Thanks Piotr
> Good points, John. We tend to look at ancient northern Europe
automatically adopting the perspective of Greek or early Roman
historians and geographers with all their bias and ignorance. To the
Greeks, the upper course of the Danube was as mysterious as the
headwaters of the Nile were to 19th-century European explorers. They
couldn't tell apart barbarian tribes and languages, and all they
really knew about the origin of commodities like tin and amber was
that they came from someplace far away. The Gaulish tin road "entered
[Classical] history" when the Massiliot Greeks gained control over
it,
which is why our reference books romantically credit them with
"establishing" the route. Of course, as archaeology shows, northern
Europe was busy with all sorts of human activity -- including
long-distance trade -- already in the Neolithic (salt, flint and
obsidian, copper, pottery, shells, etc.); it only lacked its own
historians to report it to posterity. Tin and amber "roads" were not
blazed by pioneers cutting their way through virgin forests but
emerged from a network of previously existing roads and exchange
routes in lands that had their own civilised communities integrated
into regional structures.
Apart from the fact that I call a civilised community and urban one
(civilis?), I would agree very strongly with you here. Gallic Oppida
were undergoing incipient urbanism across western and central Europe
(and SE Britain), but they were not urban in the Mediterranean sense.
>
> Being an eastern European barbarian myself, I know what it means
to live on the fringes of the civilised world, near to Cimmerian
darkness. The Myth of the Pripyat Marshes was discussed here when
Cybalist was young.
There is so much ignorance of Non European history. In the year 800,
for instance, when Charlemagne's Aachen was amongst the biggest
centres in Europe, it was less than 1/5th the size of Cordova, 1/10th
the size of Constantinople, 1/20th the size of Bagdad, 1/30th the
size
of Changhan. Cordova had free public libraries, a free public health
system, and over 2 miles of street lighting of a kind not seen until
Victorian London! During the 12th century, when Europe was boasting
of the growth of Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, the University
of
West African Timbuctoo had over 20,000 students in all subjects from
medecine, to astronomy, mathematics to jurisprudence, and the
University of Cairo was even bigger. Ibn Khaldun, the Arab
hsitorian,
in his History of the World, spoke of Medieval European History
"Rumours are coming through of a minor researgence in philosophy, and
there has been some good religious building, but as for what else
goes
on in such barbarous parts, God only knows". Andre Gundar Frank's
recent book "Re-Orient" shows that Chinese dominance of world trade
continued until the end of the 17th Century. Europe produced nothing
of interest to world trade except as a way of harnessing American
silver to the Chinese market of goods and services.
It goes to for prehistory. Art is supposed to have occurred first in
Western Europe.... Wrong.... Red ochre was mined in Swaziland from
100,000 years ago, more than 3 times as old as Western Europe.
Pottery began in the Middle East.... Wrong.... Jomon Japanese potters
were hard at work 12,000 years ago! It is a little like people
searching for their car keys under the street lamp because that is
what they can see, whilst in actual fact they lost their keys out of
the light in the dark!
Regards
John