2Pillars said:
Dear grmorton,
Please find the generally accepted definition of "civilization" compliment by Merriam Webster Dictionary per your request.
Main Entry:
civ·i·li·za·tion
Pronunciation: "si-v&-l&-'zA-sh&n
Function: noun
Date: 1772
1 a : a relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specifically : the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained
Failure to show an Earlier Human Civilization will be the test for all the TE's as well.
And please grmorton you can also ask all of your TE's friends for an answer and come back to me -- or -- better yet, whenever you are all ready to admit your doctrinal (TE's) errors, yo hear?
You make me laugh. Lots of hunter gatherers have kept written records, something which is not generally known by those who haven't studied ethnography. We can be sure that the activities I document below, occurred all over the world. The Cherokee, Kiowa and other tribes, kept written records in the form of pictographs painted on hides. The symbols stood for the entire story in themselves. But they are written and they are a record of what happened in the past which helps the tribe remember certain events in their history. Thus, by your definition such peoples are civilized. BTW, the Cherokee were one of the Five Civilized Tribes, having a farming society long before the Europeans came here.
"East of the Mississippi the most important and best known
record is the Walam Olum or 'red score' of the Delawares,
originally discovered in 1820, and published by Dr. D. G. Brinton
in 1885. It consists of a series of pictographs designed to fix
in memory the verses of a genesis and migration chant which
begins with the mythic period and comes down to the advent of the
whites about the year 1610. it appears to be genuine and
ancient, although the written chant as we find it contains modern
forms, having of course been reduced to writing within a
comparatively recent period.
"It is said that the Cherokee seventy years ago had a
similar long tribal tradition which was recited by the priests on
ceremonial occasions. if so, it was probably recorded in
pictographs, but tradition and record alike are not lost." ~
James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, (Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), p. 142
**
"West of the Mississippi the first extended Indian calendar
history discovered was the 'Lone-dog winter count,' found among
the Dakota by Colonel garrick Mallery, and first published by him
in 1877. This history of the Dakota was painted on a buffalo
robe by Lone-dog, of the Yanktonai tribe of that convederacy, and
extends over a period of seventy-one years, beginning in 1800.
Subsequent investigation by Colonel Mallery brought to light
several other calendars in the same tribe, some being
substantially a copy of the first, others going back
respectively, to 1786, 1775, and the mythic period.
"In all these Dakota calendars there is only a single
picture for each year, with nothing to mark the division of
summer and winter. As they call a year a 'winter,' and as our
year begins in the middle of the winter, it is consequently
impossible, without some tally date from our own records to know
in which of two consecutive years any event occurred, i.e.,
whether before or after New Year. In this respect the Kiowa
calendars here published are much superior to those of the
Dakota." ~ James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians,
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), p. 142
"Clark, in his book on Indian sign-language, mentions
incidentally that the Apache have similar picture histories, but
gives no more difinite information as concerns that tribe. he
goes on to say that the Santee Sioux claim to have formerly kept
a record of events by tying knots in a string, after the manner
of the Peruvian quipu. By the peculiar method of tying and by
means of certain marks they indicated battles and other important
events, and even less remarkable occurrences, such as births,
etc.. he states that he saw among them a slender pole about 6
feet in length, the surface of which was completely covered with
small notches, and the old Indian who had it assured him that it
had been handed down from father to son for many generations, and
that these notches represented the history of his tribe for more
than a thousand years, going back, indeed, to the time when they
lived near the ocean. In this case the markings must have been
suggestive rather than definite in their interpretation, and were
probably used in connection with a migration chant similar to
that of the Walam Olum." ~ James Mooney, Calendar History of the
Kiowa Indians, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1979), p. 142-143
"This calendar was procured from Dhasan, 'Little-bluff,' nephew
of the celebrated Dohasan who was head chief of the Kiowa tribe
for more than thirty years. The nephew, who died in 1893 at an
advanced age, told Captain Scott that the calendar had been kept
in his family from his youth up, having originally been painted
on hides, which were renewed from time to time as they wore out
from age and handling. the calendar delivered by him to Scott is
drawn with colored pencils on heavy manila paper, as is also the
Sett'an calendar obtained by the author. In both, the
pictographs are arranged in a continuous spiral, beginning in the
lower right-hand corner and ending near the center, the rows of
pictographs being separated from each other by a continuous
spiral. In both, the winter is designated by means of an upright
black bar, to indicate that vegetation was then dead, while
summer is represented by means of the figure of the medicine
lodge, the central object of the annual summer religious
ceremony." ~ James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians,
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), p. 143
**
"A small notched message-stick of the Seneca, with a hole at
one end for a knotted string, looks exactly like certain Upper
Paleolithic notched bones and some Australian message-sticks. It
contains a marking of days, calling chiefs to a particular
ceremony at a certain time. A small tally-stick of the Onondaga
with twenty-seven notches was a 'condolence' record, listing
twenty-seven chiefs who had died. A tribe of the Sioux at the
end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries
had a 'slender pole about six feet in length, the surface of
which was covered with small notches, and the old Indian who had
it assured him [Clark] that it had been handed down from father
to son for many generations and that those notches represented
the history of his tribe for more than a thousand years back to
the time when they lived near the ocean.'" ~ Alexander Marshack,
The Roots of Civilization,(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1972),
p. 139
The above is a WRITTEN record! It is written on a stick. Your definition doesn't say what something has to be written on.
And I absolutely love this one, the message stick--a written form of communication in a culture commonly thought to be illiterate:
"In 1990 I was carrying out Ph.D. field research with the Garawa, a
language group located in the southern inland region of Australia's
Gulf of Carpentaria. One afternoon I was with a party comprising one
older man and two women. it was a relaxing afternoon with the two
women fishing while the man and I discussed the land-use and settlement
activities of past Garawa. during a break after lunch he borrowed my
knife, eventually producing a small carved object called a
Dayowurruwurru, or message stick, an item we had been discussing on and
off over several weeks. This object is illustrated in Figure 1. It is
12 centimetres long, 1.5 centimetres in diameter and cylindrical in
cross-section. It has several incised lines.
"My informant then explained the meaning and use of this item.
The message stick was given to a person who was to carry it to its
recipients. In addition to delivering the message stick itself, with
its text implicit in its inscribed "symbols', the deliverer was to tell
the recipient of the message. The message stick was, therefore,
largely a mnemonic device although it also seems to have acted in part
as a 'contract' between the sender, the carrier and the recipient.
"the example that accompanied the message stick described in
Figure 1 is as follows. Two men wish to meet another two men at a
specific location at some time in the future. Two incised lines at one
end of the message stick represent the sender and his brother while two
incised lines at the other end of the stick represent the recipients.
the single pit in the centre represents the location. The deliverer
was to tell the recipients of the location and time of the meeting.
"This all made perfect sense. I then asked 'what are these
marks?', referring to the circumscribing and diagonal symbols. I
expected these marks to have a particular set of meanings or to serve
as some identifier. My informant looked at me and said, quite
straightforwardly, 'Some lines'." ~Michael Pickering, "The Message
Stick: An Anecdote", Rock Art Research 14(1997):1, p. 59
Secondly, the Sumerians began writing in 3100 BC. There is writing in Pakistan from 3300 BC and from Egypt in 3250 BC. Neither of these places, is in Mesopotamia. see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_334000/334517.stm
and
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/science/social/16SCOR.html
accessed 4-19-02
And now, in China, tortoise shells have beenfound with symbols used in early Chinese writing and the shells date to 6600 BC. I pointed this out earlier but you simply don't say anything about it. Things simply aren't as simply as you try to make them.
And the oldest standing temple building in the world, is 500-1000 years prior to the Sumerian civilization. It is from Malta. They had quite a civilization there.
I can only conclude, that like the ugly step sisters of Cinderella, you are trying to fit your theory into the wrong shoeful of data.
