Europe: 700 to 601 b.c.  (Page 34/2)

Europe

Back to Europe 1000 to 700 B.C.

Beginning about 700 B.C. and lasting for the next 1,000 years most of Europe seems to have been somewhat colder and moister than it is now. (Ref. 215 )

Southern europe

Eastern mediterranean islands

Crete remained under Dorian Greek control, while the Aegean islands overall belonged to a mixture of Ionian and Dorian tribes. Rhodes remained independent and even had a colony on Gela, in Sicily. (Ref. 38 )

Greece

The Greek civilization continued to develop in Greece proper as well as on the coasts of southern Italy and Asia Minor. There was a series of city-states, most of which were aristocratic republics by the end of this century. Cavalry played a decisive role in inter-state warfare and only the wealthy could be cavalrymen, with the result that noble landowners developed an increased influence. Sparta was supreme in the Peloponnese, while Athens was the major power in Attica. The hillsides of Attica had already been denuded of lumber for houses, ships and charcoal for metal working by 650 B.C. and the consequent erosion of the marginal land removed the soil to the point where little would grow and the peasants began to go into debt. All of Greece had poor land for livestock and thus with scarcity of animal fats, the Greeks cultivated olives for their oil, and depended on food imports for the remainder of their food necessities. The urgent need for grain stimulated much of their later enterprises.

Metal coins were introduced stamped with the likeness of an ear of wheat. Although gold, ivory and marble were used on sculpture and public buildings, the common people lived in houses of sun-dried brick, built on rubble in narrow streets strewn each day with litter thrown from the houses. Wives were held to housekeeping and childbearing while husbands, if they could afford it, openly took concubines and associated with the hetairae, women of education, wit and beauty, groomed for this profession, not unlike the Geisha of more modern Japan. There were about ten slaves for every free citizen and it was felt that about one hundred slaves were necessary to keep one philosopher in comfort. (Ref. 222 , 211 , 77 )

Upper balkans

The Greeks had cities on the Black Sea coast of present day Bulgaria and Romania while Thrace began its period of highest culture. The Macedonians were Greeks, speaking a dialect remotely connected to those in Greece, proper, but developed separately. A series of local chieftains ruled until the middle of this century when the country was partially united by King Perdiccas I. (Ref. 180 )

Italy

On the Italian peninsula there were multiple tribes, including the Latins and the Sabines, but dominating most of the north and central parts were the Etruscan city- states. Rome, itself, was ruled after 616 B.C. by Tarquinius Priscus, son of a Corinthian Greek man and an Etruscan woman. The Etruscans absorbed writing and other elements of the Hellenic civilization, assimilated and changed them and passed them on to other Italic peoples. The Latin alphabet was derived from the Etruscans, but the latter were never able to inflict their language on the Romans and in essence Rome remained a city of a dual culture. The Etruscans, themselves, had attained a certain degree of unity of culture and language. They attempted to form an Etruscan League, but the ties with adjacent tribes were more religious and cultural than truly political and concerted action was difficult to obtain. The Etruscans were superior engineers, and the Roman Theophrastus, writing later in the third century B.C. stated that they cultivated medicine and were rich in their pharmacopoeia. There is some evidence that they excavated tunnels and leveled hills to drain swamps as malaria control projects. They definitely practiced some surgery and dentistry, using gold wires in the latter field. (Ref. 176 , 28 , 8 , 45 , 185 , 75 )