The ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform writing about 5000-5500Y ago.
This is as long before ancient Sumer as ancient Sumer is before us today.
Mind-boggling.
one of those mind-boggling timeline comparisons I sometimes think about is Cleopatra and the Pyramids. The Giza pyramids were built around ~2600 years _before_ Cleopatra. And she's about 2000 years removed from us today.
So to think that Egyptians and Romans in Cleopatra's era went to visit the Pyramids as a kind of tourist thing from a civilization 2 millennia removed from them is quite astounding.
I guess Cleopatra feels somewhat 'close' to us due to the surviving literary and archeological artifacts from the Roman empire.
>I guess Cleopatra feels somewhat 'close' to us due to the surviving literary and archeological artifacts from the Roman empire.
Shakespeare wrote a play about her and Elizabeth Taylor played her in a movie. The effect of modern media is 99% of the reason why Cleopatra feels more "contemporary" than, say, Hatshepsut (for whom plenty of artifacts exist) or even Nefertiti.
The aesthetics of this sculpture look very similar to the Moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
"Hold my..." checks notes, yeah it's a couple thousand years earlier and near enough "...beer and watch this!"
Exact same thought, “Oldest evidence of bad ideas found in Turkey”.
> Since systematic excavations began in 2019, a number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figural sculptures have been found at Karahan Tepe, often in unusual combinations. Several examples of a human carrying a leopard on his back. The leopards in these sculptures are not slung on the man’s back as if he had killed them in the hunt or tamed them enough to carry them, but rather are depicted snarling, with teeth bared, very much alive and very much unfriendly.
Interesting that "you've got a monkey on your back" is a commonly-used expression in English. I could imagine these people saying the exact same thing, with "leopard" substituted in.
"Bro, I gotta get this leopard off my back..."
No, you have it reversed, the leopards have the monkey on their back.
>> Less than 12 miles away from Karahan Tepe, a high relief of a man gripping his phallus flanked by two roaring/biting leopards carved into the stone is the earliest narrative scene ever discovered.
So, er, what is the um narrative conveyed by this scene?
It’s a cautionary tale: man who jerks his meat in the woods risks getting eaten by leopards.
No cougars were hurt during filming that scene.
Depends on the nature of the grip.
He could be trying to protect his junk from the leopards, or taunting the leopards by jerking at them. So many options. The past was just as juvenile and perverse as modernity.
Given that they went to considerable effort to carve it in stone as part of a temple complex, it was likely neither juvenile nor perverse
Have I got some ancient Greek theatre to show you?
Some people like making others laugh, maybe they thought we'd appreciate it
This is most likely the explanation. Apex predators will often try to kill the seed of an enemy by tearing off their junk. It's much less dangerous than trying to kill the enemy, and it serves the same purpose of ending their genetic line.
There are pictures available.
I’m certainly not an expert but he’s holding his stomach in one hand, giving himself a good tug with the other and looks somewhere between scared and confused. The leopard on the left is all smiles.
There’s another dude standing a few figures away with his back turned to old tug-a-lug. He’s holding something and looks kind of ashamed though I could be reading that into the image since it’s not really well carved… Tug-a-lug is the best carved of all and must be the centrepiece of the story.
If this is another great flood narrative, I sure prefer the Hebrew great flood story.
The simple joys of being a man.
What a downgrade. We were riding leopards back then!