Does Greece deserve its title?

[Kanaris]

Nice song... and the place looks like Chios.... who did you piss off to be hiding there?

[Kanaris]

Jun 21, 2011 20:45:49 GMT -5 @uz said:

fukk off already.

Relax

[herrabubu]

Jun 21, 2011 20:16:02 GMT -5 @uz said:

Geometry
Logical proofs
Philosophy
The study of politics in great detail
Scientific pursuits in Astronomy (The Antikythera mechanism, a device for calculating the movements of planets, dates from about 80 BC, and was the first ancestor of the astronomical computer.)
Integral Calculus
The olympics
Coined money
Thermometer
Central heating systems (but the Romans perfected it)
the hula hoop <- lol
Some argue they invented the steam-engine

I think there's more, but not exactly sure.

Not exactly.

Geometry developed out of the need to measure out parcels of land (and sacred geometry to build temples). The ancient Egyptians 5000 years ago already knew how to calculate areas and volumes of different geometrical shapes, including cylinders and obviously pyramids. They could reasonably calculate Pi.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_mathematics#Geometry


The rudiments of the Pythagorean Theorem can be found in 4000 yr old Babylonian tablets. Pythagoras himself spent a lot of time in Egypt and had traveled probably all the way to India, he adopted turban and eastern dress and eastern ideas of reincarnation.

www.whoinventedit.net/who-invented-the-pythagorean-theorem.html


I admit Euclid is a big name in geometry, but he did not invent a lot of it, he collected and formalized the geometry known in his time.
www.gurus.org/dougdeb/Essays/Geometry/geometry.html
As far as logic, that is probably one of man’s earliest science and it was well developed in China, India, Egypt, Babylon well before the Greeks thought of “if p…, then q…,”. Again, a large part of the Greek contribution was in systemizing their knowledge, and then they merely became the source the West later discovered (preserved by the Arabs no less) and idealized.


Philosophy?!! Nothing the Greeks or the entire Western world have ever produced can scratch the surface of the rich philosophy of the East (India and China). That aside, Plato is taught in more universities across the Western World than anyone else, as if his word was the last word on philosophy, as if the rest of the world is just footnotes to Plato. But again, this is a our selection bias; when Medieval Europe began to come out of the dark ages they started reading Plato and that became their source. If they had read Lao tze or Confucius they would have been just as enlightened.


Study of politics? The Greeks were amateurs. They were just a bunch of individual Polis, each trying to be King of the Hill. They couldn’t even unite themselves unless it was to fight the Persians (who, luckily for the Greeks, were fighting at the extreme end of their logistic arm), then break off again and start fighting each other. Alexander also did it by holding them at the speartip. Just about the only reason Athens became wealthy enough to have leisure for political treatises and pretty buildings was because it overcharged the members of its League in return for offering them protection (which Athens did truthfully provide). Sparta did not even bother with politics, it just achieved its ends by ruthlessly squashing it helots.


Again, Astronomy is old as Man and the oldest of the natural sciences. The science of Astronomy was crucial to the transition from hunter-gather societies to the agricultural mode of subsistence, thus it well known to peoples stretching from Egypt and Mesopotamia who built their ziggurats and pyramids based on astro data all the way to barbarian cultures of Europe like the ones that built Stonehenge (3000 BC) as a sort of astronomic calendar. Think about the incredible amount of knowledge of the stars and confidence in their science these people had to devote and trust such a huge amount of their labor and resources into these megalithic stoneworks.


Allright, the Antikythera is a good mechanical artisan piece, but it is in essence a collection of gears around an astronomical theme. The astronomical knowledge was already in place, they just meshed in some gears and today we go “ooh and aah” because we modern people have a long history of thinking of ancient cultures as ignorant and uncivilized and wonder how they could have built anything, kinda like the pyramids (we think the aliens did it). Also, it cannot be in a direct line of succession of technological advancement to the “astronomical computer” because obviously the device was lost to the Western world, having only discovered it in 1900. So Western mechanical science did fine without knowing the damn thing ever existed.


The ancient Egyptians / Sumerians / Babylonians recognized 12 major constellations in the night sky, thus they divided the night into 12 sections (hours) and then applied the same divisions to daytime (12 hours), which is how the whole world got the 24 hour day.
They applied the same 12 piece partition to the “year” which is how we got the 12 month year.


The Sumerians had advanced mathematics and were the first ancient culture we know of that had invented the place value system (like our own decimal system, and unlike say the Roman system). Unlike our own system which is base-10 system, their system was based on the number 60. Which is why we have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 mins in an hour, measure the circle in 360 (6 x 60) degrees, etc.


The Arabs gave us our numbers, the Indians gave us zero (of course, leave it to the Indians to think of Nothing), and with these modern mathematics became possible.


www.interestingfacts.org/fact/invention-of-zero
Algebra, Algorithms credited to Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, a Persian/Arab.


