What is the longest living civilization?

 

Kids - You're not doing anything except helping me add to my postcount. I'm tired of trying to read through your bad English and counter your narrow-minded views with rationalization. Please stop responding to my posts. I want to engage in constructive dialogue - not hatemongering.

 

I guess that you are unable to counter my claim on Chinese science and technlogy and provide any books that discuss or comparison between India and Greece.

 

And I think the reason you called me racist because you were incapable of refuting my arguments. If I am really a Orientalist or racist, the administrator already kick me out.

 

Racist, bad-english, what else can you call me? Thats all you would refer anyone who raise questions about YOUR GREAT Indian civilization.

 

 

 

You are contradicting yourself; you said I am racist, but I never say anything about China being superor to India. In fact, I agree India is way older than China.

 

But, now, you said Europeans and Iran are SUPERIOR to CHINA

 

Great, this proofs that you are an Orientalist and racist.

 

By the way, didnt you say you dont want to response to my posts? why continue to do so?

 

So, now you said China is inferior, and you reponse that it has to do with English context. Great, first, you accused me of being racist even I didnt say anything about Indian inferiority. Then, you called me bad English speaker after I provided all academic books, while you provided only wikipedia (even my little sister, who is 9 years old, have edited some articles on wikipedia. This is why most of universities ban the wikipedia for part of research papers).

 

If you think I am inferior in intelligence or mental capacity, isnt that also discrimination? Afterall, my Chinese and Indian friend in my physics class do not speark well in English, yet they got scholarships; do you also laugh at them because they speak "bad english"??

 

If I wrote bad English, this is because I dont write formally as I do in my school or work. Beside, this isnt english class. If I, a honor student in Political Scince, write bad english, I dont know how should I call you. Your accusation of my personal abilities is an attempt to remove my (as well as the members of this discussion) attention from the argument I made on the topic. By doing so, it enable you to shift the emphasis/core of the discussion to the unrelated topics that have nothing to do with India or China. 

 

Since you think I am lower than you in terms of language capability, and you claim that its ridiculous to response to an ESL, why you still want to response? isnt that also make you as equally inferior?

 

Originally posted by gcle2003  I don't think we disagree much on facts so much as on interpretation. For instance I don't think you can look at Iraq and say this is still the 'Mesopotamian civilisation'. Ignoring that early Mesopotamia can be said to have more than one 'civilisation', all of them were pretty much supplanted by the Persian conquest, let alone the Arab one.

 

You are right; I incorrectly stated that the Mesopotamian civilization is the oldest continuous civilization. I did not mean to state it as such; I simply meant to say that it was the oldest civilization. I agree in that since the various peoples which existed at that time have died our or become assimilated with conquering peoples, it cannot be considered the oldest continuous civilization.

 

And as I have already stated and provided a source indicating as such (again, I hate to keep beating the drums here), that the Indian civilization began circa 7000 BC and the Chinese civilization began circa 6500 BC. Are we to conclude from this that the Indian civilization is the oldest continuous civilization? The beginnings of this civilization has its roots with the Dravidian peoples who migrated to India after first settling in the Middle East and primarily establishing agricultural societies on the Iranian Plateau, would this then imply that the Iranian peoples (or Iranic peoples so as not to confuse the twofold definition of Iranian, i.e. a) a citizen of Iran vs b) of or pertaining to the Aryan inhabitants of the Iranian Plateau) is the oldest continuous civilization?

 

It appears to me that if we are to define the oldest continuous living civilization as the first peoples to make advances in certain fields and a people that continues to strive today � then we would need to concede that the Dravidian peoples are the oldest.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003   Similarly you can't look at Egypt now and say this represents the 'Egyptian civilisation' which lasted at the latest until the Arab conquest.

 

The modern day Egyptians are the descendants of pre-Islamic peoples who cultivated the Nile Valley prior to the Arab conquest, and these people adopted Arab language, customs, religion, and culture. They are not the descendants of a massive Arab migration out of the Arabian Peninsula and into Egypt. The modern day Egyptian Arabs did not completely and totally supplant the Egyptian civilization that was already there rather, they assimilated it.

 

Furthermore, if you speak with an Arab from Egypt, you will notice that they do in fact take a great amount of pride in their Egyptian ancestry. If you are trying to imply that because a people have been conquered or evolved and hence cannot be considered as a continuous civilization, then that is another point of contention and interpretation. For example, just because the Egyptian civilization declined and became assimilated by a foreign people � it does not necessarily mean that all Egyptians died out and their civilization came to a total end. Similarly, just because the Dravidian peoples were conquered and pushed to the southern parts of modern day India, and their religious beliefs became incorporated with their Aryan conquerors- it does not mean that their civilization completely died out. These people continue to exist today, they practice the same belief system their ancestors did, and they speak Dravidian languages derived from the same tongue spoken by their ancestors more than 9000 years ago.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003   So I don't think you can say that Mesopotamian civilisation is the 'oldest living civilisation', though it is arguable it may have been the first to arise.

 

I agree completely, it was the first to arise and has since died out � and died out completely.

 

Originally posted by gcle2003   I only brought in Shinto because its origins are so obscure. 300 BCE seems to be OK for the beginning of the Yayoi period, and as the earliest known date for the existence of Shinto, but the question remains whether Shinto already existed in Japan previously as part of Jomon culture, or was brought in as part of the new immigration, or what.

 

 

According to this argument, the beliefs, which were incorporated in Hinduism with the Aryan conquest of the Indus River basin, also have origins that date back many thousands of years before the accepted begin date given to Vedic Hinduism. If we apply your method of reasoning to determine that Shinto-ism is much older than the date ascribed to it (300 BC) � then we can also argue that Hinduism is much older than the date ascribed to it (1500 BC).

 

 

 

 

 

sorry for the offtopic

 

regards