ANCIENT BRITAIN
The Ice
Age,
during which Neanderthals and then Cro-Magnons inhabited Great Britain, ended about 8000 BC. The rising sea level produced
the English Channel and made Great Britain an island. In the
new environment of forest and swamp
the Middle Stone Age came and passed, followed by the New Stone Age, during
which the practice of agriculture was begun. This period brought a stream of
new people to Britain. By 3000 BC the Iberians, or Long Skulls, were
farming the chalk soil of southern England, and by 2500 BC the pastoral Beaker folk had
established themselves. The latter, named for their characteristic
pottery, are
noted for their bronze tools and their huge stone monuments, especially Stonehenge. These monuments attest to their social and economic organization as
well as their technical skill and intellectual ability.
In the 1st
millennium BC the Celts overran the British Isles, as
they did virtually all of Western
Europe. With iron plows they
cultivated the heavy soil of the river valleys; with iron weapons and
two-wheeled, horse-drawn chariots, they subdued and absorbed the indigenous
inhabitants of the islands. Their priests, the Druids, dominated their society.
History of Excavations
The Indus Valley
civilization was first defined by the British archaeologist Sir John Marshall’s (1876–1958)
diggings at Mohenjo-daro and M. S. Vat’s excavations at Harappa (both in what
is now Pakistan) in the 1920s, and it is sometimes called Harappan civilization
after the latter site. In 1946 the British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler
(1890–1976), excavating at Harappa, located
stylistically different pottery in the earliest occupied areas. Subsequent
discoveries at nearby Kot Diji established that this early pottery at Harappa
belonged to the early Bronze Age Kot Diji culture. Since 1960 Indian,
Pakistani, and Western scholars have defined several additional early Bronze
Age cultures at Amri, Sothi, Gumla, and other sites in Pakistan,
each of which has some traits in common and contributed to the formation of the
Indus Valley
civilization.
Archaeological Discoveries
A German amateur
archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, was responsible for some of the most famous
discoveries of the 19th century. In 1870 he began excavating a mound called
Hissarlik, in Turkey, and found what is believed to be the ruins of Troy. In Greece he uncovered the sites of Mycenae in 1876–78 and Tiryns in 1884. Finds of fortress palaces, pottery,
ornaments, and royal tombs containing gold and other artifacts demonstrated the
existence of a well-developed civilization that had flourished about 1500–1200
BC. Schliemann’s work has been continued by modern
archaeologists, including
the American Carl Blegen (1887–1971).
In 1900 the
British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered at Knossos, Crete, a palace complex that he associated with King Minos
and the labyrinth. He also found baked clay tablets with two types of writing
from the middle of the 2d millennium BC, called Linear A and Linear B. Linear B
tablets from about 1200 BC have been found at Pylos and other Mycenaean sites.
The British cryptologist Michael Ventris (1922–56) and John Chadwick (1920–98),
a classical scholar, proved that Linear B is an early form of Greek. Linear A,
the language of Minoan Crete, has not yet been deciphered. The discovery of
Linear B on Crete supported the theory that the mainland people, the
Mycenaeans, gained ascendancy over the Minoans.
The existence of a Cycladic civilization that
had connections with both the mainland and Crete is
indicated by artifacts found in these islands. Since the 1930s Greek
excavations of a Cycladic settlement on the island
of Thera (Thíra), also known as Santorin,
have yielded frescoes and artifacts similar to the Minoan. Thera was destroyed
by a great volcanic eruption about 1625 BC. Thedisaster may have been the
basis for Plato’s writings on the lost continent of Atlantis. More recent
excavations on the islands encircling Delos traced back
the Cycladic culture to the 4th millenium BC, when merchants, in search of
obsidian (a volcanic glass), and fishermen established seasonal settlements
there. Although no examples of writing have been identified, Cycladic culture
possessed viable pottery, jewelry, and characteristic marble idols, generally
of women and often life-size in scale, that were originally lavishly painted.
Incorrectly termed "mother goddesses," these idols associate the
deceased with the powers of the sea, which was central to Cycladic life.
The New Archaeology
During the 1960s,
however, many archaeologists began to find historiography-oriented archaeology
sterile. Some, such as the American anthropologist Walter W. Taylor
(1913– ), deplored the overemphasis on chronology and
sought to use anthropological data about contemporary cultures to understand
those of the past. Others—Albert C. Spaulding (1914– ),
for example—demanded more sophisticated quantitative methods and techniques.
Still others felt that archaeologists were not focusing sufficiently on
theoretical objectives. Many young archaeologists of the 1950s sought to
understand how and why cultural changes took place instead of simply describing
and dating them. In their view, the ultimate goal of archaeology is to
formulate laws of cultural change, thereby establishing it as a science. They believed
that understanding the process of change in one area of archaeological research
would yield generalizations that could be applied to other areas. The leader of
this new movement was Lewis R. Binford (1930– ), who
began writing on the subject about 1960, ushering in yet another period—that of
the new archaeology.
Arnold Toynbee
wrote a book “A Study of History”; it is over 3000 pages. The book was
published in 1995 by Strand Book Stall, by arrangement with Thames
and Hudson ltd. --- I read the book and I was disappointed – I’m no match to
his knowledge, acumen and his philosophical bend in dealing with the situation.
Americans had sent him to Vietnam; they
wanted to know his views of the people of Vietnam. Americans
had opened full-fledged war against communist Vietnam; they
wanted to literally wipe out Vietnam from the
map of the world. But at the cost of dollars and lives of American soldiers
they were loosing war and prestige. Arnold Toynbee
went to Vietnam. He saw all
men had joined military service and women were working in the rice fields with
a child tucked in the pouch on the back.
Yet moment they saw an American fighter
plane flying off on the head, they picked the rifle kept handy near by and
pointed skyward. Toynbee told Americans to stop the war. People, who have no
fear of death, cannot be defeated. Americans called off the war.
Ho Chi Minh declared Hanoi the capital
of a newly independent Vietnam in 1945;
French had left Vietnam in good
order without subjecting it to “Divide and Rule” policy of the British. Vietnam has past
history: The ancient name may have been “Viyāta Nāmnā” – Let you be called Bold. In 1010 King
Ly Thai To picked Thang Long (Ascending Dragon), situated within present day
Hanoi, as the capital for a country that has defeated the Tang Dynasty less
than a century before, ending a millennium of Chinese rule. The enormous royal
complex that Ly Thai To (Rā taiḥ tvam) built last 900 years. The history of Thang Long
(Rāgaḥ - to apply
ointment to deity, pleasant Expression) citadel is the history of the Great
Viet. Archaeologists are working on the
site. Viet probably descended from the Bronze Age Dong Son Culture. Terra Cotta
sculptures of five-toed dragons and coiled-tongued phoenixes, symbols of the
king and queen, eyed the excavators from the d
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