Which civilization was the world's most advanced in antiquity?

Guaporense said:

He will not. LoG is a troll, if you haven't noticed.

I will never reply to any of his posts, ever. He is in my ignore list and I advise everyone to do the same.

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You have failed to address me from the very first post you've made, because you expected a free pass to your quasi-academic analysis. You didn't expect that simply making graphs out of random data wouldn't be questioned.

You refuse to address me, because if you did, you would be forced to retract most of your illogical and biassed conclusions.

Conclusions such as 'Greeks enjoyed higher standard of living in classical times than before or latter'- you use 'average house size' to support your argument. You refuse to address me, because you know that your 'average house size' argument is trash, since we do not know the average family size of any pre-reneissance period society.

Ie, you ignore me, because i pointed out that a 2000 sq. foot house size is meaningless, without knowing how many people shared that space.

You also fail to address the fact that your dataset is far too small to make such claims and the fact that your historical references are not taken seriously by any academic who is versed in data analysis. For the bulk majority of data regarding ancient societies are bunk. For one very simple reason: your data-set represents less than 1% of the entire data set (99% are lost or contaminated) and your error margin is greater than your data- which to any statistician, is equal to playing the lottery.

What you fail to mention, is that your data-analysis of 'lifestyles' and 'incomes' would actually look something like this: " the average Greek circa 200 BCE made 5000 bushels of wheat per annum, +/- 6000 bushels'. Ie, statistically nonsense.

His mind is apparently binary: If you say that civilization X was more advanced than Y in the year 100 AD that's because you think civilization Y was crap for the last 5,000 years.

He is not capable of understanding that civilization is a highly complex thing. There are many aspects of a civilization. As result you cannot say easily that civilization A is more advanced than civilization B.

I tried previously to do something more complex in terms of "ranking" civilizations that but people apparently ignored my efforts.

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Logically inconsistent lies. I've said earlier in this thread that comparing civilizations is too complex and the scope of this thread is too wide to be meaningful. Yet, i am the 'binary one' who says that civilization A> civilization B.

But you, who jumped in instantly with rankings and overarching conclusions, is taking into account the highly complex nature of civilizations.

Sorry pal, but your blatantly obvious propaganda and mispotrayal of the arguments and facts is too easy to pick apart.

I think it is a case of local knowledge of the IVC existing throughout Indian history but there is very little documentation of it for two reasons:

a) the bulk majority of Indian centres of learning were destroyed in 1203-1205 CE by Turkic forces (Bhaktiyar Khilji), where scholars estimate as many as 500,000 students and 50,000 professors perished in the destruction of almost a dozen universities in this period.

b) the subsequent leadership throughout Northern India for the next 600 years was Muslim turks, who were very disinterested in the history of their adopted homeland. The few pockets of non-turkic rulership that existed (the Rajputs) were predominantly pre-occupied with their survival than persuing peace-time ventures such as literaure.

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Forgetting about the IDC is really not an anomaly as India never had a strong traditional of written history. Even Ashoka was largely forgotten to the masses and only existed in a few isolated literary sources, mostly Budhdist texts, which itself largely dissapeared from India from the 12th century onwards, and much of what remained dissappeared with the destruction of Nalanda by the Turks. Ashoka was largely rediscovered in the 19th century by archeologists as well. One can only imagine how much of a civilization as old as IDC would have been remembered.

heavenlykaghan said:

Forgetting about the IDC is really not an anomaly as India never had a strong traditional of written history. Even Ashoka was largely forgotten to the masses and only existed in a few isolated literary sources, mostly Budhdist texts, which itself largely dissapeared from India from the 12th century onwards, and much of what remained dissappeared with the destruction of Nalanda by the Turks. Ashoka was largely rediscovered in the 19th century by archeologists as well. One can only imagine how much of a civilization as old as IDC would have been remembered.

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I think to say that India didn't have a strong tradition of written history would be incorrect. What is correct, is to say that India didn't have a strong tradition of written history for the last 800 years or so, since the destruction of Indian universities.

