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Mon 7 Nov, 2005 09:54 pm
I'm not sure if this has already been mentioned here goes...
I was told Hitler helped Iran in WWI & WWII true/false?
I was told some tiny country started with "S" was the first country to exist in this world (it was above Iran), true/false? I know I should get the fullname of it.
If not what is the oldest country in the world? Anybody has a list?
Is there such thing as "7 Lover City" an event in history between Iran and Russia?
Thanks for the help.
Re: Iran...
AbleIIKnow_wong wrote:
I was told Hitler helped Iran in WWI & WWII true/false?
Unlikely, Hitler was a corporal in the army in WW1
AbleIIKnow_wong wrote:
I was told some tiny country started with "S" was the first country to exist in this world (it was above Iran), true/false? I know I should get the fullname of it.
If not what is the oldest country in the world? Anybody has a list?
May be referring to Sumeria - but hey, define country....
AbleIIKnow_wong wrote:
Is there such thing as "7 Lover City" an event in history between Iran and Russia?
If there is google don't know nothin' about it....
Iran declared neutrality in WWII but was attacked by Britain and the Soviets.
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/iran.html
And now I find out there was no Iran in WWI, it was still Persia
Persia in World War One (1914-1918)
Persia was drawn into the periphery of WWI because of its strategic position between Afghanistan and the warring Ottoman, Russian, and British Empires. In 1914 Britain sent a military force to Mesopotamia to deny access to the Persian oilfields from the Ottomans. Germany retaliated on behalf of its ally by spreading a rumour that the Kaiser had converted to Islam, and sent agents through Persia to attack the oil fields and raise a Jihad against British rule in India. Most of those German agents were captured by Persian, British and Russian troops who were sent to patrol the Afghan border, and the rebellion faded away.
This was followed by a German attempt to abduct and control the young Shah, with the assistance of his mainly-Swedish bodyguard, which was foiled at the last moment.
In 1916 the fighting between Russian and Ottoman forces to the north of the country had spilt down into Persia; Russia gained the advantage until most of her armies collapsed in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. This left the Caucasus unprotected, and the Caucasian and Persian civilians starving after years of war and depravation. In 1918 a small force of 400 British troops under General Dunsterville moved into the Trans-Caucasus from Persia in a bid to encourage local resistance to German and Ottoman armies who were about to invade the Baku oilfields. Although they later withdrew back into Persia, they did succeed in delaying the Turks access to the oil almost until the Armistice. In addition, the expedition's supplies were used to avert a major famine in the region, and a camp for 30,000 displaced refugees was created near the Persian-Mesopotamian border.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Empire#Persia_in_World_War_One_.281914-1918.29
I guess it does depend on how country is defined... I think they defined it as an established country... which hasn't under gone name/revolutionary changes or anything of that sort....
I still believe China is one of the oldest ones... obviously not the "People's Replublic of China."
About Iran, cool thanks.
hingehead wrote:Hmmm.
From
http://worldatlas.com/geoquiz/thelist.htm
arrow OLDEST COUNTRIES
San Marino (301 AD)
France (486 AD)
Bulgaria (632 AD)
Denmark (950 AD)
Portugal (1143 AD)
Andorra (1278 AD)
Switzerland (1291 AD)
WHERE ARE THE FIVE ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS:
- Greece
- Rome
- Egypt
- India and
of course of course of course:
CHINA
?????
I repeat: "Define 'country'"
hingehead wrote:I repeat: "Define 'country'"
Sorry...
I'll focus my attention on civilisations.
It is generally accepted that civilization began at
Sumer, around the middle of the fourth millenium BCE. The origins of the people who invented civilization and came to be known as Sumerians are a matter of considerable debate and conjecture; the regions of Persia, Anatolia, and The Indus (roughly corresponding with contemporary Iran, Turkey, and India) all have their proponents, but neither artifacts nor linguistic research argue conclusively for, or against, any of the chief candidates. None the less, it is with the Sumerians that first we find such things as writing, sophisticated metalwork (bronze, the first alloy), and codified, institutionalized socio-civil infrastructure.
While ancient by any measure, China's civilization - social structure on the order of that found at Sumer - generally is regarded to have emerged a millenium or so later, with the
Xian Dynasty.
pragmatic wrote:hingehead wrote:Hmmm.
