[HN Gopher] The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K ...
___________________________________________________________________
The Kush civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5K years ago
Author : pseudolus
Score : 243 points
Date : 2020-08-20 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| fortran77 wrote:
| According to the Hebrew Bible, a wife of Moses was from Sudan.
| And there are many references to a "Kingdom of Kush" which is
| taken to be where modern-day Sudan is. So at least 3500 years
| ago, we have some evidence of a thriving civilization there.
| ncal wrote:
| There's a Kush civilization flourishing in my closet today.
| legerdemain wrote:
| "Kushi" is still a current slur against black people in Israel
| and other Hebrew-speaking areas.[1] It's a bit like calling
| someone a "chinaman." Also, some people point out the sound
| similarity of qvop (monkey) and kvshy (Kushite).
|
| [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/chief-rabbi-compares-
| african-a...
| drorco wrote:
| I wouldn't say this is accurate. Well, some might use it that
| way, but as a kid this is the word we were taught for black
| folk with no harm intended, it's also the name used in the
| bible--I believe it's originally from the bible.
| legerdemain wrote:
| The Troubling Resurgence of Racial Slurs Like 'Shvartze' and
| 'Kushi'[1]
|
| Hasidic singer slurs Obama at Jerusalem concert[2]
|
| Terra incognita: Israel's k-word: Can Holon teach us a lesson
| in racism?[3]
|
| https://forward.com/opinion/361625/michael-twitty-black-
| jewi...
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/hasidic-singer-slurs-obama-
| at-...
|
| https://www.jpost.com/opinion/columnists/terra-incognita-
| isr...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| drorco didn't say no one uses it as a slur, they were
| relaying their experience having been taught the word means
| no ill will. I don't really see a reason to try to prove
| his experience wrong.
| legerdemain wrote:
| They claimed that describing this word as a slur is
| inaccurate. This word is commonly used and described as a
| slur.
| drorco wrote:
| I think what happens is that overtime certain groups have
| taken "ownership" over the word by using it as a racial
| slur but originally it just means "someone from Kush". In
| Hebrew if you take a location and add "I" as a suffix it
| means someone originating from that place, e.g:
| "Americai"-> someone from America, "Kushi"-> someone from
| Kush which is a country occasionally used in the bible to
| refer to Africa.
|
| I guess in English there are also such words that
| originally had no use as a slur but later "denominated"
| to racial slurs.
|
| The reference to Kushi->Kof (monkey) is totally off.
| Doesn't sound similar at all for my native Hebrew ears.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Look, this is just childish equivocation. A lot of words
| that are considered offensive also have (or used to have)
| other, innocuous meanings. What you're doing is like a
| child saying "Nah-uh, this word just means _happy_! "
|
| A word is offensive in polite society because a
| population of people finds it hurtful, or because another
| population of people uses it in an intentionally hurtful
| way. Usually it's both. Innocent words can become slurs,
| and other slurs, over time, can become obscure and lose
| their power.
|
| For example, the "n-word" in English obviously comes from
| the Spanish or Portuguese for the color black. Despite
| that, it's an offensive slur.
|
| The older colloquial term in the English language for
| Romani people apparently comes from the word "Egyptian."
| There is no problem with being Egyptian. But many people
| find this particular word hurtful, and polite society is
| actively trying to retire it.
|
| Maybe you have personal ideas about what "should" or
| "shouldn't" be hurtful, but I'm surprised that we don't
| seem to agree on how people actually use these words in
| reality. "Kushi" can be a slur even if your grandma's pet
| name for you was "my little Kushi" and you love that word
| to death.
| Papirola wrote:
| these words do not sound even remotely similar.
|
| source: I'm Israeli, fluent in Hebrew.
| the_af wrote:
| > _"It's like opening a fairytale book"_
|
| Breathtaking photos and awesome article! I knew nothing about the
| Kush before reading this.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| I guess the people there blazed it and lit up too much? /s
| jessaustin wrote:
| If our cultural memory of much more recent events indicates
| anything, I reckon we've "forgotten" quite a few things that went
| on 5k ya.
| theobeers wrote:
| I was starting to worry that the author would omit one of the
| classic factoids on this topic: that there are more pyramids in
| what is now Sudan, than there are in what is now Egypt. And not
| by a small margin! (This is mentioned, pretty far into the
| article.)
| stakkur wrote:
| I think it's fair to say that Kush has never been 'forgotten'--in
| fact, it's been heavily researched, documented, debated. This
| article title is a bit clickbait-y, and hinges on the current fad
| of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't acknowledge/appreciate a
| Black civilization', which is of course wrong.
| kilgorewest wrote:
| >"the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't
| appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong."
|
| The leaders of European nations fed and feed their populations
| large amount of misinformation about who they are and who
| people outside their borders were. If a monarch was made in the
| image of and chosen by god, how could the greatest structures
| in human history not be in Europe? The solution was to
| whitewash as much as possible.
|
| You see this in the restoration of art for the last few
| centuries, many brown/black pieces turned white all of sudden.
