Early Man in Motion Picture

There is a period of time we are familiar with the acronym "BC". It stands, of course, for "Before Christ", the period before the famous tale about the origin of the Christian religion. But this time goes far behind Jesus. Far beyond the origin of all monotheistic religions. It goes even before the eons when our ancestors knew gods in the plural and to the ages when modern humans started their everlasting and ongoing endeavors. The time in prehistory was occupied with the endless wonders of surrounding nature without firm beliefs but surely filled with many invisible divine spirits and mysterious stars.

Due to the illiteracy of the period, there's almost nothing tangible we could use to gain full knowledge of what early society really looked like, and even though we know a great deal about those times only by analyzing cave walls, fossil records, and DNA samples, in order to describe one early settlement, we still must use lots of imagination and scientific guesses.

Personally and definitely caused by the mystery of the ancient times, I do enjoy reading and, in this case, watching fictitious stories about early people, events, and how everything was in the beginning. Hence, if we stay in the realm of motion pictures, I want to share four movie recommendations from the rather small pile of films covering prehistory free of wild imagination that might be anthropologically correct. So, let's start in, appropriately, in chronological and descending order, starting with the latest film about the earliest period of prehistory in all four movies. The story is about the first joint adventures of man and man's best friends. The wolves. Well, you know... the dogs.

Portraying Europe at the end of the Pleistocene epoch some 20,000 years ago, Alpha is telling an adventurous story of Keda, a teenage boy on his first hunting trip, and Alpha, the first domesticated wolf. They struggle to survive the harsh environment of the last ice age and, along the way, learn to enjoy new special friendships among two species. Something we are taking for granted in our very contemporary age. Three things about this movie are fascinating: for one, there are no human villains in the film, and this is amazing for nowadays movies, and yet the story works just as perfectly. Secondly, I learned something I didn't know: Alpha was played by a real Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a mix between a German shepherd and real Carpathian wolves created for military purposes. I always admired German shepherds, but I have to say that this relatively new breed is really magnificent in every way. Finally, the language they used is a fictional one, fully developed for the movie by Christine Schreyer, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia who used three ancestral languages in the process, and this effort alone gave the movie a genuine and really extraordinary feeling.

The next two movies went even further in the past. The set was still the Eurasian continent, and the time could be estimated at some 30-40K BC, when one of the kind events in the history of two dominant species happened. It was the time when our ancestors started to populate the area that was already taken by Neanderthals. Barely compatible, this caused the death of the weakest and most unprepared party in conflict. It is still a mystery what exactly was happening in those shared periods that probably lasted hundreds or more likely thousands of years, but in the aftermath, just like proposed in one of the movies, Neanderthals suffered and died out from both major issues: their bodies were totally unprepared for new diseases humans unknowingly delivered, and equally important, their minds couldn't stand or understand the violent behavior of newcomers.

Ao, le dernier Néandertal and The Clan of the Cave Bear are both dealing with the collision of two dominant humanoid species of the time only from different angles. At first, Ao was a desperate Neanderthal man whose family was brutally murdered by modern humans, and he was forced to seek his life elsewhere and find happiness with a homo sapiens woman. The movie offers outstanding performances by Aruna Shields and especially Simon Paul Sutton, who portrayed the story with one word—perfectly. The same goes for Jean Auel's first book of the "Earth's Children" series and the movie with the same name. Here, the script is the opposite and follows young girl Ayla, who finds shelter within the Neanderthal clan. It's hard to say which film is more appealing, historically accurate, better performed, and better made, but if you choose to watch them, entertainment filled with drama, adventure, and even romance is guaranteed.

Finally, if we go even further into the past, more or less 80000 years ago, in the time of tribal societies where the fire was a luxury and hard to find, the last film recommendation was the oldest movie of them all. Quest for Fire was filmed back in 1981, and it was the first movie I watched from this genre. I remember I was fascinated with scenes with mammoths who were played by circus elephants in full wardrobe and trained lions in the role of saber-toothed tigers. In short, three cavemen are sent on the quest to find the fire, for which they still don't have the knowledge of how to start it. The quest turned into a real adventure, and what they learned and returned to their cave was priceless. And I am not talking just about fire. Enough said.

Refs:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2015/10/neanderthals-humans-and-shared-caves.html
https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog
https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/08/23/bc-professor-creates-language-for-alpha
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-wild-story-behind-quest-for-fire

The Oldest Pictograph for Copper

Last year, during our visit to the Cretan site of Knossos and their wonderful museum in Heraklion dedicated in large part to one of the greatest peaceful periods in human history, I didn't hide my admiration for the old Minoans and their way of life. I even said I would move to Crete without second thoughts if I had a time machine, mainly to avoid the hostility of the world order we are currently living in today. At the time, considering only the European continent, I was under the impression that cultures like Minoan were rare and the Bronze Age society we glimpsed on Crete was maybe walking on the edge of being the only one in the history of mankind. To say the least, I couldn't be more wrong.

Only a couple of millennia before the late Neolithic period, known as the Chalcolithic or simply the Copper Age, there was an old European society that lived for centuries and also flourished in peaceful harmony and perfect equilibrium with nature, themselves, and their immediate land, where they built large settlements with big houses, streets, and infrastructure. And one of their major cities, by using vocabulary for describing settlements built 7000 years ago, existed almost next to my backyard. So to speak.

Prehistoric Europe, probably like everywhere else in the world, has experienced a civilization boom after the Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture, along with the domestication of wild animals. That also included a boost in population and ways of living, and in these parts of the world, for almost eight centuries, if not longer, rose a civilization that belonged to the well-known Turdaș-Vinča culture. Many archaeologists today consider this early civilization for the throne of being the first independent and distinguished modern humans and true civilization cradle.

More than ten major settlements were found, and most of them were in the process of excavation throughout Serbian territories, with the addition of several more within neighboring lands, especially Transylvania in central Romania. These people not only perfected agriculture but also were the first to initiate the Copper Age in world history. The art of pottery was their hallmark, and many alien-shaped figurines triggered a wave of 'ancient astronauts' theories, and I will only quote one of the referenced articles: "The appearance of these figurines is striking. Many depictions of extraterrestrials in ancient literature and art reference the same oval-shaped heads, enormous almond eyes with dark pupils, and small noses and mouths". Whether or not this is evidence enough to conclude that Vinča people were in contact with extraterrestrial beings who helped them to achieve a higher level of life, I will let you conclude or ignore, but one thing is for sure: these people, along with their way of clothing and decorating, early metallurgy, and the functionality of their large, for the time, houses and settlements, were almost on the same levels of civilization as the old Minoans who lived and flourished three millennia later.

If you add to the facts that pottery was practiced at the household level with artifacts clearly created and shaped by children, along with evidence that women's clothing included mini-skirts and trousers, it is really fascinating. All vanished civilizations from ancient times earned their place in the evolution of humanity, but those of them who practiced or invented something for the first time and what we today take for granted represent our true and genuine heritage. Within the humanity tree, Vinča people deserved a very special place for two very important things in our evolution as a species.

