How do we find our past?

reply to post by Byrd


I admit it has been probably 15 years since I last read it.

Still I remember enjoying it.

reply to post by Chamberf=6


I remember finding it tedious - but then I never had the temperment of an anthroplogist. I remember I had to read that at the same time we started the lithics classes - which were far more interesting!

Adding:

For documents dealing with building did find this note: This building noted below was under construction from 300 BC to 200 AD

A few years after the Parthenon restoration began, University of Pennsylvania scholar Lothar Haselberger was on a field trip exploring the Temple of Apollo’s innermost sanctuary. He noticed what seemed to be patterns of faint scratches on the marble walls. In the blinding morning sunlight the scratches are all but invisible, as I discovered to my initial frustration when I searched for them. After the sun had swung around and began grazing the surface, however, a delicate web of finely engraved lines started to emerge. Haselberger recalls, “All of a sudden I spotted a series of circles that corresponded precisely to the shape of a column base, the very one at the front of the temple.” He realized he had discovered the ancient equivalent of an architect’s blueprint.

Link

Adding: The Gudea cylinders from the 3rd

Cylinders

And a birds eye view of a plan for a house

reply to post by Druid42

Great thread, Druid!...I'm really enjoying it. I'm pretty sure that the oldest surviving book was The Epic of Gilgamesh; a Sumerian cunieform epic written on a series of clay tablets between 4 and 5000 years ago.

www.ancienttexts.org...

reply to post by Hanslune

When it comes to a discussion of the oldest books detailing architectural or construction plans, let's not forget The Old Testament.
"...the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits".
Genesis, Chapter 8

reply to post by Hanslune


So not a blueprint, but a written record of construction. 3rd century BCE. Just coming out of the Stone Age, entering the Bronze, and yet, able to build precise structures without working with Iron. I believe in exponential advancement of technology, but I'd consider that to be rather anomalous.

Sorry for baiting you, but I'm trying to draw out your thoughts.

reply to post by IAMTAT


Hi, TAT,

Thanks for joining in the conversation. Your thoughts, as always, are insightful and honest.

Originally posted by Druid42
reply to post by Hanslune

 

So not a blueprint, but a written record of construction. 3rd century BCE. Just coming out of the Stone Age, entering the Bronze, and yet, able to build precise structures without working with Iron. I believe in exponential advancement of technology, but I'd consider that to be rather anomalous.

Sorry for baiting you, but I'm trying to draw out your thoughts.

That is fine; I didn't know the answer and have been researching and asking the question on other websites. 'Blueprints' in the since of complicated plans probably didn't come into existence until the renaissance - but I suspect the Chinese or Indians may have used complex drawings prior to that. I would think that in most cases if there were drawings they were considered the secrets of the craftman doing the construction. So the answer to where are the drawings of the pyramids is; there were never any and people didn't start doing that intil thousands of years later - AFAWK

Why would you consider it 'anomalous' - compared to what?

reply to post by Druid42

Found this webpage; it includes examples of everything from the oldest example of a written recipe to the oldest math lesson.
www.historyofinformation.com...

Originally posted by Druid42
So then, given your comments (everyone) so far, I guess it's safe to assume that verbal communication established itself early on in the pre-historical record, with many architectural feats being achieved throughout the ancient world being built by word of mouth alone?

Could be that the pyramids were carefully planned in writng. But they wrote on papyrus, which doesn't keep well and they were prone to re-using it too.

Once the thing was built, they may have "recycled" the papyrus.

Originally posted by Druid42
reply to post by Hanslune

 

So not a blueprint, but a written record of construction. 3rd century BCE. Just coming out of the Stone Age, entering the Bronze, and yet, able to build precise structures without working with Iron.

The Bronze Age on mainland Greece began 2500 years before that.

Harte

reply to post by Harte


An aside shipwrights built ships up to a 1,000 tons without documentation until the 17th century. Smaller ships are built today. I've watch dhows being built in Muscat and Dubai of 400 tons based on the skill of shipwrights alone, no documentation

reply to post by Harte

reply to post by IAMTAT

OOPS...LETS TRY THIS AGAIN...

Writing board with an architectural drawing, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, ca. 1550–1295 b.c.
Egyptian; From western Thebes
Plastered and painted wood :
www.metmuseum.org...

Originally posted by IAMTAT
reply to post by IAMTAT

 

OOPS...LETS TRY THIS AGAIN...

Writing board with an architectural drawing, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, ca. 1550–1295 b.c.
Egyptian; From western Thebes
Plastered and painted wood :
www.metmuseum.org...

Nice find.

What does it mean? That is, so what? It's 18th Dynasty first, and the pyramids are all around the 4th.

Secondly, the thing is wood, which is why it's been preserved. Writing and drawing on stone has also been preserved.

Where are the papyri from the 4th dynasty? Show me some of those.

If you decide to look, I suspect you'll find a claim of the "oldest papyrus" being that from the era of King Assa around 2600 BC, which is the right time period.

The reference for this claim is usually given as "The Paleography of Greek Papyri" by Kenyon in 1899.

If we've never found an older piece of papyrus since then, I doubt one exists (though Kenyon has the date wrong - they all did in 1899.)
Here's the pertinant page of Kenyon's book:
Link

Let me know if you ever find a picture of this scrap of ancient papyrus.

Harte

reply to post by Harte


20th. Dynasty papyrus:

"...Also discovered were two sketched plans, drawn on papyrus and flakes of stone, that show the accuracy of the architect's work.