| Some claim this was unintentional, but if we look at how
| Africans have been treated for the past 500+- years, that claim
| seems suspicious and sounds more like ass-covering when the
| fraud was revealed.
|
| I expect this exposing of fraud to ramp up as automated
| translation allows us to compare notes between the great
| civilizations of human history in the near future.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This comment undersells the article, imho, which is quite cool.
| I would have thought it's some culture war overcorrection but
| it actually only has one reference to prejudice (about an
| Egyptologist from the early 1900s) and is mostly about how the
| Kush kingdoms were actually more than just some Egyptian
| colony.
|
| Title is clickbaity though of you interpret it literally.
| Article does not answer "why" it was forgotten.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Yes, Sudan hasn't been totally ignored, but the 3 classical
| areas of Rome, Greece, and Egypt have gotten a very
| disproportionate share of work, with France and the Levant/near
| east as second fiddles. On that scale, I think it's fair to
| describe Sudan and other outlying areas (like the Caucasus) as
| effectively ignored.
|
| The article also isn't talking about "Europeans are racist and
| didn't appreciate black people". It's referencing about how
| Sudanese archaeology has been plagued by Diffusionism, a
| formerly dominant school of thought that's come under heavy
| criticism in the past 40ish years. Some people, myself
| included, will argue that diffusionism is a product of
| prejudiced ideologies and worldviews, but that's at least one
| step removed from what you're suggesting.
| secondcoming wrote:
| "Diffusionism refers to the diffusion or transmission of
| cultural characteristics or traits from the common society to
| all other societies."
| hogFeast wrote:
| The work is in proportion to the amount of documents that are
| retained today. The reason why Rome and Greece are "popular"
| is they determined intellectual thought from the fall of the
| Western Rome until, probably, humanism (some one millennia
| later) so much of what they wrote down has been retained (or,
| more accurately, wasn't destroyed).
|
| As an example: we know Carthage was a huge
| civilisation...until Rome razed it so we have no real idea
| today what ancient Carthage actually was like apart from that
| it was significant enough for Rome to burn to the ground.
|
| Also, talking about "Europeans" is indicative of a total
| misconception of history in the period. Rome was a
| Mediterranean as much as a European one (north of Rome wasn't
| Europe as today, it was just a bunch of tribes). Many
| important figures that, ironically, people today say are
| examples of an over-emphasis on "Europeans" were Africans.
| Augustine being the best example, basically founded the
| theology of the early Church, he was a Roman but he was (in
| today's terms) also African. In short, trying to read the
| present back into the future is not smart.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The work of archaeologists is absolutely not in proportion
| to the amount of surviving documents. Most of my digs have
| been in places and periods with few to no written records,
| for example.
|
| As for the comment about Europeans, I was talking about
| modern academics (particularly of the early through late
| 20th century). The leading archaeologists of that period
| primarily came from European and American traditions. I
| have no idea what Augustine has to do with 20th century
| academia. Please feel free to enlighten me if there's a
| connection though.
| hogFeast wrote:
| That wasn't the claim. You should read the reply chain
| but the point isn't about archaeology but our
| interpretation of civilization outside Rome and Greece.
| You wanted to know why these civilizations get that share
| of work...the reason why is that their thought was more
| relevant to us (again, most Europeans believed in
| Aristotelian science until humanism). And, again, these
| civilizations were more African than European...it is
| nothing to do with racism (which was the implication).
|
| That wasn't the claim. I will explain, although you would
| do just as well to go back and read what I said more
| closely...again. The point is: many people who are
| perceived to be part of the European tradition (i.e.
| Rome/Greece) are not Europeans. So when someone says:
| Europe has got a disproportionate share of work, these
| regions are ignored, their civilizations are
| ignored...this is wrong. Most of these civilizations were
| mutli-culutural/multi-national, and included Africa (the
| other big contributor would be the Middle East). Again,
| attempting to read the current political view onto the
| past. And the point about Augustine is that he was
| African, the point about academics who say things like:
| we are too Euro-centric is that they define Europe in a
| way that makes no historical sense (unsurprisingly, as
| they are usually arguing about things in the present, not
| anything related to history...the concept of Europe
| itself is not something with a clear historical meaning).
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It seems like there might be a misunderstanding of what I
| wrote. Quoting myself:
|
| > ..the 3 classical areas of Rome, Greece, and Egypt have
| gotten a very disproportionate share of work...
|
| Greece and Rome (in the sense of the empire) are
| literally the "classic" in so-called classical
| archaeology [1]. Egypt is included because it's
| comparable for this particular case and there's a pretty
| substantial overlap with "core" classical archaeology.
|
| Again, I've written nothing about whether these areas
| encompass parts of Africa nor whether they were wholly
| European. I also haven't implicated racism as the reason
| for that disproportionate amount of study. The things
| you're criticizing aren't my views and trying to put
| words into my mouth isn't appreciated.
|
| [1] https://lsa.umich.edu/classics/undergraduate-
| students/majors...
| tremon wrote:
| _north of Rome wasn 't Europe as today, it was just a bunch
| of tribes_
|
| This is a mischaracterization in the same class as what's
| described in the article. Early Rome was just as tribal as
| the rest of Europe, and Greece has been tribal for almost
| its entire (ancient) existence. The major difference is
| that the tribes of Northern Europe seem to have been much
| less well documented, but they didn't live in isolation.
| There's ample evidence of trade routes spanning from the
| Iberian peninsula to the Carpathians, and across the
| British isles, the Nordic and Baltic states.
|
| The "bunch of tribes" encountered by the Romans was
| actually a vast Celtic empire, which was itself preceded by
| other societies such as the Bell Beaker or Corded Ware
| cultures. But they've largely disappeared from the record
| because of the written legacy from the Greek and Roman
| empires.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, it's probably fair to say that it's been ignored by the
| general public, but then so have most really old civilisations;
| in the popular imagination, there was nothing except Greece,
| Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD.
|
| > hinges on the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and
| didn't appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course
| wrong.
|
| ... eh, until last century it was fashionable to attribute it
| to "just an Egypt copy, basically".
|
| EDIT: On the latter topic, RE the guy who looted the Sudanese
| pyramids:
|
| > He tried to sell the treasure, but at this time nobody
| believed that such high quality jewellery could be made in Sub-
| Saharan Africa.
|
| The stuff he stole ultimately ended up in two German museums
| for _Egyptian_ artifacts.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > in the popular imagination, there was nothing except
| Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD.
|
| Really? The Romans are known for their expansionism. Who were
| they conquering? Who was everybody fighting against in _300_?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If we're really talking about Western popular imagination,
| 1-4 generations ago, I have to think it was dominated by
| what's in the Bible.
| makomk wrote:
| In the popular imagination? The Romans were conquering
| barbaric tribes that aren't worth talking about in detail,
| I think. Certainly not civilizations. The actual details of
| those civilizations seem to be as niche and obscure as
| knowledge of the Kush.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In the popular imagination? The Romans were conquering
| barbaric tribes that aren't worth talking about in
| detail, I think.
|
| There was plenty of interaction, but the thing about
| those insignificant barbaric tribes is that they aren't
| worth conquering either.
| usrusr wrote:
| And there's a simple rule that's obvious even in a
| superficial read of de bello gallico: don't cultivate
| wheat and the legions won't bother you.
| jacobush wrote:
| Now it's cultivate nukes and the legions won't bother
| you.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Barbarians! Tribes! People in some way not civilized!
|
| (This was, in fairness, largely how the Romans represented
| it to themselves, regardless of how true it was, so it's
| maybe not surprising.)
| CBLT wrote:
| > in the popular imagination, there was nothing except
| Greece, Rome and Egypt until this side of 1 AD.
|
| Doesn't seem true to me; people seem aware of the Mayans and
| some of the stuff going on in Asia at the time (though
| generally not all).
| kaitai wrote:
| In school, we (I'm in the US) spent a whole high school
| semester on Greece and Rome. In elementary school we had a
| unit on Mayans/Aztecs/the Inca, and we had a unit on
| ancient India, but not in high school. For some reason
| Chinese history was really ignored so I didn't get that
| until I chose to take a class in college. Since we don't
| have a national curriculum in the US, I'm sure it's
| different in different places. I think we know about the
| Mayans because Americans like to fly to Cancun.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This is a continuation of the 19th century American bias
| towards Greek classicism as the hallmark of democracy.
| Conflict with the Ottomans generated a lot of sympathy
| toward Greece and that was reflected in fads of fashion,
| architecture, place names, and education.
| throwaway590007 wrote:
| Looking at a strain of thought that seeks to attribute the
| current differences in outcomes and 'accomplishments' between
| Africans and Europeans to the inherent qualities of their
| populations, thereby discarding the possibility that such
| outcomes could have been different not so long ago, and seeing
| this strain of thought dominate HN and HN-adjacent communities
| (in the form of "we should dig into at'uncomfortable questions'
| and so forth"), I'd say that yes, Kush has largely been
| forgotten by the general population, even that part of which
| who likes to call itself 'educated'.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > I'd say that yes, Kush has largely been forgotten by the
| general population, even that part of which who likes to call
| itself 'educated'.
|
| The Kingdom of Kush, and the people who came from there are
| well known to Jews. Moses wife Tziporah was a Midianite (as
| was Jethro) and he had a second wife from Kush.
| IllogicalLogic wrote:
| "the current fad of 'Europeans are all racists and didn't
| appreciate a Black civilization', which is of course wrong."
|
| The leaders of European nations fed and feed their populations
| large amount of misinformation about who they are and who
| people outside their borders were. If a monarch was chosen by
| god, how could the greatest structures in human history not be
| in Europe? The answer was to whitewash as much as possible.
|
| You see this in the restoration of art for the last few
| centuries, many brown/black pieces turned white all of sudden.
| Some claim this was unintentional, but if we look at how
| Africans have been treated for the past 500+- years, that claim
| seems suspicious and sounds more like ass-covering when the
| fraud was revealed.
|
| I expect this exposing of fraud to ramp up as automated
| translation allows us to compare notes between the great
| civilizations of human history.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| Your "see it has been researched" rebuttal is dodging the
| actual point which is that it has been systematically under-
| researched and under-appreciated, not that it hasn't been
| researched at all. Similarly no one is saying _all_ Europeans
| are racists and you trotting that out is just a straw man. Your
| proposal that European /American civilization having a major
| problem now and historically of exploiting and marginalizing
| the brown world in every single way is "of course wrong" is
| completely insane and, honestly, an _example_ of exactly the
| systematic racism you are denying.
| TheTruth321 wrote:
| "all" ...
|
| Is that your fad?
|
| You sound entirely stupid for this type of a subject.
|
| Edit: unsuitable might be the better word for stupid in this
| case, but I'll let both stand.
| monadic2 wrote:
| I mean they literally invented race to enslave entire groups of
| people. And it's hardly like Europe stopped interfering or
| exploiting even with the 21st century.
| elefanten wrote:
| This is such an intellectually impoverished notion of racism.
| It's mired in 20th-century theory goo.
|
| You can rest assured that racist reasoning ran rampant
| throughout world history long before someone coined the word
| "race" or before 18th/19th century political narratives used
| it in whatever particular ways.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I challenge you to go find a description of race based on
| skin colour in old Roman texts. The colour of someone's
| skin is barely commented on in them, more of a novelty
| about the person, and is not described as being related to
| "race." And yet they had an empire which spanned from North
| Africa to Northern Europe.
|
| Race as a category was an invention to justify the form of
| slave trade during the settling of the Americas.
| merpnderp wrote:
| <N. Africans have entered the conversation>
|
| You do realize that slavery, racism and every despicable
| thing imaginable was the normal state of humanity for
| 99.999% of our 200,000+ year history? How many languages
| have names for a group of people based on some common
| attribute of that people, far before the 17th/18th
| century? A lot.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Human beings definitely did and still do very awful
| things. But that word race, as we understand it today,
| isn't really the thing they used to justify it.
|
| The question is whether "race" as we understand it today
| was understood that way then. And it wasn't. Not that we
| can see.
|
| 19th century pseudo-anthropology and earlier built up a
| whole concept of race which essentially defined humanity
| into subspecies. There was Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid,
| etc. and these were then attached to specific supposedly
| scientifically defined traits that went far beyond the
| colour of skin or shape of eye. That is what is generally
| meant by race, _still_. And it turns out this is complete
| and total bunk. There's more genetic diversity and
| difference within Africa between "blacks" than there is
| between non-Africans and Africans. So the category of
| race is of absolutely no use except as a historical or
| ethno-linguistic-cultural designation, and there as well,
| it's a pretty crappy one. What do Kenyans and West
| Africans and African Americans have in common other than
| skin colour? Very little -- not linguistically, not
| genetically, and not much culturally, either, but they do
| share a history of being categorized together as "black"
| by Europeans.
|
| By saying "people always did this" you're ignoring a very
| specific meaning of race that has been used to justify,
| and still is, some pretty stupid _specifically_ awful
| crap. By calling "race" into question, we try to deal
| with that crap.
|
| Yes, humanity has always used difference as a way of
| justifying oppression. But this specific kind of imagined
| difference, it's important to analyze because it's a very
| _modern_ designation, without a scientific basis, and it
| had a very specific purpose, and still does for people
| who like to peddle pseudo-scientific superiority theories
| around it.
| monadic2 wrote:
| I mean if you're just going to conflate the concepts of
| race and ethnicity there's not much point to having this
| conversation at all.
| elefanten wrote:
| As expressed by sibling comments -- skin color is
| irrelevant to my point.
|
| If it's not skin color, it's "those people beyond the
| mountains" or "the river folk to the south" or "the
| Babylonians" or whatever.
|
| I'm talking about tribal/identitarian discrimination that
| ascribes essential natures/behaviors to "other" peoples.
|
| This narrowly-defined and elevated notion of racism along
| the lines of skin color, Atlantic slave trade dynamics,
| state-building/citizenship discourses of the last few
| century, scientific racism and all other fashionable
| targets of criticism is ultimately just that: a narrow
| subset of a larger human problem.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Edit: downvoting this without a response is pretty much
| against the guidelines, I am hardly distracting from the
| conversation here, and the downvote is not a "disagree"
| button. I put in a lot of effort to showing you why you
| have a shallow understanding of the topic; I'm open to
| being wrong.
|
| Xenophobia and racism are completely separate concepts,
| although xenophobia does underly racism. It's entirely
| possible to construct a form of race that relies on other
| qualitative factors than skin color--just look at
| colourism, which ironically explicitly lays out non-color
| qualitative identifiers of "dark and light skinned"--hair
| type, body shape, hyperpigmentation, prevalence of
| certain genetic disease, whatever. These terms arose from
| feedback loops where racist capital dictate societal
| beauty standards and cultural norms. You certainly can't
| explain phenomena like skin bleaching or the long history
| of hair straitening with simple xenophobia. But,
| colourism is just one effect globalized racist capital
| has produced.