They developed one of the earliest forms of proto-writing, which still waits for definite evidence of whether or not it overgrown simplicity over centuries and became the true representation of their spoken language. The second achievement is indisputable for most scholars. This culture was the first one, in the current knowledge and archaeological evidence, to learn how to smelt copper ore. They were the pioneers who took the big step toward the end of the Stone Age.

Vinča-Turdaș symbols were found practically everywhere engraved on artifacts excavated in Serbia and Romania. Hence the name by which it is known; like with Cretan civilization, we don't know how they called themselves. Most of the inscriptions are on pottery, and the vast majority of the inscriptions consist of a single symbol. This indicates that symbols are used similarly to what we are familiar with today as "icons", and lots of different pictographs are probably designed to identify the object they are engraved on, the content of it, the owner, value, and measure, perhaps even the ancient logo of the household or manufacturer. Most likely the names of individuals as well. For example, the name Cochise of Native Americans' Apache means "oak wood", and one of the Vinča symbols most definitely means the same thing. No doubt there were a series of pictographs related to copper and whatever they made out of it.

However, over the time of civilization's existence, the script probably evolved along, and these three tablets in the image above, found at a site in the village of Tărtăria, indicate more complex writing that most likely represents words of their language. So far, no "Epic of Gilgamesh" alternative has been found, but lots of work on sites is still ahead, and I am sure many other sites are still waiting to be found. Even so, Vinča symbols predate the earliest Sumerian cuneiform script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the first Minoan writing by far.

To me, the Vinča-Turdaș script most definitely resembles all other linear scripts, which means by using the symbols it is possible to write complex lines and sentences, but I am far from being the expert in the field. However, this suggestion is sound, and lines of text dated to the period and found in two locations in Bulgaria and Greece support the hypothesis. For the theory to become proven or disputed, cracking the ancient code must be done first, but for all lost languages, this is not easy. For example, old Minoans used a "Linear A" script that is still a mystery even though it is related to its solved big brother, "Linear B". Its amazing that these three scripts are possible to download in the form of TrueType fonts, and just for fun, I used them in this image to print "Milan's Public Journal" in Vinča, Minoan, and Mycenaean. This is rubbish, of course, and all these people from the past would need very different keyboards to write their languages (letters of the alphabet would not do any good for their symbols), but still, it was fun to play with.

While the writing puzzle is still not solved, Vinča people who lived nearby natural deposits of copper ore very quickly developed a process to extract the metal from the mineral and to build various tools and weapons used only for hunting. One of such sites is the one from my neighborhood. Only an hour of driving to the south is the archaeological site of Pločnik, probably the first ancient city in the world where copper smelting was industrialized. We visited the site last weekend, where we found amazing replicas of Vinča people's homes and also a nearby museum in the city of Prokuplje with lots of excavated items from the site and lots of stories from the excavation itself.

Even today, there are deposits of malachite and azurite in the wide area where the site is located, and our guide hinted that in the past they were probably able to find them in the river as well. Both are common copper minerals that are melted at 700 °C. Campfires are about 200° short of the temperature needed, so they built square-shaped furnaces stored in larger buildings with pipe-like earthen blowers with hundreds of tiny holes in them used to blow compressed air directly into fire. Whether people, like Viktor in the above video, were manually blowing the air or they had some sort of leather bellows is still unknown.

The place is very big—more than 100 hectares. The ancient city was large and populated from 5500 to 4700 BC in a row until it was destroyed in a big fire by probably intruders from afar. What happened with survivors and where they moved after is also not known. Like Minoans, no peaceful society ever survived hostile events and probably ceased to exist entirely or fully dispersed among the newcomers. Anyhow, we were all carrying lots of impressions from the last weekend trip to the history of our own neighborhood, along with a piece of pottery, 7000 years old, we received as a gift from the excavation park. No words could describe all of our gratefulness, especially Viktor's, when he had to choose a piece that maybe once belonged to his peer from the early Copper Age.

The Minoan Legacy:
https://www.mpj.one/2017/07/the-minoan-legacy.html

Stone Age of Iron Gates:
https://www.mpj.one/2015/08/stone-age-of-iron-gates.html

Cyclops of Peloponnese:
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/cyclops-of-peloponnese.html

Image & Video refs:
https://www.disclose.tv/the-danube-valley-civilization-script-is-the-worlds-oldest-writing-313756
http://korzoportal.civcic.com/julka-kuzmanovic-cvetkovic-plocnik-kako-doziveti-neolit/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2BtavSrxaRyvOJS5JZaHQ

Refs:
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/serbiavinca.htm
https://cogniarchae.com/2015/10/29/tartaria-connection-between-vinca-and-proto-linear-b-script/
https://www.disclose.tv/mysterious-vinca-statuettes-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-contact-313094
http://www.ancientpages.com/2015/09/30/mysterious-ancient-vinca-culture-undeciphered-script/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinca_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinca_symbols
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/civilisation-script-oldest-writing
http://www.ancientpages.com/2018/02/17/7000-year-old-inscription-undeciphered-vinca-script/
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/vinca.htm
http://vrtoplica.mi.sanu.ac.rs/en/section/58
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting#Copper_and_bronze
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/17456/pdf
https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/native-american

Serbian refs:
https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr/Плочник_(археолошки_локалитет)
https://www.serbia.com/srpski/posetite-srbiju/kulturne-atrakcije/arheoloska-nalazista/vinca/
http://muzejtoplice.org.rs/index.php/en/muzejtoplice
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Civilization-Museum/Arheo-park-Pločnik

Goddess Zhiva

My great-great-grandfather was born in 1845, and he spent his entire life in the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. Little is known about his life; after all, life in rural Serbian villages in past times wasn't really documented well, and literacy among the majority of people wasn't something our ancestors could be proud of. However, what was a major disadvantage for most people turned out to be a great opportunity for my great-great-grandfather. Besides being literate and educated, he was gifted with a human property only a few others possess. He owned a strong and melodic voice that would probably guarantee him at least a radio host job if he were born a century later. Anyhow, one of his tasks was to read newspapers, various dispatches, and communiques while standing in the center of the village square, surrounded by neighbors and people from nearby settlements. Soon enough, he earned valuable prominence in his family, and his children decided to devote our family name to him. Ever since then and after, more or less 100 years, our last name has been carrying my great-great-grandfather's, Zhiva.

Artistic presentation of Goddess Zhiva

But his name goes even further in the past. A millennium or two before my great-great-grandfather, this name belonged first to someone else entirely. Zhiva (Živa) was the name of the old Slavic goddess of life, fertility, and marriage, one of numerous terrestrial goddesses. It literally means "living, being, existing", and compared to other religions of the past, Zhiva was the goddess similar to Hera, Demeter, and Aphrodite of the ancient Olympians and very much alike goddess Sif from the old Norse mythology. Thanks to modern pop culture, especially comics and, in recent years, movie blockbusters, we are pretty familiar with the old beliefs of our ancestors in Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, but tremendous and equally colorful stories are hiding in old Slavic mythology as well. Like with our family name, in one way or another, old stories of ancient mythology survived all these years. And not just stories—the customs, celebrations, and rituals are very much alive even today, despite all the efforts from the new Christian religion that tried or are still trying to eliminate old paganism from people's minds.

