And then we have the Epic of Gilgamesh, a 6,000 year old story that reminisces about times long past.
… and Dinosaurs ruled the earth for about 165 million years and even that is only 3% of the time our planet has been around.
Modern man, including the writers of Gilgamesh, are but a fleeting speck on the history of life on this planet.
Don’t think we well last as long as the dinosaurs.
Things aren’t looking good for us
Times long past could be like your childhood…
Touché
Not an Egyptologist, but I was actually just talking with a friend (when discussing the loss of information in societies) about ~1500 BCE Pharaohs having to run archeological expeditions to figure out whose tomb was whose to pay the proper respects.
I remember a Hardcore History episode where he talks about how in the time of the Assyrian empire, it was known even then that the world was ancient, filled with individual civilisations that saw themselves as the centre of the world and would marvel at the ignorance of being lumped in together with equally self-possessed civilisations by the historians who write of them only in passing with incomplete sources.
I might have a bit of that wrong, I just woke up and it’s been almost a decade since I listened to it. But the part that stuck with me was the idea that even to people we see as deeply ancient, they too had an apprehension that human history is no spring chicken.
And yet, compared with the span of time claimed by the ages of the dinosaurs, humanity has barely existed long enough to clear its throat and introduce itself. And in that time we have been imperiled very often.
I was intrigued to hear that the Toba catastrophe hypothesis may be discredited. I enjoy the idea that 200,000 years ago we may have had as few as 10,000 individuals. It must have been a peaceful time…
Ah ty for the reminder, I’m surely a few episodes behind on Hardcore History. Also, <3 your name
(•ө•)♡
The oldest recorded song in history starts with “in those ancient times”. Tale of Gilgamesh IIRC
Myths always take place back a long time ago.
I wonder if they were referring to the protoindoeuropeans, who just slowly wandered the earth spreading their language
Why would Akkadian or semite myths speak about a people that not only isn’t theirs, but also unknown?
that’s a trap question and you know it!
(because I thought they shared the same ancestor, but apparently they don’t – there, ya happy now?)
Sorry, I didn’t mean to come across this way. I didn’t think you thought Akkadians or Sumerians were Indo-European peoples. Indeed, your idea makes more sense now.
My understanding was that you thought a people could have myths centered on another people. I also didn’t understand how thought possible to tell stories about an unknown people. No point in arguing over this now, since it’s all clear now.
(I wanna fight some more!)
But yeah I didnt realise this was history memes, and that people do practice and correct knowledge here haha
Oddly enough it was actually a mistranslated copy of Jerusalem as the rest of the stone said “walk upon England’s mountain green”
Also crazy is that the thing that brought down the Old Kingdom around 2180 BCE, after nearly a millennia in power, was a megadrought thanks to a climatic change. It took them about 140 years to reboot things into the Middle Kingdom.
I’ve read that their governance was geared towards stability, not growth or disruption. It helps with keeping things going for a long time.
I’ve read that their governance was geared towards stability, not growth or disruption. It helps with keeping things going for a long time.
I’m confused. How could their leaders earn a big enough quarterly bonus to blow on cocaine?
Edit: This might be something modern government models could adapt and use, to everyone’s benefit… If we can just crack the cocaine challenges with it.
I think I’m joking, except I can’t stop thinking about how a universal basic cocaine subsidy might actually be what is needed to convince a bunch of problematic leaders to retire…
I suspect it’s unbridled psychopathic greed that’s the problem.
That still doesn’t answer whether a universal basic cocaine subsidy would solve the problem.
Cocaine is actually quite cheap to make…
?
I mean, maybe - but its not hard to focus on stability instead of growth when you’re the only game in town.
They did pretty damned well against the Hittites and Lybians, Egypt only really started to struggle when the bronze age collapse happened. Frankly speaking when you are durable enough to weather an apocalypse you are doing pretty good, the only other ones I can think of that pulled the same was the Assyrians who I’m pretty sure are gonna outlast every other culture at this rate.
Want yet another fun fact? All the most famous egyptian pyramids were built in a span of 100 years or so.
They blew their retirement savings and their heirs couldn’t afford to build more!