|
| When academics talk about how racism is a problem, they
| definitely aren't discussing a general form of
| qualitative, personal discrimination. These racial
| structures underly our communities, our politics, our
| identities, here in America our state's use of slave
| labor in prisons, how our wealth is divided among our
| citizens, how we construct and discuss trade deals and
| foreign "charities" such as the Gates foundation, etc.
| simply put, you cannot discuss racism without discussing
| how race is embedded in the structures and processes all
| around us. These dynamics are easier to ignore in
| ethnically homogenous societies... unless of course you
| are a minority or immigrant.
|
| Whiteness and blackness as we know it here in America
| were invented to formalize the structures of slavery here
| between the 15th and 18th centuries--this took centuries
| to move from the enslavement and sale of both Africans
| and indigenous Americans to a codified racial hierarchy,
| driven by European capital and nearly complete genocide
| of the indigenous people. I am sure there are similar
| narratives in the Congo, in Rhodesia, in South Africa, in
| Brazil, in European involvement in Southeast Asia, in
| virtually every part of the carribean and West Indies--
| it's colonialism, baby!
|
| Every single aspect of the development of racism was
| ultimately driven by European capital. When countries
| "decolonialized" the west simply replaced formal state
| oppression with oppression through trade deals and proxy
| wars, which could not take course without European
| capital and violence. Make no mistake, European wealth is
| racist blood money.
|
| This attitude of "oh the form of racism I learned about
| on Mister Roger's Neighborhood is just xenophobia with a
| different name" is just completely ignorant of the past
| 150-200 years of analysis of race and racism. I recommend
| these books if you have any serious inclination of
| discussing race:
|
| * "Black Reconstruction" and "the souls of black folk",
| by WEB du Bois.
|
| * "Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from
| Mayflower to Modern" by J. Sakai
|
| * Toni Morrison's "the origin of others" directly
| addresses your attitude towards racism--after all, though
| racism is distinct from xenophobia, xenophobia is
| necessary for racism.
|
| * "Color Stories: Black Woman and Colorism in the 21st
| century (intersections of race, ethnicity, and culture)"
| by JeffriAnne Wilder.
|
| * "redefining race: Asian american panethnicity and
| shifting ethnic boundaries" by Dina Okamato.
|
| * "Marxism and the National and Colonial Question" by
| Joseph Stalin. Note, I am not a Stalin fan, but he's a
| decent essayist and laid out an excellent argument for
| separating the concepts of state sovereignty and
| nationhood, which is basically a collective recognition
| of being part of a shared people. You see this in the
| "union" part of the soviet union and the 56 nations of
| China, though this is frequently disingenuously
| translated as "ethnic groups".
|
| * building off the above book, "The Nine Nations of North
| America" is a must read. This was written by Joel
| Garreau.
|
| * "Racial ideas and the impact of imperialism in Europe":
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1084877980857
| 986...
|
| * "the color complex: the politics of skin color in a new
| millennium." by Kathy Russell
|
| This is also neglecting vast swathes of racial dynamics
| across central and South America, Asia, Australia and
| Polynesia--you really can fill up entire libraries with
| how racism is distinct (materially, culturally,
| subjectively) from xenophobia and manifests through labor
| exploitation and capital transfer.
| dtwest wrote:
| Why is the Gates Foundation a foreign "charity"? What
| does that mean / what do the quotes imply?
|
| I didn't downvote, but I'm not really following what
| you're saying.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Herodotus narrates the Athenians promising that they
| would never betray the Spartans because they are the same
| race ("homaimos" - "same blood").
|
| I don't know off the top of my head whether the Romans
| widely knew of the Histories, but it certainly undercuts
| your claim that these broader categorizations are a
| recent invention. The Athenians and Spartans clearly
| recognized a racial idea broader than the cultures of
| their individual polities.
| monadic2 wrote:
| That is not race. Ethnicity and race are distinct
| concepts.
| torstenvl wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
| minimuffins wrote:
| In a child comment you make the case that racism is when
| some group holds "tribal/identitarian" notions about an
| "other" group and attributes essential characteristics to
| them. You say this has existed throughout history and did
| not begin in modernity.
|
| Ok.
|
| That doesn't actually disagree with the "20th-century
| theory goo" though. The goo says that colonizing European
| empires created "new discourses" about race that served an
| ideological function in their empire-building. That's a far
| cry from "those people over the mountains there are
| barbarous."
|
| The notions of "whiteness" and "blackness," as they still
| function today (against increasingly strong currents of
| critique) are clearly something different from that. In
| pre-modern times, a Viking and a Frank wouldn't have seen
| themselves as having anything in common. But now
| (anachronistically) they're commonly "white."
|
| It seems like the confusion here--and I see it repeated all
| over the place--comes from a failure to clarify terms like
| "race" and "racism."
|
| There's "racism" in the sense of a prejudice against some
| other-group that we can identify because they look or act
| different, and they live over there and we live over here.
| That has probably been around as long as different kinds of
| people have been encountering each other.
|
| And then there's "racism," the ideological function where
| European empires constructed whole new ideas about groups
| of people that previously would not have seen themselves as
| having anything in common, in the service of expansion,
| extraction, domination, slavery, etc.
|
| If you think that's all goo, that's fine, but you need to
| provide a stronger counter-argument. None of the purveyors
| of the 20th-century goo actually believe that no one hated
| other-groups before modernity.
| [deleted]
| airstrike wrote:
| https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Nubian_(Civ6)
|
| Yeah, doesn't look forgotten to me
|
| https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Amanitore_(Civ6)
|
| _> Kandake Amanitore ruled Nubia at the turning of an era. A
| powerful queen, feared by her enemies and beloved by her
| people, she was one of the last great builders of the Kingdom
| of Kush. Amanitore restored the Land of the Bow to its
| greatness following a period of turmoil. Her rule was long and
| her works lasting._
|
| _> At least, that is what historians have pieced together. Two
| millennia and one dead language later, there is little
| surviving written record of Amanitore in the form of scrolls or
| other documents. What remains is carved into the very stone of
| the buildings she left behind._
|
| _> The most nebulous aspect of Amanitore 's life is who she
| was before she became queen. Indeed, her personality is a
| cypher. We can only interpret. One abstract depiction of the
| kandake shows her mercilessly slaying enemies she has already
| subjugated. Was it from an actual incident where she ordered
| the execution of rebels, or propaganda proclaiming her
| righteous vengeance against those who would be enemies of the
| state?_
|
| _> Even then, her actual role as queen is difficult to pin
| down. Conflicting accounts of her co-ruler Natakamani depict
| him as either her husband or her son, though thankfully never
| both. Furthermore, Amanitore succeeded Kandake Amanishakheto,
| who was either her mother-in-law (if Natakamani was Amanitore
| 's husband), her actual mother (if Natakamani was Amanitore's
| son), or some other form of relation lost to time._
|
| _> The fuzzy details of Amanitore 's lineage are less
| important than the role she held. The title of kandake--or
| "candace," as the Romans called it--roughly translates to
| "queen-mother," but it did not equate to a regent ruling on
| behalf of an heir too young to hold power. Instead, the
| kandakes were independent queens who ruled alone with husband
| consorts or with kings in a form of co-rulership._
|
| _> Amanitore 's reign took the latter form, with Natakamani as
| her equal. There is scant information on any aspect of her life
| before she became queen (around 1 BCE). Still, monuments always
| depict both co-rulers as adults, so she was likely in her prime
| when her rule began. In fact, the depictions of Amanitore and
| Natakamani deliberately present the two as equivalent,
| particularly in religious buildings, which was uncommon for the
| time._
|
| _> With Egypt a Roman vassal and Rome on amicable terms with
| Nubia, no regional conflicts threatened Amanitore 's reign. The
| relatively peaceful time and the collaborative autonomy of co-
| rulership let Amanitore pursue what would become her legacy--an
| extended period of building that brought great prosperity to
| the Meroitic kingdom. Among her works were the construction of
| Nubian pyramids and tombs, restoration of Amun's temple in
| Meroe, and infrastructure projects, such as the reservoirs
| built near the capital._
|
| _> Amanitore also rebuilt the temple of Amun at Napata--the
| same temple that Roman invaders had destroyed just two decades
| prior. As Amanitore's name incorporated the name of the god
| Amun, it is reasonable to assume its restoration was a point of
| pride for the busy queen. Indeed, her efforts helped revive
| Jebel Barkal to at least a fraction of its former glory._
|
| _> Although the queen enjoyed cordial relations with Rome, the
| decades-earlier reprisal raids into Egyptian (which is to say,
| "Roman") territory had recovered bronze statues of Augustus
| Caesar as spoils of war. An apocryphal tale describes Amanitore
| burying the decapitated head of one such statue beneath temple
| stairs in Meroe so Nubians would always walk over the Roman
| emperor responsible for razing Napata. (It was most likely
| Kandake Amanirenas, her predecessor, who actually did this.)
| Whether or not she was actually responsible for its burial, the
| "Meroe head" of Augustus Caesar was recovered in the early 20th
| Century--found beneath a flight of temple steps._
|
| _> As with the confusion surrounding Amanitore 's ascension,
| we know very little about the end of her reign. Some estimates
| put the date of her death at roughly 20 CE. Treasure hunters
| have long since plundered her tomb in Meroe._
|
| _> Despite the many unknown aspects of Amanitore, the
| extensive building program she left behind inspired later
| kandakes to expand upon her work, which in turn led to a
| flourishing of Meroitic culture and fortunes through the Second
| Century. Archaeologists continue to uncover examples of her
| influence, including a set of recently unearthed Nubian
| pyramids built during her reign. _
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Loading up gamefaqs.com Age Of Empires II Walkthrough to
| prove my point about human civilizations.
| arp242 wrote:
| > I first learned of Sudan's extraordinary pyramids as a boy, in
| the British historian Basil Davidson's 1984 documentary series
| "Africa."
|
| This one seems to be on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75COneJ4w8&list=PL6mz4AK-lT...