Contrary to the old Greeks, Romans, or Scandinavians, who more or less occupied smaller territories, Slavs spread to vast areas of nowadays Asia and Eastern Europe. Numerous cultures and nations emerged from several migrations and gave birth to slightly different mythology of the same deities, and in different Slavic languages and histories, Zhiva is known with different names, and the most prominent ones were Zhibog (life god), Živa, Жива, Siwa, Šiwa, etc. Along with the variety of names comes the variety of descriptions, and searching for definite and the most accurate ancient text is the mission impossible or one of those Sisyphean tasks if we want to stay in the realm of old legends and stories. However, I did find one mutual description of her that pretty much covers all sources, and it explains the goddess as: "Zhiva is the main female goddess in the world of the Slavs. Like the god Svarog, she covers the whole world with his light and closely follows the basic laws of the Kind. Goddess Zhiva gives tenderness, care, kindness, heart, and care to all pregnant women and lactating mothers." Zhiva existed as a supreme goddess, and she was the offspring of the main Slavic deities (Rod as a main supreme god, creator of everything; Svarog, god of heaven; and three great goddesses), a sister goddess to other female deities (Vesna, Morana, and Lada, terrestrial goddesses related to Earth seasons), the sister of the god of thunder and lightning Perun, and the wife of Dabog (Dazhbog), the god of sun, justice, and well-being.

Artistic presentation of Slavic temple

I can imagine that it is very hard to enumerate all Slavic gods, their relations, and all their pantheons due to the vast diversity of Slavic people, but if we consider only South Slavs who migrated to the Balkans at some point in the 6th century, one thing is for sure. They immediately collided with upcoming and already established Christianity that took heavy root in the Roman and Byzantine empires. Almost immediately, missionaries are sent to start conversion and kill old beliefs for good. It turned out it was another wave of Sisyphean tasks that required centuries to process. Serbs accepted the new religion only later in the 9th century, but not entirely. While god in plural ended with its existence almost fully with the start of the second millennium, many customs remained until today. For example, Serbian people still celebrate a family religious day called slava, which was dedicated to the god the family had chosen to be their protector in the old days. Christianity never succeeded in eliminating this custom and only managed to convert it into worshiping Christian saints instead. What was once a day dedicated to Perun, god of thunder, is now replaced with Saint Elijah (Sveti Ilija), which is also connected with thunders and lightnings in Christian tales. Old Serbs believed that gods could take the form of ordinary people who were visiting family homes at random times, and one of the related customs was warm hospitality toward strangers who knocked on their doors. The oak was the holy tree, and all the temples were built out of it instead of using heavy and everlasting stones. In the aftermath, no Slavic holy sights and temples persisted today. In temples dedicated to goddess Zhiva, high priests wore ritual hats or helmets with horns, which were symbols of fertility among Slavic people and other religious folklore throughout Europe in the old times.

Aside from Slavic deities, Serbs believed in other godly creatures who had influence over nature, like ghosts, fairies, demons, dragons, and forest mothers, and also human-like creatures that originated from people like vampires, witches, werewolves, etc. The list is endless. To better live with all those beasts and scary underworld monsters, many rituals are invented and practiced all over. One in particular is still alive in Eastern Serbia in the event called Rusalje, where women fall into trances after ritually caroling and dancing and virtually connect to the ghosts and afterlife world in order to predict future events and understand upcoming dangers. Interesting facts are that many women refused to exert 'the healing procedure' in local monasteries performed by Christian priests and willingly performed the ritual every year. Of course, these were the extremes, but there were other more benevolent rituals that were practiced in the past, and I would not be surprised if they are still alive today. For example, if we are talking about Zhiva, human worshipers were ceremonially providing bouquets of flowers, fruits, and wheat on numerous occasions, but also there was a ritual of sacrificing a rooster before the time when wheat is sown and/or after the harvest is over.

Christian church on the Isle of Bled

If we are considering the Eastern European Slavic history, perhaps the strongest sites where Zhiva was worshiped were throughout the lands of nowadays Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and eastern Germany, but perhaps the most interesting site where the temple of Zhiva once existed was the famous Lake Bled in Slovenia. More precisely, the foundation of the temple that provided the support for a square wooden house in the 8th century was excavated under the Christian church on the Isle of Bled. Attached to the foundation was a square building with an apse from the 9th century that clearly indicates the transition from a pagan temple to an early Christian church. Christian missionaries dedicated to shutting down old Slavic sites and temples at the time almost always transferred the sites of worshiping Slavic goddesses into the worship of the Mother of God to ease the transition, and the nowadays church on Lake Bled is consecrated to the Ascension of Mary. The temple of Zhiva on the Isle of Bled and the waterfall on the nearby Savica river were commemorated and celebrated in the epic poem 'Baptism on Savica' by the 19th-century Slovenian poet France Prešeren.

Well, temples dedicated to Zhiva definitely no longer exist, but it is documented that many places, at least in Serbia, with names that survived the last millennium and have the words 'deva' or 'baba' in their roots (which means goddess mother) suggest sites of worshiping the female deity, most likely locations of Zhiva's temples. A couple of those places and nearby mountains have such words near the village where my great-great-grandfather lived and where our summer house still stands. Also, lots of people's names and surnames have the word 'Živa' in the root, and they all originate in old Slavic beliefs. Years ago, during my education in high school and faculty, Živa was my nickname, and I always turned around if I heard somebody call it.

Image refs:
https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/2017/08/10/reanimating-slavic-gods-the-man-who-breathes-life-into-deities_820264
https://www.locationscout.net/locations/6017-lake-bled
http://www.1zoom.me/de/wallpaper/156998/z349.2/

Refs:
http://www.starisloveni.com/Bogovi.html
https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/550443944/goddess-zhiva-wood-birch-statue-slavic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deities_of_Slavic_religion
https://www.rasen.rs/2017/01/rusalje-ili-zene-padalice/#.W26_Kegza00
https://www.srbijadanas.com/vesti/info/misterija-istocne-srbije-ko-su-zene-koje-padaju-u-trans-i-predvidaju-buducnost-2017-05-20
https://vesna.atlantidaforum.com/?p=3916
http://lifestyle.enaa.com/horoskop/Kdo-je-bila-Ziva.html
http://vladimir-uno.blogspot.com/2015/09/ziva-goddess-of-living-water-life-love.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_Pre%C5%A1eren

The Minoan Legacy

Often, I found myself giving a glimpse of thoughts of where I would move on this world in order to acquire at least a little bit better life compared to what we currently have. Or when. Has there ever been a time in history when there was a civilization with a more dignified style of living? With society built with a more honest foundation toward themselves and their neighbors. With equality among people, genders, colors, skin, and different cultures. With not at all or just a hint of superstition and religiosity. With no temples higher than schools and people's homes. With cities without strong police keeping order and without military of any kind. Was there a country without fortifications, both real and metaphorical? With no or just a bearable hostility toward others...

There is definitely no such idealistic settlement in this world. Not now. But there was one before. More than three thousand years ago on the island of Crete. The first civilization in Europe and perhaps the first and last one that fits this description. The place where I would time travel without hesitation if I could.

We know them in our history books as the Minoans, but that wasn't their real name. What they called themselves we don't know. We don't understand their letters and can't read their tablets. They built marvelous settlements with almost all the modern infrastructure we are familiar with today. Glorious city-palaces with paved roads between them. With main squares where they preferred practicing sports and arts instead of going into temples to pray. They were people who invented and lived one idealistic, peaceful life and based their wealth on trades among themselves and all the others across the sea.

Unfortunately, after several attempts throughout eons, human nature and natural catastrophes destroyed Minoan civilization, and these people at the end dispersed fully, and their way of life faded away for good. Among neighboring civilizations and their saved documents, as well as with the Bible, their names were probably either Keftiu, Kaptarians, Caphtor, or Kabturi. Or if you like, we can even call them Atlanteans if we connect Plato's story with the Minoan volcanic eruption that reshaped the island of Thera in the middle of the second millennium BC. Perhaps we should wait for their Linear A script to be revealed by maybe another Rosetta Stone, but until then, Sir Evan's label for Minoans based on the old Greek mythology is the best we've got. Nevertheless, this blog post is not really history research, and more stories about related old times I tried to list below in the references, but one thing is for sure. The end of Minoan culture, which started with earthquakes and at least one cataclysmic volcanic eruption, faded and dispersed during the final couple of centuries of the second millennium with hostile raids and occupations over time from both directions: mainland Greece in the face of old Mycenaeans and ancient invaders from the direction of the Middle East.

However, their life based solely on manufacturing goods and food, honest trade, sports, arts, and all the non-hostile human activities was once indeed possible and flourishing. Unfortunately, their legacy is, as it seems, lost for good, and after more than three and a half thousand years, we are living in a world filled with fear of self-destruction with little hope for humanity to survive the next three millennia. Anyhow, the road, or to better say, the airplane, took us this summer to the island of Crete, and we landed at the Chania airport, which is also the military base that hosts both air and nearby naval forces. The sight of supersonic fighters constantly flying above the beaches, heavy military aircraft parked next to the civilian runway, and large destroyer ships anchored in Souda Bay was definitely not something old Minoans would evolve into if history played the cards differently. After visiting the Knossos archeological site and the wonderful museum in Heraklion dedicated to these ancient people, I am certain of it.

Caused by the city's amazing scope and Minoan fascination for bulls, centuries after the fall of civilization, Greek mythology created one of the most famous stories with characters as strong as Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, Theseus, and, of course, the Minotaur captured in the center of the labyrinth. On the other side, the most plausible truth of why Knossos was built the way it was built is simply because Crete was positioned on top of the movement of the African tectonic plate under the Eurasian plate. This is causing lots of earthquakes, small and big, and results from the complex geological process; the entire eastern side of the island is sinking while the western part is rising. The ancient builders purposely made the palace in this way in order to sustain constant ground shake, with buildings and chambers literally supporting each other from all directions.

It probably goes without saying that I am fascinated with Greece and the Greeks. Their amazing history and all the contributions their ancestors gave to the rest of the world are enormous. With this summer trip, I rounded out walking the lands of all three main stages of ancient Greek times. Classical Greece that belongs to the mainland north of Sparta, the Mycenaean epoch that precedes them in the time of Agamemnon, and now the ancient civilization of Minoans that precedes them all. Surely, there are many more sites to see, but somehow I felt today that I fulfilled the genuine urge to visit all the main places and to walk the same paths where stories from history (and mythology) took place.

Our prime vacation time this summer was in Agia Marina, a cute little place several kilometers west of Chania, where we spent a wonderful ten days exploring local beaches and took an excursion to the old Venetian harbor in the old city and its nautical museum with an exact replica of the Bronze Age Minoan ship. The second trip to Heraklion and Knossos completed our travel through the history of the island, and the following day-by-day travel video clip Viktor and I made hopefully will show you more than still images could, especially if you have never visited Crete before.

Surely, summer vacations are never about visiting museums and the history of the area. It is also about the present, and in the most hedonistic fashion, we also visited the Balos Lagoon, one of the greatest beaches in Europe, and, most of all, tried to enjoy the time by meeting local people and visiting local sites and the neighborhood. It is hard to say what we liked the most, and I guess the best thing is to say that Crete is an exceptional place to visit. Something we will definitely try to do again. Many thanks to all the good people we met this July, especially to the crew of Fly Fly Travel and their great guides, Nebojša and Dobrivoje, for all their super-professional work and help.

Image and video refs:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tp8ugeNBg07zE9q52
https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/greece/

Refs:
http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/knossos/articleKnossos01.html
http://paleoglot.blogspot.rs/2010/01/minoan-name-for-minoa.html
http://www.minoanatlantis.com/Minoan_Science.php
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22527821
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos
https://www.timemaps.com/civilizations/minoan-civilization/
http://ancient-greece.org/history/minoan.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization
https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/.../HIST101-2.3.2-MinoanCrete-FINAL.pdf
http://www.ancient.eu/Minoan_Civilization/

Warfare Then and Now

Lately I was watching the current stream of war-related news and the Syrian migrant crisis, and I thought of what I would say on the blog about actual, continuous, and devastating warfare in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and the stupidity of the literally inexplicable background of who is fighting whom in all those conflicts and what cause would justify the aftermaths in the form of devastated cities and long refugee corridors... Or even what words should I use to describe the foolishness of the new cold war between nuclear-powered "super countries" and what that will mean for our children and theirs in the future... Then I realized that reacting to meaningless affairs and worldwide political absurdity in a world so divided by racial, structural, governmental, and religious diversity is also meaningless. I also realized that I said enough in the past. There is nothing new to be added or said. There will always be people who will think that a rifle is not a rifle if it never fires a bullet.

And to use a rifle, you need war, right?

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings when it comes to the military, soldiers, wars, battles, tactics, military gadgets, and stuff. On the 'interesting' side of the medal, warfare, if placed in history, good stories, or movies, is simply extraordinary, and I love it. Perhaps, in a way, it was also based on my experience as a soldier: I served in the army more than two decades ago within the mandatory military service, and I was situated in the surface-to-surface missile unit and trained for operating small rockets designed for targeting tanks and other heavy machinery. I couldn't say I enjoyed all the time spent in the service, but I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said that it wasn't interesting and educational, at least from the technical point of view.

The cannon from the Hill of Čegar

Speaking of history and tales, this summer, I mentioned one of the most famous last stands in the history of wars in the post "Fishermen and Pirates of Evia", when King Leonidas of Sparta confronted a large army of the Persian Empire and stood to the very end guarding a narrow pass in the battle of Thermopylae almost 2500 years ago. Anyhow, here, in Serbia, in our own history, we also have one of those suicide missions, conveniently called "last stands" by military vocabulary, and it happened only a couple of kilometers to the north from our house on the nearby hill called Čegar. Just like Leonidas, Serbian general Stevan Sindjelić, during the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire in the year 1809, confronted a huge Ottoman offensive after the Serbian army failed to capture the main Turkish fortress in the city. Outnumbered by 1 to 10, Serbian trenches only managed to reject several attacks, and after almost all day long of fighting, the battle turned out to be one of the best-known last stands in the long history of Ottoman occupation of Serbian lands. Ultimately, when the battle turned to be hand-to-hand combat in the trench, Stevan fired his flintlock pistol into a pile of gunpowder kegs in the moment when Ottoman soldiers swarmed the trench from all sides and headed for him personally. The explosion was tremendous, and the fall of Stevan's trench created time for other Serbian troops in the remaining 5 trenches to retreat on time, and, in the aftermath, Turks took all the Serbian soldiers' heads off and used the skulls to build a tower along the road to Constantinople as a warning to anyone rising against the Ottoman Empire.

Yesterday, we decided to visit the hill where it all happened and took some photos with two remaining cannons from the battle and from the monumental tower standing in the middle of the field. It was a one-of-a-kind experience that leaves a distressed feeling, especially after the glimpse from the top of the narrow tower toward the planes and the city.

Stevan Sindjelić & Remains of the Skull Tower in Niš

But there is another side of my mixed feelings regarding this topic. Simply put, if you place the warfare outside the history or fiction and experience it live, for me, all the magic from movies and books evaporates into thin air almost immediately. While I wasn't participating in any warfare in the army, I have witnessed real air strikes performed by NATO aircraft, dropping cluster bombs just hundreds of meters away from my house. I saw them explode*. I saw real damage in neighboring houses and streets and saw people injured from the impacts. Real people. Not soldiers. Collateral victims. Civilians. It wasn't fun. It seems that warfare two centuries before was more dignified, to say the least. The battles before were "organized" outside settlements, and most of them took place in the fields where no civilian casualties could be possible. Today, if you look at the aftermath of any wars happening everywhere on the globe, the first thing you will notice are devastated cities, villages, houses, schools, hospitals, even... Murdered innocent people and children. Ruins in all directions. It is easy today to pull the trigger. From the distance. There are no real heroes or knights today like before.

Modern times and technological advances perhaps ruined the very essence of war, but deep in its core, war was, is, and will always stay our darkest invention. Yes, it looks amazing with special effects in movies and written in our history books full of heroes and heroic events, but in a nutshell, it represents the worst genes we kept from our animal ancestors, evolutionary speaking.

View from Čegar's monumental tower with Viktor's plastic AK-47 toy gun

And the armies... They are a big part of it. The following words, said a couple of years before the battle of Čegar, on a different continent, are still fresh and valid, just like if they were said yesterday. Almost certainly, the famous James Madison quote will stay accurate for many more centuries. After all, as a species, humans are not really capable of learning from their own mistakes:

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

I am sure proving his point is as easy as glimpsing the yearly statistics for the Global Firepower, aka GFP. The following numbers I acquired from "Business Insider" and "The Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation". They are collected for the latest year, and I summarized the data for only the top 5 armies in the world: the US, Russia, China, India, and the UK (and you can freely double these numbers for accounts of all other countries).

Anyway, more or less, give or take, believe it or not, in a nutshell, GFP numbers are:

6,000,000+ soldiers (human beings, men in the uniform)
35,000+ tanks (the iron amphibian combat vehicles with heavy guns on the top)
22,000+ aircraft (fighters, bombers, logistic planes, all kinds of military flying machines)
16,000+ nuclear warheads (only couple of them needed to cease all life on earth)
1000+ warships (cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, etc.)
15+ aircraft carriers (monster nuclear-powered ships)
230+ combat submarines (with large nuclear engines under the sea)
900,000,000,000+ dollars spent for military budgets (per year)

And don't forget to add an uncountable, and I really mean devastating, large number of missiles and rockets, all kinds of ballistics, regular weapons, drones, rifles, pistols, cold weapons, military-based factories, scientific research facilities, spy satellites and military space programs, state-of-the-art uniforms, etc. Indeed, we don't have a name for that big number in mathematics. Even the number of zeros in that count would probably be longer than the letters in this very sentence.

The 11 Most Powerful Militaries In The World**

Now, only by comparing these numbers with James Madison's words, it seems that after 200+ years, perhaps armies are not children of war anymore. In the dawn of the third millennium, it seems now that they are perfectly capable of creating wars just to justify their own existence. If only war could stay in history and fairy tales... But we all know that's not going to happen. With all that weaponry in existence, there will always be people who will think that a rifle is not a rifle if it never fires a bullet.

Original post date: November 2014; Update: November 2015

Image ref:
**http://www.businessinsider.com/11-most-powerful-militaries-in-the-world-2014-4

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Čegar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Tower
http://armscontrolcenter.org/
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/nuclearweapons/articles/fact_sheet_2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison
http://www.businessinsider.com/35-most-powerful-militaries-in-the-world-2014-7
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_bombing_of_Niš

Stone Age of Iron Gates

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognizable events or technological inventions, and some were slow evolutionary processes in the history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome always reshaped the course of mankind entirely. In our own time, one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and invent the nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has the potential to raise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization-killer event or a true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is a breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called the "Neolithic Revolution", and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention are still very much all around us.

"Lepenski Vir" by Giovanni Caselli

Yes, the invention is, of course, agriculture along with domesticating wild animals. In this part of the world it happened around the year 5300 BC, and along with the Vinča culture, it was invented by one of the oldest civilizations that occupied Iron Gates, the great gorge of the mighty Danube, at the spot called Lepenski Vir (Lepen Whirlpool) near the Koršo hills at the right bank of the river. The gorge had everything for the rise of one medium-sized settlement for our Mesolithic predecessors. Large river with lots of fish; hills and valleys very near the bank with lots of small animals, deer, and especially easily hunted herds of aurochs (now extinct species of wild cows); and lots of water birds.

Many things happened in human minds with the agricultural way of life. If you ask me, it was the point when humans abandoned the 'natural' way of life, or, to better say it, it was the time when natural equilibrium with humans being just a part of the biodiversity microcosm of the inhabited area changed inevitably. We became the ultimate and the only player. Growing our own food and enslaving wild animals had raised us toward the godlike creatures, and we left our prehistorical ways for good. Just like with nuclear power, we made one great step in human evolution. And just like with the nuclear bomb, we invented all the side effects we are suffering to this day.

With agriculture we didn't just invent unlimited food supplies. We got ourselves envy and jealousy toward our own neighbor and cousin for simple things, like him having more food or land. We started to hunt for pleasure and not just for food. We started to steal and hate. We invented divine beings and prayers for them to spare our crops from natural hazards between planting and harvesting seasons. Let me just not repeat myself too much on the topic.