People underestimate the scope and impact of Bhaktiyar Khilji's destruction of eastern Indian universities.
Circa 1200 CE, there existed Nalanda, Vikramshila, Paharpura, Odantapuri, Ratnagiri, Pushpagiri and Jagaddala in eastern India. From the few scattered reference we find (mostly from Tibetan annals, as a few survivors made it to Tibet), these universities worked in remarkably modern fashion: they had a common curriculum, inter-university exchanges of professors and students, office of the registrar to keep adminsitrative track, dormitories for teachers and students, along with full-time and part-time students. By 1200 CE, Nalanda wasn't even the biggest or the most influential university, Vikramshila had taken that position and the combined faculty of these eastern Indian universities is estimated to've been between 20,000-30,000 faculty, 70,000-150,000 students and millions of scrolls of work, ranging from history, politics, sciences, mathematics, philosophy, religion, etc.

by 1205 CE- in just five years, Nalanda, Vikramshila, Paharpura, Odantapuri and Jaggadala were completely destroyed, with the vast majority of its works destroyed and its population slain, with Pushpagiri and Ratnagiri massively damaged but surviving for another century or so.

This is a staggering loss of information- by any standard, the campaign of Bhaktiyar Khilji is unparalleled in history, with such a scale of destruction of knowledge and faculty. When taken into the context of the times- when printing press didn;t exist and as such, countless copies of influential works didn't exist, this is a death-knell to any civilization.

Throughout Indian history, invaders have shown a tactical penchant of categorically targetting Indian insitutions of learning. While Bhaktiyar's campaign is unpralleled in human history for scope and significance, it is not the solitary example in Indian history.

Takshashila ( Taxila) was annihilated by the Hepthalites when the Gupta Empire finally fell, Vallabhi was destroyed by Mohammed Bin Qasim and his Arab hoardes, Sharada Peeth ruined by Mehmoud of Ghazni, Nagarjunkonda and Manyakheta ruined by the massive southern Indian campaigns by the Delhi Sultanate in mid 1200s CE, Pushpagiri and Ratnagiri terminated by 1300 CE.

The systematic destruction of knowledge and written records in Indian history is largely unpralleled in world history and IMO, its significance cannot possibly be underestimated- or the amount of written information in so many Indian centres of learning.

Lord_of_Gauda said:

I think to say that India didn't have a strong tradition of written history would be incorrect. What is correct, is to say that India didn't have a strong tradition of written history for the last 800 years or so, since the destruction of Indian universities.

People underestimate the scope and impact of Bhaktiyar Khilji's destruction of eastern Indian universities.
Circa 1200 CE, there existed Nalanda, Vikramshila, Paharpura, Odantapuri, Ratnagiri, Pushpagiri and Jagaddala in eastern India. From the few scattered reference we find (mostly from Tibetan annals, as a few survivors made it to Tibet), these universities worked in remarkably modern fashion: they had a common curriculum, inter-university exchanges of professors and students, office of the registrar to keep adminsitrative track, dormitories for teachers and students, along with full-time and part-time students. By 1200 CE, Nalanda wasn't even the biggest or the most influential university, Vikramshila had taken that position and the combined faculty of these eastern Indian universities is estimated to've been between 20,000-30,000 faculty, 70,000-150,000 students and millions of scrolls of work, ranging from history, politics, sciences, mathematics, philosophy, religion, etc.

by 1205 CE- in just five years, Nalanda, Vikramshila, Paharpura, Odantapuri and Jaggadala were completely destroyed, with the vast majority of its works destroyed and its population slain, with Pushpagiri and Ratnagiri massively damaged but surviving for another century or so.

This is a staggering loss of information- by any standard, the campaign of Bhaktiyar Khilji is unparalleled in history, with such a scale of destruction of knowledge and faculty. When taken into the context of the times- when printing press didn;t exist and as such, countless copies of influential works didn't exist, this is a death-knell to any civilization.

Throughout Indian history, invaders have shown a tactical penchant of categorically targetting Indian insitutions of learning. While Bhaktiyar's campaign is unpralleled in human history for scope and significance, it is not the solitary example in Indian history.

Takshashila ( Taxila) was annihilated by the Hepthalites when the Gupta Empire finally fell, Vallabhi was destroyed by Mohammed Bin Qasim and his Arab hoardes, Sharada Peeth ruined by Mehmoud of Ghazni, Nagarjunkonda and Manyakheta ruined by the massive southern Indian campaigns by the Delhi Sultanate in mid 1200s CE, Pushpagiri and Ratnagiri terminated by 1300 CE.

The systematic destruction of knowledge and written records in Indian history is largely unpralleled in world history and IMO, its significance cannot possibly be underestimated- or the amount of written information in so many Indian centres of learning.

