Recent Discovery Contains Oldest Depiction of the Tower of Babel 309
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Unknown Lamer
from the tower-built-by-java-developer dept.
from the tower-built-by-java-developer dept.
smitty777 writes "The recent discovery of the Tower of Babel stele by a team of scholars shows what might be the earliest depiction of the ancient Tower of Babel. The stele belongs to Martin Schøyen, who also owns a large number of pictographic and cuneiform tablets, some of the earliest known written documents. The tablet (reconstruction) depicts King Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom Babylon was a cultural leader in astronomy, mathematics, literature and medicine. It's also interesting to note the somewhat recent Slashdot article linking the common ancestry of languages to this area."
Pretty Lame (Score:5, Funny)
The tower comes up to his waist.
Re:Pretty Lame (Score:5, Funny)
It's only a model.
Re:Pretty Lame (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pretty Lame (Score:5, Funny)
What is this, a center for ants?!
How can we be expected to teach children when they can't even fit inside the building?!
Tower of babel is interesting. Have they ever actually figured out how big it actually was etc? Because the carvings aren't very detailed or convincing.
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How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read if they can't even fit inside the building!
Re:Pretty Lame (Score:5, Funny)
What is this, a Tower of Babel for ants? It needs to be at least ... three times bigger than this.
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And 20% cooler.
Re:Pretty Lame (Score:5, Funny)
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He used " when he meant '.
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Size doesn't matter. You should see how small the Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too is
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What is this, a tower for ANTS? How can we expect Babylonians to read if they can't even fit in the building?</zoolander>
Small...far away (Score:3)
In case this is still puzzling anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbd3E6tK2U [youtube.com]
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The tower comes up to his waist.
Less languages than a nomad, Lame.
Re:Pretty Lame (Score:5, Interesting)
Doctor Morbius opined:
This article is idiotic. Time to exclude Unknown Lamer.
>/p>
Not to some of us.
Me, for instance. I'm a pretty serious student of the life of Alexander the Great - one of whose long-term projects was the rebuilding of the Ziggurat of Babylon. Up until now, there simply hasn't been a known-contemporary depiction of the Tower and its temple. All the illustrations heretofore have been products of their artists' imangination (the same is true of the Lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria, btw). For history geeks, this is a rather wonderful discovery.
The Krell would be ashamed of you.
Quick someone call apple's lawers (Score:5, Funny)
That tablet has a glossy black surface and rounded corners
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That tablet has a glossy black surface and rounded corners
No, that's what I would call very prior art.
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Prior art doesn't matter anymore. The US is now a first-to-file country. And since Apple was the first to file a patent on glossy black surfaces with rounded corners, ancient Mesopotamians are now banned from importing or selling their stela in the US. Also, it helps that Apple can hire better lawyers than extinct civilizations can.
Babylon is in Central/Southern Africa? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the other article:
Dear Slashdot editors: Do you know where Babylon and Central/Southern Africa are?
I'd also bet money that the timeline is also completely wrong. Babylon existed a few thousand years ago. The origin of language is much, much older.
Re:Babylon is in Central/Southern Africa? (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is pretty blood suspicious. First of all, it isn't the Tower of Babel, it's the ziggurat of Babylon. The Babel story may indeed reference the ziggurat of Babylon, or not, but no serious scholar goes around calling it the Tower of Babel.
The origin of language nonsense reveals that this is clearly the creation of some Biblical literalist. The breaking of the tongues story from Genesis is myth. No linguist has seriously believed it in well over two hundred years, and pretty much everyone accepts that humans developed full language in Africa. The language Nebuchadnezzar spoke; Akkadian, was an Afro-Asiatic language, and those languages likely developed either in the Arabian Peninsula or in East Africa, most certainly not in Mesopotamia.
Come on Slashdot editors. What's next, an article about humans and dinosaurs living together, or Biblical Flood confirmation stories? Is this the low that the post-Taco era is going to sink to?
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What's next, an article about humans and dinosaurs living together
Nah, Slashdot's always late. They won't post that story until dinosaurs actually do go extinct. (Birds: Class Aves, Branch:Avialae. Order: Saurischia Superorder:Dinosauria Yes, "Dinosauria" means exactly what you should think it does. Source [wikipedia.org] BTW)
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They won't post that story until dinosaurs actually do go extinct.
Not to worry, we're working on it [about.com].
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Well, look at who wrote the summary, his nick is smitty777. 777 is, for a lot of Christians, a meaningful number as in the opposite of 666, it's the number closest to their God.
