THE THREAD OF THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION
The strongest thread of the History of Civilization is the combination of all threads, weaved together…threaded, tied, braided…the culmination of threads that define the history of western civilization.
There are thousands of threads in our history, all of which are still around today; most are the foundation of everything we have, everything we are and everything we need. To list them separately would be just that – a list. To discuss the relationships among these threads is the most effective way to understand our historical tapestry.
History is the consequence of the human condition. The greatest component of this condition is the most basic of survival: food, one of the first threads. Most records of the beginning of man, or Homo sapiens, are dated back to the Neanderthals who lived roughly 100,000 years ago. Even as far back as this, an individual's shelter was based on the location of food. Both food and shelter were mobile as part of the hunter and gatherer lifestyle. Shelter became stationary with the recognition and understanding of agriculture, for the purpose of producing and maintaining food. The thread of a permanent residence, also known as settling, was the basis for all the threads that hold us up today, like puppet strings. Settlements began with tribes, villages, towns, cities, city-states, and empires, all of which instigated government, military and law, or in other words, civilization – our puppet master.
The Paleolithic era found the requirements for living a fuller life than just maintaining food for survival. This was a time of speech, communication through pictures and faith in multiple higher beings.
Egypt is credited as the beginning of civilization as it relates to today's view of social organization. Communication was strengthened through writing, art, Gods and government, which housed the greatest city-god, also known as a king.
Settled civilization gave muscle to a horrible aspect of the human condition: power struggles. Many stories color the need for power as a form of survival and in many ways it is. Other stories illustrate power struggles as greedy acts of wanting more by acquiring a neighbor's property and in numerous cases, hundreds of neighboring properties. Power struggles are most commonly known as war, a controversial thread of society today. Greed and power is such an intricate part of the human condition that it did not only breed war, it has various tiers in every social organization – family, schools, communities, business and government, to name a few.
Alongside these power struggles was a wonderful aspect of the human condition: communication with outside cities. Many people would say the ability to learn from neighboring territories because of communication is a fair trade off with having war, also possible because of communication. Many threads listed above have been responsible for weaving our time line but there are also threads that spanned distance. Trade has always been a major business thread and education has been a major thread for individual and community growth. Both only available through communication – travel was the original means of communication, whether it was person to person, or person to carrier to person.
The many threads discussed so far are the foundation we live on, with or among. This foundation has been necessary on many levels of survival. However, the first and most important threads of the history of the human condition are not tangible: Family and God.
The make-up of family is from the need for human contact and love, from basic reproduction and from the need for structure – a system to work from just like shelter. This system has changed throughout history but mostly in regards to the role of women and the use of slaves. Slaves were not chosen by culture in early Egyptian, Greek and Roman times, rather, they were chosen by social status. The role of women and the many classifications of social status have varied from state to state and generation to generation. When you look back on the 20th century the role of women has changed progressively, however, in B.C. times their involvement in public life varied from culture to culture rather than with time. In Athens they were not involved in the public life at all and only managed the home and family. Whereas, in the Greek Hellenistic world (4th century B.C.), they were allowed to manage property and business. Family threads are the most obvious of who we are today.
God or religion has been many threads – the greatest two being faith and the search to understand the human condition. The mysterious rope, which, creates all the threads mentioned above, would be the question of which came first: God or the human condition? This is the greatest mystery of the universe. Greeks and Romans believed in multiple Gods until Judaism and the spread of Christianity slowly began to eliminate polytheism. The conversion was a very long process and was mostly instigated by Paul, disciple of Jesus Christ, who traveled to spread the word and miracle of Jesus as the Son of God. Today Christianity of all denominations, along with Judaism, is extremely accepted but questions about God's existence and precise role are still everywhere among believers and non-believers.
These tangible and non-tangible threads that have weaved themselves through distance and time are what we consider the basic staples of life today and people rarely analyze what we were born into, rather, we accept and expect these threads in our lives. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans gave us even more than these basic necessities. They gave us art, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and Latin. There is not a single place or existence that isn't affected by these threads of society.
There is no doubt that art, any preserved art from ancient civilizations, has inspired thousands of artists since. In America, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and all of its sisters, for example, portray our appreciation of ancient aesthetics. Rome and Greece are commonly referred to as the experts.
Architecture literally houses our homes and places of business, school and recreation. Styles may change from country to country and city to city but its existence can't possibly change unless we learn how to live in bubbles, floating in the air. And certain kinds of architectural styles will never change, arches for example. Coliseums for games, concerts and other public events have only changed with time for convenience; now we've added restaurants, comfortable bathrooms, retractable roofs and vendors. Additionally, the practice of building heads of state and country are throughout history, built high upon a hill. Washington D.C. is a prime example. The capitol is located on a hill and below it is an entire district devoted to government offices. There are Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns, as well as many dome and arch shapes.
Mathematics to all degrees (telling time or figuring equations) plays a role in every single thing we do today, especially since the technological revolutions over the past two hundred years.
Math and architecture would have been invented eventually if not in the B.C. era and throughout the West; however, the slight alteration in the time of invention would have changed life as we know it today. If these threads were invented and discovered, in 1,000 A.D., we would be hundreds of years behind in the structure of our society.
Philosophy would exist without being called philosophy because it is part of the human condition to wonder, question, ponder and analyze. Hypatia (370-415 B.C.) and many other philosophers' biographies will show how the study of philosophy naturally overlaps with at least science, math and astronomy. Philosophy is second nature. Philosophers have contributed to society as a thread themselves, weaving through every other thread. Hypatia lost her life due to her pagan beliefs. It's hard to say if she, and other philosophers, would adapt to society today and advance us to an unknown level, or if they would end up in a mental institute
Astronomy is an extension of the philosophic mind because it exists outside the earth and offers us gifts that we don't have to understand in order to survive, i.e., sunshine, the moon and the stars. It seems every generation has bred a great philosophic mind but if this were not the case and astrology was unidentified, as either an exact science or a gift from God, many people would be in different occupations today and landing on the moon would sound as crazy as it did two hundred years ago. The weather channel would possibly cease to exist and alternative forms of energy would lack definition.
On the other hand, we were destined to have these great discoveries because in Archaic Greece man was so anxious to understand the world that he made up myths as possible explanations. Myths were a substitute for truth for hundreds of years and can still be found today in the form of fairytales and urban legends. Without myths we would probably not know Disney as an industry and animation could have taken a different form all together.
Without the thousands of threads from early Western Civilization, especially the ability to write and communicate extensively, life, as we know it would no longer be a tapestry of discoveries, inventions and progressive wisdom – instead we would be a tapestry of myths, ignorant of our veracity.
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