History's Questions
Or some five of them...
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
This is a list (with explanations) of some questions about history I have often been wondering about.
Enjoy!
Question 1
How did Egypt evolve into the expensive pharaonic system several thousand years ago?
I have always wondered how one culture among so many evolved into that supreme exaggeration of an absolute monarchy.
(Yes, I know about human stupidity. I also know about the joke with the Egyptians falling for a classic "pyramid" scheme back then.)
Question 2
Was there a series of civilisations before the current series of civilisations?
History goes back a few thousand years. Over an extended period of time the stone age turned into the copper age into the bronze age into the iron age (this is where the Hittites come in). I wonder whether at some point in time, long before the current series of civilisations there was an earlier series, which is now lost in time.
Human beings as a species are much older then documented history suggests. I do not know enough about physics and archaeology to be able to tell how much evidence of a civilisation remains after thousands of years. And in this case it would be tens of thousands of years. Perhaps the Toba catastrophe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory) took care of the last stage of this previous civilisation?
(Stone age cave wall paintings are not that old.)
Question 3
What happened 5766 years ago?
The Jewish calendar begins, according to some, with the creation of the world. Well, I don't believe the world is a mere 6000 years old, but I think that _something_ must have convinced the authors of the calendar that it should be the starting point. It is likely, of course, that they came up with the epoch (the beginning of the calendar) hundreds or thousands of years after it happened.
But individuals who make up a working lunisolar calendar are not stupid. Did they define the epoch? If they did, what made them think that (translated) around 3760 BCE was a good starting point? Presumably they calculated the age of the world by adding up the years the Bible mentions, but who made up these numbers? Perhaps, and most probably with a considerable error of likely tens, possibly hundreds of years, a significant event in world history is referred to here as the epoch.
(The other calendars I know have very clear epochs, the birth of some guy, some other guy starting to announce stuff, the foundation of a city etc..)
Question 4
What people did Noah belong to?
This question is more serious than it sounds, as it is possibly the wrong question to ask. But this version is catchier than the real question.
It is known that the so-called Afro-Asiatic languages (I prefer the old term "Hamito-Semitic" languages) originated in Africa ("it is known" means "the most reasonable assumption is" here). But the majority of speakers are, and have likely always been, white. The modern descendants of the original language are Arabic (Semitic), Hebrew (Semitic), Aramaic (Semitic), Amharic (Semitic, spoken in Ethiopia), Berber (Hamitic, spoken around the Sahara), Cushitic (Hamitic), and Coptic (in between, remnant of the Egyptian language, used as liturgical language by Egyptian Christians).
If these languages or their ancestor came from Africa, why do so many Caucasians speak it?
And this brings us to Noah, who is traditionally thought to be the sole survivor of a flood and ultimately the father of all humanity afterwards. Maybe two questions are really one.
(Yes, I know about the Ryan-Pitman deluge theory. The Black Sea transforming from a huge freshwater lake into a salt water environment would be a sufficiently great event, but it likely happened too early to be relevant, unless question 5 has a positive answer for the range of 10,000 years, which is very possible indeed!)
Question 5
What is left of the deep past?
This relates to question 2 "Was there a series of civilisations before the current series of civilisations". Legends and myths are told and it never stops. Stories are modified a lot until somebody writes them down (which happened a few thousand years ago). But I wonder whether any of the myths and legends we have learned are actually based on events long before the current series of civilisations. Perhaps some go back a lot further than 7000 or so years.
At the moment it looks like there is a historical event horizon. We have the last 7000 years covered and before that there was basically nothing, or so it seems. But what made the event horizon? (Is that the event 5766 years ago described in question 3?) For a father to tell a story to his son, a story he himself has heard from his father is nothing new. I presume it has happened for tens of thousands of years (if spoken language is that old, I don't know).
I am not talking about aliens visiting the earth and the possibility that some common memory of that event exists which we could use to our spiritual advantage or anything like that. I am referring solely to "normal" legends or possibly even recurring story-lines that are common in so many stories. Some people have argued that all stories are based on just a few basic stories. Perhaps these stories are based on events that happened a _very_ long time ago?
(Yes, I know about Danicken and other nutters. But they referred to more recent history and very specific events. I am talking about deep history and very unspecific events.)
