Lately, I guess I tend to focus on nurturing and organizing the PoLitics section of the site, however my real love is HiStory?. I wrote the pages on OregoN, GladstoneOregon, and AlchemY, and it thrills me to be able to share these with you, and feel they represent my best work.
I was thinking of Europe as a cultural centre, not as a continent, so that's why I left them off. The other way is better, since it gives a home to topics like Celts and megaliths. But I still think that the Romans and Greeks don't belong here. Yes, Greece and Italy are located in Europe. But the Greeks had much more to do with Persia than the interior, and the RomanEmpire? was as much African and Asian is it was European.
I really think the essential "region" these civs belong to is the Meditteranean. At the very least, this would give the Carthaginians a home too. Of course this has a lot of overlap with Europe, and they should refer a lot to each other; but anything said on Europe about Rome (and to a lesser extent Greece) is just going to be repeated in other regions. -- JoshuaGrosse
Hrm, well I'm just an American, but I did study a LOT of European history in school (bit of a passion of mine). The Greeks and Romans had a _profound_ influence on European history, and while I do agree that they also had influence and interaction with other people on other continents as well, I still (strongly) think Greece and Rome deserve (even require) mention here. Their impact goes far beyond mere influence; their civilization and culture is really the underpinnings of all that followed.
I could write a whole essay on this, but let me address just three specific areas; things that I think we can agree were critical aspects in the later history of Europe: Religion, Governance, and Settlement. I could also discuss things like science, theater, architecture, language, military, and sports, but hopefully you'll forgive me if I wave my hand at those as "obvious". ;-)
Christianity is of unquestionable influence on the history of Europe, but it's origins and early development is inextricably bound up not in Germanic or Celtic culture, but in Greek and Roman. Jesus was martyred during the reign of the first emperor of Rome, smack in the middle of the most heavily studied period of "classical" Roman history. The reason for his death was tied up largely in the political and economic behavior of the Romans; Israel was bound up in a struggle for freedom, that they eventually lost - the Jews were dispersed around the world (including Europe). If not for the Roman Empire, one could wonder if Christianity could have emerged at all. Many of the early Christians were killed in Roman gladatorial pits, giving the young religion many martyrs and many converts in Rome itself. There is a vast network of catacombs beneath the city of Rome, where the early Christians buried there dead (and possibly even hid). Of course, eventually Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, and spread it even further, perhaps now with the help of the Roman sword? But during this whole process, Christianity was absorbing culture and traditions from Rome, and theory from Greece. Early forms of the Bible were written in Greek, and then later Latin. Statues and imagery of older gods were reused (e.g., Mary from some of the pre-existing mother-goddess cults). Roman holidays were recast into Christian holidays (Christmas, IIRC, had roots in the Mithras religion?) Much cut-and-paste-and-tweak.
The Roman style of governance, with a dictatorial emperor, has had direct influence on many of Europe's most powerful leaders. The Romans used the word "Ceasar" to indicate utmost authority. From this we have gotten the words "Czar", "Tsar", "Kaiser", and even "King". While dictatorship is certainly nothing unique to Europe, it is the Roman style of dictatorship that many of Europe's leaders ascribed to. When Charlemagne built his empire, he placed "Roman" right in the middle of its name. Napoleon and Hitler also both drew from Roman symbology to lend an air of ancient authority to their regimes. "Heil Hitler" is an obvious allusion to and derivation from "Hail Ceasar". The military organization and tactics similarly were taught to the "barbaric" tribes (we can imagine "military advisors" looking down on the anarchical locals, thinking "these guys will never learn...") The skills and discipline taught by the Romans almost assuredly profoundly affected their ability to conquer Rome when it neared its end, and to take control over the lands it left behind.
The Roman Empire is also the primary force responsible for settlement of Europe, influencing even lands not under their direct control. And through the Romans we find (important) underlying Greek origins. At the height of their empire, the Romans directly controlled Gaul (later France), England, Spain, and all of Southern Europe. Indirectly, they controlled or influenced most of the remainder of Europe. Many European towns have Roman origins; some started as mere fortresses for the Roman garrisons. When the Romans entered a land, they planned (and built) to stay. Europe came to be crossed with a vast network of roads that were the best human-made land routes in Europe until the 20th century. The archaeological evidence (even as far as Hadrian's wall in the far north of England) demonstrates that the Romans were not mere casual visitors clinging to the belly of Europe, but embraced it. Yes, while their main involvement was to the East, the Romans were to Europe what the American Colonists were to North America - they carved civilization out of the forests. The 'villa' style of agricultural settlement stood in mark contrast to the Celtic family oriented traditions, yet persisted well into the middle ages (and beyond, in the Hispanic culture).
Without the Roman Empire's influence, Europe would NOT be the place it is today and would have had a *far* different history than it did. The pre-existing Celt/Germanic? civilizations were drastically different from the Romans, and took the Greco-Roman style as a model for their own latter cultures. Rome and Greece need to be looked at not as merely random civilizations that had their time and then died, to be replaced by unique new civilizations; rather, they had a *key* role in the formation of all that followed in Europe. Leaving them out of the European History page would be akin to leaving England out of the history of the United States.
Well, the thing is that I would keep England's history separate from that of the US. That's not to say that I would omit it, but that I would place it separately in the main hierarchy and then cross-reference a lot. Otherwise England's history is going to be told as the history of England, retold as that of Scotland, retold as that of France, and so forth. Same deal with Rome. There should be one RomanEmpire? page, and the history of Europe should say something along the lines of "most of south Europe was included in the RomanEmpire?, under which urban centers spread and the catholic church was introduced and blah blah blah. And then Egypt, Syria, and so forth can do the same sort of thing.
Ok. Greece does deserve credit, though, for being completely unique in developing democratic governments, formal mathematics, empirical science (to the extent that they did), and so forth. They also were unique in inventing vowels. :) -- JoshuaGrosse
Actually, I believe there were actually some native american tribes that had either semi-democratic or concensus-oriented styles of leadership. I believe I ran into some references by Jefferson regarding this, which would have some rather exciting implications. I agree that Greeks kicked butt with math and science, but archaeology has suggested that some of the new world civilizations had achieved some impressive discoveries themselves, independently. I think Greece probably gets the bulk of the credit because a) their works were preserved and have come down to us through our own literary history. Consider if we had only their pottery and ruins to judge them by, would we have any clue about their most impressive achievements? -- BryceHarrington
I think most tribal societies start ought more-or-less democratically (I've also heard of English historians commenting about the "democratic genius of the GermanicPeoples?). What makes the Greeks exceptional is they brought the idea into an urban context. At the time, all urban societies were pretty much top down - civilizations of slaves, as the Greeks put it.
In math, again, I think the main contribution of the Greeks - rational and axiomatic reasoning rather than empirical and approximate - is unique. That's not to say other civs didn't perform some wonderful math; the Babylonians could solve quadratic problems, and both the Hindus and Mayans invented zero. But it's not the same when you're doing it for practical reasons.
The Greeks also, btw, invented history (though that one isn't unique), and that's more or less guaranteed that they wouldn't be known just from their ruins. Compare to Persia, which actually based a lot of its inscriptions on what the Greeks said. Unfortunately the American civilizations got cheated in this respect, since most of their writings were slash-and-burnt along with the people.
Is very, very cool. I've noticed you've been doing a lot of work building infrastructure, and that's really very praiseworthy. Thanks for the help with this one. -- JoshuaGrosse
Thanks, I love what we're doing here, and think we're really making something that matters. I gave a shot at reorganizing the homepage, 'cause the existing organization makes little sense to me (and ordering disorder is a dire habit of mine), but it looks like someone reverted the changes. Ah well...
Btw, thank you muchly for commenting to me about the changes... I like having had the change to give my opinion on it, even if ultimately we went a different way.
How's this for a primary division? AncientEurope? (pre-Roman stuff), MedievalEurope?, Rennaisance, and then a bunch of later stuff I'm less knowledgeable about. Closely tied to these would be HellenicCivilization?, RomanEmpire?, ByzantineEmpire?, and HistoryOfIslam?. A second split in terms of geographical regions - things like HolyRomanEmpire? - probably wouldn't hurt, and then things can grow as the will. -- JoshuaGrosse
These all sound like good and viable topics. Personally, I have too many negative experiences to trust a hierarchical structure... Most real things rarely map well into a hierarchy. As you say, the Roman Empire overlaps a lot more than just Europe. Fortunately, Wiki allows organization broader than mere hierarchical, so we'll be okay.
To add to your list... We'll want a section for the DarkAges?, FrenchRevolution? and Napoleon, Colonialism, the SpanishEmpire?, the BritishEmpire?, the Crusades, and a whole heaping ton of CatholicChurchInEurope?.
Should the DarkAges? as part of the MiddleAges, or as a separate time period? I personally am all for the former, because a thousand years is a darn long time which is hard to summarize, but the latter is more conventional.
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