Yeah, I missed a night. That's what happens when you burn the candle at both ends the way I have been. Eventually, it catches up with you. Sleep was the priority last night. Tonight, it's back to work.
So, my wife and I finished watching the Ascent of Civilization season two series. The three episodes were the Carthaginians, the Germanians, and the Arabs. Not as immediately relevant to Western civilization as the Greeks, Romans and Vikings from season one, but certainly all three of those civilizations made very significant contributions to the West.
The first episode was the Carthaginians, who emigrated to the other end of the Mediterranean from what we know as Phoenicia in about 900 BC. Their big contributions to our cultural heritage were that they were the first true seafaring power in the world, having settlements from Palestine to modern-day Spain. And they were merchants, trading goods all over the world. They also had a pretty tough military; after all, they had war elephants. Those were the tanks of the ancient world.
The Carthaginians have a bad reputation in history as being involved in nasty cultic practices, particularly child sacrifice. While there is debate about whether that was just Greek and Roman propaganda (since almost everything we know about Carthage comes from those cultures since Carthage was razed by the Romans and most of their writings burned), the Carthaginians were Baal worshipers, which has a special significance to Bible readers. Baal's big moment in the Bible is when Elijah challenges his priests to summon their god through a sacrifice. I won't spoil it here; it's in the First Book of Kings, chapter 18. It's a cool story; there are explosions.
Anyway, the Carthaginians may or may not have been involved in unsavory practices, but what can't be argued is their longevity and success as an imperial power. They reached their peak at roughly the same time as the Athenians did in Greece, and their mercantile network stretched all the way across the Mediterranean, and even around the northern part of Europe all the way to modern-day Britain. There's not much left of them today except stories, but they were vital in shaping the pre-Christian history of the Mediterranean basin.
Moving on, we have the Germanians, or Germanics. Never a united people, the Germanics were basically a whole bunch of tribes in northern Europe who resisted Roman rule to the point that the Romans gave up trying to conquer them. Some of the tribes included the Gauls, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Anglos, the Saxons, and the Suebi. Considered barbarians by the sophisticated Romans and Greeks, the Germanics nevertheless had their own cultural identity, divided as they were. And we get a lot of our modern culture from things they started. They were the first men to popularize the wearing of pants instead of togas and skirts. That's helpful in those German winters.
They also gave us several of the days of the week; their gods are more familiar to us today in their Norse versions, but Odin was originally the Germanic Wodan. There were also the war god Tyr, Odin's wife Frigga, and of course, everyone's favorite hammer-wielding giant-killer, Thor. Tyr gaves us Tuesday, Odin Wednesday, Thor Thursday, and Frigga Friday. And they also popularized beer, which was their preferred weekend (or weekday) entertainment. The civilized folk thought it to be disgusting, but then, they lived where grapes were easy to grow, so wine was their thing. Grapes weren't a thing in northern Europe at that time, but barley was. So, beer.
As for other noteworthy things we got from them, how about art and architecture? Gothic architecture is derived from Germanic styles. Oh, and let's not forget fairy tales; most of the ones we know are old Germanic folk stories, including all of Grimm's Fairy Tales. We also got bigger stories from them, such as the Eddas and other sagas. Some of the names in those stories include Bombur, Thorin, and Gandalf. Sound familiar? Yep; Tolkien cribbed the hell out of the Germanic sagas. I'm not complaining.
Finally, the Arabs. Today, a lot of people have a particular view of the Arab people, one that involves religious fanaticism and intolerance, and a lack of cultural sophistication compared to us in the West. And in some ways, they are right; Islam is not a forgiving or ecumenical religion. But the Arab civilization that is being discussed in this series is much, much different than what we are familiar with.
First of all, Muhammad is quoted as saying that the pen of the scholar was more important than the zeal of the prophet, or something to that effect. And some of the Arab caliphs of the latter part of the first millenium took that seriously. They were collectors of knowledge and scholarship from all over the world, and not just from the west; they had an advantage that the Romans largely lacked: they had India and Persia to draw from as well. So, in the major cities such as Baghdad, the whole world came together for the purpose of expanding human knowledge. Greek texts were translated into Arabic, as were Indian and Persian texts of antiquity. They had libraries that made the Library of Congress look like a small town public library.
They also had an empire, one that stretched even further than the empires of Alexander or Rome. They ruled territory from northwestern India through North Africa and even into what is now Spain. That's one of the reasons Spanish architecture and music is so different and unique compared to the rest of Europe; they had Arabic as well as Christian influence to draw from.
Back to the scholars, they had some incredibly brilliant men (and yes, even some women) working in multiple fields; they made advancements in medicine, music, architecture, astronomy, physics, philosophy, mathematics...you name it, they studied it. A lot of people today like to criticize the West and point out that the Arabs did have a multicultural Empire that stretched so far and avoided the Dark Ages because they were so enlightened. Actually, their cultural dominance of the time was primarily due to two factors: they lived in subtropical regions, while the majority of Europe was temperate and dealing with a lot more cold. It's not easy to focus on studying Aristotle when you're tempted to throw the manuscript on the dying embers to keep from freezing to death. Second, the Arabs were RICH. The caliphs could afford to buy rare manuscripts from all over the world at any price demanded. Northern Europe wasn't swimming in that kind of wealth.
So, what happened to the Arabs that turned them from the wise, enlightened multicultural empire of scholarly learning into the religious fanatics that burn libraries and historical monuments to the ground? Two words: The Mongols.
Yep. Genghis Khan did to the Arabs what he did to the Russians. He burned Baghdad to the ground, destroying their great library, a crime against humanity on par with the burning of the library at Alexandria. Who knows how much was lost forever? Greek plays, scientific texts, all kinds of stuff that we'll never see again. Damn the Mongols.
So, what did we learn? We learned that while our civilization comes from the two main streams of Greco-Roman culture and Christianity, it wasn't all from them. The rest of the ancient and medieval world had a lot of input as well, and we're all the better for it and what they did.
Except the Mongols.
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