Early Man in Motion Picture

There is a period of time we are familiar with the acronym "BC". It stands, of course, for "Before Christ", the period before the famous tale about the origin of the Christian religion. But this time goes far behind Jesus. Far beyond the origin of all monotheistic religions. It goes even before the eons when our ancestors knew gods in the plural and to the ages when modern humans started their everlasting and ongoing endeavors. The time in prehistory was occupied with the endless wonders of surrounding nature without firm beliefs but surely filled with many invisible divine spirits and mysterious stars.

Due to the illiteracy of the period, there's almost nothing tangible we could use to gain full knowledge of what early society really looked like, and even though we know a great deal about those times only by analyzing cave walls, fossil records, and DNA samples, in order to describe one early settlement, we still must use lots of imagination and scientific guesses.

Personally and definitely caused by the mystery of the ancient times, I do enjoy reading and, in this case, watching fictitious stories about early people, events, and how everything was in the beginning. Hence, if we stay in the realm of motion pictures, I want to share four movie recommendations from the rather small pile of films covering prehistory free of wild imagination that might be anthropologically correct. So, let's start in, appropriately, in chronological and descending order, starting with the latest film about the earliest period of prehistory in all four movies. The story is about the first joint adventures of man and man's best friends. The wolves. Well, you know... the dogs.

Portraying Europe at the end of the Pleistocene epoch some 20,000 years ago, Alpha is telling an adventurous story of Keda, a teenage boy on his first hunting trip, and Alpha, the first domesticated wolf. They struggle to survive the harsh environment of the last ice age and, along the way, learn to enjoy new special friendships among two species. Something we are taking for granted in our very contemporary age. Three things about this movie are fascinating: for one, there are no human villains in the film, and this is amazing for nowadays movies, and yet the story works just as perfectly. Secondly, I learned something I didn't know: Alpha was played by a real Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a mix between a German shepherd and real Carpathian wolves created for military purposes. I always admired German shepherds, but I have to say that this relatively new breed is really magnificent in every way. Finally, the language they used is a fictional one, fully developed for the movie by Christine Schreyer, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia who used three ancestral languages in the process, and this effort alone gave the movie a genuine and really extraordinary feeling.

The next two movies went even further in the past. The set was still the Eurasian continent, and the time could be estimated at some 30-40K BC, when one of the kind events in the history of two dominant species happened. It was the time when our ancestors started to populate the area that was already taken by Neanderthals. Barely compatible, this caused the death of the weakest and most unprepared party in conflict. It is still a mystery what exactly was happening in those shared periods that probably lasted hundreds or more likely thousands of years, but in the aftermath, just like proposed in one of the movies, Neanderthals suffered and died out from both major issues: their bodies were totally unprepared for new diseases humans unknowingly delivered, and equally important, their minds couldn't stand or understand the violent behavior of newcomers.

Ao, le dernier Néandertal and The Clan of the Cave Bear are both dealing with the collision of two dominant humanoid species of the time only from different angles. At first, Ao was a desperate Neanderthal man whose family was brutally murdered by modern humans, and he was forced to seek his life elsewhere and find happiness with a homo sapiens woman. The movie offers outstanding performances by Aruna Shields and especially Simon Paul Sutton, who portrayed the story with one word—perfectly. The same goes for Jean Auel's first book of the "Earth's Children" series and the movie with the same name. Here, the script is the opposite and follows young girl Ayla, who finds shelter within the Neanderthal clan. It's hard to say which film is more appealing, historically accurate, better performed, and better made, but if you choose to watch them, entertainment filled with drama, adventure, and even romance is guaranteed.

Finally, if we go even further into the past, more or less 80000 years ago, in the time of tribal societies where the fire was a luxury and hard to find, the last film recommendation was the oldest movie of them all. Quest for Fire was filmed back in 1981, and it was the first movie I watched from this genre. I remember I was fascinated with scenes with mammoths who were played by circus elephants in full wardrobe and trained lions in the role of saber-toothed tigers. In short, three cavemen are sent on the quest to find the fire, for which they still don't have the knowledge of how to start it. The quest turned into a real adventure, and what they learned and returned to their cave was priceless. And I am not talking just about fire. Enough said.

Refs:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2015/10/neanderthals-humans-and-shared-caves.html
https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog
https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/08/23/bc-professor-creates-language-for-alpha
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-wild-story-behind-quest-for-fire

The Oldest Pictograph for Copper

Last year, during our visit to the Cretan site of Knossos and their wonderful museum in Heraklion dedicated in large part to one of the greatest peaceful periods in human history, I didn't hide my admiration for the old Minoans and their way of life. I even said I would move to Crete without second thoughts if I had a time machine, mainly to avoid the hostility of the world order we are currently living in today. At the time, considering only the European continent, I was under the impression that cultures like Minoan were rare and the Bronze Age society we glimpsed on Crete was maybe walking on the edge of being the only one in the history of mankind. To say the least, I couldn't be more wrong.

Only a couple of millennia before the late Neolithic period, known as the Chalcolithic or simply the Copper Age, there was an old European society that lived for centuries and also flourished in peaceful harmony and perfect equilibrium with nature, themselves, and their immediate land, where they built large settlements with big houses, streets, and infrastructure. And one of their major cities, by using vocabulary for describing settlements built 7000 years ago, existed almost next to my backyard. So to speak.

Prehistoric Europe, probably like everywhere else in the world, has experienced a civilization boom after the Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture, along with the domestication of wild animals. That also included a boost in population and ways of living, and in these parts of the world, for almost eight centuries, if not longer, rose a civilization that belonged to the well-known Turdaș-Vinča culture. Many archaeologists today consider this early civilization for the throne of being the first independent and distinguished modern humans and true civilization cradle.

More than ten major settlements were found, and most of them were in the process of excavation throughout Serbian territories, with the addition of several more within neighboring lands, especially Transylvania in central Romania. These people not only perfected agriculture but also were the first to initiate the Copper Age in world history. The art of pottery was their hallmark, and many alien-shaped figurines triggered a wave of 'ancient astronauts' theories, and I will only quote one of the referenced articles: "The appearance of these figurines is striking. Many depictions of extraterrestrials in ancient literature and art reference the same oval-shaped heads, enormous almond eyes with dark pupils, and small noses and mouths". Whether or not this is evidence enough to conclude that Vinča people were in contact with extraterrestrial beings who helped them to achieve a higher level of life, I will let you conclude or ignore, but one thing is for sure: these people, along with their way of clothing and decorating, early metallurgy, and the functionality of their large, for the time, houses and settlements, were almost on the same levels of civilization as the old Minoans who lived and flourished three millennia later.

If you add to the facts that pottery was practiced at the household level with artifacts clearly created and shaped by children, along with evidence that women's clothing included mini-skirts and trousers, it is really fascinating. All vanished civilizations from ancient times earned their place in the evolution of humanity, but those of them who practiced or invented something for the first time and what we today take for granted represent our true and genuine heritage. Within the humanity tree, Vinča people deserved a very special place for two very important things in our evolution as a species.

They developed one of the earliest forms of proto-writing, which still waits for definite evidence of whether or not it overgrown simplicity over centuries and became the true representation of their spoken language. The second achievement is indisputable for most scholars. This culture was the first one, in the current knowledge and archaeological evidence, to learn how to smelt copper ore. They were the pioneers who took the big step toward the end of the Stone Age.

Vinča-Turdaș symbols were found practically everywhere engraved on artifacts excavated in Serbia and Romania. Hence the name by which it is known; like with Cretan civilization, we don't know how they called themselves. Most of the inscriptions are on pottery, and the vast majority of the inscriptions consist of a single symbol. This indicates that symbols are used similarly to what we are familiar with today as "icons", and lots of different pictographs are probably designed to identify the object they are engraved on, the content of it, the owner, value, and measure, perhaps even the ancient logo of the household or manufacturer. Most likely the names of individuals as well. For example, the name Cochise of Native Americans' Apache means "oak wood", and one of the Vinča symbols most definitely means the same thing. No doubt there were a series of pictographs related to copper and whatever they made out of it.

However, over the time of civilization's existence, the script probably evolved along, and these three tablets in the image above, found at a site in the village of Tărtăria, indicate more complex writing that most likely represents words of their language. So far, no "Epic of Gilgamesh" alternative has been found, but lots of work on sites is still ahead, and I am sure many other sites are still waiting to be found. Even so, Vinča symbols predate the earliest Sumerian cuneiform script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the first Minoan writing by far.

To me, the Vinča-Turdaș script most definitely resembles all other linear scripts, which means by using the symbols it is possible to write complex lines and sentences, but I am far from being the expert in the field. However, this suggestion is sound, and lines of text dated to the period and found in two locations in Bulgaria and Greece support the hypothesis. For the theory to become proven or disputed, cracking the ancient code must be done first, but for all lost languages, this is not easy. For example, old Minoans used a "Linear A" script that is still a mystery even though it is related to its solved big brother, "Linear B". Its amazing that these three scripts are possible to download in the form of TrueType fonts, and just for fun, I used them in this image to print "Milan's Public Journal" in Vinča, Minoan, and Mycenaean. This is rubbish, of course, and all these people from the past would need very different keyboards to write their languages (letters of the alphabet would not do any good for their symbols), but still, it was fun to play with.

While the writing puzzle is still not solved, Vinča people who lived nearby natural deposits of copper ore very quickly developed a process to extract the metal from the mineral and to build various tools and weapons used only for hunting. One of such sites is the one from my neighborhood. Only an hour of driving to the south is the archaeological site of Pločnik, probably the first ancient city in the world where copper smelting was industrialized. We visited the site last weekend, where we found amazing replicas of Vinča people's homes and also a nearby museum in the city of Prokuplje with lots of excavated items from the site and lots of stories from the excavation itself.

Even today, there are deposits of malachite and azurite in the wide area where the site is located, and our guide hinted that in the past they were probably able to find them in the river as well. Both are common copper minerals that are melted at 700 °C. Campfires are about 200° short of the temperature needed, so they built square-shaped furnaces stored in larger buildings with pipe-like earthen blowers with hundreds of tiny holes in them used to blow compressed air directly into fire. Whether people, like Viktor in the above video, were manually blowing the air or they had some sort of leather bellows is still unknown.

The place is very big—more than 100 hectares. The ancient city was large and populated from 5500 to 4700 BC in a row until it was destroyed in a big fire by probably intruders from afar. What happened with survivors and where they moved after is also not known. Like Minoans, no peaceful society ever survived hostile events and probably ceased to exist entirely or fully dispersed among the newcomers. Anyhow, we were all carrying lots of impressions from the last weekend trip to the history of our own neighborhood, along with a piece of pottery, 7000 years old, we received as a gift from the excavation park. No words could describe all of our gratefulness, especially Viktor's, when he had to choose a piece that maybe once belonged to his peer from the early Copper Age.

The Minoan Legacy:
https://www.mpj.one/2017/07/the-minoan-legacy.html

Stone Age of Iron Gates:
https://www.mpj.one/2015/08/stone-age-of-iron-gates.html

Cyclops of Peloponnese:
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/cyclops-of-peloponnese.html

Image & Video refs:
https://www.disclose.tv/the-danube-valley-civilization-script-is-the-worlds-oldest-writing-313756
http://korzoportal.civcic.com/julka-kuzmanovic-cvetkovic-plocnik-kako-doziveti-neolit/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2BtavSrxaRyvOJS5JZaHQ

Refs:
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/serbiavinca.htm
https://cogniarchae.com/2015/10/29/tartaria-connection-between-vinca-and-proto-linear-b-script/
https://www.disclose.tv/mysterious-vinca-statuettes-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-contact-313094
http://www.ancientpages.com/2015/09/30/mysterious-ancient-vinca-culture-undeciphered-script/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinca_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinca_symbols
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/civilisation-script-oldest-writing
http://www.ancientpages.com/2018/02/17/7000-year-old-inscription-undeciphered-vinca-script/
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/vinca.htm
http://vrtoplica.mi.sanu.ac.rs/en/section/58
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting#Copper_and_bronze
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/17456/pdf
https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/native-american

Serbian refs:
https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr/Плочник_(археолошки_локалитет)
https://www.serbia.com/srpski/posetite-srbiju/kulturne-atrakcije/arheoloska-nalazista/vinca/
http://muzejtoplice.org.rs/index.php/en/muzejtoplice
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Civilization-Museum/Arheo-park-Pločnik

The Minoan Legacy

Often, I found myself giving a glimpse of thoughts of where I would move on this world in order to acquire at least a little bit better life compared to what we currently have. Or when. Has there ever been a time in history when there was a civilization with a more dignified style of living? With society built with a more honest foundation toward themselves and their neighbors. With equality among people, genders, colors, skin, and different cultures. With not at all or just a hint of superstition and religiosity. With no temples higher than schools and people's homes. With cities without strong police keeping order and without military of any kind. Was there a country without fortifications, both real and metaphorical? With no or just a bearable hostility toward others...

