tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post3697096120600412603..comments2023-09-30T10:36:23.154-05:00Comments on Accidental Historian: AtF: Beware Greeks Bearing GiftsGedshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-74973009070214463562009-08-13T16:46:49.747-05:002009-08-13T16:46:49.747-05:00The point I was trying to make there, was that som...The point I was trying to make there, was that sometimes a different point of view can provide unexpected insights. The archeologists who collected those artifacts were all male, and apparently none of the museum staff were hand spinners.Rhoadanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02375561352677522227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-57400487023398352252009-08-13T16:43:46.278-05:002009-08-13T16:43:46.278-05:00We also more or less ran with a constant refrain t...<i>We also more or less ran with a constant refrain that whenever something was labeled as having "religious ceremonial purposes" that actually meant "we don't know what the hell this is."<br /></i><br /><br />Possibly true, but certainly plausible story that I read in a magazine once. A museum had some disk shaped artifacts with holes in the middle, labeled "unidentified religious items" or words to that effect. A woman visiting the museum took one look at them and said, "Those aren't religious items, they're <a href="http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/spindle-types.shtml" rel="nofollow">spindle whorls.</a>" The museum staff didn't believe her until she produced a spindle of her own and demonstrated how it worked. See, the whorls had been made of stone or some other durable material and shafts had been made of wood which had rotted away. Replacing the shafts made them quite usable. <br /><br />The magazine? I think it was either <i>Piecework</i> or <i>Handspinner</i>.Rhoadanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02375561352677522227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-48319444856168013172009-04-21T09:02:00.000-05:002009-04-21T09:02:00.000-05:00It's no big deal, jessa. I'm guessing that ElderC...It's no big deal, jessa. I'm guessing that ElderChild there won't be back. He seems like a drive-by evangiposter to me.<br /><br />I have no idea what the goal is, though. Everything in it is gibberish to me and you might have noticed that I'm fluent in Christianese and evangelese. My guess is that I'm supposed to read that and think, "Oh, interesting. I wonder if he has more to say," then go to his blog.<br /><br />Not gonna happen.<br /><br />It's kind of like this guy who occasionally pops up and calls bullshit on me for a claim that I made back in August that George Lucas has no real concept of the conflict between good and evil. I mean, he's basically left the exact same comment on the exact same post three times. I actually did go to the guy's site. The first thing I saw was <I>Star Wars</I> fanfic.<br /><br />It amused me.Gedshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-25297718292317668182009-04-20T16:49:00.000-05:002009-04-20T16:49:00.000-05:00Right on. This guy, with his trying to figure out ...Right on. This guy, with his trying to figure out whether ancient peoples were creationists or evolutionists in the modern sense. It's like asking if refugees on boats trying to reach the Florida Keys are Democrats or Republicans. When they get there, they might turn out to be one or the other. But while they're still in the water they don't give a damn about that stuff.<br /><br />So yeah, I wasn't there. But seems to me the really old-school gods came from more something more like desperation. A god was anything that might kill you and your entire family at any time and you didn't know how it worked or why it was there. So you pretend it's a person, 'cause you can sometimes bargain or beg or bribe people not to kill you. Or maybe a god was one of the few things in life that <I>didn't</I> frequently kill your family and friends, so you pretend it's a person so it can maybe help you out with all those other things that are trying to kill you. <br /><br />So yeah, everybody who gave enough of a shit about being alive to try and be part of a social group with culture wouldn't go around saying, "nah, the so-called 'gods' don't even know we exist, and we're all gonna die whether we pray to them or not, and praying to them doesn't actually do anything except maybe make us feel better sometimes." Not only because it would be rude or controversial, but because it would be <I>freaking obvious</I>. <br /><br />It's like a scene in a movie, the characters are all sitting around the bed of some terminally ill character, and for a few minutes they all pretend their dying friend is going to be fine, and they'll all get to go off and have one more grand adventure together. Then the dying friend laughs at how foolish they're being, then everybody else laughs even though they feel they shouldn't, and they all reaffirm their friendship and camaraderie some more. <br /><br />Seems to me in ancient times, people had to have a little bit of that weird "we know it can't possibly be true but we have to believe it because there isn't anything else" optimism all the time. Because life was really hard. So if somebody goes around blaspheming against your gods, it's like they're telling you you might as well give up now and let the wolves eat your children. Because the whole point of having the gods is to give you a reason to hope that the wolves will continue not eating your children, even though you have very little control over the movements of wolves. <br /><br />Or something.Fiat Lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10441862977921307080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-52446971594101578102009-04-20T14:57:00.000-05:002009-04-20T14:57:00.000-05:00Geds: I LOVE Motel of Mysteries! My mother had it ...Geds: I LOVE <I>Motel of Mysteries</I>! My mother had it and let me read it when I was a kid, and I fell in love it (plus I was about 12 and the woman wearing the toilet seat was awesome). I haven't met many people who have heard of it.<br />Sorry to hijack the comments...Leighhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01264241978515946396noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-28679172644496320472009-04-20T10:59:00.000-05:002009-04-20T10:59:00.000-05:00You just reminded me of something, hapax.
I unkno...You just reminded me of something, hapax.<br /><br />I unknowingly read one of the best books ever on the subject of the study of history when I was probably in grade school. It's a book called <I>Motel of the Mysteries</I> by David Macauley. The book takes place some hundreds or thousands of years after the United States is suddenly buried under an avalanche of junk mail. The main person is this Howard Carter-esque archaeologist who accidentally uncovers a perfectly preserved sacred burial chamber and goes through to catalog all of the items inside and illustrate the burial rituals of the lost American civilization.<br /><br />Of course, as you'd guess from the title, what he's actually discovered is a motel room.<br /><br />My favorite professor out at Western started out History 320: Ancient Greece by having us read <I>Motel</I>. That was our baseline for attempting to understand ancient Greece. We also more or less ran with a constant refrain that whenever something was labeled as having "religious ceremonial purposes" that actually meant "we don't know what the hell this is."<br /><br />My mother, who had bought me the book lo those many years ago and loved it, was delighted to learn that I had a professor who used it in college. 300 level, no less...Gedshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-31138814286833277632009-04-20T10:35:00.000-05:002009-04-20T10:35:00.000-05:00Imagine what you'd conclude about American society...<I>Imagine what you'd conclude about American society if all you had to go on were a few official documents</I>There's actually been some wonderful work done on reconstructing the weltanschaungen of "ordinary" illiterate folks in the late medieval period through the use of transcripts of heresy trials. I'm thinking of Le Roy Ladurie, Carlo Ginzburg, and similar researchers.<br /><br />Admittedly, you're not going to come up with rational materialistic empiricists, any more than you would in Classical Greece (Aristotle might approach that, but nobody had the mental vocabulary to construct such a mindset, really.) But you do find a glimpse into the wonderful variety of ways real people shaped their worlds.<br /><br />When I teach medieval philosophy, I sometimes use the example to my students of learning to read. Once you've done that, you simply can't force your brain to look at a roman typeface and NOT make sense (or at least try) of the squiggles and marks on the page. Even looking at, say, Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese ideograms, you *know* somewhere that there is a meaning conveyed beyond the shape of the brushmarks.<br /><br />"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there..."<br /><br />It is equally impossible to try and force a modern Creationist / Evolutionist mindset on Sumerian epic poetry.<br /><br />Nimnuls.hapaxnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-12532671182807021292009-04-20T10:19:00.000-05:002009-04-20T10:19:00.000-05:00dude- what's with you and the trolls . . . and why...dude- what's with you and the trolls . . . and why aren't they over at my blog?<br /><br />I swear- I'm SO much more offensive than geds, who's hardly offensive at all.PersonalFailurehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03034292023591747601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-90622396490361013762009-04-20T09:53:00.000-05:002009-04-20T09:53:00.000-05:00You, uh, you can't really write a letter in cuneif...<I>You, uh, you can't really write a letter in cuneiform...<br /><br /></I>Yeah, and on clay tablets, too. Imagine the postal fees. And how would you store your old letters? I don't think they'd all fit in a box under the bed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-4428038165245461262009-04-20T08:50:00.000-05:002009-04-20T08:50:00.000-05:00to my knowledge there aren't a lot of personal let...<I>to my knowledge there aren't a lot of personal letters or diaries that survive from ancient Mesopotamia</I>I'd be surprised if there were more than a handful. The vast majority of people throughout history were completely illiterate. And that includes ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel (I include Israel because there's this idea that always got pushed in church that the Jewish people were completely literate and boys all learned to memorize the Torah at their fathers' knees, whether their father was a rabbi, mason, or day laborer. Not true).<br /><br />Also, the bar for "literate" was pretty low. In a lot of cases if you could write and recognize your own name you were considered literate.<br /><br />Plus there's the problem that if you get far enough back in to Mesopotamia you're talking cuneiform writing. You, uh, you can't really write a letter in cuneiform...Gedshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-51414154186765475682009-04-19T21:07:00.000-05:002009-04-19T21:07:00.000-05:00I think Cooper just got himself the rich, white, W...I think Cooper just got himself the rich, white, Western European trifecta: co-opt a foreign culture, misinterpret what you find, and ignore anything you don't like!<br /><br /><br /><I>Publicly denying the existence of the gods would have been a really, really good way to get killed in the ancient world.</I>An excellent point. It could also be a lack a primary sources- to my knowledge there aren't a lot of personal letters or diaries that survive from ancient Mesopotamia. Cooper is effectively arguing from ignorance, here. Imagine what you'd conclude about American society if all you had to go on were a few official documents, laws, and the inscriptions on our public monuments...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-16897693587947791872009-04-19T19:38:00.000-05:002009-04-19T19:38:00.000-05:00Creation's Genius has revealed The Creator(GOD, Gr...Creation's Genius has revealed The Creator(GOD, Great Spirit, Father,,,) throughout time.<br /><br />So it is that those with "eyes to see and ears to hear" yet today fellowship with The Creator, and could be more "see" HIM in and of HIS Creation than "see" Him who merely read, yet never experience those "colored marks written on a dead tree" that are bound in a book.......<br /><br />Thankfully The Creator(GOD, Great Spirit, Father,,,) HE yet speaks to HIS Children.......<br /><br />Is anyone listening?<br /><br />Peace, in spite of the dis-ease(religion) that is of this world.......<br /><br />thedestructionoftheearth.wordpress.comelderchildhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09827206019505093406noreply@blogger.com