Tea at Trianon: The First City in Recorded History

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, April 6, 2020

The First City in Recorded History

The Vintage News:

The foundations of the first settlements on the site date somewhere around 5000 B.C., the Eridu period. According to the Sumerian King List (an ancient stone tablet which lists all the kings of Sumer, in Sumerian language), Uruk was founded by King Enmerkar around 4500 B.C. This was during the Ubaid period (5000–4100 B.C.). After 4000 B.C., Uruk rose from small, agricultural villages to a significantly larger and more complex center. This has been attributed partly to a period of climatic change; the area saw less rainfall and so people living in the hills migrated to the river valley of the ancient Euphrates. The course of the Euphrates has since shifted, an important factor in the decline of the city. Nestled in the lush and fertile river valley, the population of Uruk continued to grow throughout the Early Uruk period (4000–3500 B.C.), Middle Uruk period (3800–3400 B.C.) and Late Uruk period (3500–3100 B.C.). Farming and irrigation techniques were refined, providing a surplus of food for the community. By around 3200 B.C., the city of Uruk was the largest settlement in southern Mesopotamia, and probably in the world. (Read more.)

And here is an even older city recently discovered. From Archaeology World:

According to the conventional version of human history, the first civilization on Earth was Sumer and emerged in southern Mesopotamia about 6000 years ago. But what if there was another, earlier civilization that was then lost in the mists of time? “The photographs, artifacts and evidence we accumulated, point towards a lost civilization that has never before been and precedes all others – not for a few hundred years, or a few thousand years … but many thousands of years,” he said. Tellinger believes that this ancient African metropolis is the oldest structure built by the human on Earth. In fact, he thinks that the Sumerians and the Egyptians inherited knowledge from this advanced civilization. (Read more.)

And is there evidence of even older civilizations? From List Verse:

While we have looked in our previous points at what might happen if our civilization was to face a sudden, life-ending disaster in order to prove, at least in theory, that other civilizations very much could have existed before our recorded history, it is also worth looking back at known ancient civilizations. If we look at the ancient Egyptians, for example, it is perfectly obvious, and even accepted by mainstream scholars, that they appear to have begun their civilization already at the height of their power and then went into permanent decline.^[5] To some researchers, who are very much shunned by most mainstream experts, this suggests that the Egyptians “took over” the remnants of an ancient, “lost” civilization. From these types of theories generally spring the further claims that such ancient structures as the Pyramids of Giza are more likely monuments and buildings of an Atlantean-type society as opposed to the work of the Egyptians themselves. (Read more.)