Deep time

Deep time: In doing some background reading on Greek history, I’m embarrassed to admit how little I know–how is it with all my education, I never learned anything about the ancient Mediterranean World? Maybe I’m a product of a Western (US, not civilization) education. I know much more about Native American tribes, beliefs, mythology than I do about Greek; and so I find myself comparing the two systems (along with others), which leads to some interesting conclusions:

1. People have been killing each other over territory (i.e. access to and control over resources) since we invented pointed sticks.

2. To prevent #1, people invent stories, beliefs, mythologies to constrain human behavior and base impulses.

3. Many cultures, but not all, have a deep connection to the natural world such that the landscape and its features, rivers, mountains, caves, rocks, and forests are imbibed with a living presence—a sacred geography.

It is this sacred geography that I am trying to wrap my head around. It seems that for many cultures, the cultural and natural landscapes are one in the same. Nature is infused with cultural meaning, primarily though a spiritual presence: Gaia, aka Mother Earth being the most conspicuous cross-cultural example. Which begs the obvious question, if the pantheist, naturalistic, Greek mythology can be considered the genesis of western civilization, where did we lose our way?

Or did we?

I’m listening to Mythos by Steven Fry, which I highly recommend! Not only is it highly entertaining, but it really illustrates how much of our language, culture, and world view is a product of Greek mythology. I find myself comparing it to the Native American coyote stories. While Coyote and Zeus seem to have a lot in common, Zeus seems to always come out ahead, while Coyote is less fortunate. And I can’t help but wonder at the many layers and complexity of Greek mythology–it just goes on and on. I imagine that a substantial factor is written language and the staggering verbiage that results. But there’s the sheer time scale–an endless onion of layers upon layers. That Homer was writing some 700 years BCE about the Trojan War that may or may not have happened 500 years earlier boggles the mind.The fusing of Greek myth, legend, and history also stretches my thinking.

But delineating what may have actually happened with what is said to have happened might be less important when attempting to unpack the human condition. I think this might explain the prevalence of Greek mythology over the past 3500 years—it provides a masterful and perhaps unequaled glimpse into the human psyche.

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