Monday, November 22, 2010

The Ancient Greeks

Let's add printing from engravings to the list of things the Greeks almost had, right next to the railroad, the steam engine and the clockwork numerical calculator. --And they did build coin-operated vending machines and had roller-skating music.

It makes me wonder how different that civilization was in reality from the one we reconstruct based on impressive buildings, moving emotionally-affecting sculpture,* tag-ends of drama and philosophy, and things found in middens. For all we know, how very little we know.
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* Since various Greek artificers did, in fact, create sculptures that moved, I thought I had better clarify what I meant.

5 comments:

  1. After looking at http://on.io9.com/aITkUt I figure they also led the way in, "Let's paint the statue in the yard and piss off the neighbors."

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  2. The present ain't nothin' special, and I mean that in every way it can be meant. Life gets easier to stomach when I keep things in perspective ...

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  3. Now, if we could only get people to bring back the Greek practice using the ostrakon.

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  4. One of those posts in my little basket of "concepts I want to write about that have never gelled into a coherent format" is how much of what we perceive about history is shaped by what was written down, and how narrow the class of readers and writers actually was for the bulk of that history. In essence, the idea that the bulk of history and how we understand it was shaped by a cabal of the literate that maybe had more in common with each other across those generations than they did with the other folk in their place and time.

    It would certainly explain how we think of ancient Greece as a civilization of philosophy and theater and the contrast those artifacts represent...

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  5. The problem is the lit-crit art fags who end up in charge of the books. I have seen this in the local public library, in which the good old technical books get "weeded" first, and the artsy-fartsy stuff stays on the shelves. I think it was just the same in ancient times. Techies don't get no respect, sons of Martha that we are.

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