[HN Gopher] Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been ...
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Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered
Author : wglb
Score : 150 points
Date : 2025-07-04 04:16 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| wglb wrote:
| Source article in the journal Iraq:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S002108892...
| echelon wrote:
| This is great! Thank you.
| idoubtit wrote:
| Thank you. Without this source, it's hard to separate the facts
| from the bullshit in what was posted on phys.org.
|
| I'm not a scholar, just an amateur, but two sentences were
| strikingly ridiculous.
|
| "Legend has it that Noah hid them here from the floodwaters
| before boarding the ark." This article is supposed to be
| popular science about Babylonian archaeology, why mix it with a
| Hebrew myth derived from an older Mesopotamian myth? I guess
| it's just because Noah appeals to the ambient Christian
| culture. In other words, it's nonsense, but it sells.
|
| "The information about the women of Babylon, their role as
| priestesses and the associated tasks, has also astonished
| experts, as no texts describing these things were previously
| known." There are many many texts about women and Naditu
| (sacred women) in Mesopotamia and in Babylon. According to the
| scholar article : "The passage has great importance for
| understanding the roles played by the various classes of
| priestesses: ugbakkatu, nadatu, and qasdatu." Quite different.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| They did cite the source at the bottom of the phys.org page
| (The source article and the link)
|
| "More information: Anmar A. Fadhil et al, Literary Texts From
| The Sippar Library V: A Hymn In Praise Of Babylon And The
| Babylonians, Iraq (2025). DOI: 10.1017/irq.2024.23"
| treve wrote:
| Legend has a specific meaning:
|
| > A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as
| historical but unauthenticated.
|
| Even though it's BS I think it's still interesting to read
| how people relate to the story.
| metalman wrote:
| the "Hymm's of Innana" are more than a bit interesting, as it
| shows(clearly) that Innana was the original riot girl goddess
| who gets whatever she wants...daddy made the universe and
| none of the "rules" apply to her, well except, that she does
| get pensive when her latest boy toy wanders. Not that
| suddenly catesrophic things dont then happen to said boy,
| previously praised for bieng "like a young bull". Especialy
| interesting are the number of occasions where she breaks into
| songs of praise for her "galla"......... quite clear that the
| tavern culture of the times was much like our own
| sramsay wrote:
| > I'm not a scholar, just an amateur, but two sentences were
| strikingly ridiculous.
|
| Well, I am a scholar, and if you mean "Noah clearly did not
| hide these texts," then yes. Of course, that is ridiculous.
|
| But it's actually a crucial bit of information if you're a
| humanist scholar. The article doesn't say anything about it,
| but the question would be: Which tradition recorded _this
| legend_ about _these texts?_ Almost any answer is important,
| because one culture trying to legitimate its own literary
| traditions or those of another through its own myths or those
| of another is absolute gold. It helps us to understand the
| way literary and religious syncretism unfolded (or failed to
| unfold) in the ancient near east and in later epochs . . .
| dzdt wrote:
| I was wondering about the headline date "missing for a
| millennium", as this Babylon is much older than 1000 years.
| From the article it seems like "two millenia" is more accurate:
| "The text survives in 20 manuscripts, from the 7th to the
| 2nd/1st centuries BCE"
| mechanicum wrote:
| I don't think that necessarily follows. The age of the
| surviving fragments today isn't the whole story.
|
| We could presumably infer it still wasn't "missing" as
| recently as a thousand years ago from later sources referring
| to it, even if the specific text (or oral tradition) those
| authors knew of hasn't survived.
|
| Like how we know about some of now lost Greek plays,
| originally written in the 5th century BC, because they were
| still being performed in Imperial Rome and writers of that
| time described them, even the details of how they were
| staged.
| freilanzer wrote:
| Fascinating. I should have studied Assyriology, few areas are as
| impressive imo. Maybe I still can, even at LMU. Although I don't
| believe it's possible alongside a regular job.
| Isamu wrote:
| I found that the languages are hard to break into as an
| amateur, owning to the available literature. In contrast
| Egyptology has many popular treatments, you just have to watch
| out for the junk.
