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Beyond Greece and Rome

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Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#21

Post by suddenlybananas »

zkmon wrote: post #18

Our perception about the ancient times, is moulded by sayings that have other goals other than recording of facts and events. Those "swords-and-sandals" movies focus on sensationalism, gory, shock that will sell. Even the historians of ancient times have goals of pleasing the rulers or maintaining the social layers and secrecy. Ancient times were far more slower and peaceful than present times. The stories pick only…

Artifacts themselves can be just as misleading as written history, there's an enormous selection bias. The idea that archeology is more trustworthy than history is really mistaken, the two work best in tandem.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#22

Post by wannabe44 »

seydor wrote: post #3

There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.

Like it or not, the "west" has a cultural common ground (Indo-European derived, chiefly greco-roman, gaulic and germanic cultures which were not isolated from each other as you would imply), and more importantly a religious common ground in judeo-christian religion and morality. Poland helped Austria against the Ottoman invasions because of this common ground, and predominantly anglo-saxon Americans read Homer's poetry because of this common ground.

From the viewpoint of a person outside "the west" under both grounds, it's a clearly recognized entity. There may be blurred contours. That doesn't invalidate the existence of such an entity.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#23

Post by pasc1878 »

frollogaston wrote: post #19
never_inline wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a ~~south asian~~ (stupid label) Indian, some knee-jerk reaction is justified because people tend to believe in exaggerated time scales (for instance, based on projected dates of astronomical events in the Hindu Epics, which predates the bronze age and the war chariot), whereas the westerners don't have a religious attachment and speak a realistic timeline for Homeric epics. If we are speaking of the classical tim…

No comment on the rest, just wanted to say I was thrown off by the "South Asian" thing too. Not tip-toeing around calling Greece "Southwest Europe."

South Asian is reasonably common in UK.

It avoids having to include Pakistan in India which if you did causes a large number of people to complain especially if talking about modern things. It is less usual when talking about ancient history.

It also differentiates Indian sub continent for East Asian which covers Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Asian usually covers too much when talking about history.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#24

Post by wannabe44 »

> The de facto equation of ‘ancient history’ with ancient Mediterranean history, at least in most of the Anglosphere, has endured for many generations. But we are on the cusp of a dramatic shift in perspective that is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’.

Archeology is more difficult than reading. The civilizations which left a literary corpus (oral or written) will have more to speak about than those who didn't.

Archeology also tells us only of what metals people used, what animals they had and what they ate. Whereas literature speaks much more - of the values of those people, which makes it a more attractive target to study.

Finally, even from an archaeological perspective, trade is less interesting than war. So warlike civilizations generate more interest than trade-dominated ones.

Of course this is excluding the fact that christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#25

Post by seydor »

quitspamming wrote: post #8
seydor wrote: post #3

There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.

> There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. The West is the Latin Church. From the Latin Church came the Protestants. From that West meant and means anything influenced by or in protest of the Latin Church in Europe and its colonies. Very easy to understand, makes less of a difference today than it might have 100 years ago but to pretend it's hard to define or not a real thing isn't…

that defines "west" as the american protestantism values, but catholic southern europe is not as west as Japan has become after decades of american influence. Even china is more western nowadays in its mindset than whatever would be called "east" nowadays (muslim world + russia and india? what is latinamerica?).

"West" is mainly used in US propaganda in order to keep its allies behind them. I feel that europe doesn't want to be defined by the "west" anymore.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#26

Post by noduerme »

wannabe44 wrote: post #24

> The de facto equation of ‘ancient history’ with ancient Mediterranean history, at least in most of the Anglosphere, has endured for many generations. But we are on the cusp of a dramatic shift in perspective that is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’. Archeology is more difficult than reading. The civilizations which left a literary corpus (oral or written) will have more…

>> christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west.

I find this statement confusing. Hellenistic culture was the West. All Western culture since, including Rome, has imitated it. Christianity didn't make Greco-Roman culture accessible to the West. It made monotheistic, Hebrew/Judean culture accessible to Rome (primarily by making it less harsh and less monotheistic), and then spread onward to the Germanic tribes, Celts, Slavs, Dacians, and others who came into Rome's former orbit.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#27

Post by TonyStr »

noduerme wrote: post #26
wannabe44 wrote: post #24

> The de facto equation of ‘ancient history’ with ancient Mediterranean history, at least in most of the Anglosphere, has endured for many generations. But we are on the cusp of a dramatic shift in perspective that is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’. Archeology is more difficult than reading. The civilizations which left a literary corpus (oral or written) will have more…

>> christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west. I find this statement confusing. Hellenistic culture was the West. All Western culture since, including Rome, has imitated it. Christianity didn't make Greco-Roman culture accessible to the West. It made monotheistic, Hebrew/Judean culture accessible to Rome (primarily by making it less harsh and less monotheistic), and then spread onward to the…

Could you expand on why you think Christianity made Hebrew/Judean culture less monotheistic?

Also, surely you would concede that scholars who sought to rediscover ancient greek/roman literature through a Christian lens in the 15th/16th centuries played a big role in making it accessible to the Christian world?

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#28

Post by lstodd »

GolfPopper wrote: post #20
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization" This is perhaps the least controversial statement in history. It's obviously true. Western Civilization is: 1) Greece 2) Rome, borrowing from the Greeks 3) Christianity taking over Rome 4) Germanic tribes adopting Roman law + the Christian religion 5) Protestantism 6) The Renaissance 7) The Enlightenment You can read Plato, and it all makes sense t…

And yet, Rome borrowed from far more than the Greeks. Norse deities are popular, and seemingly more recognizable than classical Greek myth to those in North America with whom I've spoke about such things. Rome was taken over by a particular flavor of Christianity, which was changed by the Empire at least as much as it changed the Empire, and changed more by those who claimed it. (Christmas and Easter are not original…

> and a major thrust of contemporary politics is that the Enlightenment was not a positive thing.

whoa, that's news to me. can you elaborate?

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#29

Post by lstodd »

TonyStr wrote: post #27
noduerme wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west. I find this statement confusing. Hellenistic culture was the West. All Western culture since, including Rome, has imitated it. Christianity didn't make Greco-Roman culture accessible to the West. It made monotheistic, Hebrew/Judean culture accessible to Rome (primarily by making it less harsh and less monotheistic), and then spread onward to the…

Could you expand on why you think Christianity made Hebrew/Judean culture less monotheistic? Also, surely you would concede that scholars who sought to rediscover ancient greek/roman literature through a Christian lens in the 15th/16th centuries played a big role in making it accessible to the Christian world?

I'd say Christianity ended up as a less fundamentalistic take on Old Testament. But one has to take into account the whole development of Christianity at least up to say 10th century. It's not like there was the only and one version of it.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#30

Post by darkwater »

TonyStr wrote: post #27
noduerme wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west. I find this statement confusing. Hellenistic culture was the West. All Western culture since, including Rome, has imitated it. Christianity didn't make Greco-Roman culture accessible to the West. It made monotheistic, Hebrew/Judean culture accessible to Rome (primarily by making it less harsh and less monotheistic), and then spread onward to the…

Could you expand on why you think Christianity made Hebrew/Judean culture less monotheistic? Also, surely you would concede that scholars who sought to rediscover ancient greek/roman literature through a Christian lens in the 15th/16th centuries played a big role in making it accessible to the Christian world?

> Could you expand on why you think Christianity made Hebrew/Judean culture less monotheistic?

Well, the very strong devotion to saints IMO comes from a polytheistic approach rather than a monotheistic one, where you just have an invisible god you are not even permitted to draw or paint.

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