Anyway, yesterday I took my family to the Lepenski Vir and its wonderful museum to learn more of these great people and how and why, on Earth, they managed to survive several millenniums in tent-based settlements and lasted for maybe the longest period of time in human history. As for why, unfortunately I can't explain with words. You would have to visit Iron Gates and see it for yourself. In short, it is a beautiful site. The river is magnificent, and the gorge is one of a kind. The forests are still there, and the feeling is, well, if I were one of the Mesolithic explorers on foot, finding this place would be the same as finding heaven. Migrating it out would be, from one hunter and fisherman group's point of view, well, stupid.

Perhaps the only thing this place doesn't have is lots of room for large agriculture fields, and eventually these people left it as soon as they became too dependent on the Neolithic Revolution, and from that point in time in the fifth millennium before Christ, we have no idea where they went and spread. Probably upstream on the Danube in search of large plains for their crops is currently the most valuable scientific explanation. Maybe something more happened in addition to agricultural reasons to force them to leave, but we don't know. Today, one of the largest dams in the world, named 'Iron Gates I', created significant landscape change in the form of a long river lake and flooded the entire gorge and all the ancient settlements, preventing further exploration in search for more clues.

Perhaps, for me, these guys in pre-agricultural times were extremely interesting for many reasons. Anthropologically speaking, they were large compared to other humans in Europe at the time and lived longer and healthier lives. Thanks to their diet with most of the fish dishes on their stone tables, some of the prominent members of the society lived more than 60 years, and some of them were tall enough to play in the NBA with ease. Well, of course, most lived to about 40-50 years old, but with their average height of 165 for women and 172 for men, they might have origins in the old Cro-Magnon species from the Paleolithic. A fascinating story about all the skeletons in tombs was that no traces of violent deaths were found. Apparently, they were extremely peaceful people, and also, the interesting fact that all excavated skeletons (more than 150 in total) are missing only two teeth gives a clue that their amazing diet with almost 70% fish and the rest meat and berries was a fact that they literally lived in some sort of Mesolithic paradise.

At the end, all the main exploration and excavations of this site were made by Professor Dragoslav Srejović of the University of Belgrade. 136 buildings, settlements, and altars were found in the initial excavations in 1965-1970. I read somewhere that Dragoslav Srejović was a giant in a Newtonian way of definition, and I couldn't agree more. This short film above is the same one they played for us in the museum. I am sorry I couldn't find the one with English subtitles, but it was a great learning experience and an amazing documentary considering it was filmed in the same time lapse as the exploration. And as my wife noticed, it has even a romantic tale in the background that gives a special touch and feel of one typical archaeological life in the mid-sixties.

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir
http://www.donsmaps.com/lepenski.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

Mammoths of Moesia Superior

Once, long, loong, loooooong ago in the days of the Late Jurassic period in the world of Pterodactylus, the famous flying dinosaur, Mother Earth was pretty busy with the work of creating continents, large mountains, seas, and oceans like we know today. At the time the place we know as Europe was mostly covered by a large sea by the name of Paratethys. About a hundred million years later, dramatic tectonic changes started producing large mountain formations today well known as the Alps and the Carpathians, which made Paratethys lose connection with the Mediterranean to the south and form a separate large inland sea in today's central Europe. Millions of years later, there are two remnant seas that still exist with the names of the Black and Caspian Seas. But there was one more in the nowadays Pannonian Basin that lasted almost 9 million years and finally disappeared in the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 600,000 years ago, with remnant lakes here and there, especially in Hungary today. During its long life, the Pannonian Sea followed Earth's tectonic events and once covered almost the entire territory of present-day Serbia. Even the place where I am located right now was once pretty watery and wet. When I was a kid, I played a lot with digging in our front yard and from time to time got lucky with a couple of snail shells that sometimes forced me to think about their origin. They were small and white, and even though I doubt they were that old, they were very much familiar to the ones you can find in nowadays salty seas. Nothing like you can see today in our neighborhood.

Viminacium's Vika

Anyway, in the time of the Pannonian Sea and its old age, more or less around a million years ago, humans were a pretty timid species. That was the time of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species who was most likely the ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals and lived more or less in the time when the last drop of the Pannonian Sea evaporated or was moved away by the mighty Danube, leaving large plains in modern Central Europe. But the real boss of the time was not the man at all, and instead, after the last dinosaur disappeared for good, it was the large mammoth who adapted very well to the colder climate compared to their southern origins and, evolutionarily speaking, started to grow fur for protection. I am pretty sure that all Homo heidelbergensis and his grand-grand-grandfathers were terrified each time when a herd of mammoths was passing by their habitat, and they were probably hiding every time for as long as the last sound of their giant feet faded away for good. Mammoths were more than 5 meters long, 4 meters high, and about 10 tons in weight, and you can only imagine how, i.e., a set of 50 or more members of the big herd would look and sound when passing by near to your home. Well... a cave, to be exact, which was the most secure home of the time, but still, it must have been very interesting, to say the least.

Viktor and Vika

In central Serbia, just next to the old Roman city of Viminacium, in the prehistoric mouth of the river Morava, which was ending its flow into the Pannonian Sea, mammoths seemed to find a good place to die. Just like elephants do today, they had their graveyards, and one of them seemed to be right there, and archaeologists found numerous skeletons and fossils of mammoths from different periods in history. Among them, the almost fully preserved mammoth "Vika" was displayed in the Viminacium we visited last weekend. Even millions of years after her death, she still leaves a deep impression on all her human visitors.

Well, the ultimate fatal doomsday, similar to the dinosaurs', didn't avoid this species either. Eventually they got extinct due to many reasons. Humans helped a lot by hunting them out and using their meat, skin, ivory, and fur. The Pannonian Sea also vanished and is now perhaps waiting for some severe climate change to get back, and until then, it stays in legends and Djordje Balasević song. Without natural borders and animal bosses, the latest half a million years gave further evolution of humans, and they lived more or less peacefully in prehistoric Serbian land in their tribal societies. More migrations happened in the meantime, and the latest one brought another wave of humans from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, which are now considered to be the origin of all populations of humans on the planet. Modern civilization in this neighborhood came only two thousand years ago with the Roman Empire during the reign of the first emperor, Augustus, who conquered this area and established a Roman province called Moesia after the Thraco-Dacian peoples who lived there before. It happened around the year 6 AD, and eight decades later it was divided into two provinces, giving birth to Moesia Superior, the western part of the original province where Romans built several cities and army camps in places significant for cultural and economic exchange and also where tactical deployment of their legions was the most effective for defense of Roman borders and also for further conquest campaigns. Numerous famous emperors and political figures of Roman history were born in Moesia Superior, including Constantine the Great, who was probably one of the most important men in the Roman Empire after the old republic in BC. I tried to describe his life from the point of view of my (and his) birthplace in the post Constantine & Naissus last year during the celebration of Milan's Edict.