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I did not know of such losses. I am terribly sorry and wonder how much we may have benefited from all this knowledge, as well as knowledge held in other libraries that were destroyed in Egypt and the Americas. There is perhaps no greater tragedy than the destruction of knowledge.

heavenlykaghan said:

The fundamental difference here is that juries in the US needs to follow the law and has no power outside of the law. American juries cannot kill a person for simply holding a different belief, whereas juries in Athens can press any charges and kill any person for any offense. In another word, they were arbitrary.



The point is that American democracy is not based on Athenian democracy and the founding fathers did not praise it. On the contrast, they only had negative things to say about Athenian democracy which served as an example how a government isn´t suppose to be ran. The only thing similar between the American democracy and the Athenian one is the ability for the poor to vote, however in everything else, there is nothing similar. The founding fathers knew that a pure democracy is arbitrary and oppressive and bound to fail, and that was why the American constitution was created. It was the constitution which made made the American government liberal, not democracy.



Despite all the source referencing and explanations, I still don´t think many people understood what I meant about the arbitrary nature of Athenian democracy. This has nothing to with laws of nature and I have no idea where you see Zeno fitting into all this. The stoics doesn´t talk about human rights at all.
The highest authority in the United States is not the demos, but the law and the constitution. The creation of the Constitution was based on the idea of human rights, a concept that came from property rights and contracts in early modern Europe. There is no such concept in Athenian democracy. The term ´rights´ doesn´t exist in any classical languages. Rights mean there is something sacred about a human that cannot be violated under any circumstances unless he violated the rights of another. In ancient Athens, the individual does not have any inviolable rights. Anything can be taken away by the decisions of the majority. That makes Greek democracy arbitrary.

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Wow, we have a much better argument going than I expected. Yes, you are motivating me to look for more information and I learned something about Socrates' trial that I never knew. I would not say their justice was as arbitrary you say. Here is a link for support an argument of greater justice than you suggest. The Court of Athens (Justice System) - Ancient Greece for Kids


I would certainly give far more credit to Zeno than you do, but perhaps we should move this argument to its own forum and then come back here? For sure matters of liberty and justice are important to the judgment of which civilizations was the most advanced. Where might we start another debate and what should it be labeled? How about the ""Laws of Nature and Natures' God"? It is people's cosmology that determines such matters as liberty and justice and human rights.

While the ancient Athenian idea of human rights was not equal to ours, it contains the argument I use when justifying why God is important to our liberty.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0126065/hrhistory.htm



It was in ancient Greece where the concept of human rights began to take a greater meaning than the prevention of arbitrary persecution. Human rights became synonymous with natural rights, rights that spring from natural law . According to the Greek tradition of Socrates and Plato, natural law is law that reflects the natural order of the universe, essentially the will of the gods who control nature. A classic example of this occurs in Greek literature, when Creon reproaches Antigone for defying his command to not bury her dead brother, and she replies that she acted under the laws of the gods. This idea of natural rights continued in ancient Rome, where the Roman jurist Ulpian believed that natural rights belonged to every person, whether they were a Roman citizen or not.

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athena said:

I did not know of such losses. I am terribly sorry and wonder how much we may have benefited from all this knowledge, as well as knowledge held in other libraries that were destroyed in Egypt and the Americas. There is perhaps no greater tragedy than the destruction of knowledge.

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Well, i sat for the last 30 min composing a post addressing this, before i gave up and came to this. Ultimately, how d we even begin to estimate the loss towards human development from a catastrophe of such magnitude ?

Millions of scrolls destroyed, dozens of thousand teachers slain, tens of thousands of students killed in what essentially amounts to a timeframe between now and the Beijing Olympics of 2010. How do we even begin to measure its impact on a pre-printing press world ? can we even begin to comprehend what kind of knowledge we'd have today, if those institutions had survived another 500 years and the printing press was around ?

I will say this: we may never know the numbers precisely, but millions of books destroyed, with hundred thousand or more students and teachers killed is probably approaching 40-50% of the world's institutionalized learnings circa 1200 CE, if not more.
These are the days before European university booms.

athena said:

I did not know of such losses. I am terribly sorry and wonder how much we may have benefited from all this knowledge, as well as knowledge held in other libraries that were destroyed in Egypt and the Americas. There is perhaps no greater tragedy than the destruction of knowledge.

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Don't worry about that.

It is a rather stupid mythology the idea that wars destroyed ancient knowledge now lost.

