posted
Is anyone else getting a bit bored of the eternity of programmes and books which expect us to be amazed that our ancestors had *gasp* brains and, like, ideas and could build things and stuff?
I think the final straw for me was some wide-eyed documentary recently which revealed that the Ancie*t R*mans or the A*cient Gr*eks or the Anc*ent Eg*ptians had invented plastic surgery! But they were completely ancient! How could they have been clever as well? It was so bad that I wish I'd made notes actually. Did anyone else see that one?
One of my favourite things I heard from some dude like Professor Robert Winston was that if a modern family was given a caveman baby (i.e. a cavebaby) to raise in Modern then the caveperson would be completely normal and clever and enjoy Big Cook Little Cook and McCain's Microwave French Bread Pizzas just like anyone normal.
In fact, I think we should be making documentaries about how fucking thick we are. In Ancient it would have been normal to know all about the world around you, the stars and the seasons, what the actions of birds and insects and animals meant in relation to the weather and all that shit. And they could build timeless structures which are still here now while our crappy 1970s houses are falling to pieces around us.
Anyway, I'm falling into the trap of patronising them myself now. I just think it's time we said, what a pity we're not as clever as they were. But is it because there's just too much for us to learn now so we just don't bother learning anything?
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posted
Did the romans have mobile phones or Airliners? Did the Egyptians build super tankers or rely on a network of satellites for their global communication needs? Perhaps Greeks pioneered laser eye surgery, test tube babies, micro-processors and complex alloys, as well as developing stealth technology and harnessing nuclear power?
Dang, they were crap. Big deal, they built big things (tiny in comparison to things that have been built in the last hundred years), did maths and washed reguarly. Ooh! Well advanced. Egyptians worshipped cats, Greeks pioneered a sewage system that can't cope with toilet paper, and Romans all pranced about in hats with brushes on the top. Twats.
posted
I agree, though I think its not that 'we' or 'they' are cleverer than the other. Intellegence revolves around the situation where it is required, no doubt we know things they didnt know, much as lots of their knowledge has been lost, possibly forever. Its the relevance to the present that contains the value of knowledge.
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The only thing the ancients were any good at was suffering and dying in large numbers to satisfy the deranged necro-centric whims of the bloodthirsty priest castes guiding the merciless rule of whichever tribal emperor had slaughtered his way to power that week.
If the forum were the Twilight Zone Dang would go to bed wishing he could 'travel back in time to when things were cool' only for him to come to atop some Aztec ziggarut just at the moment when the dude in the 'feathered jaguar' get-up is about to plunge the sacrificial dagger into his bared chest. He would barely have time for a Bakulaesque 'oh boy!' when the dagger came down and Dang 'awoke' to find Mrs Dang standing over him, waving the steam-iron, point down, and screaming: "AAAAARRGGH! CAN YOU FIX THIS DANG? CAN YOU???"
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: Did the romans have mobile phones or Airliners? Did the Egyptians build super tankers or rely on a network of satellites for their global communication needs? Perhaps Greeks pioneered laser eye surgery, test tube babies, micro-processors and complex alloys, as well as developing stealth technology and harnessing nuclear power?
Yes, yes, very smart, but it's only because those things hadn't been invented yet. It all takes time doesn't it, it's not that they couldn't have invented them. I mean, they didn't have mobile phones twenty years ago (approx), or several of the other things you mention, but we don't go making documentaries going, "Hey, lookee here, in 1979 the Ancient English were actually able to fashion a primitive type of CD called an album. It even had primitive pictures on the front and some of the music would have almost sounded like the shit they had on the Brits the other night! Amazing! They did have rather uncivilised ways of playing their instruments though. Heh heh heh."
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: Did the Egyptians... rely on a network of satellites for their global communication needs?
Yes. All early civilizations did. The remnants of those early global communication systems are the standing stones, stone circles, cairns, barrows, pyramids, ziggurats, earthworks, ruts and carvings that we still find all over the world. These were all linked, of course, by ley lines. They not only served as a communication nexus but the power they channeled was visible (as pure energy) from space, thus demonstrating to extra-terrestrial visitors the nodes of communication most worthy of establishing contact.
quote: we don't go making documentaries going, "Hey, lookee here, in 1979 the Ancient English were actually able to fashion a primitive type of CD called an album. It even had primitive pictures on the front and some of the music would have almost sounded like the shit they had on the Brits the other night! Amazing!
quote: The Opel Kadett was the car of the moment and the Intercity 125 high-speed train arrived on Britain’s railways
???
[ 11.02.2005, 07:47: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
quote:Originally posted by ben: The only thing the ancients were any good at was suffering and dying in large numbers to satisfy the deranged necro-centric whims of the bloodthirsty priest castes guiding the merciless rule of whichever tribal emperor had slaughtered his way to power that week.
Ah yes, the Ancients out of the movies. Did you know that the Edwardians spent most of their time dancing on rooftops and flying using umbrellas? And in the Second World War they had machine guns that you could fire for hours on end without a) running out of bullets and b) ever replacing the gun barrel. It's all true.
quote:Originally posted by ben: If the forum were the Twilight Zone Dang would go to bed wishing he could 'travel back in time to when things were cool'
I wasn't actually suggesting that I'd rather be an Ancient, or even that I'd like to visit the era for tea, just that we could do with toning down the wild-eyed surprise when it's revealed that basically everything we think we've just invented was done before - only being limited by the technological standards of the time, not by brain power, organisational skills or resourcefulness.
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: Ah yes, the Ancients out of the movies. Did you know that the Edwardians spent most of their time dancing on rooftops and flying using umbrellas? And in the Second World War they had machine guns that you could fire for hours on end without a) running out of bullets and b) ever replacing the gun barrel. It's all true.
So you reckon the Pyramids were built by highly unionised, empowered and informed workforce with a humane and responsive 'management' remaining cognisant of their health and safety responsibilities and attempting to conform to standard classical world practice in areas such as harassment, diversity and work-life balance? Posts: 8657
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: Did the Egyptians... rely on a network of satellites for their global communication needs?
Yes. All early civilizations did. The remnants of those early global communication systems are the standing stones, stone circles, cairns, barrows, pyramids, ziggurats, earthworks, ruts and carvings that we still find all over the world. These were all linked, of course, by ley lines. They not only served as a communication nexus but the power they channeled was visible (as pure energy) from space, thus demonstrating to extra-terrestrial visitors the nodes of communication most worthy of establishing contact.
Indeed, the centre of this power being 'Mu' or 'Atlantis'. The final destruction of the ley line network came with the invention of the railway, which, far from being an easy method of travel is in fact a grand conspiracy to bind the earth in cold iron and disrupt its natural energy flow.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: So you reckon the Pyramids were built by highly unionised, empowered and informed workforce with a humane and responsive 'management' remaining cognisant of their health and safety responsibilities and attempting to conform to standard classical world practice in areas such as harassment, diversity and work-life balance?
I can't pretend to have read up on this in any detail, or at all in fact, but I did understand it to be the case that the pyramids were built by the workers of Egypt during times of the year when their land was untenable, either while it was flooded by the Nile or while it was too arid, I forget which.
They were not, again as I understand it, some sort of massed slave labour, worked to death in the way the Nazis might have organised things. Whether they were paid or not I don't know, but I don't think that simply not being paid automatically defines one as a slave does it?
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posted
This is off of the National Geographic site anyway:
Who Built the Pyramids?
Contrary to some popular depictions, the pyramid builders were not slaves or foreigners. Excavated skeletons show that they were Egyptians who lived in villages developed and overseen by the pharaoh's supervisors.
The builders' villages boasted bakers, butchers, brewers, granaries, houses, cemeteries, and probably even some sorts of health-care facilities—there is evidence of laborers surviving crushed or amputated limbs. Bakeries excavated near the Great Pyramids could have produced thousands of loaves of bread every week.
Some of the builders were permanent employees of the pharaoh. Others were conscripted for a limited time from local villages. Some may have been women: Although no depictions of women builders have been found, some female skeletons show wear that suggests they labored with heavy stone for long periods of time.
Graffiti indicates that at least some of these workers took pride in their work, calling their teams "Friends of Khufu," "Drunkards of Menkaure," and so on—names indicating allegiances to pharaohs.
An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 workers built the Pyramids at Giza over 80 years. Much of the work probably happened while the River Nile was flooded.
Huge limestone blocks could be floated from quarries right to the base of the Pyramids. The stones would likely then be polished by hand and pushed up ramps to their intended positions.
It took more than manual labor, though. Architects achieved an accurate pyramid shape by running ropes from the outer corners up to the planned summit, to make sure the stones were positioned correctly. And priests-astronomers helped choose the pyramids' sites and orientations, so that they would be on the appropriate axis in relation to sacred constellations.
From stone pusher to priest, every worker would likely have recognized his or her role in continuing the life-and-death cycle of the pharaohs, and thereby in perpetuating the glory of Egypt.
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One site I read just now compared the building of the pyramids to the Amish building a barn, but on a giant scale. No one gets paid, but it's done for the community, for the good of the people (in their view) and it was done at a time when they couldn't work on their own land anyway because it was flooded. They were still free men, just that they had to pay a kind of tax of labour.
That's different from being dragged in chains from your home, marched hundreds of miles to the sea, crammed into a disease-ridden hulk and taken thousands of miles to live a life of forced labour with no rights and no hope of freedom.
posted
The first LOL I had on this thread was from Benway, then Ben made me laugh with both of his posts. Then Dang sort of ruined it by taking it seriously. Thanks alot Dang. :madface: Posts: 13758
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Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
quote:Originally posted by damo: some websites i've read don't acknowledge the holocaust.
Riiiight, OK. So, you think that Cecil B. De Mille had the whole Egyptian slave scandal sussed out and the National Geographic is some sort of Pharoahist cover-up conspiracy organisation? It seems to me that it's Modern Man with his African slave trade, Nazi death camps, Gulag Archipeligo and so on which is making assumptions that we must have always done things that way and presumably the Oldens were far worse because they didn't even believe in the right God either!
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quote:Originally posted by Bamba: Comedy genius there from the boy Davis. I think we should lobby Darryn to make that the standard angry smiley on TMO.
where does one sign up to this lobbying group?
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Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
posted
quote:Originally posted by damo:
quote:Originally posted by Bamba: Comedy genius there from the boy Davis. I think we should lobby Darryn to make that the standard angry smiley on TMO.
where does one sign up to this lobbying group?
quote:Originally posted by Bamba: Comedy genius there from the boy Davis. I think we should lobby Darryn to make that the standard angry smiley on TMO.
fuck OFF! God. this = worst day of 2005 so far.
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posted
I've erased three posts, which started off kinda agreeing with Dang, but then tailed off when I realised I didn't really know what I think.
Isn't the common sense bit to acknowledge that: an Olden would be fucked trying to get his dinner from a vending machine, and we'd go a bit hungry trying to get our dinner in the Olden Times.
But it's more fun just to focus on the fun Olden stuff, like savagery and body paint.
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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quote:Originally posted by Astromariner: fuck OFF! God. this = worst day of 2005 so far.
If it helps, I think you look quite cute in that picture. If you promised to pull that face I'd even let you wank me off with your spastic left hand. Does that help? probably not, I imagine.
quote:Originally posted by Bamba: Comedy genius there from the boy Davis. I think we should lobby Darryn to make that the standard angry smiley on TMO.
I don't think that you should. There is, after all, a much better picture that could be used as the new standard smiley on TMO - one featuring a bemused looking Benway and a certain Mr Bamba doing a very good impression of The Hulk (right down to the straining trousers)....
-------------------- They give you a pen as fat as a modest cock and you're expected to dab it on the page, as though you were mopping the dregs of an afternoon Tommy. Posts: 1847
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quote:Originally posted by Astromariner: Oh, you are EVIL.
Jeez. You try and make a girl feel wanted, and this is the thanks you get. Fine! That's the last time I offer to let someone wank me off. Nice one Astro - you've ruined it for everyone else, now.
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quote:Originally posted by Sidney: I don't think that you should. There is, after all, a much better picture that could be used as the new standard smiley on TMO - one featuring a bemused looking Benway and a certain Mr Bamba doing a very good impression of The Hulk (right down to the straining trousers)....
Is this a competition to see which person can find the worst image of the other? Is that really what you want Sidney?
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: :rolleyes hieroglyph:
Well FUCK OFF! Your opinion became invalid when you revealed that rather than living in a sound waterproof structure with central heating, you'd rather scrabble around in some misery-hole made of straw wadded together with handfuls of your own shit.
posted
please, if you make me laugh, all the cake will come splurging back out and go over the keyboard.
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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