Introduction

History

  1. Definition, Meaning, Aims - History as written by Herodotus means 'Inquiry'. This page is produced in the same spirit, being a general inquiry into the ancient past as examined in a fashion which has now itself became somewhat antiquated, Chronological Sequence of Events. History, being regarded as a 'Social' science has moved in the direction of other similar disciplines away from the more traditional approach of kings, dates, battles, etc. While recognizing that Kings and Battles do not represent the totality of what can properly be called History, it would still seem that without an adequate chronological background upon which to paint events, there can be little real understanding of developments, whether in the political, artistic or more social arenas.
  2. Historical Sources
    Physical Remains - the physical remains of a culture are examined by archaeologists and others to determine aspects of history
  3. Topography- often the physical remains of a culture or civilization are the best evidence we have for their history- this is particularly true for extant remains
  4. Artifacts - the various physical artifacts of a culture often can be scrutinized to glean important facts about ancient history. Among the more important material remains for dating things historically are ceramics. Ceramics due to their durability and stylistic developments can be studied and dated often with great accuracy by experts.
  5. Numismatics- Similarly to ceramic arts, coins are an indispensable tool for the ancient historian. Often they provide our only real framework on which to assemble the facts of a regime or personage. There are numerous specialties and subspecialties withn the field of numismatics.
  6. Traditions
    1. Oral
    2. Written
      1. Primary - These refer to original texts from older or contemporary sources
      2. Secondary- generally this refers to works based upon original texts or scholarship concerning the past, as in academic research and publications for instance.
  7. Geography
  8. Chronology and Dating
    • Centuries of Darkness: Chronology Links; generational chronologies pre-existed a systematic chronology: it became usual to reckon three generations as 100 years, so that the unit was roughly equivalent to 33 years, but there were other systems of 23 years (Her I.7) and yet another of 40 years and presumably others as well.

Ethnography and Linguistics

This is a rough list of the more important language families. All classifications of this sort ignore the cultural links between languages--also the finer aspects of languages, such as dialect, are lost in the jumble. The Summer Institute of Linguistics (And their ethnologue.) is an excellent resource in the the study of linguistics. Our modern concepts of ethnicity are grossly inadequate for understanding the ancient world, not least because our attitudes are coloured by Nationalistic and 'racially-sensitive' sentiment. To the average ancient individuals were first and foremost members of a small community, usually an agricultural unit gathered around a small city or town. A broader concept of 'belonging' might be associated with linguistic kinship. Only later do larger political relationships lead disparate groups to claim unity, often blurring the lines between families, tribes and clans. As nations grew, maintaining cohesion amongst diverse political bodies in a single state became more challenging and remains so today. Speakers of the same language naturally tend to identify with one another to some degree especially within a polity. In terms of the history of the Mediterranean basin, the primary language groups which have dominated the political and thus historical arenas are the Semitic and Indo-European groups. These of course by no means represent the only language groups in these areas although they have had a disproportionately high impact on linguistic developments there.

  1. Semitic
    1. Arabic
    2. Hebraic
    3. Aramaic
    4. Syrian
    5. Amharic
    6. Akkadian
  2. Indo-European
    1. Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) -Northwestern: Panjabi, Lahnda, Sindhi, Pahari, Dardic
      • West and Southwest: Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani, Maldivirian, Sinhalese
      • East: Assamese, Bengali, Oriya
      • Midland: Rajasthani, Bihari, Hindi, Urdu
    2. Indo-Iranian Persian: Old Persian (Achaemenid), Middle Persian (Sassanian), Modern Persian (Farsi)
      • Ossetic, Kurdish, Baluchi, Tajik, Pashto
    3. Tocharian Now extinct, this language was spoken in the northern part of Chinese Turkestan during the first millennium CE Eastern dialect from the Turfan region, labeled Tocharian A, and a western variety, from the Kucha region, called Tocharian B.
    4. Armenian
    5. Albanian - Gheg in the North and Tosk in the South
    6. Hellenic - Greek
    7. Balto-Slavic : Lettic, Lithuanian
    8. Italic : Latin> French, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Rhaetian, Romanian, Sardinian
    9. Celtic Goidelic: Scott's Gael, Manx Gael, Irish Gael
      Brythonic: Cumbrian, Welsh, Cornish, Breton
      Continental: Celtiberian, Gaulish, Galatian
    10. Germanic North- Scandinavia: Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish
    11. Anatolian - Hittite, Palaic, Lydian, Lycian and Luwian
    12. Slavic: Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian
  3. Afro-Asiatic
  4. Algonquian
  5. Altaic
    1. Mongolian
    2. Tungus
    3. Turkik
  6. Andean-Equatorial
  7. Australian Aborigine
  8. Austro-Asiatic
  9. Austronesian
  10. Aymaran
  11. Aztec-Tanoan
  12. Caucasian
    1. North
    2. South
  13. Dravidian
  14. Eskimo-Aleut
  15. Ge-Pano-Carib
    1. Panoan
    2. Carib
  16. Hokan
  17. Indo-Pacific
  18. Japanese
  19. Khoisan
  20. Korean
  21. Macro-Chibchan
  22. Macro-Siouan
  23. Na-Dene
  24. Niger-Congo
  25. Nilo-Saharan
  26. Oto-Manguean
  27. PaleoSiberian
  28. Papuan
    1. East Papuan
    2. West Papuan
  29. Penutian
  30. Sepic-Ramu
  31. Sino-Tibetan
  32. Tai
  33. Tupi
  34. Uralic - Turkish, Khazakh, Khirgiz, Turkmen, Tatar, Azerbaijani, Uighur, Uzbek,
  35. Uto-Aztecan

The Ages of Man

The terminology of the ages stems from the 3-Age system of stone, bronze and iron defined by the Danish scholar Thomsen in the 19th c. to classify museum finds. The notion of a linear evolution of cultures thus implied is obviously presumptuous--nevertheless it has the advantage of providing a sweeping glance of the social, cultural and technological advances of civilizations

  1. Stone Ages
    1. Palaeolithic
    2. Mesolithic
    3. Neolithic
  2. Bronze Age
  3. Iron Age
  4. Classical Age
  5. Mediaeval Age
  6. Age of Reason
  7. Age of Exploration
  8. Industrial Age
  9. The Twentieth Century
  10. The Twenty-first Century
  11. The Future

Related Resources

Copyright 1998- November 13, 2005,
Jerome T. Shaw, Asgard Enterprises.
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