Ionian Renaissance
When we talk about the Renaissance period, the implicit assumption is the period of 1200 to 1500 AD in Europe. This is the period when the dark ages clouds are finally pushed back with wider recognition and acceptance of scientific reasoning.
But there was also a similar Renaissance period in Ionian Greece in 700 BC. Just like the European Renaissance centuries later, the Ionian Renaissance followed after centuries of dark ages after the fall of Troy in 1200 BC. Of course the definition of the term Renaissance implies the preceding dark ages. Therefore, I realize that this parallel comparison between the two Renaissance periods is redundant.
What is more interesting, the Ionian Renaissance was caused by contact with the Achaemenid (ancient Persian/Iranian) empire and the flourishing trade with it. New ideas about political organizations as well as the understanding of nature and man’s role in it came through with these contacts. This has parallels in the causes of the European Renaissance. The European Renaissance was caused with contacts with the Muslim Moors in Spain and soon after with the contacts with the Roman-Byzantines after the fall of Constantinople. The accumulated knowledge and reasoning from the Greeks, Chinese, Indian and Arabs through these contacts triggered the European Renaissance.
What I find puzzling is that the Greek Philosophical thoughts are considered as the origins of western philosophy. But here in the Ionian Renaissance, you see the Greek city-state’s political systems being influenced by the centralized political Achaemenid empire. In the same vain, Philosophers Thales and his pupil Pythagoras came from the lands adjacent to the Aegean Sea. Thales came from Miletus. The ruins of Miletus lie in Anatolia in Turkey. Pythagoras came from the Greek Samos island very close to Anatolia. To consider this region as purely European requires a stretch of the geographical imagination, pun intended.
As I had written earlier in the context of the European Renaissance, the development of scientific and political knowledge and ideas have taken place in history as a result of contacts with different cultures and trade relationships. I don’t see any artificial geographical boundaries playing a role in it nor any claims of the superiority of one race or one geographic region.
I must also say that my trips to different geographical regions of the world and the history and art museums are helping me to see these global cultural linkages in the development of knowledge. The joy of this appreciation could not have been achieved without them.
The attached pictures from the Archeology Museum in Istanbul, Turkey show the ruins of the capitals of the Ionic Pillars. The capital architectural form is based on the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence.
