Minimalist wrote:There you go again. Assuming that every detail has to be identical.
They probably stood around admiring their painting and longing for the day when someone would invent "Beer."
got this faint hunch that the guys i'm talking about weren't hunting for sport. and, serious to your serious, if cave paintings aren't some kind of attempt at formal, symbolic communication, then what the hell are they?
I don't have a problem with the idea that any artist has a reason for expending the effort to make a painting or sculpture that he is trying to communicate.
I don't accept the notion that all such communication is related to magic or religion.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
please post some source for this assertion. but my point is what stops people from learning outside the scribe school? why wouldn't friends teach other friends outside of school?
thus how do we know that education was limited to a formal setting as this?
I would post the most comprehensive collection of sumerian texts available online but you wouldn't understand how to use it so here this instead, scroll down to the bottom, note how almost every text has a gods name in it http://www.earth-history.com/Sumer/sume ... -dream.htm
friends wouldn't have any motivation to teach anyone else
to start with it took over seven years to become qualified as the most basic of scribes and secondly because it was a trade. why would you teach your friend farming if he was an engineer. you think hed want to spend every moment of his freetime learning something that he'd never be able to use.so that he could read for himself stories that were read out loud publically at the temples anyway
and they've excavated the scribe schools. they typically learned by copying a tutors text onto their own piece of clay
in sumerian the first few words were
Gods
Peoples
Holy
wooden
box
they found millions and millions of discarded tablets like this
luckily nobody found them who didn't know what they were or they might have got some funny ideas
if cave paintings aren't some kind of attempt at formal, symbolic communication, then what the hell are they?
commuication of strategy, communication of the hunt recently completed, communication to tell others where to go hunt, artwork, graffittii etc.
what i also had in mind was the circle discussed in the other topic 'europe's oldest civilization' and how they were automatically deemed to be temples without any supporting texts.
now are these designations just based upon the assumptions of archaeologist because that is they way they want to present the past or are they too afraid to portray ancient cultures as normal modern ones?
I don't have a problem with the idea that any artist has a reason for expending the effort to make a painting or sculpture that he is trying to communicate.
I don't accept the notion that all such communication is related to magic or religion.
aha. just figured it out. its obvious that your guy just plain don't know how to paint his cave!
and i wasn't going down the magic or religion road, just only one specific point on the communication road. if you cant corrall a horse to present his ass, then how do present (symbolically) the horse's ass so that the communication gets through? this problem plagues multinational corporations to this day - dang- we haven't progressed as much as i'd hoped. as a matter of fact, maybe we haven't progressed attall.
and as i'm gaining momentum on the end of the diving board here, what possible benefit can be gained from symbolic communication as it relates to the survival of a species? last word i have is that we're not only killing ourselves off, we're taking the rest of the world with us.
I would post the most comprehensive collection of sumerian texts available online but you wouldn't understand how to use it
you would be surprised at what i understand so please post those links.
friends wouldn't have any motivation to teach anyone else
i will disagree with you here as people being people , there are those wanting tolearn but can't go to those schools or failioes wanted to learn from the one son or whatever. i think it would be wrong to limit education to a few lucky ones, maybe formal education was but informal has always been done.
I would post the most comprehensive collection of sumerian texts available online but you wouldn't understand how to use it
you would be surprised at what i understand so please post those links.
friends wouldn't have any motivation to teach anyone else
i will disagree with you here as people being people , there are those wanting tolearn but can't go to those schools or failioes wanted to learn from the one son or whatever. i think it would be wrong to limit education to a few lucky ones, maybe formal education was but informal has always been done.
come on guys, we're involved in a serious discussion here about whether the great white hunter has the physical skill base to paint his den.
and how they were automatically deemed to be temples without any supporting texts.
You can't expect "texts" in pre-literate societies, arch. Less direct evidence is needed. Such as burials within those circles.
So, if they find burials inside a circle then I could be persuaded that it was a cemetary. Does that make it "religious?" Atheists have to bury their dead too and perhaps the circle was just a means to keep animals away.
Then again....if they find a circle with scads of sheep shit in it, I am going to hold out for my corral theory.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
then how do present (symbolically) the horse's ass so that the communication gets through?
Well.....I'd use something like this.
But, that's just me.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
and i wasn't going down the magic or religion road, just only one specific point on the communication road.
I get what your saying but the whole point of the thread was the nearly automatic reaction of archaeology to ascribe all human behavior to "ritual" when they have no other answer.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Since then they have found others even older, though the jury is still out on them.
Back in a hunter/gatherer society women needed a hunter; mate, son or whatever. Children would have been important for late life survival. I can see women inventing a goddess who could give them sons and get them through childbirth. Childbirth is still scary in this day and age, I shudder to think what it was like then.
imo fear is a big motivator for searching for something outside oneself to pray to/placate, hence the prevalence of 'religious' artifacts being found. Besides all those really poor hunters had to have something to do(early priesthood) so the good hunters didn't just get rid of them
and i wasn't going down the magic or religion road, just only one specific point on the communication road.
I get what your saying but the whole point of the thread was the nearly automatic reaction of archaeology to ascribe all human behavior to "ritual" when they have no other choice.
i hate to say this, but archaeology has not been at all immune from the big whatever question, and has suffered grievously from it. which further confuses matters when mixed with religion. a while back you said i was being "too hard on science". - as far as i'm concerned both religion and science are battling for the snake oil market, with very dubious results.
and i'm presenting the thought that both archaeology and religion can be examined from an existential rather than a ritual viewpoint. cf. my opinion on how people ended up in the americas.
Well, I'm from the "man created god" school.....mainly for the reasons that Starflower noted above. Thus separating the two seems fairly pointless.
I suspect that archaeology takes the 'god route' simply because it is easiest.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
You can't expect "texts" in pre-literate societies, arch.
the big question is, were they pre-literate/ since we really don't know exactly when writing started but that is another topic. one would think that these early societies if interested in history, and we know that the baylonians were, along with the future, that some sort of ancient record would have survived.
now i am aware that there are thousands of inscriptians, tablets, clay shards undeciphered, so there is a possibility of more information forthcoming.
Does that make it "religious?"
no and neither does the artwork of ancient civilizations. it is like saying that a household, in modern times, found with a Bible were christians when we know that isn't true. many non-religious people have Bibles in their homes,, given to them as gifts or bought for their children and so on yet toassume that all were christian would be idealistic and thatis what i am thinking with this trend to paint all ancient households with the same brush.
