4 ms·

There's two different ways to interpret the GP post. Using the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated societies", the first is that civilization == the t

There's two different ways to interpret the GP post. Using the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated societies", the first is that civilization == the traditional childe definition. The academic timelines around that sort of stuff are well-established and people like graham Hancock do push ideas best described as crackpot about these sorts of societies existing before the LGM. But there's also the redefinitional arguments that the Childe definition of civilization is wrong. That's the vein you're working in and where books like Dawn of Everything are arguing from. They're much more agreeable to modern archaeologists and most wouldn't disagree too strongly (if at all). Wengrow has a good opinion piece on this dichotomy in [1]. [1] https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-one-of-monuments https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-...

zozbot234 4y ago
AIUI, Childe proposed a number of criteria for civilization, all of them correlating one way or another with 'increasingly complex society'. Some of those we'll never know if the very ancient past had them (and I think even Graham Hancock would acknowledge this), the others are pretty much in line with the article you link to. So I'm not sure how much genuine disagreement is involved, as opposed to scholars holding on to untenable viewpoints and neglecting to put two and two together.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  It's a bit fuzzier. The popular model prior to Childe was Lewis Morgan's three stage Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model. When Childe published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria, he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in the paper itself) and was intentionally providing standardized criteria to recognize the last stage. Childe himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really these are all the same broad concept with slightly different connotations. But aside from a few exceptions (people at USYD, Michael Smith), Childe's definitions are increasingly disagreeable to archaeologists. Most of the newer generations, myself included, find anti-evolutionist arguments significantly more persuasive and even those that don't aren't big fans of the original formulation of Childe's ideas. [1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is finding out now is that complex societies might not necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly unequal/hierarchical?

zozbot234 4y ago

AIUI, Childe proposed a number of criteria for civilization, all of them correlating one way or another with 'increasingly complex society'. Some of those we'll never know if the very ancient past had them (and I think even Graham Hancock would acknowledge this), the others are pretty much in line with the article you link to. So I'm not sure how much genuine disagreement is involved, as opposed to scholars holding on to untenable viewpoints and neglecting to put two and two together.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
It's a bit fuzzier. The popular model prior to Childe was Lewis Morgan's three stage Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model. When Childe published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria, he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in the paper itself) and was intentionally providing standardized criteria to recognize the last stage. Childe himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really these are all the same broad concept with slightly different connotations. But aside from a few exceptions (people at USYD, Michael Smith), Childe's definitions are increasingly disagreeable to archaeologists. Most of the newer generations, myself included, find anti-evolutionist arguments significantly more persuasive and even those that don't aren't big fans of the original formulation of Childe's ideas. [1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108
- zozbot234 4y ago
  So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is finding out now is that complex societies might not necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly unequal/hierarchical?