Ancient history

Almost all geographical discoveries by Europeans have, in like manner, been brought about by means of guides who necessarily knew the country which their European masters wished to discover.

what therefore we mean by the history of geographical discovery is the gradual bringing to the knowledge of the nations of civilization surrounding the mediterranean sea the vast tracts of land extending in all directions from it there are mainly two divisions of this history the discovery of the old world and that of the new including australia under the latter term though we speak of geographical discovery it is really the discovery of new tribes of men that we are thinking of it is only quite recently that men have sought for knowledge about lands apart from the men who inhabit them one might almost say that the history of geographical discovery properly so called begins with captain cook the motive of whose voyages was purely scientific curiosity but before his time men wanted to know one another for two chief reasons they wanted to conquer or they wanted to trade or perhaps we could reduce the motives to one they wanted to conquer because they wanted to trade in our own day we have seen a remarkable mixture of all three motives resulting in the european partition of africa perhaps the most remarkable event of the latter end of the nineteenth century speke and burton livingstone and stanley investigated the interior from love of adventure and of knowledge then came the great chartered trading companies and finally the governments to which these belong have assumed responsibility for the territories thus made known to the civilized world within forty years the map of africa which was practically a blank in the interior and as will be shown was better known in sixteen eighty than in eighteen fifty has been filled up almost completely by researches due to motives of conquest of trade or of scientific curiosity in the earlier stages then the history of geographical discovery is mainly a history of conquest and what we shall have to do will be to give a short history of the ancient world from the point of view of how that world became known became known to whom you might ask and we must determine that question first We might, of course, take the earliest geographical work known to us, the 10th chapter of Genesis, and work out how the rest of the world became known to the Israelites when they became part of the Roman Empire.

But in history, all roads lead to Rome, or away from it, and it is more useful for every purpose to take Rome as our center point.

yet rome only came in as the heir of earlier empires that spread the knowledge of the earth and man by conquest long before rome was of importance and even when the romans were the masters of all this vast inheritance they had not themselves the ability to record the geographical knowledge thus acquired and it is to a greek named ptolemy a professor of a great university of alexandria to whom we owe our knowledge of how much the ancient world knew of the earth it will be convenient to determine this first, and afterwards to sketch rapidly the course of historical events which led to the knowledge which Ptolemy records.

In the Middle Ages, much of this knowledge, like all other, was lost, and we shall have to record how knowledge was replaced by imagination and theory.

the true inheritors of greek science during that period were the arabs and the few additions to real geographical knowledge at that time were due to them except in so far as commercial travelers and pilgrims brought a more intimate knowledge of asia to the west the discovery of america forms the beginning of a new period both in modern history and in modern geography In the 400 years that have elapsed since then, more than twice as much of the inhabited globe has become known to civilized man than in the preceding 4,000 years.

This gave very full and tolerably accurate accounts of the coasts from Aden to the mouth of the Ganges, though it regarded Ceylon as much greater and more to the south than it really is, but it also contains an account of the more easterly parts of Asia, Indochina, and China itself, where the silk comes from.

This had an important influence on the views of Ptolemy, as we shall see, and indirectly helped long afterwards to the discovery of America.

There was the one and only Professor Judith Herrin, talking all about the origins of the great city of Constantinople, the continent-straddling capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

I really hope you enjoyed the episode and if you want to learn more about the Byzantine Empire and this fascinating period of late antiquity, the early middle ages too, then do go and check out our previous episodes, one on Ravenna and another on the decline and fall of the ancient world.

We'll put links to both of those episodes in the show notes.

Now for our subscribers, we've also got another episode coming up for you.

And so began several long millennia of bee anthracis super-killing any humans unlucky enough to get infected with it.

In the ancient world, the Roman poet Virgil described a plague that spread from animals to humans, one that caused high fevers and lesions breaking out on the skin of anyone who touched the animal's fur.

Come the Middle Ages, anthrax was so endemic in Europe that it was nicknamed the Black Bane.

There's even a theory that the mysterious sweating sickness that afflicted England across the late 15th and early 16th centuries may have been anthrax.

Here's a picture of ancient Egyptians actually producing fish.

Fish was an extremely important source of protein in the ancient world.

Um, although it's interesting to note that fresh fish was actually quite a bit of a delicacy and was reserved for the most part for higher level people with, um, greater amounts of disposable wealth.

Um, most people ate a lot more dried fish or salted fish, which could be produced in two different ways.

And Dr. G, we're stepping into the arena today.

We are joined by Harry Sidebottom, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and is a lecturer in ancient history at Lincoln College Oxford.

He's the author of two well-known series, Warrior of Rome and Throne of the Caesars, as well as several nonfiction books on Roman history.

However, his latest book is Those Who Are About to Die [laughs], A Day in the Life of a Roman Gladiator, which is being released actually as we speak, I believe, which is mid-April 2026, for those of you listening in the future.

They seem kind of separate sometimes.

But this kind of leads into a question as we s- sort of get to know a little bit more about you and what drew you to this career path.

You've obviously been studying ancient history for a few decades now.

What was it that initially drew you to the ancient world and ancient Rome in particular?

And we're very happy to have you join us this week.

We are going to be revisiting a topic we covered on the show about nine years ago, and that's ghosts of the ancient world.

We're going to take you on a historical tour of the ancient world to uncover what they really believed about ghosts and the afterlife.

So something that I find fascinating is that ghost stories can be found everywhere.

In ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, China, India, Greece, Ireland, England, Scotland, the entire continent of Africa.

No one was permitted to leave unless they had to right a wrong.

So the only time this queen of the underworld would allow ghosts to appear to the living is if, for example, the family hadn't given them a proper burial, or if the family had neglected to give the ghost offerings.

The idea of leaving offerings for the deceased, you will see, comes up again and again and again in the ancient world.

And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either.

Section One of The History Teacher's Magazine, Volume One, Number Four, December nineteen oh nine.

This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Greg Giordano.

The History Teacher's Magazine, Volume One, Number Four, December nineteen oh nine, by various.

Section One.

History Syllabi by Walter L. Fleming, Professor of History, Louisiana State University.

Exato.

E na Antiguidade, esse palco era a própria estrutura do espaço-tempo.

E mais importante, hã, as métricas exatas que a definiam.

O que nos leva logo à matemática e à arquitetura, certo?