this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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The Internet in Ancient Times

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Welcome to the stone age... or the bronze age... or the iron age... heck, anything with an 'age' is welcome, except our modern age or any ages to come.

This is about what the internet was like thousands of years ago back when it all started. Like when Darius the Great hired mercenaries via Craigslist or when Egypt invented emojis.

CODE OF LAWS

1 - Be civil. No name calling, no fighting, keep your flint hand axes inside your leather pouches at all times.

2 - Keep the AI stuff to a minimum. It gets annoying and old fashioned memes are more fun for everyone.

3 - None of this newfangled modern 21st century nonsense. We don't even know what "21st century" means.

4 - No porn/explicit content. The king is sensitive about these things.

5 - No lemmy.world TOS violations will be tolerated. So there.

6 - There is no ~~rule~~ law 6.

Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding-place. I expounded all great difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. With the mighty weapons which Zamama and Ishtar entrusted to me, with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy above and below (in north and south), subdued the earth, brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight, the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I enclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness.

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[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 20 points 3 days ago (3 children)

More like 1 million years ago with Homo Erectus?

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, people have no concept of how old people are. Behavioral modern humans have been walking around for 2.5 million years

[–] FundMECFS@quokk.au 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Depends what you mean by behaviourally modern.

Skulls around 2.5 million year old range (seen in homo habilis for example) are very different (and much smaller) from the ones we currently have. I mean humans only split off from our common ancestor with chimps about 5 - 7 million years ago.

So timewise 2.5 Mya is just a little more than halfway between our last common ancestors and modern Homo Sapiens (Sapiens).

The earliest evidence we have for things like symbolic language and abstract art is more like 50-100’000 years ago. That’s what most people mean by behaviourally modern.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

"Depends what you mean by behaviourally modern." immediately begins defining anatomically modern lmao yup you know what you're talking about fr

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity

There is no one definition, as it is debated. If you define it by control of fire, then it's about 2 million years back.

EDIT: nice, you edited your comment to add a blurb that's actually relevant to behavioral modernity now 👍 looks like you learned something from the wikipedia article

[–] FundMECFS@quokk.au 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Edit 2: This reply isn’t even relevent anymore because the poster is editing their before posts to try and make my replies seem bad, really weird behaviour.

I never said there was a single definition. Just that most people think it’s characterised by things like symbolic language and art.

And the first paragraph of the wikipedia article you sent agrees with me

Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinkingplanning depth, symbolic behavior (e.g., artornamentation), music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others.

Edit: I posted my paragraoh before you replied with that article. My edit was fixing spelling adding the homo habilis example and fixing language to last common ancestor around my chimp example because I had said “evolved from Chimps” which is inaccurate.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

The earliest evidence we have for things like symbolic language and abstract art is more like 50-100’000 years ago. That’s what most people mean by behaviourally modern.

You edited your reply to add this entire sentence, after I replied to it, otherwise your original comment would have had nothing at all to do with behavioral modernity and wasn't relevant to the discussion...

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

America taught us relative measurement helps understand abstract concepts like linear time.

The 2 thousand years between now and Cleopatra is roughly the same amount of time between Cleopatra and the building of those pyramids. The pyramids of Egypt are super old.

Humans (homo sapiens) have been around for 20,000 times longer than the pyramids. Other humans and near homo, like Neanderthals and Denisovans, were even earlier. We go back as a recognizable non-monkey a few million years.

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

is roughly the same amount of time between Cleopatra and the building of those pyramids

Well, the newer and more impressive ones, yes. But there are some much older pyramids too.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Kinda weird how we as a global species went through an awkward pyramid phase for a few thousand years, then never built any real ones since.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Luxor in Las Vegas has entered the chat.

[–] swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Doesn't Bass Pro Shops have a pyramid?

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, but IIRC they bought it from whoever actually built the thing.

[–] FundMECFS@quokk.au 1 points 2 days ago

It also checks out for homo sapiens interacting with chimpanzees north of the Congo river 20k ya

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I believe humans have better significantly throwing arm. So i wonder if rocks came before stick.

[–] Forester@pawb.social 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Almost certainly. We can throw better than any other animal on earth. Nothing else has our range and accuracy.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 3 points 2 days ago

Kind of crazy to think about. Most Humans first thought is intelligence sets them apart from other animals but it's also the thing Kids do when they grab something. Like imagine aliens going wtf you can throw like that?

[–] bricklove@midwest.social 2 points 2 days ago

I just noticed that chimps have the same haircut as Bubble Boy

[–] reev@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago