I hope it's not considered inappropriate to mention the Fall of Civilizations podcast ep about Assyria here. I'm not affiliated. I just love history and this podcast is deeply researched and highly entertaining to a history nerd.
The ancient timelines are sometimes so mind boggling. A 700 year empire must have seemed like a permanent state of the world. Yet here we are, little remains, and at the same time puts our current times in perspective. Ozymandias is very fitting.
Tangentially but somewhat interestingly, I was reading the other day that the field of "Assyriology" goes all the way up to the Islamic conquest, about a thousand years after the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire mentioned above.
"Assyriology" is a bit of a misnomer and really means the study of cultures that used cuneiform. So it includes the Sumerians and their prehistory, which preceded the Assyrians by thousands of years. Taking it up to the Islamic conquest is stretching it a bit, but I suppose there was a lot of continuity between that period and the thousands of years of cuneiform use in the region. E.g. the latest cuneiform tablet known is from 79AD from the city of Uruk, which was inhabited from about 5000BC to 700AD
Yes, it seems like there was or is a region considered the "Assyrian homeland" [0] of the people for whom the empire was named (Assyria being named for the home city of Assur). Wikipedia's map makes it look the same as the Kurdish territory and when I look up differences between them, Reddit threads describing contemporary accounts are front and center. [1]
There is an amazing bit in the fall of civs podcast of a Greek military leader’s account who over 2000 years ago is retreating from battle in Iraq and comes across an entire ancient city. He doesn’t know it but the ruins for him are already over a 1000 years old.
Was that Xenophon’s anabasis? I didn’t remember that part but I love the book.
Xenophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates and wrote philosophical dialogues involving him. Unlike Plato, Xenophon became a mercenary soldier who led 10,000 Greek soldiers to fight their way out of Iraq. It’s very well written — hope they make a movie at some point.
In addition to archeology, ancient Greeks (and undoubtably others) also did paleontology:
Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and
measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and
museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric
creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the
remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone
finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these
neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific
discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.
Amazing old part of the world. I liked how this guy got taken to a place a few thousand years old and its just sitting there in the desert no signs or any protection.
I sketched and photographed older rock art in high school 50 years past:
The rock art has been dated back to before the ice age ended and is approx. over 40,000 years old and there is up to 1 million rock art images scattered across the entire Burrup Peninsula and Dampier Archipelago.
It seems they knew there were hundreds of sites to be inundated and there was an effort to investigate as many as they could before the damn was built https://www.jstor.org/stable/25182504
It's very common that both historical artifacts and natural wonders have been consumed by reservoirs, I suspect it would be almost impossible to avoid this.
One thing that seems to link many past great civilisations is their discovery of forces or powers that eventually consume them.
The challenge seems to be how to wield the fire without yourself getting burned. Some would say this is an impossible task given the relative nature of our definitition of what is considered "new", as once again we extend our hand to the flame.
What past lessons may we bring to this experience which can allow us deeper insights, and the hope of a less destructive outcome?
Skimmed that thread but saw no mention of why the site is in such a bad shape.
It's because the usians made a tank and helicopter parking lot out of it when they arrived, angering scholars and enthusiasts all over the world, and then the polish built a military base there, at which point the anger had mostly turned into exhaustion.
https://soundcloud.com/fallofcivilizations/13-the-assyrians-...
So similar territory and genetic people but well after the Assyrians.
(rough dates from wikipedia)expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_homeland
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Assyria/comments/u8c324/relationshi...
Well, sort of. "Assyria" would be a rendering of the Greek idea of the name. The Greeks couldn't pronounce it.
In English the city (and god) is usually called "Ashur"; in Akkadian it's Ashshur. It's never called "Assur".
Xenophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates and wrote philosophical dialogues involving him. Unlike Plato, Xenophon became a mercenary soldier who led 10,000 Greek soldiers to fight their way out of Iraq. It’s very well written — hope they make a movie at some point.
https://youtu.be/CrhFdiAABPE?si=c-OzPFj2fF4T6O_k&t=1796
Now under threat from natural gas North West Shelf Project https://theconversation.com/green-light-for-gas-north-west-s...
The challenge seems to be how to wield the fire without yourself getting burned. Some would say this is an impossible task given the relative nature of our definitition of what is considered "new", as once again we extend our hand to the flame.
What past lessons may we bring to this experience which can allow us deeper insights, and the hope of a less destructive outcome?
How the restoration of ancient Babylon is drawing tourists back to Iraq
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45236473
It's because the usians made a tank and helicopter parking lot out of it when they arrived, angering scholars and enthusiasts all over the world, and then the polish built a military base there, at which point the anger had mostly turned into exhaustion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jan/15/iraq.arts1
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/24/669272204/in-iraq-a-race-to-p...