Deeper Roots

[Sick Boy]

have you even read the books?

Have you read anything else?
Your arguments against Bernal's detractors so far has consisted of pestering a small sample group of people in a museum.

 

[zhao]

No, this answer is bullshit. If geographic proximity to Asia or Africa was the determining factor why did the many other places that are near Asia or Africa not come up with anything like what Greece came up with? Disease, Weather, internal warfare etc i.e. luck play a big role here.

disease, weather, luck, etc, for sure always play a role, and that can explain the flowering of thought and sciences all along the fertile crescent way before the greeks came along.

the other places didn't come up with sophisticated civilizations like the Greeks? which other places are you talking about? but this is the wrong question to ask, betraying your fundamentally greek-centric/eurocentric attitude: the greeks came much later than in many ways more advanced civilizations, from which they borrowed heavily. and their rise can be attributed to the luck of which you mention - a young culture which was able to synthesize the wisdom and knowledge from multiple parent cultures, forming a basis for innovation.

I have read some Black Athena, in the 1990s but not much. Have you followed the scholarly discussion that ensued? Do you have anything substantial to say about counterarguments to Bernal?

i am still reading the first volume. it's terrible as i seem to never ever have time to read these days... i have read some of Bernal's responses to his opponents, like this, and watched some videos of the debate.

i never pretended to be a historian or anthropologist, or have indepth knowledge in these areas. but from what i have read, which is very little, his opponents are mostly neo-con assholes like these people.

Several people in this thread and the deleted on did point you towards problems of the afrocentric theory. You didn't come up with any substantial counterpoints, except implicitly accusing anyone who's not agreeing with you/Bernal as eurocentric/racist, like here:

which "problems of the afrocentric theory" have been brought up here? if i can i will provide counterpoints. but i will be more able after more reading.

yes i do think ideas of ancient history (and other subjects) based on racist thinking runs very deep in the world today, and are often held by even the most "liberal", "progressive", and educated people. i'm not sure if subscription to notions which are based on revisionist versions of history exactly qualifies people as "racist"... but that just depends on where you draw the line.

Your arguments against Bernal's detractors so far has consisted of pestering a small sample group of people in a museum.

not my job to argue with Bernal's detractors. graphic design for films and television, playing music live and in studio, those are my jobs.

a lot of what went on in this and other theads have been a debate on whether eurocentric ideas still overwhelmingly dominate the western world, and not on the actual debate on ancient history.

 

[Sick Boy]

a lot of what went on in this and other theads have been a debate on whether eurocentric ideas still overwhelmingly dominate the western world, and not on the actual debate on ancient history.

It is on the debate of ancient history because your main argument supporting this claim is that the majority of people deny the influence of ancient African and Jewish cultures on ancient Greece, and put undue emphasis on ancient Greece as being the birthplace of civilization.

I'm basically looking for an answer to this:

the greeks came much later than in many ways more advanced civilizations

I still don't really buy your claim that the majority of people deny the Middle East and Egypt's influence in general on ancient Greece. This is quite pervasive knowledge. If it's a matter of the degree of that influence as you suggest above then you still need to clarify how those previous cultures were more advanced.

i am still reading the first volume. it's terrible as i seem to never ever have time to read these days...but from what i have read, which is very little, his opponents are mostly neo-con assholes

not my job to argue with Bernal's detractors. graphic design for films and television, playing music live and in studio, those are my jobs.

Your hasty generalizations are fallacious and not very convincing. If your job is not to argue with Bernal's detractors, then it is clearly not to convince us or to discuss but to reassert over and over an appeal to authority that you won't allow to be held up to critical inquiry without deeming all those who attempt it racists.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

the other places didn't come up with sophisticated civilizations like the Greeks? which other places are you talking about? but this is the wrong question to ask, betraying your fundamentally greek-centric/eurocentric attitude: the greeks came much later than in many ways more advanced civilizations, from which they borrowed heavily. and their rise can be attributed to the luck of which you mention - a young culture which was able to synthesize the wisdom and knowledge from multiple parent cultures, forming a basis for innovation.

I'm sorry but this doesn't hold up. If, as you suggest, what the Greeks invented was just an inevitable synthesis of pre-greek ideas, why did the neighbouring countries didn't come up with the same things? Why did the Egyptians not invent the axiomatic method in mathematics, why didn't Rome invent (analog) computers? Etc ... Rome is an especially interesting and powerful counterexample to your suggestions: Rome destroyed Greek culture, but had a lot of Greek teacher/slaves, and access to a considerable amount of Greek scientific writing. Yet, dispite this considerable headstart, Rome contributed essentially nothing to scientific progress.

The most natural explanation for this divergence in outcome between hellenistic culture and that of its neighbours/successors is that there was something unique about greek social organisation,

i have read some of Bernal's responses to his opponents, like this,

In "this", Bernal isn't really getting to the heart of the matter, as outlined above and in previous postings. He just goes on about vague things like whether greek religion was substantially different from other religions, and similar irrelevancies. Who cares?

which "problems of the afrocentric theory" have been brought up here? if i can i will provide counterpoints. but i will be more able after more reading.

See above, and previous postings. Summary: if Greece didn't do anything special, why didn't all the other surrounding cultures come up with the things the Greeks did?

This is what you and other Greek-bashers need to explain.

 

[zhao]

Summary: if Greece didn't do anything special, why didn't all the other surrounding cultures come up with the things the Greeks did?

This is what you and other Greek-bashers need to explain.

putting words in my mouth bro. i never said "greece didn't do anything special", or said anything which would amount to "greek-bashing".

i recognize the innovations of the greek empire, always have, even in the somewhat problematic (in other ways) first post of this thread. but the point is the drastically underplayed Egyptian and Hasidic influences.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

putting words in my mouth bro. i never said "greece didn't do anything special", or said anything which would amount to "greek-bashing".

