Talk:Elam

alpine

a comment about the elamites being an "alpine people" keeps reappearing. the link listed is to the alps. this information is not only missing from every source i can find, it also appears to be completely incorrect: the elamites did not move from the alps in western europe and settle down in western iran. in fact, they appear to be indigenous: there is no evidence of cultural discontinuities in the archaeology. this seems to be some kind of weird notion of the elamites being 'aryan' or something whereas most scholars posit their closest ethnic and linguistic links are in india (now mostly restricted to southern india after the arrival of the indo-iranian peoples). Emilyzilch

Perhaps you are being selective in which sources you are referencing. I have personally never heard of this connection to India, but I have read several works by scholars of ancient Iran and Zoroastrianism (Mary Boyce, Richard Frye, etc.) who have mentioned the connection of the Elamites to the Alpine region. As for 'weird notions' of the Elamites being 'Aryan,' I have no idea where you got that from, as the sentence did not mention the word 'Aryan' at all. At any rate, the Elamites certainly were not 'Aryan,' but of European origin, perhaps a Cro-Magnon people like the Basque. This is the most common theory I have come across in my studies of the Elamites. SouthernComfort 19:40, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why you deleted the sentence I wrote that indicates the name of the modern province where Elam was comes from the Old Persian name for Elam, but I have replaced it. As for my sources, I have significant sources of information on Elam - and Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and has no bearing on Elam or its culture except that a kingdom that patronised it owned the territory the Elamites once lived in. Boyce is a religious scholar; I have plenty of works on Zoroastrianism as well, but they have nothing to do with the topic at hand because the Elamites only overlapped with the Persians for a time before their culture, language and even their memory was effaced. Resources on Elam I have (grabbing randomly from the top of the pile): Khačikjan Margaret (1998): Elamite Language. Deshpande & Hook eds. (1979): Aryan & Non-Aryan in India (article: McAlpin, "Linguistic Prehistory: The Dravidian Situation"). Webber & Belcher (eds.) (2003): Indus Ethnobiology: New Perspectives from the Field. Krishnamurti Bhadriraju (2003): The Dravidian Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys). Hole Frank (1987): The Archaeology of Western Iran: Settlement & Society from Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest (Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry). Zvelebil Kamil V (1990): Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction ("Dravidian & Elamite"). I hope those will allay any concern you have over my resources. em zilch 19:37, 9 Apr 2005 (EST)

Why do you insist on removing the bit about the Old Persian name for Elam surviving into the modern name of the province? em zilch 16:10, 10 Apr 2005 (EST)

Because it might be incorrect. According to 'iranianlanguages.com,' the Old Persian for Elam is Úvja. In response to your other comment above, the books you listed are not the entirety of Iranian historical study. Also, Boyce is not simply a religious scholar, since the study of religion naturally involves the study of history, and she is very well regarded as being an expert in both fields as pertains to ancient Iran. I believe that Mircea Eliade is also another reknowned 'religious' scholar who has promoted the idea of the Elamites being of Alpine origin. The fact that you find the idea of a group of people from the Alps settling down in southwestern Iran untrue does not make it so. The fact is that you cannot prove ethnic origins through linguistics. It was that sort of distorted thinking which led men like Gobineau and Hitler to develop the 'Aryan myth' - that since there was a lingustic connection between Europe, Iran, and India, that this meant that the peoples of Europe and India had descended from the prehistoric Aryan tribes which had settled in Iran. And of course this was tied in with the 'Aryan invasion theory' (which is now generally considered to be false), which stated that one of the Aryan tribes ended up invading northern India and establishing the Vedic religion and subjugating the native Dravidian population. You get the point.

You cannot say with absolute certainty, as in your original post, that the Elamites did not move from here or there and then settled in Iran. They may have, and then again, they not have. The same goes for any ethnic link between the Elamites and the Dravidians, though I again stress the importance of realising that linguistic similarities between two peoples does not necessarily equal an ethnic connection. This is the reason why so-called 'religious' and philosophical scholars are also quite often the most knowledgeable historians as well, since they are well accustomed to thinking 'out of the box,' while anthropologists and linguists most often (with a few exceptions here and there) restrict themselves to the rigidity of their own disciplines, without taking into account other avenues of study which may provide more solid answers. SouthernComfort 00:14, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you studied Old Persian, you would realise that the cuneiform used was not an alphabet, but a cross between an abjad and a syllabary. U-W-J, also U-W-J-I-Y, U-J, U-J-I-Y is read /Hūjiya/; R. Kent (1953) writes that it appears incessantly in the cuneiform inscriptions, which explicitly equals "(h)altamti, (h)alamti". he also notes that the early middle persian form of the same word as /xuuź/, which appears in the arab traveler's writings when describing xuuzii - the language or dialect of xuuz. with the usual ethnonymic addition of the ezade and -staan, c.f. siistaan 'saka-land' etc., we get modern persian Khouzestan /xuz-e stan/. Websites don't always understand the pages they cite - the index of Kent lists UVJ as "Elam", but also lists in the *dictionary* section Hū(w)jiya "'Elamite, Susian'; derivation of preceding"; the preceding being Hū(w)ja "'Elam, Susiana', a province of the persian empire; also as ethnic, 'Elamite, Susian': Elam. hal-tam-tu, Akk. e-lam-mat, cf. MPers. Huź".

a comment about the elamites being "alpine people" has reappeared. i reiterate my objections to this. i find very offensive your idea that i am a hidebound ideologue and your arguments about the 'alpine origin' have no citation or even origin. you haven't said a word as to where you even *got* those ideas. the flow of population in prehistoric times was slow; this only changed with the domestication of the donkey and camel (in the middle east and iran) in the third millennium. elamite groups in assorted separate ethnes are attested in the earliest written records in southern iran. also, the population flow in prehistoric times was INTO europe; the basque are a vestige of the earliest infiltration by the Cro-Magnon, which is attested by modern genetic analysis. also, the alps are INCREDIBLY far away from iran; the trade routes were limited by the distance a person could travel on foot. when, exactly, did these prehistoric people arrive in iran? by this rate, we should just say the elamites are african, because we all came out of africa. finally, i mentioned aryanism because the notion that civilisation came out of european ethnic groups is curious to me. why argue for their european origin when there is no evidence they came from anywhere else?

in summary: there is zero evidence for such a wild, senseless and massive migration. on the other side, there is evidence dating back to the early seventh millennium for cultural continuity in southwestern iran. Emilyzilch

a comment on matriarchy: the elamites show no matriarchy. what they demonstrate is matriliny: the inheritance of power BY A MALE through his female relatives (uncle to sister's daughter), and there only in a limited way. hence i have emended "matriarchal" to "matrilineal", because matriarchies are rule by women and nearly every regent of the elamite region was male throughout all of their history. control of women remained, even though rights were passed through the rather more reliable source of one's mother (patriliny assumes genetic connection, matriliny assures it.) Emilyzilch

I think you seriously need to calm down and relax. As to where I received my "ideas," as you refer to them, I believe I already cited the authors I have studied who have referred to the 'Alpine theory.' As such, they are not *my* ideas, thank you very much. It is not more wild or senseless than Aryans from the steppes of Central Asia travelling to and settling down in Iran, taking over the Elamite civilisation, and assimilating them into their Aryan culture. In addition, if one had to cite a source for every single sentence, then a project like Wikipedia would not be feasible. You state that "we all came from Africa," though this is clearly not a fact, and there is 'zero evidence' for this, just as there is 'zero evidence' for the idea of humans evolving from apes, though this is widely accepted amongst scientists. In history, there is plenty of 'zero physical evidence,' but no shortage of scholarly theories. Lastly, and for what seems to be the third time, the term and concept 'Aryan' has nothing to do with anything European, since in academia, 'Aryan' is solely connected with Indo-Iranian studies, and specifically Iran. Lastly, though you may find the idea absurd, not all scholars agree with each other, and many scholars have varied beliefs and theories, and the field of Iranian studies is vast and as with any historical study, is continually in flux. If you do not want to be seen as an ideologue, then please do not behave as one. SouthernComfort 23:17, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid your assertion that the Elamites came to SW Iran from the Alps is, frankly, fringe. The arrival of the Indo-Iranians in Iran remains controversial, despite evidence; with such a recent arrival with so much evidence continuing to be so, how much more so the assertion that a prehistoric group in Iran came from the mountains of West Europe? I personally think you mistook "Alpine" ('from the Alps') with "alpine" ('from the mountains' (of northern Iran etc.). And as for the 'out of africa' issue, there is plenty of evidence unless you are a Dominionist: early sapiens skeletons only in Africa, the advent of Cro-Magnon into Europe, etc. That is evidence. If I am energised about the subject it is because the theory is fringe and echoed Eurocentric, Aryanist views of the 20th century. This might not be intended, but it hit a sore point. Besides which, human beings are apes; it's not like we stopped being apes any more than we stopped being primates or mammals or chordates.

Removing Persian bias

I removed the cites re the Elamite Empire being "Persian" from the very start of the article, along with the Iranian history template, and added a new section called "After the Assyrians", which takes up the link to the early Persian empires. As I have said in other places, it is extremely misleading to extend "Persian" history thousands of years into the past, classifying as Persian peoples who did not speak a Indo-European language, practice Zoroastrianism, or identify themselves as Persians.

As I understand Southern Comfort's position after dealing with him on other Persia-related articles, claiming that the Elamites were "Persians" is crucial to the claim that Khuzestan has "always" been Persian. This claim is advanced as a rebuttal to Ahwazi Arab separatism and to Saddam Hussein's claims to historical dominion over Khuzestan. However, it is possible to believe that separatism would be unfortunate and that Saddam was wrong in invading Khuzestan WITHOUT subscribing to the historically preposterous claim that the Elamites were Persians.

Per the call for papers at a 2004 UK conference on Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)construction of the Past [1]:

The teleological nature of history encourages historians to retroactively imagine or construct past communities in accordance with contemporary cartographies. Today these cartographies are dominated by the nation-state and its territorially oriented mapping of geo-political space.

That is, nations are extended into the past. I do not think that this should be done on Wikipedia without challenge. Zora 21:06, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

When have I ever claimed that the Elamites were Persian? Show me the diffs. Where in this article is it claimed that the Elamites were Persian? Show me the diffs. None of what you state above in reference to me can be sourced. SouthernComfort 23:24, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What are your objections to Zora's edit? It looks like an improvement to me, especially with the addition of the final section. Opening articles with quotes is not usual Wikipedia practice, especially when the quotes could be argued to be POV. - Mustafaa 23:30, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The quotes may not belong at the very top of the article, but certainly they are relevant. I don't see how they can be construed as POV unless they can be refuted or countered with other relevant quotes. Also, she deleted this sentence, In fact, the modern provincial name Khuzestān is derived from the Old Persian root Hujiyā, which means "Elam." This is certainly relevant and there is no need to delete or move it from the introduction. SouthernComfort 02:29, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

SC, please stop reverting anything I change in articles you claim as YOURS. I have been trying to keep my temper, explain my changes, source material, include alternate views, etc. I've been actively doing research, spending money on books and dissertations, and I've been willing to change my views and supply information that supports you if that's what my research shows. If you claim that you didn't exactly say that the Elamites were Persians (just that they were geographically Persian), well, that's fine. Then you ought to be OK with removing the misleading quotes from the top of the article. Zora 23:45, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I reverted because of your accusations that I have claimed the Elamites as being Persian. I have NEVER made that claim. Unless you can back up such accusations, please do not begin making them. I have also NEVER claimed any articles as being mine. I am not a primary contributor to this article - that distinction goes to others, including Amir85 who cleaned up the article and organized the article a great deal. I do not appreciate these sorts of accusations and I don't want to see ancient history articles turned into political battlegrounds. Your final sentence above states that I have implied that Elamites were Persian. That is also blatantly FALSE. If you want to discuss moving the quotes, that's fine. But I am tired of these ridiculous accusations. Respect is a two-way street. SouthernComfort 02:29, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What's on the talk page is on the talk page; what's at issue is the article. I think I improved the readability of the article, removed a POV bias in the format, and kept your points re the Elamite influence on the early Persian dynasties. You seem to be saying that you'll revert all my edits unless you get respect from me. You'll get my respect if you can put truth and readability ahead of ego. Zora 05:00, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, they are not "my" points. History is history. And I am not the primary contributor here. You deleted relevant quotes as well as the above listed sentence contributed by Emilyzilch (all of which you continue to view as being a "Persian bias"). Thirdly, if you don't want to respect me, that's fine - so far you have treated myself and Zereshk as if we are second-class citizens who have no right to edit these articles because of your view that we have a "Persian bias" due to our Iranian background while falsely accusing me (several times) of such things as stating that Elamites are Persian among other things. If you want to talk about ego, I am the one who has so far attempted to be diplomatic (so much so that Ahwaz and I were able to discuss civilly together and come to agreements while you continued to attack my contributions) and to state things as they are, as free of political bias as possible and adhering to history. Reorganizing articles is one thing, but deleting valid information due to your POV is inappropriate. You are free to add to the article and counter such quotes with others that disagree with the former. SouthernComfort 05:22, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Editing for readability requires subtraction as well as addition. Having your prose deleted or altered is part of Wikipedia. Zora 05:29, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Elamite survival

since the Elamite language (called Khuzi by the Persians) persisted well into the fifth century CE - this is not necessarily a safe assumption. What guarantee do we have that this actually referred to Elamite, rather than, say, proto-Mandaic? - Mustafaa 23:31, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Was this in the Encyclopedia Iranica? I can't remember now whether I saw it in an online source, or just copied it from the other editors. I agree that sourcing it would be good, if it's true. Zora 23:37, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ibn al-Nadim states that "The Iranian languages are Fahlavi (Pahlavi), Dari, Khuzi, Persian, and Seryani." He then adds that Khuzi is the unofficial language of the royalty and comes from Khuzestan. From Iranica: However, most experts believe the name Khuzestan to be derived from Ķūzī, the name of the original non-Semitic people of the province, whose distinctive language reportedly survived until Sassanid times. (see Encyclopedia Iranica, E. YarShater, Columbia University, Vol 1, p687-689.). It is not clear from this that the actual language of the Khuzi (Elamites) was indeed Elamite, as it might have evolved into a mixture of Elamite and Persian and so forth. But the people themselves were called Khuzi. SouthernComfort 02:36, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. They spoke a language called Khuzi, named after Elamite, but not necessarily the Elamite language. (French is named after the Franks, for instance, but is not Germanic...) - Mustafaa 19:04, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Rearrangement

I took Mustafa's edit and moved the Iranian claims to Elam into one section, and then added another section with a long quote from an Italian Elamologist. I made a few other minor tweaks, such as paragraphing.

