01-30-2019, 11:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-30-2019, 11:24 PM by bigcat1969.)
When Europeans started exploring North Africa near the Mediterranean coast, they found many massive stone structures.There two tall stone columns pointed skyward with a short stone connecting the two on top. This reminded them of Stonehenge. Some of these structures were close together and all had a flat stone at the base with grooves. This led to several highly successful books about ancient heathen cults that featured human sacrifice since the flat stones with grooves were manifestly for the blood of the victims to be carried away. Someone finally asked a Mediterranean farmer about these Stonehenge like cult objects and he said, "Oh you mean the old Roman olive presses?"
The very first written documents were tax records. This makes sense when you consider that early towns were basically leeches on the food supply of farmers. Taxes would have had to proceed governments. To the early farmers tax collectors and bandits would have been synonymous. This explains why the first ever written recipe was how to make beer.
In the mid 1800s in India, British railway engineers needed solid material to lay the rails on. The local folk told them about an abandoned city with lots of old mud bricks. The Brits happily used them to lay 93 miles of track. Later it was discovered that these were 4,000 year old bricks from a completely unknown civilization that might have been larger than ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt or China. So vast portions of one of the most important archeological sites in the world were destroyed for track ballast.
'Help a historian, burn down a library'. This is an aphorism rarely seen at your local book repository. Yet several of the best textual finds in place like Mesopotamia and Greece have been because of ancient fires. The writing was done on mud or clay tablets and when the building they were in caught fire, the tablets were baked and survived for millennium.
Before the great dark age of Greece, there was a script used that defied all attempts to translate it. Finally a clever young man wondered if it was the same language as later Greek, but using a different alphabet. He was right. The Greeks had forgotten how to write and read, but they still spoke and used the same language as their forefathers and foremothers. When they decided to take up literacy again they just borrowed the Phonetician alphabet and assigned their sounds to the new letters. With this discovery in hand translators excitedly set to work only to find out that all the old tablet contained were long lists of possessions and land. Yup once again the ancient writing was used for tax records. Oddly we know the name of a cow, but not the name of any of the ancient kings.
Athen's main governing body was chosen by luck once a year. There were 10 'tribes' and each drew stones from a jug type thingie and the the ones that got the black stones ruled along with 499 other 'lucky' winners. Could it be any worse than Congress here in the US? That is more or less true anyway, there seem to be conflicting accounts of how people were chosen by lot, and at times it seems 1000 were chosen and 100 elected and all 1100 put in a poll for government jobs including the 500 person council. Still odd either way.
The very first written documents were tax records. This makes sense when you consider that early towns were basically leeches on the food supply of farmers. Taxes would have had to proceed governments. To the early farmers tax collectors and bandits would have been synonymous. This explains why the first ever written recipe was how to make beer.
In the mid 1800s in India, British railway engineers needed solid material to lay the rails on. The local folk told them about an abandoned city with lots of old mud bricks. The Brits happily used them to lay 93 miles of track. Later it was discovered that these were 4,000 year old bricks from a completely unknown civilization that might have been larger than ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt or China. So vast portions of one of the most important archeological sites in the world were destroyed for track ballast.
'Help a historian, burn down a library'. This is an aphorism rarely seen at your local book repository. Yet several of the best textual finds in place like Mesopotamia and Greece have been because of ancient fires. The writing was done on mud or clay tablets and when the building they were in caught fire, the tablets were baked and survived for millennium.
Before the great dark age of Greece, there was a script used that defied all attempts to translate it. Finally a clever young man wondered if it was the same language as later Greek, but using a different alphabet. He was right. The Greeks had forgotten how to write and read, but they still spoke and used the same language as their forefathers and foremothers. When they decided to take up literacy again they just borrowed the Phonetician alphabet and assigned their sounds to the new letters. With this discovery in hand translators excitedly set to work only to find out that all the old tablet contained were long lists of possessions and land. Yup once again the ancient writing was used for tax records. Oddly we know the name of a cow, but not the name of any of the ancient kings.
Athen's main governing body was chosen by luck once a year. There were 10 'tribes' and each drew stones from a jug type thingie and the the ones that got the black stones ruled along with 499 other 'lucky' winners. Could it be any worse than Congress here in the US? That is more or less true anyway, there seem to be conflicting accounts of how people were chosen by lot, and at times it seems 1000 were chosen and 100 elected and all 1100 put in a poll for government jobs including the 500 person council. Still odd either way.