Coincidence? Maybe, but in combination with the false summary I'd say chances are pretty big smitty777 has his own agenda when posting this Christian propaganda.
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1) 666 is the number of man, short of perfection, which would be 777.
2) I completely missed the Christian propoganda. Could you explain it to me pleeze? I b confuzed.
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Re:Babylon is in Central/Southern Africa? (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought that 7 meant read/write/execute, 6 meant read/write, 3 meant write/execute, and 777 meant wide-open?
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The reference to the Tower of Babel and the whole origin of language line gives it away. Can you think of anyone besides of Christian Biblical literalist (except maybe a Muslim literalist or, if they exist in any quantity, a Jewish literalist) who would call an image of a ziggurat on a steal the "tower of Babel" or who would suggest that this is where languages came from immediately afterwards.
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Wouldn't that be 668, the neighbor of the beast? Or 667, the guy who lives across the street from the beast, or perhaps even 666B, the guy who lives in the apartment loft above the beast (no doubt against local zoning law)? Seems that all of those would fit the condition of "closer".
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I don't know if it is "Christian propaganda" or not, but how the hell is it "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters"? I mean, is it made of Legos, does it run Linux, or at the very least, is SCO or the RIAA suing them?
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You got me dude...you've uncovered a vast conspiracy between me and that hotbed of right wing propaganda - The Discovery Channel! BTW, if you had managed to read the article, they also allude to this reference as well. Because it's relevant.
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IF this is the Tower of Babel mentioned in the bible, it basically proves that the bible is wrong.
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I think you're making a logical leap that is unfounded. It could be that either the king is taking credit for something that was already built, or that the scholars are wrong about it being the original tower. I do agree with you about the timing of the original tower, though.
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phantomfive opined:
If that's the case, then you're completely wrong.....the Tower of Babel depicted in the Bible is at 1500BCE at the absolute latest. The one in this Slashdot article was built ~600BCE.
No, the ziggurat in TFS is the rebuilt Tower. The original was destroyed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 BCE, and rebuilt by Nabopolassar and his successor Nebuchadnezzar II after Esarhaddon became king of Assyria.Three hundred or so years later, Alexander III had the much-neglected Etemenanki (the Babylonian name for the Tower) demolished in preparation for rebuilding it - a project that fell through after his unexpected death in June, 323 BCE.
IF this is the Tower of Babel mentioned in the bible, it basically proves that the bible is wrong.
It does nothing of the sort. Otoh, i
Re:Babylon is in Central/Southern Africa? (Score:5, Insightful)
Biblical literalist? Hardly. Nebuchadnezzar had nothing to do with the Tower of Babel, and it's clear the author has only passing knowledge of either bible story. The article manages to completely mangle both philology and biblical theology. It's stupid enough for everyone to hate.
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They're not saying Nebuchadnezzar built the original Tower of Babel, they're saying it looks like he might have (tried to) restore it (rebuild it). "Calling himself the 'great restorer and builder of holy places,' he also reconstru
Re:Who didn't read the article? (Score:4, Informative)
There is also no linguistic connection between the tower of "balal" (Hebrew) and the ziggaurat of "babili" (Akkadian).
The Hebrew is not "balal", it's BBL (two "bet" characters followed by a "lamed".) Hebrew is normally written without most vowels, and ancient Hebrew was always written without most vowels; the "nikud" dot systems used to teach Hebrew vowels are no more than 1500 years old. I don't know where you got your Akkadian transliteration from. If your Akkadian is as bad as your Hebrew, it's worthless. But if your Akkadian source was better than your Hebrew source, then it's interesting that Hebrew BBL is quite close to "babili". If you were going to write "babili" in Hebrew, it would look either like "BBL" or BBLY" (the Hebrew yud character can double as a vowel.)
And the linguistics are irrelevant, anyway. Hebrew BBL has long been considered a reference to Babylon. Even if the Hebrew and Akkadian place names were linguistically disparate, BBL would still have been an exonym referencing Babylon. Sort of like Japan vs. Nippon. A modern English article that describes a site in Japan is not incorrect or mythical just because the local name is "Nippon"/"Nihon" rather than "Japan". "BBL means "Babylon" just as "Japan" means "Nippon".
[Disclaimer: I personally don't believe in the Bible. However, that doesn't change the fact that it is an interesting collection of ancient documents that reference other antiquities.]
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But that common language existed between 75K and 100K years ago, at that time there were probably 2500 human beings in the world, and the place was eastern Africa. The language had lots of click sounds, and its closest extant remnants are the Andamanese spoken i
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Nobody actually knows any of that for sure. It is not generally accepted, it is conjecture, and as no linguistic link has been made between the "click" languages of southern Africa and any other language outside of the region, this is what most linguists would call a flight of fancy. We're talking about a discipline that largely rejects Nostratic due to insufficient evidence, so I don't think you'll find many linguists who would accept your account, and any linguist who did would be at the very margins of t
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I'd like to add that nobody is quite sure if there was a mother tongue. The neural hardware for language may have existed for a considerable length of time prior to the first fully-formed languages, so you could have had different H. sapiens populations moving from proto-language to full language independently. If there was a single mother tongue, nobody knows what it sounded like.
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Of all the different languages spoken by man around the world, I would say there are at least two words that come the closets to sounding universal. Mamma and Daddy. It should come to no surprise that these are among the first two words a baby learns when growing up. The most important no doubt.
Ya, I was kinda blown away by that little discovery myself.
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My understanding is that linguists consider these examples of false cognates. They do not represent surviving words from the progenitor language, but rather are due to the fact that they tend to be the simplest sounds a young child can produce. Largely because it seems highly unlikely that just two cognates survive from the mother tongue, and not more.
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Re:Babylon is in Central/Southern Africa? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, a posting in which every single claim is false. (I am a linguist.) There's no evidence that there was ever a single common language which is the source of all present day languages. Scientific hypotheses do not get "scientifically proven" (there's only falsification, kids, not "proof"). The dating (75K-100K years ago) is just pulled out of someone's ass, the population numbers for that period don't match anything I've ever seen and would appear to also be made up. Since we don't know that there was this "original language", it's properties can hardly be known (phonemic make-up, whether it had 'clicks' or not). The claims about Khoisan and Andamenese are laughable on their face (if the languages existed 75K years ago, and all modern languages are "daughters" of this original language, aren't they all equally "close" "extant remnants"? like 75K years close?, of course you could claim that some languages have changed more than others, but that would entail that language change is not a constant --- probably true, by the way --- but would, unfortunately for the author, likewise entail that you can't date how long ago the languages were spoken; only the assumption of a constant rate of change could let you do that). If the "clicks sounds were the first ones to be lost as languages evolved" why are they still there in some languages? There is no such concept as "more evolved" and "less evolved" languages. Sanskrit has fewer phonemes than Tamil. The languages of Micronesia have large phoneme inventories, not small ones as asserted here.
Jeesh. Read a fucking book or something.
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Jeesh. Read a fucking book or something.
I speak Tamil and I know enough of Sanskrit. Your statement that Sanskrit has smaller number of phonemes is clearly wrong. In vowels, Tamil counts 12 but it has really 10 (ai and aw are not really vowels). Sanskrit counts 14 including kru and one more, but it too has basically 10 distinct vowel sounds. In consonants, tamil has 18, Sanskrit has 4 versions of ka (ka, kha, ga, gha), 4 versions of cha (sa,sha, cha, ja), 4 versions of da (ta, tha, dha, da) and 4 versions of pa (pa, fa, ba, bha). Tamil has just o
the bibles babel mentioning.. (Score:4, Funny)
is a warning against multiple company outsourcing.
Tower of Babel (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how much the Tower of Babel looks like every other ziggurat (tell) ever dug up in the Middle East. Oh wait....
When the fuck will people grow up and realize that not every city unearthed with breached walls is Jericho, not every cross dug up is the True Cross, not every Roman spear is the Dolourous Lance, not every Babylonian leader is King Nebuchadnezzar, and not every old cup is the Holy Grail? It's awesome enough that there is an old Babylonian cuneiform tablet without it also fitting into Biblical narrative.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Informative)
The submitter is an idiot. The whole "origin of language" bit demonstrates that well enough. WTF is wrong with Slashdot editors?
Ah well, I remember a time when every conman selling a perpetual motion machine could get a submission here, so maybe things haven't changed that much. Maybe next week we'll have an article on Noah's Ark being found, that would be about right if this is the standard.
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Slashdot had plenty of articles on Atlantis being found too. Slightly different, since the records of its existence is are a little more recent and a little more reliable, but just as hyperbolic and inflaming.
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I thought about adding something to that effect, but I like the way you wrote it better than I was able to frame the statement.
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If the tower of Babel story equates to a Babylonian tower, it would seem that suggests that the book of Genesis, which presents itself as having been written thousands of years before Babylon, actually dates to the era of Babylon (or perhaps parts of Genesis actually are older, but someone 'inserted' the Tower of Babel story much later)?
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The tower of Babel could refer to any of the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and it's never been determined that it refers to the ziggurat of Babylon, or to another one, or is really not referencing any one in particular. The Book of Genesis never tells us, and it's later interpreters who associated it with the ziggurat of Babylon. By your logic, you can't say it doesn't refer to the Penis of Marduk.
And a global flood never happened. Never. Not once. Not ever. The flood as described in Genesis is physically impos
Slashdot article headline in 2,000 years: (Score:4, Insightful)
Oblig bad joke (Score:2)
*Ducks*
Another fine article from Discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good example of the infotainment Discovery and all of its subsidiaries have used to replace what was once great, informative programming. Remember the long, droll documentaries you used to watch on the History Channel that were fascinating, somewhat layered, and informative? That all changed the day David M. Zaslav (former head of NBC, http://corporate.discovery.com/leadership/david-zaslav/ [discovery.com]) took the helm in 2007. Since then the organization has worked tooth and nail to dissolve its reputation as a place to learn something by replacing any programming focused on science, history, or biology with Big Log Muckers, UFO specials, End-of-the-World simulations, When Animals Attack and anything that can go out on a limb to find scientific proof for Biblical anecdotes. It follows the logic that those who are watching television are uneducated and then offers the lowest common demoninator in order to lull larger audiences. What a blight that man's leadership is.
Careful when translating (Score:5, Funny)
May contain mind virus. :P
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Insightful)
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You couldn't be more wrong.
A)Socialism/Communism
Not comparable, not the same thing, and don't belong link together like that.
B) "In practice it would require that the society in question be bereft of ..."
No, it wouldn't.
You need to learn the difference between social policy and economic policy. You can have a free market and socialism.
You need to read up some more so you get past "Mount stupid":
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2475 [smbc-comics.com]
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:5, Informative)
"socialism was exactly what we had there: state ownership of the means of production"
One minor nit to pick... that's not socialism. Socialism has very little to do with who owns the means of production or capital. Socialism describes a system in which states provide varying levels of service and economic remuneration to citizens in lieu of markets. Communism is concerned with ownership of the means of production, and it is not the same thing; hence two different terms, if they were indeed identical in form and function, there would be no need to differentiate them.
As for the correlation between "socialism" and totalitarianism... would you classify the Scandinavian states as particularly totalitarian? Most of Europe, really, is socialist to a greater or lesser extent. Most are pretty solidly non-totalitarian in comparison to a state like Singapore, which offers economic freedom virtually unmatched anywhere else. It's only a strong correlation if you choose to look only at data points which show that, ignoring all others.
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The problem, of course, is that your hypothetical scenario is nonsense, thus making your point moot (valid or not). Indeed, a cyncial person might even suggest you gave an intentionally inane example just to beat on a strawman in order to deflect any potential criticism of or competition against your own ideology. Of course, that would be a pretty serious accusation of intellectual fraud...
Anyway, assuming that you were making your argument in good faith, you picked an extremely problematic set of careers.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:5, Interesting)
The Monkey Theory comes into play here, in an indirect fashion. People can only remember so many facts, figures, names and slogans. Some of the smaller minded people in incapable of separating socialism from communism, and they can't go any further afield into the political spectrum to find terms that might fit their ideas. Assuming, of course, that they have any ideas that need to be articulated.
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I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a deliberate parody of religion, or genuine crazy.
I'd say genuine crazy considering he got the story wrong and there are plenty of Bibles around for reference. God didn't muddle the languages to keep dictators from ruling everyone. He did it because mankind was reaching the heavens and "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them!" Why that was considered a bad thing is not mentioned (pride?).
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One could make a weak argument that it was Marxist. Of course, the Marxist interpretation would probably differ greatly from the mainstream interpretation: a utopian society, living in a state of peace and egalitarianism, is caused to splinter, because God fears the accomplishments capable of this society that has no need of him. In fact, you could even use that same exact sentence as the Objectivist interpretation. Hey, I should publish this! I bet you could bend it into half a dozen interpretations wi
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That's not socialism [wikipedia.org]. You're describing a totalitarian state.
The Soviet Union was called the Union of Soviet "Socialist" Republics or USSR for short. From their perspective they were socialist and they were a totalitarian state when Stalin was in power. Hitler was the Chancellor of the Germany representing the National Socialist Worker Party (NAZI) and his regime was also a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is neither left or right because totalitarianism is about "social" control rather than "economic" control. You can have "right wing" totalitarian regimes but th
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Re:Tower of Babel (Score:5, Insightful)
It's often argued (correctly in my opinion) that *****lism inevitably leads to a totalitarian state. Read [A book (of millions that are out there) written by someone with my same ideas (and who nobody knows about) as a proof of what I think] for further info.
There, fixed that for you. Now you have a generic argument for whatever your opinions are.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Informative)
Sigh... This old canard again. The Nazis were most certainly socialists, and Hitler certainly espoused a socialist doctrine, but in reality he was simply pursuing power. He aligned himself with the socialist wing of the National Socialists right up until it became clear that he would need to cozy up to the industrialist and aristocratic classes in German society, and it is they that essentially decided to back Hitler as Chancellor.
At any rate, whatever meaningful socialism there was in Hitler or in Nazism was wiped out Rohm was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
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Au CARtraire...
We did get the People's Vagen out of it. You can get a new one for about $20K-$60K.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Insightful)
At any rate, whatever meaningful socialism there was in Hitler or in Nazism was wiped out ... during the Night of the Long Knives.
Whatever meaningful socialism there was in _______ was wiped out during ________
1) the USSR / Stalin's purges
2) communist China / Mao's purges
3) Cuba / Castro's purges
and on and on.
Socialism / Communism isn't a way of running a society. It is a method used to disrupt and destroy a society. The nuances and differences between socialism, communism and Progressivism are as meaningless as the nuances and differences between the effects of different types of nuclear weapons on a city. Socialism, Communism and Progressivism are a means to achieving totalitarianism, no more, no less.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh not this nonsense again. The Nazis were socialist in the same sense that the former East Germany was a democratic republic.
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At any rate, whatever meaningful socialism there was in Hitler or in Nazism was wiped out [when] Rohm was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
For those who haven't bothered reading up on it, TNOTLK was the result of the fact that Rohm wanted to "complete the socialist revolution" on behalf of disgruntled WWI veterans after AH and HG got public offices with a certain amount of power, but at that point they perceived that revolution to be a threat to *them*.
But clearly, people who want to use 'socialism' to make people's knees jerk aren't interested in what was really going on. Just saying "Hitler was a socialist, so our social programs are bad" su
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:5, Insightful)
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence. The breaking up of languages very likely happened in Africa tens of thousands of years before the first mud bricks that were used to construct the Ziggurat were formed.
And no, it's not socialism, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It was, as another poster pointed out, a dictatorship, or more properly an absolute monarchy. It would be like calling the government of Louis XIV a socialist government.
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And no, it's not socialism, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It was, as another poster pointed out, a dictatorship, or more properly an absolute monarchy. It would be like calling the government of Louis XIV a socialist government.
To right-wing nutballs, anything they don't like is socialism. How do they know it's socialism? Because they don't like socialism, and so if there's something they don't like, socialism is what it must be!
Any attempt to point out the flaws in this line of reasoning is, of course, socialist propaganda.
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Wow. thanks for distilling the essence of the right-wing.
Not. Go call Bill Maher and ask him for a more insightful analysis, as even that would indeed be more insightful.
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Yep, bald sarcasm sure is funny. It sure doesn't need any context highlighting the problem, just being sarcastic puts opponents in their place straight out. Game, set, match.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you know how it is. Look at how many people call Nazi Germany "socialist" just because the word "Socialist" is in the name, but people do it all the time. It is about as stupid as calling The Democratic People's Republic of Korea a democracy or a republic.
Hell, the sheer number of people that equate socialism and fascism, let alone socialism and communism, or socialism and a social democracy...it's all ridiculous. Ignorance is our greatest threat in this nation, not terrorism.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Informative)
The industrialists still got rich under the Nazi government. Whatever the Nazi party line in the 1920s and early 1930s might be, when Hitler got into power, he understood very well that he needed to get the industrialists and aristocrats on board. And as I mentioned elsewhere, any meaningfully socialist elements of the Nazi party were eliminated during the Night of the Long Knives; in particular the leader of the SA and one of Hitler's most important early allies; Ernst Rohm.