The two sections on the contrasting views of Elamite history may need further work. I hope that the arrangement will be allowed to stand, however. Surely the opinion of a scholar active in the development of CTML, the Cuneiform Text Markup Language, should not be expunged. Zora 02:25, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Gol durn it, Codex Sinaiticus, you've moved the ancient Mesopotamia template down, moved the Iranian template up, put ALL the nationalist propaganda back throughout the entire article, rather than putting it in one section, and edited the section with the quote from the Elamologist to say that he's a minority view. That is NOT FAIR. Zora 04:20, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I stand by what I did. What specific sentence in the article do you disagree with? If you carefully read the so-called "nationalist propaganda" (I didn't add any, just took it out of an awkward and incoherent section you artificially created) you will see that it says much the same thing your 'Elamologist' is saying anyway. I see no substantial differences calling for a disputed tag, but if I missed them, please enlighten me. Codex Sinaiticus 04:29, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sources

Zereshk, when you restored "your" section, you also restored some incomplete references. I think that anyone consulting this article should know that one of your references is a Time-Life book, and another was first published in 1922. Zora 05:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes. The editors and contributers of that Time-Life book hold PhDs, are curators of many Iranian collections in the US, and some even did the research themselves. Why dont you look up who wrote that Time-Life edition? I would be happy to include a list of the contributors.--Zereshk 06:08, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Declaration of war

I am getting sick and tired of this racist anti-Iranian crusade Zora keeps dragging us into. I call for a full arbitration to end this blatant historical revision. Enough is enough.

1. Zora and Mustafaa keep deleting my edits claiming that I keep "bombarding" the article with quotes. Yet Zora has added an entire section which is nothing but quotes. Hypocricy at its best.
2. Zora and Mustafaa have deleted the section I painfully researched on the cultural link of The Elamites to Iran, and instead added a section that intends to refute and counter this (thus censoring any opposing views). This is incredibly POV.
3. Zora claims we are using "Persian nationalist" sources, whereas in the section I used, out of the hundreds of authors that support my section, only Ehsan Yarshater is Iranian. And he is highly respected at Columbia University.

Until now, my policy has been ADDING material so that there will be a balance of all POVs. Yet EVERY fuckin edit I make is deleted, blanked out, and censored. From now on, if my edits, which are well researched and documented, are deleted for no good reason (instead of ADDING opposite views to balance out), I will change my policy, and likewise start deleting and blaking out as well. You want an edit war? Youll get one.

Luckily, I have access to Iran's National Museum and Library where The Elamite heritage is kept. I will keep adding supporting references and documentation until this flagrant historical revisionism is drowned.--Zereshk 06:09, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zereshk, your writing style seems to be to heap up as many factoids as possible, of all degrees of relevance and reliability. This is not effective communication! If you want to CONVINCE other people, you have to edit yourself. If you won't edit yourself, then other people are going to edit you. They may make a better argument for your position than you can.

I dont have to convince you with facts. That you call what hundreds of authors have written factoids clearly illustrates your opiniated position.--Zereshk 09:38, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Most of the professional writers I know use their friends as "beta readers". When they have a draft they think is ready for the publisher, they give it to their friends to find out if it WORKS. Very often the beta reader will tell them "This was great, this wasn't clear, this bored me ... " -- and the good writers will listen, and edit accordingly. They don't incorporate every criticism, but they listen to lots of them. I was the proofreader/beta reader for my friend Alis' last book and she told me that she agreed with me 80% of the time.

Editors edit other peoples work. They dont delete it and re-write it themselves.--Zereshk 09:38, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

But Alis is the AUTHOR of her book. She can say yes or no. None of us here can say yes or no -- we can only try to make things readable and NPOV. That means collaborating.

You can go to arbitration, but I don't think you'll get the outcome you seem to expect. Why not let other people edit your prose, if they can make it more convincing? Don't you want to convince people, rather than just seeing your words "in print"? Zora 07:44, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You want to bet? Nobody will buy your crusading efforts to revise Iranian history. Because you just cant swim against the evidence. You can delete my edits, but you cannot delete history. For every obscure Italian dissertation you find to fit your biased "edits", I can provide 100s in return.

Why not let others edit your prose? Practice what you preach.--Zereshk 09:38, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me? Let's go through these allegations one by one:

• "Zora and Mustafaa keep deleting my edits claiming that I keep "bombarding" the article with quotes... Zora and Mustafaa have deleted the section I painfully researched on the cultural link of The Elamites to Iran." Nearly every sentence in your edits was preserved in mine. About the only thing I deleted was the collection of quotes - for which I substituted a summary that I believe makes every point that those quotes make:

Elam was the first civilization based in what is now Iran - as well as one of the first civilizations on Earth - and its culture played a crucial role in the Achaemenid empire. It is thus a major starting point in the narrative of Iran's national history.

Your readding "The Elamites, Iran's first empire" simply means that nearly every sentence in that section now occurs twice in this article. Would you mind fixing this, please? (fixed by me)

• "and instead added a section that intends to refute and counter this (thus censoring any opposing views). I added no such section. Zora added such a section, while also readding a section intended to present the cultural link of the Elamites to Iran[2]. I do not endorse either idea; I'd much prefer the article to express the facts rather than quoting people's opinions of any stripe. - Mustafaa 17:54, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1. Those people's opinion you are talking about are experts on Iranian history. You forget that Zora entirely censored the Shia pages by caliming there were no modern western sources of scholarship to back up Shi'a viewpoints. She even specifically asked for ISBN numbers as a means for providing "reliable" evidence. Learning from that fiasco she imposed upon everyone, I am now providing full documentation that supports the facts that you find so hard to accept. If you dont like the expert quotes, well then tough luck. It is in fact nothing but factual evidence to support what is written. Without them, ignoramuses like Zora will come along and make stupid claims that what is written is "Persian Nationalist history".
2. The stuff is repeated you say? Well then delete you and Zora's re-writes that you added after deleting my additions. The page was perfectly fine until you guys came along and (na'uzu billah) started this shitty ethnic editorial war.--Zereshk 08:12, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If all you want the quotes for is that, then keep them on Talk. That's what the Talk pages are there for. Giving a bunch of quotes to support a factual claim actually has the opposite impact - it makes the claim look like it must be POV, otherwise it would be stated as fact instead of as a quote. - Mustafaa 18:04, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New sources, oh neato keen!

Trying to substantiate claims for the existence of "proto-Elamites", I found this link: [3]. It's the first chapter of a book I just ordered, The Archaeology of Elam, by D.T. Potts, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Hey, the article is all wrong, per Potts. Fascinating. It's going to be hard to wait for the book (it takes a while for things to get to Hawai'i boat mail). Zora 08:27, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Knock yourself out. I'll even help you with it. Your smoking gun book even gives it away: The Archaeology of Elam : Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State (Cambridge World Archaeology) by D. T. Potts, et al (Paperback)

It's Iranian. It even says it in the title. Have fun :) --Zereshk 09:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes -- Potts, so far as I can tell from the first chapter, says that Elamite may just mean "highlander" and may include many different peoples and languages. The Sumerians and Babylonians just didn't distinguish them (all barbarians, in their eyes). It's not clear "Elamite" always meant the same thing. But he does say that these upland groups were based in the hills, or the edges of the hills, and not the Mesopotamian lowlands. The map in the first chapter, showing elevations, is quite illuminating in this regard.

I still protest against assimilating the Elamites completely into an "Iranian" historical project -- projecting Iran into the past -- but I'm much more prepared to see them as an upland phenomenon.

Another new source! An article called "Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archaeology in Iran", Kamyar Abdi, American Journal of Archaeology, January 2001 [4]. Fascinating ... Zora 10:05, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is an unnecessary argument. Elamite civilization is quite obviously Iranian, by retrospective location and by where its main surviving cultural contributions were adopted; it's equally obviously its own entity, much of whose heritage (such as the language or the literature) has left no living descendants, and whose land could easily have ended up part of some other country had things gone a little differently. Any intelligent reader should be able to grasp both points from the article him/herself, without being told what other people think. I'd prefer to see neither "3 The Elamites, Iran's first Empire" nor "An Elamologist's view" included. - Mustafaa 18:12, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your argument does not hold because it would apply to all of Iran's ancient dynasties and empires (including the Sassanids, Parthians, and Achaemenids). By your argument, Italy cannot claim to be the main inheritor of the Roman Empire.

The effort to detach The Elamites from Iranian identity and history is clearly nothing but a futile ploy supporting Arab seperatists of Khuzestan, which is a very pathetic thing to do for a Wikipedia writer. We should be expanding knowledge on Wikipedia, not carrying out politically motivated agendas. Why dont I see Zora ardently supporting [similar speratist causes in Sweden, India, Pakistan, or even Iraq]? Why dont I see her supporting the Shi'as to have their own separate state in Iraq?--Zereshk 07:38, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And btw, I dont agree with removing anything from this page because the page is peppered with bits and pieces of politically motivated sentences from Zora's edits. Until they are not addressed properly, everything else stays.--Zereshk 07:49, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

fortunately, that's not your call. I've never even heard of Khuzestan separatists, and I fail to see how the classification of the ancient Elamite Empire has any bearing on contemporary politics. You people are capable of politicizing anything. Ancient Macedon, Ancient Urartu, Ancient Elam, I just don't get it, that's ancient history, and cannot be used for any political argument today, and no sane person would suggest it does. And no, Italy is not the "inheritor of the Roman Empire", for god's sake, Italy is a nation state of the 19th century. If anything, the German Empire was the political heir of the Roman one, and that ended back in 1918. dab (ᛏ) 08:38, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"You people"? What is this supposed to mean? I hope this is not a reference to our ethnic background. FYI, this article had nothing to do with politics until Zora came around making accusations of "Persian nationalism." As Zereshk has noted, the quotes that are included in this article are from expert historians and scholars and none of them claim that Elamites were Persian. She also made ridiculous accusations against me that I claimed Elamites were Persian. This was the main thrust of Zora's involvement in this article and her rationale for deleting them, despite their relevance to this article. The fact remains that Elam was absorbed into Persia (Iran - Iranians have always referred to their country as Iran since ancient times) and they as a people were also absorbed, and became an Iranian people, with their civilization forming the administrative and cultural foundation of the Achaemenid empire. The term Iranian refers to those people indigenous to the Iranian plateau, regardless of their ethnicity - it is not exclusive to Persians. The quotes illustrate these points very clearly, and that is all they illustrate. SouthernComfort 13:35, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1. You should have been here from the start to follow the evolution of the arguments. This debate has its roots on the Shia pages. After I quit debating Zora, she followed me around still counter editing everything I put in. And here we are now. Zora continues to add inflammatory text to incite admins like Mustafaa against us. (an e.g. would be comparing Persian rule over Khuzestan to "zionist" occupation of Palestine, knowing that Mustafaa is sensitive and partial to this issue)
2. Let me explain it for you plain simple in one sentence: With the Iranian identity of The Elamites proven (the Elamites were the first indigenous kingdom of Khuzetsan), Khuzestan cannot be claimed to be an Arab state under any argument. Unfortunately, it has come to that.
3. You are incorrect on the latter issue because Im not talking about political inheritance, but rather cultural inheritance. And in that respect, Italy is indisputably the main inheritor of The Roman Empire. If you dont like Rome/Italy as an example, I can switch to Misr/Egypt for an example. With Mustafaa's argument, The current republic of Egypt (Misr) cannot claim primary inheritance to ancient Egypt.--Zereshk 09:00, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

well, last time I checked, Mubarak didn't claim to be descended from Horus, and his mausoleum isn't making good progress either. Your "plain simple" explanation I am afraid to me is plain ridiculous. The "Iranian identity" (beyond evident geographical position) of the Elamite empire says, of course nothing about whether Khuzestan should be an Arab state. By that argument, Iraq could never be an Arab state, the official language should of course be Sumerian! dab (ᛏ) 09:13, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be unaware of the Al-Ahwaz movement and its claims. In that regard, I dont think debating you is fruitful at this time.--Zereshk 10:11, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm saying that I have every right to be unaware of them on this article because their claims are entirely irrelevant here. So yes, even bringing the topic up here is completly fruitless. While, of course, the debate may be entirely on topic, e.g. on Talk:Al-Ahwaz (or, Talk:Ahvaz, where I will not interfere at all, thank you. dab (ᛏ) 10:26, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Your argument does not hold because it would apply to all of Iran's ancient dynasties and empires (including the Sassanids, Parthians, and Achaemenids)." In some ways, yes: all of these entities are indubitably Iranian, and all of them could in principle have become part of the heritage of some other state (maybe an Afghan Empire, for instance) if things had gone differently, though that would have required a much bigger change in history. In other ways, not really: the Sassanids, Parthians, and Achaemenids all spoke languages ancestral to modern Persian, all occupied a much larger proportion of the area of Iran, and were all based more centrally in Iran. But what does that prove either way?

"With the Iranian identity of The Elamites proven (the Elamites were the first indigenous kingdom of Khuzetsan), Khuzestan cannot be claimed to be an Arab state under any argument." Are you kidding? There is almost no Arab state whose "first indigenous kingdom" was Arab. Algeria didn't become Arab until well after the 11th century; that doesn't make Numidia any less a part of Algeria's heritage. - Mustafaa 18:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Iranian"

from the intro:

its culture, though non-Aryan, played a crucial role in the Achaemenid empire that succeeded it.

is that disputed? no? In that case, what is the disagreement? Nobody claims the Elamites were Indo-Iranians. The simple fact is that culture is not tied to ethnicity. If Elamite culture can have an influence on the Achaemenids, Iranian culture can have an influence on Arabs, and Arabic culture (significantly, of course) on Iranians. I really don't see the relevance to this article at all. The Elamite Empire was not "Iranian". It is pre-Iranian, and is part of the history of Iran because of the undisputable fact that its territory was part of what is today Iran. dab (ᛏ) 09:21, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1. You are correct. You seem unable to see the relevance at all. It's not your call to decide "The Elamites were not Iranian". That is the main reason I provided direct quotes by western expert Iranologists and Elamologists in the article: To prevent such ridiculous statements from re-occurence. You dont know our history (it seems), and are thus unfit to decide for us what is Iranian and what isnt. Elamite culture did not "influence" Achaemenids. It was directly inherited by them. Same capital, same language, same customs. Please argue on something you are knowledgable in.
2. FYI, The Republic of Egypt in fact does claim full cultural inheritance to the ancient state of the pharaohs. The name Egypt itself is originally derived from the ancient Egyptian phrase ḥwt-k3-ptḥ ("Hut ka Ptah"). In fact, at the top of the History of Egypt page it says: "The history of Egypt is the longest continuous history, as a unified state, of any country in the world." In fact, Gamal Abdel Nasser explicitly once linked his presidency to Pharaoh Nectanebo II.
3. Me and SC didnt start this mess. We came here only after we started seeing some drastic changes made to the page.--Zereshk 10:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ah, you're just a nationalist, then. Sorry, I wouldn't even have bothered to argue with you. As for "same language", allow me to chuckle distractedly, and point to Elamite language. dab (ᛏ) 11:01, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me, but allow me to chuckle. From Elamite language, Elamite was an official language of the Persian Empire from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great. After all, Elamite scribes (writing in Elamite) were an important element in the Achaemenid courts as Elamites provided the administrative foundation of the empire. No historians or scholars even dispute this, and yet you call him a "nationalist" for adhering to history. SouthernComfort 13:58, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

well, of course, so it seems there is no disagreement at all. Elamite was not Iranian, and so it would seem that the "Iranian" empire, at least in its early days, was more of a rehash of the earlier Elamite Empire rather than genuinely Iranian, i.e. it is entirely pointless to call the Elamite Empire "Iranian", since at the time of the rise of the EE, there was not a single Iranian in the area. It is not at all pointless to say the later Iranian empire was to a great extent Elamite. Which is outside the scope of this article. To make really certain that there is no misunderstanding here, by "Iranian" I of course mean Aryan in the sense of Indo-Iranian languages. The fact that the Elamite language survived into times of the Persian Empire doesn't make it any more Iranian. dab (ᛏ) 15:29, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Real or imaginary?