Ancient knowledge was lost though the fact that scrolls last about 50-100 years, so without constant copying it was impossible to maintain the existing stock of literary knowledge.

Guaporense said:

Don't worry about that.

It is a rather stupid mythology the idea that wars destroyed ancient knowledge now lost.

Ancient knowledge was lost though the fact that scrolls last about 50-100 years, so without constant copying it was impossible to maintain the existing stock of literary knowledge.

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It is rather stupid to think that the ancients just wrote everything once on paper/parchment/papyrus and then went 'oh well, that is now in tatters- we shall never remember archimedes'. It is obvious that the wealth of knowledge preserved for the classical Greeks is a product of hundreds of newer editions of older books being put into circulation. And previous to printing press, such action was done almost exclusively by private collectors and higher institutions of learning. It is rather stupid to think that an event which sees the destruction of over 50% of the world's institutionalized knowledge in a span of less than 5 years is of no significance and killing of tens of thousands of professors, scribes and teachers have no impact on continuity of written information of learning.

Infact, i see a direct correlation here: areas such as China, Persia, India and northern Middle east yeild far more patchwork of archaeology and history, with big gaping holes in several eras. Whereas the mediterranean Greco-Roman & Egyptian records are far more intact. Its of no coincidence that the lands of as disparate culture and history as middle east, Persia, India and China faced several instances of geocidal city razings, often in areas as large as France in a single year and the mediterranean Greco-Roman world has never faced such a level of information loss, as there is no large scale genocide, spanning huge areas and multiple cities in a single decade (nevermind a single campaign season, as is evidenced in China, India,Persia and middle east).

The reason we have Greco-Roman history far more intact is because they never faced destruction at the same level as the Asians have. Eurocentric superiorists like yourself conviniently ignore this fact while declaring the superior plethora of material evidence of mediterranean is indicative of its superior levels of civilizational development.

I think to say that India didn't have a strong tradition of written history would be incorrect. What is correct, is to say that India didn't have a strong tradition of written history for the last 800 years or so, since the destruction of Indian universities.

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India had no tradition of history writing as a professional discipline. Thats not to say that there was no records of history, but historiography as a subject was simply not as pronounced as the West or East Asia.

As for the numerical claims you made, such as the greatest scale in humanity or 50% of the world´s institutions, I´m afraid there are no sufficient evidence to demonstrate them.

Infact, i see a direct correlation here: areas such as China, Persia, India and northern Middle east yeild far more patchwork of archaeology and history, with big gaping holes in several eras.

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China really doesn´t have big gaping holes and certainly nothing that could really be labelled a dark age. This is what I meant by a strong historical tradition. Archeology might not be pronounced in China before the PRC came to power, but the Chinese still knew what happened almost every year in their history all the way back to the early first mellenium BC because of a systematic history recording bureau and government promotion of history recording.
The Eastern Zhou period and the 16 kingdoms period after the fall of the Jin dynasty in the 4th century is probably the only times where historical records were more scarce compared to other times. The former records from different states were largely destroyed by Qin Shihuang´s book burning policy, while the latter period was simply too destructive in terms of war and no regime lasted long enough to compose a written history of the history of any state. Yet even here, a general outline of events could still easily be constructed and all the major events are still known. Its just the details that are lost. Qin Shihuang´s book burning was pretty absolute, and so many sources were destroyed that when Han emperors were trying to recollect these sources, they had to rely on scholars who memorized these earlier works to reconstruct the books. The Delhi Sultanate and their successors who inherited India never tried to reconstruct the information that was lost in India, so there was probably indeed a greater loss of information, but it might also be due to the fact that these books were mainly concerned about religious and philosophical matters which didn´t catch the interest of the Muslim rulers. One álso can´t ignore the fact that history writing was never really pronounced in ancient India.

Infact, i see a direct correlation here: areas such as China, Persia, India and northern Middle east yeild far more patchwork of archaeology and history, with big gaping holes in several eras.

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Well, although China did experience book burnings and the like throughout history, I wouldn't say that it lacks sources. The Shiji itself, for example, is much more comprehensive (in the amount written) than the works of both Herodotus and Thucydides combined. After all, the Shiji was the life work of two generations, whereas the Histories and the History of the Peloponnesian War was not. Of course, there are gaping holes as you say, especially from Qin ShiHuang's infamous book burning, but there's still more than enough than I myself could handle in my own spare time. The problem lies more in the fact that many sources don't have English translations, which may give the impression that sources are lacking.

It was in ancient Greece where the concept of human rights began to take a greater meaning than the prevention of arbitrary persecution. Human rights became synonymous with natural rights, rights that spring from natural law . According to the Greek tradition of Socrates and Plato, natural law is law that reflects the natural order of the universe, essentially the will of the gods who control nature.

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The author of this article is simply talking about matters outside of his professional competence but since the article is none scholarly in the first place, it is only to be expected. Views such as these are the typical stereotypical claims made in early days, but professsional studies of the concept of human rights and its origin has already traced it to property possession in England, not to Rome or Greece. If you want to continue this discussion, use academic material, not websites featuring third hand research. Looking over the academic source I provided might be a good start.

A classic example of this occurs in Greek literature, when Creon reproaches Antigone for defying his command to not bury her dead brother, and she replies that she acted under the laws of the gods. This idea of natural rights continued in ancient Rome, where the Roman jurist Ulpian believed that natural rights belonged to every person, whether they were a Roman citizen or not.

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The article above does not describe human rights at all, which as I explained countless times, means something inherently sacred in a human that cannot be taken away at will no matter what the circumstances are. There is nothing in the story of Antigone which demonstrates this. Natural law is a far cry from human rights. Nor did the ancient west have a monopoly over this idea. The Indian Brahman and the Chinese Dao and Li were both concepts similar to the Greek logos. Acting under the laws of gods doesn´t mean a thing. Many societies have this idea. In ancient China, we have the concept of mandate of heaven as well. The fact is that the ancient west did not have the concept of human rights, and their respect over human lifes or property weren´t any greater than places like India or China. To truly possess the idea of human rights, one must also have an abhorrence for slavery, which was in fact even less pronounced in ancient Greece than most other civilizations.

heavenlykaghan said:

India had no tradition of history writing as a professional discipline. Thats not to say that there was no records of history, but historiography as a subject was simply not as pronounced as the West or East Asia.

As for the numerical claims you made, such as the greatest scale in humanity or 50% of the world´s institutions, I´m afraid there are no sufficient evidence to demonstrate them.

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I don't think there were more than a dozen institutions of higher learning outside of India circa 1200 CE.That would make the destruction of eastern Indian centres of learning circa 1200-1205 CE as almost/over 50% of the world's institutionalized knowledge lost. The bulk majority of world's knowledge were passed down in the form of apprentenceship and individual discourse with the said expert in their field. Certainly, there were no centres offering the same kind of interdisciplinary studies as the universities I've mentioned, nor do we observe similar modern concepts in education ( transfer of students, faculties, etc) until 1600s Europe.

As for Indian histography, i beg to differ. We do have texts such as the Bhavishya purana surviving, where even though the format is esoterical, the chain of events and happenings across Northern India is very well documented.

HackneyedScribe said:

Well, although China did experience book burnings and the like throughout history, I wouldn't say that it lacks sources. The Shiji itself, for example, is much more comprehensive (in the amount written) than the works of both Herodotus and Thucydides combined. After all, the Shiji was the life work of two generations, whereas the Histories and the History of the Peloponnesian War was not. Of course, there are gaping holes as you say, especially from Qin ShiHuang's infamous book burning, but there's still more than enough than I myself could handle in my own spare time. The problem lies more in the fact that many sources don't have English translations, which may give the impression that sources are lacking.

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The amount of Indian/Chinese historical literature (and not just dealing with history, but virtually all written records from ancient times) that exist in English translations is anywhere between 1-10% of available material.

That the bulk majority of works are untranslated, is something i would expect any educated debater to acknowledge & know.

But my point is very simple: the timeline of Indian and Chinese histories are nowhere as continuous as those of western classical period to modern times. Virtually every decade of governance, laws and edicts from Greco-Roman regions are available for the last 2000 years. Such cannot be said for China and India and IMO, the massive destructions wrought upon by invaders in these two societies is a fundamental cause. It is the lack of this cause (macroscopic city razings and genocide) is lacking in the northern mediterranean for atleast 2500 years, which is why their timeline is far more intact.
That India suffered a more comprehensive loss than China is also borne out by historical events: while the Chinese underwent an almost total destruction of northern China at the hands of the Mongols, their south was relatively more intact and didn't suffer from language barrier from rest of China, hence a lot of the knowledge was transported and saved there. However, the razing of India began around 950s CE and went on in full tilt till 1300 CE, by which time no part of India had been spared, except the extreme south peninsular India. Unfortunately, these regions spoke different language from the knowledge centres of Northern and North western India, meaning not much of that knowledge was preserved.

But my point is very simple: the timeline of Indian and Chinese histories are nowhere as continuous as those of western classical period to modern times. Virtually every decade of governance, laws and edicts from Greco-Roman regions are available for the last 2000 years. Such cannot be said for China and India and IMO, the massive destructions wrought upon by invaders in these two societies is a fundamental cause. It is the lack of this cause (macroscopic city razings and genocide) is lacking in the northern mediterranean for atleast 2500 years, which is why their timeline is far more intact.
That India suffered a more comprehensive loss than China is also borne out by historical events: while the Chinese underwent an almost total destruction of northern China at the hands of the Mongols, their south was relatively more intact and didn't suffer from language barrier from rest of China, hence a lot of the knowledge was transported and saved there. However, the razing of India began around 950s CE and went on in full tilt till 1300 CE, by which time no part of India had been spared, except the extreme south peninsular India. Unfortunately, these regions spoke different language from the knowledge centres of Northern and North western India, meaning not much of that knowledge was preserved.

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Read my edited post(post # 291) on Chinese historiography, the continuation of events in China is recorded to an even greater precision than the western history records, as events that happened every year, including natural disasters, were all recorded by government scribes and compiled into official histories since the western Zhou, and there are good reasons to suppose even the Shang had such a tradition since the names of the Shang kings were passed down all the way onto the Han period(western historical records had little in regard to the era following the fall of Rome, whereas China still recorded yearly events after the fall of the Jin to the 5 barbarians, since even the `barbarians` which include the Mongols of later times, followed the Chinese history recording tradition. In fact it was under the Yuan that the history of the Liao, Jin, and Song was compiled), which is why I said India had no strong tradition of history writing. Nothing in the west approached the systematic organization of the 24 histories of Chinese historiography(the only 1 of these books that was completey translated is Shiji, and that was only done a few years ago). China is also the first country to have a complete book on historiography(not just history writing) known as Shi Tong, written by Liu Zhiji during the Tang, which analyzed history recording methods and the styles of history books. He grouped Chinese historiography into six schools; the Shang Shu, Spring and Autumn, Zuozhuan, Guoyu, Shiji, and Hanshu as all later Chinese history writing are continuations of these six schools.
The Bhavishya purana is not a history work per se, it is mixed with other facts and even includes creation in its story. India had nothing like Herodotus, Thucydides, Zuo Qiu Ming or Simaqian.

HeavenlyKaghan:

Ancient Athens is precisely the opposite of heavy government control. All policies are decided by voting of the general assembly, who are virtually clueless about intellectual matters. Other than tax collectors and generals, all of the government staff are chosen randomly by lot. There were no hierarchical bureau(as everyone was suppose to be equal) and an organized professional decision making body is completely missing in its government.

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I think your idea of Athenian democracy is too absolute. For 3/4 of a whole century, the aristocratic forces dominated Athenian democracy. And the reasons included the fact that they were the ones educated enough to provide this leadership, as you yourself point out how clueless the average citizen was. It was something hereditarym with fathers training their sons for leadership positions, and Also they possessed the prestige of divine descent from the greek Gods or Demi-Gods such as Hercules; Zeus, etc. --a right recognized by Greek society:

The city of Athens entered the 5th century--the century of its greatness in form a democracy, but an aristocracy in function.

Frank Frost, Greek Society, pg 57.

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It was this aristocarcy which was responsible for state inspired economic policies which led to expansion in infrastructure; expansion in trade and commerce, which led to economic and social revolutions of the sort being seen today in China( but maybe not on such a massive scale).

For instance in response to the Persian wars, the Athenian aristocracy created a huge and complex bureaucracy for the purpose of coordinating the economic and legal transactions of the New league of Greek states conducting this war against a common enemy.

The economy expanded leaps and bounds in the process of creating an impressive an expansive fleet of war ships using rich resevers of state -owned silver mines to do so. Revenue was also used by the state to build formidble land fortifications against the perceived Spartan threat. This led to the birth of a state sector led largely by the Aristocrats. Remarkably the vast mahority of these state funded public construction projects were contracted out to private individuals.

This led to greater employment and greater wealth on the part of the average citizen, which in turn led to more real as oppossed to token people power ;and this meant that eventually Aristocratic power was effectively challenged.

If it is true as you say the China is now being ruled by an Oligarchy, then China may well be at this first stage of development. And not so fundamentally different form Classical Athens, in regards to the role played by Government intervention in political economy.

When I speak of heavy government control, I mean effective, dynamic and vigorous participation of the government in the economy of the nation state. Classical Athens for at least 3/4s of the 5th century certainly lives up to this definition.

I think your idea of Athenian democracy is too absolute. For 3/4 of a whole century, the aristocratic forces dominated Athenian democracy. And the reasons included the fact that they were the ones educated enough to provide this leadership, as you yourself point out how clueless the average citizen was. It was something hereditarym with fathers training their sons for leadership positions, and Also they possessed the prestige of divine descent from the greek Gods or Demi-Gods such as Hercules; Zeus, etc. --a right recognized by Greek society:

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The aristocrats certainly had the most influence, as they are the most educated. But that is just like the fact that in a monarchy, well educated ministers also have great influence on policies, but the ultimate decision is still up to the ruler, just like how the ultimate decisions in Athenian democracy is up to the demos. It doesn´t change the fact that the government is still arbitrary.

If it is true as you say the China is now being ruled by an Oligarchy, then China may well be at this first stage of development. And not so fundamentally different form Classical Athens.

When I speak of heavy government control, I mean effective and vigorous participation of the government in the economy of the nation state. Classical Athens for at least 2/3rds of the 5th century certainly lives up to this definition.

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Oligarchy is a type of authority, not a stage of development. In fact primitive tribal organizations all have elements of democracy and oligarchy in them. The steppe nomads like the Mongols for example, voted for their leaders in the beginning. Labels such as democracy, monarchy, and oligarchy, only describes who is the ultimate authority, not how the government is organized. Furthermore, calling modern governments democracies is a misnomer, as the highest authority in modern times are constitutions, not the masses as in the case of ancient democracies. Bureuacracy on the other hand is what makes a government complex and takes time to develop. Modern China is nothing like Athens, even compared to Sparta there is hardly similarity. When breaking modern PRC bureaucrat down(as well as any modern government for that matter) one sees the departmental organizations virtually identical in the big picture to the six ministries of Sui and Tang times until the Qing.

Lord_of_Gauda said:

I don't think there were more than a dozen institutions of higher learning outside of India circa 1200 CE.That would make the destruction of eastern Indian centres of learning circa 1200-1205 CE as almost/over 50% of the world's institutionalized knowledge lost. The bulk majority of world's knowledge were passed down in the form of apprentenceship and individual discourse with the said expert in their field. Certainly, there were no centres offering the same kind of interdisciplinary studies as the universities I've mentioned, nor do we observe similar modern concepts in education ( transfer of students, faculties, etc) until 1600s Europe.

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Do you have any figures for the amount of students that medieval Europe or the Middle East had in the 13th century? Furthermore, when you pull off numbers without academic sources, you need to keep in mind that the world is not restricted to Europe and India, or even adding the Middle East and China. Just because medieval Europe did not have sizable academic institutions in the middle ages doesn´t mean other regions outside of India didn´t. You don´t appear to have sources for this subject, neither quantitative, or even a qualitative one. I have no data for the Middle East, but for the learning centers of Tibet alone, there were probably tens of thousands of students even in the late middle ages as all monastic institutions in Tibet were school institutions(by the 18th century, the population of monastic institutions in Tibet was probably in the hundreds of thousands and these teaching facilities are very similar to western universities and Tibetan teachers fit right into western programs today, my old Tibetan teacher from the university of Columbia was a lama who never had western training, but still taught Tibetan there with no problem). Europe and India is certainly not the only places with these institutions, although the Tibetan institution is largely based on the Indian one, but with their own characteristics as well. However it was in Tibet which such academic learning continued whereas they dissapeared in India.

