Which of the Ancient Cultures were the most Brilliant?

The answer is obvious.

The Sumerians.

They gave us the concept of laws, cities, the wheel, agruculture, domestic farm animals, written langauge, astronomy, math, you name it, they were involved with it.

Everyone else learned from them.

sumeri14.jpg

But they didn't invent the internet.
 
Which of the Ancient Cultures were the most Brilliant?

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

The Hellenic Culture. Once Greek Hellenic civilization was conquered by Rome, that civilization became an amalgam; a Greek/Roman civilization. Rome outdid all earlier art in public architecture in both originality and profundity with their invention of concrete including hydraulic concrete cured under water for building their harbors. They scattered their architectural art including aquaducts, indoor plumbing, baths, and highways across more than three thousand miles of empire; from the Persian Gulf to Scotland in the British Isles. In the process they adapted and spread Greek science.

They also spread their ideas of government, the federal system through out their empire, with each city self governed with minimum interference, and relatively low taxation. In the process they gave the Mediterranean world including Briton their ideals of representative Roman republican government with its “rule of law” and amendable constitution. Their laws included the Law of Contracts, the Law of Persons, the Law of Property, the law of Procedure, and the Law of Nations.

To manage the contracting of public contracts and projects, the Roman government demanded the creation of “corporations,” made up of associations of citizens, so as to have a survivable system of control and responsibility; something an individual could not provide alone. If you thought of "letters of credit" as a form of checks, the Romans had banking and checking services for wealthy citizens, including freedmen.

Not being great scientific innovators, the Romans scattered Hellenic science throughout the Roman Empire, sent their children to Greece for an education and eventually became those they conquered, the “Greeks.” Roman civilization equaled Hellenic civilization equaled Greek civilization.

For an example of the work of Greek Astronomers, although they might better be called mathematicians and philosophers, the Greeks measured the diameter and circumference of the earth, and the distance between the Earth and the moon within an acceptable margin of error: 23,300 miles compared to 24,900 miles for Earth’s circumference, and about 240,000 miles for the Earth/moon distance which varies from about 225,000 to 250,000. The distance between the Earth and the sun was determined to be about half the correct value 92 million miles. But doing the calculations led Aristarchus to realize the size of the sun, leading him to suggest that the sun rather than the earth, must be at the center of the universe.
 
Last edited:
Id have to go with the Chinese.

Paper
Gunpowder
Irrigation
Martial Arts
Eastern Philosophy

Not to mention theyve been around since forever.
 
The pict's for face painting, Chucky Cheese would not have been invented without them.
 
Not being great scientific innovators, the Romans scattered Hellenic science throughout the Roman Empire, sent their children to Greece for an education and eventually became those they conquered, the “Greeks.” Roman civilization equaled Hellenic civilization equaled Greek civilization.

This is the key reason why I don't consider the Romans to be the most important or brilliant Ancient Civilization. They did accomplish a great deal, but as a civilization they were a dead end. They didn't advance science and technology (merely used it), and once their civilization fell apart almost nothing was left past a few engineering marvels. The Roman collapse was near complete and total.

If it wasn't for the Islamic culture, and Byzantine scribes who were literally copying down documents they couldn't even understand, all of the Hellenic culture would have passed from this Earth. That's why earlier I gave the Pre-Crusade Islamic culture the nod.

I do like the Romans, and think they made a great many legal advances. Its just that almost none of their legal advances survived them (almost all had to be "rediscovered") and as a Mathematician, Roman culture is a big empty space in the story that is the History of Mathematics.
 
The ancient Hebrews.
They wrote a series of books that were effective in enslaving the planet for over 6000 years.:cuckoo:
They also figured out how to profit immensely and pay zero taxes.
 
Not being great scientific innovators, the Romans scattered Hellenic science throughout the Roman Empire, sent their children to Greece for an education and eventually became those they conquered, the “Greeks.” Roman civilization equaled Hellenic civilization equaled Greek civilization.

This is the key reason why I don't consider the Romans to be the most important or brilliant Ancient Civilization. They did accomplish a great deal, but as a civilization they were a dead end. They didn't advance science and technology (merely used it), and once their civilization fell apart almost nothing was left past a few engineering marvels. The Roman collapse was near complete and total.

If it wasn't for the Islamic culture, and Byzantine scribes who were literally copying down documents they couldn't even understand, all of the Hellenic culture would have passed from this Earth. That's why earlier I gave the Pre-Crusade Islamic culture the nod.

I do like the Romans, and think they made a great many legal advances. Its just that almost none of their legal advances survived them (almost all had to be "rediscovered") and as a Mathematician, Roman culture is a big empty space in the story that is the History of Mathematics.

Mathematics isn’t everything, neither is the highly technical. The Romans were consummately practical. Their brilliance was manifest in utilizing new ideas and distributing them. They made things work. Their greatest innovation was concrete in all its various forms and applications. They were the first to combine brick and concrete, and as a result of that combination were able to build structures in artistic form that before were impossible. They standardized and organized the processes and spread them over a large geographical area of the world so that they could be fully utilized. They took the simple arch and recombined it in new ways that had not been tried before. These Roman designs became the models for the cathedrals that were built all over Europe following the middle ages.

They were master organizers.. Their government of laws was a masterpiece of organizational skill. If it was lost for a time in the chaos of the middle centuries, still, it was never really lost. Our (US) government is organized in almost every compartment like the Roman model; The limited term of office of the chief executive, the upper and lower legislative bodies, the “rule of law” over the rule of man, the guarantee of a public trial of the accused, and the right to confront accusers, freedom of speech, freedom of religion was a strong protected right. Our Federal system is an embodiment of the Foederati (pronounced fed-erat-ee) which was a model system of empowering local governments to run their own affairs with minimal interference from the Capital in Rome. Like ours today, the most successful become models for others. Our own electoral college, as much as some believe it is a travesty, is modeled after Roman elections for high office in which the citizen members of the “tribes” met and cast their vote, with the majority vote of each tribe determining the whole vote cast as a single vote; The tribes elected the executive, as do the states elect the executive. Theirs was a government embodying the will of tribes, likewise ours is a government embodying the will of the states.

Their system of laws is the model for Britain and the US. Today in the US we have master survey documents that read almost the same as their ancient Roman models for preserving boundary monuments and easements for public utilities.

I don’t think they were a dead end; their system lives on in US. They showed the world how self government can work effectively. Of course their system decayed over time, but it was a universal model for self government, at least in the so called “western world.”
 
Last edited:
Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

I'd have to say the answer is the Islamic Culture pre-Crusade. They were the ones that actually preserved the Hellenistic traditions of Greek science and learning after the early Christian Church shut down the Academy and the Museum and started burning and lynching Mathematicians and Scientists. They were also the ones that advanced algebraic techniques for problem solving after the Greeks got stuck in the dead end of only considering geometric techniques for problem solving. They also assimilated Hindu characters into Mathematics (Our modern number system!) along with other Chinese and Indian mathematical, medical, and scientific techniques.

Without the Islamic houses of learning science would have likely been set back a 1000 years easily as Euclid's Elements, Archimedes various writings, and other scientific works would have stayed lost. They eventually turned fundamentalist and fell apart as a civilization, but not before transmitting all that knowledge back to Europe.

I hate to break it to you, but the Muslims didn't create or advance jack. The things they get credited with, like algebra, they actually got from pre-Islamic Arabs or stole from someone else entirely. I've heard people credit Muslims with medical advances, pointing out that people came to the Middle East from all over the world to learn. They did, but from the Hospitaller Knights, who lent their name to the word "hospital". The early Muslims were actually known for destroying any sort of science or learning they came upon, because they felt that trying to figure out the world logically was "putting limits on Allah".




NONSENSE! But I would go with the Greeks for basically INVENTING mathmatics.
 
That's funny. Greece, Rome, China, India, any culture that wasn't contaminated by Christians and Muslims. Maybe because those cultures gennerally left their gays alone. Course, Christians want to say Rome fell because of corruption, but Rome actually fell because Christians destroyed it.
 
Not being great scientific innovators, the Romans scattered Hellenic science throughout the Roman Empire, sent their children to Greece for an education and eventually became those they conquered, the “Greeks.” Roman civilization equaled Hellenic civilization equaled Greek civilization.

This is the key reason why I don't consider the Romans to be the most important or brilliant Ancient Civilization. They did accomplish a great deal, but as a civilization they were a dead end. They didn't advance science and technology (merely used it), and once their civilization fell apart almost nothing was left past a few engineering marvels. The Roman collapse was near complete and total.

If it wasn't for the Islamic culture, and Byzantine scribes who were literally copying down documents they couldn't even understand, all of the Hellenic culture would have passed from this Earth. That's why earlier I gave the Pre-Crusade Islamic culture the nod.

I do like the Romans, and think they made a great many legal advances. Its just that almost none of their legal advances survived them (almost all had to be "rediscovered") and as a Mathematician, Roman culture is a big empty space in the story that is the History of Mathematics.
I will agree with you to some extent. The Romans knew what was good in Greece and took it.

You didn't even mention the largest of the failings of Roman culture, infighting. Imagine if all them legions weren't wasted on eachother!

Don't forget though about the Eastern Roman Empire. Isn't like in 477AD them folks suddenly became "non-Roman".

Eastern Roman Empire
 
I'm bouncing around Wikipedia comparing dates on ancient China "Xia dynasty" or the "three sovereigns" and Ancient Greece "Aegean Civilization". Amazing how close they are.
 
Each ancient civilization was great in it's own way. Each contributed something to what we have today. The Islamic golden era, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Sumerians, Persians, Celts, Vikings, Middle Ages Europe, Chinese, Hindus and Neolithic Man was the most brilliant of all the ancients, for all mankind is due to their brilliance and ability to use their intelligence to survive what all of us couldn't.
 
NONSENSE! But I would go with the Greeks for basically INVENTING mathmatics.

There's certainly a case for that as Hellenistic culture is a common thread for much of history when it comes to successful societies, plus while many of the results of Greek Mathematics were known to the Egyptians and Babylonians (and the Chinese!) the Greeks were the first to realize that mathematics was worthy of study in and of itself, and is not just a tool for engineers and tax assessors.

They did have some problems though. The "Horror of the Infinite" (from Zeon's Paradoxes) and a strong dislike of irrational numbers limited most of their techniques to finite geometric methods. That meant they were never going to tackle or solve problems in higher than 3-4 dimensions nor were they every going to discover Calculus, though Archimedes came close.
 
I must say the Ancient Egyptians. Every other civilization copied them to the fullest. The Greeks, Romans, borrowed much from the Egyptians.!!
 
While the Egyptians were wonderful monument builders, and obviously had a well ordered social system, they pale compared to the practical engineering displayed by the Minoans. Both in building earthquake resistant building of stone, hot and cold water systems as well as sewage systems. Evidence of hybridization of plants. Even a half of a double convex lense of quartz. Was it a lens or amulet?

And the whole of the civilization wiped out in a volcanic eruption a couple of orders larger than Krakatoa.
 
Is that what they're telling you in church these days? I look forward to seeing you explain how the "filthy Muslims" stole all of these innovations:

Inventions in medieval Islam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So to support your claim you link to a Wiki page with "problems" listed at the top which include factual inconsistencies.
Islam did not create Algebra, one of their oft cited innovations, rather they got it from India. I will not say they destroyed information (though they did burn a lot of 'blasphemous' material rathe indiscriminately) but they are not better than Ireland for preservation of records.
You've heard of Ireland right? Little Island northwest of England?

Islam is incorrectly credited witha lot of positive things, and this is a case in point.

Since the original question was about ancient cultures, we should look at the definition of 'antiquity' for a beginning.
Classical 'antiquity' ends witht he fall of the Western Roman empire, so that eliminates any claim Islam might attempt to make. Same goes for Medieval Europe or even the industrial period.

The Number one contender for most advanced must be the Greeks during the Time of Alexander the Great - they took knowledge with them, and accepted other cultures and ideas. Though Alexander was a monster in today's terms, he was in that time remarkably visuionary. Yes he destroyed Tyre, but he spared every city which submitted and gave the citizens true equality - the citizens of new territory had all the rights of those in Macedonia. His conquests gave rise to a cosmopolitan cultural ideal which survived for centuries in the 'Greek' world. That same cosmopolitanism made it possible for new ideas to spread and proliferate. That was the origin of modern science and society, moreso than any other single source.
 
Last edited:

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top