alternatehistory.com

At secondary school (from when you are 13 to when you are 17 years old) I had a very "Classical" formation (Secular, humanistic, non religiuos and deeply Eurocentrical).

At history we learnt about the Ancient Egyptians and Messopotamiams, the Phoenitians, the Israelis, the Greek, the Romans, the Middle Age, The Reinassance and the Age of Discovery, the colonization of Spanish America, The Modern Era and the French Revolution, the independence of Spanish America, the most importants events that took place in Argentina and Europe during the XIX and XX centuries... and a bit about the US history in those two centuries (basically, the Civil War, its expansion westwards and, in the XX century, its role in both World wars and the New Deal). We don't learn anything about China and India, and we learned more about the Ancient Egyptians than about the Incas, which governed a (small) part of what's now are country for at least 50 years (1)

But, besides History, in several courses we were tought about the Ancient Greeks. That was where Democracy, Philosophy, Political Science, Math, Geometry, Geography and History were born. Even Music and Art owed much to Greece. That was the place were humans first dared to think about the world that surrounded them without remainenig enslaved by preconcieved religious, mytichal or superstitious ideas, and where men became the center of the word. The idea was that that was where rational, abstract thought was formed. Babylonians and Egyptians applied Math, we were told, but the Greeks were the first who put problems in Abstract terms, developping theoremes, and concieving the idea of how to demonstrate that a theorem is universaly valid (parting from certain premises). They were the once who developped Logic (If A...then B...) as a Science.

The idea was this Awakening of human potential that took place in Ancient Greece came almost out of nowhere. One teacher refered to it as the "Greek Miracle". Also, it was as if, culturaly, these ancient and distant people were our ancestors, and as if we where much closer to them culturaly than to, let's say, the Amerindian peoples who inhabited the land we now live in.

In this site, however, I have the sensation that the Greeks were just another Ancient people, and that, for instance, if the Persian had beat them in the begining of the V century B.C., the world would have changed, but humanity wouldn't have lost much, and that human history might even have been nicer.

So, I've got two questions for members:


-Do you think the Ancient Greek where "special", somehow, and that they were the first to come up with some of the ideas I mentioned? If you do, do you think that, if the Greek had been wiped out, these ideas would have come up anyway, somwhere else? If you don't, do you think the Ancient Greek weren't so much different from their neighbours, and that, if we could read what the Phoenitians wrote, we would find that they also though in abstract terms, and had developped notions such us logic, humanism or theoremes on their own? Or do you think, for example, that they are a bit overestimated, and that they don't developped the ideas mentioned (for example, when could argue they weren't free from superstitious ideas when thinking about the world that surrounded them, and that they were, in that sense, more or less like anyone else at the time)? Might it be that, when modern science was indeed developped, in the XVI and XVII centuries, those who did reinterpreted Ancient Greek texts and "discovered" those ideas they where developping in those ancient texts (ideas that, in fact, where never there)?

- Where you also taught at school that Ancient Greeks were somehow "special"? Or where they, for you, just another Ancient people? Where you not taught about them at all? (Please state what's your home country)


(1) I went to secondary school in the late nineties, not sure if it's the same now. I wouldn't think so.
Top