| kbenson wrote:
| > The land south of Egypt, beyond the first cataract of the Nile,
| was known to the ancient world by many names: Ta-Seti, or Land of
| the Bow, so named because the inhabitants were expert archers;
| Ta-Nehesi, or Land of Copper;
|
| Oh, is that what Ta-Nehesi Coates is named after? I decided to
| look, and apparently his name is slightly different, Ta-Nehisi.
| What's weird just just how often he's miscredited with the wrong
| name in articles online, whether they be blogs or new agencies
| (those might be alternate spelling tagging) or book clubs.
|
| As I myself have an uncommon spelling of a fairly common name
| (with no common variations), I can only imagine how annoying this
| must be. It's probably self propagating at this point, since
| anyone that searches for it with the wrong name will find plenty
| of (wrong) evidence that they guessed right, depending on where
| their eyes land on the page.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Note that Ta-Nehisi Coates insists on the pronunciation "Ta-
| Nehasi Coates."
| kbenson wrote:
| Yeah, the first few times I heard him on a podcast, I thought
| people were calling him "Tallahassee".
| robk wrote:
| Meroe is spectacular and virtually no tourists and overall rather
| safe compared to the other three quadrants of the country. I can
| recommend that and scuba diving in Port Sudan highly.
| https://www.robk.com/2013/08/21/sudan-2012/
| pueblito wrote:
| What are the square structures in the back of the 2nd to last
| photo?
| CrackpotGonzo wrote:
| "Be, be-fore we came to this country
|
| We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys
|
| There was empires in Africa called Kush
|
| Timbuktu, where every race came to get books
|
| To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans
|
| Asian Arabs and gave them gold, when
|
| Gold was converted to money it all changed
|
| Money then became empowerment for Europeans
|
| The Persian military invaded
|
| They heard about the gold, the teachings, and everything sacred
|
| Africa was almost robbed naked
|
| Slavery was money, so they began making slave ships
|
| Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went
|
| He was so shocked at the mountains with black faces
|
| Shot up they nose to impose what basically
|
| Still goes on today, you see?"
|
| - From I Can by Nas https://genius.com/Nas-i-can-lyrics
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Nas was ahead of the times. I can't believe that these lyrics
| are from 2003. Always inspiring to hear them.
|
| These lyrics bring home the point that so much of culture is
| historical narrative. I was reading Scale by Geoffrey West who
| is a particle physicist. Every 5-10 pages West brings up
| Plato/Aristotle. This was baffling to me till it dawned on that
| Greek history is the author's historical narrative, his
| cultural identity. Erase someone's history, erase their
| identity and you crush their progress. Give them a glorious
| past and they feel predestined to greatness. I believe good
| things will come from resurrecting the history of African
| Civilizations.
|
| "Where is your history? How did the man wipe out your history?"
| - Malcolm X [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt6CA9VX4XY
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Plato isn't the best philosopher of all time because he is
| white and male. The Enlightenment is open and inclusive.
| Plato used to be a slave and elevated a woman to the highest
| philosophical position in the Symposium.
| bitdizzy wrote:
| I don't think the quote in the OP is talking about Plato's
| works or conduct, but how Plato figures into a modern
| person's, Geoffrey West's, relationship to history. In that
| context, I don't understand the relevance of your comment.
| sevensor wrote:
| I'd be really interested to hear more about the literature of
| ancient Kush or Timbuktu -- what language it was written in,
| what kind of scholarly tradition it had. My education covered
| (at least superficially) Europe, Egypt, the Levant,
| Mesopotamia, India, and East Asia, but Africa south of the
| Sahara is a big blank spot...
|
| So I went and looked it up on Wikipedia, and it turns out that
| Kush had an alphabetic script. Many inscriptions remain but
| little of the language (Meroitic) has been decoded. Although
| they would have had access to paper as a result of contact with
| Egypt and the Hellenistic world, there's no indication that any
| books written in Meroitic have survived.
| biztos wrote:
| "Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went
|
| He was so shocked at the mountains with black faces
|
| Shot up they nose to impose..."
|
| Is that a reference to the Great Sphinx of Giza?
|
| If so... it doesn't appear that Alexander the Great had
| anything to do with it.
|
| Am I missing something?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza#Missing_n...
|
| _Edit: attempting to format the quote_
| karlp wrote:
| It sounds really deep, but there doesn't seem to be any truth
| to it? Wikipedia mentions internal problems and conquest by a
| neighboring kingdom:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush
|
| I don't understand why make up stories when there are more than
| enough material with the colonial history.
| elefanten wrote:
| One of the most frustrating aspects of these liberationist
| counter-narratives is the pretense that whoever conquered or
| succeeded certain civilizations/cultures, did so by a unique
| application of force.
|
| Roughly: 'our people were good and peaceful until evil
| warlike invaders with wholly-different human motivations
| wiped us out.'
|
| We should aim to fix injustices in the world. But building
| false narratives of differential demonization will only
| recreate problems in the long run.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| How does an invasionary force conquer a foreign land where
| they are outnumbered other than by being warlike?
|
| Lets define warlike as those who have achieved a high
| degree of skill at warfare.
