. Less than the current population of the United States.
Posted on 12/4/24 at 4:28 pm to Arksulli
Is Sulli really Grok?
Posted on 12/4/24 at 8:21 pm to 1BIGTigerFan
quote:
Is Sulli really Grok?
No, but I bore the tits off you by telling you where Musk stole that from.
I'd don't have the arse to be Grok, curse my Irish no booty heritage!
Posted on 12/4/24 at 9:15 pm to Arksulli
Do tell.
Posted on 12/5/24 at 12:18 am to Arksulli
quote:
Think of it this way. We are talking about a world wide population 40 million back then. 6000 years later (1000 AD) it had only grown to about 300 million people. Less than the current population of the United States.
There are more slaves in the world today than the entire worlds population then.
And that's not even counting economic slaves who have the illusion of freedom.
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