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>> am always fascinated when I hear other nerds describe the process of learning Western history as "begin with the Greeks." A good example of frames being "ma

>> am always fascinated when I hear other nerds describe the process of learning Western history as "begin with the Greeks." A good example of frames being "made up," in the sense that they can be constructed multiple ways. Another frame might be that Greeks were not "Western" at all. They were simply the western fringe of the greater "fertile crescent" culture. This frame would have made more sense to the Greeks themselves, who considered Egypt the source of much knowledge and urban culture. Writers like Plato credited scholars visiting egypt (Eg his uncle Solon) for bringing this knowledge back, especially during the Athenian golden age. The greek alphabet is also derived from the phoenician/canaanite/semitic alphabet. Archeology of older periods, like the Minoan Greek era, suggest Egyptian cultural influence started very early. "The West" (also near east, and far east) is actually a Greek concept, and the directions are relative to Greece. Rome is "The West" because its west of Greece. But, both Greek and Roman empires were a lot more active in the east than in the west.

jhgb 5y ago
Ancient Greeks were Indo-Europeans, though, unlike any of the contemporary Ferticle Crescent cultures. In many ways that does make them very much western, e.g. their invention of vowel graphemes was one that other western peoples such as Latins/Romans who were also Indo-European and needed them as well could take advantage of.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > Ancient Greeks were Indo-Europeans, though, So were the Hittites, and the ruling class of the Mittani.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    True, I sometimes forget how far north the Fertile Crescent reached. Nevertheless, when the Greeks rose to their height the Hittites had already been gone. The fact the Hittite language had to be deciphered in the 20th century attests to the cultural irrelevance of the Hittites for the western world. Compared to that we have whole schools of philosophy for Ancient Greece. We've never needed to rediscover Greece -- it's always been there in the background.
    - wl 5y ago
      We also had to decipher Egyptian. I don't think having to do so speaks to the cultural irrelevance of a civilization.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        Yes, and the result of that was that for two thousand years, Greco-Roman culture was directly influencing European cultures while Egyptian was not. That my country produced Alexandreis (a vernacular Czech version based on a French original by Gautier de Châtillon) in the High Middle Ages and not Ramesseis instead is telling: Egyptian culture had been irrelevant to us for two millennia. You had to wait for the 20th century and Mika Waltari to retell the story of Sinuhe.
        wl 5y ago
        If we're talking about Sinuhe, that's on the wrong side of the Late Bronze Age systems collapse. Other than perhaps faint echos found in the Greek epics and the Hebrew scriptures, Mediterranean texts from the other side of the collapse were undeciphered until the 19th century. Ramesses II and Alexander are more than eight centuries apart, with Alexander being on our side of the collapse. On the other hand, that Greco-Roman culture that was so influential is in no small part Egyptian. Alexandria was a major cultural center of the Greco-Roman world. Egypt was the first nation to convert to Christianity en masse and that influence on Christianity remains today.
    - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
      The Hittites were gone, but languages related to Hittite were still spoken throughout Asia Minor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_languages
- datameta 5y ago
  The Persians were just as much descended from Indo-Europeans as the Greeks were and they were squarely in the Near East by any Greek account. If anything Indo-European ancestry is what can point out commonalities rather than be a source of categorical division.
quotemstr 5y ago
Whether we call classical Greece "western" is not is ultimately not all that relevant. What matters more to me is that, reading the ancient Greek sources, we see attitudes, philosophies, dreams, and goals that are immediately recognizable as being "us" in an important way. Consider the justly famous and beautiful funeral oration of Pericles: "Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace." ""In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause." https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/pericles-funeralspeech.asp https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/pericles-funeralspee... These are words that you can imagine coming out of the mouth of a figure like Lincoln or FDR. Pericles reaches into many of the same ideals we still venerate today. I've never seen anything chiseled into some Egyptian obelisk or scrawled onto a Sumerian tablet that feels so, well, familiar, so recognizable, so modern.

jhgb 5y ago

Ancient Greeks were Indo-Europeans, though, unlike any of the contemporary Ferticle Crescent cultures. In many ways that does make them very much western, e.g. their invention of vowel graphemes was one that other western peoples such as Latins/Romans who were also Indo-European and needed them as well could take advantage of.

bigbillheck 5y ago
> Ancient Greeks were Indo-Europeans, though, So were the Hittites, and the ruling class of the Mittani.
- jhgb 5y ago
  True, I sometimes forget how far north the Fertile Crescent reached. Nevertheless, when the Greeks rose to their height the Hittites had already been gone. The fact the Hittite language had to be deciphered in the 20th century attests to the cultural irrelevance of the Hittites for the western world. Compared to that we have whole schools of philosophy for Ancient Greece. We've never needed to rediscover Greece -- it's always been there in the background.
  - wl 5y ago
    We also had to decipher Egyptian. I don't think having to do so speaks to the cultural irrelevance of a civilization.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      Yes, and the result of that was that for two thousand years, Greco-Roman culture was directly influencing European cultures while Egyptian was not. That my country produced Alexandreis (a vernacular Czech version based on a French original by Gautier de Châtillon) in the High Middle Ages and not Ramesseis instead is telling: Egyptian culture had been irrelevant to us for two millennia. You had to wait for the 20th century and Mika Waltari to retell the story of Sinuhe.
      - wl 5y ago
        If we're talking about Sinuhe, that's on the wrong side of the Late Bronze Age systems collapse. Other than perhaps faint echos found in the Greek epics and the Hebrew scriptures, Mediterranean texts from the other side of the collapse were undeciphered until the 19th century. Ramesses II and Alexander are more than eight centuries apart, with Alexander being on our side of the collapse. On the other hand, that Greco-Roman culture that was so influential is in no small part Egyptian. Alexandria was a major cultural center of the Greco-Roman world. Egypt was the first nation to convert to Christianity en masse and that influence on Christianity remains today.
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    The Hittites were gone, but languages related to Hittite were still spoken throughout Asia Minor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_languages
datameta 5y ago
The Persians were just as much descended from Indo-Europeans as the Greeks were and they were squarely in the Near East by any Greek account. If anything Indo-European ancestry is what can point out commonalities rather than be a source of categorical division.

quotemstr 5y ago

Whether we call classical Greece "western" is not is ultimately not all that relevant. What matters more to me is that, reading the ancient Greek sources, we see attitudes, philosophies, dreams, and goals that are immediately recognizable as being "us" in an important way. Consider the justly famous and beautiful funeral oration of Pericles: "Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace." ""In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause." https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/pericles-funeralspeech.asp https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/pericles-funeralspee... These are words that you can imagine coming out of the mouth of a figure like Lincoln or FDR. Pericles reaches into many of the same ideals we still venerate today. I've never seen anything chiseled into some Egyptian obelisk or scrawled onto a Sumerian tablet that feels so, well, familiar, so recognizable, so modern.