soor Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 what is the oldest known civilization and any artifacts??
Ouroboros Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 The Arena is off limits. The Colosseum is open for organized discussions.
perianwalsh Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 is this thread closed?hey i am confused-btw interesting topic
mwc Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 The Sumerians are probably the oldest known civilization within a written history. Is that what you meant? The question is a little open ended. mwc
Mythra Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 what is the oldest known civilization and any artifacts?? I suppose you would need to more clearly define "civilization". Someone here can correct me if I'm a little off (and I usually am) .... but There are quite a few artifacts from South Africa and Sumatra that date to the middle stone age - 130,000 to 70,000 BCE or so. There were also tools made from non-local materials found at some of the sites, suggesting trade was taking place with other cultures even back then. One of the oldest sites is at a place called the Klasies River Cave in South Africa. Human skeletal remains go back much further - I believe to 195,000 BCE (found in Ethiopia.) Of course, this is just referring to our direct human ancestors. There's others (such as Neanderthal) that have become extinct. I wonder what happened to all of the souls of these folks for thousands and thousands of years before Jesus showed up just 2,000 years ago to save us all from eternal damnation?
Ouroboros Posted October 17, 2007 Posted October 17, 2007 is this thread closed?hey i am confused-btw interesting topic Sorry. I was a bit short in my previous post. I moved it, and it's not closed.
perianwalsh Posted October 21, 2007 Posted October 21, 2007 lucky.this is good.thanks han. gee-draggin out my history i thought civilization is supposed to something-do you mean organised ones,such as egyptian,sumerian,aegerian,or do you include those which developed at stone age.. oh yeah,i done some google search here-seems like no one agree-http://www.classbrain.com/artaskcb/publish/article_119.shtml http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/38638 http://www.digonsite.com/drdig/neareast/28.html .. i think it's at africa but i may be wrong oh yeah,what about the hobbits?is they considered as civilization? mwc,when u say written history,does it mean their cuneiform?
Dave Posted October 21, 2007 Posted October 21, 2007 what is the oldest known civilization and any artifacts?? Ur. Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur
Mythra Posted October 22, 2007 Posted October 22, 2007 Anyone who is interested in this topic should check out National Geographic's Human Genographic project. It's really good. https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html It's amazing how many thousands of generations of people lived prior to Adam and Eve. Funny the bible doesn't mention them.
R. S. Martin Posted October 22, 2007 Posted October 22, 2007 Anyone who is interested in this topic should check out National Geographic's Human Genographic project. It's really good. https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html It's amazing how many thousands of generations of people lived prior to Adam and Eve. Funny the bible doesn't mention them. Now I know why I felt uncomfortable reading National Geographic back in my teens and twenties when visiting the chiropractor. Articles about skulls tens of thousands of years old would have given me such a weird feeling that I could not have handled it. Not if I was supposed to also believe the Bible. And I was. The attraction was its glossy pictures and interesting articles. It sounded so convincing. But the unsettled feelings won the day.
mwc Posted October 22, 2007 Posted October 22, 2007 mwc,when u say written history,does it mean their cuneiform? As your research shows people can't decide what the first civilization was so I qualified my answer by putting down the group that is generally considered first to have a written language/history (but this too is debatable on whether they were truly the absolute first). mwc
Grandpa Harley Posted October 23, 2007 Posted October 23, 2007 The cities on the Indian side of the Bay of Cambay seem to be older than Ur by a couple of thousand years.
Dave Posted October 23, 2007 Posted October 23, 2007 The cities on the Indian side of the Bay of Cambay seem to be older than Ur by a couple of thousand years. Sure, you can find occupied sites much older than Ur. The question was "civilization" not occupation.
Grandpa Harley Posted October 23, 2007 Posted October 23, 2007 The cities on the Indian side of the Bay of Cambay seem to be older than Ur by a couple of thousand years. Sure, you can find occupied sites much older than Ur. The question was "civilization" not occupation. It's a pretty big 'occupation' involving roads, large stone structures and masses of carved objects and ceramics... but of course, Ur has to be the oldest...
Dave Posted October 23, 2007 Posted October 23, 2007 The cities on the Indian side of the Bay of Cambay seem to be older than Ur by a couple of thousand years. Sure, you can find occupied sites much older than Ur. The question was "civilization" not occupation. It's a pretty big 'occupation' involving roads, large stone structures and masses of carved objects and ceramics... but of course, Ur has to be the oldest... I never said, or hinted, that Ur had to be the oldest. I guess if someone claims that their archeology is "forbidden" then it MUST be true. I'd have to see more than the claims from one website to go against what has been known for quite some time.
Grandpa Harley Posted October 23, 2007 Posted October 23, 2007 Of course... you are quite right... what was I thinking?
perianwalsh Posted October 24, 2007 Posted October 24, 2007 any old civilization alongside ur and bay of cambay?
Dave Posted October 24, 2007 Posted October 24, 2007 any old civilization alongside ur and bay of cambay? Egypt should have something pretty old..... What about Ethopia? They got some real old stuff there. We started there so it only makes sense, kind of, that they should have some kind of ancient civilization.
Dave Posted October 25, 2007 Posted October 25, 2007 i think ethopia is the answer i want. The problem there is that for a long time white skinned inteligencia refused to believe that dark skinned people could form a society.
Jun Posted October 25, 2007 Posted October 25, 2007 China's pretty old too. But before the Chinese there were heavily tattooed Caucasians related to the Celts living there.
Grandpa Harley Posted October 25, 2007 Posted October 25, 2007 The walled city of Zimbabwe is impress and pretty damned old... with very little good archaeology done on the site...
Heimdall Posted October 25, 2007 Posted October 25, 2007 Totally depends on what you mean by civilization...Catal Huyuk located in Anatolia (Turkey) variously dated from 8500 BCE to 6500 BCE (I lean towards the later date because of radiocarbon datings)...this was a full fledged well organized Neolithic city/town of 6000 people and since no traces of a preceding settlement exists, it is reasonable to think that several hundred years (and possibly several millennia) before 6,500 B.C. the site was occupied, found ideal, and then developed from a village into a town, and finally into a city. Archaeologists have mapped out Catal Huyuk-style village sites stretching out over a trade network of hundreds of miles; the city appears to have been the central hub of a widespread population. At certain times of the year this rural population almost certainly congregated at the city for trade, marriage-exchange, and the religious services offered by the city's many shrines and temples. I would say that this one counts as one of the oldest and at least on a temporal par with the "Bay of Cambray" civilization. However, I will say..."watch this space" - mankind was developing all over the globe and I wouldn't be surprized to find that older civilizations existed. - Heimdall
Jun Posted October 25, 2007 Posted October 25, 2007 Totally depends on what you mean by civilization... Across Japan there are numerous sites that show evidence of neolithic villages. These villages contain the worlds first pottery and the period is known as the Jõmon period - 14,000 BCE to 400 BCE. Clustered pit-dwellings are evident all over Japan and are arranged in blocks as modern day cities are, complete with streets and fenced off farming areas. Many of these dwellings have been reconstructed.
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