Pytheas: Ancient Greek Explorer of Britain, the Arctic Circle & Northern Europe

[Sanguine]

The majority share the idea that ancient civilizations were primitive in many ways and possessed limited capabilities in navigation and long distance exploration. The journeys of Greek navigator Pytheas demonstrate that the ancients had the technology to travel all over the world.


Pytheas was a contemporary of Aristotle and Alexander the Great. He  reached the Arctic Circle in his search for new sources of tin (essential for the making of bronze) and amber (usually sourced from the German coast) around 330 to 325 BC.

In the centuries that followed ancient historians  Polybius (200-118BC) and Strabo(64BC-24AD) discredit the journeys of Pytheas as too incredible to believe. Our modern knowledge provides solid indications that the journeys of Pytheas are real. Many of his observations have proved to be true (he was able to calculate the correct latitude of his home town Massalia among other achievements). It is also worth noting that Pytheas was the first to reference Britain and provide a reliable estimation of its size....

https://www.historydisclosure.com/pytheas/

[Bill Cipher]

Ancients were remarkable sailors, and had invented a number of really interesting devices, such as the solar compass, and a crystal the Vikings used to determine the direction of the sun on overcast days.

[roamer_1]

And he only went where the Phoenicians went before him.


There was never a time that man did not go to sea.

Sumerian artifacts in central America tell the tale.

[Free Vulcan]

Man has been sophisticated for a very very long time.

And if they could make it to the Arctic, the Americas surely weren't out of reach.

[Bill Cipher]

Man has been sophisticated for a very very long time.

And if they could make it to the Arctic, the Americas surely weren't out of reach.

The Vikings made it there. 

[Absalom]

The vast majority of the greatest minds who ever existed,
in Art and Science, lived and died in Europe, the birthplace
of Western Civilization,created by Greece and Rome. Period!

 

[Bill Cipher]

The vast majority of the greatest minds who ever existed,
in Art and Science, lived and died in Europe, the birthplace
of Western Civilization,created by Greece and Rome. Period!

 

That we know of.  Still, the Greeks couldn’t even handle the number zero, so they were deficient in quite a few ways.

[jpsb]

That we know of.  Still, the Greeks couldn’t even handle the number zero, so they were deficient in quite a few ways.

The Greeks were into geometry, in geometry zero is not a player. 

[Bill Cipher]

The Greeks were into geometry, in geometry zero is not a player. 

So?  The Greeks couldn’t grasp the concept of zero.  We had to wait on the Indians for that.  And since the concept of zero is crucial to much of what passes for Western culture and progress, we can thank the Indians for our culture as much as the ancient Greeks. 

[Absalom]

That we know of.  Still, the Greeks couldn’t even handle the number zero, so they were deficient in quite a few ways.

------------------------------
So, the Greeks, co-founders of Western Civilization, were deficient in quite a few ways, were they?
Well at least they managed to create a few trivialities, among them;
* Representative Governance (Pericles, Solon.......)
* History (Herodotus.......)
* Literature ( Comedy, Tragedy, Poetry and the Novel......)
* Competitive Athletics ( the Olympic Games)
* Philosophy and Logic (Deductive and Inductive Reasoning)
Perhaps more importantly, they created:
* Geometry (Euclid, Pythagoras........) w/o which structure is not possible.
* Botany which permitted the development of Agriculture expanding Man's life span.
* Medicine
* Physics which defined the Law of Buoyancy, among many, permitting global navigation.
Now reflect a moment, as they did all this w/o tee-vee, college degrees or politics.
Think how deprived these poor things were. Oh, the ghastly horror....................!!!

[Bill Cipher]

------------------------------
So, the Greeks, co-founders of Western Civilization, were deficient in quite a few ways, were they?
Well at least they managed to create a few trivialities, among them;
* Representative Governance (Pericles, Solon.......)
* History (Herodotus.......)
* Literature ( Comedy, Tragedy, Poetry and the Novel......)
* Competitive Athletics ( the Olympic Games)
* Philosophy and Logic (Deductive and Inductive Reasoning)
Perhaps more importantly, they created:
* Geometry (Euclid, Pythagoras........) w/o which structure is not possible.
* Botany which permitted the development of Agriculture expanding Man's life span.
* Medicine
* Physics which defined the Law of Buoyancy, among many, permitting global navigation.
Now reflect a moment, as they did all this w/o tee-vee, college degrees or politics.
Think how deprived these poor things were. Oh, the ghastly horror....................!!!

Bravo to the ancient Greeks.  And look how it all got frittered away by that Western culture you fetishize, which, btw, was responsible for communism, fascism, and the worst sort of mass murder ever seen.  Square that circle.

[Absalom]

Bravo to the ancient Greeks.  And look how it all got frittered away by that Western culture you fetishize, which, btw, was responsible for communism, fascism, and the worst sort of mass murder ever seen.  Square that circle.

--------------------------------------------
Let's engage history and learn!
Man emerged from his tribal existence around 6500 BC at Jericho of the Jordanian Valley
in the SW corner of the Fertile Crescent.
Over the next 8000+ years towns/villages grew into city/states and empires/nations formed;
Egypt, then Persia, Babylon, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Byzantium followed by Europe and
then by North and South America.
Despite Man's shortcomings/warts over this timeline, he always maintained a strong
spiritual sensibility evidenced by the creativity and passion of his unsurpassed Art Forms.
Then the Enlightenment emerged in 18th Century France, changing the earlier
dynamic radically as it birthed the concept of "progress", measured by the material and
secular betterment of Mankind and the vehicle for this progress was Capitalism.
All the isms' you have identified are the spawn of the Enlightenment and in my judgement,
a step backward rather than forward for Man.
The events that have occurred in our world since 1800 are mute testament to that reality.

[truth_seeker]

Discoveries continue at a fast pace, into severaal topics; and the timelines are moving further back.

Onesuch is Göbekli Tepe

This site in Turkey moves "civilization" back many years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

[Bill Cipher]

--------------------------------------------
Let's engage history and learn!
Man emerged from his tribal existence around 6500 BC at Jericho of the Jordanian Valley
in the SW corner of the Fertile Crescent.
Over the next 8000+ years towns/villages grew into city/states and empires/nations formed;
Egypt, then Persia, Babylon, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Byzantium followed by Europe and
then by North and South America.
Despite Man's shortcomings/warts over this timeline, he always maintained a strong
spiritual sensibility evidenced by the creativity and passion of his unsurpassed Art Forms.
Then the Enlightenment emerged in 18th Century France, changing the earlier
dynamic radically as it birthed the concept of "progress", measured by the material and
secular betterment of Mankind and the vehicle for this progress was Capitalism.
All the isms' you have identified are the spawn of the Enlightenment and in my judgement,
a step backward rather than forward for Man.
The events that have occurred in our world since 1800 are mute testament to that reality.

Yes, yes.  We all know that you’re the pinnacle of human development and should be worshipped accordingly. 

Still, there is that small thing about the various holocausts perpetrated under the guise of Western philosophical and political thought .....

[Absalom]

Yes, yes.  We all know that you’re the pinnacle of human development and should be worshipped accordingly. 
Still, there is that small thing about the various holocausts perpetrated under the guise of Western philosophical and political thought .....

------------------------------
Thought you were serious, so I responded seriously.
Obviously I was wrong; so my error.
Keep your tee-vee on and burn the books.
That scenario makes the end infinitely less embarrassing!

[Bill Cipher]

------------------------------
Thought you were serious, so I responded seriously.
Obviously I was wrong; so my error.
Keep your tee-vee on and burn the books.
That scenario makes the end infinitely less embarrassing!

No, you didn’t reply seriously.  You have some bizarre fetish for ancient greeks and seem to wish to aggrandize yourself through claimed cultural inheritance.

But at the same time, you aren’t willing to accept all the bad that comes with the good.  Western culture’s responsibility for communism and fascism, and the holocausts those doctrines led to must be factored into the balance. 

Gives meaning to Gandhi’s comment when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”

[Absalom]

No, you didn’t reply seriously.  You have some bizarre fetish for ancient greeks and seem to wish to aggrandize yourself through claimed cultural inheritance.
But at the same time, you aren’t willing to accept all the bad that comes with the good.  Western culture’s responsibility for communism and fascism, and the holocausts those doctrines led to must be factored into the balance. 
Gives meaning to Gandhi’s comment when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”

------------------------------------
The precepts of the moral order of Natural Law, were revealed through logic and
reason by the earliest cultures/societies of the Fertile Crescent.
Next Greece and Rome birthed Western Civilization, followed by the Medieval Scholastics
who reinforced this wisdom and structured the various disciplines of Science.
Then came the unsurpassed High Art from the Renaissance, in Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.
The cranks, malcontents and revolutionaries of the Enlightenment revolted against
this Order, rejecting Western Civilization and insisting that material betterment was a
greater aspiration for Mankind and attainable thru progressivism. This, not Western Civilization
spawned our modern deadly neuroses of communism, fascism, socialism plus many more.
It is breathtakingly astounding that you haven't heard this, don't understand it or
refuse to accept it. Third graders are more aware of the dynamics of history than you are.
JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!
GOOD-BYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!