Was there a civilization that existed 13 000 years ago?

"Clave" wrote in message ...
"Starblade Darksquall" wrote in message
m...
"Clave" wrote in message
...

...

A "city" also presupposes that certain civic problems like sanitation,
water,
and transportation of goods had been solved, any one of which would
necessarily
leave more traces than rotting deerskin.

Sheesh.

Jim

What about a stone age city? Civilization can exist in the stone age.

Yeah, for sufficiently generous definitions of "civilization" and "city."


The stone age WAS at the time when humans first learned how to
socially organize. There may have been, one or two large cities. How
could human civilization progress to later stages if they were just
individual tribes spread out through the Earth? No, there must have
been some cities of SOME sort, otherwise our situations today is
unexplainable.


And it's quite possible that at that level of development, any method
they developed for satisfying their needs was overshadowed by the ice
age, and buried or otherwise destroyed.

/me hands "Starblade Darksquall" a freshly-fashioned, genuine tin,
Clave-embossed tinfoil hat.


Oh, a dunce hat. How clever. Hah hah hah. You made my day.

(And, yes, that was sarcasm.)

Jim

(...Starblade Riven Darksquall...)

"Starblade Darksquall" wrote in message
m...
"Clave" wrote in message
...
"Starblade Darksquall" wrote in message
m...
"Clave" wrote in message
...

...

A "city" also presupposes that certain civic problems like sanitation,
water,
and transportation of goods had been solved, any one of which would
necessarily
leave more traces than rotting deerskin.

Sheesh.

Jim

What about a stone age city? Civilization can exist in the stone age.

Yeah, for sufficiently generous definitions of "civilization" and "city."


The stone age WAS at the time when humans first learned how to
socially organize. There may have been, one or two large cities. How
could human civilization progress to later stages if they were just
individual tribes spread out through the Earth? No, there must have
been some cities of SOME sort, otherwise our situations today is
unexplainable...

You *must* have some less-embarrassing way of getting attention, don't you?

Jim

On 13 Oct 2003 13:52:43 -0700, (Starblade
Darksquall) wrote in alt.fan.art-bell:


The stone age WAS at the time when humans first learned how to
socially organize. There may have been, one or two large cities. How
could human civilization progress to later stages if they were just
individual tribes spread out through the Earth? No, there must have
been some cities of SOME sort, otherwise our situations today is
unexplainable.

Circular "logic", at it's very finest.
--
V.G.

"People are more violently opposed to fur than leather, because it is easier to harrass
rich women than it is motorcycle gangs." - Bumper Sticker
(This sig file contains not less than 80% recycled SPAM)

Sarcasm is my sword, Apathy is my shield.

Vanilla Gorilla (Monkey Boy) wrote:
Sarcasm is my sword, Apathy is my shield.

Question: What is the difference between ignorance and apath?
Answer: I don't know and I don't care.

Bob Kolker

In article , "Robert J. Kolker" writes:


Vanilla Gorilla (Monkey Boy) wrote:
Sarcasm is my sword, Apathy is my shield.

Question: What is the difference between ignorance and apath?
Answer: I don't know and I don't care.

:-)))))

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
| chances are he is doing just the same"

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 08:02:24 -0800, "Vanilla Gorilla (Monkey Boy)"
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:21:07 GMT, DrPostman
wrote in alt.fan.art-bell:


The evidence provided is the important aspect .. not some talking
head telling me what to consider. If a ditzy blond that dropped out

What talking heads? People with PhDs in archeology and geology
are talking heads?



They're part of the conspiracy, and HUGE POOLS OF MOLTEN STEEL!!!


Amazing, those pools.





--
Dr.Postman USPS, MBMC, BsD; "Disgruntled, But Unarmed"
Member,Board of Directors of afa-b, SKEP-TI-CULT® member #15-51506-253.
You can email me at: eckles(at)midsouth.rr.com

"The services provided by Sylvia Browne Corporation are highly
speculative in nature and we do not guarantee that the results
of our work will be satisfactory to a client."
-Sylvia's Refund Policy

"No, the next step, Doktor, is that you start diagnosing illegally and
stupidly online, and get your license revoked."
-viveshwar

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 10:43:42 -0600, "Carl R. Osterwald"
wrote:

In article , Paul R. Mays
wrote:

I know this guy don't understand what I have said in this thread but one
of you I know has figured out that I'm not one of the guys that have
postulated the theory under question but only pointed correctly too
the fact that there is evidence that is at odds with existing theory of
civilization and that all people of intellect should actually consider
the physical evidence and use their mind's to understand the world around
us..... not to lock step and wait till a committee says its ok to think...]