Pyramid building was serious society-stabilizing policy, not government-breaking waste.
Fashion is ephemeral by nature.
Being in the same place doesn’t make it the same civilisation. Cleopatra was more similar to the ancient Greeks than the ancient Egyptians
An unbroken span of time with the same name and identity makes it the same civilization. It isn’t like countries stopped being themselves due to an industrial revolution.
The ruling class in Egypt spoke Greek in Cleopatra’s time
That’s a very particular and odd view of what a civilisation is. By this logic, there are no inheritors to ancient Egypt at all since even the current inhabitants speak Arabic and not ancient Egyptian. In fact, Ancient Egyptian had already developed into Demotic Egyptian by the time of Cleopatra, and Demotic in itself was heavily influenced by Aramaic and, you guessed it, Greek. It’s fairly common for language to develop and change throughout the history of old civilisations, and in that process, be influenced by the major civilisations of the time. Cleopatra speaking Greek doesn’t make her not Egyptian, it just means that the Greeks were the dominant civilisation in her region during her lifetime. A thousad years later she’d be speaking Arabic, which still wouldn’t make her not Egyptian.
Yeah no shit there are no inheritors of ancient Egypt who the fuck nowadays shares Egyptian culture? No one is building pyramids, writing in hiroglyphs or talking the language. You gonna tell me Italy is the roman empire next?
I know it’s sometimes hard for Aussies to imagine history beyond 300 years back as being relevant to your national identity. But that’s just because it’d make you face the fact that your nation is built upon the ruins of a civilisation you feel zero connection to, because of you know, you being colonial settlers and them being the indigenous people you tried (and still try) to eradicate. In Egypt, and indeed in Italy, Greece, Iran, China, India and so on, people don’t viscerally hate what came before them wanting to just forget them. They do often feel as the inheritors of those ancient civilizations, and have incorporated them into their own national identity. So yes, Italians do feel like the inheritors to the ancient Romans, just ask an Italian.
I know it’s sometimes hard for Aussies to imagine history beyond 300 years back as being relevant to your national identity.
also shut the fuck up you smug fuckhead
Yeah Europeans would never have a colonial history
In America we’re Roman because our nazis still do a particular salute
Your an Aussie, calling yourself a European. That’s how your society is different. Other people generally consider themselves to belong to the countries they inhabit, not be from another continent entirely. But the anglo settler colonial nations still call themselves European.
So yes, Italians do feel like the inheritors to the ancient Romans, just ask an Italian.
That doesn’t mean they are. Continuity of geopolitical narrative is mostly stupid. In the era of nationalism (post-Napoleonic France) geopolitical narrative is 100% jingoistic propaganda: those impulses are 100% recuperated by the State.
By this logic, there are no inheritors to ancient Egypt at all since even the current inhabitants speak Arabic and not ancient Egyptian.
That’s actually very coherent, or more coherent than the idiotic notion that because people live in the same place, they are connected genetically, culturally, linguistically, or politically.
You’re discovering the complexities of comparing geopolitical strata across time and space. Don’t disrespect it. Just because you have feelings about an essential “egyptian” storyline doesn’t mean those feelings are valid. Shut up. Thanks.
Wow, an American backing up the Aussie’s settler colonial understanding of national identity. What a shock that a member of the other major anglo settler colonial entity that hates the indigenous people of its land would feel this way. You are the anomaly, the rest of the world doesn’t distance itself from the history of the people who have lived there over the years. Understandable that you can’t relate though, your whole society has been based on the extermination of those people. So it’d be difficult to claim their history as your own or even feel a positive connection to it. That’s not the case for much of the rest of the world though.
I mean, early 19th century Russian nobility spoke more French than Russian, does that mean they suddenly were another civilization?
Ehhh my comments was meant to point out that Egypt was far from an “unbroken span of time with the same name and identity.” The region was conquered multiple times with numerous fractures and centralisations happening. Cleopatra didn’t feel a need to construct a pyramid tomb for herself for example, that culture has died off and been replaced .
That’s fair, I understand your point, that particular comment just felt too specific when compared to what is being argued.