I don't think that anyone else is quite grasping what I'm trying to say about extending nations into the past, because for the rest of you, the "nation" is a real and solid thing with a historical existence spanning centuries or millenia. Nationalists identify with this "nation" and take real personal satisfaction in being part of something that is strong and real and prestigious. Trying to take anything away from the "nation", whether it's a border province or a claim to millenia-old achievements, is an attack on the self, to be resisted to the death. To me, the "nation" is imaginary. It's an ideology. There's a state, sure enough, and the state has an ideology that inculcates obedience and self-sacrifice. The state would very much like all citizens to believe that they are part of a great "nation".

But there ARE ethnic separatists, political zealots who put Communism ahead of the nation, religious zealots who put the ummah ahead of the nation, and just plain cranky cusses like me who say "The emperor has no clothes". But we're alive right now and we can refuse to believe the idealogy.

Nations don't just claim territory, and living bodies. Nations magnify themselves by claiming the achievements of the past. Mussolini thought the glories of imperial Rome added luster to his Italy. Mohamed Reza Shah thought that holding a coronation at Persepolis would turn him into Cyrus the Great. After driving out the Muslims, Spaniards claim the mosques and palaces of Granada as "Spanish". It's rare for people to claim the failures of the past. I told someone once that I was inspired by the Jewish Bundists (now forgotten anti-Zionists) and he said, in a puzzled way, "But they all died in the concentration camps". They didn't win, they didn't leave ideological descendents, therefore it makes no sense to identify with them.

Since the Romans can't speak up and say "We'd rather not be considered Fascists, thank you", since the Achaemenids can't tell the Shah to get lost, etc., the only people who can protect the past against current political projects are the historians -- who have often fallen down on the job. They're just as involved in the nationalist project as anyone else, writing versions of history that are nationalist versions of "Whig" history. Whig history, in historian-speak, means accounts of history that present it as a relentless march towards that pinnacle of civilization, Western science and culture. Nationalist history, ditto, extends the nation far in time and wide in space, showing how the relentless march of history culminated in that pinnacle of civilization, US/UK/France/Germany/Iran/China/India, etc. etc.

I don't think I'll convince you folks that nationalism is a pernicious illusion, and it's probably going to continue to flourish in Wikipedia. However, just for the sake of consistency we can't allow exaggerated nationalist projects. For every Pakistani ready to claim the achievements of the Indus valley civilization as Pakistani, there's going to be an Indian claiming that civilization for India. So let's just step back and report that some people believe X and other people believe Y. Don't privilege the ultra-nationalist viewpoint. Allow us "imagined identities" folks to speak too. Zora 09:31, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

sure, I suppose I agree in general. But what does that mean for the purposes of this article? Beyond saying that the EE was in what is today Iran, and mentioning cultural influence on the Achaemenids (both points undisputed, I suppose), no later nations should even be mentioned. This article simply doesn't deal with Iranians, or Arabs. your point will be well made on the Iran article, in case people want to claim cultural continuity. I mean, we still like to sit around fires, that's cultural continuity for a million years, right there, but that bears no relation to nationalism at all. dab (ᛏ) 10:03, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What does it have to do with this article? It needn't have a whole lot to do with the article. I found the article decorated with quotes to the effect that the Elamites were Iranian, removed them, and wrote a new section called "After the Assyrians" that pointed out that while the Elamites were not Indo-Europeans, they had had a great deal of influence on the Achaemenids. I moved the Iran template down from the top and put it in the "After the Assyrians" section. I thought that was fine, and sufficiently respectful of nationalism. Mustafaa thought it was fine. Then my esteemed Iranian colleagues <g> rose up in revolt and made the article (from my POV) even more stridently Iranian nationalist.

I figure the article is going to have to be completely rewritten in any case, since it seems to be based on older views re the Elamites, and the Potts book I'm expecting is a lot more up to date. I found one online reference to Potts recently being given gov't permission to dig in Iran -- the results of his dig/s, if and when they're published, should be interesting. Zora 11:03, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Again Zora declares her intention of rewriting an entire article unilaterally. This is not accordance with the spirit of Wikipedia. She is free to add data to counter what is already in the article, but she cannot "completely" rewrite it to suit her own POV. SouthernComfort 13:42, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

huh? why unilaterally? she announces the intention on the talk page, which is they way it should be done, and I can only heartily agree with her. Thanks for looking after this, Zora, I certainly think an "After the Assyrians" section is fine, too. dab (ᛏ) 15:14, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As I have stated, she cannot censor this article. If she wants to present other scholarly opinions, that's fine. But she cannot selectively delete quotes and rewrite the article as she sees fit to suit her own anti-Iranian POV. That would be totally unacceptable, and frankly I am sick and tired of this racist nonsense (your anti-Iranian bias is also quite obvious). Just as it is pointless for a Jew to debate an anti-Semite, it is pointless for us to debate with those who have no respect for our history and civilization. If she does begin deleting other editors' contribs and rewriting the article, I will not engage her in a an edit war, but will take this case to arbitration and allow them to sort it out. I've had enough. SouthernComfort 17:41, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You are welcome to do that. I am myself tired of nationalist pov-pushers who think that anybody who doesn't share their ardent patriotism is a hatemonger on a vendetta. Zora put matters concerning the rise of the Persian Empire in a separate "After the Assyrians" section. That's quite moderate, since that hardly even concerns the Elamite Empire (which happens to be the topic of this article). Nobody denied the influence the EE had on the Persians, and nobody tried to belittle Persian history. We are just trying to pervent this from becoming a nationalist pamphlet. If you cannot live with that, by all means try arbitration, and best of luck to you. dab (ᛏ) 11:30, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mani's addition

Mani, this is not Western scholars beating up on poor oppressed Third Worlders. Scholars who distance themselves from nationalist history take this attitude towards ALL history. Questioning nationalism is considered "trendy" right now, and is being promulgated by people like Prasenjit Duara, who is Indian by birth, and studies China. Zora 11:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

scope of this article

Just to make sure we agree on the scope of this article: Evidently, its focus is on the period from 2700 BC until the sack of Susa in the 7th century BC. After that, there was no Elamite Empire left. Of course there can be a brief "aftermath" section, pointing to (but not detailing) what happened later, i.e. the rise of the Persian Empire (it's blue, click it if you want to know about the Persian Empire), the persistence of the Elamite language (likewise, click for details, a language is not an empire). If there is not enough Elamite stuff on Persian Empire, add it there, or create Elamite influence on the Persian Empire, which we'll also link to from the "aftermath" section, and which will be an entire article about how Elamic ancient Persia really was. I'm not trying to censor anything here, this is just about preventing overlap of article scopes. I'm very interested to learn that the Persian Empire was really quite hybrid, emerging from a blend of Elamite and Aryan culture. However, this is not the article to discuss that. Also, I made the "Persian Empire" stuff a subsection of the "after the Assyrians" section, since the focus of these sections was the same, some statements were pretty much repeated, and I think it is superfluous to have "after the Assyrians", since that's really the same as saying "Persian Empire". dab (ᛏ) 12:45, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Problems with Elamite studies

As near as I can figure out from reading the first chapter of Potts' book, and the Encyclopedia Iranica article on Elam, the problem is that the Mesopotamian records are all we have for a lot of the "Elamite" history, and it's now accepted that for the Mesopotamians, Elamite just meant "highlander" -- with an overtone of "they're all barbarians out there". So the Mesopotamian records may have been lumping together peoples of quite different cultures, languages, etc. The archaeology of the area is somewhat undeveloped, since the theocratic government clamped down on it after the 1979 revolution. They weren't willing to fund even Iranian archaeologists till a few years back, and they're just now opening up Iran to foreign archaeologists again. At the moment, the consensus seems to be that what is now called the classical Elamite civilization developed up on the Iranian plateau, on the western edge, got a foothold in Khuzestan, and then got pushed down into Khuzestan by the invading Indo-Europeans. So it may be an Iranian plateau civilization, just not an Indo-European one. But that could change ... <g>

Also questionable, in my mind, are the "proto-Elamite" sites up on the plateau, and especially the dating. Grandiose claims for being "the oldest civilization in the world" all seem to emanate from journalistic rather than scientific sources. I haven't been able to find any published excavation reports or articles in scientific journals.

Before we put a whole lot of effort into rewriting the article, it might be a good idea to bring it up to date. I hadn't realized how shabby it was. Zora 13:32, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

hm, well, I changed the title from "an Elamologist's view" since it seemed to be about establishing Elamite studies as an individual discipline, i.e. we are talking about the question whether there even are "Elamologists" (google hits for the term are neglegible). We don't seem to claim that it's "the oldest" civilization, but rather "among the oldest". "Elam" is evidently contemporary to the Sumerian civilization, but as you say, the "civilization" part is questionable, especially in comparison with the advanced Sumerians, at least until the defeat of the 3rd dynasty of Ur. Before that they seem to have been simply a colony of Sumer. It seems we can only speak of an "Empire" proper from the ca. 1300 to 1100, i.e. contemporary to the early Iron Age empires in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, and even during this time, their role seems to be mainly to be the "barbarian threat" to Babylonia. Btw, we seriously need to wikify the main part of this article, and edit for consistency of spellings and dates! In the light of this, it may be better to rename the article to Elamites or Elamite culture, since there seems to be really no evidence for an "Empire" comparable to the Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite or Egyptian ones. I don't know this, mind you, this is what I gather from the present state of our article, i.e. the title is at odds with the content. dab (ᛏ) 15:32, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now that I scrutinize the article, there seem to be other inconsistencies. What was the "Elam" conquered by Shulgi? The highlands, one would presume, since for the purposes of the Sumerians, "Elam" was just "the highlands"? So how is this reconcileable with the statement "In earliest times, the overlord lived in Susa, which functioned as a federal capital." in the "History" intro? Dates are conspicuously absent from that long intro, but from the "Old Elamite" section, one would conclude "earliest times" to mean early 3rd millennium? So is that the time of the "traditional federated governmental structure", and if so, how is that known? dab (ᛏ) 15:44, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

style

apart from the problems discussed above, the style is cheesy in some instances. Examples:

• Hammurabi was not to be denied, and Elam was crushed
• Eventually the Elamites rose in rebellion and overthrew the 3rd Ur dynasty, an event long remembered in Mesopotamian dirges
• it was not long before the Elamites were able to gain revenge
• The Elamites under Kidin-Khutran, second king after Untash-Gal, countered with a successful and devastating raid
• Elam was quick to take advantage of this situation
• The next 100 years witnessed the constant attempts of the Elamites to interfere in Mesopotamian affairs
• The Assyrians thought that they had utterly destroyed the Elamite

dab (ᛏ) 15:44, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

let's consult the Encyclopedia Iranica!

for reference: http://www.iranica.com/articles/v8f3/v8f340.html

the extensive article begins with the statement:

For a long time scholars confused Elam with Susiana, equivalent to the plain and lower Zagros foothills in the present Persian province of Khuzestan

it appears that is already the death blow for our present article, i.e. it is conflating two separate cultures. At least, we have to make clear the subtleties of this. Maybe we can speak of an Elamite Empire from 2004, "When the Elamites, in alliance with the people of Susiana, brought an end to the empire of Ur in 2004 B.C.E., they annexed Susiana, where the Epartid, or sukkalmah, dynasty was founded" dab (ᛏ) 15:52, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

---

Praps we could cockaroach, erm, adapt the Encyclopedia Iranica article as an interim fix, and then revise as necessary when the Potts book becomes available to me -- or to anyone else interested in working on this (including the Iranian contingent, if they can focus on "what happened?"). The Potts' book is fairly recent, so it ought to have a good bibliography, which might help resolve some of the puzzles.

I'm also digging up material on ancient Middle Eastern economies and trade routes, which seems to be a hot topic in academia right now. That would put all the material re Elam into some kind of regional focus, particularily if we see the Elamites as mining and trading outposts of the Mesopotamian cultures.