There is definitely no such idealistic settlement in this world. Not now. But there was one before. More than three thousand years ago on the island of Crete. The first civilization in Europe and perhaps the first and last one that fits this description. The place where I would time travel without hesitation if I could.

We know them in our history books as the Minoans, but that wasn't their real name. What they called themselves we don't know. We don't understand their letters and can't read their tablets. They built marvelous settlements with almost all the modern infrastructure we are familiar with today. Glorious city-palaces with paved roads between them. With main squares where they preferred practicing sports and arts instead of going into temples to pray. They were people who invented and lived one idealistic, peaceful life and based their wealth on trades among themselves and all the others across the sea.

Unfortunately, after several attempts throughout eons, human nature and natural catastrophes destroyed Minoan civilization, and these people at the end dispersed fully, and their way of life faded away for good. Among neighboring civilizations and their saved documents, as well as with the Bible, their names were probably either Keftiu, Kaptarians, Caphtor, or Kabturi. Or if you like, we can even call them Atlanteans if we connect Plato's story with the Minoan volcanic eruption that reshaped the island of Thera in the middle of the second millennium BC. Perhaps we should wait for their Linear A script to be revealed by maybe another Rosetta Stone, but until then, Sir Evan's label for Minoans based on the old Greek mythology is the best we've got. Nevertheless, this blog post is not really history research, and more stories about related old times I tried to list below in the references, but one thing is for sure. The end of Minoan culture, which started with earthquakes and at least one cataclysmic volcanic eruption, faded and dispersed during the final couple of centuries of the second millennium with hostile raids and occupations over time from both directions: mainland Greece in the face of old Mycenaeans and ancient invaders from the direction of the Middle East.

However, their life based solely on manufacturing goods and food, honest trade, sports, arts, and all the non-hostile human activities was once indeed possible and flourishing. Unfortunately, their legacy is, as it seems, lost for good, and after more than three and a half thousand years, we are living in a world filled with fear of self-destruction with little hope for humanity to survive the next three millennia. Anyhow, the road, or to better say, the airplane, took us this summer to the island of Crete, and we landed at the Chania airport, which is also the military base that hosts both air and nearby naval forces. The sight of supersonic fighters constantly flying above the beaches, heavy military aircraft parked next to the civilian runway, and large destroyer ships anchored in Souda Bay was definitely not something old Minoans would evolve into if history played the cards differently. After visiting the Knossos archeological site and the wonderful museum in Heraklion dedicated to these ancient people, I am certain of it.

Caused by the city's amazing scope and Minoan fascination for bulls, centuries after the fall of civilization, Greek mythology created one of the most famous stories with characters as strong as Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, Theseus, and, of course, the Minotaur captured in the center of the labyrinth. On the other side, the most plausible truth of why Knossos was built the way it was built is simply because Crete was positioned on top of the movement of the African tectonic plate under the Eurasian plate. This is causing lots of earthquakes, small and big, and results from the complex geological process; the entire eastern side of the island is sinking while the western part is rising. The ancient builders purposely made the palace in this way in order to sustain constant ground shake, with buildings and chambers literally supporting each other from all directions.

It probably goes without saying that I am fascinated with Greece and the Greeks. Their amazing history and all the contributions their ancestors gave to the rest of the world are enormous. With this summer trip, I rounded out walking the lands of all three main stages of ancient Greek times. Classical Greece that belongs to the mainland north of Sparta, the Mycenaean epoch that precedes them in the time of Agamemnon, and now the ancient civilization of Minoans that precedes them all. Surely, there are many more sites to see, but somehow I felt today that I fulfilled the genuine urge to visit all the main places and to walk the same paths where stories from history (and mythology) took place.

Our prime vacation time this summer was in Agia Marina, a cute little place several kilometers west of Chania, where we spent a wonderful ten days exploring local beaches and took an excursion to the old Venetian harbor in the old city and its nautical museum with an exact replica of the Bronze Age Minoan ship. The second trip to Heraklion and Knossos completed our travel through the history of the island, and the following day-by-day travel video clip Viktor and I made hopefully will show you more than still images could, especially if you have never visited Crete before.

Surely, summer vacations are never about visiting museums and the history of the area. It is also about the present, and in the most hedonistic fashion, we also visited the Balos Lagoon, one of the greatest beaches in Europe, and, most of all, tried to enjoy the time by meeting local people and visiting local sites and the neighborhood. It is hard to say what we liked the most, and I guess the best thing is to say that Crete is an exceptional place to visit. Something we will definitely try to do again. Many thanks to all the good people we met this July, especially to the crew of Fly Fly Travel and their great guides, Nebojša and Dobrivoje, for all their super-professional work and help.

Image and video refs:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tp8ugeNBg07zE9q52
https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/greece/

Refs:
http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/knossos/articleKnossos01.html
http://paleoglot.blogspot.rs/2010/01/minoan-name-for-minoa.html
http://www.minoanatlantis.com/Minoan_Science.php
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22527821
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos
https://www.timemaps.com/civilizations/minoan-civilization/
http://ancient-greece.org/history/minoan.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization
https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/.../HIST101-2.3.2-MinoanCrete-FINAL.pdf
http://www.ancient.eu/Minoan_Civilization/

Cyclops of Peloponnese

Another 'Greek' vacation came to an end after we chose to take and risk a little, probably the longest drive toward the ancient civilization cradle in the history of all of our summer vacations. Driving in a row for 14 hours was not exactly as fun as expected, but in the end, when I put all the 'pros' and 'cons' together after a couple of years of planning and anticipating our first visit to the famous Peloponnese, it was worth the wait. But before a story about sites we visited, I'd like to share some thoughts about the journey itself. This year it was the weakest link of our entire vacation, and little 'pros' can be taken out of it. First of all, it was too long, and with 40+ degrees Celsius outside, it was far from being pleasurable and relaxing. If you add to the 'cons' list too many moments with driving poor roads and unnecessary waiting time on borders and tolls, especially within the transiting country of Macedonia (FYROM), I am not far from the decision that next time we will be choosing a different route for the travel to Greece and most likely booking the plane instead or, for smaller trips, checking out the new highway the European Union is currently building in Bulgaria.