Calculus was independently discovered and co-discovered, almost simultaneously, by Newton and Leibniz in the 17th century. IIRC Newton might have been slightly early to discover it but put it on a shelf and didn’t publish it, whereas around the same time Leibniz also came up with it but published first and had a superior notation which is the one we use today. Yes, I had to take Calculus in college.


Okay, they gave us the Olympics. A contest in physical feats between men, … geez, that’s never been done before.


The first to coin money were the Phoenicians, the original big-league trader of the Mediterranean. Indians did it too in the 6-5th centuries BC. But the Greeks picked it up from the Phoenicians in the same way they picked up the alphabet.

www.michaelppowers.com/prosperity/coins.htm


The history of the thermometer is more of a development than a solid and unique invention (and hardly groundshaking). I agree that a couple of guys in ancient Greece noticed that certain materials contract or expand differentially when hot or cold. And water thermometers have been around for centuries, although I think technically the credit for the invention of the thermometer goes to Galileo or some other guy in late Medieval Europe. Incidentally, thermometers are of little use without scales, which were later developed by Celsius and Fahrenheit.


Central heating was more of a Roman thing, and even then they left the plumbing on the outside.


Hula hoop… lol


Hero of Alexandria described the aeolipile, arguably a crude form of steam-driven ability to perform work. Same thing as “discovered” later by the genius ottoman inventor Taqi Al-Din (1577), but neither is a steam engine. But both actually relied on centuries of human experience and thought. And it is not proven that Hero actually invented any of the devices he described. The Greeks were infamous for only carrying out thought experiments, they never performed an actual physical experiment, not even something as simple as dropping a stone down a slope. Had they done that, they would have claimed to have discovered gravity.


I am not buying the ancient Greek birthplace-of-science-and-democracy hype. Are you?

[Kanaris]

I'll tell you a little true story that is based on what your are writing above.
Back in the early days when Microsoft was but a gleam in Bill Gates eye.. he and some of his partners went to Rochester to visit the Xerox plant.. as they were going about their tour they noticed that some of the machines had elaborate pointing systems guided by a wired roller balled device,which was later called a 'pc mouse' .. Lo and behold.. they took off with that idea... and the masses now credit them for coming up with it and of course we do .. cuase they 'delivered' to the people.

The Phoenicians had a pretty redundant alphabet with no vowels...the Greeks took ,tuned it up and delivered it the masses.. they did the same to the first bible.. Don't tell me who had it ... tell me who tuned it and brought it forth...

[herrabubu]

Jun 22, 2011 13:11:00 GMT -5 Kanaris said:

I'll tell you a little true story that is based on what your are writing above.
Back in the early days when Microsoft was but a gleam in Bill Gates eye.. he and some of his partners went to Rochester to visit the Xerox plant.. as they were going about their tour they noticed that some of the machines had elaborate pointing systems guided by a wired roller balled device,which was later called a 'pc mouse' .. Lo and behold.. they took off with that idea... and the masses now credit them for coming up with it and of course we do .. cuase they 'delivered' to the people.

The Phoenicians had a pretty redundant alphabet with no vowels...the Greeks took ,tuned it up and delivered it the masses.. they did the same to the first bible.. Don't tell me who had it ... tell me who tuned it and brought it forth...

That’s sort of my point, plako. The ancient Greeks were lucky enough to be at the right place and at the right time. Centuries upon centuries of Mankind’s knowledge and experience travelled up through Egypt, Mesopotamia in the same path that agriculture traveled in the Neolithic, from the Nile and Fertile Crescent valleys to the Anatolian plateau then across the Dardanelles into mainland Greece and then the rest of Europe.


Greece was not the "cradle" of western civilization, but rather the pre-school, or playground if you wish. The ancient Greeks became good at synthesizing and cataloging this knowledge, like good accountants and book-keepers, but the innovations were few and mostly a matter of degree rather kind. They did it bring this knowledge to the masses, in some sort, and for that they get some credit. But that just makes them the middle-men of w. civilization not its creators.


They were the fortunate recipients of eastern-oriental wisdom and an invigorating spirit from barbarian Indo-European (Doric) tribes from the North, which produced a few outstanding geniuses that pulled the rest of the demos, kicking and screaming as always, up to some level of decency. The ancient Greeks were little more than a willing mould that was shaped into something finer through the charisma and strength of these Nordic raiders.

[Kanaris]

It always happens like that... but we have to give credit to the fine tuners.... and the ones that can deliver the goods..

[Hellenas]

Sonchis of Sais:

The Platonic dialogues Timaeus and Critias (dialogue), written around 360 BC, relate (through the voice of Critias) how the Athenian statesman Solon (638–558 BC) travelled to Egypt and in the city of Sais encountered the priests of the goddess Neith. A very aged priest tells him that 9000 years earlier, Athens had been in conflict with the great power of Atlantis, which was then destroyed in a catastrophe.

Plato, Timaeus.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchis_of_Sais

Jun 21, 2011 20:37:23 GMT -5 @herrabubu said:

Anyway, this is just a friendly discussion, just throwing around around some ideas among each other, kind of like the ancient greeks did in their spas, minus the combing each other's hair and buttsex of course.

Don't tell us here what the boyfriend of your mother do to her EVERY DAY.

p.s. Alvane, you can't prove that the ancient Greeks took their civilization from non-Greek/non-European foreigners so shut up your anti-Greek mouth.

[herrabubu]

Ancient Egyptian civilization was so grand, imposing and strong, that its impact on the Greeks was tremendous. In order to try to understand what happened when these two cultures met, we must first sketch the situation of both parties. This will allow us to make sound correspondences.


"Herodotus and other Greeks of the fifth century BC recognized that Egypt was different from other 'barbarian' countries. All people who did not speak Greek were considered barbarians, with features that the Greeks despised. They were either loathsome tyrants, devious magicians, or dull and effeminate pleasure-seeking individuals. But Egypt had more to offer ; like India, it was full of old and venerable wisdom."
Matthews & Roemer, 2003, pp.11-12.


What exactly did the Greeks incorporate when visiting Egypt ? They surely witnessed (at the earliest in ca. 570 BCE, when Naukratis became the channel through which all Greek trade was required to flow by law) the extremely wealthy Egyptian state at work and may have participated, in particular in the areas they were allowed to travel, in the popular festivals and feasts happening everywhere in Egypt (the Egyptians found good religious reasons to feast with an average of once every five days).


In his Timaeus (21-23), Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) testified the Egyptian priests of Sais of Pharaoh Amasis (570 - 526 BCE) saw the Greeks as young souls, children who had received language only recently and who did not keep written records of any of their venerated (oral) traditions. In the same passage of the Timaeus, Plato acknowledges the Egyptians seem to speak in myth, "although there is truth in it." According to a story told by Diogenius Laertius (in his The Lives of the Philosophers, Book VIII), Plato bought a book from a Pythagorean called Philolaus when he visited Sicily for 40 Alexandrian Minae of silver. From it, he copied the contents of the Timaeus ... The Greeks, and this is the hypothesis we are set to prove, linearized major parts of the Ancient Egyptian proto-rational mindset. Alexandrian Hermetism was a Hellenistic blend of Egyptian traditions, Jewish lore and Greek, mostly Platonic, thought.


Later, the influence of Ptolemaic Alexandria on all spiritual traditions of the Mediterranean would become unmistaken. On this point, I agree with Bernal in his controversial Black Athena (1987).


"In the first place we find the survival of Egyptian religion both within Christianity and outside it in heretical sects like those of the Gnostics, and in the Hermetic tradition that was frankly pagan. Far more widespread than these direct continuations, however, was the general admiration for Ancient Egypt among the educated elites. Egypt, though subordinated to the Christian and biblical traditions on issues of religion and morality, was clearly placed as the source of all 'Gentile' or secular wisdom. Thus no one before 1600 seriously questioned either the belief that Greek civilization and philosophy derived from Egypt, or that the chief ways in which they had been transmitted were through Egyptian colonizations of Greece and later Greek study in Egypt."
Bernal, 1987, p.121, my italics.


Recently, Bernal has advocated a "Revised Ancient Model". According to this, the "glory that is Greece", the Greek Miracle, is the product of an extravagant mixture. The culture of Greece is somehow the outcome of repeated outside influence.


"Thus, I argue for the establishment of a 'Revised Ancient Model'. According to this, Greece has received repeated outside influence both from the east Mediterranean and from the Balkans. It is this extravagant mixture that has produced this attractive and fruitful culture and the glory that is Greece."
Bernal, in O'Connor & Reid, 2003, p.29.


Bernal apparently forgets that Greek recuperation is also an overtaking of ante-rationality by rationality, a leaving behind of the earlier stage of cognitive development (namely mythical, pre-rational and proto-rational thought). The Greeks had superior thought, and this "sui generis". Hence, Greek civilization cannot be seen as the outcome of an extravagant mixture. The mixture was there because the Greeks were curious and open. They linearized the grand cultures of their day, and Egypt had been the greatest and oldest culture.


www.maat.sofiatopia.org/hermes1.htm

[Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning]

Hellenas thinks the whole world is anti Greek LOL

its actually really funny

[Hellenas]

Nothing of what you posted here Al-vane proves that the Greeks took their civilization from non-Greeks, keep searching and dreaming as well.

The Ancient Hellenic civilization is Hellenic and only Hellenic.

