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This article has a sensationalist headline, but it reiterates the old thought — that everything began in the Middle East. Several other regions of the world ha

This article has a sensationalist headline, but it reiterates the old thought — that everything began in the Middle East. Several other regions of the world have extremely rich traditions, oral traditions of literature, predating by centuries events of the Middle East.

shp0ngle 4y ago
This talks about surviving written literature.
kitsune_ 4y ago
Two observations, first, the significance with the Sumerians, especially in context of this article, is the writing (among other things), not the fact that they told stories. Secondly, I think it's a fair assumption that there were oral traditions long before the invention of writing, but this is likely true for people living in the Middle East, or elsewhere. And as a sidenote, how can you prove the existence of extremely rich oral traditions?
- prox 4y ago
  One really interesting one is that of the Vedas, where there is a priest specifically to check if there are no mistakes and errors made. From wikipedia’s vedic priesthood article : The brahman was the reciter of hymns from the atharvaveda who was largely silent and observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made. So at least when it comes to accuracy, it was very resilient. I think my history teacher also mentioned something similar for the Jewish priesthood.
goto11 4y ago
Sure, but presumably the Sumerians also had a long oral tradition predating writing. It is just that we don't know anything about oral traditions thousands of years ago, since they leave no archeological trace. What we can know about is what is written down on durable material, and Sumer happens to have some of the very oldest surviving writing. Stories are probably as old as language, but this is pure speculation.
- prox 4y ago
  Not pure speculation. The study of proto Indo European Mythology points to a lot of shared concepts and history, at least pointing to a semblance of shared mythology/religion between cultures that split of from eachother as far back as 4000BC.
Tor3 4y ago
> oral traditions of literature Isn't that contradictory? You have oral traditions, and then you have literature ("literature" means written work)

shp0ngle 4y ago

This talks about surviving written literature.

kitsune_ 4y ago

Two observations, first, the significance with the Sumerians, especially in context of this article, is the writing (among other things), not the fact that they told stories. Secondly, I think it's a fair assumption that there were oral traditions long before the invention of writing, but this is likely true for people living in the Middle East, or elsewhere. And as a sidenote, how can you prove the existence of extremely rich oral traditions?

prox 4y ago
One really interesting one is that of the Vedas, where there is a priest specifically to check if there are no mistakes and errors made. From wikipedia’s vedic priesthood article : The brahman was the reciter of hymns from the atharvaveda who was largely silent and observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made. So at least when it comes to accuracy, it was very resilient. I think my history teacher also mentioned something similar for the Jewish priesthood.

goto11 4y ago

Sure, but presumably the Sumerians also had a long oral tradition predating writing. It is just that we don't know anything about oral traditions thousands of years ago, since they leave no archeological trace. What we can know about is what is written down on durable material, and Sumer happens to have some of the very oldest surviving writing. Stories are probably as old as language, but this is pure speculation.

prox 4y ago
Not pure speculation. The study of proto Indo European Mythology points to a lot of shared concepts and history, at least pointing to a semblance of shared mythology/religion between cultures that split of from eachother as far back as 4000BC.

Tor3 4y ago

> oral traditions of literature Isn't that contradictory? You have oral traditions, and then you have literature ("literature" means written work)