Fortunately, all the 'cons' ended with the journey alone, and all the good mood and perfect vacation spirit recovered fast as soon as all the 'pros' overcame in days of one full week of our second vacation south from Greek Macedonia and our first visit to the Greek capital, its municipality area, the Corinth Canal, and ancient Peloponnese.

Perhaps the most exciting time we spent during the first couple of days was filming the remaining scenes for our short film "Game of Life" (embedded below), which we were playing with all summer long. It all started pretty benign and just like another father-son playtime, but somehow it evolved into a real project with a decent storyline, filming scenes on four major locations, and also using chroma keying technology with a green background for dialogues. With the last scene taken in Greece, we now have 90+ video files in total. Anyhow, this was one of our best plays so far, and we both enjoyed it very much with all the bloopers and improvisation. Most importantly, this film would not be possible without a lighthouse, as it plays a major role in the story, and we found it just 20 kilometers from our hotel with tremendous views of the entire Corinthian Gulf. We spent three days on the site and nearby beach and finished all the 'Greek' scenes. In the above photo, Viktor, with our 'nerf' portal stone preps, is posing in front of 'Faros Melagavi', built on the rock near the 'Vouliagmenis' lake where we filmed the last portal scene and also just next to the ancient archaeological site of 'Heraion of Perachora'—a sanctuary occupied by a real oracle, just like the one in Delphi, dedicated to the goddess Hera and built in the 9th century BC. Here, just next to the old ruins of the temple of Hera, I found a stone perfect for a green screen scene we already filmed in our living room 'studio' and more or less successfully merged it into the film's main dialog.

In a way, we were, sort of, pioneers in exploring Corinthian vacations from Serbia. This was actually only the second year for travel agency "Balkan Fun" to organize a stay in Loutraki, a seaside resort located in the Gulf of Corinth and just a couple of kilometers from the western exit of the Corinth Canal. It is actually a thermal spa center known from ancient times with natural water springs with multiple healing abilities. If you bought bottled water in Greece anytime in the past, the chances are that some of them are from Loutraki Spa. We stayed in the hotel 'Mon Repos', a very nice old hotel with a genuine 'Otis' elevator from the middle of the previous century. If you watched 'Kate and Leopold', you probably know what I mean. The town is not perfect for families per se; the beach is not sandy and wide, and deep water comes very soon from the rocky part, but if you are in your twenties, with the famous hotel Casino and numerous nightclubs, you are in the right place. If you are older and with small kids, don't forget to come here with the car so you can be able, like we did, to explore the neighborhood.

Anyways, we chose to come here with 'Balkan Fun', not only because they were the only agency offering Loutraki for the fair prices, but also because of their numerous bus excursions to Athens and the Peloponnese. Anja Bačanin, our travel guide, did a perfect job organizing the tour, and with her 'radio host' voice in decent buses, she perfectly provided all the information needed. I admired her for her ability to tell a story with thousands of years of ancient times perfectly wrapped into just five or ten minutes. Not all travel guides can do that, and with these words, this is our thanks for all her efforts during our stay and especially for the two excursions we shared with the group.

And from two excursions on the Greek mainland, one was a visit to the ancient Acropolis of Athens, which was one unforgettable day. Especially for me, as this was my second visit to the site, with the first one being when I was younger than my son today. I still have a scanned image of me in the Acropolis some 40+ years ago, and all my efforts to find the same amphora where my old photo was taken failed, probably due to the fact that a new museum opened in the foothills of the site since then and all small artifacts are probably moved there. Still a couple of 'déjà vu' memories triggered in my mind, especially at the gate. Too many years passed, I guess—I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and it is not easy to remember things from that distance in time. I am still happy I experienced a couple of flashes of familiarities and resemblances.

The second excursion was named 'Discovering Peloponnese', and it widely justified its name. To be honest, quietly I was all in for this vacation this year, just because of this trip and especially for a chance to visit the Mycenae fortress. Within the second millennium of BC, Mycenae was one of the major and only centers of Greek civilization, and if you ask me, all the ancient Greek times later, including 'Classical Greece', which flourished for a couple of hundredyears and started somewhere in the 5th century BC, have to thank their origin in Mycenae. It was populated all the way from Neolithic times, ever since probably the last ice age, but the most prosperous times were around 1350 BC, at its peak when the entire site was built in a famous Cyclopean masonry style with massive limestone boulders and no use of mortar of any kind. In Greek mythology, Cyclops, the one-eyed giants, supposedly lived before the last ice age and, in ancient times, were the only ones capable of lifting stones, and some of them we saw on site were larger than two meters in height and probably weighed tons. Well, if you ask me, the Cyclop builders in this and any other case were probably elephants, strong horses, and "expendable" slaves, but still, the ingenuity of the old masons never disappoints. Their ingenuousness and beautiful museum with alien-like artifacts are something I will remember for a long time.

The peak of Mycenae dated just a couple of centuries after the devastating volcanic eruption of Thera, or the well-known Minoan eruption of the island today known as Santorini. I wrote more about it in the posts Aegean Sea and Atlanteans, but in a nutshell, there is a theory that survivors of the old Minoan civilization (Atlanteans?) or at least some of their ancestors, after the eruption, came here and founded Mycenae in the first place or mixed with natives. Artifacts found that resemble Minoan deities are one of the pieces of evidence that it might be true, along with similarities in the written language used. That's the history and scientific hypotheses, but as far as mythology says, Mycenae is founded by legendary Perseus, a demigod, the son of the ultimate god Zeus and mortal woman Danaë, daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. If you didn't see "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans" with Perseus played by Sam Worthington, go ahead and "rent" them; they were not that bad movies at all, despite all my reservations, and best of all, the script of the second movie offers the answer to the ultimate question of how and why gods from Olympus ended their presence on Earth.

Of course, the excursion was not only about the ancient Greeks—we were privileged to visit the Corinth Canal itself, the legendary sanctuary of Epidaurus with an amazing amphitheater, probably bigger than the one in the ancient Hierapolis of Pamukkale in present-day Turkey, and most of all, the old capital city of Greece—Nafplio, an amazing city with a colorful history that one time in the middle ages was ruled by the Republic of Venice. It was the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and of the Kingdom of Greece in the early 19th century, and its mixed architecture is still visible today. Viktor and I visited their small and wonderful war museum that is hosting many items and stories about the last millennium, including a model of the Venetian warship from the time.

Sometimes I wonder if one lifetime is enough to visit all of Greece and its ancient and modern sites and cities. Probably not. One thing is for sure. More summers are waiting ahead.

Anyway, this vacation gave us lots of knowledge and experience, and I am sure with this year there are fewer and fewer sites still waiting to be explored and seen. Aside from a couple of Aegean islands still on my to-do list, regarding Peloponnese, I still have a couple of regrets, especially if I think of Sparta and ancient Olympia. Speaking of Sparta, what we didn't miss and stopped to see during our journey was the "ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ" monument, next to the highway and old site where the famous battle of Thermopylae happened. Leonidas I, as I wrote in the posts Fishermen and Pirates of Evia and Warfare Then and Now, led a small army to defend Greece from Persian invasion in August 480 BC. He failed to defend Greece from Xerxes' large army at Thermopylae, but even today, after 2500 years, his bravery will be remembered as the greatest last-stand battle ever recorded. Not to mention the movie and famous line "This is Sparta", which is not only artistically perfect but also not too far distant from the facts as well.

ps.

I rarely publish on the blog personal photos that are not ours, especially not selfies, but this post deserves an exception. The following image is made by Anja, our guide. Great colors and style. Well made. I mean it. We are somewhere in the picture, and not just us; behind the group to the left is my backpack, which I accidentally forgot to bring with me, and coincidentally, where it stands is the exact spot where the first image from this post was taken.

As for the rest of the images in the post, this time I chose to include only selected photos that are following the story, but there are more, and all of them are in the album named, well, you probably guessed, Cyclops of Peloponnese. Needless to say, I recommend the entire destination, travel agency, and all the excursions.

Image refs:
https://goo.gl/photos/rLdZuPdaApQTCv5N8

Refs:
http://www.visitloutraki.com/
http://www.nafplio.gr/en/sightsmenu/stateandprivatemuseums/warmuseum.html
http://www.fungroup.rs/
https://www.facebook.com/anja.bacanin

Stone Age of Iron Gates

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognizable events or technological inventions, and some were slow evolutionary processes in the history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome always reshaped the course of mankind entirely. In our own time, one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and invent the nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has the potential to raise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization-killer event or a true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is a breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called the "Neolithic Revolution", and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention are still very much all around us.

"Lepenski Vir" by Giovanni Caselli

Yes, the invention is, of course, agriculture along with domesticating wild animals. In this part of the world it happened around the year 5300 BC, and along with the Vinča culture, it was invented by one of the oldest civilizations that occupied Iron Gates, the great gorge of the mighty Danube, at the spot called Lepenski Vir (Lepen Whirlpool) near the Koršo hills at the right bank of the river. The gorge had everything for the rise of one medium-sized settlement for our Mesolithic predecessors. Large river with lots of fish; hills and valleys very near the bank with lots of small animals, deer, and especially easily hunted herds of aurochs (now extinct species of wild cows); and lots of water birds.

Many things happened in human minds with the agricultural way of life. If you ask me, it was the point when humans abandoned the 'natural' way of life, or, to better say it, it was the time when natural equilibrium with humans being just a part of the biodiversity microcosm of the inhabited area changed inevitably. We became the ultimate and the only player. Growing our own food and enslaving wild animals had raised us toward the godlike creatures, and we left our prehistorical ways for good. Just like with nuclear power, we made one great step in human evolution. And just like with the nuclear bomb, we invented all the side effects we are suffering to this day.

With agriculture we didn't just invent unlimited food supplies. We got ourselves envy and jealousy toward our own neighbor and cousin for simple things, like him having more food or land. We started to hunt for pleasure and not just for food. We started to steal and hate. We invented divine beings and prayers for them to spare our crops from natural hazards between planting and harvesting seasons. Let me just not repeat myself too much on the topic.

Anyway, yesterday I took my family to the Lepenski Vir and its wonderful museum to learn more of these great people and how and why, on Earth, they managed to survive several millenniums in tent-based settlements and lasted for maybe the longest period of time in human history. As for why, unfortunately I can't explain with words. You would have to visit Iron Gates and see it for yourself. In short, it is a beautiful site. The river is magnificent, and the gorge is one of a kind. The forests are still there, and the feeling is, well, if I were one of the Mesolithic explorers on foot, finding this place would be the same as finding heaven. Migrating it out would be, from one hunter and fisherman group's point of view, well, stupid.

Perhaps the only thing this place doesn't have is lots of room for large agriculture fields, and eventually these people left it as soon as they became too dependent on the Neolithic Revolution, and from that point in time in the fifth millennium before Christ, we have no idea where they went and spread. Probably upstream on the Danube in search of large plains for their crops is currently the most valuable scientific explanation. Maybe something more happened in addition to agricultural reasons to force them to leave, but we don't know. Today, one of the largest dams in the world, named 'Iron Gates I', created significant landscape change in the form of a long river lake and flooded the entire gorge and all the ancient settlements, preventing further exploration in search for more clues.

Perhaps, for me, these guys in pre-agricultural times were extremely interesting for many reasons. Anthropologically speaking, they were large compared to other humans in Europe at the time and lived longer and healthier lives. Thanks to their diet with most of the fish dishes on their stone tables, some of the prominent members of the society lived more than 60 years, and some of them were tall enough to play in the NBA with ease. Well, of course, most lived to about 40-50 years old, but with their average height of 165 for women and 172 for men, they might have origins in the old Cro-Magnon species from the Paleolithic. A fascinating story about all the skeletons in tombs was that no traces of violent deaths were found. Apparently, they were extremely peaceful people, and also, the interesting fact that all excavated skeletons (more than 150 in total) are missing only two teeth gives a clue that their amazing diet with almost 70% fish and the rest meat and berries was a fact that they literally lived in some sort of Mesolithic paradise.

