valhalla | The Kalympics

We all start with DNA which might be the most frequented line in the climbing world.

ADDENDUM

What is (Ancient) Greek?

Ancient Greek cities were sprinkled all over the Mediterranean. Some were led independently by a leader of 'their own', some were led by a tyrant installed by a power elsewhere, and some had obligations to their Greek mother city of which they are/were a colony.

The Greek never formed a political unity.
Neither did they form a discrete territory.
Greek was a culture with its own script, language-group, myths and sanctuaries. You had the Greek world like today you have the Arab world and the Latin-writing Ancient-Greek-admiring world.
The Ancient Greek had nothing to do with the contemporary country of Greece (which nonetheless unsolicitedly borrowed legitimacy from the ancient peoples).

The country Greece was invented in 1821.
Later a British warship delivered Greece' first king, chosen from the European elite: Otto von Wittelsbach from Bamberg, Kingdom of Bavaria.
The new country was part of the emergence of the 19th-century nation-states:

Identity was created, propagated and resized to a large territory that had to become a monoculture. E.g. Greece' territory in reality was not monocultural: Atatürk (first leader of the Turkish nation) grew up there.
Monoculture identity, political-entity and the accompanying territory became all linked.
Legitimacy was sought in nationalist-colored history. National education primarily confirmed the nation-state.
In school, historical conflicts were retold as cultural conflicts. National identity was placed centrally in the narrative on conflicts and war.
In reality, historical conflicts were mostly fought between political entitities with mixed culture and religion, even if we're told not. How often did Catholics join Protestants to fight a rivalling power that was either Catholic or Protestant? How often did Sparta side with the Persians to screw over Athens? How did French- and Dutch-speaking fight on both sides in the Battle of the Golden Spurs, when today it is told as a war of cultures? How did the French help the Ottoman Muslims to fight Vienna in 1529?
Colonists brought this giga-tribal thinking also to their victim regions to divide and conquer.
The nation was a new way for the elite to keep authority and unity over an extended nation-state, in their ambition to be powerful like the Romans or Napoleon.

Did you know that many contemporary temple-inspired logos show an uneven amount of pillars which means a central entrance would be blocked by the middle pillar? An example:

If it's true that I'm going to see so many ruins from Ancient Greek, then I better read some basics on the Aegean and the Ancient Greek ().

Aegean geology

The Anatolian plate is pushed hard by the African and Arabian plates, into the immobile Eurasian plate. This makes for steep mountains sticking out of the Aegean Sea. East of the sea there is the Anatolian continent: intensely mountaineous and often shaken by earthquakes.

Examples of seismic and volcanic activity:

Around 1600 BC Thera's volcano erupted and created Santorini.
Around 500 BC constant earthquakes split Telendos from Kalymnos.
Two years ago the Samos earthquake shook and damaged İzmir, where 117 people died. In Greece 2 people died. 15.000 people were made homeless.

Aegean classical history

From 2000 BC until 1000 BC the Minoan culture thrived on the island of Crete, having a strategic role in the trade of copper and tin.

For centuries up until 1000 BC historians talk more generally of Mycenaean Greece, after the then prominent city of Mycenae. This era will soon inspire Homer's epic poems.

Around 1000 BC Greek people started colonizing the west-coasts of the Anatolian continent. You had Aeolians, Ionians and Dorians.

The Greek dark ages brought famine, depopulation, the script of then was no longer used, and decorations lacked figures and became much simpler. It's not all bad: The Greek alphabet came about, inspired by Phoenician script in the Levant, and the old class hierarchy became abandoned, the Olympic games started, and Homer wrote his Odyssey, a tale that

crosses the Mediterranean,
lands the hero in Sardinia (the island featured in many trade routes, the Greek called it Ichnussa (Ιχνουσσα) and the south had a Phoenician vibe, while the rest of the island involved native people),
invents the Trojan war in Anatolia,
and mentions the Kalymnian islands.

Imagine you're 3000 years ago. You command a seafaring vessel over the Aegean archipelago, you land somewhere, have a good donkey and travel the Peloponnese peninsula. Chances are high that eventually you run across a Greek city state (polis).

The culture that emerged in these poleis is called Greek (in opposition to the Phoenician) and spread because of some cities' trading and colonizing (looking for new horizonts because of overpopulation or a quest for fertile land). For example, check how many branches the island of Samos eventually has:

Culture spread through colonisations, travels, trade, education,... Therefore Greek culture became widespread, not at all limited to

what we know today as Greece, the territorial 18th century's invented nation-state. Greek people were not limited to current-day Greece, and current-day Greece was not limited to Greek people: the first leader of the Turkish nation, Atatürk, was born and brought up in Thessaloniki in the late 1800's.
the Aegean Sea.

Examples of Greek thinkers:

Island of Ios	Aegean Sea	750 BC	Homer	epic poems Illiad and Odyssey
Miletus	Aegean Sea (Anatolian coast)	550 BC	Anaximander	suggested biological evolution
Samos	Aegean Sea	550 BC	Pythagoras
Ephesus	Aegean Sea (Anatolian coast)	500 BC	Heraclitus	the misanthrope
Calabria	Italic Peninsula	500 BC	Arignota	female student of Pythagoras and Theano
Campania	Italic Peninsula	450 BC	Zeno of Eleia (and Parmenides)	paradoxes
Agrigento	Sicily	450 BC	Empedocles
Just east of Kalymnos (moved to Calabria)	Aegean Sea	450 BC	Herodotes
Athens	Greek peninsula	400 BC	Xenophon	writer-historian, Athenian/Spartan leader of a mercenary army of 10.000 hired by a Persian royal looking to steal the throne from his own brother in Babylon (inspires Alexander)
Cyrene	present-day Libya	300 BC	Eratosthenes	who calculated the circumference of the earth
Marseille	present-day French Côte d'Azur	300 BC	Pytheas	geographer
Alexandria	present-day Egypt	300 BC	Euclid	400 years before the 'Roman' Ptolemy studied there
Samos	Aegean Sea	300 BC	Epicurus
Citium	Aegean Sea (Cyprus)	300 BC	Zeno of Citium	Stoic
Syracuse	Sicily	250 BC	Archimedes
Naucratis (moved to Rhodes)	inland Egypt	250 BC	Apollonius of Rhodes	writer of the Argonautica poem
Apamea (moved to Athens and Rhodes)	Syria	100 BC	Posidonius	spread Stoicism to the Roman world
Oenoanda	Lycia	150 AD	Diogenes of Oenoanda (not to confuse with the more famous Diogenes of Sinop, Black Sea)	called the Epicurus of Lycia

Around 500 BC the Ionian cities revolted against Persian rule and the tyrants they installed. The geopolitical ball went rolling around the Aegean Sea. Sparta and the Persians wanted Athens to be ruled by a tyrant too. Sparta's allies didn't like the idea. Athens rid itself of its tyrants and came the Ionians to help in their struggle with theirs.

The Persians swore revenge but their path of destruction was halted at Marathon, just a good run away from Athens. The Achaemenid Empire (the Persians) went home with a sad face, but there they planned an even bigger revenge and were soon back to conquer.. well.. everything everywhere.. with probably the largest army ever. The common threat brought the Greek city-states together. Nonetheless the Persians had their first important success at Thermopylae, where the famous 300 Spartans (and hundreds of other soldiers) fought to death to hold off the Persians and allow the larger Greek military alliance to retreat.

Mayhem befell the peninsula. But the Greek held the Persians off and the city-states eventually veered back and won decisively at Plataea. However soon Sparta lost the sympathy and trust of many in the Hellenic League. Therefore Athenian leadership won influence (with Pericles leading in a democracy).

Athens came to thrive. Keywords: democracy, trade, the Delian league, external influence, and making cities pay for the provision of security. Athens rose from its ashes, straight into its Golden Age. Pericles ruled from the age of 34 'till his 66. Many Athenian citizens were on the public payroll. Athens became an important center attracting great thinkers.

But some places also revolted against Athens. Moreover the Spartans saw their chance. Some say they felt threatened by a rising Athens, and war became a case of not if, but when. Other historians claim Sparta just saw Athens stagnating and felt (from its culture of military eagerness) that it was the moment to strike its colleague superpower. When the 'Peloponnesian Wars' finally really broke out, the golden age ended.

Though it was just as politically tumultuous, Macedonia deployed sophisticated politics and soon grew to power and influence, and marched deep into the Achaemenid Empire (also visiting the rather independent Lycian League). Alexander the Great took Persia by storm, then fought local chieftains and warlords, and eastern tribal alliances.

Again, the Mediterranean scene was not only about Greek-cultured city-states (and with that Thrace and Macedonian city-states), but also Phoenician city-states like Carthage (a fertile coastal oasis in present-day Tunisia) that was a colony (but got independent from) Tyre (present-day Lebanon). Then Romans jumped to the regional scene around 200 BC as they fought war with Carthage (Hannibal with his elephants, Punic wars) and various Greek states (Pyrrhic wars), often quarreling for parts of Sicily.