[Hellenas]

Jun 25, 2011 6:22:21 GMT -5 Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning said:

Hellenas thinks the whole world is anti Greek LOL

its actually really funny

The really funny thing over here dear lol-ita is that you try to pass Albanians and Turks as non-anti-Greeks.

[uz]

Laughinggriever;

Everything listed was a contribution to the area in question. Math, astrology, science, philosophy, etc... No one can deny their influence in these areas, to have them become what they are today.

Sure, all over the world people has similiar ways of doing things, maybe the Greeks simplified it and this is where we are now. Still, if this was the case (probably, not), the Greeks would still have deserved credit to some degree.

Whose to say that all ancient civilisations were not connected directly anyway?

[herrabubu]

Jun 25, 2011 18:38:59 GMT -5 @uz said:

Laughinggriever;

Everything listed was a contribution to the area in question. Math, astrology, science, philosophy, etc... No one can deny their influence in these areas, to have them become what they are today.

Sure, all over the world people has similiar ways of doing things, maybe the Greeks simplified it and this is where we are now. Still, if this was the case (probably, not), the Greeks would still have deserved credit to some degree.

Whose to say that all ancient civilisations were not connected directly anyway?

For the sake of brevity, the ancient Greeks were not the originators of all the culture that they claimed and that we in the western world give them credit for. Greece was the entry point of for the accumulated knowledge of mankind coming from Egypt, Persia, India, and the Orient. It was not for nothing that the greatest minds of ancient Greece went to study in Egypt (Pythagoras, Plato, and others).


There is a difference between the person whose work generates a million dollars and someone who just inherits a million dollars. The Greeks were the inheritors of the "million dollars" but would like us to believe they were the producers. And people like to believe that, like you, for emotional reasons. The facts however are clear and they point to the East.


You said it yourself, all ancient cultures are / were interconnected. The Greeks would like you to believe that they created everything out of nothing, like Athena bursting out in full armor out of Zeus' head.

[uz]

To be honest, I can only argue this from an outside view. I am not an ancient-greek academic in anyway, but I do think it's stupid to claim "ideas", or inventions. Maybe some kid in some village in Africa thought about life the same way the "great-philosophers" did, who knows right? The Greeks definitly were not the first "thinkers", the mind has been around way longer than them.

Maybe you're right. Perhaps the "elites" gave the Greeks to much credit, or maybe the elites are ancient-greek descendants. Who knows. We weren't there. It's really up to the individual to decide for themselves who "deserves" credit in different areas. or maybe the thought of "giving-credit" to anyone in the first place itself is false.

[uz]

Neither of us has quite the outsider's detachment and objective view. You are a Serb and you dare not go blatantly against established orthodox Greek dogma and I am Albanian so I must be fomenting s**t.

You are too fixated on the fact I'm a Serb. You act like you know me. Yes you're an Albanian, and why should I give a fuck?

[Deleted]

"Over the last sixty years scholars have increasingly become aware of links connecting early Greek poetry with the literatures of the ancient Near East. Martin West's new book far surpasses previous studies in comprehensiveness, demonstrating these links with massive and detailed documentation and showing they are much more fundamental and pervasive than has hitherto been acknowledged. His survey embraces Hesiod, the Homeric epics, the lyric poets, and Aeschylus, and concludes with an illuminating discussion of possible avenues of transmission between the orient and Greece."

www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ClassicalStudies/LiteraryCriticism/?view=usa&ci=9780198152217

www.amazon.com/Black-Athena-Afroasiatic-Civilization-Fabrication/dp/0813512778

www.blackathena.com/outline.php

[Deleted]

Jun 25, 2011 16:23:53 GMT -5 Hellenas said:

Jun 25, 2011 6:22:21 GMT -5 Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning said:

Hellenas thinks the whole world is anti Greek LOL

its actually really funny

The really funny thing over here dear lol-ita is that you try to pass Albanians and Turks as non-anti-Greeks.

I haven't noticed this, Mr. Hellanas. Maybe it is you that believes all Albanians and Turks hate Greeks.

[missanthropology58]

That's not his belief I've spoken to him about that subject matter on anthroscape. About how we are joined together through bloodlines and Neolithic migration into South Eastern Europe did, for the most part come from West Asia

[seoexp1982]

They did lots of important things for us. They created geometry and the axiomatic logical proofs that are still the basis for modern day mathematics. I think there is so much interesting facts out there about ancient greek.

[Hellenas]

Nov 10, 2011 10:52:41 GMT -5 @thechief said:

I haven't noticed this, Mr. Hellanas. Maybe it is you that believes all Albanians and Turks hate Greeks.

It is not just me, most Greeks consider Turks and their allies, the Turkalbanians, as enemies and anti-Greek haters, open a book of history.