Posted by T.K.D. on November 04, 2000 at 10:01:29:
In Reply to: Re: Greek Influence posted by Maria on October 27, 2000 at 21:33:41:
Also:
1) The first constitutions detailing individual rights (and responsibilities) were Greek.
2) First systematic analysis in the majority of sciences.
3) Breaking the silk monopoly of China by smuggling the secrets and silk eggs (and mulberry tree twigs) from China around the year 800 A.D.
4) Development of first completely phonetic alphabet that included vowels that could form any word already spoken.
5) Development of first left to right alphabet (that makes sense since over 90% of the world is right handed), allowing people to not smudge whatever they had already written.
6) Establishment of first Cartesian-like coordinate system (ie. Pythagoras' world grid was the basis of what we called Rene DesCarte's "Cartesian coordinates).
7) Being the agents of the spreading of Christ's word beyond the Jewish community (see John 12:20). Also, the New Testament was written in Greek.
8) The majority (Book of Luke and the Book of Acts of the Apostles) of the best-selling (best-read also, hopefully?) book in history was written by a Greek (Luke, one of the four apostles was the only "ethnikos" of the four).
9) Creating from nothing, the literary language that is the basis of all Slavic languages (ie. Slavonic) by the two Greek monks (Cyril and Methodios), thus bringing civilization the recently arrived Slavic tribes (from Poland to the far reaches of Siberia in the 9th century A.D.
10) Inventing bagpipes (my half-Scottish friends are pleasantly surprised that the bagpipe ("Gaida" or "tsambouna" in Hellenic) was brought to the British Isles in the 13th century A.D. with the looting of Constantinople (yes, by fellow "Christian Crusaders" {most Arabs and eastern Europeans view them as murderous and hideous}).
I could go on. How about 10,000 things (or innovations) ? But I digress.
T.K.D. (Toronto, Canada)