
Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) - rfreytag
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/19/whos-the-first-person-in-history-whose-name-we-know/
======
schoen
Other brief discussions about this topic suggesting other candidates:

[http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question114584.html](http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question114584.html)

[http://ask.metafilter.com/103405/Who-was-the-first-person-
in...](http://ask.metafilter.com/103405/Who-was-the-first-person-in-recorded-
history)

One Metafilter user ("Riemann") makes the interesting point that a huge number
of clay tablets that have been excavated remain untranslated, so it's quite
possible that new candidates would turn up over time as scholars examine those
artifacts.

In support of this, Wikipedia says (internal references removed):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script)

> Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to
> have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –
> 100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest
> collection (c. 130,000), followed by the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin,
> the Louvre, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the National Museum of Iraq,
> the Yale Babylonian Collection (c.40,000) and Penn Museum. Most of these
> have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated,
> studied or published," as there are only a few hundred qualified
> cuneiformists in the world.

Edit: if you become a cuneiformist, maybe you can discover the new earliest
known named person! I'm reminded of the exciting time that Amir Aczel had in
locating the first-known written numeral zero in history.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amir-aczel/worlds-first-
zero_b...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amir-aczel/worlds-first-
zero_b_3276709.html)

(He has published a whole book on this if you want to hear a longer and more
dramatic version of the story.)

~~~
brador
Why can't we scan and use OCR with machine learning to automatically translate
those clay tablets?

~~~
computator
> Why can't we scan and use OCR those clay tablets?

Possibly for the same reason you can't scan 88-year-old images of Mickey Mouse
without being sued by Disney.

The academics who control things like that are protective with their finds
(even if they didn't find it, but got control). The Dead Sea Scrolls weren't
published for _decades_ because the scholars who got to them first wouldn't
let anyone else see them[1]; they got published only after the government
intervened.

One scholar even sued[2] another over copyright infringement for publishing
the words he painstakingly copied off the scrolls; the guy he sued had merely
copied his copy of the 2000-year-old words.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Publication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Publication)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Ownership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Ownership)

~~~
coldtea
> _Possibly for the same reason you can 't scan 88-year-old images of Mickey
> Mouse without being sued by Disney._

You mean besides the scientific (or at least practical, at the current level
of OCR/machine learning) impossibility of what the parent suggests?

Plus, I don't think parent asks why don't WE scan/ocr/machine learn translate
them, but why the archeological community doesn't.

~~~
koolba
> Plus, I don't think parent asks why don't WE scan/ocr/machine learn
> translate them, but why the archeological community doesn't.

Pure speculation but if it's like any other scientific community the pressure
to be the first to publish would take control. Releasing scans, pictures, etc
would allow someone else to beat you to the punch which means they'll get the
fame and future funding.

~~~
washadjeffmad
Which is fine if you're going to job security or trying to extract funding for
the duration of your career, but being first to publicly publish proof of
ownership and work done is a pretty surefire way to claim credit.

------
c3534l
Traditionally history is said to start where we have written records, the time
before the being relegated to anthropology and archeology. But they say that
the scope of economic history is larger because we have accounting records
before we have written records. Before we had any clay tablets telling legends
and recording the events of kings, we have the exchange rate between fish and
barley, records of indebtedness, estimates for how many customers a shop might
get in a day. Writing in the near-east was essentially developed as a more
sophisticated accounting tool. So before I even clicked on the link, I was
placing all my bets on a shopkeep. However, as a nitpick accounting as an
individual profession really didn't develop until the industrial revolution
when large corporations requiring high investment costs to leverage economies
of scale led to changes in corporations and bankruptcy proceedings,
establishing accounting as a specialty and profession in it's own right,
rather than a skill that a business person was expected to learn. So Kushim
wasn't an accountant, that's a very modern idea of a job. Kushim was a
businessman who kept books to keep track of trade.

~~~
huuu
_" that's a very modern idea of a job"_

I don't agree. A vizier [1] is very related to an accountant. For example:
Joseph (book of Genesis) became a vizier and had to account for the supplies
in storehouses. Maybe he didn't do the accounting himself, but I'm sure they
had a way to write down what was in stock and what not. They also traded with
surrounding countries that were out of stock, so I'm sure this was bigger than
the work of a small businessman.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizier_(Ancient_Egypt)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizier_\(Ancient_Egypt\))

~~~
c3534l
"The vizier's paramount duty was to supervise the running of the country, such
as a prime minister, at times even small details of it such as sampling the
city's water supply."

That doesn't sound like much of an accountant to me.

It would be even more strange that Kushim could be called an accountant at a
time where double-entry bookkeeping hadn't been invented. There were always
people who kept records, sure. But a person who went to school to learn
specifically about keeping and organizing financial records and, in all
likelihood, is licensed by the state to ensure that all records are kept in a
consistent manner - that's what's modern. It took a very long time for
accounting to be a job instead of a task you did in certain jobs. There were
even auditors who worked for the government and were basically tax-collectors.
But they would actually go to a business and have the owners read aloud their
financial records to ensure that they were being kept and they made sense
("audit" basically means to hear).

------
martinko
"Note from Robert Krulwich: I see that this column has offended a whole bunch
of you. Yes, as many of you point out, my viewpoint was white, male (and hung
up on fame and power) and many of you have serious, and totally legitimate
arguments with my assumptions. Now that I read your comments, I’m a little
surprised, and a touch ashamed of myself. But the thing is—those were my
assumptions. They were wrong. I say so."

It is so sad that so may discussions end up in places like this. Absolute
bullshit.

