Ancient History Discussion Thread

[Kerbalsaurus]

This has always been an area that’s interested me. Ancient History is just such a fun thing to learn, and something I want to more about. In this thread, you can pretty much talk about it and have discussions about it. Just please don’t get political about it. People have done  it in real life.

I guess I can start us off. There’s evidence that the Indus Valley Civilization is older than Mesopotamia.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Kerbalsaurus

[Vanamonde]

This is a large subject and one that I am interested in.

[adsii1970]

Indus Valley/Egypt(Nile Valley Civilization)/China/Mesopotamia are lumped in as around the same time for multiple reasons. Archaeological evidence shows that they all appear within a minuscule time of human history of one another (anything within 750 year period is too close to say “aha! This group is the first!” 
 

What makes us know for certain they are first is writing. No other civilizations have any form of writing as early as these do. Even if we cannot read Linear A or the pre-Heiroglyphics of Egypt or the pre-Sanskrit written languages, they exist. 
 

The FASTEST civilization to develop from prehistoric to classical era? The Japanese. They do it in a little over 300 years what took most others 800 to 1,200 years to do. 

[Kerbalsaurus]

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

Indus Valley/Egypt(Nile Valley Civilization)/China/Mesopotamia are lumped in as around the same time for multiple reasons. Archaeological evidence shows that they all appear within a minuscule time of human history of one another (anything within 750 year period is too close to say “aha! This group is the first!” 
 

What makes us know for certain they are first is writing. No other civilizations have any form of writing as early as these do. Even if we cannot read Linear A or the pre-Heiroglyphics of Egypt or the pre-Sanskrit written languages, they exist. 
 

The FASTEST civilization to develop from prehistoric to classical era? The Japanese. They do it in a little over 300 years what took most others 800 to 1,200 years to do. 

I remember reading something once though that said it could date the Indus River Valley Civilization 2,000 years before Mesopotamia.

[adsii1970]

6 minutes ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

I remember reading something once though that said it could date the Indus River Valley Civilization 2,000 years before Mesopotamia.

Yeah, be careful with those kinds of things, though. The problem is there is not any one "aha" thing we can say with certainty. I have no cultural dog in the fight, for lack of a better explanation, but the Indus, while important, is NOT the oldest civilization in the world. As a side note, there are two types of civilizations - simple and complex. None of these, at this state of development, can be considered as complex because NONE have a written language at this time. What they all do have is a distinct form of pottery, architecture, trade medium, trade goods, agriculture, and religion/legends/systems of belief.

• 3350 BCE is roughly the founding of the earliest dynasty of Egypt, based on archaeology and the appearance of pictoglyphs alone.* Stepped pyramids do not appear until around 3500 BCE.
• 3300 BCE is the rough era date given for the Indus Valley Civilization. It is widely accepted by nearly every scholar.
• 3500 BCE is the rough era date given for the Norte Chico Civilization. These folks were building stepped pyramids at the same time of the Egyptians and were located in what is now Peru/Argentina (South America).
• (6300 BEC) 5000 BCE The date I go with is the one not in parenthesis. It's the rough era date given for the beginning of the Mesopotamian civilization where a distinct culture and language first appears.
• (7000 BCE) 5000 BCE The date I go with is the one not in parenthesis. It's the rough era date given for the beginning of the Jiahu civilization. Writing does appear about 3200 BCE, about the same time it appears in both Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Indus Valley. Cannot explain why writing appears in three major population clusters near the same moment in world history, but it does.

I have spent considerable time studying the ancient world and reject the parenthesis dates because ONE PIECE of pottery or "dragon bones" as certain researchers claim is insufficient evidence to base the early start date of an entire civilization on. Unfortunately, there is a lot at stake when it comes to sense of civilization bragging rights. Considering that the Hindi Indians have the longest unchanged cultural heritage since 3300 BCE is no small feat in human affairs. And it is something I point out in every semester of world civilization.

[Vanamonde]

Which he teaches. 

[adsii1970]

8 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Which he teaches. 

Yeah, I just hope I haven't killed the thread.   I am interested in the philosophical discussion - as in why that around 3200 BCE does every single civilization cluster (Mesopotamia, Crete, Egypt, China, Indus River Valley, and South America) does written language, even if we still cannot translate it today suddenly appear out of nowhere without any trace of a written proto-language?

