“Unraveling the Mysteries: What Sparked the Dawn of Ancient Greece?”
The Dark age ends more or less with the adoption of an alphabet from the Phoenicians. Unlike Linear B, this alphabet was consonants and vowels, cutting the more than 200 signs down to around 24 depending on the dialect. The alphabet was adopted not for record keeping, but to preserve epic poetry like Homerâs and Hesiodâs. With this new script, Greece entered the Archaic age. Written works like Herodotusâ Histories started to develop a sustained Greek identity. As Herodotus wrote âthe kinship of all Greeks is in blood, speech, the shrines of gods, the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life.â
Expand for References
Egbert, J. Bakker eds. A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
Hall, Jonathan M. Hellenicity Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
HÄ«rÅ«dÅ«t, tr. Abd al-IlÄh Al-MalÄḥ , TÄrÄ«kh HÄ«rÅ«dÅ«t. Abu Dhabi: al-Majmaʾ al-ThaqÄfÄ«, 2001.
Pomeroy, Sarah B., Stanley M. Burstein, et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
The post How Did Ancient Greece Start appeared first on Today I Found Out.