Say WHAT??


I'm still unable to parse that as well.





--
Dr.Postman USPS, MBMC, BsD; "Disgruntled, But Unarmed"
Member,Board of Directors of afa-b, SKEP-TI-CULT® member #15-51506-253.
You can email me at: eckles(at)midsouth.rr.com

"The services provided by Sylvia Browne Corporation are highly
speculative in nature and we do not guarantee that the results
of our work will be satisfactory to a client."
-Sylvia's Refund Policy

"No, the next step, Doktor, is that you start diagnosing illegally and
stupidly online, and get your license revoked."
-viveshwar

"Clave" wrote in message ...
"Starblade Darksquall" wrote in message
m...
"Clave" wrote in message
...
"Starblade Darksquall" wrote in message
m...
"Clave" wrote in message
...

...

A "city" also presupposes that certain civic problems like sanitation,
water,
and transportation of goods had been solved, any one of which would
necessarily
leave more traces than rotting deerskin.

Sheesh.

Jim

What about a stone age city? Civilization can exist in the stone age.

Yeah, for sufficiently generous definitions of "civilization" and "city."


The stone age WAS at the time when humans first learned how to
socially organize. There may have been, one or two large cities. How
could human civilization progress to later stages if they were just
individual tribes spread out through the Earth? No, there must have
been some cities of SOME sort, otherwise our situations today is
unexplainable...

You *must* have some less-embarrassing way of getting attention, don't you?

Jim


what do you suppose "darksquall" means, if not "temper tantrum"?

"DrPostman" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 08:02:24 -0800, "Vanilla Gorilla (Monkey Boy)"
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:21:07 GMT, DrPostman
wrote in alt.fan.art-bell:


The evidence provided is the important aspect .. not some talking
head telling me what to consider. If a ditzy blond that dropped out

What talking heads? People with PhDs in archeology and geology
are talking heads?



They're part of the conspiracy, and HUGE POOLS OF MOLTEN STEEL!!!


Amazing, those pools.

They do get around.

Jim

Thomas McDonald replied:
"Rich" wrote in message
...


In infinite wisdom Tom Kirke answered:

====================================



WAS THERE A CIVILIZATION
THAT EXISTED 13,000 YEARS AGO?

By definition civilization requires cities, so no, there
was no civilization 11kBCE.


I'm not sure about this (this being that civilizations require cities).

civ?i?li?za?tion (sv-l-zshn)
n.

1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development
in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the
extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance
of complex political and social institutions.
2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or
region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization
of ancient Rome.
3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.
4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste.
5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after
camping in the mountains.

It seems a very debatable point.

TSM: Rich,

This thread originated in sci.archaeology. (Our Eddie hijacked the
thread in order to...well, do whatever it is he thinks he is doing.)

I checked, the group is dead, dead, dead. Perhaps excavations via google
are in order?

In anthropology, of which archaeology is a subset in the US at least,
'civilization' has to do with a level of societal development that includes
a political/religious/economic heirarchy more ramified than a chiefdom
(which usually has only three or four 'levels'). Normally, this requires at
least one city to support this heirarchy, and the regional organization that
the city needs to survive. In return, the city provides political
organization, economic stability, defence, specialized religious and
artifact manufacture, etc.

A general dictionary definition is inadequate to a discussion requiring
technical understanding of terminology.

There boundaries seem a bit fuzzy WRT exactly what is and is not a civilization,
even among archeologists.

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture1b.html

[...]

The Oxford English Dictionary defines civilization as "the action
or process of civilizing or of being civilized; a developed or
advanced state of human society." Such a definition is fraught
with difficulties. For instance, how might we correctly identify
a "developed or advanced state of human society"? Developed or
advanced compared to what? The OED defines the verb "to civilize"
in the following way: "to make civil; to bring out of a state of
barbarism; to instruct in the arts of life; to enlighten; to
refine and polish." Are we any closer to a working definition?

In 1936, the archeologist V. Gordon Childe published his book
Man Makes Himself. Childe identified several elements which he
believed were essential for a civilization to exist. He included:
the plow, wheeled cart and draft animals, sailing ships, the
smelting of copper and bronze, a solar calendar, writing,
standards of measurement, irrigation ditches, specialized
craftsmen, urban centers and a surplus of food necessary to
support non-agricultural workers who lived within the walls
of the city. Childe's list concerns human achievements and
pays less attention to human organization.

