yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

This Greek Cave is Teeming With History—and Bodies | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Classical Greece didn't just come out of nowhere. If you really want to understand where the Greece of Athens, the Greece of the Acropolis, came from, you need to look way back in the past. You need to look several thousand years back in the past at places like this.

This is a la pocha cave on southern Greece's Mone Peninsula, a cave used by some of the earliest farmers in Europe. It is a very important site; it's there, it's this cave in Greece and one of the richest in Europe. Some have suggested it was the mythical gateway to Hades, the Greek underworld, and it's easy to see why.

In various pockets all around this nearly 1,000-foot-long cavern, scientists have exhumed more than 150 bodies. Archaeologists Honestasia Pop, Athena CEO, and Bill Parkinson continued to find more from 8,000 years ago until about 5,000 years ago. Agricultural villagers—farmers, some of the first farmers in Europe—buried their dead in here. They carried out ritual activities here, and these are the people who eventually laid the foundation for what became classical Greece.

Compared to other ancient civilizations, it seems the people here in Greece never had it easy. The cave provides a window into a key period in human history: the Neolithic. When, by around ten thousand years ago, humans first started to give up hunting and gathering and began settling down, it's the first time period in human life that people start living in a way like us. They are the cultural roots; they base their diet mostly in grains, like us today.

Depending on where you lived and what resources you had access to, some societies during the Neolithic were much more primed for greatness than others. Some of the objects are so valuable that it's like what we call hand carry, and that's basically the courier is handcuffed to the briefcase and escorted through security.

More Articles

View All
The Surprising Superpowers of Sharks | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
Our shark story starts in the late 1950s. Elvis Presley has just released “Jailhouse Rock,” Jane Goodall is taking her very first trip to Kenya, businesses will invent the laser soon, although they don’t quite know what to use it for, and the space race i…
Multiplying by tens word problem | Math | 3rd grade | Khan Academy
A volunteer group is planting trees at five different parks. They planted 90 trees at each park. How many trees did the group plant in all? So here’s what we know: we know that this group went to five different parks, very kind of them, and planted 90 tr…
Introduction to vertex form of a quadratic
It might not be obvious when you look at these three equations, but they’re the exact same equation. They’ve just been algebraically manipulated. They are in different forms. This is the equation and sometimes called standard form for a quadratic. This is…
Why I have 11 Credit Cards…
What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here. So how ridiculous is this? I now have 11 credit cards! Now I was perfectly happy and perfectly content having 10 credit cards. I really didn’t need another one. But I saw the Credit Shifu, who uploaded a video the oth…
The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth | Cosmos: Possible Worlds
[bees buzzing] NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: For thousands of years, bees have been symbols of mindless industry. We always think of them as being something like biological robots, doomed to live out their lives in lockstep, shackled to the dreary roles assigned …
What 300 DIRTY JOBS Taught Mike Rowe About TRUE SUCCESS | Kevin O'Leary
If I were in a seat, I’d be on the edge of it. All right, here we go. [Music] You are watching yet another episode of Mr. Wonderful. I’m not him; I’m just a guest. I might grow your questions; we answer them. It’s gonna be great. Hi, my name is Monty. I’…