From
http://worldatlas.com/geoquiz/thelist.htm
arrow OLDEST COUNTRIES
San Marino (301 AD)
France (486 AD)
Bulgaria (632 AD)
Denmark (950 AD)
Portugal (1143 AD)
Andorra (1278 AD)
Switzerland (1291 AD)
WHERE ARE THE FIVE ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS:
- Greece
- Rome
- Egypt
- India and
of course of course of course:
CHINA
?????
I believe Persia should be added on this. Of course Greece and China are ''unapproachable''
.
And hingehead this list is referring to the countries created at the form they are now. If it is like that Greece created at 1828 AD
.
Ellinas wrote: ... this list is referring to the countries created at the form they are now. If it is like that Greece created at 1828 AD
.
By that standard, I'm several years older than China
Adding "Persia" to a list of ancient countries which includes China is silly. It is equally silly to include "Greece," per se. The list of oldest civilizations should include Sumer, China, the Indus River Valley and Egypt.
As to what constitue countries, the idea of nations is only a very recent one in human history. The region now known as Persia/Iran was long settled, but formed no part of any ancient civilization until the arrival of the Aryan tribes which were to create the Persian Empire--the Medes and the Farsi (or Parsa). The word Persian is a corruption of Farsi--which may or may not have been a tribal name, but which is an accurate name for a language. The Medes firsr conquered the central plateau of what is today Iran, and then swept over the Zagros Mountains. They did not attempt to retain the territory they subjugated, which was wise, as the Zagros is a very high range, and they were cut off from their home population, and therefore from their supply base. This occurred early in the first millenium BCE, although it seems certain from archaeological evidence that the Farsi (aka Parsa) and the Medes (aka Mada) were in the Iranian plateau from sometime in the second millenium BCE, very likely from about 1500 BCE onward.
The first written occurance of Farsi known is from about 550 BCE, in cuneiform, and from the Achaemenid dynasty of the Persians, who had by then acheived hegemony over the Medes. (Note that Achaemenid is a Greek term; furthermore, Old Persian Avestan, the language of the Persians of the northwest of the Iranian plateau, was the language of the Avesta, the ancient scriptures of the Zoarastrians; it may have been written, but evidence does not survive contemporary to early Parsa and Mada incursions into the middle east--it is akin to Sanskrit, futher confirming the Aryan origins of the Parsa and the Mada).
Persia therefore does not exist as a monarchical polity until literally thousands of years after the rise of civilization in the region of Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River valley. The Chinese dynasties often referred to as "empires" prior to the third century BCE were not effectively empires--no more than Roman hegemony over the Latins, Hernicans and Samnites made them an empire. To that extent, the Chinese empires are no older than the Roman. The Roman empire can be said to be truly imperial from the end of the Tuscan and Samnite Wars, but even the most conservative historical opinions will put the rise of true Roman imperialism at the end of the second Punic War. This is roughly contemporaneous to the establishment of the first true imperial dynasty in China, that of Huang-Ti, the "Yellow Emperor," in the late third century BCE.
The Myceneans cannot properly be said to have represented Greek civilization. In fact, their veneer of civilization my have been borrowed wholesale from the Minoans of Crete--the origins of whose civlization are in doubt, with a bare majority of historians believing their civilization to have been "borrowed" from the Egyptians. The later Doric and Ionic Greek invasions may well have taken up the civilized veneer of the Myceneans to create their civilization, which although older than the establishment of Rome by many centuries, cannot be considered to be in the running against the aforementioned cilivizations of the river valleys: Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus and Yellow River.
Notes on the foregoing: I have written Chinese empires as there is not any way to honestly assert that there was genuine continuity from one dynasty to the next in Chinese history. Each new dynasty built upon the culture of its predecessors, but there were often long decades of imperial lacunae when no dynasty reigned, and the authority of separate clan kingdoms was notional.
The use of Iran as a name from Persia, although several centuries old, does not become "official" until 1935, when the government of that nation insisted that Iran replace Persia in diplomatic communication.
Setanta wrote:Adding "Persia" to a list of ancient countries which includes China is silly. It is equally silly to include "Greece," per se. The list of oldest civilizations should include Sumer, China, the Indus River Valley and Egypt.
That is what you think. Most of you when you hear about Greece your mind goes at our golden century at 5th century BC and around but Greek civilization is much older. Historically the first Greek civilization appeared at the 30th century BC, but we can't know everything about history. Many others are of the opinion that Greeks had organised societies before that, many talk even about 10000 BC, and I have seen many books having facts that we can't deny on this. You can't find also many informations and happenings in Greece's past in Greek mythology which is not just a fairy tail as many think.
