That’s the problem—how do you restrict literacy to an elite scribal class when everybody has string?
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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The Internet in Ancient Times
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Welcome to the stone age... or the bronze age... or the iron age... heck, anything with an 'age' is welcome, except our modern age or any ages to come.
This is about what the internet was like thousands of years ago back when it all started. Like when Darius the Great hired mercenaries via Craigslist or when Egypt invented emojis.
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6 - There is no ~~rule~~ law 6.
Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding-place. I expounded all great difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. With the mighty weapons which Zamama and Ishtar entrusted to me, with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy above and below (in north and south), subdued the earth, brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight, the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I enclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness.
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My Mayan buddies up north just make it so super complicated that you have to be really talented at drawing or carving.
String's easier though.
Because sometimes you want to describe and record the beauty of a potato without being limited by the language! How can one describe the terrace farms with just ~~knot~~ knot knot knot knot knot ~~knot~~
You missed a knot.
Because I'm a westerner, so Tallysticks were the go to!
...which is why everyone should go learn MMT (a set of economic ideas/statements based on the historical usages of money).
I think the Wikipedia article answers that question: "carved wood as a supplemental, and perhaps sturdier, base to which the color-coded cords could be attached.[6] A relatively small number have survived."
they're fragile and don't last. i imagine the act of reading them probably wears them down quickly if they're read often. you read them through abrasion. books are fragile too, but it's possible to handle them carefully and still read them. can these be read by sight? I'm actually not sure now that i think about it.
this likely created survivorship bias. even in the cultures that we know to have used them surviving examples are uncommon. there could easily have been other cultures doing this or something similar, but we wouldn't know before none survived the test of time.
edit: read further and there's also this "and most quipu were identified as idolatrous and destroyed," -destroyed by the spaniards.
classic.
man i gotta finish reading first.
"Various cultures have used knotted strings unrelated to South American quipu to record information — these include Chinese knotting, and practice by Tibetans, Japanese, and Polynesians.[10][11][12][13][14]"
i bet we could get a better answer by looking at the cultures that did this but weren't fucked over by colonizers. Japan seems a good place to start. one of the few countries that looked colonizers in the face, saw through their bullshit, then had the strength of arm to tell them to fuck all the way off.
Sorry, that's a lot of information. Can you please repeat that in knot form so I can read it out to the emperor?