Archaeologist David Wengrow pushes back against Ancient Apocalypse, urges us to consider the power of everyday people

It is truly amazing what ancient people have done, that we know about. To me, Stonehenge and the pyramids are incredible, and I’ve seen them myself. I’ve never been to Easter Island but that’s also an amazing accomplishment. Stonehenge and Easter Island were done by people so primitive they didn’t have a writing system (although maybe) or metal. For a long time it was mysterious how those things were even done, but they can be done by people with some creativity and lots of labor, without needing to invoke some mysterious ancient civilization, aliens, or whatever.

It’s pretty common for various groups to make up crazy pre-history for themselves. The Mormons have all kinds of beliefs about international travel between ancient Egypt and the Americas, although they seem to downplay those ideas as archeology makes progress.

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Flinders Petrie was definitely a man of his time. Plenty to dislike about him as the article points out, but he is also one of the greatest Egyptologists of all time.

His work on the Giza Plateau was ironically originally inspired by the original nonsense archaeologists - those that believed the whole of human history and destiny was encoded in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid.

Petrie’s family were close friends of the greatest pyramidiot Charles Piazzi Smyth (a man who truly loathed the Egyptians) and Petrie’s phenomenal survey of the Giza Plateau which was only surpassed in accuracy relatively recently, was intended to prove Smyth’s ideas - it didn’t and Petrie pretty much founded scientific Egyptology as a consequence. Even today his work on the Giza Necropolis is regularly cited because it was so good - and so far ahead of the rest of contemporary archaeology, and because the site has been so altered in the past 120 years or so.

His work elsewhere in Egypt, at preDynastic sites close to Abydos and in the tombs of the First Dynasty kings was absolutely foundational to our understanding of how the Egyptian State emerged in the Old Kingdom, and he did enormously significant work excavating some of the Middle Kingdom Pyramids around the Fayum.

Mostly just wearing pink underpants.

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Exactly. The refusal to accept that the Egyptian State was advanced enough to be able to coordinate huge numbers of people and distribute huge amounts of foodstuffs to workers during the 3-4 months when much of the country was underwater is fundamentally racist.

That they continue to refuse to accept it when the evidence of the workers and their lives has been excavated around the Giza Plateau for decades now is simply stupidity.

John Romer’s books on the Great Pyramid and the first volume of his three part history of Egypt are well worth a read for how the Egyptian State functioned in the Old Kingdom and the colossal amounts of evidence we have for the people who built these incredible monuments being the ancestors of modern Egyptians.

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Recently I’ve been doing a fairly deep dive into the prehistoric cultures of the American Southwest (and into Mexico.) During the progression from roaming hunter-gatherers to the cliff dwellings of Ancestral Pueblans, there was some fairly sophisticated knowledge amassed in dryland farming and ecology, construction, astronomy, and other concepts that still astonish modern researchers. That, and the abrupt dispersal of the cultures that constructed things like Pueblo Bonito, Montezuma’s Castle and Mesa Verde, although still not well explained, seems like clickbait for ‘ancient alien’ theories, and I’m pleasantly surprised no one has tried to attribute it to anything but normal human behavior and abilities. They’ve certainly tried with Mesoamerica.

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Racism wasn’t invented in the Enlightenment. Every traditional society had its racial theories including the Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the Norse, the Aztecs and, based on the evidence, just about everyone else. They had their own genetic theories of superiority as well. Just about every civilization of any size was ruled by a genetic aristocracy.

The Enlightment was when Europeans started looking under the rock and examining their assumptions. The supremacy of religion was under attack after all the religious wars. The genetic aristocracy was being questioned. Even ideas about race and sex were being challenged as explorers returned with stories of other societies and peoples.

One of the point of the book being discussed was that this was the first time Europeans actually listened to outsiders explain their cultures and their views of European culture. This listening led to changes within Europe in terms of government, religion, philosophy, sex, race and culture. It’s a great book about the evolution of European thought.