At the end, all the main exploration and excavations of this site were made by Professor Dragoslav Srejović of the University of Belgrade. 136 buildings, settlements, and altars were found in the initial excavations in 1965-1970. I read somewhere that Dragoslav Srejović was a giant in a Newtonian way of definition, and I couldn't agree more. This short film above is the same one they played for us in the museum. I am sorry I couldn't find the one with English subtitles, but it was a great learning experience and an amazing documentary considering it was filmed in the same time lapse as the exploration. And as my wife noticed, it has even a romantic tale in the background that gives a special touch and feel of one typical archaeological life in the mid-sixties.

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir
http://www.donsmaps.com/lepenski.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

Mammoths of Moesia Superior

Once, long, loong, loooooong ago in the days of the Late Jurassic period in the world of Pterodactylus, the famous flying dinosaur, Mother Earth was pretty busy with the work of creating continents, large mountains, seas, and oceans like we know today. At the time the place we know as Europe was mostly covered by a large sea by the name of Paratethys. About a hundred million years later, dramatic tectonic changes started producing large mountain formations today well known as the Alps and the Carpathians, which made Paratethys lose connection with the Mediterranean to the south and form a separate large inland sea in today's central Europe. Millions of years later, there are two remnant seas that still exist with the names of the Black and Caspian Seas. But there was one more in the nowadays Pannonian Basin that lasted almost 9 million years and finally disappeared in the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 600,000 years ago, with remnant lakes here and there, especially in Hungary today. During its long life, the Pannonian Sea followed Earth's tectonic events and once covered almost the entire territory of present-day Serbia. Even the place where I am located right now was once pretty watery and wet. When I was a kid, I played a lot with digging in our front yard and from time to time got lucky with a couple of snail shells that sometimes forced me to think about their origin. They were small and white, and even though I doubt they were that old, they were very much familiar to the ones you can find in nowadays salty seas. Nothing like you can see today in our neighborhood.

Viminacium's Vika

Anyway, in the time of the Pannonian Sea and its old age, more or less around a million years ago, humans were a pretty timid species. That was the time of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species who was most likely the ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals and lived more or less in the time when the last drop of the Pannonian Sea evaporated or was moved away by the mighty Danube, leaving large plains in modern Central Europe. But the real boss of the time was not the man at all, and instead, after the last dinosaur disappeared for good, it was the large mammoth who adapted very well to the colder climate compared to their southern origins and, evolutionarily speaking, started to grow fur for protection. I am pretty sure that all Homo heidelbergensis and his grand-grand-grandfathers were terrified each time when a herd of mammoths was passing by their habitat, and they were probably hiding every time for as long as the last sound of their giant feet faded away for good. Mammoths were more than 5 meters long, 4 meters high, and about 10 tons in weight, and you can only imagine how, i.e., a set of 50 or more members of the big herd would look and sound when passing by near to your home. Well... a cave, to be exact, which was the most secure home of the time, but still, it must have been very interesting, to say the least.

Viktor and Vika

In central Serbia, just next to the old Roman city of Viminacium, in the prehistoric mouth of the river Morava, which was ending its flow into the Pannonian Sea, mammoths seemed to find a good place to die. Just like elephants do today, they had their graveyards, and one of them seemed to be right there, and archaeologists found numerous skeletons and fossils of mammoths from different periods in history. Among them, the almost fully preserved mammoth "Vika" was displayed in the Viminacium we visited last weekend. Even millions of years after her death, she still leaves a deep impression on all her human visitors.

Well, the ultimate fatal doomsday, similar to the dinosaurs', didn't avoid this species either. Eventually they got extinct due to many reasons. Humans helped a lot by hunting them out and using their meat, skin, ivory, and fur. The Pannonian Sea also vanished and is now perhaps waiting for some severe climate change to get back, and until then, it stays in legends and Djordje Balasević song. Without natural borders and animal bosses, the latest half a million years gave further evolution of humans, and they lived more or less peacefully in prehistoric Serbian land in their tribal societies. More migrations happened in the meantime, and the latest one brought another wave of humans from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, which are now considered to be the origin of all populations of humans on the planet. Modern civilization in this neighborhood came only two thousand years ago with the Roman Empire during the reign of the first emperor, Augustus, who conquered this area and established a Roman province called Moesia after the Thraco-Dacian peoples who lived there before. It happened around the year 6 AD, and eight decades later it was divided into two provinces, giving birth to Moesia Superior, the western part of the original province where Romans built several cities and army camps in places significant for cultural and economic exchange and also where tactical deployment of their legions was the most effective for defense of Roman borders and also for further conquest campaigns. Numerous famous emperors and political figures of Roman history were born in Moesia Superior, including Constantine the Great, who was probably one of the most important men in the Roman Empire after the old republic in BC. I tried to describe his life from the point of view of my (and his) birthplace in the post Constantine & Naissus last year during the celebration of Milan's Edict.

Mausoleum

While Naissus was one of the most important cities and army installations for the southern Moesia Superior (Roman Dardania), the most important one on the north was the city of Viminacium. Located near the Danube, it was a natural point for the deployment of one of the most effective legions, 'Legio Septima Claudia Pia Fidelis', which was situated here during the reign of Hadrian in AD 125. Viminacium grew into a large city of the time with more than 40,000 inhabitants and with all the benefits of one large Roman city and the infrastructure of water aqueducts, modern industry, and entertainment with a wooden amphitheater big enough to host more than 10,000 people. In the most flourished period of the time, in the third century AD, Viminacium earned the status of a Roman colony and the right to coin its own money. The most important family of rulers born in this Roman land and living in Viminacium was Emperor Trajan Decius, who was previously governor of the entire Moesia. During the battle of Abritus, he died along with his son Herennius, with whom he co-ruled in the reign. After their death the throne briefly went to his second son, Hostilian, but sadly the family misfortune ended here, this time with a deadly plague that killed both Hostilian and his mother.