Renaming might be necessary too. But let's see how a rewrite goes, first. Zora 21:42, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The EI article appears very thorough. If we 'adapt' that, I don't think we can aspire to more, and wouldn't need to. I'll browse through it to get a better idea of the subject. dab (ᛏ) 07:33, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1. Both Susiana, The Khuzi, Elam, The Medians, Arrata, and 81 other ethnic groups were and are Iranian. Susiana was a name dubbed by Herodotus and Xenophon.
2. I have the Potts book. I quoted directly out of its chapter 9. Dabs was un-kind enough to erase the section.
3. Contrary to Dab's claims, Elam was in fact spread out over the entire Iranian plateau, not just Khuzestan. We have 19 documented Elamite archeological sites over the Iranian plateau. In fact, Potts even provides a map of the sites.
4. I will likewise delete and rewrite the entire article in a few days to restore the lost accuracy brought by Zora and Dabs. We simply cannot allow historical revisionism to appear on a public encyclopedia.--Zereshk 07:44, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have not removed any content. The section I removed was superfluous, because the same statement was made twice in the article. As for your claims "were and are Iranian" (?), I'll look into it. I am getting the impression that they are "Elamite by definition" in your book. Let's have a look at the II article, and argue based on the information in there (the II is a prime source, we can only aspire to their level). dab (ᛏ) 10:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The "81 ethnic groups" were of course Iranian in the sense of being based in modern-day Iran (well, I think the location of Aratta is disputed, but let's not quibble; they were equally obviously not all Iranian in the linguistic meaning of the term (ie "speakers of Iranian languages".) The Elamite civilization was concentrated in Elam itself, but was certainly spread across the entire Iranian plateau; some sites are as far east as the Afghan border, if I recall rightly. As for "I will likewise delete and rewrite the entire article in a few days to restore the lost accuracy brought by Zora and Dabs" - I find it hard to believe you've even looked at dab's edits, considering their innocuousness. This "tit for tat" attitude is not helpful. - Mustafaa 18:26, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zereshk's revision

Z, you haven't grappled with the problem that, per Potts and EI, Elamite just meant "highlander" to the peoples of the Mesopotamian valley. There's no evidence that the "Elamites" up on the Iranian plateau all shared the same language or culture, and certainly not that there was an Elamite state, or empire, until much later. You can't just ASSUME that they were all one people. The whole basis of the article is in question. Zora 05:28, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Roman Ghirshman, Jaque De Morgan, and other archeologists clearly state "proto-elamites" to be existing in central Iran by 5000BC. And I havent even mentioned "Elamite" remains in Jiroft [5] or Shahr-i Sukhteh in Eastern Iran. I dont know why you so persistently insist on fallacies.--Zereshk 06:38, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ghirshman and De Morgan are antiquated, out-dated sources; Potts and the Encyclopedia Iranica are later, and they both agree that the term "Elamites" was used for people of different cultures and languages. The Jiroft source is a news article -- which, BTW, reports the findings of the principal investigator and then a whole list of eminent archaeologists who think the whole theory is dubious.

Ooh, here's an interesting quote, from a review of Potts:

The theme underlying this work owes much to the critical scrutiny of nationalism and ethnicity current in historical and anthropological studies. What is under study is not just Elam as defined by Mesopotamia, but the "many Elams," both ancient and modern, as well as the processes of transformation and redefinition of Elam. Such analysis is a difficult task: Elam does not invent itself under that name until the early second millennium B.C., although the area has been called Elam by its Western neighbors from the mid-third millennium B.C. Since the concept of Elam was initially and primarily Mesopotamian and any internal unity was at times tenuous and often completely spurious, difficulties arise in definitions and identifications, both temporal and geographical. (August Mcmahon, The Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 121, 2001)

You can't seriously argue that 100-year-old sources, like De Morgan, should be regarded as more authoritative than sources only four or five years old. Zora 08:24, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Prove to me youre not trying to be a RPA (Royal Pain in the Ass), because your monkey wrenches are becoming more ridiculous by the hour:

1. The "news article" you are dismissing so arrogantly, is reporting findings of a joint team with the University of Pennsylvania.
2. Show us where the article says "a whole list of eminent archaeologists who think the whole theory is dubious". Please do. Im dying to see where it says that.
3. Werent you the same person who claimed "Encyclopedia Iranica" to be "outdated" as well?!! :)
4. Potts uses findings of, and bases his arguments on Ghirshman. In fact Ghirshman is quoted 85 times in the Potts book on 35 pages.
5. I suppose with your reasoning, we should throw away Newtonian Physics, since it is hundreds of years old now. lol. :)

Please stop wasting my time Zora. Pick up any Archeology journal and look up Jiroft. I am not going to debate with you about the abundant established existence of Elamite artifacts there anymore. I dont have time to educate you. :) --Zereshk 12:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The "Proto-Elamites" have not been proved to be actually Elamite; see http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P183.PDF . However, the theory that they were is very plausible, and certainly should be mentioned here. - Mustafaa 17:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mustafaa,

I dont think Zora is talking about Proto-Elamites. See her initial statement at the top of this section. She just doesnt agree that the Elamites of Khuzestan were the same as the Elamites on the plateau, even if they did appear later.--Zereshk 11:34, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

First civilizations on earth

The claim that the peoples of the Iranian plateau had one of the first civilizations on earth is unsupported. Are there any cites for this from reputable archaelogical journals and publications? Zora 05:43, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"One of the oldest" is in fact correct. I presented my findings on Sialk last fall at The Society of Architectural Historians southeasten chapter meeting in Knoxville. The 7000 year old Sialk ziggurats predate all 32 known ziggurats of the Middle East. It was fairly sophisticated in construction. It has 1.25 million bricks and still extant seemingly celestially oriented tunnels running thru the largest ziggurat. The glass-encased protected skeletons there have been determined to be of 5500BC. U of Penn has determined the oldest wine to be from The Zagros Mountains, and we know some of the world's first domestication occured there as well. There are several dozens of archeological remains with varying degrees of sophistication on the Iranian plateau dating from 2000BC to 30,000 years ago. The 5000 year old "mesopotamian independent" civilization of Shahr-i Sukhteh has "4 Billion artifacts" [6] alone. So yes, it is well supported in fact: Iran is one of the oldest civilizations on earth. This is not even contested. See "Iranica Antiqua" for more info.--Zereshk 07:26, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quoting yourself is not a reputable archaeological source! All the sources that you give in the Sialk article are from the Iran Cultural Heritage News Agency, which is a government mouthpiece and not a trusted source. You don't cite any excavation reports. I've found online references to a few such reports, but I can't access them, not having access to a major university library. Zora 08:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you're published, quoting yourself should be fair game. But the question is whether we should really lump 5000 years of history under "Elamite Empire", a political entity that lasted for a couple of centuries at best. I.e., peace to your ziggurat, but we are discussing a matter of terminology. By all means, let's do an article about late Neolithic cultures on the Iranian plateau. But saying "Iran is one of the oldest civilizations", or even "Iran is a civilization" is simply mistaken. Iran is a country. We could with the same right claim the Neanderthals for the German Empire. As for "Proto-Elamite", according to EI, the term refers to a writing system in use in the Susiana plain and the Iranian highlands east of Mesopotamia between ca. 3050 and 2900 B.C.E.. "Elam" in archaeology, The archeological use of the term "Elam" is based on a loose unity recognizable in the material cultures of the period 3400-525 B.C.E.. 5000 BC isn't even "proto-Elamite". Civilization is a flexible term, and we can discuss the late neolithic civilizations, but please not under "Elamite". dab (ᛏ) 10:21, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dab:

I see this as a test of your claim of impartiality. Please read the discussion more carefully before attempting to refute me. Zora is not contending the statement: "Iran is one of the oldest civilizations", as you are saying. She is against the statement (in her own words): "the peoples of the Iranian plateau had one of the first civilizations on earth". That's a big difference.--Zereshk 13:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zora:

I am so happy to see you display your ignorance more and more with foolish statements. So foolish in fact, that it makes "the chicken in the pot laugh", as the Persian proverb goes. You dont even make the attempt to find out anything about what youre debating about. But fear not. I am here to educate you (as always):

The Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran (ICHO) is not a "govt mouthpiece". Rather, it is a government affilaited institution in the same way that The Smithsonian Institution was founded by an Act of Congress signed by President James K. Polk on Aug. 10, 1846.

The ICHO is a consortium of Iran's top universities, museums, and professional experts. Every paper, study, or excavation carried out in Iran by western teams since ICHO's inception has been in conjunction with the ICHO, as a joint project. In fact, The ICHO has officially made it clear that they will only permit western teams and scholars to study Iranian sites if projects and studies are carried out jointly with the ICHO. In other words, your Potts source for example, is either based on studies performed jointly with ICHO, or based on previous sources such as Ghirshman, which you so ignorantly dismiss. :)

Well, yes, it's the arm of the government dedicated to archaeology. SO? That doesn't necessarily make it credible. Of course foreign scholars have to work with it, just as they have to work with governments the world over. This is often problematic, with scholars being pressured by their peers not to publish politically embarassing material that might cause the governments in question to revoke excavation permits.

Do you have specific evidence that U Penn, Harvard, U Chicago, and other scholars in Iran are being "pressured" to publish specific archeological results? If not, then I can claim likewise that anything published by the Smithsonian institution is not credible either, because (as stupid as it sounds) it is pressured by The Republican Party. You are making cheap unfounded allegations to score yourself some points in this debate. The Govt of Iran doesnt care about pre-Islamic heritage of Iran one way or the other.--Zereshk 12:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The press releases put out by the CHNA make grand claims that don't seem to be supported by the published scientific articles, at least the ones I've been able to access. But ... I don't think the folks at ICHO are out to dupe the rest of the world; I think their target is the Iranian government itself. By reporting things that play well to other branches of government, they demonstrate that they are burnishing the image of Iran internationally and promoting rah-rah patriotism internally. This quiets the mullahs' suspicion of archeaology (politically linked to the Pahlavis and suppressed for many years after the revolution) and ensures that ICHO can continue doing excavations and inviting foreign scholars. If I were an Iranian archaeologist I might be doing the same thing, telling myself that I had to cooperate with the government journalists in order to get permission to dig, and that it didn't matter much -- because what really counts are the professional journal articles and excavation reports, which the rest of the government will not be reading. Zora 19:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So youre telling us that western Archeologists in Iran are pressured not to publish specific results?! Can you provide us with any reputed document supporting this latest conspiracy theory of yours about the Govt of Iran suppressing Archeologists in Iran?--Zereshk 12:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

At any rate, ICHO is credible enough to receive funding from UNESCO for its work and research. ICHO was formed to promote International collaboration in the study of Iran’s artifacts and history, and experts from Sorbonne, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Nantes, Italy, and Japan, are already working here.--Zereshk 13:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"The claim that the peoples of the Iranian plateau had one of the first civilizations on earth" is quite obviously true. By 3100 BC you have proto-Elamite inscriptions, which I would take as a certain sign of civilization. Their Elamite nature is uncertain; their Iranian plateau provenance is not (see http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P183.PDF, which gives a nice map.) In 3000 BC, the only other civilizations on earth were Mesopotamia and Egypt (Harappa seems to be 2800 BC on.) - Mustafaa 17:18, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The reason I'm reacting as I am is that the "oldest civilization" claim sounds like boasting, and it's not at all clear to me that developments on the Iranian plateau should be viewed in isolation from Mesopotamian civilization. City states develop in Uruk, Eridu, and Larak a thousand years before Anshan (the best cites I have, from the British Museum and the Encyclopedia Iranica, say "end of fourth millenium" for Uruk and "end of third millenium" for Anshan. Also, Iranian plateau sites seem to have been involved in what Gunder-Frank calls "the Uruk world system", or Uruk trade network. EI says:

Mobile pastoralism and agriculture formed the basis of economic life in Elam, but trade and exchange with lowland Mesopotamia, particularly in metals, timber, and various stones, also played a part in the Elamite economy from as early as the 4th millennium B.C.E.

Looking at the rise of city-states on the Iranian plateau in isolation from earlier developments in Mesopotamia, and claiming that they're a separate "civilization" seems to me to be the kind of error that nationalist history fosters. It breaks the connections between things. IF Iraq and Iran were one country today -- let's just imagine that the Sassanids never got overthrown and that descendents of the Sassanids were heading a constitutional monarchy today -- then there'd be no problem with seeing Anshan as an plateau civilization that grew up through emulation of the lowland cities and through trade with them. I have no problem admitting that this happened EARLY, compared to urbanization in much of the rest of the world -- I just don't like seeing it treated as an isolated and independent phenomenon. Zora 19:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Certainly events on the Iranian plateau should not be viewed in isolation from those in Mesopotamia. As so often through history, much of the culture was shared between the two regions, even as other aspects, such as language, differed. How do you count civilizations? They aren't usually discrete entities. Is Sumer and Akkad two civilizations or one? I don't know. But it's clear that, whether it is considered an extension of Mesopotamia or a separate entity, civilization was on the Iranian plateau very early. - Mustafaa 19:56, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zereshk, I'm not Zora, and if you phrase it as "the peoples inhabiting the Iranian plateau", I agree completely, just like Mustafaa. I was arguing that the neolithic cultures of the Iranian plateau are not directly relevant to the "Elamites". Sure, mention them, but let's keep with the EI in restricting use of "Elamite" to 3000-500 BC, and "Proto-Elamite" possibly 3400-3000. Yes, they number among the earliest civilizations, but I suppose their origins cannot be divorced from the remaining early civilizations of the fertile crescent. My suggestion was:

• move this article to Elamite civilization, or better yet just Elamites (i.e. minus the "Empire" claim)
• restrict the time and area treated here to that treated by the EI article
• discuss prehistoric neolithic cultures of the Iranian plateau elsewhere.

that's all, thanks, dab (ᛏ) 17:32, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dab's suggestions seem sensible to me. - Mustafaa 17:39, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK. Zora 19:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So I understand that Dab and Mustafaa's position is (correct me if I'm wrong):

1. They do not accept the Ziggurats at Sialk are "proto-elamite", despite Encyclopedia Britannica's explicit statement: "...The appearance of proto-Elamite tablets in Sialk IV may bear witness to such trade. So also may the appearance of similar proto-Elamite tablets at Tepe Yahya south of Kerman". Considering that both are on the plateau and Sialk predates all Mesopotamian ziggurats.
2. Zora does not accept University of Pennsylvania curator Holly Pittman's claim that the 5000 year old tablet found in Jiroft is "Elamite" in origin. We can contact her about that. I have her email.
3. Zora and Dab do not accept that Iran (with or without The Elamites) was one of the earliest independent (or at least quasi-independent) civilizations on earth. This however should be quite convincing, as it is American and not "Persian nationalist": http://www.sas.upenn.edu/home/SASFrontiers/pittman.html

--Zereshk 13:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• what do you mean by "independent", and what do you mean by "civilization"? For some meanings of the latter term, I can easily agree that the earliest civilizations are aged some 10.000 years. Btu by all means, do say the Elamites are "among the earliest civilizations", I have no problem with that, I was objecting to the term "Empire".
• I do not automatically accept that the Ziggurats at Sialk are "proto elamite" because a proto-elamite tablet was found at "Sialk IV". No explanation of the layers is given on the Sialk article. How is layer IV dated (or, is it a layer, or a site?)? What was the context of the tablet? If the Ziggurat dates to 5000 BC, as you say, and the tablet to post-3500, hm, no, I do not really see a connection. dab (ᛏ) 15:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am happy to accept the Sialk ziggurats as "proto-Elamite"; however, in light of Englund's comment that "de Morgan’s archaeological earth-moving machine sent to the Louvre examples of an evidently very early writing system which, based on a presumed genetic relationship to the later attested Elamite-speaking peoples of the Susiana plain, has been only conventionally named proto-Elamite" and that "“Proto-Elamite” is an artificial term derived from this geographical designation usually used to describe an historical phase in the Susiana plain and the Iranian highlands situated to the east of Mesopotamia generally considered to correspond to the Jemdet Nasr/Uruk III and the ED I periods in Mesopotamia.", what I don't accept is that proto-Elamite can be uncontroversially assumed to be Elamite. Until the script is deciphered, the connection must remain tentative - as indeed is the connection between Sumerian and the earliest Mesopotamian cuneiform. - Mustafaa 21:25, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

what Mustafaa just said, thanks. dab (ᛏ) 07:59, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1. Even Mustafaa's Max Planck Institute study clearly states: "Given later linguistic evidence, it is likely that an indigenous, Elamite-speaking population was living there at the end of the 4th millennium."
2. I didnt put the word Empire in the article.
3. I'm actually OK with the article as it stands now at this time.--Zereshk 10:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

("end of the 4th millennium" means "around 3000 BC"). I'm glad, now that wasn't so hard, was it? We're not such unreasonable chaps as you seem to believe. dab (ᛏ) 10:28, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ah, but my stylistic objections still stand, as well as those to the long intro to the "History" section.

also — The rise of the Achaemenids in the 6th century BC brought an end to the existence of Elam as an independent political power "but not as a cultural entity" (Encyclopedia Iranica, Columbia University).: is it just me, or is there an uncanny reminiscence in this syntax of Lycidas,

But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,

And slits the thin spun life. "But not the praise",

Phœbus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;

how about, "Fair Elam in its flower was put out / by A c h a e m e n e s' abhorrent hordes / who tore its might into the desert sand / "but not its beauty", the C o l u m b i a n sages said.

