Ancient "Debate between bird and fish" of 3rd Millennium - An Art Skill Never Boring

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

No paper?  These people wrote on clay tablets.  Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the text of the poem Inanna and Ebih by the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known.

Here we see  the Carl Sandburg High School Debate team on their medal-winning performance at the IHSA state debate tournament at Illinois State University. The Eagles brought home several top finishes.  Congratulations!  

There is nothing like a good debate to see how people think.  My son took "Debate" in the Ontario High School and he and his partner went to State in Salem, Oregon and came in 2nd in the State.  How they learned the art of Debate is true debate with timing included that I haven't seen on TV.  I got to be  Debate Judge, being I was the a teacher in the district.

What the Republicans did which was called a debate was certainly not following the rules of debate which these boys had learned. I wonder if any of them ever had a class in debate.  My son's partner became a lawyer.  Many do graduate in law after this high school class.   

     Osprey with fish that they hold upside down-reason for debate?  The fish can't get away in this position. How about a debate between a bird and a fish as to which one should be ruler over all the animals?   

A Giant Trevally versus an Tern in this amazing fish eats bird. Usually Giant trevally are solitary hunters but they have come in numbers to try their .luck.  See on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=h4pxLHG0Wzs

How about a debate between a bird and a fish?  That must have been something which was written about in the 3rd millennium, about 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age. It was listed on a clay tablet when someone attempted to write a short story about it. In the story they held a debate between the two.   

A clay tablet was not usually finished in a kiln but simply baked in the sun.  The clay could then be useable again by wetting it in water. Text on clay tablets took the forms of myths, fables, essays, hymns, proverbs, epic poetry, business records, laws, plants, and animals. What these clay tablets allowed was for individuals to record who and what was significant. An example of these great stories was Epic of Gilgamesh. This story would tell of the great flood that destroyed Sumer. Remedies and recipes that would have been unknown were then possible because of the clay tablet. Some of the recipes were stew, which was made with goat, garlic, onions and sour milk, which was certainly not kosher-mixing meat with milk-ugh. Often tablets suffered from fires and then were to last forever, but these were accidentally baked.   

The ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites wrote on tablets made from water-cleaned clay. Although these writing bricks varied in shape and dimension, a common form was a thin quadrilateral tile about five inches long. While the clay was still wet, the writing was by a stylus pressed into soft clay tablets, which were subsequently hardened by drying in the sun or the oven.

Surviving tablet-based documents from the Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations (Minoa was the name of several Bronze-Age port cities on the coasts of the Aegean islands Crete, Paros, Siphnos, Amorgos and Corfu in Greece,,) are mainly those which were used for accounting. Tablets serving as labels with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system.