I recently finished The Bronze Age in Europe written by Jean-Pierre Mohen and Christiane Eluère. So I think it might be translated from the French. It's a very short illustrated book.
What's interesting about the Bronze Age is that it marks a transition in what got saved and passed down, and how things were remembered. Previous to it were the stone ages, most recently the Neolithic. All we know of those times are what we can piece together from bones, artifacts, a few cave paintings.The Iron Age, which followed the Bronze, gives us a well-documented history. History is written by the winners, of course, but things like battles and succession dates are well preserved. While when studying the Neolithic we still don't even know anybody's name. So the Bronze Age is the transitional time when oral history started to become written history. And also myth, of course.
Interestingly enough religion changed around this time as well. Previously there had been more worship of female fertility figures. In the Bronze Age pantheons of gods, dominated by male deities, became the norm in the Western world. Possibly due to more specialized professions: not everyone was a farmer or hunter/gatherer anymore.
What's interesting about the Bronze Age is that it marks a transition in what got saved and passed down, and how things were remembered. Previous to it were the stone ages, most recently the Neolithic. All we know of those times are what we can piece together from bones, artifacts, a few cave paintings.The Iron Age, which followed the Bronze, gives us a well-documented history. History is written by the winners, of course, but things like battles and succession dates are well preserved. While when studying the Neolithic we still don't even know anybody's name. So the Bronze Age is the transitional time when oral history started to become written history. And also myth, of course.
Interestingly enough religion changed around this time as well. Previously there had been more worship of female fertility figures. In the Bronze Age pantheons of gods, dominated by male deities, became the norm in the Western world. Possibly due to more specialized professions: not everyone was a farmer or hunter/gatherer anymore.
2 comments:
I'm continually amazed by the modern tendency to relegate all societies previous to our own to a beyond the pale kind of horrific barbarism. Bronze Age cultures definitely varied depending on where and when they arose but overall my own explorations have brought me to the conclusion that there was a great cultural flowering in that period. One of my particular favorites has been reading about the Indus Valley civilization and the Harappans. This article is an interesting sample of what was accomplished at Mohenjo-Daro. Interestingly, excavations of the city indicate there was no royal palace, nor temples, and no evidence of a military.
I'm cautious about overinterpreting the lack of overt signs of military, royals, etc. Absence of evidence not being evidence of absence and all, and these things might have just been handled in a different way. But the Harappans really do present a marvel: architecture and engineering that would be vanguard millennia later, and beautiful art just in terms of what's been preserved. Which we're lucky as much of it has.
Civilization is a slippery concept, and in practice has been defined in a way written by the winners. Still, there were big changes in those days, a new way of humans interacting with each other, that must have been exciting to live through.
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