Ancient Peoples

[Jade Harley]

Alright, punks and pals. What are your favorite ancient civilizations or groups? What parts of their societies/ways of living do you find yourself appreciating the most?

:frogon:

[Cirno]

Aztec's and the Chinese are both really interesting and cool civilizations

[Tearen Wover]

Shout out to the Spartans. Dedicated, Enlightened, Equalists. Look up Lycurgus and King Lysander; those were some real leaders.

Shout out to the Mayans for having the best written language ever.

Shout Out to dynastic Egypt for having the best architecture and being the original hipsters.

[Revan Noctis]

The ancient Egyptians for their architecture artwork and culture.
Roman Empire for some of their empire building and military methods as well as the technology they developed. The Greeks under Alexander weren't too bad either.
Shout out to the Western and Eastern roman empires including the Byzantines for their great struggle to preserve civilisation from the filthy barbarian scum.
Carthage is pretty good for their culture military and trade as well especially as a sea power.

[Handsome Jack]

Pretty interested in Native American culture, pre-Columbus. Their version of Hell was pretty interesting.

[Amaterasu]

Japan has some amazing culture which dates back quite a ways.

Also, the Greeks! Generally the ancient mediterranean civilizations had a lot of interesting culture but these ones were especially cool. (If you ever have the time I recommend picking up a book about greek mythologies and sagas. The stories are amazing)

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

I don't really have any favourites, but I agree that the Aztecs & Egyptians were both pretty cool.

[The Vision]

Shout out to the Mayans for having the best written language ever.

Okay so I'm a Korean so I'm a bit biased but I'm also studying linguistics so I'm basically qualified. Telling you right now, the Korean alphabet is IMHO the best script ever. Sorry for Kanye-ing the Mayans, but the Korean alphabet is the best of ALL TIME. I had a friend who could read (slowly and clumsily) without any notes after having studied it for a WEEK. He learned to read out loud in a completely foreign language in a little less than seven days. It's all fucking squares and lines.

(Sorry for hijacking)

Tl;dr Shoutout to the Joseon dynasty.

[Tearen Wover]

Sorry Vis, you're just wrong. I would go into why Mayan is the best, but it's just too complex.

Nyeh.

Also, reasons why Spartans are the best:

1. Women's rights. The first. Ever.
2. No money. No property. And it worked.
3. Single largest city state to exist in Greece circa 450 BC.
4. Awesome military. Battle of Thermopoli was great, but a pittance compared to their greater acumen for war.
5. Mercy. Incredible mercy for defeated enemies.
6. NOT STUPID. Don't listen to Athenians.
7. Rocked the original man braids. With bows.

Fuck ur civ. I'm rollin' wif da hoplites.

[Okor]

Mesopotamia, nerds.

First off, look at this beard.



Don't you wish your ancient kings were as sexy as that? Mesopotamia is the ancient civilization. It's one of the first empires that developed writing, the wheel, mathematics, architecture, an organized religion, and everything else we assort with proper civilization.

Speaking of their religion, it's pretty damn cool as well. They gave us the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is one of the first legends on record. I highly reccomend reading Snow Crash, which, despite being primarily Cyberpunk, also schools you pretty damn well in ancient Mesopotamian culture.

And, of course, it also gave us Ea-Nasir, the world's first corporate bastard.

[Jade Harley]

Dang Vis, I've always been super interested in Korean culture so this is something I need to dig into. Language is FUN. That said, Spartans = A++ for women's rights.

But I like this talk of beards in the post above. Yes.

[The Vision]

Sorry Vis, you're just wrong. I would go into why Mayan is the best, but it's just too complex.

HNNRRRRRGH /rage

Fun fact about Korea: it's called Korea because when the Chinese ambassadors were chatting with Marco Polo they mentioned that there was like this tiny clan that was trying to break off (when in fact we had established ourselves as an independent kingdom). At the time, we called ourselves Goryeo. (As in the Goryeo dynasty, though that translation doesn't really work because tbh that was just the name of the country) Same thing happened with China. No idea where the fuck "Japan" comes from.

Speaking of Mayans and Koreans, have you guys heard the theory that Native Americans and East Asians have the same ancestors? I'm pretty sure that's the consensus but there's all these scholars from Korea who are convinced that the North-Eastern tribes are related to Koreans. My father tried to convince me that the name "Connecticut" actually comes from Korean. The coincidence is pretty funny, actually. Connecticut means "long river" in something Native American, and in older times of Korean, you'd say 큰내 곳 ("Kun-Neh-Goet", or "Big River Place"), which is weirdly similar. If only there was more than one instance of this happening.

[Jade Harley]

Hoplite Spartan Phalanx  - We watched this video in one of my classes the other day. I thought it might be of interest, even if the shields are all wonky!

And as for some more standard Western cultural history junk, Pericles' Funeral Oration! [Text & Audio] [Text]. The audio/text version makes me laugh because it's so terrible, oh my god. Still, it's crazy how similar the Athenian values mentioned are to those that inspired the Declaration of Independence and later the United States Constitution. I'd always just taken that influence as fact without looking into it, but reading this really opened my eyes. Connections throughout history are cool, man.

To be honest, I'm pretty disappointed in my Humanities course for focusing so much on everything outside of Native American and Asian cultures, among other things that are being overlooked. Like, sure, we'll cover Israel, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and Egypt, but blatantly ignore everything else! I guess there might just not be enough time for everything, so the course is designed to act as a lead-in to medieval Europe... will probably just look into these things on my own time. That said, I'm thankful my mythology course was pretty evenly distributed between cultures across the globe!

I just realized I haven't really talked about the civs I like the most. I've really liked the Anglo-Saxon language ever since reading Beowulf, and I've even scribbled through a few books in the interest of writing my own verse with it. One day I hope to develop something semi-legible and publish it, but that's just a dream of mine. There was some writer who came up with a story from the monster Grendel's point of view, something I never would have considered because hELlOoooOO0, Beowulf swims to the bottom of the ocean, why would you focus on the monster instead of yelling about all the clear evidence for aliens and making up a wild science fiction story. Still. It just goes to show how relevant a lot of older literature is today, haha.

[Alex]

Sorry Vis, you're just wrong. I would go into why Mayan is the best, but it's just too complex.

Nyeh.

Also, reasons why Spartans are the best:

1. Women's rights. The first. Ever.
2. No money. No property. And it worked.
3. Single largest city state to exist in Greece circa 450 BC.
4. Awesome military. Battle of Thermopoli was great, but a pittance compared to their greater acumen for war.
5. Mercy. Incredible mercy for defeated enemies.
6. NOT STUPID. Don't listen to Athenians.
7. Rocked the original man braids. With bows.

Fuck ur civ. I'm rollin' wif da hoplites.

The helots would prolly disagree wif u

[Tearen Wover]

Oi oi, at least the Spartans only enslaved other Peloponnesians instead of eradicating them outright.

*cough*Athens*cough*

*cough*Melos*coughcough*

[Alex]

One of my favorite parts of Thucydides

[Jade Harley]

Okay, this isn't so much ancient as medieval, but oh my god will you watch this.

[youtube]C0OLla4jYSE[/youtube]

[Cell]

Ancient Chinese. I love their cosmology and how heavily things like honour and brotherhood affected their lives, plus their concept of the Mandate of Heaven (the true ruler is the one who makes the land prosper, not hereditary).