:o) dab (ᛏ) 10:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nationalism and archaeology

Zereshk and I are at loggerheads as usual. He demands proof that the government of Iran is suppressing or distorting archaeological research.

Suppressing is easy enough to document -- research WAS suppressed during the early years of the current government. See the article already cited, [7]. Since then, archaeology has slowly returned to Iranian universities and a few foreign archaeologists have received excavation permits.

Since I am not an archaeologist and don't have any insider knowledge of the workings of the ICHO, I had to speculate as to the conditions under which the ICHO and the archaeologists (Iranian and foreign) are working. I clearly labeled my speculations as such. I can't prove them. I can't point to any incidents of archaeologists being expelled, or denied excavation permits, in recent years, because I don't personally know of any.

What I have as "proof" is the disjunction between the grandiose claims and enthusiastic nationalism of the press releases from the CHN (Cultural Heritage News Agency) and the dry language of excavation reports. Go to [8] for an example of the kind of thing archaeologists put forward. CHN reports are simply not reliable to the same degree as materials intended for professional consumption. This generally holds true for journalistic reporting of any scholarly activity. Journalist get things wrong because they don't know the field and they're writing under time pressures.

It does seem to me that any archaeologist trying to get government permission to dig in Iran is going to self-censor, to be extremely careful in public and publishing, because the current Iranian government has already shown itself willing to stop archaeology and expel archaeologists.

It isn't just the Iranian government -- many governments are extremely sensitive to anything that might reflect badly on them or their history, and there have been any number of widely-publicized cases of anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists expelled, or even put in jail, for their views.

In 1995, Bulgaria expelled an archaeologist, claiming that he was a "spy". I can't find much information on this online, sorry. See [9].

China has been a major offender in this regard. An anthropologist was expelled for his writing about government birth-control programs, a historian was arrested for "revealing state secrets", and an ethnomusicologist working in Tibet was arrested for "spying" and is still in prison, I believe.

I paid particular attention to the case of the anthropologist, since that's my former field, and what was interesting there was the venom directed at him by many other scholars, for making things difficult for the rest of them. By publishing material that the Chinese government found embarrassing, he was reducing the chances that other scholars would get research permits.

There's now a huge literature out there on nationalism, archaeology, and politics -- I was surprised at how much there was when I started looking for it. Most relevant would probably be:

• Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Lynn Meskell, Routledge, 1998

I've started reading the book through my Questia account. Unfortunately, there aren't any chapters on Iran in the book. But I trust that I've supplied enough information to show that distrust of CHN reports is a rational POV. Zora 23:53, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your argument is erroneous because:

1. You can argue it may apply to Iranian archeologists. But it wont apply to western archeologists working in Iran, because they have no reason to boast about Iran's past heritage. In fact, according to an MIT dissertation printed in the latest edition of ARRIS, it was Arthur Pope who gave Reza Khan the idea of reviving the past glory of Persia as a tool for instigating modern nationalism in Art and politics.
2. Last I recall, ICHO was founded in 2001.
3. Many of the Iranian archeologists working there are not even based in Iran. The Jiroft team is based in France. They dont abide by ICHO standards.
4. IRI's govt doesnt really care about Elamite history. They ignore it altogether. What you say would be true about, say, modern Pahlavi related history.
5. Contrary to your claim, many of the results are in fact corroborated. I'll give an example. CHN report: [10] Max Planck Institute report on same subject (Decimal System of Elamites): [11] Like I said, studies are jointly carried out by ICHO and western teams. To discredit ICHO would be to discredit everyone else.
6. UNESCO thinks ICHO is credible enough. Thus I see your argument as a mere attempt to dismiss the evidence Im providing to illustrate a point. I recall you doing the same thing with Qom vis a vis the Shi'as. It's your style of polemics I have come to be familiar with.--Zereshk 10:51, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zereshk, we seem to have problems with the estimation of the value of sources. Often you quote something and say, "See, that proves it!" and then I say that the source isn't necessarily reliable. At which point you get upset. Then perhaps I dig and find something I do think is reliable, which proves your point, and you think, "She was just dissing my source to be difficult, coz it was proved right". If a source is right 50% of the time, that doesn't make it a reliable source! It just means that there's a 50% probability that the source is right. If a CHN press release is backed up by a German academic paper, it doesn't mean that the CHN press releases are always right. I'll believe them when they're backed up by academic sources, not before.

This applies to you too. What makes you think your sources are right all the time? The fact that it seems right once?--Zereshk 09:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Frex, two CHN press releases you cite in your Sialk article contradict each other. One press release says that the ziggurat there is 2,800 years old and it's the oldest in the world. I think they must mean 2,800 BCE. Clearly, no archaeologist proofread that article! Another press release says that it's nearly 5000 years old (which would make it older than the ziggurat of Ur, dated 2113-2096 BCE). But the Ur ziggurat is precisely dated by cuneiform inscriptions, and we have just a guess for Sialk. We would need pottery sequences, dendrochronology, carbon dating, etc., to really pin down a date.

Somehow, Zereshk, you read those two press releases as showing that the Sialk ziggurat is 7500 years old! Which claim is enshrined in the Sialk article to this day, and worse yet, repeated endlessly by all the sites that mirror Wikipedia. That's why I'm being such a pain in the ass. Zora 11:32, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

agree with Zora, when we say your sources are bad, we don't mean your statements are false, we mean they are worthless, and could be either true or false, until verified. dab (ᛏ) 12:21, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Im not going to debate this with you. Your persistence on ignorance is annoying. It is established fact that Sialk predates any Ziggurat in Mesopotamia. And I didnt make this statement. I only reported it. I can provide several sources verifying this. But why should I? You will accuse that they are either "outdated", "govt propaganda", "Persian nationalist", "copyvioed", or some other fucked up pretext to dismiss the source. Therefore I put the burden of proof on you, not me. Go to a library and look up Sialk. Yes, the 2800 was 2800BC, a typo. Iran's govt hardly provides funding for ICHO. There are no proofreaders. The ICHO website is hardly functioning at all. Your western ethnocentric attitude disgusts me. What makes you think you can judge and choose what is Iranian history, more than 1000s of Iranian experts? What makes you so sure your views are not politically motivated as opposed to "nationalist" Iranian archeologists?--Zereshk 09:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Title of this article

Reading over this discussion, I will avoid most of the argument here, except to say that I largely agree with Zora, Mustafaa, and dab. That said, I find the title of this article very problematic. An article on the Elamites in general should not be located at Elamite Empire, in that this term is rarely used, and even when it is used it cannot be used to encompass the entire history of the Elamite peoples. May I suggest a move to Elamites or to Elam (with the current Elam article moved to Elam (disambiguation))? john k 00:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I concur. - Mustafaa 00:29, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I do too. I won't make the move, since I seem to be a controversial figure, but I trust someone else will do it. We also need articles on Proto-Elamite and Neolithic settlements on the Iranian central plateau. Last title is a working title only. If we go with Neolithic, then we'd probably need a Bronze age settlements on the Iranian central plateau article as well. Zora 00:35, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Moving this article to Elam makes a lot of sense to me. It is the most popular English name of the nation that is the subject of the article. Tom Radulovich 06:52, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Given that the disambigs on Elam at present are mostly for things that are in some way relate to the Elamites, with the exception of the personal names are various minor Biblical figures, I'm going to move the page there. john k 06:57, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have completed the move to Elam. john k 07:02, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I never put up that title for the article for people to disagree with me on. The debate has significantly deviated from where and what it started on. At the time being, I think the article is fine. Though I do wonder what SC would say.--Zereshk 11:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh bl--dy h-ll

I just discovered that much of the current text is a copyvio. Take a look at this reference: [12].

I went back through the older versions of the Elamite Empire article and found that it was evolving fairly reasonably (from my POV) until 25 Jan 2005, when Zereshk added his picture of a 7500 year-old-ziggurat and inserted a sentence re Iran's oil-rich province Khuzestan. He also asserted that the Elamites were an Alpine people who had migrated from Europe. A long controversy followed, with EmilyZilch opposing the Alpine claim and suggesting that Zereshk had misunderstood a source that claimed the Elamites were alpine (from the mountains -- in this case, the Zagros mountains). The Alpine claim disappeared, but the Sialk ziggurat stayed. Then on 21 Apr 2005 Amir85 added the copyvio text from allempires.com, and Zereshk added the Iranian history template. First he put the Iranian template AFTER the Mesopotamian one, and then he switched them, putting the Iranian first. Then on 5 May 2005 Zereshk added the introductory quotes re the Elamites being Iran's first empire.

The discovery that large chunks of the text are copyvios should provide additional incentive to rewrite. Zora 12:13, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Stop making these ridiculous and absurd accusations against Zereshk. If you had even bothered to read the first discussion here, I was the one asserting the Alpine character of the Elamites (I added this in the first place). I also believe I was the one who added the sentence about Khuzestan being an oil-rich province. Zereshk had nothing to do with that. I allowed the Alpine reference to be removed because I didn't have the relevant texts on hand. I have to get back to it at some point. And mind you, there is no misunderstanding on my part concerning the definition of 'Alpine' in the context that I used, i.e. ethnic background. It is a common enough theory that the Elamites were of Alpine Mediterranean stock. Once I gather up my sources on this, I will add the relevant data. SouthernComfort 12:54, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'd have to check the article history again to be sure, but it seemed to me that the first appearance of the Alpine claim and the oil-rich sentence were in one of Zereshk's edits. But I could be wrong, or the history could be corrupted. I have been known to be wrong before. Zora 12:59, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the history. Zereshk didn't become involved with this article until January 25th 2005. Those edits were added in July of 2004 by an anon editor (myself). So you are definitely wrong. SouthernComfort 17:35, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

oh man, I should have known, the text looked much too unwikified. Can we just do brief summaries of the copivio parts for now? Can we keep the king list? (i.e. is it verifiable?) Was any content removed with the copivio addition? How annoying. dab (ᛏ) 12:19, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Even if there is copyvio text (I haven't checked allempires yet, but I will), that only requires that the relevant sections be rewritten, not the entire article, and certainly not Zereshk's additions (which look perfectly fine to me). SouthernComfort 12:49, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

---

Earlier versions of the article were much more tentative, said the term Elamites probably refered to several languages and cultures, said status of proto-Elamites wasn't clear, etc. So it was more accurate earlier, and got simplified. A lot of what is wrong now was introduced with the allempires text.

I dunno how much of the copyvio text can or should be saved, since so much of it is inaccurate. Frex, Potts says that the bit re the nephew inheriting is a misunderstanding. Elamite kings, like the Egyptian ones, married their sisters, so their offspring were both their sons and their nephews.

I can't rewrite now, it's late and I'm tired. The king list should be verifiable through the Encyclopedia Iranica, which is a better source than allempires. Zora 12:59, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

SC, you are just needlessy aggressive. "rewriting" means, trimming and re-organizing, keeping the good bits, including the good bits by Zereshk. What is the problem? There are good parts in the article, but the entire thing needs major changes, if we want to end up with a good, flowing text, and not bits pieced together by this or that editor that needed to be left alone not to offend anybody. I am not aware of any pov problems, at this point. We have copyvio, stylistic and ToC problems. No need for anybody to be defensive. dab (ᛏ) 13:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

plus, of course, we need fact-checking, good references, and we should really work through that IE article to check what we have missed so far. dab (ᛏ) 13:05, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think that there are POV problems, but I'm not going to fuss with them until AFTER the major rewrite. If they still exist then, which they may not. Zora 13:28, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Copyvio and proposed rewrites

Dab, my tone is not directed towards you. I believe that the intro and section The Elamite Legacy as well as the chronology (this list might need to be verified just in case) are fine and should not be rewritten. I do not want to see them deleted needlessly, and we both agree that there are no POV problems (though I do disagree with Zora's section on histiography and nationalism, but I have no objection to leaving it in if others have no problem). What's left are the sections Old Elamite Period, Middle Elamite Period, and Neo-Elamite Period, as well as perhaps bits of the History intro which preceeds those three sections. I believe that what exactly is copyvio should be clearly identified as such here (in the discussion area) so that proposed rewrites can then be made with proper sourcing (i.e. which text is saying what exactly). And then the rewrites may be applied to the relevant sections. This is not a difficult task, but it will probably be a bit time consuming and I feel it is important that drastic changes should not be made without proper communication from the editors involved. SouthernComfort 17:35, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we need to negotiate every detail in TALK before making any changes. If each sentence is negotiated as a separate clause of the treaty, you end up with a splintered, unreadable mess, and it takes forever too. Both you and Zereshk have rewritten articles with no previous discussion at all. Allow other editors the same discretion. Zora 20:33, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Who said anything about negotiating every detail? This is on a section-by-section basis. In this case, there are three sections where there is allegedly copyvio text, which I have mentioned above. I haven't checked allempires.com yet as I haven't had time, but if this is the case, then these three sections will have to rewritten based on actual source material so that everything is verified to be okay and that any blanks may then be filled in the process. But first it is important to pinpoint exactly what is copyvio in those sections and what is not, because there is material in the history intro which is not copyvio. I'll have quite a bit of free time tomorrow to spend in the library and gather up material for these three sections. At any rate, this article could certainly stand to use more detail and there are several excellent sources that have not yet been accessed by other editors. SouthernComfort 22:08, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zora and Dab,

