Most inventive Civilization?

Greek democracy can be compared to tribal democracy. Read about the Iroquois

 

No they really cannot be so compared, at least not true Greek democracies like Athens or Hellenistic Rhodes.

 

While the Iroquois had a sort of �Proto-Constitutional� confederacy it was still essentially an oligarchy. The confederacies� ruling council (and war chiefs etc) was selected by a tiny minority of royaneh families that amounted to something like 5% of the population.  The Iroquois may have had a constitution, but that means they were merely similar to Greek oligarchies which also had constitutions �

 

It is also important to remember that the Iroquois confederation was tiny by comparison to Classical Athens (in terms of population and geographic scale). In the 1600�s the Iroquois could field maybe 2500 warriors, by comparison Classical Athens could over the 5^th and 4^th centuries put over 10,000 infantry in the field (excluding reserves) and float a fleet of up (if not more ) 250 line of battle warships at the same time (that is some 50,000 sailors, soldiers and marines).

Now sure not all those men were citizens, some were mercenaries or metrics (but there is also no evidence to suggest the Iroquois economy could produce sufficient excess wealth to hire any Mercenaries at all, let alone on the scale Rhodes and Athens could) but the fact remains Athens (or Rhodes) were nation/states that outstripped the Iroquois by orders of magnitude in both population and complexity - the Iroquois certainly managed a fairly unique feat of producing a very effective constitutional confederacy in NA (the Hurons for example had a very similar confederacy and larger population but do not seem to have been able to produce such an effective proto-state), but they did not develop a democracy.

Edited by conon394 - 26-May-2007 at 08:49

Lame poll, those are ethnicities, not civilizations, and all European/Euro-derived to boot. The thread starter needs to have Toynbee and Spengler thrown at him.

these types of threads suck.Couldnt we not  have a  photo contest of the hottest babe ever?regardless of culture  ethnicity race or whatever.Just pics and judging!

those are ethnicities, not civilizations, and all European/Euro-derived to boot. The thread starter needs to have Toynbee and Spengler thrown at him.

 

While you are quite correct that an �other� category without at least a China is Eurocentric; I would suggest rather catching and throwing the Toynbee back - along with his overly broad civilization definitions.

Why is there no China?
Oh well, voted "others" :S

I'd have to say the British. None of the other examples achieved so much, in such a short period of time, as what the British did during the 19th century. The world went from ancient modes like horses and wooden ships to modern modes like trains and ships with engines. Telecommunication (excepting things like the semaphore) was invented, electricity appeared, and so forth. No other culture produced so much in a single century, nor did any other culture revolutionize the entire world to such a degree before that.

If someone wants to throw Spengler at me, please don't make it in German.

Originally posted by Cywr What did the Spainish invent? ...

Originally posted by Cywr Bah, wiseass, its all about the spelling. The Sqeezy-mop-bucked thing is also a Spanish invention IIRC

That reminds me of Andrew Carnegie's tombstone: "Here lies a man who knew how to enlist the service of better men than himself."

If you can't invent, live off inventors.