The Technological Weakness of the Ancient World

1969 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Reece
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Outward Appearance ◽  
Technological Improvement ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Bronze Age

One of the major puzzles in the history of the Graeco-Roman world lies in the great discrepancy between its considerable achievements in art, in literature, in philosophy, in mathematics, and in medicine, and its very marked backwardness in most branches of technology. This is less surprising where the Romans are concerned, since, for all their admirable qualities in other directions, they were not a conspicuously original or inventive people. Even in those spheres in which they most excelled, the arts of government and warfare, they made few contributions of their own, and their strength lay rather in their skill at adapting to their own purposes the bright ideas of other men. It is significant that those two simple but important aids to improved horsemanship and cavalry tactics, the saddle and the stirrup, were not invented by the Romans, nor indeed by the Greeks, but by the nomadic tribes that pressed in on the Roman empire from the third century A.d. onwards. But with the Greeks the case is different. They were a highly intelligent people, gifted with a degree of inquisitiveness which made them unwilling to accept without question the outward appearance of the world in which they lived. Consequently in mathematics and certain branches of pure science they were able to make quite astonishing progress. But these intellectual advances were not accompanied by any marked degree of technological improvement. While Eratosthenes in Alexandria was calculating the circumference of the earth, and obtaining a figure that was less than i per cent short of the real one, the world around him was still more or less at the same technical level as it had been since the end of the Bronze Age. This contrast between theoretical brilliance and practical incompetence is great and dramatic, and it is the purpose of this paper to suggest some of the reasons why it existed.

scholarly journals From the History of Shamanism: Images of Shamans and Shamanistic Rituals on the Petroglyphs of the Upper Amur, Olekma, and Aldan Rivers (article one)

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-61
Author(s):  
Tatyana Yu. Sem ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
European Population ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Genesis ◽  
The Bronze Age

The article deals with the ancient roots of shamanism according to the materials of the petroglyphs of the Upper Amur, Aldan and Olekma of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age (2000–1000 BC) with the ethnographic parallels. In order to analyze the material, the author uses a set of methods – diachronic archaeological and ethnographic comparative research, iconographic and semantic analysis. According to the petroglyphs of the 11 images of shamans of the specified period, and two of the 18th century, describing the personality of shamans with ritual paraphernalia – a suit, a tambourine, a mallet, a baton, masks and a headdress. Two images in costumes were also dressed in masks of the supreme gods of heaven and thunder. All shaman figures are painted in the process of ritual actions. There are hunting rituals, ritual of receiving the heavenly grace of the calendar type, circular dances associated with the cult of the sun at the new year’s holiday, the ritual of seeing the soul into the world of the dead and the shaman's initial ritual of sacrifice to the spirits to strengthen the shaman's power depicted among the shamanistic rituals on the petroglyphs. The vast majority of the considered images of shamans with attributes and costumes, shamanistic rituals depicted in the petroglyphs of the Upper Amur and Aldan rivers have direct correspondences in the shamanism of the Tungus-Manchu peoples (Evenki, Nanai, Udege), which indicates a possible direction of cultural genesis in the region. In addition, some of the images have parallels with the spiritual culture of the ancient Indo-Europeans and Turkic-Mongols. Some images – radiant headdress, figures of thunderbolts – have analogies among the ancient Indo-European population of Karakol and Pribaikalye. Separate stories are genetically related to the Okunevites. Shamanic tambourines with vertical rungs are typical for the Altai and Tuvinians and were found in the Yakut group of Evenks.

Contributions to the History of Southern Aeolis

1881 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 271-308
Author(s):  
W. M. Ramsay
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Western Coast ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The Arts ◽  
French School ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
School Of Athens

Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.

scholarly journals Ancient Bactria in Historical Sources

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-359
Author(s):  
I. Umarov
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The World ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Bronze Age

Ancient Bactria is a country where early urban planning traditions and foundations of statehood were formed in Central Asia. Historical sources give a lot of information about Ancient Bactria. In terms of development, the northern regions of Bactria were especially distinguished. Here, since the bronze age, agriculture, handicrafts, trade, culture, urban planning were highly developed and still attracts the attention of the world scientific community. This article provides information about the history of Ancient Bactria, its population, cities and historical regions based on Greco-Roman sources.

scholarly journals The Bronze Age of Kazakhstan in the context of Asian cultural relations

2020 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-63
Author(s):  
М. Pedracki ◽  
◽  
G. Bukesheva ◽  
М. Khabdulina ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Palace Reliefs ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Bronze Age

It seems that there are some events in the history of Ancient Near Eastern civilizations directly related to the Bronze Age of Kazakhstan. Those events have taken place in the first half of the second millennium BC and were associated with the invasion of mobile groups chariot warriors who brought with themselves a cult of a horse, a war chariot, advanced weapons, and some new ideologies to the Ancient Near East. Those chariotry men became the military aristocracy in many new founded states in Ancient Near East They propagated a heroized image of a warrior- king ride in a chariot, which was widely used in the palace reliefs of the countries of the Ancient Near East. During the last fifty years the archeologists discovered many Bronze Age monuments in Kazakhstan, with cultural indicators which coincided with the characteristics of the historical tribes that invaded early agricultural civilizations of Near East at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and created new dynasties of rulers. The names of those incomers are preserved in the writing sources of the Near Ancient East states. They are mentioned as: Hyksos, Kassites, Amorites, Mariannu. It is known that some part of them were Indo-Aryans by language. For many decades, linguists, historians and archaeologists have been searching for their ancestral home. The purpose of the article is to characterize the main cultural factors of the Bronze Age cultures of Ural-Kazakhstan steppes and to investigate the possibility of the steppe origin of the chariot warriors income to the Near East in the first half of second millennium BC and thus show the contribution of the ancient population of the Kazakhstan steppes to the world historical process.

scholarly journals Geopoetics: Storytelling against mastery

2021 ◽  
pp. 204382062098639
Author(s):  
Aya Nassar
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World

In this engagement with Eric Magrane’s article, ‘Climate Geopolitics (The Earth is a Composted Poem)’, I follow two provocations: first, geopoetics as travelling through disciplinary turfs, and second, geopoetics as storytelling. Coming from a disciplinary trajectory that spent a long stop at international relations (IR), these provocations attach me to geopoetics as practice and a growing field. My engagement here is oriented to geopoetics not only at the threshold of geography and the arts and humanities, but also the intersections of geography and politics. I primarily propose that viewing geopoetics as an open space for experimenting allows for disrupting masterful understandings of the academic self and counters a univocal, universal narrative of the world.

Harmonizing the Truth: Eusebius and the Problem of the Four Gospels

Traditio ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas O'Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Perceived Utility ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Book Of Kells ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eusebius Of Caesarea ◽  
The Church

In the late third century Eusebius of Caesarea, better remembered now for his work as a historian of the church, produced an apparatus for the reconciliation of the disagreements found in the four Christian gospels. It was a remarkable work in its own right for it preserved, as the tradition demanded, the plurality of the gospels, while allowing them to be presented and studied as a single entity, “the gospel,” and so succeeding in Tatian's aim in hisDiatessaron— as exegesis and apologetics demanded. Moreover, though now largely forgotten, it remained an important element within theology for centuries. This paper's aim is to locate the significance of Eusebius's work in its original setting in the world of late antiquity and the Christian defense of pagan challenges to the gospels' integrity, and then to follow the influence of his work within just one strand of the tradition: that which forms the background of western, Latin theology. So it will note how that work was adopted and adapted by Jerome, how it then passed on to the late-patristic Latin schoolmasters who sought to transform all learning into convenient modules of defined value, and then was taken up by others in just one region of the Latin West, the insular world, such as the anonymous scribes of the Book of Kells, the Stowe Missal, and the Book of Deer, for whom Eusebius's work was a mystery that they could not simply abandon, even when they could not understand it. Throughout this period, the Eusebian Apparatus roused the intellect of scholars, teachers, and scribes, but in each milieu the significance and perceived utility of the Apparatus was different. The history of ideas is about changes within intellectual and textual continuities, and with the Apparatus we have a clearly identifiable scholarly tool that does not in itself change over the period, but whose reception and exploitation vary greatly.

Art and Archaeology of the Bronze Age in China

Art History ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
English Language ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Museum Displays ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Bronze Vessels ◽  
The Bronze Age

“China” here designates much but not all of China Proper or Inner China, terrain controlled during the Imperial era (221 bce to ce 1912) by historic dynastic states. Vast regions to the northeast, north, and west—Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet—are excluded even though they are now integral to the modern-day nation-state. Similarly, we slight areas of the south, for example the modern-day Lingnan and Yun-Gui macroregions, that only gradually were absorbed after the Bronze Age. In Chinese scholarship, “Bronze Age” (qingtong shidai青铜时代) serves as an alternate for the “Three Dynasties” (san dai三代) of traditional historiography: Xia (Hsia), Shang, and Zhou (Chou). Bracketing dates of c. 2000–221 bce are now widely used, the first an approximation, the latter firm. Bronze alloy, however, was just one ingredient of material cultures of the Three Dynasties. Other features include the appearance of states, social stratification, urbanization, warfare, and the appearance of iron (the Iron Age), in addition to achievements in literature, music, and philosophy during the latter centuries, a kind of “Classical Age.” Today, “arts” may encompass many forms of crafting materials for a variety of purposes and audiences. This bibliography specifically addresses architecture, bronze, jade, lacquer, and silk as well as music, pictorial representation, and writing. A term from the Bronze Age—“Six Arts” (or “skills,” liu yi六艺)—defined expertise for an elite male as ritual, music, archery, chariot driving, writing, and calculation. While the overlap between the ancient and modern categories is at best partial, these concepts do intersect in terms of makers and consumers and in social and religious purposes. The elite’s luxury lifestyle was sustained by the “arts.” Ritual required bronze vessels, and the requisite music was performed on instruments of bronze, stone, lacquer, etc. Chariots were outfitted with bronze; writing and picturing employed silk. This bibliography emphasizes Chinese archaeology, both as a discipline and as a realm of knowledge that have burgeoned since the late 20th century. Archaeology creates fresh evidence, which then becomes the stuff of excavation reports, investigative scholarship, exhibitions and museum displays, and reference works. Only some of this bounty can be cited here, and readers are directed to Oxford Bibliographies for Chinese Studies (e.g., Chinese Architecture, Calligraphy, Ceramics, Paleography, Ancient Chinese Religion) for further advice. This essay is limited to publications from 1980 and, when possible, favors English-language sources.

Cosmic Deer as an Archaic Symbol in the Narratives and Rituals of the Tungus-Manchus

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-121
Author(s):  
Татьяна Юрьевна Сем
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Time Model ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Cosmic Scale ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Bronze Age

Статья посвящена мифологическому образу космического оленя в традиционной культуре тунгусо-маньчжуров. В работе рассматриваются материалы фольклора, шаманства, промысловых и календарных ритуалов, а также искусства. Впервые систематизированы материалы по всем тунгусо-маньчжурским народам. Образ космического оленя в фольклоре эвенов имеет наиболее близкие аналогии с амурскими народами, которые представляют его с рогами до небес. Он сохранился в сказочном фольклоре с мифологическими и эпическими элементами. В эвенском мифе образ оленя имеет космические масштабы: из тела его происходит земля и всё живущее на ней. У народов Амура образ оленя нашел отражение в космогенезе, отделении неба от земли. Своеобразие сюжета космической охоты характеризует общесибирскую мифологию, относящуюся к ранней истории. В ней наиболее ярко проявляется мотив смены старого и нового солнца, хода времени, смены времен года, календарь тунгусо-маньчжуров. В результате анализа автор пришел к выводу, что олень в тунгусо-маньчжурской традиции моделирует пространство и время Вселенной, характеризует образ солнца и хода времени. Космический олень является архетипичным символом культуры тунгусо-маньчжуров, сохранившим свое значение до настоящего времени в художественной культуре This article is devoted to the mythological image of cosmic deer in traditional Tungus-Manchu culture. It examines materials of folklore, shamanism, trade and calendar rituals as well as art and for the first time systematizes materials from all of the Tungus-Manchu peoples. The image of cosmic deer in the folklore of the Evens has its closest analogy in that of the Amur peoples, reflected in the image of a deer with horns reaching up to the sky. This image is preserved in fairytales with mythological and epic elements. In the Even myth, the image of a deer is on a cosmic scale, as the cosmos issues from its body. Among the Amur peoples, the image of a deer is also related to cosmogenesis, to the separation of the earth from the sky. The plot of a cosmic hunt is reflected in pan-Siberian mythology, dating back to the Bronze Age. It clearly illustrates the motif of the change of the old and new sun, the passage of time, the change of seasons, the Tungus-Manchu calendar. The author comes to the conclusion that deer in the Tungus-Manchu tradition, in depicting the image of the sun and the passage of time, model the space and time of the Universe. The cosmic deer is an archetypal symbol of Tungus-Manchu culture, which has retained its significance in artistic culture to the present day.

The Strait of Magellan—a Gateway to New Worlds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Onetto Pavez
Keyword(s):  
Global Scale ◽  
Modern World ◽  
American Continent ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Strait Of Magellan ◽  
The World ◽  
The Strait Of Magellan ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time

The year 2020 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the “discovery” of the Strait of Magellan. The unveiling of this passage between 1519 and 1522 allowed the planet to be circumnavigated for the first time in the history of humanity. All maritime routes could now be connected, and the idea of the Earth, in its geographical, cosmographic, and philosophical dimensions, gained its definitive meaning. This discovery can be considered one of the founding events of the modern world and of the process of globalization that still continues today. This new connectivity awoke an immediate interest in Europe that led to the emergence of a political consciousness of possession, domination, and territorial occupation generalized on a global scale, and the American continent was the starting point for this. This consciousness also inspired a desire for knowledge about this new form of inhabiting the world. Various fields of knowledge were redefined thanks to the new spaces and measurements produced by the discovery of the southern part of the Americas, which was recorded in books on cosmography, natural history, cartography, and manuscripts, circulating mainly between the Americas and Europe. All these processes transformed the Strait of Magellan into a geopolitical space coveted by Europeans during the 16th century. As an interoceanic connector, it was used to imagine commercial routes to the Orient and political projects that could sustain these dynamics. It was also conceived as a space to speculate on the potential wealth in the extreme south of the continent. In addition, on the Spanish side, some agents of the Crown considered it a strategic place for imperial projections and the defense of the Americas.

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