|
| The Mongols who conquered cities and states were famously
| warlike. So were the Macedonians/Greeks under Alexander.
| philwelch wrote:
| People spin history to try and enhance the prestige of groups
| they identify with. Even when their group identities don't
| really make sense in contexts that existed thousands of years
| ago and thousands of miles away. For instance, "were the
| ancient Egyptians black?" is a deep rabbit hole.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's pretty common for archeology to be scanty when a
| civilization doesn't leave behind any writings to study. If you
| want to be remembered you gotta write stuff down, and do so in a
| way that survives the ages.
|
| It also helps to be closer to the modern era. Complaints that the
| Greek and Roman empires are better known seem a bit silly when
| you consider that they were in their peak closer to the present
| day than they were to Kush.
| marc_abonce wrote:
| Kushites did have writing though:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroitic_script.
| wl wrote:
| It's not writing that's well understood. There's no parallel
| texts like the Rosetta Stone. Also, Meroitic isn't closely
| related to any other language we have knowledge of. As a
| result, we can read a few names and little else.
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| Recommend sources for human culture/civilization history from
| 10,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C.?
|
| Most of the top search results and Wikipedia entries tap out on
| cultures prior to ~5,000-~3,000 B.C.
|
| Of course there are stand alone pages such as
| Neolithic_founder_crops
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture
|
| Chalocolithic Period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic
| JackFr wrote:
| The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
| Mind
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicame...
| simonsarris wrote:
| Against the Grain by James Scott.
| ruined wrote:
| another +1, excellent book
| simlevesque wrote:
| Thank you I just ordered it.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| +1, it's excellent
| op03 wrote:
| https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| I enjoyed 'After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000
| BC' by Steven Mithen
|
| https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23426761
| ryansmccoy wrote:
| Joe Rogan had some interesting guys, Graham Hancock & Randall
| Carlson, that talked about lost civilizations due to asteroid
| in 10,000 BC. Sounded like there is some controversy around it
| though, so take it however you'd like.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8&t=781s
| dragandj wrote:
| Europe Between The Oceans, by Barry Cunliffe. On The Ocean, by
| Barry Cunliffe
| leptoniscool wrote:
| If the area was more prosperous today, it would have hired many
| historians and PR to spread its historical significance. Many
| European cities do this to increase tourism revenue.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I'm guessing it had been prosperous while it was in the middle
| of the trade route between egypt and punt, and that after some
| change (broken off trade, or just rerouted via the red sea to
| cut out the middle man?) lost that envious position.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23184621
| power wrote:
| There's a nice webcomic called Drawing History that gives a
| gentle overview of many ancient civilisations, including the Kush
| https://m.tapas.io/series/Drawing-History/info
| flerchin wrote:
| Forgotten? Looks like looted Egyptian civilization to me.
| throwaw4y-plate wrote:
| Could someone flag this please before it eats the whole thread?
|
| E: thank you!
| charlesu wrote:
| There's a reply to sentiments like yours in the first few
| paragraphs of the article.
|
| > For years, European and American historians and
| archaeologists viewed ancient Kush through the lens of their
| own prejudices and that of the times. In the early 20th
| century, the Harvard Egyptologist George Reisner, on viewing
| the ruins of the Nubian settlement of Kerma, declared the site
| an Egyptian outpost. "The native negroid race had never
| developed either its trade or any industry worthy of mention,
| and owed their cultural position to the Egyptian immigrants and
| to the imported Egyptian civilization," he wrote in an October
| 1918 bulletin for Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. It wasn't until
| mid-century that sustained excavation and archaeology revealed
| the truth: Kerma, which dated to as early as 3000 B.C., was the
| first capital of a powerful indigenous kingdom that expanded to
| encompass the land between the first cataract of the Nile in
| the north and the fourth cataract in the south. The kingdom
| rivaled and at times overtook Egypt. This first Kushite kingdom
| traded in ivory, gold, bronze, ebony and slaves with
| neighboring states such as Egypt and ancient Punt, along the
| Red Sea to the east, and it became famous for its blue glazed
| pottery and finely polished, tulip-shaped red-brown ceramics.
|
| Also, "looted"? How does one loot civilization? Did the West
| "loot" paper from China?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well... there _is_ borrowing between civilizations. One might
| suspect that either Egypt developed pyramids, or Kush did,
| and the other borrowed the idea. The word "looting" doesn't
| fit, though, because if Kush borrowed the idea from Egypt,
| Egypt still had the idea - they didn't lose it. And Kush
| built their _own_ pyramids; they didn 't take Egyptian
| pyramids and move them south.
|
| In the same way, we don't say that Rome looted Greek
| civilization, though they borrowed quite a bit.
| rsynnott wrote:
| However, Rome (and others) _did_ literally loot _Egyptian_
| architecture; there are more Egyptian Obelisks in Italy
| today than in Egypt.
| ktta wrote:
| I don't agree with the GP's comment, but:
|
| > How does one loot civilization?
|
| Colonize, exploit the people and steal valued resources when
| they leave.
|
| You should look up this country called England sometime.
| graham_paul wrote:
| I think his statement was troll-ish
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