Showing posts with label ancient history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ancient history. Show all posts

September 13 - That's Ancient History!

Posted on September 13, 2020

It's a bit tough to be sure of dates from history. Records weren't always kept, or accurate; and records are sometimes destroyed. Also, calendar systems used to vary all over the world, and the modern Gregorian calendar was adopted by various places at different times, so we have to translate not just between languages, but between different calendar systems. 



Of course, the problem with accuracy in dating gets worse as we go farther and farther back - so dates on ancient monuments and scrolls are pretty iffy. Still, we are pretty certain of the day-and-year dates of a surprising number of ancient events.

Which brings us to two events that happened on this date during ancient times:

On this date in 509 BCE, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus was dedicated. The temple was located on Rome's Capitoline Hill.

We don't know exactly what the temple looked like.
This model is based on an educated guess.
This is a model of what the Capitoline Hill in Rome
looked like in ancient times.
Nowadays, people climb stairs (above)
up the hill to the plaza (below).


On this date in 379 CE, Yax Nuun Ahiin I was crowned the 15th Ajaw of Tikal. This occurred in the Mayan city that is now located in Guatemala, south of Mexico.


Evidence tells archeologists that Tikal included many
 buildings (above); people can visit the ruins today (below).


I got to thinking about these two events. They occurred pretty far apart, globe-wise - Italy and Guatemala are an ocean away from one another. But they occurred really far apart, time-wise, too. 870 years stretch between the two dates, so even though we tend to think of "ancient times" as one big lump, those "times" lasted a reaaaalllllyyy long time!

After all, there's only been 244 years between this:


...and this:


I got to wondering...what defines "ancient history"?

Apparently, it dates from the beginning of writing - and therefore recorded history - to around 500 CE. The latter date is close to the time of the Fall of Ancient Rome (476 CE) and the beginning of the Dark Ages or Middle Ages. The Dark Ages are called "dark" because a lot of knowledge was lost.

The span of ancient history, therefore, is about 5,000 years. The oldest "coherent" texts from the oldest known writing, Sumerian cuneiform, dates from around 2600 BCE. So ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans from 3,000 BCE to 500 CE. 



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August 26 - On This Date, WAAAAAAY Back...

Posted on August 26, 2020

It sometimes seems hard to believe that we have dates for some events way back in history. However, when historians and linguists have a good understanding of an ancient or historical language and dating system, they can translate dates chiseled into stone tablets or commemorative statues, written on ancient scrolls and codices, and otherwise enshrined for centuries and millennia.

Here are a few long-ago events we have identified as having happened on what is August 26 on modern calendars in the English-speaking world:

On this date in 683, a Syrian caliph (a Muslim political and religious leader) named Yazid I ordered his army into the city of Medina (now in Saudi Arabia) to put down a rebellion against him. A few years later, he died while leading a siege on Mecca, and the empire was plunged into a full civil war. 



On this date in 1071, a group of Turks called the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine army in a battle that resulted in them taking over most of the Anatolian peninsula (the Asian part of modern Turkey).

Modern Turkey includes a chunk of Europe, south of Bulgaria and
east of Greece. But most of modern Turkey is in Asia,
for the most part consisting of the Anatolian peninsula.



On this date in 1278, a king of Hungary and Croatia and a king of Germany teamed up to defeat a king of Bohemia in a place called Moravia. Both Bohemia and Moravia are names for Czech lands.


The three different historical realms that are considered Czech lands
are Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Of course, for a while Czechia was
joined with Slovakia to create the nation of Czechoslovakia.

One thing I do not like about this map is that it used the color blue to
represent non-Czech lands - but blue is ALWAYS used for water!
The southern chunk of blue is correctly labeled Austria, and the
northern chunk of blue is Poland.

There is no water portrayed on this map!


On this date in 1303, an Indian emperor named Alauddin Khalji captured the largest fort in India, Chittorgarh.




Do you notice that all the historical events listed above were about great battles, kings and caliphs and emperors, the transfer of land from one ruler to another?

Of course people who lived so long ago had lots of events in their lives, just as we do. 

They had happy occasions like healthy births and fun holiday traditions and really good meals. 






They spent lots and lots and lots of time doing various sorts of work - often much more physical work than most of us do today. 



For example, laundry and getting food for the fam are SO much easier now than way back then! 



Of course long-ago people had unhappy occasions like household accidents, illness, family quarrels or broken friendships. 




But as important as all of the good and mundane and bad times of their lives were to people who lived long ago, we don't have records of these more ordinary lives and events. The things that have come down to us from plaques, monuments, and the scrolls that were kept safe and passed down through generations are the histories of rulers and of military conquests and defeats.

Remember, this is not the most important kind of history. We can get ideas of everyday life from clues discovered by archeologists who study ancient trash dumps and home structures and sometimes from art and literature. 





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