Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings 

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Website Wednesday

I just spent 5 minutes editing my Monday post because I reread the opening paragraph and thought I saw a mistake, which was the mistake because it wasn't there. Of course, once I got into the editing mode, the formatting became scrambled eggs and I had to "clean up" every paragraph. The lesson being: get better glasses, get more confidence, learn to accept and leave your mistakes, get a new blog host. Whatever.

Yesterday, sitting in the car in unseasonably warm and spooky weather for the first week in December, waiting for the boy to finish Kumon, I started to think about the definition of civilization (you can see why I'm the life of the party) so I googled the meaning and I was shocked!

Now, I was taught the classical definition of civilization which Cynthia Stokes Brown in her article at:

http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

attributes to a professor of prehistoric archeology, V. Gordon Childe (d. 1957) as having features which include:

Large urban centers
Full-time specialist occupations
Primary producers of food paying surpluses to deity or ruler
Monumental architecture
Ruling class exempt from manual labor
System for recording information
Development of exact, practical sciences
Monumental art
Regular importation of raw materials
Interdependence of classes (peasants, craftspeople, rulers)
State religion/ideology
Persistent state structures (don't understand this one)

My history training had always included these features and I remember my prof saying these features are what moved a culture into a civilization.

And then I travelled to this site:

http://www.wmich.edu/iscsc/civilization.html

and here's where the shock factor comes in because on this site you get zillions of definitions of civilization which made me realize there is little consensus among historians/archeologists on this subject.

The one I liked the best is the the description of famous Egyptologist, W. M. Flinders Petrie, as:

W. M. Flinders Petrie: In his path opening book, The Revolutions of Civilisation, 1911, gives no hint of a definition, not even in an opening section entitled “The Nature of Civilisation.”

All of which makes me realize that you shouldn't accept anything and you should read everything. Something I'm sure when I enthusiastically tell the kids they will roll their eyes and say: Get a life!

Well, if you have plowed through everything I've written above, you will realize that it was really only a segue to my pick for today:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/

What a cool title: Today I Found Out.

Of itself, it says: Today I Found Out is a site founded on the precept that it is always good to learn something new every day.  It was originally inspired by the wonderful sub-reddit “Today I Learned“, which is one of our favorite subscriptions on reddit.

How can I not love this site? For here, I, who believe you should learn something major every year, am presented with some major/minor, important/trivial/fun fact every day.

It's an up-to-date site with an everyday: This Day in History. After reading any articles, be sure to click the bottom button: Surprise Me! They will.

Today, you'll learn that Brenda Lee recorded her hit Christmas song at 13. However, not all facts are "frothy fun" and the curious method of execution they describe in another article is both informative and unpleasant. But this is a vast smörgåsbord of information so cruise around and enjoy.

OK, got to go; another early day. What would I ever do with a late day?

See you next week.