Quote from: Bren;848463But by looking at civic infrastructure or peak city size you are adopting a measure that will of course preference empires and their capitals. Europe didn't see a city the size of Imperial Rome again for over 1,000 years.
.

Sure. But in a lot of ways Europe was a cultural backwater until that 1000 years had passed.

Quote from: apparition13;848279Link to the wikipedia article on civilization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization#cite_ref-16



Learn something new everyday (further down in the article): the word civilization didn't exist in English until the mid 1700s.

Pundit: instead of repeating yourself over and over again, add a citation. The wikipedia article does a good job of supporting your definition.

Critics of "civilization" as a concept: get off your (deconstructionist and critical theory derived) high horses (the concept is bad because it's *barbarianist*, not that there is any need to provide evidence as to whether or not that is the case, or even if it is, if it's relevant) and provide your own evidence why the Celts or other group of your choice count as civilized. Look: some criteria in the article. Do they fit the criteria? Why or why not? And just saying so doesn't count, back yourself up with evidence.

Everyone: you're smarter than these arguments where everyone is just presenting their opinion as fact. You have the knowledge of the world at your fingertips. Do a perfunctory internet search and find some evidence to support (or perhaps change your mind about) your view. Use it to ground your claims. That way we might have more (in number as well as quality) productive discussions than these tedious definitiopinion* squabbles.


*Yes, these are deliberate neologisms.

I didn't realise that this was an academic forum.

Quote from: soltakss;848489I didn't realise that this was an academic forum.

That not a bad thing to be, is it?

Quote from: soltakss;848489I didn't realise that this was an academic forum.

I didn't realize there was anything wrong with being well informed before you pontificate on a subject.  Why do you think there is?

Quote from: Ravenswing;848530I didn't realize there was anything wrong with being well informed before you pontificate on a subject.  Why do you think there is?

I get the concern, which I think is getting into the "citation please" you see in some corners of the internet. But on a topic like this, asking for sources and facts is probably a good idea.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;848534I get the concern, which I think is getting into the "citation please" you see in some corners of the internet. But on a topic like this, asking for sources and facts is probably a good idea.

Sure one can ask. But for those of us who are not professionally involved in the topic de jure, remembering which book, periodical, or museum blurb some particular factoid came from can be very difficult, even impossible. I don't want to see conversations here turned into some version of dueling academic citations.

On the other hand, it makes me happy when people do have a citation and I don't mind admitting when I either don't have one to hand or can't be bothered to look one up.

Quote from: Bren;848584Sure one can ask. But for those of us who are not professionally involved in the topic de jure, remembering which book, periodical, or museum blurb some particular factoid came from can be very difficult, even impossible. I don't want to see conversations here turned into some version of dueling academic citations.

On the other hand, it makes me happy when people do have a citation and I don't mind admitting when I either don't have one to hand or can't be bothered to look one up.

I understand. This is one of the reasons I think forums are not very good for these kinds of discussions. History is just an area where I tend to be very cautious. My hesitation here is I see a lot of these discussions online where people sound very authoritative and well-read, but 9 times out of 10, when I go check the best available sources myself (usually much later and over a longer period of time) it becomes clear they were working with incomplete or inaccurate sources and information. When people put up sources it becomes very easy to quickly identify where their main arguments are coming from and if they are coming from a questionable place.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;848586I understand. This is one of the reasons I think forums are not very good for these kinds of discussions. History is just an area where I tend to be very cautious. My hesitation here is I see a lot of these discussions online where people sound very authoritative and well-read, but 9 times out of 10, when I go check the best available sources myself (usually much later and over a longer period of time) it becomes clear they were working with incomplete or inaccurate sources and information. When people put up sources it becomes very easy to quickly identify where their main arguments are coming from and if they are coming from a questionable place.

Agreed.

Also conversation online is often swamped by the know-nothing types who believe goofy things like invisible ninjas and katanas cutting through tank armor. I have a good idea of the truthiness of the different things I know. But there is no way that you or anyone else will know that  about me save by long conversation and fact checking. And getting a source does help cut through the Internet bullshit and dick waving.

Quote from: soltakss;848489I didn't realise that this was an academic forum.

You call that "academic"?

Quote from: Ravenswing;848530I didn't realize there was anything wrong with being well informed before you pontificate on a subject.  Why do you think there is?

apparition13's copying random Wikipedia crap and kissing up to Pundit =/= well-informed.

Quote from: Bren;848454Then again, even in High School, I knew the Commentaries were a primarily written as a propaganda piece so Caesar had every incentive to puff up the numbers of his opponents. So much younger me took his numbers with a shaker of salt.

However, Caesar also had many powerful opponents at home who'd be leaping on anything deemed inconsistent or over-inflated the moment he tried to assert it. They had their spies and openly partisan supporters in his army, he wouldn't have gotten away with adding zeros to the numbers captured and so on.

Quote from: soltakss;848489I didn't realise that this was an academic forum.

I didn't realize academics could get away with a perfunctory internet search.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;848534I get the concern, which I think is getting into the "citation please" you see in some corners of the internet. But on a topic like this, asking for sources and facts is probably a good idea.

It needn't even go that far. The form is usually "I feel X", a totally unsupported assertion. I'm asking for "I think (notice "think", not "feel") X, because Y (some sort of evidence).

Y is sourced from Z would be nice, but more often than not you don't even get "because Y", it's just people screaming X1, not X2, no X1, no X2.

Quote from: Bren;848584Sure one can ask. But for those of us who are not professionally involved in the topic de jure, remembering which book, periodical, or museum blurb some particular factoid came from can be very difficult, even impossible. I don't want to see conversations here turned into some version of dueling academic citations.

On the other hand, it makes me happy when people do have a citation and I don't mind admitting when I either don't have one to hand or can't be bothered to look one up.

Three minutes on google to see if you can confirm your recollection. I checked wiki to see if the definition I'd seen of civilization was, as I recalled, mostly in line with Pundits, and saw it was, so I quoted it. I could have drilled down into the citations, hopped over to google scholar or JSTOR and gone into more detail, but that's too much effort for this kind of conversation. All I'm saying is double check your (general not specific your) memory.

Quote from: The Ent;848623You call that "academic"?

I sure don't.

Quoteapparition13's copying random Wikipedia crap and kissing up to Pundit =/= well-informed.

Kissing up to Pundit? How is "yo dude, 30 seconds on google and you could have avoided half a dozen posts where you basically just say 'is so'" kissing up?

Quote from: jibbajibba;848300One of the reasons there is so much Celt love out there is that they went through a fairly recent reanalysis from "barbarians" to inventors and innovators of some pretty key technologies. Also the lack of written records allows people to project their own "noble savage" ideas back onto the Celts fairly easily.

Not really accurate: in fact, there's been absolutely ridiculous adoration of a (mostly mythologized) Celtic greatness since the late 19th century.  Talk about propaganda wars: this was largely impulsed by the unholy alliance between romanticism and Irish nationalism.

People have been stupidly fashionably in love with the Celts for a very long time now, in the English-speaking world. It was and is as patently dumb as Germanic romanticism, only it remained popular because no Irishman killed 50 million people midway through the last century.

Quote from: RPGPundit;849153Not really accurate: in fact, there's been absolutely ridiculous adoration of a (mostly mythologized) Celtic greatness since the late 19th century.  Talk about propaganda wars: this was largely impulsed by the unholy alliance between romanticism and Irish nationalism.

People have been stupidly fashionably in love with the Celts for a very long time now, in the English-speaking world. It was and is as patently dumb as Germanic romanticism, only it remained popular because no Irishman killed 50 million people midway through the last century.

You are aware that we have archaeological evidence that the Celts were a talented and technically sophisticated culture right? That there isn't some vast historical 'conspiracy' to make the Celts 'look good' to the general public right? They left behind art, jewelry, armour, weapons, and settlements. When you can stand on a Celtic site or hold a Celtic artifact in your hand it isn't 'historical revisionism' or 'romanticism'. I don't buy into the 'noble savage' crap over actual history. Eradicating an entire culture's accomplishments as 'adoration' or 'romanticism' is insulting, demeaning and dismissive.

Quote from: RPGPundit;847367Society is pretty much just a universal. For culture you can say a culture is more complex than others, but not necessarily more 'advanced', because the complexity does not necessarily equate to any meaningful sort of advancement. But civilization is something that has different levels of advancement, which can be clearly observed.

When I distill the difference between barbarian and civilization it boils down to the rule of law. Understand that this is a simplification of great many factors.

What civilization excel at is providing a structure where two strangers can meet and do business or whatever in peace.

Barbarians in contrast all relationships are personal and there isn't a personal connection then basically the other party is fair game for whatever.


Doesn't mean that it always rape, pillage, and plunder. If the barbarians like the individuals in question then it may wind up forging a personal connection. After which things proceed according to the custom, laws and mores of the barbarian's culture.

The lack of the rule of law hinders cultural sophistication and diversity.

When I game barbarian culture versus civilized culture this is the root cause I use to determine how people act. In a barbarian culture the NPCs care more about who the character know than what they are. In a civilization what the characters are is more important than who they know.

estar: that works in an RPG, but "barbarian" societies IRL very much had laws, even rule of law.