Enjoy!
Question 1
How did Egypt evolve into the expensive pharaonic system several thousand years ago?
I have always wondered how one culture among so many evolved into that supreme exaggeration of an absolute monarchy.
(Yes, I know about human stupidity. I also know about the joke with the Egyptians falling for a classic "pyramid" scheme back then.)
Question 2
Was there a series of civilisations before the current series of civilisations?
History goes back a few thousand years. Over an extended period of time the stone age turned into the copper age into the bronze age into the iron age (this is where the Hittites come in). I wonder whether at some point in time, long before the current series of civilisations there was an earlier series, which is now lost in time.
Human beings as a species are much older then documented history suggests. I do not know enough about physics and archaeology to be able to tell how much evidence of a civilisation remains after thousands of years. And in this case it would be tens of thousands of years. Perhaps the Toba catastrophe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory) took care of the last stage of this previous civilisation?
(Stone age cave wall paintings are not that old.)
Question 3
What happened 5766 years ago?
The Jewish calendar begins, according to some, with the creation of the world. Well, I don't believe the world is a mere 6000 years old, but I think that _something_ must have convinced the authors of the calendar that it should be the starting point. It is likely, of course, that they came up with the epoch (the beginning of the calendar) hundreds or thousands of years after it happened.
But individuals who make up a working lunisolar calendar are not stupid. Did they define the epoch? If they did, what made them think that (translated) around 3760 BCE was a good starting point? Presumably they calculated the age of the world by adding up the years the Bible mentions, but who made up these numbers? Perhaps, and most probably with a considerable error of likely tens, possibly hundreds of years, a significant event in world history is referred to here as the epoch.
(The other calendars I know have very clear epochs, the birth of some guy, some other guy starting to announce stuff, the foundation of a city etc..)
Question 4
What people did Noah belong to?
This question is more serious than it sounds, as it is possibly the wrong question to ask. But this version is catchier than the real question.
It is known that the so-called Afro-Asiatic languages (I prefer the old term "Hamito-Semitic" languages) originated in Africa ("it is known" means "the most reasonable assumption is" here). But the majority of speakers are, and have likely always been, white. The modern descendants of the original language are Arabic (Semitic), Hebrew (Semitic), Aramaic (Semitic), Amharic (Semitic, spoken in Ethiopia), Berber (Hamitic, spoken around the Sahara), Cushitic (Hamitic), and Coptic (in between, remnant of the Egyptian language, used as liturgical language by Egyptian Christians).
If these languages or their ancestor came from Africa, why do so many Caucasians speak it?
And this brings us to Noah, who is traditionally thought to be the sole survivor of a flood and ultimately the father of all humanity afterwards. Maybe two questions are really one.
(Yes, I know about the Ryan-Pitman deluge theory. The Black Sea transforming from a huge freshwater lake into a salt water environment would be a sufficiently great event, but it likely happened too early to be relevant, unless question 5 has a positive answer for the range of 10,000 years, which is very possible indeed!)
Question 5
What is left of the deep past?
This relates to question 2 "Was there a series of civilisations before the current series of civilisations". Legends and myths are told and it never stops. Stories are modified a lot until somebody writes them down (which happened a few thousand years ago). But I wonder whether any of the myths and legends we have learned are actually based on events long before the current series of civilisations. Perhaps some go back a lot further than 7000 or so years.
At the moment it looks like there is a historical event horizon. We have the last 7000 years covered and before that there was basically nothing, or so it seems. But what made the event horizon? (Is that the event 5766 years ago described in question 3?) For a father to tell a story to his son, a story he himself has heard from his father is nothing new. I presume it has happened for tens of thousands of years (if spoken language is that old, I don't know).
I am not talking about aliens visiting the earth and the possibility that some common memory of that event exists which we could use to our spiritual advantage or anything like that. I am referring solely to "normal" legends or possibly even recurring story-lines that are common in so many stories. Some people have argued that all stories are based on just a few basic stories. Perhaps these stories are based on events that happened a _very_ long time ago?
(Yes, I know about Danicken and other nutters. But they referred to more recent history and very specific events. I am talking about deep history and very unspecific events.)
means both "father" (male) and "creator" (unidentified gender, i.e. male).