Ye Olde World

Sub-Pages

▪ Religion, God & a big Picture - Concepts in Religions and their effect on civilisations and society.

▪ Civilisations - a Timeline - A linear look at the history of civilisations as well as the incidence of religion.

▪ Mythology of Mesopotamia - Ancient origins of our stories, folklore and mythology.

▪ Canaan - looking beyond ancient Mesopotamia.

-:: When looking at Ancient Society ::-

History, Legend & Mythology - What's the difference?

What do they mean?:-

History - A narrative of actual past events which is verified through independent records or scientific methods. Ideally, history should be unbiased.

Mythology - Folklore or stories about a nation (or peoples) which were used to explain their origins, their world and environment.

Legend - A mix of history and mythology - Typically, historical figures or events which are embellished together with mythological stories.

Example : Which Bible characters are historical? - by UsefulCharts on YouTube

Mythology

Mythology exists to explain the world around us, especially in the absence of science and technology at the time. Civilisations create social cultures which evolve over time and they explain their world in terms of stories, folklore and myths. How was the world created? What is thunder and lightning? How did our king come to be? What is in the forest to be aware of? Popular myths are passed along to different nations and civilisations over time. It become part of customs, traditions and is absorbed into religious literature.

Fact -vs- Legend

Great heroes and leaders are revered and celebrated by their people. Historical fact eventually becomes blurred with romanticised legend. History is intermingled with the popular folklore of that culture and, in this way, their great deeds become immortalised. Quite an honour.

Two famous examples of "romanticised" history are (1) the Romance of Alexander, and (2) the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

● The factual history of Alexander (the great) of Macedon [356 - 323 BC] is gleaned from literature written by his commanders (eg. Nearchus) to record his battles. However, his conquests were of such great influence that his legend inspired multiple versions of his romanticised story.

● The factual history on the Period of the Three Kingdoms [220-280 AD] is contained in the "Records of the Three Kingdoms", which is an important military record detailing the use of strategy, diplomacy and deceit. However, it was very dry reading and so was re-written (c. 1370 AD) by GuanZhong in a romanticised version making the storyline more dramatic, making the characters more memorable and still maintaining the important military details. To this day, it is one of the most popular stories from China known throughout the world.

Literacy in ancient times

Why are most of old literature composed as Epics?

Epic - A long poem or narrative poetic composition, typically relating the adventures of heroic characters/ events.

Epics were developed from ancient oral tradition. There used to be specialist storytellers called Reciters and their profession was to re-tell epic stories to their audiences. With rhyming lines and syllable metering, when composed as poems, the Epics were easier to remember and recite.

Why didn't they just write it down and read it aloud?

Throughout history, most people were illiterate because most people had no need for literacy. Everything they knew could be explained, taught and passed along orally; by word of mouth.

So why did they invent writing?

Writing was invented for record-keeping. The oldest script was Cuneiform from Sumeria and were pictograms to communicate messages in an understandable way to another city which spoke a different language. This script was not phonetic (it didn't spell out words) and instead used symbols to represent meaning.

Why record-keeping?

Basically, accounting to manage their food and resources. Also, as verification for logistics deliveries. Eventually, the people did record their mythology, legends and history for posterity.

Who composed the Epics?

A lot of the content of Epics would have been orally passed down many generations (by word of mouth). Legends to portray a heroic king would have been commissioned by the palace and composed by the professionals of the time. However, composers (or story compilers) did not physically write.

Who did all the writing down?

Actual writing down was done by Scribes, who were skillful manuscript makers. The Scribes would sometimes add paintings and decorations to the manuscripts. As printing was not yet invented, Scribes were also the copiers; to make copies of master scripts/ tablets.

People & Places : What's in a Name?

Why do we need to have names for people and places? Actually we don't need to have names but it's highly convenient to have "unique identifying sounds" to refer to a person or place; otherwise there would be a lot of "him" and "there" to confuse people.

A short story: You washed up on a deserted island as a baby. What's your name? You don't have one because there is no one there to call out and refer to you.

One day, an animal washes up. You call it "Animal".

The next day, another animal washes up and so you have to make a distinction between them. You call one "Dog" and the other one "Cat" as they happen to be a dog and cat.

While wandering, you find a woman who was also washed up as a baby. You call her "Woman" and she calls you "Man".

This is all in the language that you are inventing over time.

Several hundred years later, the island is discovered by explorers. After establishing language translation, they ask for the names of everything.

Not surprisingly, in your language, your tribe is named "People", the river is named "River" and a volcano is named "Volcano". There are men and women with names like "Tall", "Dark", "Handsome", "Pearl", "Bosom" and "Fury".

Actually, all names began as just descriptions to uniquely identify a person or place. For example, "Adam" means "a Man" in Hebrew. Most cultures still retain the meanings of people's names like "fragrant flower" or "tall leaf" or "red eagle" or "moonlight".

Many places have names like "New-Town" or "Weigh-Bridge" or "Hills-Borough" or "West-Hamlet".

As populations increase, names are not so unique anymore and so a second-name becomes needed from which there are many sources:-

▪ from a parent's name: eg. Bjorn-son, bin Abdullah, Jacobs-dottir, fitz-Patrick, Abraham-ovich, Amund-sen;

▪ from a clan name: eg. Lee, Campbell, Chopra;

▪ by vocation: eg. smith, miller, baker, silver-man;

▪ by place description: eg. ford, marsh, hill, dell;

▪ by place name: eg. da Vinci, van Gogh, el Baghdadi, de Albuquerque, al-Razi.

Ancient Origins

As far as we know, the earliest civilisations were :-

● Ancient Mesopotamia - 4500 BC in Iraq - West Asia

● Norte Chico (or Caral Supe) - 3500 BC in Peru - South America.

● Indus Harappa (Indus Valley) - 3300 BC in Afghanistan, Pakistan & North-West India - South Asia.

● Ancient Egypt - 3100 BC in Egypt - North-East Africa

● Ancient China - 2070 BC in China - East Asia

Deciphering Ancient Languages

The Rosetta Stone and the Behistun Inscription were instrumental in our ability to translate ancient languages.

The Rosetta Stone was found in the Nile delta, Egypt. The stone tablet from 196 BC basically spelt out a decree concerning King Ptolemy V engraved identically in 3 languages: Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. By knowing the Greek language, researchers were able to decipher the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

The Behistun Inscription is a massive rock relief in Iran. The inscription from 521 BC tells the story of King Darius I (the Great) engraved identically in 3 Cuneiform languages: Akkadian (Babylonian), Elamite and Old Persian. Cuneiform is made up of small triangle marks and is pressed onto clay by using a small flat stick. Mesopotamian Cuneiform used pictograms or symbols to represent words and had a major influence on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. However the cuneiform used for Old Persian was alphabetic and so was translated using Middle Persian.

Similarly, the Karatepe Bilingual from southern Anatolia c.750 BC had identical inscriptions in Phoenician alphabet as well as Luwian hieroglyphs.

Behistun Inscription [source- WikiCommons].

Other Topics :-

Reproduction & Survival of the Species

Hunter Gatherer

Safety in Numbers

Ownership & Territorial Conquest

City-states and Civilisation

Kings & Feudalism

Class Structure

{I will write these section very soon}