this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
325 points (96.3% liked)

The Internet in Ancient Times

762 readers
6 users here now

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 Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding-place.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.

founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Wondering what the actual text really translates to. I have a hard time believing that in 2800 BCE, "Every man wants to write a book," was really much of a concern, but you never know

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I can't speak to the validity of this particular example, but every society has something that they're decrying as a sign of weakness, and it changes over time.

We're all familiar with the denouncement of rock and roll, but at one point reading was seen as a bad thing. People were concerned that it encouraged laziness and distraction from the important things in life.

Every society thinks they're important enough to witness the end of history.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Here I was having some serious climate change related anxiety, and this post, coupled with another meme I saw (which was Neil Degrasse Tyson saying that "If Humans can geo-engineer other planets, we can certainly do it to our own."), helped.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There is no evidence that we can actually geo-engineer any planet though

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Well... we have one example that we can.

load more comments (5 replies)