A lot of people in Europe speak languages that have a lot of latin words, so is the EU the same thing as the Roman Empire?
We are talking about a people living in a region having various civilizations over thousands of years so I think it’s a better comparison.
That identity was gone by Cleopatra’s time. By a couple of centuries.
What actually doesn’t change the numbers a lot. In fact, it changes them less than the rounding the OP did. But there were a couple of other deep changes like that.
Yes. Ramses II’s son “found in Thebes” (Khaemweset) was known and recorded for his passion in archeological study and restoration, and has been called the “first Egyptologist.”
Sumeria Jones.
What’s his job during winter?
College professor. 90% of all archeology is done in your local papyrus repository.
This is true for all ancient civilisations though. Maya, Sumer, India, China. All had ancient and ancient ancient.
Human history is nuts because humans were around for so long before we ever figured out how to write things down. We had agriculture before language!
And you know tons of people tried to create languages, but they were just surrounded by mother fuckers who were like “look at this removed, over here with his stick poking the ground. Hey, stick boy! Stop fucking around! Your pictures aren’t important! Grug’s already the best painting! You see his mammoth? Fucking stick boy.”
I think its interesting that we are also very biased towards long lasting societies, because they leave more stuff for us to study, and literate ones, because they can tell us with their own words what events there were. We still dont have a complete picture of the battle of Cannae, one of the consequential in all of history, whose effects we are still living with. Writing was only invented 4500ish years ago, and humans are as a species are way way older.
Its fucked up to think about Catal Hayuk, or Utsie.
It’s also interesting how short these time frames actually are. 2000 years are just 80 generations.
All but the most important bullet points of history from that time is wiped out.
And our intuitive understanding “how the past was” is just from maybe 4-5 generations ago.
The past is a vast place and we only ever scratch the very surface of it.
No one even really knows what their great grandparents were like, unless they were famous or something. I have no idea who my great, great grandfather even was. It stops in 1872
Aren’t great grandparents the parents of your grandparents? I knew them, and a lot of people did know theirs. Mine were nice people.
What about your great, great grandparents then? Do you know what they were like?
True, depends on the age when everyone got kids. But the point of the person you replied to still stands: You know the people you met, you might know one or the other story of the people they met, but then it stops.
One of my great grandparents is still alive. They told me a handful of stories from their parents and grandparents. That’s it. There’s no history beyond a few birth and marriage certificates from beyond that.
And now there is an overwhelming amount of information, as long as someone keeps rotating in fresh hard drives and replacing the dead ones
Kinda, ish, not really though.
In theory, all that data exists, but huge amounts of it are lost already. There was an indoor pool/waterpark thing that we often went to as kids and it was shut down about 25 years ago.
I tried finding pictures of that, and the only picture I could find was from when it was torn down. There are no (publically available) fotos of that thing being in operation, and 25 years is not a long time.
My wife’s grandpa died a while ago and I helped going through his PC to sort what to keep. It was a huge mess and we ended up grabbing a few things that looked relevant, put them onto a hard drive and that on a shelf in my wife’s parents’ house. And it will likely remain there without anyone looking into it until my wife’s parents die, and then it will get tossed out too.
We had long-term shelf-stable data storage for centuries, and still when someone dies we usually throw out their old diaries and photo albums, maybe keeping a handful of pictures. And even if there’s a horder in the family who keeps all that, most people end up with dozens or hundreds of descendants over a few generations and one of these descendants ends up with the data. To all others this data is all but lost.
But it’s not only that: the number of ancestors you have grows exponentially with each generation you go back. It’s easy to keep 4 grandparents straight in mind. 8 great grand parents are also not that hard. 16 great great grandparents that you have likely never met become more difficult. 32 great great grandparents are a lot, and it only gets worse from here. There’s only so much mental capacity a human has, so remembering more than just names and dates for everyone a few generations back is all but impossible.
So what we will see in the future is just that there will be more data rotting away until it’s thrown out. Cloud services are already starting to go back on their “we store stuff until eternity”-policies.
fuck
f
uck
The people and/or sentient crabs that study us in thousands of years are going to have WAY crazier things to think about than how ancient the pyramids were to us.