I dont recall claiming anything about Alpine people. Please provide date and time of such edits to refresh my memory. In fact, Im not even the primary author of the original Elamite Empire article. I only added one section with minor various additions, after Zora commenced her anti-Iranian campaign here. So your Copyvio accusation is just an empty accusation to throw another monkey wrench at me. Obviously, Zora still seems to be unhappy even after Dab and Mustafaa's edits. But then again that is understandable, because Zora didnt succeed in erasing the Iranian identity of The Elamites off the article, which is the primary incentive for her driving this endless edit war. Im surprised that Dab still refuses to acknowledge her childish editorial unprofessionalism.--Zereshk 09:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zereshk, I'm sorry if I misread the history of the article and thought that you were the one who made the "Alpine" argument. I know that SC was arguing with EmilyZilch, but I figured it was just SC supporting you. I apologized to SC and I'll apologize to you. I do have a history with you two. I think I have good reason to feel tetchy. Nonetheless, I am trying to do the right thing, and that means telling you guys if you're right about something, or apologizing if I've made a mistake. I don't always succeed, but I'm trying to do the right thing. Please recognize that. Zora 10:14, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I also agree with SC that Zora must provide exact reference to which sentences are coyvios. Also we must consider that many sources on the web get their stuff off of Wikipedia. So it may in fact not be a Copyvio at all.--Zereshk 09:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about the alpine thing, and frankly I don't care. Zora's copyvio "accusations" are not directed against you, and you're just being obstructive now. The case is obvious, look at the history. Anyway, it is not your material that has to be removed, but the uncontroversial (?) "history" part. You could help rephrasing the stuff. Show some good faith, for god's sake, man. dab (ᛏ) 09:26, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Im sorry to see you taking sides Dab. You call me obstructionist while supporting Zora's obvious lie: "A long controversy followed, with EmilyZilch opposing the Alpine claim and suggesting that Zereshk had misunderstood a source that claimed the Elamites were alpine (from the mountains -- in this case, the Zagros mountains)." I never even debated EmilyZilch about the Alpine thing. I never even wrote the Alpine thingy. We never even talked. She (EmilyZilch) never even wrote me once. Cant you see Zora's taking this personally?

And yes, I am ready to rephrase any problematic copyvios. Zora isnt! She insists on total rewrites. She always does!!! deleting entire sections, and rewriting the whole article. That's me and SC's problem with Zora!!!!--Zereshk 09:53, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

okay look, the Zereshk-Zora dispute seems mainly based on personal dislike by now. I don't want to go into this. Likewise I have no interest if there was some misunderstanding of "alpine" in the past. I am only interested in the present article, and how we can improve it. The present article contains copyvios. It doesn't matter how they ended up here (except for purposes of establishing that they are, in fact, copyvios). I just want to see them gone. Let's just all calm down and try to improve the atmosphere here. And then address the facts one by one. dab (ᛏ) 09:59, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

and I do, in fact, support a major rewrite. Not from a particular pov, of course, but this article has issues (both factual and stylistic). dab (ᛏ) 10:00, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, let Zora provide exact reference to which sentences are copyvios. We will rephrase them. I'm fine with a rephrase as long as Zora does not knock out everything with a total rewrite and omit pertinent info. I'll watch for that.--Zereshk 09:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

the entire "History" section was. She gave you the link. Please base your rewrite on the IE article, that's a perfectly good academic source, and classes better than any other online reference I have seen. I have started with the "History" intro. dab (ᛏ) 10:39, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

scope

ok, this article (as discussed above) is supposed to treat the time from 2700 BC to 539 BC, only. I created Proto-Elamite to deal with the preceding culure at Susa. A writeup on the Proto-Elamite script is needed. dab (ᛏ) 10:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll work on the Proto-Elamite script. I've already started rewriting Elamite language -- won't finish tonight, it's 1 AM here in Honolulu and I'm fading. Zora 11:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Dang it, I'm still up. DB, Potts says that Elam might have been an upland kingdom, centered in Anshan, which conquered Susa later. Kings of Elam called themselves Kings of Anshan and Susa, may have used them as summer and winter capitals (like later Persian practice). Then Indo-European tribes started pushing against Elam, pushed them down into Susa. At least that's the story I got from Potts, need to reread it. Also EI. So inaccurate to say that Elam was centered on Susa always. True of later period only. Zora 12:40, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note that I havent even touched Elamite Language as of this time. I'm wondering what the pretext for changing that article is.--Zereshk 12:45, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

wtf Z, are you paranoid or what? She is working on it, because it is unfinished. Or are you just trolling? This is ridiculous. dab (ᛏ) 14:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

She stated that she was going to rewrite it. That's a hell of a big difference than adding to it. What's ridiculous is your last insinuation (the "troll" comment), which is totally uncalled for. You really want to discuss who is the one trolling - after all, you yourself stated that you know nothing of the "conflict" with Zora and that you are not interested. Then don't take sides (thus involving yourself) and start attacking one party while ignoring the other. SouthernComfort 16:47, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I rewrite articles all the time. I've done major revisions of Qur'an, Hadith, Muhammad, Clothing, Haute couture, Bollywood, Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, and many others. Most people thank me for it. Zora 20:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is perfectly alright to rewrite articles, if they can be improved, of course keeping the valuable information, possibly rearranging it for better flow. This is just business as usual. From Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages:

For the most part, the instinctive desire of an author to "own" what he or she has written is counterproductive here, and it is good to shake up that emotional attachment by making sweeping changes at will when it improves the result. And of course, others here will boldly and mercilessly edit what you write. Don't take it personally. They, like all of us, just want to make Wikipedia as good as it can possibly be.

(emphasis mine). I.e. only rewrite if it results in an improvement, but if it does, do it. dab (ᛏ) 08:53, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Zora's rewrites dont help at all, because she always ends up deleting massive chunks of info, replcing it with her own POVd material.--Zereshk 17:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. All of Zora's edits I have seen are useful and in good faith. If you think differently, collect diffs and open an rfc and see what other people think. dab (ᛏ) 18:19, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A word on sources

Zereshk asked me why I trusted MY sources and not his. Um, I was taught not to trust anything. Everyone has a POV. Cultural assumptions, projects, limited knowledge, whatever. History is all about weighing and balancing the sources, seeing how they fit together, confirm each other, contradict each other, etc. That's why history is so much a matter of interpretation -- the person doing the weighing and balancing also has assumptions, projects, and limited knowledge. As an example -- I read an unpublished dissertation on the history of Khuzestan and I regard it as generally reliable. The author had no obvious axe to grind, and he seemed sensible and diligent. However ... since so much of his dissertation was based on government correspondence, you have to wonder what he missed that was happening "on the ground", so speak, outside government view. I don't think that knowing more about such matters would change the general outline of events, but it might change one's interpretation. So we'd have to consider the manuscript as useful ... as far as it goes. It's not the whole truth. We'll never have the whole truth. Zora 12:51, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hamazi, Awan?

From what I've been researching, beside Susin and Anshan, there were early Elamite kingdoms at Hamazi and Awan that feuded with Mesopotamian city states, sometimes even supplanting them. Could someone please put these names into the history section? Thanks Codex Sinaiticus 15:40, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

BCE

sigh, is this the beginning of another "BCE war"? The whole article was just uglified with about 50 BCE tags. The manual of style doesn't tell you to prefer BCE. It tells you to leave it alone, and only edit for consistency. I don't care enough to change it back, but it is a really really silly thing, and using BCE all over the place flies in the face of the "common usage" doctrine. dab (ᛏ) 30 June 2005 11:56 (UTC)

I didnt make any AD-->CE changes, but I support its usage. I favor CE/BCE over AD/BC because it promotes ecumenical standards. And if we're going to be talking about "common usage", then perhaps we should recognize that the following organizations are using the BCE/CE system:

1. The History Channel [13]
2. Jewish Virtual Library [14]
3. PBS [15]
4. The Israeli Government [16]
5. Johns Hopkins University [17]
6. Columbia University [18]
7. Fordham University [19]
8. University of California Davis [20]
9. US Naval Observatory [21]
10. Weber State University [22]
11. San Diego State University [23]
12. Judaism Online [24]
13. Iran Chamber Society [25], since this page is about the history of Iran.
14. Christian Travel Study Programs [26]
15. Ask Asia [27]
16. The National Library of Medicine [28]
17. NASA [29]
18. The University of Victoria [30]
19. The US Library of Congress [31]
20. California Academy of Sciences [32]
21. UCLA National Center for World History in Schools [33] explicitly mentioning their preference.
22. University of Haifa, Israel [34]
23. The Smithsonian Institution Center for Education [35]
24. American Jewish Historical Society [36]
25. Danforth Mennonite Church [37]
26. The Royal Ontario Museum [38]
27. Religious Tolerance.org (the Internet's highest volume site on religious subjects) [39]

Style Guides approving CE/BCE system:

1. Ostracon [40]
2. American Journal of Philology [41]
3. Nova Southeastern University [42]
4. Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha [43]
5. Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus [44]
6. Topia The Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies [45]
7. The Anglican Episcopal Diocese of Maryland [46]
8. The Chicago Manual of Style (see ninth question) [47]

--Zereshk 30 June 2005 12:12 (UTC)

no need to regurgitate that endless dispute here. That AD/BC is more widespread is undisputed, but some people favour CE because it is allegedly more "politically correct". Fact is that it was changed unilaterally on this article, against policy, and it could be changed back and forth childishly another 100 times, just like on other articles. So, is it policy that the more stubborn party gets their way? dab (ᛏ) 30 June 2005 12:17 (UTC)

Actually, what I did do was 100% in accordance with policy (or rather, the guidelines of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers))) - that is to say, to ensure that the article consistently uses one, single dating convention. I had thought Codex put aside his animosity towards me, but I guess not, as he still assumes bad faith and is being disingenuous - and is perhaps attempting to engage me in a revert war, considering the final outcome of the recent arbitration. I believe that there is a general agreement amongst most editors involved here (and in Iran-related articles in general) that BCE/CE is the preferred convention (and the article used BCE/CE beforehand). I appreciate Zereshk's comments, and it would be much appreciated if other editors would chime in here. SouthernComfort 30 June 2005 21:37 (UTC)

Guys what a silly little dispute. Just to clarify policy, BCE is considered more neutral by encyclopedic standards and respects the sensativities of all editors. Therefore BCE and CE should be used on Wikipedia. Thanks.--Anonymous editor June 30, 2005 19:37 (UTC)

I agree with SC as well, as I stated above.--Zereshk 30 June 2005 19:39 (UTC)

It's disappointing that no sooner has SC been told not to go making these unilateral changes, that he goes to make one. It's also disappointing that he prefers to go politicking rather than writing articles in a language our readers will understand. The standard amongst our readers is crystal clear - and Codex is unsurprisingly astonished at what SC has done, as is Dab. And so SC to claim that there's a general agreement here when Codex quite clearly disagrees is quite simply a lie, jguk 30 June 2005 20:18 (UTC)

I made no unilateral changes. The article consistently used BCE/CE before Dab made his changes, and he didn't ensure consistency (i.e. his edits used BC, but he did not change the rest of the article (from BCE), therefore making the article inconsistent). I suggest that Jguk and others stop making false accusations in provoking a senseless revert war. In addition, last time I checked Jguk has not been involved with this article and he would do well to abide by ArbCom's decision to not go around reverting senselessly. SouthernComfort 30 June 2005 21:02 (UTC)

I would just like to note that, as a non-religious Jew, I am deeply offended by the idea that it is somehow "ecumenical" to use a Christian calendar, but to call it the "Common Era" instead of the "Year of Our Lord." Whatever we call the era system pales next to the fact that it is a dating system derived from the date which some early Christian chronographer decided was the year of the Birth of Christ. I would suggest that we use a religiously neutral calendar, such as the Seleucid Era, or the Era from the Founding of the City of Rome, throughout wikipedia, in order to avoid offending any religious group. john k 30 June 2005 21:00 (UTC)

I take it your comment is tongue in cheek. On a serious point though, moving things (even slightly) to BCE has caused serious offence with questions asked in both chambers of the New South Wales parliament, angry letters to newspapers, emergency and reassuring statements put out by government bodies that they are not about to go for a wholesale change, and much else consternation wherever it has been introduced (at least outside North America). If we don't want to alienate vast swathes of people (and potential readers) we should leave things at BC/AD, jguk 30 June 2005 21:57 (UTC)

By the way, anonymous editor, it is simply not true that our policy is to use BCE and CE. Note articles 1 BC, 2 BC, 3 BC, 4 BC, [[5 BC}], 6 BC, 7 BC, 8 BC, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. As long as all those articles persist, there is clearly an (uncodified) preference on wikipedia for use of BC/AD rather than BCE/CE. john k 30 June 2005 21:05 (UTC)

This is true. The WP manual of style permits both, but states that articles should be consistent, i.e. there should be no mixed use of BCE/CE and BC/AD in a single article. SouthernComfort 30 June 2005 21:12 (UTC)

• My reason for reverting to BC is mainly because I really don't like the way the "politically correct" / BCE crowd tries to ram "consensus" down everyone's throat. Wikipedia works through consensus, and if you do anything, anything at all on wikipedia without a true consensus beforehand, chances are it's going to get reverted. If you don't know what consensus means, look it up. It doesn't mean having a majority. It means having NO opposition. It's like when the speaker of a parliamentary body says "Without opposition, so ordered". If even ONE member of that body speaks up and voices opposition, then they have to go through some more procedure first and you can't just say "without opposition, so ordered" because that would be a lie, and a violation of parliamentary procedure. But here you have a situation where there is CLEARLY NO CONSENSUS -- and yet one side is taking steps and pretending there is a consensus. That's what I mean by "Unilateral".