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Sigh. I'm not talking about a brand new class of rich people, I'm talking about the people who were the power brokers in Germany prior to Hitler's rise. Come on people, this is pretty common fucking knowledge. Put away your "the Nazis were Commies" crap and read a fucking history book. Hitler came to power not because he promised people lots of money and government contracts, but because the power brokers in Germany, in particular Franz von Papen. Hitler achieved ultimate power by having Ernst Rohm and the
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No, it didn't. At least Naziism, I don't know what Mussolini did as well. Hitler was an ardent supporter of mercantilism and believed in using government power to facilitate the maximizing of profits. He also believed in seizing assets from those he believed were unworthy, like Jewish businessmen. Those assets were then sold to companies that supported the Nazi party. It was a method for consolidating power within a group of elites. They did, however, trumpet their supposed socialism in poor neighborh
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was an ardent supporter of mercantilism and believed in using government power to facilitate the maximizing of profits.
I suggest you re-read Mein Kampf and Third Reich policy. Profit was not discouraged. However the state was very firm in pointing out that you were only allowed to make an "acceptable" profit. If you made more profit than what the state deemed enough for you, you would be dealt with.
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The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
A large group of humans all cooperated (with a common language to facilitate) to build a tower several miles tall to reach the heavens, which angered a god so much that with a swipe of his hand he scattered the humans across the world and made them all speak in different languages.
And the reason that story is nonsense is because by the time some large Mesopotamian structures were built, humans were already speaking different languages?
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"And the United States, which if you believe the media is the most racist and intolerant nation in the world, has a black President."
Is that so? Maybe he's white. How can you tell?
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"Anything's possible."
no, no it's not. Many thing are impossible.
Note what doesn't work and move on.
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The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
No one is saying the existence of the temple that formed the basis of the story of the Tower of Babel lends any credibility to the rest of the story. That's sort of like saying "Well, Jerusalem actually existed--which lends evidence to the claim that Jesus was the Son of God." Many of the sites, people, and events mentioned in the Bible really existed, or at least had some basis in historical fact. That doesn't mean that everything else in the Bible must therefore be true too.
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Not quite. If I remember correctly, God dropped by to check out the tower (various unnamed parties were worried it would actually reach heaven), and found a woman performing manual labor while her baby was unattended. Something like that. Which pissed him off.
Something of a hidden message which states humanity has to deal with its social / welfare issues before trying to reach the stars. Or technology is evil; hard to tell after that garden story. Possibly, anyways. I've found trying to gather understanding
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Informative)
Need to do a bit more reading, my friend. The account doesn't have anything to do with women performing manual labor:
"(The Babylonians) said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babelc—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
So, it had nothing to do with labor practices. Many scholars think the tower was some sort of astrological artifact, and that the scrambling of the languages had to do with dispersing the population of the earth. That is, according to the scripture.
Re:Tower of Babel (Score:4, Insightful)
Who are these many "scholars"?
Real scholars will tell you that this is a myth and the division of human languages had far more to do with our spread out of Africa than anything else.
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Are those the same scholars that told you the account was a women's right issue?
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I have never heard of such a tale until another poster made that claim.
I did not make such a claim. Perhaps you should learn to read a little better. I suggest starting with some non-fiction works since you seem to already be quite versed with fiction.
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He's probably referring to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#Greek_Apocalypse_of_Baruch [wikipedia.org]
"Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech..."
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Reference plz? I have never heard that aspect of it before.
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So pointing out something is a myth is rabid atheism in this case, but anyone would say the same thing about Zeus.
You don't need evidence to tear down such things, they have none to support it.
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Scholars treat ancient texts with care. You can gleam a good deal about an ancient society even from the more fanciful and mythical writings. Take for instance the Vedas. Scholars have used them to do at least some reconstruction of ancient Indo-Aryan civilization; it's beliefs, social structure and economy, and just as importantly to extrapolate further and get some hints of the Indo-European progenitor society. Even the language of the texts; Vedic Sanskrit, was the first major inspiration that lead to fo
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ToB is a story of humanity's first venture down the road of socialism, where all of humanity fell under the rule of a single dictator.
Based on that sentence, I'd say it's a fair bet that you don't even know what the fuck Socialism is...
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Get out of here, Dilbert.
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With the exception that BAL is still in use today. If you do systems programming on IBM mainframes for any amount of time, You. Will. Learn. BAL.
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"...and even cylcon symbols by Australia's Aborigines which can be up to 20,000 years old." ... I had no idea BSG was a documentary!
Holy crap
There is some evidence that there was a "nuclear" war in India thousands of years ago. See http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ancientatomicwar/esp_ancient_atomic_07.htm [bibliotecapleyades.net] I'm not sure what to make of it but it is interesting.