The Past as Present
Rachel Moltz
Wed, 06/07/2023 – 12:21
More often than not the past provides the present with serious warnings about the dangers of the world in which it lives. Nothing better exemplifies this truism than the geographic realities inflicted by the Deity on the territories stretching across south-eastern Europe from the Danube in the west to the great mountains covering the Caspian Sea in the east. To the south, the largely waterless Anatolian plateau blocked much of the Black Sea from access to the Mediterranean with the exception the Dardanelles, a narrow strait that had made it one of the most important strategic points of the fifth century B.C., just as it has proven to be in the twenty-first century.
The gods had also provided the first settlers of Ukraine with unbelievable riches of raw materials. From its center to far in the east, deep, dark soil has provided a massive agricultural bounty, unmatched elsewhere. Small wedges of farms allowed for the production of wheat and sunflower seeds. Ukraine’s agricultural bounties provided enormous wealth which soon drew large numbers of Greek merchants across the Black Sea in search of agricultural sustenance which was so rare in the …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution
