text | Guxuan's Story
edit | Guxuan's Story
Most people know Ancient Greek people have made many significant contributions to modern civilization, but not everyone knows exactly what they have contributed.
It is impossible for us to list all the contributions of ancient Greece to civilization here, because we can write a whole book on this topic, but still can't cover everything.
Nevertheless, here is just The most famous ancient Greek -in fact, and it is also a small part of the most obvious contributions, they have no specific order number:
1.
Written vowels
Ancient Greek letters were the first real alphabet , because it was the first writing system where each letter represents a specific sound, where the letter represents a vowel.
Greek letters are based on the early Phoenician abjad, which has only consonants, but the Greeks reused the Phoenician letter to represent consonants, which do not exist in their language.
Latin letters, which are the alphabets used to write English today, and the alphabets we use to write this answer are derived from the Etruscan alphabets, and the Etruscan letters are derived from the Greek alphabets.
2.
Early form of democracy
As we all know, it is indeed true that the ancient Greeks invented democracy, but the democracy of ancient Greek city-states is still completely different from the form of government we are today.
Ancient Greek democracy was a direct democracy, which means citizens vote directly on all issues, rather than electing representatives to vote for them.
This is actually problematic, at least in Athens, which is the largest and best recorded of all ancient Greek democratic city-states, as many Athenian citizens don't seem to really understand all the problems, leading to many bad decisions.
In addition, in ancient Athens, only free, adult, male Athenian citizens were allowed to participate in the government, which meant that the vast majority of people in the city, including women, foreigners and slaves, had virtually no political say.
There are other major issues in Athenian democracy, including the Athenian judicial system is also a mess. Anyone could be charged with a crime and taken to court without any evidence.
Conviction and innocence rarely rely on any type of objective evidence, but rather on who can make the most attractive arguments to the jury.
Despite this, despite the many shortcomings of Athenian democracy, it was the starting point of all democratic countries later - the first prototype necessary for the people to rule their own system of government.
Every democratic country in today's world draws some degree of inspiration directly or indirectly from the constitution of ancient Athens.
3.
eventually became the origin of Western and Middle Eastern philosophy
Before the Greeks, there were many thinkers in early civilizations, and we can call them "philosophers".
But in the past around 2,500 years, the specific species of philosophy dominated in Western world mainly originated from the Greek philosopher Sokrates (living in 470-399 B.C.) and others, who were described as the founders of the Western philosopher tradition.
In the late classical and early Hellenistic periods, many schools of Greek philosophical thought emerged, including Plato ists, nomads, cynics, Stoic schools, Epicurus ists, Cyreans and Pyroles.
All these schools draw at least several aspects of their teachings from one of the three big names I mentioned above.
Greek philosophy had a huge impact on Romans , and through them had a huge impact on Western European , which also had a huge impact on later Byzantine and Middle East philosophers.
4.
A very early form of empirical philosophy, eventually becoming science
In the early days of Greece, it was very common to use mythical explanations to explain natural events. It is said that the first person who tried to explain the universe naturally without resorting to mythical explanations was the Ionian Greek philosopher Miletos Thales (living in 624 BC - 545 BC).
others, including later Anacimandros of Miletos and Samos' Pythagoras (about 570 BCE - 495 BCE), followed in Thales' footsteps.
Later Greek philosophers were one of the first to develop the idea that our knowledge of the world should be collected from empirical evidence and observation.
Now, this has become the central idea behind almost all modern science. The earliest supporters of this ideology were the philosopher Tajira's Aristotle (living in 384-322 B.C.) and the Epiculos of Samos (living in 341-270 B.C.) calling these thinkers "scientists" in any meaningful sense, but we can reasonably call them "primitive scientists."
5.
History
Before the Greeks, many writers in ancient civilizations wrote about past events, but they did this mainly for propaganda purposes.
None of them, as far as we know, attempts to methodically collect and objectively analyze different narratives of past events from different ethnic groups and evaluate them to figure out what exactly happened.
Likewise, as far as we know, none of them tried to figure out the cause of the event they described.
The first person known to try to do all these things was the Greek historian of Halicanasos Herodotus (Herodotus) (living in 484 BC - 425 BC).
Herodotus is known for his book History, an immortal nine-volume work in which he retells the various narratives he heard from different peoples and attempts to analyze them as neutrally and objectively as possible to determine the reasons behind the events he described.
Although Herodotus's "Records of the Grand Historian" is indeed far from perfect, and historiography has undoubtedly gone through a long way since the fifth century BC, Herodotus took an important first step in writing past events in a more historiographical way.
Athenian historian Thoukydides (about 460 BC to 400 BC) followed Herodotus's footsteps and wrote his book " History of the Peloponnese War ".
However, while Herodotus freely included stories of suspicious historical accuracy, because he felt obliged to record everything he heard, whether he believed it or not, Tuchidides adopted a more rational, skeptical attitude, including only the narrative he thought was correct.
Since then, all Western historians have followed in the footsteps of Herodotus and Tuchidides.
6.
Some of the greatest world literature works
A large number of outstanding ancient Greek literary works are now widely regarded as eternal classics and the greatest literary works of all time.
The earliest of which are two great Homer epics, Iliad and Odyssey, and Hesiod , Theogonia and poetry of works and days.
These four works were written with six meters of fingertips and may have been created around the eighth century BC. They form the basis of the ancient Greek literature tradition.
A little later are poems by early Greek lyric poets, most of which exist only in fragments.
is most famous for its early Greek lyric poets including Sappho on the island of Lesbos (about 630 BC - about 570 BC), Alkeios in Mitilini (about 620 BC - 550 BC), and Pindarus in Thebes (about 522 BC - 443 BC). The surviving drama of the period of the great Athens
The great Athens The playwright Ahilos (about 525 BC - about 455 BC) is considered one of the greatest dramas ever.
About the third century BC, during the Hellenistic period, the poet Apollonios of Rhodes created the epic "Argonotica".
In the second century AD, when Greece was under the rule of Roman, the philosopher Plutachos of the Platonist (living between 46 and 120 AD) wrote many famous biography and essays.
satirist Loukianos (living from 125 AD to 180 AD) wrote about eighty satirical dramas in Greek , which is still very lively even today. There are many other great works of Greek literature that we don't even mention here.
7.
Some of the greatest existing art and architectural works
Ancient Greeks produced a large number of amazing works of art and architectural works. Here are some of the most famous examples:
Modern ruins of the temple of Irektion , another building in Acropolis, Athens,
Modern ruins of the Epidalos Theatre, which is one of the best preserved ancient Greek theatres
A mural in the tomb of the divers in Paestum, which can be traced back to 480 BC
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