Hacker News Reader

Comment by astine | Hacker News Reader

"Drainage channels" are far from "evidence of a sophisticated civilisation".

The term "civilization" has a technical meaning in archaeology which includes things such as permanent settlement and a hierarchical social order. Walls and drainage are absolutely treated as evidence of civilization when discussing other ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians and the Maya.

The fact that Great Zimbabwe is not as sophisticated as other civilizations of the same time-period is a moot point because the thing that is interesting about it isn't how it stacks up to contemporary Eurasian society but the fact that it apparently is an entirely home-grown civilization in southern Africa.

View on HN

> The fact that Great Zimbabwe is not as sophisticated as other civilizations of the same time-period

Then why call it "sophisticated"? Nobody would have had a problem with the article if it just stuck to proof of civilization. Even an extremely small enclosed area like this (not even a village) is still proof of people working together, ornaments speak for themselves, etc. That is clearly a civilization. They clearly had some engineering skill. But "sophisticated" and "triumph" are pathetic exaggerations which result in the exact opposite effect than what was intended.

Because archaeologists call everything sophisticated including stone-aged hand-axes if they're comparing it to something less-sophisticated, such as the pastoralist communities that people usually think of when considering southern Africa. "Sophistication" in this context though, I think is referring to social complexity rather that strict technological sophistication. I have no comment on the use of the word "triumph", except that it's very subjective and the kind of thing I tend to ignore.

Might a civilization that lasts for thousands of years and leaves minimal impact be successful?

Synonyms for sophisticated:

baroque, byzantine, complex, complicate, complicated, convoluted, daedal, elaborate, intricate, involute, involved, knotty, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, tangled

My house is sophisticated to the point where doing any electrical rewiring is a pain. Hiding it all in the walls? Whose bright idea was that? And encasing nails in plastic for the nailgun? No thanks, I’ll use a hammer and try to spew less plastic on the ground. Et cetera.

I'm not sure if a joke is going over my head, but it seems that you're intentionally using the synonyms for the secondary definition of sophisticated [0], when in context the author clearly means to use the primary definition.

[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sophisticated

Reply on news.ycombinator.com