 

[steve9728]

16 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Yeah, I just hope I haven't killed the thread.   I am interested in the philosophical discussion - as in why that around 3200 BCE does every single civilization cluster (Mesopotamia, Crete, Egypt, China, Indus River Valley, and South America) does written language, even if we still cannot translate it today suddenly appear out of nowhere without any trace of a written proto-language?

 

Ideographic characters, like those in Chinese, have evolved from patterns and divinatory symbols. But although 4,500 oracle bone script characters has been discovered, two-thirds of them are still uninterpretable.

[KerballingSmasher]

20 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

The FASTEST civilization to develop from prehistoric to classical era? The Japanese. They do it in a little over 300 years what took most others 800 to 1,200 years to do. 

Similarly, fastest to be industrialized? The Japanese. They were super isolated until the US came in in the 1860s and said "You're gonna trade with us and like it" and promptly industrialized the country, going from rural farms everywhere to trains, steamships, and massive factories, in the span of something like twenty years.

Pretty crazy.

[Kerbalsaurus]

3 hours ago, KerballingSmasher said:

Similarly, fastest to be industrialized? The Japanese. They were super isolated until the US came in in the 1860s and said "You're gonna trade with us and like it" and promptly industrialized the country, going from rural farms everywhere to trains, steamships, and massive factories, in the span of something like twenty years.

Pretty crazy.

Granted, this is because they had the influence of an outside source. Also, the Japanese language is heavily based in the Chinese language. They did steal their alphabet at one point.

[adsii1970]

3 hours ago, steve9728 said:

Ideographic characters, like those in Chinese, have evolved from patterns and divinatory symbols. 

But even these appear from nowhere in the archaeological record. There's no precursory development of them. Same thing with the pre-Sanskrit Hindi written language, Linear A, and the Egyptian forerunner to hieroglyphics. That's what's intriguing. In full disclosure, and since you do mention the evolutionary process of divinary symbology, this is much the same as expected with the rest of the civilization clusters - the development of the written language and religion are not only tied, they are intertwined.

A few years back, I spent an entire summer semester teaching an undergraduate course on Mesopotamian cultures and spent a lot of it in literature and religious systems. Had three students that were constantly mad; two over how I rejected their views of religion and theology (an extremely hot and contested topic) and the third was upset because I refused to deviate from the "standard" Mesopotamian view of human social order (for the most part, Mesopotamian civilizations did not care about race; slavery was not about race. It was about debts a person owed or if they had been conquered). But what puzzled them most of all were the ties between religion and science, religion and government, religion and the marketplace... they had a hard time understanding the many faces of ancient religion and why it was so important to ancient peoples everywhere.

3 hours ago, KerballingSmasher said:

Similarly, fastest to be industrialized? The Japanese. They were super isolated until the US came in in the 1860s and said "You're gonna trade with us and like it" and promptly industrialized the country, going from rural farms everywhere to trains, steamships, and massive factories, in the span of something like twenty years.

Pretty crazy.

Yes. From about 1860 to 1900, Japan did what took Great Britain nearly 200 years to do - to become a modern industrial power. The Russo-Japanese War was a disaster for the Russians and an awakening of the Imperial Japanese might. I hate the movie because it is NOT historically accurate as the U.S. did not play a role in it, but The Last Samurai was accurate in its portrayal of the Satsuma Rebellion (1877) between the Imperial Japanese Army and the last of the traditional Samurai.

9 minutes ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Granted, this is because they had the influence of an outside source. Also, the Japanese language is heavily based in the Chinese language. They did steal their alphabet at one point.

Did not steal anything. They did as any other civilization did, they adapted an idea they liked from another civilization, simplified it, and made it Japanese. The Koreans, who are also descendants of the Chinese, did the same thing. Cultural appropriation has been happening since the most ancient of times. It has never been regarded as being evil or wrong until the post modern era. And not everything from the post-modern era is necessarily a good thing.

If cultural appropriation was evil, there'd be no pizza, no spaghetti with meatballs or marinara sauce, or many other international favorites. Our world's global culture (the similarities we all share) is quite literally a hodgepodge of mixed-mashed cultural appropriations at its best.

[steve9728]

40 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

But even these appear from nowhere in the archaeological record. There's no precursory development of them. Same thing with the pre-Sanskrit Hindi written language, Linear A, and the Egyptian forerunner to hieroglyphics. That's what's intriguing. In full disclosure, and since you do mention the evolutionary process of divinary symbology, this is much the same as expected with the rest of the civilization clusters - the development of the written language and religion are not only tied, they are intertwined.

