Originally Posted by Elijah

It's not that I don't understand what you are trying to say. I just don't agree with it.

Originally Posted by Elijah

You sure they only live two years?

Originally Posted by Faid

Um. Man, read again what you said. You just defined "related to age"!

Do you get what you wrote? If so, explain to me: WHY are these things related to age, if age makes us smarter and smarter and more capable all the time?

Originally Posted by mung bean

Wot Faid said.

Originally Posted by Sauron

Yes. Some life only one year.

No.

Originally Posted by mung bean

Elijah, the ones that are doing teh smart shit are in captivity.
They snuff it after two years.

Teh Galapagos tortoise has fuck all skills and live for yonkers.
They are in league with teh occys to fuck with your head.
Go get those fuckers.



Edit: just realised that deserves an award for gratuitous use of the word "fuck".

Originally Posted by Elijah

It's not age It's time. The more time you have the more time you have to learn. The more you learn the more mental development. The aging process and the effects of old age are not relative to the discussion at hand.

Originally Posted by Faid

Elijah, when your claim is "longer lifespans = smarter people", the effects of old age are nothing BUT relevant. Are you trying to bail out from this?


And I have already addressed the relationship between old age after a point, and the ability to learn. Anything else?

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Good for you: tell us more. Who did you deal with? (I am a past member of the Egypt Exploration Society, you see).

I would hope so. Some might consider that those holding chairs of ancient history and classics at major universities might have some claim to respect also.

Perhaps you should ask them, rather than suppose that they endorse that view. I think that you might be surprised at what you get, even from so object-focused a group.

You see, literary sources tell us the majority of what we know about antiquity. I cannot imagine any conceivable archaeology that will give us what Pliny's letters do, for instance. How do we learn about the plotting after Caesar's death, other than from the letters exchanged at the time that we get from Cicero?

A belt-buckle cannot speak. We know so little about the beaker-folk; but Cicero is a friend, and we can all read with pleasure Pliny's remarks about Regulus, gnash our teeth with Sidonius Apollinaris at the treachery betraying his countrymen to the Goths. We may smile ruefully with the emperor Majorian when meeting with Gallic senators, as he finds that they are interested only in honours that are about to vanish with the empire itself.

Such things cannot be recovered from digs. I remember digging out a piece of Samian ware on a dig. It was marvellous to hold it! But it could not speak, not like a letter. A tablet from Vindolanda reading "send more beer" brings us closer to those frozen legionaries than any amount of pottery.

I say nothing that we don't know, I'm sure. But it is worth reiterating.

Archaeology is valuable, and I wouldn't want people to suppose that I was setting the two up as enemies -- on the contrary -- but then no one disputes that. Something that is hard and testable and definite is of inestimable value.

But to discard the texts -- as has been said here -- is to get things thoroughly upside down. It is to lose most of the data that we have.

That ancient writers do not give us the whole picture is true -- neither does a find of a beaker. An ancient writer will be biased, may be mistaken, will write in accordance with the canons of his time. But... he lives there. Even if he is wrong about something, just the fact that he says so has evidential value in a lot of cases; it has to be something that is at least possible to say in his culture.

I would encourage anyone who supposes that they can write a history of ancient Rome without using literary sources to attempt it. Or, perhaps more reasonably, to ask a professional.

All the best,

Roger Pearse