Chinese academies by Song times are also highly developed. The Hanlin academy trained the highest scholars of China in classics and the amount of people in this institution numbered over a hundred thousand. These are just big institutions and ignores the huge quantity of small institutions all around China at this time. So large was the population of high education in China that they formed a entire class; the gentry class. This class has grown to a size of over a million by Qing times, and still in the hundreds of thousands in Song time which appeared to be as large as the population of students in contemporary India.
The gentry class is again divided into two; the upper gentry and the lower gentry.The total size of the upper gentry, which include all people qualified for regular appointment to office, was about 125,000 people. The lower gentry were qualified to take the examinations that would allow access to higher gentry status and official position but were not yet eligible for regular appointment and they numbered around 1,150,000. Adding this to the upper gentry class, the total size of people with higher education is around 1.3 million. The total size of the degree-holding gentry class and their immediate families, would have made up about 1 percent of the entire Chinese population under the mid Qing.

These Tibetan and Chinese academic institutions continued into the 21st century, and Tibetan monastic academies is still around, while the last of the traditional Chinese school just closed a few years ago.

heavenlykaghan said:

The aristocrats certainly had the most influence, as they are the most educated. But that is just like the fact that in a monarchy, well educated ministers also have great influence on policies, but the ultimate decision is still up to the ruler, just like how the ultimate decisions in Athenian democracy is up to the demos. It doesn´t change the fact that the government is still arbitrary..

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Yes it does. Athens could have never been as successful as it proved to be if the Aristocracy did not hold real power and the ability to make final decisions. A country being run effectively or abitrarily by a group of largely ignorant, unsophisticated, and illiterate populace would never achieve the political dominance achieved by Athens.

During the Aristocratic era of dominance, democracy by the people was simply tokenistic. Your analogy with monarchy is weak; you cannot compare the power of a monarchy with the power of uneducated masses subservient to an Aristocratic class, seen as descended from the Gods by these masses.

The modern democratic societies with their individual right to vote and senates and other democratic assemblies are a good example of this tokenism. Power in the US and most major political decisions are made by or for the sake of a tiny Oligarchical minority, inspite of the democratic process.

heavenlykaghan said:

Oligarchy is a type of authority, not a stage of development. In fact primitive tribal organizations all have elements of democracy and oligarchy in them. The steppe nomads like the Mongols for example, voted for their leaders in the beginning. Labels such as democracy, monarchy, and oligarchy, only describes who is the ultimate authority, not how the government is organized. Furthermore, calling modern governments democracies is a misnomer, as the highest authority in modern times are constitutions, not the masses as in the case of ancient democracies. Bureuacracy on the other hand is what makes a government complex and takes time to develop. Modern China is nothing like Athens, even compared to Sparta there is hardly similarity. When breaking modern PRC bureaucrat down(as well as any modern government for that matter) one sees the departmental organizations virtually identical in the big picture to the six ministries of Sui and Tang times until the Qing.

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I was making no absolutist or general claim about stages of development of a Nation state or human societies. I spoke strictly within the context of the rapid economic growth and upward social mobility which comes about as a result of the state making major imvestments in public infrastructure and economy.

Modern china bears a similarity to classical Athens because of the upward social monility and social revolution being caused by a rapidly expanding economy growing as a result of government intervention. How do you deny this?

heavenlykaghan said:

Furthermore, calling modern governments democracies is a misnomer, as the highest authority in modern times are constitutions, not the masses as in the case of ancient democracies. Bureuacracy on the other hand is what makes a government complex and takes time to develop...

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How accurate is the first sentence in regards to China or Soviet Russia? They both have\had constitutions which guaranteed individula rights and yet at the same time being defined signifigantly by heavy abuses of human rights by a one-party state.

And how could you make such a strong conclusion about the nature of ancient democracies? How may ancient democracies have ever existed or been studied to draw these definite conclusions? And i remain unconvinced at this idea or notion of ancient absolutist demmocracy you seem to believe in.

In any unequal society in terms of wealth, the more wealthy and powerful elites will put themeselves in positions of power. This is what happened in Ancient Athens with the aristicracy. Democratic debates in Athens meant nothing more but debates between rival aristocratic groups or families. Voting in Athens simply meant voting for the competing interests of rival aristocratic groups.

The common people listened to the arguments of rival aristocrats in the assembly, they chose among aristocrats when electing people to office, and they followed aristicratic officers into battle and sent them as diplomats to other states.

Frank Frost, Greek Society--pg 57

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Again as i said earlier "When I speak of heavy government control, I mean effective, dynamic and vigorous participation of the government in the economy of the nation state. Classical Athens for at least 3/4s of the 5th century certainly lives up to this definition." Athens in no way during that period , represented as you claim the exact oppossite of heavy government control. It was the living embodimenent of it.