Hmmm.

i recognize the innovations of the greek empire

What are they in your opinion?

but the point is the drastically underplayed Egyptian and Hasidic influences

What are the concrete hasidic influences on what you recognize as the innovations of the greek empire?

 

[M.E.S.H.]

i recognize the innovations of the greek empire, always have

lol

 

[swears]

Why can't people give more props to the USA, then? Their empire's massive.

 

[zhao]

was just thinking how ironic it is for me to care so much about these deep roots, as i'm probably as rootless an urban nomad as you can think of, with no ties to my own heritage, lineage, or even family.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

was just thinking how ironic it is for me to care so much about these deep roots, as i'm probably as rootless an urban nomad as you can think of, with no ties to my own heritage, lineage, or even family.

In my experience, people start caring about these things when they become older, in their 30s, when they start to be confronted seriously with their own mortality, when they face the question of having children and what that means, the trust differentials between family/clan and strangers. Being and urban nomad (and I'm one myself) brings these trust differentials into sharp relief.

 

[swears]

I'm going to reconnect with with my Irish and Jewish roots by becoming a self-hating drunkard.

 

[M.E.S.H.]

I'm basically a rootless urban nomad who has always recognized the innovations of the greek empire

.

 

[zhao]

In my experience, people start caring about these things when they become older, in their 30s, when they start to be confronted seriously with their own mortality, when they face the question of having children and what that means, the trust differentials between family/clan and strangers. Being and urban nomad (and I'm one myself) brings these trust differentials into sharp relief.

true, true. all of this ancient history stuff for me might be a substitute for what i lack in real life... a sense of connection.

i know it's cliche but i honestly, really, have no home, and simultaneously everywhere i go has the potential to become home (berlin for example)... where to next? istanbul? kenya? but with the freedom there is a sense of disconnect, at times a feeling of being alone...

 

[nomadthethird]

was just thinking how ironic it is for me to care so much about these deep roots, as i'm probably as rootless an urban nomad as you can think of, with no ties to my own heritage, lineage, or even family.

Oh yeah I know. Like when you have no idea where your relatives past your grandparents live or lived or whatever, and the ones you know all changed their names and moved from country to country over and over.

I thought it was so weird in Europe how these people actually had a sense of belonging to a culture, and a static sense of identity, and on top of it, this sense that culture really matters. It's a huge difference you'll see between Americans and Europeans, it's subtle but it comes up in a lot of situations. They tend to get frustrated with Americans for not giving proper obeisance to their precious "culture"...

 

[Mr. Tea]

At the same time it can be funny how 'history-starved' some Americans seem, like being insanely proud that their little town has a building in it that dates back to eighteen-hundred and sixty-eight! or whatever. Though I guess this is probably more of a small-town kind of attitude (and a small-town white person's attitude - I'm sure black Americans are well aware of their historical circumstances...). Bill Bryson talks about this - I remember him saying that there are more intact 17th-century buildings in the small Yorkshire town he moved to than in the whole of his native country.

Hence the huge popularity of the Disney resorts in America and the relative disaster of Disneyland Paris. I mean, apart from the obvious contempt that many French people hold for American culture in general and probably Disney and particular, there's the added factor of "Why pay lots of money to wander around a fibreglass castle when there's a real one a half-hour drive from my house?".

 

[Sick Boy]

I thought it was so weird in Europe how these people actually had a sense of belonging to a culture, and a static sense of identity, and on top of it, this sense that culture really matters. It's a huge difference you'll see between Americans and Europeans, it's subtle but it comes up in a lot of situations. They tend to get frustrated with Americans for not giving proper obeisance to their precious "culture"...

In ways Canada is worse. A lot of Canadians clamour to be anything but Canadian because defining their most immediate national identity is a very difficult task (there was a point in time when a massive national swell in patriotism resulted over a Molson Beer commercial). They will cherish and celebrate passionately the fact they have ancestry that is Irish, Scottish, Serbian, French, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, you name it, but they still couldn't identify a picture of Canada's first prime minister.

Typically, Canadians are way, way, way more ignorant about their own country than Americans.

 

[Sick Boy]

Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee franchise, is a object of immense national pride in Canada, so much so that it even eclipses a knowledge of Canada's actual history, important figures, etc., in terms of building a coherent national identity.

And the worst part about it is Tim Hortons is owned by Americans.

 

[vimothy]

This dude -- political economic anthropologist, Timothy Earle -- looks really interesting: http://www.anthropology.northwestern.edu/faculty/earle.html

 

[vimothy]

Is this the right thread for this? Dunno, but 'ere you go anyway:

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies--Monique Borgerhoff Mulder et al, 2009

Abstract:
Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population’s long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material, embodied, and relational), as well as the extent of wealth inequality in 21 historical and contemporary populations. We show that intergenerational transmission of wealth and wealth inequality are substantial among pastoral and small-scale agricultural societies (on a par with or even exceeding the most unequal modern industrial economies) but are limited among horticultural and foraging peoples (equivalent to the most egalitarian of modern industrial populations). Differences in the technology by which a people derive their livelihood and in the institutions and norms making up the economic system jointly contribute to this pattern.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

big up Vim, looks good. I'll try to get to it over Thanksgiving.

political economic anthropologist, Timothy Earle

ha! that's one of the places I'm looking at to transfer, I'm actually headed over there today for an interview. I don't really have a lot of time for electives, but Economic Anthropology looks interesting. esp. if it can be shoehorned into a Poli Sci minor somehow.