The end of the city started with Attila the Hun and his raid in the fifth century, and even though it was rebuilt by Justinian I, it was finally destroyed by Avars in the late sixth century. After that, it started to fade, and after decades and centuries, it eventually got buried under the dirt and sand near the nowadays city of Kostolac and the villages of Old Kostolac and Drmno. However, even after so many years from the golden Roman era and contrary to almost all other ancient archaeological sites that lie deep under modern cities, Viminacium is today an open plain, and simply because of this fact, the only obstacle for further excavation is financial background. Other sites are not that lucky; for example, excavation of old Naissus is almost impossible, as all post-Roman settlements in the previous two millenniums were built on the same ground. Nevertheless, and even with modest funding, Viminacium is today one of the most explored Roman cities outside Italy. If you add all the mammoth bones found in the same area, this is today one great tourist and educational site.

Atrium at Domus scientiarum Viminacium

Archaeological excavation and scientific research started with more than modest funding—Mihailo Valtrović, one of the Serbian scientists, the first professor of archaeology, and the custodian of the National Museum in Belgrade, started digging Viminacium walls in the late nineteenth century with the help of 12 prisoners assigned by the Serbian government due to a lack of qualified workers and with a low amount of money reserved for archaeology. During the twentieth century, excavation was continued on several occasions, and finally, in the dawn of the 21st, Viminacium received the proper scientific and archaeological attention from the Serbian government and dedicated scientists.

The crown jewel of the site is no doubt 'Domus scientiarum Viminacium', a research and tourist center built as a Roman villa with several atriums, rooms, and laboratories for scientists; a hostel for visitors; and a beautiful museum dedicated to Viminacium, Moesia Superior, and, of course,recently, mammoths and their prehistoric life.

Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae

Especially interesting is the museum's exhibition of 'Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae', dedicated to 17 Roman emperors who were born within the current borders of Serbia, the second country after Italy itself. In recent years, especially after last year's celebration of 1700 years after Milan's Edict, it has been recognized as one of the national brands of Serbia and was founded by the Serbian government and the Ministry of Culture.

References and wikis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moesia
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130207114602.htm
http://viminacium.org.rs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viminacium
http://viminacium.org.rs/projekti/itinerarium-romanum-serbiae/

Constantine & Naissus

A couple of centuries after Christ, Constantine was a very popular name. Especially among soldiers in the Roman and Byzantine empires, along with Greeks during their Macedonian age. Within Latin, Cōnstantīnus, and Greek, Κωνσταντῖνος (Kōnstantînos), the name literally means the one who's constant and steadfast, especially within military properties related to strength and stamina. In those times the land of my current location was called Moesia Superior, with the city of Naissus in the role of its main trade center and biggest military outpost for the Roman army. Today's name of the city is "Niš", the largest city of southern Serbia and also the city where I was born and where I have lived ever since. The Serbian usage of the name is "Konstantin", and even though it is not related to the military anymore, the name is fairly popular nowadays among young Serbians. It was third on my list when my son was born simply because I really like names with strong inner "adjectivity" and history as well, but in our case my son's name, Viktor, won six years ago in the photo finish. If I had another son, his name would probably be Konstantin (Constantine) or Filip (Philip), but now it is certain that this will stay in my wish list only.

Constantine the Great*

Well, this post is not going to be just about names. Instead it will be equally about my birth town, the history of the Christian religion and the "Edict of Milan", a small glimpse of the Roman Empire, the end of the Classical era during violent events in ancient Alexandria, and a little photography along the way. But, for a moment, let's stay with names and their importance for this story. With mention of the "Edict of Milan", the city I was most probably named for, many of you probably guessed why I partly named this post "Constantine". Constantine I, or Constantine the Great, emperor of the western part of the Roman Empire, and Licinius I, his fellow emperor of the eastern part, in February of 313 BC, declared Christianity, the rising religion of the time, to be treated equal to all other official beliefs in the whole of southern Europe, northern Africa, and a big portion of eastern Asia ruled by Romans after the Crucifixion of Jesus, where the modern history we are living in started. But the early days (or, to better say, centuries) of "modern history", or what we love to call "AD," were, to call it the least, very disturbing. The probably best example of those violent "multi-religious" times happened at the end of the fourth century in the city of Alexandria. I am sure if Alexander the Great knew what would happen 700 years after he founded the city, he would never do it in the first place. In the classic BC times of great cities, free thought and scientific premises flourished in the most famous institution in the world at the time and probably ever since—the great Library of Alexandria. In those times, over a million scrolls from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India, and many other nations were stored in the library, and comparing it to nowadays terminology, we can safely say that the entire ancient "internet" was located within one single library. More than a hundred scholars worked full-time within the library's walls, performing research, translating documents, giving lectures, and writing books. It was one of the shiniest periods of the whole world's history.

Then "Anno Domini" happened. Soon after the birth of Christianity, Alexandria became home for people of different beliefs but mainly Christians, Jews, and Pagans. One ancient writer claimed that there were no people who loved a fight more than those of Alexandria. Religious animosities rose to the edge in the time of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, and in his raid, around 391 AD, the Temple of Serapis, where one branch of the Alexandrian library was located, was demolished, documents were destroyed, and the temple was converted to a church. The rest of the library's treasure was probably lost a couple of years later when one of the most famous women who ever lived, Hypatia, a Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, was killed by Christians during some retaliation against both the Jews and the Pagans. That night was officially the end of Classical antiquity, or the era of prosperity I was talking about in the post Aegean Sea. If some document survived that night, when Hypatia was stripped, beaten, and hacked to pieces and her body burned to hide all traces of the crime, then it was destroyed centuries later, when Muslims took the city of Alexandria around the year of 640 AD, when all the remaining scrolls were proclaimed either heresy or superfluous.

Rachel Weisz as Hypatia of Alexandria in Agora (2009)

There is no doubt that Constantine the Great was one of those great visionaries who foresaw all possible futures of the Roman Empire and had enough courage to act and officially acknowledge the definite rise of Christians in order to avoid all the dangers that came with the first multicultural societies. Rome and Constantinople under his rule and the rules of many emperors that came later more or less managed to survive Alexandria's fate. At least until a couple of centuries later, when the third big player in the world of monotheistic religions appeared in the face of Islam. We all know what happened next. The Crusades. What happened to Alexandria in the fourth century started to happen to Jerusalem. Multiple times. During each crusade. Some would say it is not over yet.

If the story so far was not enough to demonstrate the cruelty of the first couple of centuries of the first millennium AD, I have some more historical facts, and they all originate way back to the point of the first founders of my hometown. The misfortune of Naissus was in the fact that its location was on the crossing road point between north and south and west and east. Whoever the warrior you were and whatever army or tribe you belonged to in those times, your path would lead through Naissus, and you were destined to raid it, no matter if you were a member of the Triballi tribes who invaded this area in the 4th century BC, a member of the Gallic groups who invaded the Balkan Peninsula during the 3rd century BC, or a Roman who gave the original name to the town and held it the longest period of them all, but with the price of thousands of men lost in numerous battles, with the most famous one called simply "Battle of Naissus", where Romans with the help of Dalmatians and Greeks finally defeated the enormous invasion by Goths and their allies. Later in the 5th and 6th centuries, the town was constantly in flames and devastated by Attila's Huns and barbarians, restored by Romans and Byzantine emperor Justinian I, and then demolished again by Avars and finally occupied by Serbian ancestors, the Slavs, in the year 540 AD or so. Serbians managed to hold it even longer than Romans, all the way into the next millennium, but also with frequent interruptions by various invasions in the face of Bulgarians and Ugri (Hungarian ancestors). The second millennium was no different, and the same area where I am sitting right now was under different rulers: firstly by Byzantine forces, the Hungarian kingdom, Greeks, Serbians again, the Ottoman Empire, Austrians... Phew... I probably forgot someone. Let's just finish with all the world wars, Germans, and the Nazis and hope that all the testosterone in the third millennium has devolved a little and we will witness no more wars like before.

Third-century Roman soldiers battling Gothic troops**

Naissus was a birth town for three Roman emperors in the 3rd century and after. The most famous one was, of course, Constantine the Great (272), but also Constantius III (360) and later Justin I (450). Within the suburb of Naissus, not far from the thermal water spa, during the reign of Constantine the Great, Romans built a luxurious residence with a highly organized economy by the name of Mediana***. Until it was fully destroyed by Attila's hordes in the year 442, the residence was used by several emperors after Constantine, including Julian the Apostate, who was best known for his attempts to restore paganism to the Roman Empire, and this time within Hellenistic polytheism (Julian was also one of the Neoplatonist philosophers, like Hypatia), and for several edicts in various laws, including the Tolerance Edict of 362. Obviously, his efforts were not successful for a longer period of time, and religions with gods seen in plural finally ended in Greek and Roman mythology and picturesque legends. But, perhaps the best-known role of the residence of Mediana, which is, by the way, only a couple of hundred meters from my home, was in the year 364 AD, when emperors Valentinian and Valens met there and divided the Roman Empire and ruled as co-emperors.

Well, in the history of humans, every separation between west and east was never without serious consequences. The separation of the Roman Empire, over time, moved the center of power from Rome to Constantinople, starting with Rome's fall on September 4, 476. The Christian Church suffered the same. Distance and differences did the math, and the Church finally separated in the so-called "Great Schism", culminating in the early 11th century and giving birth to the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church we all know today. The saddest thing is that one full millennium has passed since then, and both "grand" fractions of the same religion are still looking at each other over their shoulders. After all that time, I am positive that if we randomly select one Catholic cardinal and one Orthodox patriarch and ask them why the Church split up in the first place and why they didn't manage to even sit and talk for 1000 years and find the way to "un-schism" the lost millennium, I am sure that they would hardly be able to provide any meaningful answer. Giving up the throne is never easy, and I guess the only way to unite Christianity is for God to show himself once again and to cut the misery once and for all. But, this story is not the place for me to express all of my skepticism about this, and if you are eager to read more about my religious glimpse of the world, please go to Science of God.

In front of Church of the Holy Emperor Constantine and Empress Helena

Well ok, let's stop with history now and continue with some more cheerful stories. For starters, please allow me to quote my favorite character from the movie "Kung Fu Panda". In the animated story, Master Oogway, among all his turtle wisdom, said exactly this: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present." It is a beautiful one-liner, and after a little search online, I have to say that I failed to find the origin of this quote, but I am perfectly fine to credit it to Oogway himself. In that spirit, let's switch from history to the present and talk a little about my home city and the religious event happening this weekend.

This year is the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan, and this weekend is chosen in Serbia to be memorialized with special liturgy (λειτουργία), where all major patriarchs gathered in Niš, or Naissus if you will, to honor Constantine's efforts to stop persecuting Christians and give the rising new religion a chance to be equal with others. The liturgy took place in front of the Church of the Holy Emperor Constantine and Empress Helena in one of the biggest parks in the city, and for this occasion a piece of wood from Jesus's cross (fragmentary remains that are by tradition alleged to be those of the True Cross) and John the Baptist's right hand, with which he baptized Jesus, were transferred to Constantine's new church. Last night, two relics were moved to the new display, and we wanted to feel the atmosphere. The crowd was fantastic, and on the nearby cross section people formed the cross with candle lights in total darkness (below photo), while this morning was the official event for "VIPs", which was much less interesting. Perhaps the only shadow to the occasion was the presence of a zillion policemen fully armored and spread everywhere. I guess they will never learn that the same job can be done without uniforms and with hidden guns, but that's a topic for another story.

1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan in Niš, Serbia

After 1700 years, I guess lots of things changed. There is no Roman Empire anymore or big crusades, but religiosity is still there, without much disturbance by the passed centuries. We can say about the Christian church in general whatever we want, but one thing is for sure. A society of people can't live without protocols and rituals. This is what we are, and I will just repeat what I said two years ago in relation to Orthodox Christian rituals: "From the point when we are born until we die, there are many occasions requiring many events to be performed. I mean, I can't imagine a wedding here in Serbia without the church involved. They have very nice protocols. Funerals too. Anything that requires more than two people to participate with, religious organizations are doing this just right."

They proved it once again.

Image ref:
https://philipstanfield.com/tag/mysticism-2/

* Constantine the Great
https://relevancy22.blogspot.rs/2015_03_02_archive.html

** Battle of Naissus
http://www.crystalinks.com/CrisisoftheThirdCentury.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Naissus
http://artnumisma.com/2013/05/20/battle-of-naissus-268ad/
http://www.geocities.ws/reginheim/battles.html

*** Mediana
http://www.panacomp.net/serbia?mesto=srbija_medijana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediana

More references
http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/women/hypatia.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Empire_125.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niš
http://www.ni.rs/index.php?language=en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan