Why aren't we celebrating the most important historical/prehistorical

>>283562
Homo is the name of our genus. When I refer to Homos, I'm referring to humans, from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens.

Please tell me you're trolling.

>>283649
Of course he's trolling you autist.

>>283669
Do you really think some people wouldn't be that stupid Anon?

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>>283686
>>283649

>>283517
Fuck your dads bone

>>283669
fag

Boy, this thread is going places.

>>283517
species are social constructs shitlord
>not even trolling though

>>283517
>Omo 1
you mean Adam, right?

>you now realize that there are thousands of years of human history before the invention of writing we know basically nothing about
>entire civilizations and peoples could have lived and died without us ever knowing
>the origins of our culture, our languages, and our very species are shrouded in mystery

We need to invent time machines already. Prehistory is just as important as history.

>>284332
>We need to invent time machines already.

Or, you know, get into archaeology. The field studying the past that doesn't rely on writing for knowledge.

Shouldn't the plural of homo be homines?

>>283562
>>283689
>>283797
>>284260
Thanks for contributing to the quality of the board

>>283517
>Prehistoric
>literally "before history"

Isn't this by definition dull as fuck?

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>>284332
>you will never know how perverted early humans really were

Closest thing really.

>>284697
Prehistory is kind of a loaded term disliked by almost every archeaologist I've met.

Recorded history in nearly every case prior to the printing press is just about Kings and bookkeeping. Its a tiny amount of detail, not really representative of what was going on at the time and is often revised or damaged after the fact, obscuring things further.

Most of the actual lives and stories of people throughout most of human existence have been forgotten, and are difficult to see with real clarity. The most interesting voices are silenced.

>>284955
It's rather horrifying that all those thousands of years of humanity will never be heard from again. If those nutjobs on /x/ were right about ayy lmaos actually visiting Earth during our early ages, we would never know.

>>285078
>horrifying

not really though, if those ancient humans were so great they would have left behind great things, instead they left some sticks, a couple bowls, some shaman's ritual objects and stuff that you can literally find still in use among tribes in Papua New Guinea or South America.

>>285142
Well, some left ancient furry shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man

>>285237
>ancient germans were already furries
Wew.

>>285257

furries are more naturally sexualised than most 'normies' who often have terrible body image problems

>>284332
>basically nothing

Archaeology, historical linguistics, comparison with modern societies, etc. Writing is helpful, especially to study of languages and religions, but it's hardly a prerequisite for knowledge about these people.

>>285257
The people inhabiting germany when the lion man was carved have been extinct for tens of thousands of years now.

>>285142
>implying tribal societies aren't the most fascinating and diverse

>>285336
They are fascinating because they are mysterious, if every single tribe in history kept records like we do I would imagine studying those would be the most tedious exercise an historian could do, think about it

>October 14th: Gunna clubbed Punna on the head, killed his son, took his woman, prayed to rain God
>October 15th: tribe killed mountain lion, praised the hunting God, Gunna killed by Punna's brother, life goes on

And so on, every tribal society is by definition a simple society, most of the fun in studying those society is speculation.

>>285142
> the measure of a person is the things they owned

Not sure your ipad makes you greater than the guys navigating the Pacific entirely by memorized star positions relative to time of year and current position. People accomplish incredible things with little more than their heads. The most impressive aspects of a culture or a person's life often doesn't preserve for thousands of years.

>>285387
I have serious difficulties imagining what incredible feats those ancient humans who had to hunt and generally be busy all day doing survival were ever able to accomplish.

Let's not digress into philosophy, it's easy to appoint our modern man knowledge and intelligence to those countless generations of early humans, but in their reality the value of thought was most likely not nearly the same as ours. And indeed the measure of a person was the things they owned and their physical strenght, without those you died whether you were able to memorise the star positions or not.

Those societies were still pretty cool, but still, fairly simple ones that don't necessitate thousands of written records for us to understand.

>>285372
That baseless stereotype of an example you pulled out of your ass sure proves that all tribal bands were exactly the same and hold none of the depth or nuance that every other human social organization on the planet does. These kind of broad, half hearted generalizations are all we need to really understand what's going on.

Try not to strain yourself by getting out of the armchair buddy.

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>>285372

This is oversimplification, your greentext applies to civilisations too. Prehistoric societies are incredibly varied, in their art, religion and mythology (usually far more ingrained in daily life, than to historic peoples, which gives interesting results) , languages, lifestyles (the hugest gap is the contrast between sedentary, agricultural cultures and the hunter-gatherer/pastoralist ones), etc.

I wouldn't exaggerate if I said that Abos and Iroquois are more distinct than Han China and Rome.

>>285452
wew fine, no more jokes just srs debate now.

>>285461
There is no doubt tribal societies are varied and interesting to study, what I'm saying is that we don't really need that many written records to understand how those people lived, so it's not that horrifying that they left none. Do we really need to know every single myth of creation humans ever came up with to progress with research about human history as whole? I don't think we do. Do we need a detailed written explanation of every single artefact dating to prehistoric times to understand how humans eventually came together and formed more complex societies? Not really.

Early humans lived in very varied but still simple societies, it's only natural that they didn't leave many detailed records about their lives, and in some aspect those lives were most likely carried on in similar fashion by every ancient tribe, they all needed to eat and survive nature, that's why they left pointy sticks and bowls instead of exceptional technological artefacts.

>>285461

>see image link on front page
>check it out

I thought I was on /fa/ for a moment.

>>284332
>we need to invent time machines already
I agree completely. Luther has to be stopped.

>>285556
pls go back to Christianity circlejerk threads

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>>285522
> that's why they left pointy sticks and bowls instead of exceptional technological artefacts

Even if they aren't 'exceptional' by modern standards, the development of stone tool technology for example from Oldowan and Acheulean through to Solutrean and Clovis, which take immense skill to create.

Also the progress of different palaeolithic tool and artistic traditions, especially when associated with human evolution seems fascinating to me at least

>>285429
Surviving ice age climatic shifts, predation by mega fauna and continually expanding into new landscapes with nothing going but the tools you craft yourself seems pretty impressive to me.

Your assertion that the "value of thought" of prior humans was less than ours smacks of profound egocentrism. Have you heard about the recent find of Homo Naledi? Human ancestors with as many primitive morphological traits as modern ones who appear to have practiced intentional interment of deceased relatives in a secluded cave system not safely navigable without artificial light (controlled fire use). That says a huge amount about the developmental time line of abstract thought and cultural complexity!

Given this, it seems kind of naive and vain to say that biologically modern Homo Sapiens who lived a mere 20000 years or so ago in non literate pre industrial agriculturalist societies were inherently our intellectual and emotional inferiors because they used biodegradable building materials.

>>285561
I was just making a joke Anon.
We all know who we'd kill if we had a time machine.

>>285556
Lovecraft pls

>>285590
Not Luther King, silly.

>>285595
Sorry meant to quote
>>284332

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>>284332
>Know o King, between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of.

>>285568
It is fascinating certainly, especially because it's all shrouded in an aura of mystery, that is also caused by the complete lack of written or understandable records.
That single tool you posted probably took generations upon generations of human to evolve into the perfect example you posted, this is the thing, up until relatively recently humans accomplished things during very stretched out periods of time, you are right when you talk about human evolution, that is definitely an interesting field but it's not the same as human history, which is not much about evolution in a biologic sense but more about the events that late humans were able to record and the knowledge they were able to pass onto the next generations via scripture.

The fact that most products of early human intellect are now gone and we don't know a single thing about the majority of people who lived before writing existed still doesn't keep us from understanding to an adequate degree how their societies worked, those simple tools reflect simple societies and anything more complex would be unnatural.

>>285626
>those simple tools reflect simple societies and anything more complex would be unnatural

Your whole argument is that simple tools imply simple society. Why?

>>283669
Do you really think someone would do that? Just go on 4chan and troll threads?

>>285574
>Surviving ice age climatic shifts, predation by mega fauna and continually expanding into new landscapes with nothing going but the tools you craft yourself

none of those things are particularly impressive if you want to showcase the importance of articulate thought in humans, and we definitely don't need detailed records to understand how they managed to do it, it's instinct.

To answer to your second sentence, that is amazing if it were true, but it is really just speculation in the end, which brings me back to my previous point: most of the fun in studying primitive societies is speculation and trying to figure out why they did things, detailed recorda re not necessary to do that and they actually defeat the purpose, so there is that dilemma for an anthropologist I guess.

Last sentence: I never implied they were inferior in any way, they simply lacked the means to access the cumulated experience of their ancestors and their enlightened peers, which is the act of writing things down. This prevented them from forming very complex societies or means to exploit resources efficiently, to compensate I'm sure their imagination was much more developed than ours.

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>>284332
>the origins of our culture, our languages, and our very species are shrouded in mystery

There's something creepy about that.

Sometime ago, I was reading on Chinese history, and the first recorded Dynasty, the Shang, pretty much speaks of thousands of years of history prior, which is only known in China as the Xia Dynasty and the legendary period of the 5 Sovereigns.

And this can be seen in a lot of the early civilizations: them speaking of stuff that happened way earlier.

>>285658
Because simple needs only require simple tools and in turn simple tools don't allow for any desire for more efficiency in satisfying a person needs.

The division of work and specialisation of workforce are essential in creating advanced tools, both of these things are very hard to achieve in primitive societies for many reasons.

>>284332
The past a shit. Our planet has literally billions of years left before it's engulfed by the expansion of Sol as it transforms to a red giant. I'm more curious about what humanity is going to do in the coming 100,000 years of history (which will actually be recorded).

>>285674
This stuff isn't true when looking at archaeological record, though. These were mostly myths made hundreds or thousands years later.

>>285720
Sometimes it is true. There were Minoans before Hellenes. We don't even know what they were called, we give them the name Minoan because of Athenian myths about them. The Egyptians called them Sea People.

Meanwhile, the Hellenes themselves were living in the ruins of their ancient ancestors. They had megalithic city walls that they had preserved no knowledge of building, and didn't know where they came from. So, they concluded that they were built by giants, since obviously men couldn't move blocks that massive.

In the near east, the city of Nineveh was known to the Assyrians in the 2nd century BC, but they didn't know that it was built by Akkadians six millennia earlier. They attributed its construction to a completely different people who they had wiped out and subjugated. The Akkadians themselves, of course, suffered the same fate.

Today, the ancient city of Nineveh is mirrored by the modern Iraqi city of Mosul. People are still living in basically the same town as one of the most ancient human cities to ever exist. More recently, the Islamic State conquered the city, repeating once again the timeless cycle. They dynamited Nineveh's city walls, that have stood for 8-10 thousand years. Walls that just a few years ago American soldiers were taking cover in during their warfighting.

I don't know about you nerds, but that makes my hair stand on end.

>>285748
>The Egyptians called them Sea People.
Negro please, we still aren't sure who the fuck exactly the Sea Peoples were, to blatantly identify them with the Minoans is bold as fuck.

>>285720
The only support for Xia Dynasty *is* archaeological record: the Erlitou Culture to be exact.

Also this >>285748

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>>285755
If you take into account the Athenian myths, it seems pretty clear they must have been the Minoans. Also, there is strong archeological evidence that the Minoans were extensive traders, excellent seafarers (probably the best in the world at the time), and highly organized to the point they could pull off the sorts of things the Greeks and Egyptians say they did.

Who knows, maybe one day we'll decipher Linear A and we can hear the Minoans speak of their subjugation of neighboring peoples.

>>285748
>it was built by Akkadians six millennia earlier
For your own sake I hope you meant centuries and not millennia because otherwise this would be the most retarded shit posted this week.

>>285776
No, anon. Millennia. That place is beyond ancient.

> area was settled as early as 6000 BC and, by 3000 BC, had become an important religious center for worship of the Akkadian goddess Ishtar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh

>>285763
Chinese archaeologists are shilling for Erlitou as Xia, but there is no reason to accept this. There is some book I think where the author discusses Xia as only legendary dynasty designed as an opposite of Shang.

Also I wasn't talking about things like Greeks and Minoans. It was more about stuff like the Sumerian King List, where the first kings rule for thousands of years or Japanese Emperor being descendant of Amaterasu, which are both obviously false and mythical.

>>285775
>it seems pretty clear they must have been the Minoans
"No." The Phoenicians / Ugaritians also adopted elements from the Minoan culture thanks to the extensive sea trade, that alone doesn't make them Minoan.

> excellent seafarers (probably the best in the world at the time)
It could've been the Sardinians as well, seeing as they were pirates fucking up the eastern Mediterranean for centuries and feared even by the Minoans.
Or it could've been a migration wave from northern Anatolia, fuck knows.


>we can hear the Minoans speak of their subjugation of neighboring peoples
Even if it was the Minoans, it was less of a mere subjugation and more of a colossal desperate migrational period.

>>285796
Assyrians already had Nineveh around 1500 BC, which separates them from the Akkadian empire by less than 1000 years and from ancient Akkadians by around 1000 to 1500. If there was a 6000 year gap between those two civilizations it would put the Akkadians in 7500 BC which is horseshit.

>but muh settlement in 6000 BC

Settlement =/= city. A bunch of goat herders living in huts qualifies as a settlement, but the first city we know is Eridu which was founded around 5400 BC.

>>285842
>colossal desperate migrational period
If that were so, it would more support the Minoans, since there's strong evidence of their culture collapsing catastrophically nearly overnight, possibly due to an earthquake and tsunami.

> A bunch of goat herders living in huts qualifies as a settlement, but the first city we know is Eridu
Well, we can nitpick, but by your standards the first city would be Wadi Hammeh 27 which is 12,000 years old.

>>285911
>If that were so, it would more support the Minoans, since there's strong evidence of their culture collapsing catastrophically nearly overnight, possibly due to an earthquake and tsunami.
The thing is Minoans weren't the only people in the Aegean island region. It might as well have been the Pelasgians / unknown Cycladean group from the north who would've been affected by the Theran eruption just the same.

>Well, we can nitpick, but by your standards the first city would be Wadi Hammeh 27 which is 12,000 years old.
Actually "by my standards" it would've been the other way around, the first city was still Eridu. You were the one implying Nineveh was already a city in 6000 BC, which is bullshit, and by Akkadians no less, which is even bigger bullshit, seeing as the earliest records of Akkadian language we have is from the early 2000s BC when they adopted civilization from the Sumerians, so they obviously can't be predating them.