~~~
minikites
Why is it bullshit to consider the feelings and dignity of people who are
different from you?

~~~
minikites
Why did this comment inspire this quantity of downvoting?

------
mzw_mzw
Man, those comments are poison. Amazing how many people flooded in to that
article just to act righteously offended and signal how virtuous they are.

~~~
NoGravitas
Yet here you are, signaling your virtue to a different community. This is a
thing that humans do. There's no need to get bent out of shape about it.

------
erdevs
The first recorded writer probably was a male, indeed.

That's because most ancient societies were blatantly misogynistic. It's
unlikely women were afforded the opportunity to be educated or trained in the
scholastic, monastic, or financial professions which were most likely to leave
some form of written record.

So, yeah, the odds, based on historical predicates, are that the first
recorded human's name was a male name. But not necessarily (or even likely)
because of the author's claim that males seem to be more prone to be early
adopters.

Nor is it at all likely that many of the hostile commenters on this author's
article have the right idea that women in ancient history were equal
contributors to society's evolution. They probably were not. Not because of
any intrinsic inferiority of women, but because of the male-oriented power
dynamics that clearly dominated most ancient societies.

~~~
contingencies
_The first recorded writer probably was a male, indeed.

That's because most ancient societies were blatantly misogynistic._

Actually, my understanding is that the emerging reality is more interesting.

Pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies were non-patriarchal and
patriarchal societies only later became the norm with the rise of
warlike/raiding and settled agricultural societies which co-evolved and co-
depended on higher population densities.

This is certainly the case here in Zomia where uninterrupted matriarchal
societies have continued to exist until today, though they are now rapidly
disappearing.

However, writing did tend to evolve only after this shift, so your statement
may tend toward observational truth despite being based upon fallacious
assumption.

~~~
467568985476
What evidence is there of matriarchy, and how is that defined? I think you're
right that today a popular theory among anthropologists is that agriculture
led to many inequalities, but like all things ancient, there just isn't much
data for anthropologists to draw conclusions from.

~~~
pastProlog
> what evidence

Archaeological evidence

Evidence from literate civilizations writing about their uncivilized
neighbors, which goes back to the earliest known works

Evidence from writers encountering such societies up to the modern day,
although they're almost extinct outside of the deep Amazon and the like.

Logical conclusions - without a food surplus, there is no class system and
other results

~~~
vacri
> _Logical conclusions - without a food surplus, there is no class system and
> other results_

Even hunter-gatherers have chiefs and elders.

~~~
pastProlog
> Even hunter-gatherers have chiefs and elders.

Hunter-gatherer bands do not have chiefs. Looking at the Wikipedia article for
"Tribal chief" it says "Historically, tribal societies represent an
intermediate stage between the band society of the Paleolithic stage and
civilization with centralized, super-regional government based in cities." I
couldn't put it better.

Even with regards to Indian chiefs, and it's not hard to see how there are
misconceptions about them if they're still referred to as "Indians", modern
anthropology acknowledges that European notions about Indian bands and tribes
in the 15th and 16th century were often wrong. Europeans saw parallels of
European society in the New World which weren't there (of course there were
different kinds of societies in the Americas, from Montezuma's Aztec empire,
to humter gatherer bands).

~~~
botfly
To be fair, you don't have to refer to them as "Indians". Most serious
academic anthropologists would refrain from doing so, preferring Native
American instead. So to label them as "Indians" yourself and then to state
that "it's not hard to see how there are misconceptions about them if they're
still referred to as 'Indians'" is a bit disingenuous. I'm sure there are
misconceptions but I don't take as evidence the fact that you chose to call
them "Indians".

~~~
pastProlog
I said they're still referred to as Indians because they're still referred to
as Indians. The point is the very name shows the nature of the ingrained
misconceptions about them - the idea that they're from India for one. Yes, I
know they're not from India, you seem to have missed the point.

------
antoineMoPa
For those trying to understand the numbers on the tablet, this could help:
[http://www.storyofmathematics.com/sumerian.html](http://www.storyofmathematics.com/sumerian.html).

However, I did not find success while trying to read that.

------
pixel_fcker
Inter stung article. Do yourself a favour and skip the comments.

------
lisper
Two things about this article registered on my bogometer:

1\. In the image of the hands on the cave wall, some of the images are
positive and some are negative. The negatives were plausibly made by the
technique described in the article (put hand on wall, blow dust at wall) but
the positive images could not possibly have been made that way.

2\. The translations of the tablets seem implausibly precise. How could we
possibly know that a particular bit of ancient Sumerian (or whatever it is)
translates as the Anglicized name "Gal Sal" or "Sukkalgir" or (most
implausibly) "En-pap X"?

Seems just a tad odd.

~~~
colanderman
The "positive" handprints are still surrounded by a halo. So, blow dust on
wall, put hand on wall, blow different-colored dust over hand on wall? Either
that or dip hand in dust, put hand on wall.

~~~
lisper
I thought of both of those possibilities, but I don't think they can explain
these images.

1\. For the dark colored positives I don't see any evidence of the dark color
bleeding through the light halo. Also, some of the positives have fingers that
are faded, and some are overlaid by negatives. A light halo overlaying a dark
base layer can't account for those.

2\. The positives are too solid to simply be handprints. If you just make a
handprint, it will have gaps in the center of the palm and between the palm
and fingers (among other places). But all the images are solid silhouettes.

------
twic
The article somehow neglects to mention _why_ Kushim wanted all this barley -
it was because they were a brewer:

[http://www.schoyencollection.com/24-smaller-
collections/wine...](http://www.schoyencollection.com/24-smaller-
collections/wine-beer/ms-1717-beer-inanna-uruk)

------
InclinedPlane
This is a way better set of answers to that question:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tqfef/what_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tqfef/what_is_the_oldest_recorded_human_name/)

------
SeanDav
I am surprised that Lucy is not mentioned, or her affectionate nickname AL
288-1. Her time of 3.2 million years ago dwarfs the 3200 B.C. mentioned in the
article!

(disclaimer: TIC - Tongue-in-cheek)

------
thefastlane
if you're interested in early human history such as this, check out Gobekli
Tepe (search youtube), the site of some very early temples. very fascinating.

------
raldi
I know that Sumerian numbers were written in a combination of bases 6 and 10
(symbols represented, e.g., 360, 600, etc), but how do they get 29,086 out of
those symbols?

~~~
bhaak
Looking at the example image on Wikipedia's page, I still have a hard time
recognizing the numbers, even though they are marked:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Examples)

People have always been using short hand and sloppy hand writing, I don't find
it surprising that you can't recognize the numbers without some practise.

~~~
raldi
Recognizing the "digits" isn't the problem; that's already been solved and
published:

[http://erenow.com/common/sapiensbriefhistory/sapiensbriefhis...](http://erenow.com/common/sapiensbriefhistory/sapiensbriefhistory.files/image023.jpg)

I can even find references to what many of the units represent:

[http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/su_numbers.gif](http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/su_numbers.gif)

For example, the six big circles in the middle seem to represent 6 x 3600. But
I can't figure out what to do next.

~~~
mcguire
Nice links!

Probably because it's not as simple as it looks. According to a handy copy of
_A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000-323 BC_ , by Marc Van de
Mieroop,

"The Uruk IV notations seem complicated to us because seven different systems
were used, each of which varied the physical shape of the numeral according to
what was measured. For example, a sexagesimal system, relying on units with
increments of ten and six, was used to account for animals, humans, and dried
fish, among other things. A bisexagesimal system, which diverges from the
previous one as its units also show increments of two, was used for processed
grain products, cheese, and fresh fish. Volumes of grain or surfaces of fields
were measured differently. [...] Although the shape of the number signs could
differ between systems, the same shapes are found in various systems but
sometimes with different values."

Wikipedia, citing _Archaic Bookkeeping Early Writing and Techniques of
Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East_ by Hans J. Nissen, Peter
Damerow, and Robert K. Englund (gonna have to get a copy of that one), claims
more than a dozen different numeric systems.

So, yay, proto-cuneiform.

------
cjbenedikt
Adam & Eve ;-)

~~~
vacri
God brought the world into being in 4004 BC. This article has a tablet from
5000 BC, so it looks like Kushim is indeed older than Adam'n'Eve :)

~~~
triclops200
You misread that a little. It says 3200 BCE (which is about 5000 years ago),
not 5000 BCE.

~~~
vacri
Damn, sorry. I liked that joke :)

------
gumby
Evidence for the world's second oldest profession?

------
buddapalm
I really enjoyed the intellectual curiosity of the article and it's author.