Mausoleum

While Naissus was one of the most important cities and army installations for the southern Moesia Superior (Roman Dardania), the most important one on the north was the city of Viminacium. Located near the Danube, it was a natural point for the deployment of one of the most effective legions, 'Legio Septima Claudia Pia Fidelis', which was situated here during the reign of Hadrian in AD 125. Viminacium grew into a large city of the time with more than 40,000 inhabitants and with all the benefits of one large Roman city and the infrastructure of water aqueducts, modern industry, and entertainment with a wooden amphitheater big enough to host more than 10,000 people. In the most flourished period of the time, in the third century AD, Viminacium earned the status of a Roman colony and the right to coin its own money. The most important family of rulers born in this Roman land and living in Viminacium was Emperor Trajan Decius, who was previously governor of the entire Moesia. During the battle of Abritus, he died along with his son Herennius, with whom he co-ruled in the reign. After their death the throne briefly went to his second son, Hostilian, but sadly the family misfortune ended here, this time with a deadly plague that killed both Hostilian and his mother.

The end of the city started with Attila the Hun and his raid in the fifth century, and even though it was rebuilt by Justinian I, it was finally destroyed by Avars in the late sixth century. After that, it started to fade, and after decades and centuries, it eventually got buried under the dirt and sand near the nowadays city of Kostolac and the villages of Old Kostolac and Drmno. However, even after so many years from the golden Roman era and contrary to almost all other ancient archaeological sites that lie deep under modern cities, Viminacium is today an open plain, and simply because of this fact, the only obstacle for further excavation is financial background. Other sites are not that lucky; for example, excavation of old Naissus is almost impossible, as all post-Roman settlements in the previous two millenniums were built on the same ground. Nevertheless, and even with modest funding, Viminacium is today one of the most explored Roman cities outside Italy. If you add all the mammoth bones found in the same area, this is today one great tourist and educational site.

Atrium at Domus scientiarum Viminacium

Archaeological excavation and scientific research started with more than modest funding—Mihailo Valtrović, one of the Serbian scientists, the first professor of archaeology, and the custodian of the National Museum in Belgrade, started digging Viminacium walls in the late nineteenth century with the help of 12 prisoners assigned by the Serbian government due to a lack of qualified workers and with a low amount of money reserved for archaeology. During the twentieth century, excavation was continued on several occasions, and finally, in the dawn of the 21st, Viminacium received the proper scientific and archaeological attention from the Serbian government and dedicated scientists.

The crown jewel of the site is no doubt 'Domus scientiarum Viminacium', a research and tourist center built as a Roman villa with several atriums, rooms, and laboratories for scientists; a hostel for visitors; and a beautiful museum dedicated to Viminacium, Moesia Superior, and, of course,recently, mammoths and their prehistoric life.

Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae

Especially interesting is the museum's exhibition of 'Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae', dedicated to 17 Roman emperors who were born within the current borders of Serbia, the second country after Italy itself. In recent years, especially after last year's celebration of 1700 years after Milan's Edict, it has been recognized as one of the national brands of Serbia and was founded by the Serbian government and the Ministry of Culture.

References and wikis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moesia
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130207114602.htm
http://viminacium.org.rs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viminacium
http://viminacium.org.rs/projekti/itinerarium-romanum-serbiae/

Constantine & Naissus

A couple of centuries after Christ, Constantine was a very popular name. Especially among soldiers in the Roman and Byzantine empires, along with Greeks during their Macedonian age. Within Latin, Cōnstantīnus, and Greek, Κωνσταντῖνος (Kōnstantînos), the name literally means the one who's constant and steadfast, especially within military properties related to strength and stamina. In those times the land of my current location was called Moesia Superior, with the city of Naissus in the role of its main trade center and biggest military outpost for the Roman army. Today's name of the city is "Niš", the largest city of southern Serbia and also the city where I was born and where I have lived ever since. The Serbian usage of the name is "Konstantin", and even though it is not related to the military anymore, the name is fairly popular nowadays among young Serbians. It was third on my list when my son was born simply because I really like names with strong inner "adjectivity" and history as well, but in our case my son's name, Viktor, won six years ago in the photo finish. If I had another son, his name would probably be Konstantin (Constantine) or Filip (Philip), but now it is certain that this will stay in my wish list only.

Constantine the Great*

Well, this post is not going to be just about names. Instead it will be equally about my birth town, the history of the Christian religion and the "Edict of Milan", a small glimpse of the Roman Empire, the end of the Classical era during violent events in ancient Alexandria, and a little photography along the way. But, for a moment, let's stay with names and their importance for this story. With mention of the "Edict of Milan", the city I was most probably named for, many of you probably guessed why I partly named this post "Constantine". Constantine I, or Constantine the Great, emperor of the western part of the Roman Empire, and Licinius I, his fellow emperor of the eastern part, in February of 313 BC, declared Christianity, the rising religion of the time, to be treated equal to all other official beliefs in the whole of southern Europe, northern Africa, and a big portion of eastern Asia ruled by Romans after the Crucifixion of Jesus, where the modern history we are living in started. But the early days (or, to better say, centuries) of "modern history", or what we love to call "AD," were, to call it the least, very disturbing. The probably best example of those violent "multi-religious" times happened at the end of the fourth century in the city of Alexandria. I am sure if Alexander the Great knew what would happen 700 years after he founded the city, he would never do it in the first place. In the classic BC times of great cities, free thought and scientific premises flourished in the most famous institution in the world at the time and probably ever since—the great Library of Alexandria. In those times, over a million scrolls from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India, and many other nations were stored in the library, and comparing it to nowadays terminology, we can safely say that the entire ancient "internet" was located within one single library. More than a hundred scholars worked full-time within the library's walls, performing research, translating documents, giving lectures, and writing books. It was one of the shiniest periods of the whole world's history.

Then "Anno Domini" happened. Soon after the birth of Christianity, Alexandria became home for people of different beliefs but mainly Christians, Jews, and Pagans. One ancient writer claimed that there were no people who loved a fight more than those of Alexandria. Religious animosities rose to the edge in the time of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, and in his raid, around 391 AD, the Temple of Serapis, where one branch of the Alexandrian library was located, was demolished, documents were destroyed, and the temple was converted to a church. The rest of the library's treasure was probably lost a couple of years later when one of the most famous women who ever lived, Hypatia, a Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, was killed by Christians during some retaliation against both the Jews and the Pagans. That night was officially the end of Classical antiquity, or the era of prosperity I was talking about in the post Aegean Sea. If some document survived that night, when Hypatia was stripped, beaten, and hacked to pieces and her body burned to hide all traces of the crime, then it was destroyed centuries later, when Muslims took the city of Alexandria around the year of 640 AD, when all the remaining scrolls were proclaimed either heresy or superfluous.

