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Civilization on the Border
The two important civilization on the border of Assyria and Persia interact with these imperial powers were the Greeks and the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians fell victim to the aggression of Assyria, then Egypt and the New Babylonian kingdom, then the Persians, each time falling into political dependence on these territorial states. Secondly, it was from the end of the VIII century that the Great Greek colonization began, and Phoenicia itself gradually lost its significance as the center of the world-economy.
Third, the Western Phoenicians formed the Carthaginian power, which took the path of conquest and turned into a territorial (that is, feudal, landowning mainly) state. At the same time, it should be remembered that even in its classical era, the Greeks were far from being ahead of the Phoenicians in everything. In the Persian Empire, the city of Phoenicia, along with Babylon, continued to play the role of a major trading and financial center. The population of Phoenicia was a complex ethnic conglomerate. The West Semitic tribes of the Canaanites lived here.
Among the main achievements of the Phoenicians can be called, first of all, the invention of the alphabet, which later formed the basis of the writing of the majority of modern peoples. Phoenicians were the first to begin the production of purple dye from a special type of mollusks. She dyed woolen and linen fabrics. These fabrics immediately became fashionable and were in great demand in all neighboring countries. During the excavations of the ancient Phoenician cities, piles of empty shells were found after they were painted. The scope of production was very large. Its fabric was not enough, and cheap unpainted wool was imported into Phenicia from the pastoral regions of Syria, from Crete, and later from the whole of East Asia. The ancient Phoenician artisans made of bronze and silver were highly valued in antiquity, as well as the famous glass from Sidon, the secrets of which were discovered in the 17th century. BC e. In addition to locally produced goods, the Phoenicians traded in the fact that they exported from Asia Minor, from Cyprus, Crete, from ancient Greece. Their cities were the largest transit trade centers. Silver and lead came from Asia Minor, and later - iron. From the island of Cyprus, the Phoenicians exported copper. From Crete, they received items of artistic craft, products from other Mediterranean countries. The main center of trade relations with the West was Ugarit, and after its destruction.
The ancient Greek civilization has developed in the basin of the Aegean Sea on two continents (Europe and Asia) and many islands. It included the South Balkans, islands, Crete and coastal areas of Asia Minor. The life of the population of this region is closely connected with the sea, which contributed to the development of navigation, colonization, trade, opened up the possibility of becoming acquainted with the civilizations of the East. The sea has formed a certain character and psychological characteristics of the ancient Greeks courage, determination, optimism and faith in their own abilities. Greece was rich in minerals (silver, gold, copper, lead, iron) and building material (limestone, marble, clay). The Greeks learned to melt bronze from copper and tin, to use it for the manufacture of tools and weapons. Entire families engaged in the manufacture of pottery and jewelry. On the islands of the Marmara and Aegean seas, marble of different colors was mined (gray, black, with streaks of blue and pink). But it was especially famous for the extraordinary whiteness of the marble from the island of Paros.
What people created the ancient Greek civilization? The ethnic history of ancient Greece is very dynamic. Already in the III millennium BC. In the south of the Balkan Peninsula, Pelasgians were inhabited by the most ancient pre-Greek tribes, whose ethnicity is still the subject of debate. They also inhabited the extreme northwest of Anatolia and the islands of the Aegean Sea. At the turn of III-II thousand BC. The Balkan Peninsula is experiencing an invasion of the proper Greek tribes - the Achaeans, who may have migrated from the Danube regions of Europe. Pelasgians were partially exterminated by the Achaeans, partially assimilated with them.
The role of the ancient Greek civilization in the history of mankind is great, complex and multifaceted. It was not only a powerful civilizational breakthrough. Ancient Greece made a kind of historical workshop, where many blanks were created, received their further processing and improvement within the subsequent civilizations. Democracy and private property, human freedom and civic duty, materialism and idealism are all of the most important components of modern civilizational development born in ancient Greece. It is not by chance that in the history of Europe, the concept of rebirth is associated with Antiquity, with the ancient Greek civilization. People of the next centuries sought in it a foothold for the further development of the spiritual world of man, science and culture, for the most important achievement of the ancient Greek civilization was the flourishing of the human person.
The paradox of history is that, relying on slavery, the ancient Greek civilization for the first time gave a sample of a free man and the free organization of the human community. City-states existed before ancient Greece. But it was the Greeks who, as if taking a step back from the power of the kings, managed to create democratic communities — policies — back to the communal structure, gave those samples of democratic self-determination of people who later served as a subject of study for those who thought about a more equitable structure of society.
It is to the first in the history of the free community of the Greeks that we owe the appearance of scientific thinking as a type of world outlook. The Greeks created the foundations of philosophical science in its dialectical unity of an idealistic and materialistic view of the world. They, realizing the significance of the past for the present and the future, created the science of history. Ethics and geography, psychology and trigonometry, physics and anatomy. These and many other sciences owe the ancient Greeks not only their birth, but also their names. Ancient Greece is the birthplace of many conceptual ideas that have become scientific truth today: the atomic structure of matter, the rotation of the Earth around its axis, the planets around the Sun, etc. But many of their specific inventions have entered our world today. Hard to believe, but Plato invented the first alarm clock., and the modern taxi meter has as its prototype a mechanism created by the Alexandrian mechanic Hodon.
To conclude, Linking the ancient world, creating great cultural achievements, spreading these achievements in the zone of its influence, the Phoenicians left the historical scene, becoming one of the "ghostly civilizations" of antiquity. The most important thing that gave us the ancient Greek civilization is the ideal of the harmonious beauty of man, which, despite the diversity of the culture of the next millennia, remained unsurpassed. Without hiding from themselves the tragic underside of life, the Greeks had the amazing ability to enjoy life, see and sing its beauty.
Works cited
Pollard, E., Rosenberg, C., & Tignor, R. Worlds together, worlds apart. retrieved from https://digital.wwnorton.com/worldscon
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