Setanta wrote:The Myceneans cannot properly be said to have represented Greek civilization. In fact, their veneer of civilization my have been borrowed wholesale from the Minoans of Crete--the origins of whose civlization are in doubt, with a bare majority of historians believing their civilization to have been "borrowed" from the Egyptians. The later Doric and Ionic Greek invasions may well have taken up the civilized veneer of the Myceneans to create their civilization, which although older than the establishment of Rome by many centuries, cannot be considered to be in the running against the aforementioned cilivizations of the river valleys: Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus and Yellow River.
That is a joke. Myceneans had Greek names, used the early Greek religions and they were using a proto-Greek language which they wrote with Linear B. What else would make them a Greek race? I can't think about having a doubt on this. They were one of the early Greek races together with the Aegeans etc. Soon you are going to tell me that we appeared magically in our golden century.
As for the Minoans I will agree with you. None knows their exact origin. However the Minoan race had dissapeared after the Mycenean and Dorian invasions. The inhabitans of Crete from about 10th century BC till today are Dorians.
PS. Don't find my not so good English as an excuse
.
The Linear B to which you refer was one of the Mycenean borrowings from the Minoans--i'd already canvassed that. As in the "First Four Civilizations" thread (which i just saw, as you had posted there), you don't want to acknowledge what Asherman pointed out in that thread, and which i've pointed out here--to wit, the Nile valley, Mesopotamia, the Indus valley and the Yellow River valley are the homes to the oldest civilizations. You're trying to hold out for the Greeks as having had a civilization as old. The romanized version of the Greek word for Greece is Hellas, or Ellas. So what does Ellinas mean, the Greek? Your pride in your heritage is comendable, but it is not a basis for making extraordinary claims which you will be unable to support. Although the conversion of linear A to linear B allowed the Myceneans to record a language similar to archaic Greek, that by no means authorizes a contention that the Greek civilization is as old as the four already mentioned. That would be the equivalent of claiming a thousand years or more of antiquity for the Romans simply because Tuscan, like Latin, is one of the Italo-Tuscan langauges. Furthermore, that doesn't mean that the attributes of cilivization shown by the Mycenean were original to them--as i've pointed out, it is generally considered that these civilized attributes were borrowed. Finally, the collapse of Mycenean civilization prior to the arrival of the Doric Greeks strongly suggests that their institutions of civilization were not sufficiently flexible to accomodate either natural disaster or a rapid increase in population, something which does characterize the first four civilizations, which had devised their own cultures, and were therefore able to adapt them to circumstance. Those who borrow such a system wholesale, without having evolved the systems, without a basic understanding of the rationales of the systems, are more likely to be rigidly attached to form, and less able to adapt.
Again, it is good that you are proud of your heritage--but there is absolutely no reason to compare the Greek civilization in terms of antiquity to civilizations which were established three thousand years before the Doric Greeks arrive in recorded history.
I better clear up my posts here: in reference to my first post regardint the five civilisations, they were, I believe what the Chinese regarded as the five ancient civilisations. I should have qualified it.
Setanta wrote:The Linear B to which you refer was one of the Mycenean borrowings from the Minoans--i'd already canvassed that. As in the "First Four Civilizations" thread (which i just saw, as you had posted there), you don't want to acknowledge what Asherman pointed out in that thread, and which i've pointed out here--to wit, the Nile valley, Mesopotamia, the Indus valley and the Yellow River valley are the homes to the oldest civilizations. You're trying to hold out for the Greeks as having had a civilization as old. The romanized version of the Greek word for Greece is Hellas, or Ellas. So what does Ellinas mean, the Greek? Your pride in your heritage is comendable, but it is not a basis for making extraordinary claims which you will be unable to support. Although the conversion of linear A to linear B allowed the Myceneans to record a language similar to archaic Greek, that by no means authorizes a contention that the Greek civilization is as old as the four already mentioned. That would be the equivalent of claiming a thousand years or more of antiquity for the Romans simply because Tuscan, like Latin, is one of the Italo-Tuscan langauges. Furthermore, that doesn't mean that the attributes of cilivization shown by the Mycenean were original to them--as i've pointed out, it is generally considered that these civilized attributes were borrowed. Finally, the collapse of Mycenean civilization prior to the arrival of the Doric Greeks strongly suggests that their institutions of civilization were not sufficiently flexible to accomodate either natural disaster or a rapid increase in population, something which does characterize the first four civilizations, which had devised their own cultures, and were therefore able to adapt them to circumstance. Those who borrow such a system wholesale, without having evolved the systems, without a basic understanding of the rationales of the systems, are more likely to be rigidly attached to form, and less able to adapt.
