Another response to Greek Lies, Historic Truth:

Rob's reply
>> .... it would probably serve yo to at least understand that culture & influence can flow 2 ways. <<

I understand it. I've written mainly about how non-Western cultures influenced the Greeks and other purveyors of Western civilization. That's because we haven't explored this topic much in our arts and letters. To understand how the Greeks influenced the cultures that followed, check any one of maybe a million books on the subject.

>> The deciphering of linear b by ventiris in the 1950s was because the cypriot script was already understood & known to be greek. It is of interest that the phoenicians also set up posts in the C9th bc in cyprus, & that the phoenicians already had a consonant "alphabet" written in cuneiform (Ugarit tablets). However, the phoenicians took up the syllabic linear b/cypriot script & used those symbols for their own consonant alphabetic script.. & the greeks took their own minoan/mycenaean script back which had been modified by phoenicians & modified it again by introducing vowels. <<

I guess this is in response to my posting at Greek Lies, Historic Truth? And what's your point, in one sentence or less?

I'm not up on the details of the alphabet's origin, but I believe my summary is accurate. Here are more summaries that say similar things. They confirm the Phoenicians were instrumental in developing and disseminating the alphabet:

>> As for the superiority of the phoenicians as sea traders. 6 of one 1/2 doz of the other. The Phoenicians were shattered in the east. Their dominance in the west was a consequence that the greeks dominated in the east... <<

The Phoenicians' alleged dominance extended all the way to the New World, according to some theories. The Greeks' alleged dominance was circumscribed by geography; it involved the aforementioned shore-hugging and island-hopping. I suspect an unbounded dominance in the west made for better sailors than a bounded dominance in the east.

Besides, the Phoenician dominance predated classical Greek civilization, as I wrote. One website characterized this time as the "Phoenician period—from 1200 to 330 BCE—900 years of trade and influence." What we usually call Ancient Greece dates from 776 to 323 BC. Needless to say, the older culture influences the younger culture, not the other way around. (Contemporaneous cultures influence each other, of course.)

>> Land hugging greeks? Read hamlets mill. The odyssey & even apollonius' Argonautica are star guides... It is a modern myth that the greeks could not navigate if the could not see the coast... What do you think the stas are for? <<

Wasn't the Odyssey largely a land-hugging tour of the Mediterranean? And didn't the Argo sail mainly in the Black Sea, the Aegean, and the Adriatic? This is hardly proof of a nautical culture that preferred oceans to seas.

The work of two poets, Homer and Apollonius, tell us little or nothing about the question at hand. Homer's epic, for one, predated classical Greek civilization by what, a millennium? And who says his depiction of one ancient Greek voyage was representative of Greek sailing practices as a whole?

A culture could develop knowledge of the stars close to land as well as far out at sea. I'm not sure there's any astronomical knowledge a culture could develop only on the open seas, out of sight of land. And if such ocean-specific knowledge exists, who says the Greeks developed it first? Maybe they borrowed it from others (the Phoenicians?) and were merely the first to write it down.

In short, what the Greeks could do isn't the same as what they did do. The question is how they sailed—along shores or across oceans—not how often or far they sailed. Your response doesn't address that.

Incidentally, I covered the origins of astronomy at Greek Lies, Historic Truth. It goes without saying that the Greeks didn't invent it all. As I pointed out, most of the stars have Arabic names, not Greek names.

Rob's problem is...?
>> Indeed your problem is posed by one of your own people, Hitler, who wanted to explain that the germans were backward because they were not near any great civilization (Mein Kampf, p 357, book 2 manheim translation). <<

First, I'm not sure which "problem" you mean. You've addressed a couple of points on one of my Web pages without telling me which page or which points. You've raised some minor questions about these points, but you haven't disproved them.

So where's the problem, exactly? I call two minor questions on one page out of almost 1,500 a "drop in the bucket," not a problem. Find one page with 100 errors or 100 pages with one error each and then we'll talk about problems.

Second, I'm only part German on my father's side. Even if every one of my father's father's ancestors were German, which they weren't, I'd be only a quarter German. My father's mother's maiden name was Lynch; she may be descended from someone who signed the Declaration of Independence. My mother's parents' names were Palmer and Beryl; the first Palmer reached Connecticut by 1636, shortly after the Mayflower arrived.

In other words, I'm more English than anything else. I have roots going back to the non-German founding of this country. And my father's German ancestors came to the US in the 1840s, long before Hitler. If I were going to take responsibility for my German ancestors' beliefs, which I'm not, it wouldn't include anything from the Fatherland since the 1840s.

>> Seems you germans still need to cling on to that desperately. <<

For you to (mis)guess my family history based on my name alone is pretty ridiculous. For all you know, I could've been adopted. My mother could've been Jewish or Japanese but remarried someone named Schmidt.

Even better, she could've been Native American. You did notice that most of my site takes a pro-indigenous point of view, didn't you? If not, check it out.

Seems you don't know what you're talking about. Next time, find out the facts first. Then pontificate.

Rob Schmidt
Publisher
PEACE PARTY

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