Ancient Diplomacy

choi

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Keith O'Brien, The first ambassadors; How ancient kings invented a powerful idea: diplomacy. Boston Globe, Aug. 22, 2010.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/22/the_first_ambassadors/

Note:
(1) Mesopotamia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia
(Greek for "[land] between the rivers")
(2) Akkadian language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language
(spoken in ancient Mesopotamia/ The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate./ The name of the language is derived from the city of Akkad, a major center of Mesopotamian civilization)
(3) Ebla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla

Not to be confused with Elba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elba
(an island where Napoleon was first exiled 1814-1815)

(4) Hamazi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamazi
(exact location unknown)
(5) Sumerian language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language

Quote:

"Sumerian was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BCE

"Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE (the exact dating being a matter of debate),[3] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the first century CE. Then, it was forgotten until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets left by these speakers. Sumerian is a language isolate.

(6) Cuneiform script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform
(the earliest known writing system in the world.[1]/ Cuneiform writing emerged in the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq around the 34th century BC beginning as a pictographic system of writing./ Cuneiform was the most widespread and historically significant writing system in the Ancient Near East; ended in 1st century AD)

Please click reference 1 to see evolution of cuneiform script.

(7)
(a) Amanda H. Podany, Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East. Oxford University Press (2010).
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/Ancient/Other/?view=usa&ci=9780195313987

(b) Amanda H. Podany
http://www.amazon.com/Amanda-H.-Podany/e/B001IZPISK


My comment: It is a pity that no record remains in China, except Oracle bone script 甲骨文. England still kept
Domesday Book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book
, as well as record of birth, death, baptism and various others.
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choi

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I wonder why the Globe report quoted the professor as saying, "Communication was done at the speed one could walk."  Wasn't there a horse?

(1) John Noble Wilford, Earlier Date Suggested for Horse Domestication. New York Times, Mar. 6, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/science/06horses.html
(horse domestication around 3500 B.C., a millennium earlier than previously thought; enabled Eurasian societies' dispersal into Europe and elsewhere, together with spread of Indo-European languages; first domestication by the semi-sedentary Botai culture, which occupied sites in northern Kazakhstan for six centuries, beginning around 3600 B.C.;


Note:
(a) Botai culture was "named by settlement Botai in Aqmola Province of Kazakhstan."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botai_culture
(b) The NYT report cited

Outram AK et al, The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking. Science, 323: 1332-1335 (2009).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;323/5919/1332?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=outram&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

The web page shows abstract. If you wish, you can click and read full text for free.

(b) Domestication of the horse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse

Quote:

"Later, images of horses, identified by their short ears, flowing manes, and tails that bushed out at the dock, began to appear in artistic media in Mesopotamia during the Akkadian period, 2300-2100 BC. The word for 'horse', literally translated as ass of the mountains, first appeared in Sumerian documents during the Third Dynasty of Ur, about 2100-2000 BC.[33][34] The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur apparently fed horses to lions for royal entertainment, perhaps indicating that horses were still regarded as more exotic than useful, but King Shulgi, about 2050 BC, compared himself to “a horse of the highway that swishes its tail”, and one image from his reign showed a man apparently riding a horse at full gallop.[35] Horses were imported into Mesopotamia and the lowland Near East in larger numbers after 2000 BC in connection with the beginning of chariot warfare.

"A further expansion, into the lowland Near East and northwestern China, also happened around 2000 BC, again apparently in conjunction with the chariot. Although ‘'Equus’' bones of uncertain species are found in some Late Neolithic sites in China dated before 2000 BC, ‘'Equus caballus’' or ‘'Equus ferus’' bones first appeared in multiple sites and in significant numbers in sites of the Qijia and Siba cultures, 2000-1600 BC, in Gansu and the northwestern provinces of China.[36] The Qijia culture was in contact with cultures of the Eurasian steppes, as shown through similarities between Qijia and Late Bronze Age steppe metallurgy, so it was probably through these contacts that domesticated horses first became frequent in northwestern China.

* Qijia culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qijia_culture
(2400 BC - 1900 BC; distributed around the upper Yellow River region of western Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China; Johan Gunnar Andersson discovered the initial site at Qijiaping (齊家坪) in 1923; Qijia culture produced some of the earliest bronze and copper mirrors found in China; Extensive domestication of horses are found at many Qijia sites)

* Siba Culture 四欛 at 甘肅 (Gansu Corridor later constituted part of Silk Road)

* Reference 36 is

Linduff, Katheryn M. (2003). "A walk on the wild side: late Shang appropriation of horses in China". in Levine, Marsha; Renfrew, Colin; Boyle, Katie. Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. pp. 139–162. ISBN 1902937090

(c) Separately:
(i) According to Chinese records, the Chinese delegations observed that the Wa people had no horses.
(ii) Modern-day horses in Japan display low genetic variety. All the populations in Japan came from just one original horse population that was transported about 2,000 years ago through the Korean peninsula.

【 在 choi 的大作中提到: 】
: Keith O'Brien, The first ambassadors; How ancient kings invented a powerful idea: diplomacy. Boston Globe, Aug. 22, 2010.
: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/22/the_first_ambassadors/
: Note:
: (1) Mesopotamia
: (以下引言省略...)

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