What the fuck was that? That was absolutely cringeworthy. Some professor is trying to redefine the word "civilisation" and rewrite history because he doesn't like how some ancient societies...
What the fuck was that? That was absolutely cringeworthy. Some professor is trying to redefine the word "civilisation" and rewrite history because he doesn't like how some ancient societies operated. He's letting his feelings get in the way of an actual study of history.
The word ‘civilisation’ stems from a very different source and ideal. In ancient times, civilis meant those qualities of political wisdom and mutual aid that permit societies to organise themselves through voluntary coalition.
If he's going to invoke the etymological fallacy, he could at least do it properly. "Civilis" meant "legal" or "political" or "pertaining to citizens". It was about public life in Rome: the politics, the laws, and how people participated in those institutions. It wasn't about "political wisdom" or "mutual aid". That's the professor's own personal interpretation, driven by his own agenda to reinvent the concept of civilisation.
The irony is that the people who we get the word "civilis" from - the ancient Romans - weren't some highly enlightened sages. In the prior paragraph, he complains about "deeply stratified societies, held together mostly by authoritarian government, violence and the radical subordination of women". This describes the ancient Romans just as much as it describes those other societies he lists (Pharaonic Egypt, Inca Peru, Aztec Mexico, Han China, Imperial Rome, Ancient Greece).
In Rome, women were chattels, under the absolute authority of their paterfamilias: as girls, this was usually their father; as women, it was usually their husband. They could literally be killed by their paterfamilias without any legal repercussions (the paterfamilias did have the same right over his sons as children, but his adult sons were not legally subject to his authority). They couldn't even own property without permission from their father or husband. There were very few independent women in ancient Rome. These independent women were usually widows who hadn't remarried.
It was said that a true sign of poverty in Rome was the inability to own even one slave. A man with a slave had some dignity; a man without a slave was truly poor. Again, a slave owner had the absolute right to do whatever he wanted with his slave, up to and including killing them. Rape was also quite common (of female and male slaves).
Sure, the Republican Romans invented representative democracy - but even that was limited only to certain parts of the population. While every Roman male citizen had the right to vote, this right was denied to Roman woman and to all slaves. Furthermore, only certain people could stand for office. Originally, you had to be a member of a patrician family to be an elected official. Eventually, this right was extended to plebeians, but that required nearly an armed revolution by the plebes before the patricians conceded. Even so, to be a member of the Senate, you had to own a certain value of assets and earn a certain level of annual income. Poor people could not be Senators.
These are the people who gave us the word "civilis". They were just as sexist and authoritarian and violent as the societies the professor decries. "Civilis" referred to a person's participation in public life, not some higher morality.
These small prehistoric communities formed civilisations in the true sense of extended moral communities.
Again, here's this redefinition of "civilisation" in action. We already have a word for what he's trying to describe: "society". Society is "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community". I'm not sure why he can't use this already existing word for this concept, and why he feels a need to redefine another word which already refers to another concept.
Without permanent kings, bureaucrats or standing armies, they fostered the growth of mathematical and calendrical knowledge; advanced metallurgy, the cultivation of olives, vines and date palms, the invention of leavened bread and wheat beer. They developed the major textile technologies applied to fabrics and basketry, the potter’s wheel, stone industries and bead-work, the sail and maritime navigation. Through ties of kinship and commerce, they distributed these invaluable and cherished qualities of true civilisation.
These "invaluable and cherished qualities of true civilisation" are actually science and technology, not some higher moral sensibility. When the professor tries to apply his new definition of "civilisation" to reality, all he can show us is technological advances, rather than some higher morality in action.
To take just one example, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early cuneiform documents, or in the layout of urban temples, sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in preliterate times, through concrete practices such as the applied calculus and solid geometry of weaving and beadwork. What until now has passed for ‘civilisation’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.
I don't even know where to start with this. This is where the professor has truly gone off the rails. For starters, he's speculating to an extreme degree; in blunter terms, he's just making shit up. He obviously wants to put women at the centre of his redefined "civilisation", but he can not produce any actual evidence to support this proposition. He basically just feels that women should have been more important than maybe they actually were, so he's reinventing history to suit his modern-day ideology.
In summary, this article is made-up shit by a professor who wants to reinvent history to suit his modern personal ideology. It's crap.
What the fuck was that? That was absolutely cringeworthy. Some professor is trying to redefine the word "civilisation" and rewrite history because he doesn't like how some ancient societies operated. He's letting his feelings get in the way of an actual study of history.
If he's going to invoke the etymological fallacy, he could at least do it properly. "Civilis" meant "legal" or "political" or "pertaining to citizens". It was about public life in Rome: the politics, the laws, and how people participated in those institutions. It wasn't about "political wisdom" or "mutual aid". That's the professor's own personal interpretation, driven by his own agenda to reinvent the concept of civilisation.
The irony is that the people who we get the word "civilis" from - the ancient Romans - weren't some highly enlightened sages. In the prior paragraph, he complains about "deeply stratified societies, held together mostly by authoritarian government, violence and the radical subordination of women". This describes the ancient Romans just as much as it describes those other societies he lists (Pharaonic Egypt, Inca Peru, Aztec Mexico, Han China, Imperial Rome, Ancient Greece).
In Rome, women were chattels, under the absolute authority of their paterfamilias: as girls, this was usually their father; as women, it was usually their husband. They could literally be killed by their paterfamilias without any legal repercussions (the paterfamilias did have the same right over his sons as children, but his adult sons were not legally subject to his authority). They couldn't even own property without permission from their father or husband. There were very few independent women in ancient Rome. These independent women were usually widows who hadn't remarried.
It was said that a true sign of poverty in Rome was the inability to own even one slave. A man with a slave had some dignity; a man without a slave was truly poor. Again, a slave owner had the absolute right to do whatever he wanted with his slave, up to and including killing them. Rape was also quite common (of female and male slaves).
Sure, the Republican Romans invented representative democracy - but even that was limited only to certain parts of the population. While every Roman male citizen had the right to vote, this right was denied to Roman woman and to all slaves. Furthermore, only certain people could stand for office. Originally, you had to be a member of a patrician family to be an elected official. Eventually, this right was extended to plebeians, but that required nearly an armed revolution by the plebes before the patricians conceded. Even so, to be a member of the Senate, you had to own a certain value of assets and earn a certain level of annual income. Poor people could not be Senators.
These are the people who gave us the word "civilis". They were just as sexist and authoritarian and violent as the societies the professor decries. "Civilis" referred to a person's participation in public life, not some higher morality.
Again, here's this redefinition of "civilisation" in action. We already have a word for what he's trying to describe: "society". Society is "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community". I'm not sure why he can't use this already existing word for this concept, and why he feels a need to redefine another word which already refers to another concept.
These "invaluable and cherished qualities of true civilisation" are actually science and technology, not some higher moral sensibility. When the professor tries to apply his new definition of "civilisation" to reality, all he can show us is technological advances, rather than some higher morality in action.
I don't even know where to start with this. This is where the professor has truly gone off the rails. For starters, he's speculating to an extreme degree; in blunter terms, he's just making shit up. He obviously wants to put women at the centre of his redefined "civilisation", but he can not produce any actual evidence to support this proposition. He basically just feels that women should have been more important than maybe they actually were, so he's reinventing history to suit his modern-day ideology.
In summary, this article is made-up shit by a professor who wants to reinvent history to suit his modern personal ideology. It's crap.