| cheese_van wrote:
| Speaking of junk, I was in Syria, many years ago, when it had
| about 250k tourists yearly, under Hafez al-Assad . I was in
| the company of an Assyriologist and in a shop of a vendor I
| knew (who sold artifacts under the table).
|
| The vendor proudly showed us a new acquisition, an ancient
| cylinder seal. The archeologist examined it and told him it
| was a fake, because he explained, "I can read this language,
| and it is gibberish."
|
| The UCLA archeologist, then excavating at Tel Mozan with
| Giorgio Buccellati, had 2 dead languages under his belt, a
| requirement for his Phd. I was rather in awe of the fellow -
| 2 dead languages!
|
| Pro-tip: never buy artifacts without an archeologist to
| advise you. It's likely ethically wrong anyway, and likewise
| stupid unless you're an expert.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Damn. I'm the opposite. When learning a language I'm
| careful to pick languages which are culturally influencial
| and have a prospect of continuing to be - it's not enough
| that they're alive. Ironically, last new language I learned
| was Russian, and then Putin goes and invades Ukraine. Fuck
| my life.
|
| All this to say I have infinite respect for someone who'd
| learn a dead language, let alone two. I'm glad someone is
| doing this work, and fortunately it's not me.
| octopoc wrote:
| The Fall of Civilizations podcast has an interesting episode
| about Assyria. The cities in Mesopotamia were polytheistic and
| each city has its own deity. Apparently the way they viewed their
| deities was similar to how we view sports teams. There was an
| expectation that if you traveled to another city, you should
| sacrifice to its god. They viewed inter city warfare as the gods
| competing in heaven.
| zppln wrote:
| I can recommend this episode as well. If I don't mix things up
| they gave some very good examples of how everyday life wasn't
| that much different from what it is now. Amazing how stuff like
| that can be communicated through identations on pieces of clay.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Polytheism seems to make a lot more sense that way. Cities (and
| personal trajectories as well) have ups and downs. If you
| understand it as a competition between various gods, it makes
| sense that they'd have a lot of back and forth going on. If
| there's only one god, it must have some preposterously
| convoluted plan, it just seems a bit silly.
| atoav wrote:
| Well also in polytheism gods were displayed as incredibly
| flawed.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A common-sense and straightforward extrapolation of human
| behavior. And also an obvious solution to the "problem of
| evil."
| dragontamer wrote:
| Monotheism elevates godhood in many regards.
|
| In Polytheistic culture, gods fight and gods die. Zeus eats
| his (and thus kills) his father Chronos. Thor dies in
| Ragnarok.
|
| In Monotheistic culture, the one true God is above all else.
| As it turns out, different Monotheistic cultures can then
| cooperate as it's an argument over what this one true God
| believes (Catholics vs Muslims).
|
| Then we get into weird blends like Hindu and their many
| avatars of Vishnu (who'd argue that Jesus probably existed
| and could do those things because he probably was that time's
| Vishnu).
|
| ----------
|
| Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept
| because it's clear that gods were creations of man.
| Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe
| while man struggles to understand the nature of God.
|
| ---------
|
| But yes. As the sibling comment points out: the gods of most
| polytheistic cultures are NOT omnipotent or omniscient. They
| are more powerful or smarter than humans but they are still
| able to be killed or destroyed.
|
| Maybe back when cities and religions would get wiped out by
| warfare, it was more common to see religions die out (and
| thus those old gods die with those religions/cultures). It
| makes you wonder about the nature of human belief systems and
| how humans lived differently back then.
| octopoc wrote:
| Polytheistic religions have more room for multiple
| worldviews than monotheistic religions. Polytheists have
| internalized the fact that there can be different paths
| that are right for different people. That's why you get so
| much division in monotheistic religions.
|
| In polytheistic religions, you still get infighting, but it
| isn't considered virtuous.
|
| Put another way, monotheism is polytheism except with a
| single title, Lord of the Universe, that all the
| gods/theologies/denominations have to compete for in order
| to be legitimate. That competition of different
| gods/worldviews is the essential innovation that monotheism
| brings.
|
| That competition, that need to justify one's beliefs,
| provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists
| lack. And that is why monotheism prevailed in so many
| areas.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > that need to justify one's beliefs, provides a drive
| that monotheists have and polytheists lack
|
| FYI, before the monotheists fully suppressed the
| polytheists in the Roman Empire, it was the polytheists
| who were suppressing the monotheists.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| Early Christians seemed weird to a lot of the people of
| the Roman Empire. Sort of how Christians now think of gay
| and trans people. It was deviant and socially upsetting.
| Modern Christians would probably not get along with early
| Christians.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| I don't know enough to argue the merits of your point, so
| instead I'll just point to Hindu nationalism in present
| day India.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept
| because it's clear that gods were creations of man.
| Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the
| universe while man struggles to understand the nature of
| God.
|
| I don't think that's true of polytheism at all. That the
| gods aren't everywhere or all-powerful doesn't mean they
| were invented by the local humans, just that they were
| discovered by them.
|
| They just look made-up by humans to us because we don't
| believe in them. I'm sure ancient people believed in their
| gods' stories just as much as some modern ones do, and most
| religions don't feature some "humans created the gods"
| story, right?
|
| I'm not sure what it means to be "flawed as an
| organizational concept." States that had polytheistic
| religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of
| course. It is hard to say what's predictive and what's a
| coincidence in history I guess.
| jollyllama wrote:
| The Hebrew view may not have been so different [0] and in turn
| this view is congruent with Christian teaching, depending on
| the theology.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew/Israelit...
| jschveibinz wrote:
| This is most likely correct. I'm not sure why you were
| downvoted. Many scholars trace the earliest worship of Yahweh
| to the southern Levant, possibly Edom, Midian, or Seir which
| were outside of traditional Canaanite (early Hebrews)
| centers. Inscriptions from 800 BC refer to "Yahweh of
| Samaria" and "Yahweh of Teman," implying a localized deity.
|
| So given that Assyria is in the same geographic region as the
| Levant, the comment makes sense in context.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Catholicism maintains it somehow by having "patron saints"
| and every city picking one up. Most cities in highly
| Catholic countries will have their own specific saint that
| they will have a special relationship with.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Can't have a power vacuum on the Divine Council, gotta
| put one of your guys in when you take over!
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| One difference is that saints are not deities, even if
| there may be a similar psychological need (for
| protection, help, etc) in play. Saints do not possess
| power of their own accord. They function as intercessors.
| They are still human beings, albeit in an elevated
| spiritual state or plane, so to speak (a saint is anyone
| who is saved from hell and in heaven; canonized saints
| are simply those who are known to be saints and thus
| formally acknowledged).
|
| Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces, hence
| Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of gods".
| They are beings like you and me, in some sense, with
| powers that we may not possess.
|
| God, on the other hand, is not a personification of a
| force of nature or one being among many. In that sense,
| the distinction between monotheism and polytheism can be
| misleading, because it's not a matter of how many gods
| you believe in, but a profound difference in
| understanding of what divinity even means. God here is
| the _Ipsum Esse Subsistens_ , or self-subsisting Being;
| the verb "to be". This makes God prior to any particular
| being and the cause of the be-ing of anything and
| everything at all times.
|
| Whatever the history of the development of theological
| ideas and beliefs, these must be distinguished from the
| philosophical substance of the beliefs.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| > Pagan gods are personifications of natural forces,
| hence Thales's famous remark that "the world is full of
| gods".
|
| There were all kinds of gods. The Christian conception of
| God is taken from "pagan" philosophers. There's also a
| difference between theologian's/philosopher's conception
| of the Divine and religion and how lay people actually
| understood their faith. Even early Christians were
| divided on how they understood God.
| timschmidt wrote:
| If I've learned anything from brief forays into different
| Gnostic groups it's that at some point in some place
| humans seem to have believed every possible variation of
| themes and interpretations.
| hibikir wrote:
| And don't miss those that have wider use than one town.
| Sta Maria del Carmen, patron of mariners, is celebrated
| in the same day in July in many a coastal town that had a
| fishing industry. The statue leaves the church and is
| paraded around in people's shoulders, taken to the port,
| and often sent on a short trip on one of the boats. The
| locals prayed for plenty fish, and for the fishermen to
| avoid dying at sea. You can trace that kind of thing to a
| polytheistic world quite well.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I have vague memories from college about China having something
| similar during the dynasties.
|
| The hierarchical government on earth, with the emperor on top
| down through layers of bureaucracy down to officials in
| villages was a mirror of the organization of the heavens.
| Villages would have their own deities and might go so far as to
| replace them after bad years of flooding or other weather. That
| was more of an outlier, though, as usually the emperor or
| government got the blame first.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Some of this is visible in the Bible.
|
| For example, Moses needing to keep his hands up to win a battle
| (Ex 17). Or his battles with the Egyptian gods.
|
| From what I've read, it's believed that the Hebrews emerged
| from multiple people's groups combining and unifying their
| beliefs. El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged
| into one as the people groups unified. That's why some of the
| biblical stories like the creation and the flood have earlier
| references from older people's groups.
|
| The evolution of monotheism was much more about keeping a large
| diverse people group united.
|
| You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with the
| formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories and
| ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't think this is quite true about either group but it's
| dangerously close if you know what I mean. How & why genesis
| specifically shares so much content with other stories from
| the region is an extremely interesting subject in itself and
| still under active developing scholarship but I'm not
| qualified represent it well.
|
| That's definitely a misunderstanding of the roman pantheon
| though. It was already a fully formed syncretic religion at
| the time of acculturation of the greek gods into it, having
| regularly adapted to & adopted nearby belief systems as it
| encountered them.
|
| Some of the greek gods were fully syncretized with similar-
| enough roman gods, some only partially, some greek gods were
| adopted more completely because there was no near enough
| equivalent, and then some roman gods continued in more or
| less their previous form, for example janus who the greeks
| had nothing comparable to. But even a lot of the pre-greek
| exposure "roman" gods were themselves adopted from other
| cultures, and/or already syncretized with indigenous ones. In
| any case it wasn't "mostly" stolen from any one place, it
| followed a pretty typical pattern for syncretic religions.
| The acceptance & merging of the greek gods was only one event
| in what was at the time already a venerable and dynamic
| religious system.
|
| You also need to be careful about timelines. The greek
| cultural influence here is at like 800bc, predating the roman
| _republic_ much less the empire. It arguably predates
| anything you could reasonably call rome at all, this is in
| the distant past that was already mythological to the roman
| republic. This was always part of their cultural essentially.
| tiahura wrote:
| Mark S Smith has written pretty persuasively about history
| of the Jews as El worshipers. See eg Abdeel, Abiel, Adbeel,
| Amiel, Ariel, Azarel, Azareel, Aziel, Asael, Ashbel, Adael,
| etc. Yet the paucity of yhwh names. Not to mention, the
| Bible flat out states as much "I am the LORD. I appeared to
| Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty (El
| Shaddai), but by my name the LORD (YHWH) I did not make
| myself known to them."
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > Yet the paucity of yhwh names.
|
| Many of the biblical names ending in "ah" are YHWH names.
| This includes many of the prophets. So Elijah, Zechariah,
| Jeremiah, Micaiah, Isaiah, for instance are all "ah"
| ending names that have a meaning related to YHWH in the
| same way that the "el" ending names are related to El.
| And then Joshua (and, hence, Jesus) is also a YHWH name.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into
| one as the people groups unified.
|
| How does this theory account for the overt hostility to Baal
| et al. in the Bible?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Unification.
|
| The authors of the Torah are laying down what correct
| worship is supposed to look like. I believe (and I'm not a
| biblical scholar, just like learning) the theory is that
| the priests at the time were dealing with a mixed culture
| and differing beliefs. One way to handle that is "Look at
| these evil/dumb heathens worshiping their weak gods".
| Painting the gods which likely some of the population still
| believes in dumb is a way to undermine and discourage
| belief. Sort of a "We are no longer team Bears, we are team
| bulls. The bears are actually inferior and dumb".
|
| Part of forming the new religion was merging concepts and
| powers from commonly believed in gods. A little like the
| early christians rebranding pagan holidays while actively
| purging pagans.
| smithkl42 wrote:
| "Baal" was less a name than a title. In modern Hebrew, it
| just means "lord" or "husband". It was also apparently a
| title that could, at some stages of Israel's history, even
| be applied to YHWH, much like "Adonay" ("My lord"). For
| instance, the individuals named "Mephibosheth" and "Ish-
| bosheth" (two of the sons of Saul, a clear if imperfect
| Yahwist) were originally named "Meribaal" and "Ish-baal".
| Whoever put together 1 and 2 Samuel changed their names
| from "May Baal Contend" and "Man of Baal" to various plays
| on "shame" (bosheth). Their original names are preserved,
| oddly enough, in 1 Chronicles.
|
| If you could go back and ask, say, Samuel or David or Saul
| about how many gods existed and what their names were, I
| suspect all of them would have been clear that YHWH was the
| chief of the gods, and the only one that Israelites should
| worship, but beyond that you would have gotten some
| complicated and perhaps confused answers. Even some parts
| of the Bible take for granted that other gods besides YHWH
| exist - see, for instance, Psalm 82.
|
| https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2082&ver
| s...
|
| Over time, "Baal" began to denote a specific agricultural
| deity, and it became less appropriate to use as a title for
| YHWH. That seems to have kicked off (or was kicked off by)
| the well-known conflict between Yahwism and Baal worship -
| see, ad infra, 1 Kings 18.
|
| https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20kings%2018
| &...
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I don't want to completely refute this because I'm also
| an amateur and there are a lot of instabilities of
| consensus, but Baal was at least also the son of El in
| Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom.
|
| My understanding is more that Yahvists had more nomadic
| origins and populated (/conquered, possibly the
| Levites[1]) a Canaanite cultural context and then there
| was religious syncreticism and interest in merging them.
| Depending on the specific passage's history there's
| either a ret-coning of "all one god" or at least the
| interpretation that way (including how your links
| translate those passages).
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Richard-Elliott-
| Friedman/dp/00...
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I'd answer a bit differently than replies so far. Later
| monotheist post "merging" of El and YHWH didn't really have
| space for El's son so they had to treat him as a lesser and
| then hostile God. Any worship for him was considered bad.
|
| Otoh, just like "Easter" is an echo of an earlier holiday,
| it just so happens Canaanites, as I understand it,
| celebrated the end of the storm god's season in spring ...
| Very similarly to how Passover is observed. With a
| sacrificed lamb shank bone and some other aspects.
| empath75 wrote:
| > Otoh, just like "Easter" is an echo of an earlier
| holiday
|
| (This is commonly repeated, but there is very little
| evidence for this)
| schuyler2d wrote:
| Well the evidence is circumstantial. A bunch of
| Canaanites celebrate a spring festival with unleavened
| bread. Later they adopt a different religion that has a
| spring festival and an Exodus story with a new god called
| YHWH is glommed onto El.
|
| I think it depends how "natural" one thinks the reason
| for unleavened bread is to Exodus. There's obviously
| plenty of mythical aspects to the story but the oldest
| are more focused on the river (Song of the Sea) and the
| battle. Why not combine rebirth/reinvention stories --
| one a feast and another the beginning of "freedom"
|
| But it's fair to say that most of Passover as a story and
| holiday is unrelated.
| empath75 wrote:
| "The Bible" is not a single coherent text, but rather a
| collection of hundreds or thousands of years of oral
| tradition that was created and passed on by various people
| at various times for various purposes, and then collected
| and edited again by different people for different
| purposes.
|
| There are layers of edits that you can tease out with
| careful reading, and they can be supported by archeological
| evidence from sites all around the near east.
|
| It is not remotely controversial that the
| Hebrews/Israelites/Canaanites/Judeans were originally
| polytheistic, with a pantheon built around Canaanite gods
| (El, Ashera, etc), just like all of their neighbors and
| then gradually became henotheistic (our god is the best
| god), and then finally monotheistic (there is only one
| god). Pure monotheism was a very late development, and a
| lot of the conflicts in the bible is straightforwardly
| interpreted as describing a conflict between Yahwist
| henotheism and traditional near-eastern polytheism. Even
| just reading the very first part of Genesis, there are two
| creation stories with very clear signs of a pantheon of
| gods.
|
| There are also completely retellings of polytheistic myths
| in the Bible which are basically a find-replace of Ba'al,
| etc, with either "El" or "Yahweh" or both.
| schuyler2d wrote:
| There's definitely some relatable and transmitted stories
| like the flood, etc. However, the Levant and Egyptian gods
| "grew up" in different contexts than Mesopotamia. Egypt was
| pretty centralized from the beginning and their gods were not
| based on cities. "El" means mountain and Baal was a storm god
| -- neither of which has (to my understanding) any trace to
| specific cities.
|
| That said, I agree there was some idea of a god "living"
| someplace specific -- e g. YHWH living in the Arc so they
| could carry Him into battle.
| detourdog wrote:
| Thought it was more an ancestral teams. Each city marveling at
| the founding families.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > There was an expectation that if you traveled to another
| city, you should sacrifice to its god.
|
| This was pretty common in the polytheistic world I think. In
| the time of the Roman empire (pre-Christianity of course) there
| was a similar idea. And although Roman gods might be imported,
| they were often identified with the local gods, rather than
| replacing them.
| MrGuts wrote:
| "Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered"
|
| Oh great, just in time for the passage of an interstellar object
| and the Dalai Lama's reincarnation day.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| If I recall, there are hundreds of thousands of untranslated
| cuneiform texts--and less than 10% have been translated.
|
| I wish there was a resource that tracked all the untranslated
| classical texts. For instance, only about 10% of Neo-Latin texts
| have been translated. It seems to me that the products of the
| renaissance ought to be a part of the training corpus of AGI.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| That would involve better funding for the humanities, which has
| been in notoriously short supply for the past century or so.
| Digitization efforts are underway in many institutions and have
| been for decades.
| smithkl42 wrote:
| "missing for a millennium" - according to both the article and
| the journal piece, the most recent of these fragments is nearly
| two millennia old.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/literar...
| ajcp wrote:
| I think just because it's 2,000 years old doesn't mean it's
| been _missing_ for 2,000 years? There could be references to a
| fragment as recently as 1,000 years ago, even if the contents
| of it were not recorded at that time. Or bad copy-editing.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Somewhat related, since we're talking about cuneiform: Dr. Irving
| Finkel of the British Museum telling the surprisingly amusing
| story of how he discovered the oldest known version of the Noah's
| Ark story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_fkpZSnz2I
| Eupolemos wrote:
| Dr. Finkel is just plain amazing.
| yayitswei wrote:
| Interesting literacy regression: this newly discovered Babylonian
| hymn was routinely copied by schoolchildren 3,000 years ago,
| while yesterday's article about why English doesn't use accents
| showed that by 1100 AD European literacy had contracted so much
| that monks were essentially writing only for other monks.
|
| If I'm interpreting this correctly, ancient Babylon had
| institutionalized childhood education for complex literary works.
| Medieval Europe treated literacy as a specialized craft. So much
| for exponential growth.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| You're skipping a lot of context here. Ancient Babylonian
| scribal schools were for a small elite--hardly universal
| childhood education. Medieval Europe's "regression" had a bit
| to do with the collapse of the Roman state, plagues, and
| centuries of instability, not just a lack of ambition.
| Comparing literacy rates across millennia without mentioning
| population size, language complexity, or what "schoolchildren"
| even means is a stretch.
|
| History isn't exponential--it's bumpy.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| "Progress" and "enlightenment" are neither uniform, linear,
| upwards, or continuous. All it takes is one absurdly corrupt
| regime to burn down the "Library of Alexandria", and with it,
| thousands of years of history and accomplishment.
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