A draft, to be rewritten later
In his present-day book Mare Norstrum Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila tells stories of 5000 or so years of cultures in the Mediterranean area, from Persia via Mesopotamia to Egypt, Crete, Greece, Sicily, Rome, Tunis, Spain to the present day life of the whole world. It turns out to be much more complex than I have been taught so far.
The standard story is that the Greek invented almost everything, at least in philosophy and science. Then, during the dark ages the Arabs kept the Greek science somehow in deep freeze and gave it back to the Europeas after the Middle-Ages. Not quite so. The story is far more complex. It turns out that the Greek inherited a lot of things from the Minoans in Crete. The Minoans had, in turn, inherited a lot of things from Egypt. This was some 4000 years back. At some point, the Middle-Eastern cultures inherited the new things the Greek had developed and developed the much further. And then they gave it back, etc.
The book is very interesting, full of new things to learn, so full actually that it would deserve repeated reading. It is fascinating to learn that the stories in the Bible are, for the most part, just adaptations of older stories. And that the Jewish were the ones distributing culture around some 1500 years back, for they did have more freedom to move around. And how the long Muslim occupation of Spain has left Spanish countless words and even parts of syntax. Or how the Muslim (Arab) medicine inherited the Greek medicin, developed it further to the point that it was far ahead of the European medicine — so much that the European elite employed Arab doctors. Then later, after the Muslim empire shrank and split into pieces, the Europeans inherited the medicine, translated the Arab books, and after 200 years were further. So that the Arabs employed European doctors.
Reading history is important. To understand how cultures and empires have risen and fallen, how they have changed influences, how ecological and other factors have played decisive roles, slows one down. The current hurry, attitude of thinking just months ahead, almost apocalyptic hurry and neglect, suddenly seems to disappear. A strange peace occupies the mind of the reader.
It would be a nice holiday indeed to first read Mare Nostrum a few times and then to visit the British Museum. And to understand, that our Western culture is not so different than other cultures. Especially, it is very similar to other Mediterranean cultures — to see the other different is just to claim one's own superiority, which always yields misery for all.
07.01.2007