Again, it is good that you are proud of your heritage--but there is absolutely no reason to compare the Greek civilization in terms of antiquity to civilizations which were established three thousand years before the Doric Greeks arrive in recorded history.
Firstly: ''Ellas'' is the Greek word for Greece, and Ellinas means Greek. I don't know what do you mean with ''Romanized''. The first ones who called us ''Grecos'' were the Romans and then the Latin and Germanic languages adopted the names for Greece from them (Greece, Grecia, Grece, Griechenland, Grokkeland etc.)
What I am trying to tell you is that you can't insist with this categorical way in what you believe. That Greeks appeared about 3000 BC. The most famous theory is that Greeks are an Indo-European race, but a lot of people doubt this. Foundings of sceletons in Greek caves like the one in Petralona cave show that the genetical structure of these ''savage'' people is the same with today's Greeks, doubting the Indo-European theory and claiming that Greeks were aborigine. Anyway I am not going to argue more in this our subject is different.
I consider what you say is completely true. What I understand about listing the older civilizations I consider the civilizations that exist till now. And Greece, Persia and China and India are the ones that survived in centuries. Having a history of thousands of years they are still here, maybe not with the same power, but they are the same people with same or similar languages and costums.
Egyptians and Sumerians (like many others) were ancient civizations but they are lost. Egypt may exist as a country today, but the ancient Egyptians genetically absorbed by the Arabs and their old language is not speaked anymore. Hope we understand each other.
I was pointing out that Ellas and Ellinas are not in the Greek alphabet--therefore, as we are using the Roman alphabet, these forms are said to be romanized.
Your contention about skeletons of an antiquity of three thousand years BCE being identical to modern skeletons, and therefore refuting any Indo-European origin for the Greeks is specious. Homo sapiens sapiens is of an antiquity of tens of thousands of years--the physiology of the skeletons is meaningless in the context of determining whether or not the Greeks are of an Indo-European origin. The langauge, however, is a crucial indicator, and that comes down firmly on the side of an Indo-European origin.
The earliest known linear B inscriptions do not date back further than 1500 BCE, and even were one to assume that the language transcribed therein were of greated antiquity in the Balkans, that only stretches back as far as 2000 BCE--which is not of an antiquity to vie with that of Sumer, Egypt, the Indus Valley or China. The use of what is known as the Greek alphabet cannot claim an antiquity of more than three thousand years in toto, and suggesting that it appears as long ago as 1000 BCE is stretching it. No greater antiquity for Hellenic languages can be claimed than the Mycenean, and that cannot reasonably said to be the source from which archaic and then classic Greek civilization descended.
Once again, it is good that you are proud of your heritage. Once again, there is no reasonable basis upon which to claim for the Greeks a cilivized antiquity to match that of Egypt, Sumer, the Indus valley and the Yellow River valley.
Setanta wrote:I was pointing out that Ellas and Ellinas are not in the Greek alphabet--therefore, as we are using the Roman alphabet, these forms are said to be romanized.
Your contention about skeletons of an antiquity of three thousand years BCE being identical to modern skeletons, and therefore refuting any Indo-European origin for the Greeks is specious. Homo sapiens sapiens is of an antiquity of tens of thousands of years--the physiology of the skeletons is meaningless in the context of determining whether or not the Greeks are of an Indo-European origin. The langauge, however, is a crucial indicator, and that comes down firmly on the side of an Indo-European origin.
The earliest known linear B inscriptions do not date back further than 1500 BCE, and even were one to assume that the language transcribed therein were of greated antiquity in the Balkans, that only stretches back as far as 2000 BCE--which is not of an antiquity to vie with that of Sumer, Egypt, the Indus Valley or China. The use of what is known as the Greek alphabet cannot claim an antiquity of more than three thousand years in toto, and suggesting that it appears as long ago as 1000 BCE is stretching it. No greater antiquity for Hellenic languages can be claimed than the Mycenean, and that cannot reasonably said to be the source from which archaic and then classic Greek civilization descended.
Once again, it is good that you are proud of your heritage. Once again, there is no reasonable basis upon which to claim for the Greeks a cilivized antiquity to match that of Egypt, Sumer, the Indus valley and the Yellow River valley.
You can have a look here:
http://www.aee.gr -because it is good to hear all the opinions. It is an anthropological association claiming what I told you.
The English version of the page is not very rich, but the information are enough.
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