A few years back, I spent an entire summer semester teaching an undergraduate course on Mesopotamian cultures and spent a lot of it in literature and religious systems. Had three students that were constantly mad; two over how I rejected their views of religion and theology (an extremely hot and contested topic) and the third was upset because I refused to deviate from the "standard" Mesopotamian view of human social order (for the most part, Mesopotamian civilizations did not care about race; slavery was not about race. It was about debts a person owed or if they had been conquered). But what puzzled them most of all were the ties between religion and science, religion and government, religion and the marketplace... they had a hard time understanding the many faces of ancient religion and why it was so important to ancient peoples everywhere.

I have a few ideas: first of all, "knowledge" is some kind luxury, even now, but it is often difficult for people like us who live in modern countries to perceive it. So for these prehistoric people who lived with systematic writing, it was more important to do more work in the tribe than to know how to draw those strange symbols. Secondly, I'm not sure if other civilisations have a legend that 'some god created writing', but China does. For a long time, writing and even the object on which it was written were sacred. So, it is quite possible that these carriers of systematic writing were destroyed in various ways, for example by witchcraft fire divination. It is also possible that the carriers of systematic writing did not exist either before systematic writing came into existence - they drew the symbols on something that was not something easy to preserve for thousands of years.

As an example, at the recently excavated site of Sanxingdui, archaeologists have discovered their method of ritual sacrifice: after the sacrifice all the ritual objects were smashed and thrown into a pit and burned. The objects are included, but were not limited to, ivory, bronze, gold masks, and possibly silk weaving. So I would not rule out the possibility that there were also objects bearing written symbols that were destroyed in the process.

I do think that the evolution of writing had a lot to do with the extent to which knowledge was spread among ordinary people, the extent to which religion developed and the extent to which economic trade was widespread, on the one hand. After all, writing and language are both tools, and the evolution of tools is that they become simpler and easier to use. And as a handy tool, if neighbours find it handy too, it is natural that they take it and later adapt it to their local needs.  Of course, I feel pathetic with places which in modern world, for some reasons, have to say that "everything in the mother country of culture is actually of their origin". And not worthy of discussion.

Edited April 28, 2023 by steve9728

[adsii1970]

2 minutes ago, steve9728 said:

As an example, at the recently excavated site of Sanxingdui, archaeologists have discovered their method of ritual sacrifice: after the sacrifice all the ritual objects were smashed and thrown into a pit and burned. The objects in question included, but were not limited to, ivory, bronze, gold masks, and possibly silk weaving. So I would not rule out the possibility that there were also objects bearing written symbols that were destroyed in the process.

Yes, this was done as a way to contact the ancestors, but not all the pieces were destroyed by fire. This is why there are so many examples of both oracle and dragon bones available  along the early Huang He River settlements (Yellow River settlements for those of you outside China - this is the cradle of the earliest Chinese civilizations). But once again, it was these religions before Confucianism/Buddhism/Jainism and other late coming ancient belief systems appeared within the region. As wise men or shaman (those who were able to determine the will of the ancestors and interpret the dragon bones and oracle bones) passed their knowledge to the next generation, it is believed their symbols became standardized over time - how long, we do not know.

But how they began (the precursor or proto-writing) we do not know this either. What we do know from the archeology is there is a standard set of symbols that appear in the historical record nearly the same time as a standardized set of writing appears in every other civilization cluster around the same time. Remember, there is no widespread literacy in any place in the world except for the Minoan/Mycenaean civilization of the late Ancient Era - but only because their system of writing was extremely easy to learn and was based on consonant sounds rather than concepts or syllables as most of the other ancient world systems were.  Both what would develop in the Indus Valley and in the Huang He were unique - a written language concept that was a universal within its region - the symbol meant the same in every dialect of the spoken language family, no matter how remote. That didn't happen anywhere else as languages developed. Again, another puzzle to the development of language patterns.

11 minutes ago, steve9728 said:

I do think that the evolution of writing had a lot to do with the extent to which knowledge was spread among ordinary people, the extent to which religion developed and the extent to which economic trade was widespread, on the one hand. After all, writing and language are both tools, and the evolution of tools is that they become simpler and easier to use.

