Greece, Miletus, and Thales: The Birth of the Boundary Breakers (thing)

In this chapter, Bloom talks about the pre-Hellenistic societies, and their transformation, via conquering Indo-Europeans, that made them the stomping grounds of the forefathers of Western Thought.

Although the early societies favored the female form, as evidenced by "wall-to-wall paintings of starring women with wide-open thighs," "the conquerors banished womanly charms . . . and imposed a fixation on more masculine things" (122-123).

Another thousand years brought another set of conquerors, the Dorians. These people brought the Iron Age to the Mediterranean. They also killed off all the men they conquered, and impregnated the women, a brutal but effective deepening of the local gene pool.

Finally, around 700 B.C., Thales, son of a Phoenician couple, and a speculator in vegetable futures, developed the world's first monopoly when he took control of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus. He befriended politicians, and journeyed all around the Mediterranean Sea, and may have even helped to initiate the concept of secular philosophy, tipping the first domino leading to the Age of Reason and beyond.

Thales is also one of a great many philosophers to whom is attributed the quote, "Know thyself."

Back to chapter 12: The Weave of Conquest and the Genes of Trade
On to chapter 14: Sparta and Baboonery: The Guesswork of Collective Mind
Up to the Index.