Pretending there is consensus when there is not, is a recognisable hallmark feature of certain totalitarian systems that have fallen by the wayside, like Soviet Marxism and National Socialism, and maybe even a few governments of today, but it's never going to work on wikipedia, because it is truly global, and not controlled by any one interest. So that's a little part (but not all) of the reason why I remain a staunch opponent of the PC-BCE/CE nonsense. Codex Sinaiticus 30 June 2005 22:30 (UTC)

Consensus does in fact mean having a majority. Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of The English Language defines Consensus as: Majority of Opinion. If this were not so, nothing could be written on Wikipedia, since there is always some bored little loser who has nothing better to do but to oppose what's on the page for the sake of opposing it.--Zereshk 1 July 2005 00:00 (UTC)

I still don't think anyone can speak of a consensus in this particular case, by any stretch. What attempt of any kind whatsoever has been made by anyone, to establish 'consensus' here? None, that I can see. If even any attempt had been made, I wouldn't be making much fuss about 'BCE'... The attempts to reach consensus at the wiki-level have only established that a slight majority of users with a preference, voted for the much more familiar BC... (Latest vote totals at Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/BCE-CE_Debate/Votes: 103 to 89...) So if anyone can claim a 'consensus' by your definition, it should be myself on behalf of the majority of readers. Codex Sinaiticus 1 July 2005 00:30 (UTC)

ok, I apologize. I realize I had made some unilateral changes myself. Note that "BCE" certainly doesn't respect my (aesthetic) sensibilities (I'm not a Christian). AD doesn't expand to "in the year of our Lord" any more than "viz." expands to "videlicet" in English. It's just a conventional, iconic abbreviation. But I accept BCE, with a sigh, no point in spending too much energy over this. This (American?) vice of putting "political correctness" over sense or style gets my goat every time. dab (ᛏ) 1 July 2005 08:31 (UTC)

Which came first, BC or BCE???

history of dating systems in Elam from article History

• 6 Apr 2003: article created; no dates appear
• 14 Dec 2003: first version with any dates (BC)
• 1 Mar 2004: New edits use BCE for 1st time, alongside older material with BC.. Term "CE" also appears (in reference to Sassanids, since Elam didn't exist by AD times)
• 23 Jan 2005: Someone attempted to convert all BCE / CE dates to BC / AD, to be consistent with oldest material.
• 14 Mar 2005: Someone else attempted to change everything to BCE and CE. (but missing about half, resulting in a mixed format)
• 21 Apr 2005: Massive rewrite of much of article, new material mostly in BCE, but in one case, another BC is added.
• 21 May 2005: SC changes all BCs into BCE, sparking first "edit war"

So much for claims that "BCE was used first in the article"...

Summary:

6 Apr '03-14 Dec '03, no dates (c. 9 months)

14 Dec '03-1 Mar '04, BC only (c. 2.5 months)

1 Mar '04-23 Jan '05, mixed format (c. 11 months)

23 Jan '05-14 Mar '05, BC (c. 1.5 months)

14 Mar '05-21 May '05, mixed format (c. 2.5 months)

21 May '05 - edit wars begin

btw, I notice that Wetman's edits of 24 Jun '04 are highly interesting and relevant; I wonder why none of this info has been retained???

Also, the "Alpine stuff" first came in on 7 July '04 by an anonymous editor... ;o)

Regards, Codex Sinaiticus 30 June 2005 23:33 (UTC)

As agreed, I am not going to revert to BC so long as the BCE list is longer. But the above list accurately shows BCE cannot be called 'original', and that BC was never completely removed before 5-21. We should improve the article; there are many previous versions to be gone over, with relevant facts that have dropped out of the current deficient version; someone needs to reincorporate some of them, IMHO. Codex Sinaiticus 10:34, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Potts's usage

I was going to roundly trump the BC/AD advocates by saying "See, Potts, a major modern reference, uses BCE/CE". But a glance at the first chapter of his book (available on the web -- I'm still waiting for the physical book to arrive) shows that he uses BC/AD <g>.

I certainly prefer the BCE/CE usage. However, I'm willing to go with a consensus -- IF people can bring themselves to look for a consensus rather than bringing the edit war here. Since I'm still waiting for Potts, I haven't worked on a rewrite, but perhaps it's possible to write the article to show that two dating systems are currently in use. That might help readers, who would encounter BOTH if they started reading real paper books on the subject. Zora 1 July 2005 07:41 (UTC)

sure, I agree it's not worth edit-warring over this. but "two dating systems"?? You do realize of course, that we are talking about one single dating system, namely count of years from the birth of Jesus, as calculated in the 6th century AD (i.e. independent of modern estimates of Jesus' year of birth, we use the 6th century calculation of "AD", by convention). The dispute is only about which abbreviation for one and the same concept should be used. It's not like people are suggesting switching over to the Hijra count, or the French revolutionary calendar, just because we happen to count years in a Christianity-related way. So, give me a break. "AD" is just as Christian as "2005", i.e. both Christian in origin, but by now entirely secularized and conventional. dab (ᛏ) 3 July 2005 13:29 (UTC)

As it seems that there is not consensus support for SouthernComfort's change, this article should change back to where it was before he made his change - which after all was using the terminology used most commonly around the world anyway, jguk 3 July 2005 17:27 (UTC)

Jguk, I suggest you stop trying to provoke a revert war and adhere to the ArbCom decision, and also stop implying that I made unilateral changes. Before I made changes to ensure consistency, the article was of mixed use, i.e. both BC and BCE. So your accusation is meaningless. SouthernComfort 4 July 2005 01:29 (UTC)

Consensus

Codex, if you want to claim that there is no consensus for BCE in this article, then at the same time, there is no consensus for BC either. When the article was almost entirely rewritten a few months ago, the usage was BCE and no one had any problems or disputed it. Much later on, Dab made rewrites which used BC. The article thereafter became inconsistent, using both BC and BCE. I changed Dab's edits to BCE to ensure consistency with the rest of the article. Now you and Jguk (who isn't even involved with this subject matter) claim that there is no consensus for BCE in this article. Both of you have also made false accusations against me, and both of you continue to accuse me of "unilateral changes." I suggest you cease making such claims, which can only amount to personal attacks and harassment due to their false nature.

The only solution that I can see is to return to mixed use and open up an RfC, which I will do (or if someone else would like to initiate one right now) if this continues and we can let others comment on this. SouthernComfort 4 July 2005 03:27 (UTC)

I admit that that's what happened. I guess I refused to use the crappy "BCE" abbreviation. The point is, what does it tell us that the article was using BCE before I came along? Half of it was a copyvio anyway, and the other half was hacked together by edit-warring. I started a substantial rewrite of the history section, replacing the copyvio, so arguably my use is the 'original' use. But basing such a decision on the editing history is a sad state anyway. I still don't get why people would object to "BC"? Is it because Jesus was born in 6 BC, and they don't like the paradox? Or is it because they want to obscure that the numbers refer to the birth of Jesus? For all I care, they could refer to the birth of Linus Thorvalds, it's just a convention, for crying out loud, explicable by European history (and both the English language, and the concept of an encycolpedia are intrinsically European, live with it), you don't need to be a Christian to admit that the "Common Era" counts years from the birth of Jesus, what gives? Anyway, I won't interfere with this. My contributions, if I continue working on the history section, will use BC, but you are free to change it to and fro as much as you like. dab (ᛏ) 4 July 2005 07:46 (UTC)

• Yes, "BCE" is unsightly, and it is an eyesore that ruins the whole feel of the page, as well as a monument to the preposterous lengths that the "politically correct" crowd routinely obliges everyone else to go to, for the sake of their militant animosity to centuries of convention...

I suppose the reason BC is "politically incorrect" is because of the very fact that the C stands for Christ, whom I guess we're all supposed to be pretending didn't exist; and so, since that C is just too much of an unpleasant reminder of Christ for a very small number of people, everyone else is supposed to bend over backwards in order to accomodate that minority, by adding the qualifying, modern, hip, existentialist, groovy "E" to the end of it, just to signal how "sensitive" we all are to their politically correct "needs"... The whole thinking here is just plain retarded, if you ask me...

I suspect that a few Iranians must be taking up this cause, not out of any contempt for Christ, but rather out of their great and passionate love for Judaism, since as the article Common Era makes plain, it is they who pioneered the brilliant innovation of sticking the useful and informative E at the end of every BC date...

The truth is, I do not object to BCE half as much as I object to the underhanded methods the "politically correct" revisionists have used to achieve this end - proclaiming "consensus" without a word of discussion, even when the majority of users of all stripes have clearly indicated they are more comfortable with "BC", they assume in a rather paternalistic manner that they "know" what is "good for" us better than we do, and they're damn well going to insist that everyone follow their standard like it or not, not suffering any BC to stand alone without that little qualifying "E" that makes them feel so much better about themselves. If anything like proper procedure had been followed here, I could probably learn to accept BCE, or at least live with it... But due process has been shoved aside, and instead we have a tiny politburo that has "determined" that only BCE is henceforth acceptable, so that's what everyone else must use and shut up about it... That's what really gets me riled up... Codex Sinaiticus 4 July 2005 21:00 (UTC)

It really doesn't help to settle this particular argument to drag in a conspiracy theory about a PC "politburo" oppressing everyone else. Let's focus on making an article that is accurate and useful to readers who just want some information. Zora 4 July 2005 21:29 (UTC)

Will you people ever stop this quarreling? Both Christ and Mohammad's faiths have led to nothing but war and misery for this planet. Me, SC, and Dab agreed that we wont insist on the BC/AD-BCE/CE thing. As long as it's consistent, it's fine with us, one way or the other. Me and SC prefer CE/BCE, Dab prefers AD/BC, but all 3 of us dont wish to push this fruitless discussion any further.

Unilateral

I am beginning to think SC has no understanding about what the word "unilateral" means either. It means (literally) "one sided". There are two sides, one side acts without waiting to establish consensus with, or ignoring, the other side, then that change is said to be 'unilateral'. I have no idea what you "think" it means, but that is precisely what has happened here (beginning on May 21 '05). As my research into the article history, that I shared, has shown, at no time before that date was the article entirely in "BCE" (sic) -- it was always either "BC-only", or "mixed". There is clearly a difference between two opinions here; it is no good to try to minimize or pretend that one side or the other consists of only one editor, when clearly both positions enjoy multiple support of at least 3 editors. It's exactly like, say, the US Congress, when they speak of actions that are "bilateral" (enjoying broad, majority support from members of both major parties) or "unilateral" (actions taken by only one party without consent of the other, presumably that one party has enough votes to form a majority to be able to do so)... The big difference here is we haven't even established any agreed "majority" in this case...

• I don't know of any easy way to arbitrate such a situation, but here is the only proposal I think of: We could have a special "sign-up" section here on the talk page, where any editors can sign their names to the bottom of two lists: one for BC, one for BCE. At any given time when one list has more "signatures", everyone would agree to abide by that usage if someone reverts to it. But at any such time as the other list grows longer by one, it would also have to be agreed that that usage would be entitled to prevail so long as its list remains longer. Can anyone think of a fairer way to establish "consensus" and get out of this mess?

I'd just say something like, "Since Potts, one of the major recent references in the field, uses the BC/AD date convention, this article will use BC/AD for the sake of simplicity. However, readers consulting other articles or books may see the BCE/CE convention used. See Common Era for an explanation of the conventions involved." Zora 7 July 2005 08:14 (UTC)

Potts is one reference. He is not the only authority, and others use BCE/CE (which has become standard in the field of Near Eastern studies). The problem with such an argument is that one could use it to make changes to all other articles using BCE/CE (e.g. all the books I've read on such-and-such a topic use BC/AD, so let's use that instead since it's easier to understand for everyone). If this is article is to use BC, it should be used because there is a general agreement amongst editors here to use such a convention. SouthernComfort 7 July 2005 09:58 (UTC)

• Oh, and Zeresh, I don't know what makes you think you are the right to say "Both Christ and Mohammad's faiths have led to nothing but war and misery for this planet" when I assure you this antagonistic statement is quite wrong. Their so-called "followers" may indeed be responsible for their share of war and misery, but overall, they have led to much greater social advances for the planet; if you have any doubt, just look at how much more war and misery and cruelty there was before these faiths, in "pagan" times when everyone prayed to statues. Nothing like a "United Nations" or a "Bill of Rights" would have been remotely conceivable in 640 BC, when Ashurbanipal sowed the fields of Susan with salt. Food for thought. Codex Sinaiticus 7 July 2005 07:27 (UTC)

Everybody's thought-food is different. The Opium of the Mind (especially if it is institutionalized) is a discussion we could pursue perhaps at some other time. --Zereshk 8 July 2005 16:44 (UTC)

Original

Codex, if you're going to revert to the BC version, do not state that you are reverting to the "original" as this not only is blatantly false, but implies that I made unilateral changes, which I most definitely did not. At least be clear about your reasons when adding an edit summary. SouthernComfort 5 July 2005 23:04 (UTC)

can we finish this article first, please, you know, add stuff from the EI, and agree on factual content? We can still fight over BC(E) once we get to the polishing stage and FAC. Just let it be, for now, ok? dab (ᛏ) 6 July 2005 14:11 (UTC)

Well Jguk just stepped in and made changes for consistency (making the article entirely BC), but when I did the same thing both Codex and Jguk attacked and accused me of making "unilateral" changes. This is hypocrisy on their part, and I find their behavior beforehand appalling considering they have no problem making changes for consistency so long as it conforms to BC. One of the reasons I haven't added any content lately was because of this nonsense that Codex launched in the first place (what's the point of doing so when a revert war is in place?). As far as BC/BCE is concerned, there are two options that I can see:

1. Either we make a request for mediation if other editors other than myself wish to use BCE and allow a (hopefully) neutral third-party make a decision as to which convention to use, or
2. if I am the only one left who wishes to use BCE, then we might as well just go with BC in this article (since Zora and Zereshk seem to not want to push this, though I won't speak for them).

Which will it be? If there is an agreement among editors (with the exception of Jguk) here to use BC, then fine, I can agree to that. But as I've said, when I made changes for consistency, I was viciously attacked for doing so. But when Jguk steps in and does the same, it's okay (though I'm not saying that Dab necessarily agrees with Jguk's recent action). That is appalling. SouthernComfort 7 July 2005 03:48 (UTC)

Zora hits the nail on the head when he says "Let's focus on making an article that is accurate and useful to readers who just want some information". The important thing is to have an article that is informative to readers, which means as far as possible using a style they are comfortable with, using a minimum of jargon and requiring the minimum of assumed knowledge. Nobody's politics should have anything whatsoever to do with it. On WP our readers are anyone who may search the web for English language information. And the style that those readers are familiar with, understand and use themselves is BC - without a shadow of a doubt (there's really no contest at all here). That is the style we should adopt as long as we want an article open to as many as possible, jguk 7 July 2005 06:21 (UTC)

You and Codex both assume bad faith when you accuse me of having a political agenda - I have never had such an agenda nor do I subscribe to so-called "political correctness." I believe in academic standards, and in the field of Near Eastern studies, BCE/CE is standard. At any rate, it's a moot point since I seem to be the only one left here (as far as this article is concerned) that prefers BCE usage. SouthernComfort 7 July 2005 10:02 (UTC)

Not everyone is like you, Jguk, not everyone feels the same way about BC/AD being easier, and you would do well to restrain your urges to "protect" users from something that is your personal bête noir. If you're already editing an article because you're interested in the subject, you are free to argue for your preferred abbreviations there. Please stop roaming Wikipedia to pick style fights. Zora 7 July 2005 07:17 (UTC)

My bête noir is articles that are not written with the reader in mind - this whole BC issue is a small subset of this. I strongly believe that communicators should adapt their language for their audience - after all, do you not speak differently to your boss than you do to your mates or your wife/girlfriend? I fully agree with you that not everyone prefers BC/AD notation - and I never claimed that to be the case. There are instances (eg if you are writing an academic paper for certain US journals, say) where it would be wholly inappropriate to use BC/AD notation. But we have to look at our readers as a whole - we try to make articles accessible to all, and where that cannot be achieved, we make them as accessible to as many as possible. In the present instant, BC/AD notation is used the world over, and is preferred by a margin of 9 to 1 on the internet (which to my mind is likely to be biased towards US academia on this issue). The alternative is not universally recognised, and is alien to many (eg it quite simply does not form part of standard British or Indian English). So which notation to use should be a slamdunk.

SouthernComfort says he is not on a political campaign. In which case I ask him to re-assess who his reader is. Wikipedia is not an academic journal; we are not writing mini-theses. We are writing for the worldwide general public: therefore we should adapt our approach for that readership, so as many as possible can be informed as easily as possible by the article, jguk 7 July 2005 14:11 (UTC)

What you say is really besides the point as the Manual of Style allows both, so it is up to the editors to decide which notation to use. With that in mind, I've decided to be bold and start a survey, and I would suggest we switch to the notation that is preferred by a simple majority.

The reason the MoS allows both is because a small hardcore of editors think that their views are more important than their readers. It's a shame - as I say, any good communicator should use style and language that their audience understand and are used to. Otherwise you alienate the audience (very, very quickly). Maybe those editors just aren't used to writing for people from backgrounds other than their own, but in the business world I work in, if we don't adapt our language for our clients we would soon lose clients and get complaints that we were not delivering what the client wanted. In the context of WP: if we write an article in a style and language our readers are used to and understand, that article loses its broad readership (and editorship too), jguk 8 July 2005 05:10 (UTC)

That may very well be true, and in which case, the MoS should be amended, but until then the current MoS is the best we have, and I don't think indivdual users should unilaterally decide that they disagree with certain parts of the MoS, and then proceed to disregard those sections. Like any set of laws (although the MoS is just a guideline), individuals don't get to choose to follow the ones they like, and disregard the ones they don't. Sortan 8 July 2005 15:31 (UTC)

BC/AD vs BCE/CE vote

Please vote here onn whether this article should use BC/AD notation or BCE/CE notation. Sign your votes with #~~~~ followed by an optional comment.

Favor BC/AD

1. Codex Sinaiticus 8 July 2005 00:00 (UTC) wow, what a good idea ;o)
2. jguk 8 July 2005 05:04 (UTC) Obviously. We should write in a style that will appeal to the vast majority of readers.
3. john k 8 July 2005 06:08 (UTC) Don't care especially either way, but I find the idea of BCE/CE irksome - either way, your epoch is a late antique estimate of the year of the birth of Jesus, so why not use the more familiar nomenclature?
4. Using BCE/CE is like lying. You claim it has nothing to do with Christianity, but then use dates from Jesus' alleged birth anyway. At least BC/AD is honest. ~~~~ 17:12, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Favor BCE/CE

1. Sortan 7 July 2005 23:09 (UTC)
2. Zereshk 8 July 2005 16:47 (UTC) But I wont push for it. (Life is short. Time is precious.)
3. CDThieme 8 July 2005 21:07 (UTC)
4. SouthernComfort 9 July 2005 06:40 (UTC) Obviously.
5. Jayjg ^(talk) 10:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC) - Original style of non-stub article was BCE, it has been in BCE format since then, and jguk's unilateral actions and anti-BCE campaign are against policy. Jayjg ^(talk) 10:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I draw your attention to the fact that about 60% of the present article are written by me (the entire "History" part, paraphrased from the EI), using BC style. define non-stub. what does the earlier 'non-stub' matter if the article is entirely different now. dab (ᛏ) 17:55, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

1. Tree&Leaf 17:08, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Abstain (please state your reasons why)

1. Zora 8 July 2005 06:35 (UTC) Totally pissed off by roving gangs of BC bullies who have otherwise no interest in the article
2. Mustafaa 12:51, 11 July 2005 (UTC) - Honestly, who cares? This is like having an edit war over "colour" vs. "color", as far as I'm concerned.
3. dab (ᛏ) 8 July 2005 07:52 (UTC) boycotting the vote because this issue is a question of WP-wide policy and cannot be decided here
   • Dab, WP policy as it stands is that it can be decided here. This is simply a vehicle for establishing what editors (and readers) want. Parallel to Zora's concern, I was somewhat worried myself about "roving gangs of BCE bullies who otherwise have no interest", and thought about somehow restricting votes to previous editors or something, but just getting approval for that procedure would involve turning this talk page into a full scale parliament. (Or possibly getting a senior moderator to step in)... Let's just keep it as an informal straw vote open to all wiki readers (the ostensible beneficiaries) or users at least interested enough to vote (BARRING SOCKPUPPETS of course!!!), and hopefully all (or most) of us can abide by the already outlined procedure... Codex Sinaiticus 8 July 2005 15:50 (UTC)
     • no. this has been discussed dozens of times on scattered talk pages. If you want to talk about policy, do it on WP:VP. It's fine to have a straw poll, my vote is just pointing out that the result will be of very little significance either way. It's okay, let's go back to working on Elam. This question comes later, when we're approaching FA standard. dab (ᛏ) 8 July 2005 16:08 (UTC)
     • I certainly like the idea of giving more weight to the primary autors of the article, but in a rather informal way rather than a formal procedure. Going by the history, the major editors seem to be: User:Tom Radulovich, User:Dbachmann, User:Zereshk, User:Emilyzilch, User:SouthernComfort, User:Amir85, User:Zora, User:Codex Sinaiticus, and User:Mustafaa. That's about nine people and if there is a clear preference among you to use BC/AD (or BCE/CE) then I for one would be more than happy to change my vote, as I wouldn't want my preferred notation to be imposed upon the actual contributors to the article. Sortan 8 July 2005 16:38 (UTC)
       • Sortan. First, welcome to Wikipedia - seems you've come straight into what has, in recent times, been a bitter controversy. What puzzles me is why, despite the fact that, as an publicly available encyclopaedia, we should writing with our readers in mind, that you don't see writing in a style that is easiest and most attractive for as many readers as possible is not a factor at all. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to comment on this, jguk 8 July 2005 17:35 (UTC)
         • but not here, please (shudder). take this to the relevant policy discussions, please, this really has nothing to do with Elam at all, and all conceivable arguments have been repeated many times over. We have to agree that it is possible to differ on this.dab (ᛏ) 8 July 2005 17:48 (UTC)
           • Maybe Sortan could reply on my talk page. There is a more general point - whilst I have done a small copyedit, the article still uses quite technical terms and assumes knowledge that most readers will not have. It'd be good to work through it and simplify the language, whilst preserving all the main points. The article would certainly benefit from a map, and I think the list of rulers could usefully be moved to its own page. Also, I haven't deleted it yet, but I'm not sure the section on "Elamite studies" is useful - it's mostly a quotation that isn't accessible to the average reader. If Elamite studies is considered an important enough subject, it could always have its own article, jguk 8 July 2005 18:22 (UTC)

Neo-Elamite

ok, I removed the remaining copyvio bit in the Neo-Elamite section. Afaik, the article now contains no more copyvio parts. Please expand the Neo-Elamite section, basing it on the EI (or I will do it over the next few days if nobody else does). dab (ᛏ) 8 July 2005 19:39 (UTC)

Improving readability

I am in the process of making a number of edits designed to improve the readability of the article. The article seemed to have too academic a style, whereas it would be better to adopt a style that makes the article as easy to read as possible for a non-academic reader. This doesn't mean dumbing down or being inaccurate - it just means acknowledging that non-academic readers will be unfamiliar with jargon and will not carry about with them a detailed map of the area or knowledge of all the politics of the era. I've been bold and removed the section on "Elamite studies", which I attach below for reference. I am also moving the list of rulers to List of rulers of Elam. This is an interesting part of history, WP should aim to make it accessible to all, jguk 9 July 2005 07:23 (UTC)

Removed bit that was headed up "Elamite studies"

Elamite studies

In a 2001 talk, Basello Gian Pietro (Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples) stated:

While even today the languages play a basic role in our schematisation and teaching of the past, this stepchild shows us how frail the boundaries of our academic subjects are. While ancient Elamites fought against Assyrians and rebelled against Persians, Elamite studies are strictly bound to Assyriology and Iranian studies. As ancient Elam stood and represented a meeting place between Mesopotamian lowland and Iranian highland, so Elamite studies need to grab and grasp data both from Assyriology and Iranian studies and through many fields of work.

Unfortunately, missing an independent academic subject, we have little specific teaching of Elamite studies. As we employ a foreign designation in referring to ancient Anšan and Susiana, Elamite scholars are often Assyriologists, Iranists or Linguists in their academic background, i.e. they have approached Elam later and from an external point of view. [48]

As opposed to the typical view that Elam is of interest only for its contributions to Iranian or Assyrian culture, or for its unique language, some scholars feel that Elam should be studied in its own right, and not annexed to another cultural tradition.

See also: Historiography and nationalism

Jguk, I'm quite upset by this. You removed the one bit that I put in there to counteract the triumphal Iranian nationalism that is otherwise rampant. Saying that you don't think Wikipedia articles should be "academic" is even more condescending than saying that readers won't understand BCE/CE. This is not "A Child's Book of Elam". If you don't understand something, you don't have to delete it. Zora 9 July 2005 08:46 (UTC)

I am generally rewriting things so that more people will be able to understand the article - my point is that we do not have an exclusively academic audience, and we should write in a style that as many as possible will understand. I haven't really deleted anything apart from the somewhat impenetrable (to a non-Elamologist) section on Elamite studies. Which bit do you think was counteracting triumphal Iranian nationalism? jguk 9 July 2005 09:40 (UTC)

Jguk's actions aside, what "triumphal Iranian nationalism" are you speaking of? Everything is sourced, and none of the scholars quoted are Iranian. This is ridiculous. SouthernComfort 9 July 2005 08:52 (UTC)

jguk, what are you doing? You just said your "dumbing down" would not remove any information, and then you go and cut entire sections? what gives? Anyway, this is not simple:, and it is alright to use the correct terminology rather than lenghty circumlocutions. dab (ᛏ) 9 July 2005 13:10 (UTC)

and jguk, could you also please discuss, before you go over the article with a lawnmower? This isn't some dilapidated unwatched piece, we have been carefully navigating it around looming edit-wars, before you came crashing it. e.g. we decided to have a separate Proto-Elamite article, after lengthy discussion, which you could kindly review before undoing it. dab (ᛏ) 9 July 2005 13:17 (UTC)

Could both Jayjg and jguk please take their fingers off this article in which they have no interest or involvement except for their stupid all-out BCE war?? dab (ᛏ) 12:13, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

The vote in favour of BCE/CE on this article appears to be 5 to 3. Any other comments before the switch? Jayjg ^(talk) 02:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I do, actually. If you take a 3:5 strawpoll for a consensus and base changes in an article you have otherwise no interest in on that, you may count my vote to whichever is the 'losing' side, and for all I care, you can b*gger off and learn the Wikipedia:dispute resolution pages by heart before you make another edit. dab (ᛏ) 12:28, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Looking at Sotran's edit history, I'm not inclined to give too much weight to his views - and without him you are nowhere near gaining consensus for change. You're also distracting from the key point that we should try to make the article more accessible for readers - in particular I find the whole "Elamite studies" section confusing. I'd be grateful if someone could explain what it is trying to say and why it is important to this article. At the moment the article uses too many technical terms - ideally (and this will be necessary if the article is ever to gain featured status) any 12 or 13-year-old who knows nothing about this part of history should be able to understand the article. It would be useful if the experts in this field who edit this article could suggest improvements to expand its reach.

Nor can I see the bit where not having any section on the Proto-Elamites was discussed. I think this is a useful lead-in. Just as a brief discussion on the Elamites legacy is useful at the end, so a brief discussion of what came before them is useful at the start, jguk 06:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Jguk, there is NO EVIDENCE that the category "Proto-elamites" bears any relationship to a linguistically and culturally-defined later Elamite civilization. The whole terminology is based on a careless use of Mesopotamian records, which used the term translated as "Elamite" for any highland group. It's as if you were to use Greek texts to postulate the existence of a "Barbarian" civilization. The Elamite case is complicated because the main group known as Elamite cheerfully adopted the Mesopotamian term and used it for themselves. But you can't simply assume cultural unity and continuity.

As for the relevance of the quote re the Elamites being considered in and of themselves, without reference to later civilizations -- apparently you don't "get" it. Many people don't, because the "nation" is such an evident, obvious, natural category to them, and of course anything that ever happened inside the borders of what is now Iran is to be considered only with reference to its role in creating the Iranian nation. Consider, if you would, the many ways that history could have turned out differently. If the train of history had gone down a different set of tracks, today's national boundaries would be drawn completely differently. There would be no Iran. Or no Britain. Or no Russia. Nations are all completely contingent, and writing history as if it inevitably culminated in this or that nation is wrong. "The past is its own country." Don't annex it for nationalistic purposes.

And as for writing for 12-13 year olds -- I gather that there's a Wikipedia children's encyclopedia in the works. Why don't you go write there and leave us to write for the grown-ups? Zora 07:07, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Articles in The Times, one of the establishment papers clearly aimed at adults, can be read by anyone with a reading age of 13. Maybe it'd be better to think of it like that - to write for a readership of a broadsheet newspaper. Wikipedia is not an academic text, it is an encyclopaedia for all, and a wide readership is most certainly what we should aim for. I think what you outline above could sit quite easily in the article. Maybe it should be added, jguk 12:16, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

not to put too fine a point on it, it would be like beginning the Foreign relations of the United States article with a writeup about glass-bead trade between Native Americans and European explorers (the grown-up term for it is anachronism). dab (ᛏ) 12:34, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Please note that 3:5 with 3 abstensions (27% vs 45%) is not consensus for a controversial change. ~~~~ 17:14, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Jguk's crusade

If Jguk is going to resume his BC/AD crusade, how about this compromise -- in any articles where this is an issue, replace with BC/BCE. It doesn't show up properly yet, but surely the powers that be can program the date parser so that BC = BCE = BC/BCE. That's even-handed enough, isn't it? Zora 18:50, 24 July 2005 (UTC)