Another historian agreed with Childe but added that a true
definition of civilization should also include money collected
through taxes, a privileged ruling class, a centralized government
and a national religious or priestly class. Such a list, unlike
Childe's, highlights human organization. In 1955, Clyde Kluckhohn
argued that there were three essential criteria for civilization:
towns containing more than 5000 people, writing, and monumental
ceremonial centers. Finally, the archeologist and anthropologist
Robert M. Adams argued for a definition of civilization as a
society with functionally interrelated sets of social institutions:
class stratification based on the ownership and control of
production, political and religious hierarchies complementing
each other in the central administration of territorially
organized states and lastly, a complex division of labor,
with skilled workers, soldiers and officials existing alongside
the great mass of peasant producers.

As historians have often remarked, civilization is a word easier
to describe than it is to define. As implied by the above
discussion, the word itself comes from the Latin adjective
civilis, a reference to a citizen. Citizens willingly bring
themselves together in political, social, economic, and religious
organizations -- they merge together, that is, in the interests
of the larger community. Over time, the word civilization has
come to imply something beyond organization -- it refers to a
particular shared way of thinking about the world as well as a
reflection on that world in art, literature, drama and a host
of other cultural happenings. To understand this idea better
it is necessary to investigate the origins of western civilization.

The historian's task is not an easy one and this is especially
the case when dealing with ancient civilizations that rose and
fell more than five thousand years ago. Since history is
specifically the story of man's written records, the historian of
ancient culture must piece together the past from fragments of
human endeavor and human achievement. True enough, having 485
tons of written material at your disposal provides the historian
with a daunting task. But trying to piece together the past of
a culture whose written documents are scarce, makes the historian's
task that much more difficult.

There were cultures, some
of them more advanced than others, but no civilizations.

I think you have it the wrong way round myself. The above is from
dictionary.com and I think it's got it right.

TSM: Not for this discussion; unless you prefer imrecision and flames.

I assume you mean 'imprecision'. That would require that there exists some
exact definition of civilization. That does not seem to be the case as
far as I can tell, the word is not precicely defined, ergo we are
stuck with imprecision. As for flames, it goes with the territory,
I don't see any way to avoid em.

If you disagree point to a city that existed then.

Trivial (for prehistoric cities, a category you call a null set).

http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s768954.htm

Ruins of 4,300-year-old prehistoric city found in China

Chinese archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a prehistoric
city dating back an estimated 4,300 years in southwest Sichuan province,
state press said.

The find provided evidence that the region along the upper reaches of
the Yangtze River, with the Chengdu Plain at the core, played an
important role in the origin and development of Chinese civilization,
experts said.

TSM: So what? Jericho is much older, and has been mostly continually lived
in.

I posted an example, there are many. Do you have a point?

-------------------------------------

http://www.telesterion.com/catal1.htm

CATAL HUYUK

The Temple City of Prehistoric Anatolia

[...]

The oldest layer of Catal Huyuk yet excavated (virgin soil has not been
reached) is reliably carbon dated to 6,500 B.C,, and reveals a thriving,
completely developed and planned, city.

They existed, their remains exist today.

Rich

TSM: Nope. I've studied the literature on Catal Huyuk, seen many of its
artifacts, and visited the Smithsonian's traveling exhibit on it. It was
large for its time, but it was a village. While the houses were built to a
general plan, they were each built by their owners, not by specialist
builders. There is no public space at all, and religious spaces are found
in each house, not in any "temple". (The "Temple City" business is wrong on
both points.)

http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Catal_Hoyuk.html

Only one acre of the thirty-two acre mound has been systematically
excavated, recorded, and reported. This was Catal Huyuk, the ancestress
of all other cities, a unique Temple City that was the religious center
of the first great prehistoric civilization .....

I don't know, it seems a bit early to close the book on what is there and
what is not. This web page is dated April 2003 BTW.

There was no agriculture requiring public works or major communal efforts.

http://archaeology.about.com/library...ms=Catal+Hoyuk

On the yellow plains of central Anatolia lie the remains of one of
the oldest civilizations on earth. Called ?atalh?y?k, the site ruins
represent a village of 300 mud brick and plaster residences, based on
a farming economy--in fact, the first farming community we've found to
date. The site was occupied from about 6300-5500 bc, and its most
striking and famous feature are the shrines, shrines dedicated to
what has been called the "Mother Goddess."

How can a farming economy not require "public works or major communal efforts"?

http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis/prerm5.htm

The village of Chatal Huyuk is the largest Neolithic site in the Near
East covering 13 hectares. It was founded in c.7000 BC and the
settlement grew rapidly and became a prosperous and well-organized
community. The inhabitants of Chatal Huyuk grew mainly wheat, barley
and peas. They supplemented their diet by apples, hackberries, almonds
and acorns, which were collected locally. The principal meat source was
cattle although it seems that wild animals were also important, judging
from the wall paintings portraying the hunting of red deer, boar and
onagers.

Onagers? Oh well.

http://campus.northpark.edu/history/...ettledAgr.html

While it is often described as the "Agricultural Revolution," the
development of settled societies took several millennia after the first
discovery of agriculture. Moreover, this process occurred at different
times in different parts of the world based on the domestication of
different plants. If one is going to speak in term of revolution,
one might better speak in terms of "agricultural revolutions."

c. 10,000 BC: Beginnings of Settled Agriculture
o 10,000 BC: First agricultural villages
o 10,000 BC: Invention of the bow and arrow
o 10,000 BC: Dogs and reindeer are domesticated
o 10,000 BC: Beginnings of settled agriculture
o 10,000 BC: Earliest pottery (Japan)
c. 8,000 to 6,500 BC: Settled Agriculture in Mesopotamia
o c. 7,000: Beginning of Settled Agricultural Revolution
o c. 6,500-5,650 BC: Catal Hulyuk

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but it seems clear that some large
scale agriculture was going on, you'd need it to feed 6,000 for a thousand
years.

The village's location (at the meeting of
foothill/plains/river valley) was naturally rich enough in resources to
support a large (ca. 5000 souls) population without agriculture.

Odd then that so many sources claim it was agriculturally based. How do you
account for this?

There was
trade, but there is no indication that there was specialize, centralized
manufacture of the trade items.

http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis/prerm5.htm

Most raw materials had to be imported and the village became the
center of a trading complex, dealing in a wide range of items - timber,
obsidian, flint, copper, shells. The craftsmen produced mainly
arrowheads, daggers of flint and obsidian, stone maceheads, baked
clay and carved stone figurines, textiles, wooden vessels and pottery.
Trinkets such as copper heads and lead pendants were also produced,
and copper-smelting.

http://members.aol.com/wprehist/3250s09.htm

# Lots of craft production

* stone beads, figurines, and vessels
* grinding equipment
* greenstone axes and adzes
* native copper and lead beads
* ochres and other pigments
* exceptional flaked stonework that could only have been made
by skilled specialists
* ground obsidian mirrors
* woven wool textiles, maybe as complex as modern Turkish rugs,
if the wall paintings are representations of them
* wooden cups, platters, boxes
* seals made of pottery, possibly for applying paint to textiles,
or for body painting (not used on clay, like later seals)
* pottery was crude and rare early in the occupation; by 6725 BC
they were making plain cooking pots; minimal painted lines, no
plastic decoration
* i.e. clearly at least part-time craft specialists, probably some
degree of interdependence and exchange for products made by others
o this is much more marked at ?atal H?y?k than at Jericho

( This is a very informative page, although only an outline)

There seems to be some disagreement about this as well.

It was probably very influential, and it
lasted for perhaps over a thousand years; but it never was a city, and it
was never the center of a 'civilization', sensu strictu.

http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis/prerm5.htm

Many features of Chatal Huyuk are puzzling. However, although we do
not know much of this neolithic village's political and social
development, it serves as a vivid illustration of the huge new
potential offered by the adoption of agriculture in the Ancient
Near East. {Source: Past Worlds, The Times Atlas of Archaeology
(N. York: Crescent Books, 1995), pp. 82-83.

Seems to me that it would be difficult to make such an assesment based
upon artifacts alone, and for prehistoric cultures this is all we have.

http://members.aol.com/wprehist/3250s09.htm

# Population estimates vary from 1,650 to 10,000

* Unknown whether excavated area is representative of whole site
* Unknown what portion of the whole mound was occupied at any given time
* Unknown what amount of space might have been open, for gathering or
ceremonial space, market, animals, etc.
* Unknown what fraction of rooms might have been abandoned and
accumulating garbage at any give time
* Shrines were probably not living spaces (Mellaart includes them in
his population estimate of 10,000)
* The recent project at ?atal H?y?k estimates around 5,000
o based on estimates of density of houses across the site, made
by scraping the surface to find walls
o and a guess of 4 people per house
* I would guess that is still a little high, since it assumes all the
rooms were fully occupied at the same time

Basically a lot of the things you claim seem rather less than solidly agreed
upon. Further, whether it was a city or a village seems just as open a
question. I think that 6,000-10,000 a bit large for a village however.

Rich (this is quite interesting)


Tom McDonald