Monthly Archives: July 2012

Departing Ancona, Italy for Greece. With apologies to our readers, we have not kept up to date. Today we will see the small part of Greece—the Peloponnese peninsula—that we visited when our timing to Athens proved to be awkward—arriving in Athens the day of the EU votes….. So we postponed Athens in favor of driving south to Gythio (reportedly where the ships were launched in antiquity to attack Troy—more about that later, now that we have also been to Troy—in Turkey). From Gythio we go to Sparta, Monemvasia, and other amazing areas. Read On! Stay Tuned!

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We can be thankful that the religious zealots and their storm troupers over the millennia did not succeed. As each successive wave of the fashionable religion of the day–of course, the only one with the true and right view–killed or ran off those who disagreed, the victors were all too eager to wipe out any vestige of the predecessors. So, whether it was South America or the eastern Mediterranean–or the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese in Tibet, or …. the rush to steal, seal, or otherwise bury (preferably using the original structures as the foundations for their own edifices—it is just business) the architecture, structures, writings, and possessions of the vanquished was generally immediate and (thought to be) thorough. Thankfully, their rush to obliterate got in the way of their thoroughness. Today, everywhere thousands of reminders of all of those preceding us remain. It is actually astounding that as much has survived as is evident throughout Greece and the Mediterranean in general. Consider the relatively small populations in these regions and then consider the thousands of years of grave robbers, stone robbers, amateur archaeologists plundering either for themselves or their patrons (a la Indiana Jones), museums, armies, villagers trying to get rich quick, etc. Those wanting what was in the cities, temples, tombs, fortresses, etc., must outnumber the number of people who placed the stuff in there…… yet, even today treasures from antiquity continue to emerge from the ruins. Amazing. What is 22,000 years? Incomprehensible? Really only a small snapshot in real scale time. Yet, the human artifacts that we saw in just one of the dozens of museums that date to approximately 20,000 BC demonstrate how short the time is that we have to contemplate what has preceded us.

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