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found a video link

The Case of the Ancient Astronauts : Don Wescott, Graham. Massey, British Broadcasting Corporation. Television Service., WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), R.M. Productions., Time-Life Video. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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i mean it took until the 1800s until the word genetics was coined and a theory developed, but sure. why not

this too seems impossible to me. first, that there was or ever has been a uniquely defined collection of thought called european. second, that it and the population of europeans was isolated and unique from all adjacent areas and history. and lastly, that exclusively european groups “evolved” their own thoughts separate from collective humanity once they had seen more of the world

none of that passes the smell test as the way things work or worked.

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Does “topics involving ancient engineering know-how” need to go on the list ?

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And yet, White supremacy still ended up dominating all those other ‘theories…’

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Most of the Roman Empire was ruled by people who didn’t inherit their title. Very few Caesars died of old age. Outside of the initial Julio-Claudian dynasty few passed down their tile to their children.

The Mongol Empire, the largest land empire in existence, was by its nature culturally and religiously polyglot. They also elected their leaders

Greeks invented the concept of Democracy. Romans were a Republic for half of their existence.

All of your examples (Greeks, Romans, Aztecs…) did not constitute single cohesive civilizations. Europeans do not constitute a single cohesive civilization.

Your use of “European” here smacks of white supremacist bullshit by way of word replacement. Pretending there was a single group involved and trying to take credit/ownership/affiliation with it on a shaky superficial basis.

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Today I am even more boggled than usual. Never mind the achievements of modern humans or even Neanderthals. It looks like Homo Erectus had their own Einsteins and Magellans.

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How many pedant points does it cost to object that Homo erectus were human by definition?

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You don’t need points to be a pedant, just a certain approach to life. :wink:

I’m just the messenger, but okay, let’s say boats predate modern humans.

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The brains of people 30KYA were the same as the brain in my skull right now. There’s no reason to believe they weren’t capable of building these complex structures. Humans can be smart and excellent problem solvers. Don’t project the idiocy of today on the people of yesteryear.

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tv land GIF by YoungerTV

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Hmmmm… maybe read a history book and stop reflexively defending “western civilization” by alluding to “other people did it”… we’re not living with the consequences of that in the same way that we are of European imperialism and racism, which is a very modern invention. There were certainly other forms of inequality, hierarchy, and bigotry, but what we think of as “race” as was developed to justify genocide and chattel slavery, is a modern invention.

It’s actually not. It’s the argument they make, and they connect the dots for the reader in a pretty convincing way.

No they weren’t? What do you think the Crusades were? Or for that matter, how about the vast amount of trade done by the Norse during the viking age, including down into the Mediterranean. Europe was a backwater, and not generally considered important, but it was never entirely isolated from the rest of Afro-Eur-Asia…

It does.

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i think you might be misreading what i wrote. i agree with your statement.

the former person’s post said that - essentially - europe was entirely isolated, that their “thought” was entirely their own, they took in what others had done and made it unique.

as someone else said better, it sounds like a white supremacy argument in a “culture” guise. especially as they started off talking about “genetics”

as you say, no part of what is modern europe was ever truly disconnected in the exchange of goods, ideas, and people

( especially with rome, i’d think. “roman” seems likely to have been a more likely self-conception than “european” for quite a long time. and roman boundaries don’t match european ones )

post enlightenment sometime a line was drawn around western europe that said: hey we’ve always been unique and special and all this cultural heritage is ours alone. that was never really true

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Wasn’t there a whole George Carlin bit about how all the great things accomplished by civilizations were performed on the principle of not giving a crap about people? I can’t seem to find it.

(It might not be entirely accurate in view of modern evidence that the pyramids might not have been built by slaves, but nonetheless.)

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I think I did! Sorry!

Exactly.

Yeah.

True!

But we are indeed in violent agreement… sorry if I misread you!

Star Trek Ok GIF

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