Religion is the key here - in nearly every civilization cluster (except for what's happening in South America because we literally have no idea thanks to the Spanish of the 1500s and 1600s) is written language development, commerce, and religion are tied directly. Here's why:

• Clerics develop a written language to record the oral religious history, the dos and don'ts, and other aspects of their religion to preserve for future generations of clerics and priests.
• Clerics begin preserving oral traditions of the deities, their interactions with humankind, etc.
• They train the next generation according to those writings.
• The kings and nobility see the value of "written records" for taxation purposes, begin recording marketplace revenue - remember, marketplaces were owned by the "government" - or the ruling family. Remember, running an empire is expensive and competitive.
• Merchants begin seeing the benefit of record keeping for transactions with other merchants and in trade. (Most non-religious writing samples are trade receipts).

And the rest, as they say, is history. The presumption is China probably did not follow any differently than the Ancient Indians, Mesopotamian civilizations, or anyone else.

[steve9728]

17 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Merchants begin seeing the benefit of record keeping for transactions with other merchants and in trade. (Most non-religious writing samples are trade receipts).

This reminds me of the "world's earliest letter of complaint" from Mesopotamia that I saw in the British Museum again hahahahahah

[Kerbalsaurus]

I mean, do you really need a protolanguage? Remember, early humans used paintings to communicate via visual signals. The protolanguages were the sounds they made. They knew they had to write it down to keep records. It makes a lot of sense when you think about that a lot of early languages were pictographs. They were based off of the pictures humans painted on cave walls. This makes sense for hieroglyphics, which uses clear pictures as words. And Chinese too. While more abstract, the characters were still pictures of different things.

[SunlitZelkova]

11 hours ago, KerballingSmasher said:

Similarly, fastest to be industrialized? The Japanese. They were super isolated until the US came in in the 1860s and said "You're gonna trade with us and like it" and promptly industrialized the country, going from rural farms everywhere to trains, steamships, and massive factories, in the span of something like twenty years.

Pretty crazy.

Eh, it was mixed, and the modernization is a little over exaggerated. There were still farms everywhere. The Japan we know today with its sprawling metropolises did not come about until after World War II.

[steve9728]

Discussed the topic of words with my gf because her undergraduate major is the history of ancient Chinese literature. I asked her if there were very few words before the oracle script was found. And her answer is did you forget somewhere called Jiahu? Then we had a little "academic discussion": mainly was she reminded me of some high school history. Thing is, the recognized origin of the Chinese language is the oracle bone script. This is a script that originated in the Shang (商) dynasty. According to the Shang Shu (《尚书》), the first historical record of ancient China, "the ancestors of Yin (殷, it's the name of the capital of the Shang dynasty) were already have booklets (惟殷先人, 有典有册).  The Jiahu site originated around 8,000 years ago, and many experts believe that these symbols can only be proven to have been consciously carved at present, but are not fully conclusive as writing. So I think that these symbols, along with knots and gradually simplified paintings, formed a systematic script during thousands of years of intermingling with various tribes and civilisations that followed. That is, many Neolithic sites between the 8,000-year-old site of Jiahu and the Shang dynasty in the sixteenth century BC have been found with written symbols on pottery. Such as Peiligang (裴李岗) culture, Yangshao (仰韶) Culture and Liangzhu (良渚) culture. Therefore, it's reasonable to believe that Chinese went through a developmental process of at least six to seven thousand years before the emergence of a truly systematic script.

Many historical records from ancient China indicate that there were two other ancient regimes before the Shang dynasty, the period when the oracle bone inscriptions appeared. That is, Yu and Shang. But still no solid evidence has been found, although the site of Erlitou - which many scholars believe to be the capital of the Xia dynasty - has been excavated in the Shang dynasty layer. 

Edited April 29, 2023 by steve9728

[adsii1970]

11 hours ago, steve9728 said:

And her answer is did you forget somewhere called Jiahu?

I mentioned this... You may have forgotten, but I didn't. As @Vanamonde pointed out, I do this within what I do for a living.

11 hours ago, steve9728 said:

Thing is, the recognized origin of the Chinese language is the oracle bone script.

Yes, but it is pretty standardized (core central set of characters by this point in its history). The interesting thing is what caused/facilitated its development? History shows us in every other technological development there is always a forerunner. We just didn't come up with cell phones that are palm-sized over night. There is a series of innovations since the invention of the telephone that has led up to what we have now. Why would the written language - the single most important innovation ever - be any different?

16 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Eh, it was mixed, and the modernization is a little over exaggerated. There were still farms everywhere. The Japan we know today with its sprawling metropolises did not come about until after World War II.

