Desiree
Member
Member # 2991
Member Rated:
posted 05-27-2006 03:04 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jaime,
Save the talking down to people aspect of your commentaries for people not as familiar with your crap as I am. In the first place, you are the pseudo-scientist, you've gotten all the information for your so-called theory from the Bible, hardly an accurate historical document, you haven't even read Plato (or at least understood him), you ignore all the evidence that doesn't support your theory and you persist in this ridiculous that the Greeks and Egyptians mistook Israel, an area thar they traded with, visited and warred with, with Atlantis.
Catal Hoyuk and Jericho were both settlements, not civilizations.
A civilization is classified with the following criteria:
What characterizes civilization
An Egyptian farmer using a plow drawn by domesticated animals, two developments in agriculture that started the Neolithic Revolution and led to the first civilizations.Literally, a civilization is a complex society, as distinguished from a simpler society. Everyone lives in a society and a culture, but not everyone lives in a civilization. Historically, civilizations have shared some or all of the following traits (some of these were suggested by V. Gordon Childe):
Intensive agricultural techniques, such as the use of human power, crop rotation, and irrigation. This has enabled farmers to produce a surplus of food that is not necessary for their own subsistence.
A significant portion of the population that does not devote most of its time to producing food. This permits a division of labor. Those who do not occupy their time in producing food may instead focus their efforts in other fields, such as industry, war, science or religion. This is possible because of the food surplus described above.
The gathering of some of these non-food producers into permanent settlements, called cities.
A form of social organization. This can be a chiefdom, in which the chieftain of one noble family or clan rules the people; or a state society, in which the ruling class is supported by a government or bureaucracy. Political power is concentrated in the cities.
The institutionalized control of food by the ruling class, government or bureaucracy.
The establishment of complex, formal social institutions such as organized religion and education, as opposed to the less formal traditions of other societies.
Development of complex forms of economic exchange. This includes the expansion of trade and may lead to the creation of money and markets.
The accumulation of more material possessions than in simpler societies.
Development of new technologies by people who are not busy producing food. In many early civilizations, metallurgy was an important advancement.
Advanced development of the arts, including writing.
So, what you have in those other communities is agriculture, and that's it.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sumer 3500–2334 BCE
The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer officially began at around 4000-3500 BCE, and ended at 2334 BCE with the rise of Assyria. It was the world's first civilization. The oldest granary yet found dates back to 9500 BCE and is located in the Jordan Valley. The earliest known settlement in Jericho (9th millennium BCE) in modern-day Israel, was a PPNA culture that eventually gave way to more developed settlements later, which included in one early settlement (8th millennium BCE) mud-brick houses surrounded by a stone wall, having a stone tower built into the wall. In this time there is evidence of domesticated emmer wheat, barley and pulses and hunting of wild animals. However, there are no indications of attempts to form communities (early civilizations) with surrounding peoples. Nevertheless, by the 6th millennium BCE we find what appears to be an ancient shrine and cult, which would likely indicate intercommunal religious practices in this era. Findings include a collective burial (with not all the skeletons completely articulated, jaws removed, faces covered with plaster, cowries used for eyes). Other finds from this era include stone and bone tools, clay figurines and shell and malachite beads. Around 1500 to 1200 BCE Jericho and other cities of Canaan had become vassals of the Egyptian empire.
Several miles southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of early temple-cities, in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, with the earliest of these settlements carbon dating to around 5000 BCE. The Sialk ziggurat of Kashan, Iran, also dates to this era. By the 4th millennium BCE, in Nippur we find, in connection with a sort of ziggurat and shrine, a conduit built of bricks, in the form of an arch. Sumerian inscriptions written on clay also appear in Nippur. By 4000 BCE an ancient city of Susa, in Mesopotamia, seems to emerge from earlier villages. Sumerian cuneiform script dates to no later than about 3500 BCE. Sumer, which was Mesopotamia's first civilization in what is now Iraq, is recognized as the world's earliest civilization. Other villages begin to spring up around this time in the Ancient Near East (Middle East) as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilizations So, in other words, the experts are all in agreement that civilization began with Sumer, so once again you are proving (by being so loose in your own definition of a civilization), you are proving that you are not a scientist.
In other words, wrong again, Jaimie.
