Ancestor of the West

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning 'between two rivers’) was an ancient region in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to today’s Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey. The 'two rivers' of the name referred... [continue reading]

Religion (from the Latin Religio, meaning 'restraint’, or Relegere, according to Cicero, meaning 'to repeat, to read again’, or, most likely, Religionem, to show respect for what is sacred) is an organized system of beliefs and practices revolving around, or leading to, a transcendent spiritual experience. There is no culture recorded... [continue reading]

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form. The original Mesopotamian writing system... [continue reading]

Greece is a country in southeastern Europe known, in Greek, as Hellas and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Greece is the birthplace of Western Philosophy (Plato) Literature (Homer) Mathematics (Pythagoras) History (Herodotus) Drama (Sophocles and Aristophanes) the Olympic Games and Democracy and Science (these last two most notably... [continue reading]

Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Knowledge of Elamite history remains largely fragmentary, reconstruction being based on mainly Mesopotamian sources. The city of Susa was founded around 5000 BCE, and during its early history, fluctuated between submission to Mesopotamian and Elamite power. The earliest Elamite sites... [continue reading]