It is still mixed worldwide. Using this logic, one could say that any modern nation is still not "modernized" since no nation is completely urban. Japan's modernization happened a lot faster than any western European nation. History shows that. The only thing that slowed Japan's economic and industrial development down was the impact of scarcity of raw resources and what I call the "geographical lottery." This geographical lottery is why Japan and Russia soon found itself fighting over Chinese Manchuria and the Russian area surrounding Port Arthur. For the Russians, it was because of the need for a warm water Pacific port (extremely simplified by their primary reason). For the Japanese, it was for a stronghold into Manchuria and the access to raw materials - something the Japanese islands do not have an abundant supply of (coal, iron ore, chromium, nickel, copper, etc). Scarcity is not something that helps industrialized nations - but that's not a topic for ancient history since the Twentieth Century can hardly be called ancient.

However, what Japan did in the short 300 year span from its Ancient age to its Classical age is still remarkable - they did it in half the time of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, a third of the time of the Chinese, and well, they outlasted the Celts. There are a lot of reasons why the ancient Japanese did outlast a lot of their contemporaries, such as the European Celts, the various Goths, and others. Sure, the Goths and Celts were absorbed into other cultures, but the isolation of the Japanese islands worked in Japan's favor for a while. And in the ancient world, isolation could either strengthen or destroy a civilization.

[Kerbalsaurus]

I feel like we are overlooking the titans of the ancient world: Rome and Greece. Or, Greece and Greece II. They definitely advanced quite rapidly. Greece was one of the most advanced countries of the ancient world, and one has to appreciate the quick time it took Rome to eat the entire Mediterranean for breakfast. Hell, Rome was responsible for the end of the ancient age! After they collapsed, Europe fell into disarray, starting the medieval age. Also, I wonder, could Rome have industrialized if they didn't collapse?

I know the joke "Greece II" isn't really fair, as Rome was put under the Helm of Hellenization after the Etruscans took over for a little while. It's still fun to joke about, though.

Edited April 30, 2023 by Kerbalsaurus

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

I feel like we are overlooking the titans of the ancient world: Rome and Greece. Or, Greece and Greece II.

The Greeks (if you are not going to consider the ancient precursor Greeks of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, are a Classical era civilization, not an ancient era civilization, for the sake of studying world history/civilization.  It's not that I am trying to make light of your comment, there is a classification system used in the study of civilizations. Since the mid-twentieth century (CE), this system has undergone tremendous revision as it has become widely recognized that not all civilizations transitioned from the ancient era to the classical era around the same time. In fact, there are still cultures today that one could easily classify as a post-classical society rather than a post-modern society or post-industrial society, whichever term you choose to use.

Ancient Greece in the form of both the Minoans and the Mycenaeans on Crete was very modern in its mid-ancient era. But the sad thing is we also do not know much about them because of the way Crete has been built and rebuilt over the years. The Minoans collapsed after a series of natural disasters and an invasion by the Mycenaeans. And the Mycenaeans took over and adopted much of what the inoans were already doing. What we do know has mostly been discovered by accident or what has been preserved from other smaller islands where we know the two civilizations had other settlements also. However, when both of these civilizations entered their Dark Age, it lasted for a while - the only evidence we have of what happened then is the writings of Homer and a few other surviving Greek tragedies and plays that are based on mythology. So, unlike their Mesopotamian, Hindi, and Chinese counterparts, their dark age was lengthy and a lot of their development was lost. When it reemerges around 480(ish) BCE, it is a latecomer into the Classical Era.

The good thing about the arrival of the Classical early Greeks and the later Hellenistic Greeks are they wrote everything down. We have extensive records from them. There is a wealth of materials from the Classical era Greeks and what they accomplish during an eight hundred year period is amazing - economic theory, science, math, medical science, and the like. But it is not considered as one of the core cradles of civilization. As far as the pre-ancient cultures and even ancient societies go, they are relatively latecomers compared to Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, the Norte Chico, and Jiahu civilizations.

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Rome was responsible for the end of the ancient age!

Nah, not hardly. Rome just happened to arrive in the Classical Age when it was already underway! Within the Mediterranean world, one could argue Phillip of Macedon was probably Greece's first Greek Classical era ruler. China entered it's Classical era as the Zhou Dynasty rose to power - about 500 years before the Mediterranean world did!

Rome was, for all practical purposes, Greece III, to "borrow" your numbering system, don't overlook the huge difference between the Greeks before and during/after Alexander the Great. His Greece is radically different because of his love of everything Persian and that's how we end up with the Hellenistic era. So, I'll refer to Alexander's Hellenistic Greece as being Greece II. Rome was becoming increasingly "Oriental" - throughout its expansion. It began early into adopting a lot of Alexander the Great's Hellenistic Greek cultural traits as its own, it adopted the Greek religion, economic systems, and philosophy.

But the Romans are the anti-thesis of development of everything except warfare. They had to be because of the internal and external threats faced by Rome. There were already a large number of Greeks on the Italian peninsula, so the Greek culture was adopted into the developing Roman identity. There's also a good blending of the Etruscan civilization, an early civilization that was already on the Italian peninsula when Rome began. Rome was great about incorporating every idea it encountered that it considered as superior to its own, incorporating it into its own culture, and making it Roman. But every civilization does it, but Rome was superior because it had to adopt quickly to survive.

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Also, I wonder, could Rome have industrialized if they didn't collapse?

No. The merchant class and higher classes (the aristocracy and old landed wealthy) had no desire to industrialize. The Italian peninsula was wealthy in agricultural products high in demand - grapes, olives, fish, and other crops high in demand on the international markets of the day. It also had large quantities of marble, tin, and copper - quick sources of wealth without having to rely on even the most rudimentary industry of the day. Plus, whatever could not be made in any large quantities on the Italian peninsula could be readily imported from other places within the Mediterranean basin by either land or sea trade routes. So, no, Rome had no need or desire for the development of industry even to the modest scale that even Alexander's Greece had. The often overlooked factor for the large amount of agricultural wealth on the Italian peninsula is the later empire had at the end of the first century, BCE, was close to 2 million slaves working on Roman farms and orchards. This made Rome's agricultural exports cheaper even in the most remotest marketplaces in the region.

Rome's lack of vision for the development of even modest industry meant that it would have to resort on taxation -- heavy taxation -- to bear the cost of empire by the time the empire was in its last four hundred years (about 20 CE to the collapse of the western empire).

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Europe fell into disarray, starting the medieval age.

Not quite. While the collapse of the Western Roman Empire did bring chaos to central and western Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia fared better without the baggage of Rome until 1453 and Constantinople fell. However, Rome was far from being the cradle of a stabilizing force in central and western Europe. Because of the harshness of the Roman government and the cruelty of the Roman military on the peoples of conquered and subjugated lands, there were often uprisings, discontentment, and other disruptions of Pax Romana that had to be dealt with. The disarray of the Middle Ages came as a result of a conversation we cannot have on the forum since it does involve the alliance/marriage of the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Roman See (The Roman Catholic Church).

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Greece and Greece II

I'm not knowledgable enough to partake in this whole discussion, but I want everybody to know 2 things:

1. I am thoroughly enjoying reading about it.
2. You should all be thankful that I didn't make a single John Travolta/Olivia Newton John/Michelle Pfeiffer joke here.

[adsii1970]

Just now, Superfluous J said:

You should all be thankful that I didn't make a single John Travolta/Olivia Newton John/Michelle Pfeiffer joke here.

As long as you don't discuss Grease II, you'll be fine. That movie stunk!

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Where does Gobekli Tepe fit in?

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

It is still mixed worldwide. Using this logic, one could say that any modern nation is still not "modernized" since no nation is completely urban. Japan's modernization happened a lot faster than any western European nation. History shows that. The only thing that slowed Japan's economic and industrial development down was the impact of scarcity of raw resources and what I call the "geographical lottery." This geographical lottery is why Japan and Russia soon found itself fighting over Chinese Manchuria and the Russian area surrounding Port Arthur. For the Russians, it was because of the need for a warm water Pacific port (extremely simplified by their primary reason). For the Japanese, it was for a stronghold into Manchuria and the access to raw materials - something the Japanese islands do not have an abundant supply of (coal, iron ore, chromium, nickel, copper, etc). Scarcity is not something that helps industrialized nations - but that's not a topic for ancient history since the Twentieth Century can hardly be called ancient.

All I'm saying is that saying "Japan was no longer rural farms everywhere", which is what that post implied, is incorrect.

But yeah, back to the ancient history.

[Vanamonde]

Was Rome's problem with incessant rebellions due to a repressive military, or just endemic to empires of the time? The Persian empire had no end of trouble with them.