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Comment by drewcoo | Hacker News Reader

Civilization means people living in cities. To do that, agriculture is probably needed. There's also probably some level of specialization and accompanying social stratification.

History is written records.

There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations.

No scholars would clai that humanity sprang out of nothing in those places. I mostly hear that from bible literalists. But if some of their people weren't in cities, the society was not civilized. And if there was nobody to write about them they were prehistoric.

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You might be interested to read "The Dawn of Everything" which discusses all of this. Cities and agriculture are far from requirements to have civilization.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314/314162/the-dawn-of-every...

Genuine question, how much evidence of agriculture would survive an ice age, being crushed under the weight of 2 mile thick ice sheets and then washed away or engulfed by bodies of water once they've melted?

Major regions in which early humans evolved and migrated have not been subject to glaciation since those events. Africa, Mesopotamia, Egypt (part of Africa), the Mediterranian basin, the Indian subcontinent, most of China and Southeast Asia, central and Southern America, and much of North America, particularly south of, say, the modern Mason-Dixon line.

The regions heavily affected by glaciation are relatively few, relatively lately settled (for obvious reasons), and hence, less significant to overall availability of evidence of early agriculture.

Other disturbances resulting from glaciation, notably sea level rise and the innundation of previous coastal and low-lying regions may contribute somewhat more to obscured evidence.

Sorry to do an "actually" here but funnily enough history is not historically written records. History as a branch of knowledge was specifically operated upon the context that the likelihood of something happening historically is based on the individual's effort to ascertain the word of mouth of the people to find certainty and consistency. That is because what is written can easily be done by anyone but convincing many people over generations would be much harder. So the fact that history has shifted to what is written as the authority is actually a successful implementation of an attack vector to manipulate truth.

tl;dr Historically oral history was the only form of discovering what is true and specifically regarded as more rigorous than written accounts.

At least, when taking history into account.

Etymology is also interesting:

> From Middle English historie, from Old French estoire, estorie (“chronicle, history, story”) (French histoire), from Latin historia, from Ancient Greek ἱστορίᾱ (historíā, “learning through research”), from ἱστορέω (historéō, “to research, inquire (and) record”), from ἵστωρ (hístōr, “the knowing, wise one”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Doublet of story and storey.

Fascinating that history is based on "seeing and knowing."

> if there was nobody to write about them they were prehistoric

A comment from a documentary about Rome stuck in my mind, it goes something like : "There is no history of Europe before Rome because for most of Europe, history starts with Rome conquering that region. They were the first to write anything down."

Similarly, we know how slavic peoples migrated into Europe because those regions stopped sending written updates back to Rome. Did they then revert back to pre-history? Or does a region continue to "have history" even if for a few centuries nobody in that area writes anything down?

How about ancient Greece? Also Europe as something that has a cultural identity is relatively new, difinitley postdates Rome.

or Egypt

Yes, except that is not Europe but the distinction is anachronistic hence my comment.

There are known city sites that predate agriculture in their regions.

Example, source, etc?

A comprehensive evidence around the world with sites and prehistoric periods are well outlined in the last David Grabaur's book "The Dawn of Everything".

I assume you're referring to Çatalhöyük (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk)?

Interesting the sand bags, I do see a concrete wall around the whole thing.

It's great people care enough to set that up/preserve/study it.

> There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations.

What about cave paintings?

That's archeology or something, not real history :)

It's the threshold between "how much do we trust the author?" and the blanket claim of "used for ceremonial purpose" whenever something isn't entirely obvious. Yes, it's a real distinction. Archeologists and historians don't consider themselves one group at all.

I personally find cave paintings to be compelling evidence for a behaviourally modern mind. They demonstrate great skill. The artists did not live in cities or have agriculture or writing, but I have little doubt that they perceived the world as we do, and were capable of essentially the same speech and thought patterns as we are. It’s an awe-inspiring tragedy and mystery that those lives were lived in a manner so unknown to us, and yet potentially so relatable to us.

They absolutely would have had conversations around campfires. Talking about what, I wonder?

Under these terms, all 400+ tribes north of the deserts of North America were prehistoric until the arrival of the European and some paper.

There were plenty of urban centers in the Americas prior to European arrival, e.g. Cahokia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

That addresses civilization but not prehistory as there is no known record of written language north of the desert barrier.

Are we still not counting wampum belts or khipu as a written language? I know that those are both very different from how we comprehend written languages but there is significant evidence to support that they were used in the process of imparting information (whether that be treaties, legends, or statistics)

A language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary.[0] I don't think NA wampum or totem poles would be considered written language by that definition. Khipu aren't found in NA, AFAIK.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language

Yes. This is absolutely correct. The generally accepted view is that prehistory ended and history started on the North American continent roughly mid 1490's.

This only sounds prepostrous if you don't understand what the terms mean.

This is also roughly the timeframe when the last stone-age society near Europe finally got subjugated by Europeans and stone age finally ended in the old world, when the Spanish crushed the Guanches in the Canaries.

This is fine if everyone in the conversation has that same academic definition of pre-history - the problem is that bad actors will often latch onto that statement, ignore the definitions, and use that as a basis to argue that so-and-so people were sub-human.

It'd be really nice if all parts of the internet engaged in good faith debates on topics they were knowledgeable but finding that phrasing preposterous isn't unreasonable if you've spent a decent chunk of time exposed to reddit and twitter.

I agree that you're correct and reasonable, but I also agree that the person you're replying to was correct and reasonable when expressing caution over how things are worded.

Then the Incans, mayas, and other civilizations which didn't have a writing systems are considered primitive??

You can have oral histories.

They don't tend to last very long without varying dramatically from the original version.

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