The Griffin Warrior Tomb Upends What We Know About the Roots of Mycenae
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
"There are more than 1,500 objects in all, and although the most precious items aren’t here (they are under lock-and-key elsewhere), the scale of the task she faces to preserve and publish these objects is nearly overwhelming. She surveys the room: a life’s work mapped out before her."
This is a drawing of what it looks like in the grave:
http://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/871131223215308800/1024/10...
> ... the three-dimensional location of every last bead photographed and recorded.
2. to apply laboratory tech, you're not going to bring an electron microscope or an NMR spectrometer down a pit
3. to keep the artefacts from spoiling further
4. because spoilage of the artefacts will speed up once they're uncovered and exposed to the elements
5. to avoid thefts and secreting of the artefacts in private collections
6. because the state would have to confiscate all dig sites rather than temporary make them off-limits, which people already react to quite badly (especially when the dig site is a construction site which is rather common, look up "rescue archaeology")
What you say is only so certain. You dont seem as quick to innovate as others. Why not put a building on top of it and add to its shelter? Everyone will react poorly to eminent domain. So what? Think about the variables.
This is not correct. Looters will take the items long before then, as they have for many thousands of years.
Let's say I wanted to test this theory and begin to address the deficiency. Anyone have some suggestions on where to start? What should I start reading?
I've always like Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. He covers a broad range of subjects but they're ways great!
Ancient China is also really awesome to learn about. It's not studied so much in the west but they had some extraordinarily advanced civilizations and cities well before those in Europe. Japan, Egypt, the Middle East all have pretty mind-blowing histories.
The isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
Pre-classical Greece is about the earliest period of the "West" we have good documentation for, and is tremendously "romantic" to study. However beware of thinking of Greece as the wellspring of civilization; this will lead you to overlook the Arabic and Chinese civilizations.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/europe#wik...
Here's an example of one that stuck in my memory recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5f86lb/what_...
And of course, there are the usual concerns about Eurocentrism and Great Man History. So follows the usual solutions. Don't make it the only thing you read, and don't stop meta-analyzing.
The podcast has the added benefit of being brief episodes, so you are quickly exposed to a variety of things you may want to explore more.
If you want to read some ancient philosophy directly, Plato's Symposium is a fun start. It is a bunch of guys staying up all night getting drunk and sharing their theories about love. And yet it is philosophy. Of course Socrates gets the last word---sort of. Also don't miss the point that one of the speeches is by Aristophanes, a comedian.
If it's the ancient Greek world that is inspiring you, maybe read Homer or Herodotus. Some quick notes there:
The Iliad - This takes place in the ninth year of the ten-year-long Trojan War. The Greeks are a loose alliance of kings, led by Agamemnon, who have sailed to Troy and are still trying to overcome its defenses. Their best warrior, Achilles, gets mad at Agamemnon and decides to quit fighting, and everything starts to fall apart. The poem is his story, although in many ways it is broader, covering lots of other heroes. So you have simultaneously the "big picture" of the war and the "little picture" of Achilles (plus some other major figures).
Most readers find this book more challenging than the Odyssey, because there is less fun adventure. It can be monotonous. It is chapter after chapter of "And X threw his bronze spear and it struck Y between the teeth and came out the back of his neck, and he fell into the dust and his armor clashed around him." But it may not be a bad monotony. Have you listened to Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Górecki? It is like that. But if you get to the end, and think about Achilles's story, it is so good.
The Odyssey - Now the Trojan War is over, and the heroes are going home. This is about how the Greek hero Odysseus gets lost, and spends another 10 years wandering. It spends some chapters on his wife and just-now-grown-up son, who are fending off the crowd of suitors who want to marry his wife and steal his estate. It follows Odysseus through his wild adventures---the most fun and memorable part of the book. And it tells of how he finally returns and defeats the suitors. (Contrary to what people usually remember, that is actually half the book.)
These books are striking in how opposite they are, and in many ways their style reflects their protagonist. Achilles is simple and straightforward, and the book is too. It has that monotony, and it basically starts at the beginning and plows forward to the end. Odysseus on the other hand is "wily" or "tricky", full of lies and schemes. (He was the inventor of the Trojan Horse.) And the book jumps all over, with flashbacks and stories-within-the-story. Multiple chapters are told by Odysseus himself. Coincidentally they are the most mythical, making you wonder if they are lies too. :-)
Some people even suggest that the first sentence---maybe even the first word---of each poem contains the rest of the story. For the Iliad it is Achilles's μῆνιν: wrath (or maybe sullenness---he is practically a teenager (or was when he came to Troy)). For the Odyssey it's ἄνδρα: the man: Odysseus.
For Homer there are lots of translations. Lattimore is great and close to the Greek, but I find Fitzgerald's to be the most enjoyable. He gives up some precision to get more poetry, and it's like reading to a soundtrack.
The Histories of Herodotus are fun too, but more history than literature. If you get The Landmark Herodotus, the maps and notes help a lot. I would just be aware of what you're reading: ostensibly this is a history of the Persian War, and that is the thread that connects everything together (like Achilles in the Iliad), but Herodotus's main movement is the digression. Chapter 2 is all about Egypt (its history, culture, etc.). Chapter 3 is all about the East. Chapter 4 is all about Scythia. You get the idea. It's like he is trying to catalog everything known or said about the world around him.
Herodotus was part of a "rationalist" movement in ancient Greece, along with the early philosophers. He is one of the first to write in prose instead of poetry. He is called the First Historian in part because he gives his sources. Sometimes he'll give several versions of something, and leave it up to you to decide. But that doesn't mean he is rational by our standards. There are plenty of myths and legends and wild stories. You will need some patience to finish this book, and a guide would help to draw out the gems, but it is pretty wonderful if you're paying attention.
Good luck, and enjoy your reading! :-)
I found Durant to be much drier. He also covers less material, both in the number of philosophers and the breadth of each philosopher's work. It was still OK and I'm glad I read it, but I only kept one of the two and it wasn't Durant. It is shorter and skips most of the kinda-boring scholasticism stuff that Russell covers thoroughly, though, so it's got that going for it.
One of the things I appreciated about Russell was his willingness to critically engage the philosophy he's describing. I think it's why his book catches a lot of shit for "bias", but I thought it was nice to have an expert explain where certain parts of older philosophical work had been found to be insupportable or problematic (and why), which parts lived on in viable modern philosophies, et c.
"There is, however, a more general argument against reverence, whether for the Greeks or for anyone else. In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."
Reading Russell can easily give you a mistaken view of the thoughts of other philosophers, especially the more they diverge from Russell's opinions, which are by no means the indisputably correct ones.
Really, I think the OP should avoid reading the history of philosophy specifically, and focus just on general history. I'd recommend reading the classics, and always try to find the most complete works that are the most contemporary - read Herodotus, read Thucydides, read Tacitus, read Caesar, read Plutarch, read Carlyle, etc. You get a hugely different experience reading how people at the time thought and acted from their own perspective, or as close as you can get to it - at least from the perspective of someone who isn't a 20th or 21st century American with the associated values.
I can't say much about world history, but I've been reading some books to get a better understanding of American politics:
- "War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires": Interesting analysis on the rise and fall of conquering civilizations. Tons of parallels between dead empires and the US empire.
- "The Death and Life of Great American Cities": Nations are built on cities, and America's cities are very poorly built. What are we doing wrong, what could we do better?
- "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War": Very dense, lots of data. Suggests that our current political turmoil is due to our economy and society expecting unrealistic growth, and a disconnect between reality and the expectation of citizens.
- The Origins of Totalitarianism: "Slippery slope" gets thrown around a lot w.r.t. suspicious legislation. This book provides context on past societies that slipped, and where we stand on that slope.
- "Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization": Optimistic look at the future of globalism.
- "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed": An analysis of the cascade failure that took out almost all the great bronze-age civilizations around the Mediterranean region in 1177BC.
"Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" - I haven't read this, but this is the #1 book that pops up in conversations.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. So, on some level I'm looking to begin addressing my broad ignorance of human history, and then see where that takes me.
Luckily, some have been made readily available on the internet. Here is The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis by him, which I think would be one of the best starting points for your type of historical curiosity.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Carroll-Quigley-TheEvoluti...
It is literally what it says in the title. He's a travel writer so has a very narrative and readable style. Wow just thinking about it now makes me amazed at what he achieved in that book.
But realistically you have to get closer. Pick a time period, or a theme, or even an individual, and start digging. Some people like local or family history. Try to find a selection of voices to read, but beware of the pseudohistorians and pop-scientists.
I feel that an honest lad shouldn't touch History (What happened?) without first wrapping is head around Historiography: Who's writing That History? Is there any conflict of interest in writing process?.
To that end, the single best book I can recommend is Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield's The Discovery of Time, published in 1965.
We take it for granted that we live in a dynamic changing universe with growth and development, but for most of human history in most cultures the opposite was true: The world was static, most change was a fall from a previous high, people's places were fixed, time was fixed, the world was fixed.
(I'm not sweeping aside creation myths, because in most myths the world was created at a specific time to be exactly as it is right now and as it will be forever or until the end, depending on the myth. Static, no change, no development.)
A few centuries ago, there began serious intellectual and philosophical investigation into the possibly of changing time, of a dynamic universe, of serious consideration of the possibility the universe had a beginning outside of religious creationism. Over time, the notion that time itself changed seeped through and into all thinking.
Without that change in perspective, Darwin and others might never have done their work....
What I find personally most interesting is trying to shift my head to imagine what it would have been like to live in a world with static time in an Earth-centric universe.
That exercise is the most eye-popping of all, IMHO.
As an aside, over the decades my interest/fascination in history has waxed and waned, in part because there is simply so much to read, so much to learn, that it can be overwhelming. Consider the simple fact of the millions of stories in WWII alone, and one can easily imagine spending a lifetime learning more and more about a single period, a single event, and never learn it all.
Every now and again I'll plunge into an area of interest, either through a maze of Wikipedia articles or a really good book (Team of Rivals; Churchill's memoirs of WWII; Paris 1919; etc.), but overall I prefer those works that challenge me to change my intellectual and artistic perspective (Age of Insight, about Vienna, is good for that).