The actual plan of Ramesses the Fourth's tomb was made on a piece of papyrus that is now preserved in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy. Architectural elements, colors, and captions for the tomb drawings are depicted in detail on this papyrus."

From:
www.eternalegypt.org...

Originally posted by IAMTAT
reply to post by IAMTAT

 

OOPS...LETS TRY THIS AGAIN...

Writing board with an architectural drawing, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, ca. 1550–1295 b.c.
Egyptian; From western Thebes
Plastered and painted wood :
www.metmuseum.org...

Excellent!.. and in a top down view also; there is a second one like this that I saw long ago. Seeing this reminded me of it

Originally posted by Druid42

We learned survival skills, and prospered. As we advanced into the Neolithic Age, we survived by using a Lunar Calendar, but didn't keep track of years. The Lunar Calendar told us when to plant crops, and when to harvest, but the aspect of lineal time was meaningless to our ancestors.

We tinkered with writing, and recording our thoughts. No doubt we had languages, and that we could speak to one another, but until writing was developed, which marks the beginning of recorded history, nobody really knows what occurred.

Writing development timeline. A good reference link.

Among many ancient societies, writing held a extremely special and important role. Often writing is so revered that myths and deities were drawn up to explain its divine origin.

In ancient Egypt, for example, the invention of writing is attributed to the god Thoth (Dhwty in Egyptian), who was not only the scribe and historian of the gods but also kept the calendar and invented art and science. In some Egyptian myths, Thoth is also portrayed as the creator of speech and possessing the power to transform speech into material objects. This ties in closely with the Egyptian belief that in order for a person to achieve immortality his or her name must be spoken or inscribed somewhere forever.

In Mesopotamia, among the Sumerians the god Enlil was the creator of writing. Later during Assyrian, and Babylonian periods, the god Nabu was credited as the inventor of writing and scribe of the gods. And similar to Thoth, Mesopotamian scribal gods also exhibit the power of creation via divine speech.
Among the Maya, the supreme deity Itzamna was a shaman and sorceror as well as the creator of the world. (In fact, the root of his name, "itz", can be roughly translated as "magical substance, usually secreted by some object, that sustains the gods"). Itzamna was also responsible for the creation of writing and time-keeping. Strangely enough, though, Itzamna isn't a scribal god. This duty falls on usually a pair of monkey gods as depicted on many Maya pots and is also preserved in the highland Maya epic "Popol Vuh". Still, in one rare case, the scribe is a "rabbit".

In China, the invention of writing was not attributed to a deity but instead to a ancient sage named Ts'ang Chieh, who was a minister in the court of the legendary Huang Ti (Yellow Emperor). While not divine, this invention occurred in mythological times, and served as a communication tool between heaven (realm of gods and ancestors) and earth (realm of humans), as demonstrated by the inscribed oracle bones used for divination during historical times.

Whether as a medium to communicate with the gods, or as a magical or supernatural power, writing cleared possesed a divine nature in these ancient cultures. Hence, writing became not only a way to extend memory but also a tool for the elite to justify their rule upon the common, illiterate people.

Source.

The pyramids were allegedly built around 3200 BCE, but that's the same period of time that hieroglyphs were invented. There's no written record of the pyramids being built. I find that to be odd. Are the building of the pyramids actually a pre-historic event? It could appear so.

The Solar Calendar was the next important innovation to make writing more important. Ancient civilizations began to record the years, with the Mayan developing their calendar around 5000 BCE. The Egyptian calendar dates back to 4,236 BCE, the Jewish calender to 3,761 BCE, the Chinese calendar to 2,357 BCE, and of course, our modern Gregorian calender dates to year 0. Isn't it odd that calendars pre-date written scripts? Shouldn't the two have mutually evolved?

I've always wondered about the aspects of "intervention" in our pre-historic past. Are the myths based in reality? Perhaps it's just our incomplete understanding our own past. Maybe someday, we'll know the answers.

Your thoughts?

That quote...

About material being formed from speech...
I just couldn't get the thought from my head of God's breath caused man to live, and that Thoth's speech created material, and Mesopotamian creation through divine speech

reply to post by mr10k


From the Bible:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

From The Enuma Elish:
(Babylonian Creation Epic)

"When heaven above was not yet named
Nor earth below pronounced by name,
Apsu, the first one,
their begetter ..."

So "Whats in a Name?"...according to the Ancients,..EVERYTHING!

reply to post by IAMTAT


One might well argue that Mankind's receiving of, or his developing, the 'gift' of communication (verbal, as well as written), could be the original (and, perhaps, forbidden) 'fruit' of the knowledge of good and evil...given that the 'fruit' of any endeavor involving skills or abilities is synonymous with the end result of their utilization.

The ability of humans to communicate information (verbally or through the written word) could literally (and biblically) be construed as a Divine attribute, garnered through whatever means, by the human animal.

This, then, allowed them (us) to take 'the fruit' of our new knowledge of the good and the evil we individually experience...and pass it along to others, thereby seperating and differentiating one individual from another.

"Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."
- Matthew 7:20

reply to post by IAMTAT


In other words: Language, or the communication of information, is the most awesome ability Mankind possesses.

It is our ideas which not only individually define us, but through their communication, ideas make manifest in the physical world, that which previously did not exist.

This singular ability, in and of itself, is truely Divine in nature (literally, figuratively...and biblically).