ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

MEDITERRANEAN HISTORY

Before I studied architecture, I was floundering in engineering looking for the right specialty. Due to a fascination with natural sciences one of my detours was bio-engineering.  This led me to studies of biology, oceanography, physics, chemistry, and organic chemistry.  In chemistry we studied the formulas and diagrams of many organic and inorganic compounds.  I always remember one anecdote, because I appreciated its later influence in design.  In the 1860s August Kukele was working on the structure of Benzene (C6 - H6) discovered by Michael Faraday decades earlier.  It did not behave like ordinary Carbon/Hydrogen compounds. He later recounted how, while working on the problem, he took a nap and had a “day dream”.  A snake was winding around and swung on itself to eat its tail.  This circular snake spun around in his head.  He woke and realized that the chemical arrangement of was not linear as many, but circular.  

Benzene Chemical Structure

Since then, I’ve always appreciated the power of the subconscious in solving problems.  When struggling to find a solution to a difficult problem I often resolve the question in the early hours of the morning when half-awake, or when I take a break or am distracted. For me, that’s when creative solutions arise.  (At least that’s my story for taking breaks – and I’m sticking with it.)

 

Interesting, you might think, but what does this have to do with a travel blog? 

 

Ten years ago, when I left Callison and planned our retirement I knew we’d need to sell the house after the kids left.  I suggested then that between selling and buying we might live in Europe. In August last year after we sold, serendipitously (love that word) Teigan was living in the UK.  We agreed to spend the holidays in the UK so we needed to decide what to do before and after.  As previously written, we settled on southeastern Mediterranean to be warm and explore Minoan and Cycladic Greek history.  After the holidays, I needed to solve our next destination before returning home.  We’ve both been to Morocco and all the countries of the northern Mediterranean.  I’d been to Lebanon and Jordan in the east, and besides Morocco, to Libya in North Africa.  This covered most, but not all, the ancient Mediterranean seafaring cultures of the Romans, Phoenicians, Hellenic Greek and others. 

 

During one of my nocturnal perambulations, our destinations came to me, like the circle of six carbons in Benzene.  Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Crete, Carthage… Rome, Athens, …   I realized if we went to Egypt and Tunisia (Carthage) in the Maghreb (Arab Africa), and Israel/Palestine in the Levant (eastern Mediterranean) we will have been to all the great Mediterranean cultures of antiquities.  

 

There is too much to write in a brief post about each of these histories, let alone test your tolerance.  So, I’ll let maps summarize the Mediterranean story.  Future blogs will touch on each of our travel destinations.

200 million years ago as Pangea started to break into two Super Continents (see Plate Tectonic Africa post from 2019), the Mediterranean was an inlet of the Tethys Sea and closed off at what is now Gibraltar.  As the continent's continued to move eventually this eastern connection was closed and the Mediterranean nearly dried up like our Death Valley.  Then five million years ago, the continents broke apart at Gibraltar and the Atlantic flooded in, in what is speculated as the largest flood in the earth's history.

Humans' first civilization developed in Mesopotamia along the Tigris and Euphrates river, todays Iraq.  The Fertile Crescent also included the Levant and the Nile river delta and valley in today's Egypt.  During this time humans develop agriculture and the first cities for trade including Ur in lower Iraq.  Ur is where Abraham, the father of todays three great religions, was born.  He migrated with his tribe to Jordan and Israel.  If ever there was a need for humans to create a new religion to provide for an afterlife, this is the region.  But at the time worshiping Yahweh was an outlier cult with other polytheistic religions being dominant. Eventually though, Judaism would conquer the Levant through King David and Soloman.  However they too would be conquered by both Babylon and Rome which would lead to the destruction of their temples and the diaspora of the jews.  

2000 BCE and the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia.

Phoenicia was located along the Levant of eastern Mediterranean.  Though based in today's Lebanon, these master seafarers traded throughout the Mediterranean with their own colonies and Greek colonies.  Evidence suggests that the Phoenicians traveled as far as Ireland for both discovery and trade.  This is also the time of the Kingdoms of Egypt, which will cover in later blogs.

1500 BCE - Phoenicia

During the later phase of Phoenician times the Greeks also developed a seafaring culture.  They colonized settlements throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Black Sea.  These  colonies eventually became their own power centers as city states.

800 BCE - Greek colonies

At the same time as the development of Greek culture and settlements, Persia, a land based military, was making incursions to the Mediterranean basin conquering Egypt and the Levant.  This ended famously in the battle of Thermopile when the underdog Greeks defeated the Persians for rule of Ionia (today's western Turkey which then included Troy). 

550 BCE - Persian Rule

After driving out the Persians a Macedonian named Alexander conquered most of eastern Mediterranean, northern Egypt, and Persia dispersing their Hellenic culture far and wide.  Still studied today for politics, rhetoric, architecture, and art.

220 BCE - Alexander the Greats Conquest

After the death of Alexander and the rise of Rome, the territory he conquered were distributed among his generals or conquered by others.  This led to a very fractured rule of the Mediterranean basin.  

220 BCE - Rise of Rome and distribution of Alexanders Conquests

As the Greek City States had internal struggles they were conquered or incorporated into the Pax Romana, and  Rome became the dominant player in the Mediterranean.

117 CE - Height of the Roman Empire

After the the death of Constantine, the Roman empire split in two in 337. The western half finally fell to the Germanic barbarians in 476. The Eastern church eventually split with Rome's Latin in 1054 to become the Byzantine Orthodox church.  These were years of stagnation along the northern Mediterranean with the Coliseum being harvested for stone and sheep grazed in the Forum.  However, big things were happening in the Magreb (northern Africa).  The newly formed religion in Saudi Arabia became both warrior and missionaries.  They conquered all northern Africa, the Levant, Persia and even into continental Europe with Portugal and Spain.

With the power vacuum after the fall of Rome, tribal Kingdoms formed in western Europe.  The church eventually filled this vacuum and claiming the power to anoint kings.  The tribes were eventually united under Christian authority to form the Holy Roman Empire.  These tribes and the church decided to get the holy lands (the Levant and specifically Jerusalem) back from the "infidel muslims".  They were successful on many fronts, but not the Levant where a new power structure arose, the Ottomans.  While Spain eventually had the "reconquista" and returned their land to Christianity, the Ottoman conquest is still apparent today where, what was once Greek or Orthodox Christianity in today's Turkey and Egypt, is now all muslim.  The Ottoman empire did not end until the end of WWI, over seven hundred years later.

1300 AD - Muslim Conquest and start of Ottoman Empire.

As you can see, history is not quite so linear as it's taught in school:  Mesopotamia, Egyptians, then the Greeks followed by the Romans.  There's a lot of overlap and productivity in those cultural exchanges - often hundreds of years between.  I often find in history, like in biology, the most fascinating areas are at the interface between stabile regions.  For example the marsh and estuaries between land and sea, the top six inches of soil and the first hundred feet of the atmosphere, and the pelagic area of the ocean between the water and sky are all the most productive.   Likewise in History, the transition from the Egyptians to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Romans, or Persians to the Greeks etc are fascinating to study.

For you History geeks out there, love you.  I'm sure you may find errors in my summary or statements to pick apart.  Compressing five thousand years into a brief blog I'd be surprised if there weren't.  I'm glad to hear any comments you take exception with.  It'll only improve my limited understanding.