Rachel Weisz as Hypatia of Alexandria in Agora (2009)

There is no doubt that Constantine the Great was one of those great visionaries who foresaw all possible futures of the Roman Empire and had enough courage to act and officially acknowledge the definite rise of Christians in order to avoid all the dangers that came with the first multicultural societies. Rome and Constantinople under his rule and the rules of many emperors that came later more or less managed to survive Alexandria's fate. At least until a couple of centuries later, when the third big player in the world of monotheistic religions appeared in the face of Islam. We all know what happened next. The Crusades. What happened to Alexandria in the fourth century started to happen to Jerusalem. Multiple times. During each crusade. Some would say it is not over yet.

If the story so far was not enough to demonstrate the cruelty of the first couple of centuries of the first millennium AD, I have some more historical facts, and they all originate way back to the point of the first founders of my hometown. The misfortune of Naissus was in the fact that its location was on the crossing road point between north and south and west and east. Whoever the warrior you were and whatever army or tribe you belonged to in those times, your path would lead through Naissus, and you were destined to raid it, no matter if you were a member of the Triballi tribes who invaded this area in the 4th century BC, a member of the Gallic groups who invaded the Balkan Peninsula during the 3rd century BC, or a Roman who gave the original name to the town and held it the longest period of them all, but with the price of thousands of men lost in numerous battles, with the most famous one called simply "Battle of Naissus", where Romans with the help of Dalmatians and Greeks finally defeated the enormous invasion by Goths and their allies. Later in the 5th and 6th centuries, the town was constantly in flames and devastated by Attila's Huns and barbarians, restored by Romans and Byzantine emperor Justinian I, and then demolished again by Avars and finally occupied by Serbian ancestors, the Slavs, in the year 540 AD or so. Serbians managed to hold it even longer than Romans, all the way into the next millennium, but also with frequent interruptions by various invasions in the face of Bulgarians and Ugri (Hungarian ancestors). The second millennium was no different, and the same area where I am sitting right now was under different rulers: firstly by Byzantine forces, the Hungarian kingdom, Greeks, Serbians again, the Ottoman Empire, Austrians... Phew... I probably forgot someone. Let's just finish with all the world wars, Germans, and the Nazis and hope that all the testosterone in the third millennium has devolved a little and we will witness no more wars like before.

Third-century Roman soldiers battling Gothic troops**

Naissus was a birth town for three Roman emperors in the 3rd century and after. The most famous one was, of course, Constantine the Great (272), but also Constantius III (360) and later Justin I (450). Within the suburb of Naissus, not far from the thermal water spa, during the reign of Constantine the Great, Romans built a luxurious residence with a highly organized economy by the name of Mediana***. Until it was fully destroyed by Attila's hordes in the year 442, the residence was used by several emperors after Constantine, including Julian the Apostate, who was best known for his attempts to restore paganism to the Roman Empire, and this time within Hellenistic polytheism (Julian was also one of the Neoplatonist philosophers, like Hypatia), and for several edicts in various laws, including the Tolerance Edict of 362. Obviously, his efforts were not successful for a longer period of time, and religions with gods seen in plural finally ended in Greek and Roman mythology and picturesque legends. But, perhaps the best-known role of the residence of Mediana, which is, by the way, only a couple of hundred meters from my home, was in the year 364 AD, when emperors Valentinian and Valens met there and divided the Roman Empire and ruled as co-emperors.

Well, in the history of humans, every separation between west and east was never without serious consequences. The separation of the Roman Empire, over time, moved the center of power from Rome to Constantinople, starting with Rome's fall on September 4, 476. The Christian Church suffered the same. Distance and differences did the math, and the Church finally separated in the so-called "Great Schism", culminating in the early 11th century and giving birth to the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church we all know today. The saddest thing is that one full millennium has passed since then, and both "grand" fractions of the same religion are still looking at each other over their shoulders. After all that time, I am positive that if we randomly select one Catholic cardinal and one Orthodox patriarch and ask them why the Church split up in the first place and why they didn't manage to even sit and talk for 1000 years and find the way to "un-schism" the lost millennium, I am sure that they would hardly be able to provide any meaningful answer. Giving up the throne is never easy, and I guess the only way to unite Christianity is for God to show himself once again and to cut the misery once and for all. But, this story is not the place for me to express all of my skepticism about this, and if you are eager to read more about my religious glimpse of the world, please go to Science of God.

In front of Church of the Holy Emperor Constantine and Empress Helena

Well ok, let's stop with history now and continue with some more cheerful stories. For starters, please allow me to quote my favorite character from the movie "Kung Fu Panda". In the animated story, Master Oogway, among all his turtle wisdom, said exactly this: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present." It is a beautiful one-liner, and after a little search online, I have to say that I failed to find the origin of this quote, but I am perfectly fine to credit it to Oogway himself. In that spirit, let's switch from history to the present and talk a little about my home city and the religious event happening this weekend.

This year is the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan, and this weekend is chosen in Serbia to be memorialized with special liturgy (λειτουργία), where all major patriarchs gathered in Niš, or Naissus if you will, to honor Constantine's efforts to stop persecuting Christians and give the rising new religion a chance to be equal with others. The liturgy took place in front of the Church of the Holy Emperor Constantine and Empress Helena in one of the biggest parks in the city, and for this occasion a piece of wood from Jesus's cross (fragmentary remains that are by tradition alleged to be those of the True Cross) and John the Baptist's right hand, with which he baptized Jesus, were transferred to Constantine's new church. Last night, two relics were moved to the new display, and we wanted to feel the atmosphere. The crowd was fantastic, and on the nearby cross section people formed the cross with candle lights in total darkness (below photo), while this morning was the official event for "VIPs", which was much less interesting. Perhaps the only shadow to the occasion was the presence of a zillion policemen fully armored and spread everywhere. I guess they will never learn that the same job can be done without uniforms and with hidden guns, but that's a topic for another story.

1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan in Niš, Serbia

After 1700 years, I guess lots of things changed. There is no Roman Empire anymore or big crusades, but religiosity is still there, without much disturbance by the passed centuries. We can say about the Christian church in general whatever we want, but one thing is for sure. A society of people can't live without protocols and rituals. This is what we are, and I will just repeat what I said two years ago in relation to Orthodox Christian rituals: "From the point when we are born until we die, there are many occasions requiring many events to be performed. I mean, I can't imagine a wedding here in Serbia without the church involved. They have very nice protocols. Funerals too. Anything that requires more than two people to participate with, religious organizations are doing this just right."

They proved it once again.

Image ref:
https://philipstanfield.com/tag/mysticism-2/

* Constantine the Great
https://relevancy22.blogspot.rs/2015_03_02_archive.html

** Battle of Naissus
http://www.crystalinks.com/CrisisoftheThirdCentury.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Naissus
http://artnumisma.com/2013/05/20/battle-of-naissus-268ad/
http://www.geocities.ws/reginheim/battles.html

*** Mediana
http://www.panacomp.net/serbia?mesto=srbija_medijana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediana

More references
http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/women/hypatia.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Empire_125.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niš
http://www.ni.rs/index.php?language=en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan