Some History

I like 'history' so much that I intend to put some talk of it on this blog. The problem is I don't know much. I don't know much history, I don't know many of its details or its lessons. I don't know what part of the subject you might find attractive. I do know a bit about some of the ways historical information has been organized and ways it has been presented.

I also have some idea about what I like. For example, I like it in the form of a good story, even accurate historical fiction. I even enjoy looking at a timeline. I also know that I tend to like he older stuff better. But the fact is I don't know much.

So, when someone says to me, "What about those Iranians!" I have grin to say "Yeah, how about those guys.!" I'd like to know more.

My hope is that you will tell me some bits of history here. Please don't wait for me to get you started. Just say what you know or what you'd like to know or what you have begun to find out or .... If you really know something you'd like to get across, you may find us surprisingly teachable.

To try to do my part to get started, I'll make a few comments and then ask some questions. If my efforts are laughable or a crying shame, please be kind, generous, and gentle. Feel free to nurture me into better ways.

Archaeologists have done a lot to help us fill in the historical record. I imagine them enjoying that work right now. I am grateful to those archaeologists who make the effort to help us understand their findings. The way they tell their story changes from person to person and from time to time. One telling might be stiff and unimaginative in an attempt at scientific honesty. Another might, in an attempt to breathe life into the story and give it heart, might let his (or her) effort at synthesis and interpretation wander into fantasy. A third telling might be just right. Archaeologists are human and a lot like historians.

Sociologists have helped in the interpretation of history, We may not yet have a clear language for describing human societies or for making statements concerning their cohesion. A sociologist might be working on stuff like that at this moment.

Here is a kind of bare bones beginning. Iranians moved out of a homeland north and east of the Black Sea about 2500 BC. It was a tow pronged movement. One prong headed into the Central Asia steppe. The other moved into the Indus an Ganges valleys of India. I believe that they were master horsemen.

When I think Danubians, I think Indo-Europeans. On linguistic grounds the Danubian culture represents the arrival and establishment of the Indo-Europeans in Central Europe.

Often a study of Western history is begun in classical Greece. The geographical area of those Greeks was the Greek Peninsula, the Aegean Islands, and Ionia. During the Greek colonization period the Carthaginians were the dominant sea power of their world. Guess they are closely related to the Phoenicians, pioneer seafarers of the Med. Phoenicians where very much like the inhabitants of the Syria and Lebanon of those days.

Appears we could use the help of persons who know something of linguistics and geography as well as about sociology and archaeology.

Here are questions which occur to me:
What's interesting about the "Iranian Plateau?"
What is a good story that features the Black Sea?
Did the Iranians have anything to do with the Helen whose face launched a thousand ships?
Who has dealt with the history of horsemanship in a fun way?
What wee the Danubians like?
What even remotely related to this stuff interests you?
What's the deal with Indo-Europeans?
What did the Carthaginians have to do with what is now Spain?
Who will tell us something about Ionia?