Maturity of History. Age of iron and Go[l]ds

 

The maturity of metal-history. Balance between human and metal information.

 

With the expansion of iron, cavalry, and coins, the wave of History enters the classic age of mankind. In the classic age of human history the development of metal-systems of energy and information [machines and money] have not yet become so dominant, as to suffocate the evolution of humankind. This will happen in the present old age of human history; when we obey money, and despise words, when we are fascinated by metal-minds and their digital art, and ignore human minds and our art.

The mature age of mankind, the age of simple iron weapons, and simple money [metal-coins], finds a balance between the two ecosystems of the Earth, the human-life ecosystem and the metal-machine ecosystem.

The warrior still touches the weapon, individually, and has to train his body to match the strength and linearity of iron swords, and the speed of horses. The ages of infantry and cavalry evolve the human body to the perfection we observe in the Greek statues.

The mind also lives in an ecosystem in which nature is still dominant. Metal-structures are minimal. Architecture still uses stone and wood. So man is still 'the measure of all things', and a relative paradise of beauty can be built in those mild regions of the Earth [Mediterranean, South-Asia], where civilizations started.  We still recognize that beauty when we admire the first and last cultures of this age, the Greek and Italian cultures.

Thus the maturity of history spreads roughly from the fascinating revolution of human thought taken place in the VI century before Christ, when coins appeared,  till the death of sacred art, and humanistic literature, with the arrival of the new God, the machine, that extinguished the renaissance.

We consider in that sense, the renaissance, the apogee of human history, when verbal thought knew still the canon of ethics, and visual thought the human aesthetic canon...

 

The maturity of History, achieves its height in regions in which also energy and information, heat and cold are in balance. That region is the Mediterranean, the North of India, and the South of China.  The sensorial cultures of mankind grow to their full expression. 

Three are the fundamental cycles of this period, that cause with new weapons, and warrior hordes, the extinction of previous civilization: the cycle of iron, the cavalry cycle, and the gunpowder cycle.

 

Historic subspecies.

 

Again we can consider now at global level the specialization of cultures in this age, in war, trade and art dominant cultures, according to his degree of exposure to war (maximum in Europe), money (maximum in China), and art and ethic wor(l)ds (maximum in the tropical, isolated, human dense inhabited India):

 

-EUROPE is war dominant in a zone of warrior flux, coming form the steppes, broken by mountains into geographical zones constantly in fight among them..

- INDIA is art and Wor[l]d dominant, isolated and rich in human goods and chemical senses, thanks to his fertile weather, and rivers.

- While CHINA after establishing the first currency (Tao Coins) and first paper money in History, with his rounded, well communicated, continental form becomes money dominant full of cities and industries...

 

European civilization, its 3 ages: Greece, Middle Ages, Renaissance

 

Let us consider of those 3 cultures, the European war dominant culture, that will be the origin of the Industrial Evolution, based in the evolution of weapons (gunboats, cannon balls and gunpowder). It lasts the span of 3 clear 800 year war cycles that give origin to 3 sub-civilizations.

 

I Age: 1200 Bc: Iron Infantry, the Greek-Roman civilization.

   II Age: 400 Ad: Cavalry, the Middle ages civilization.

  III Age: 1200 Ad; Gunpowder, the modern European civilization.

 

Youth: Greece

 

Let us study the first of those 800 year sub-civilizations, the Greek Roman culture, based in iron infantry, that extends from ±1500 Bc [Fall Of Crete] till +410 Ad [Fall Of Rome]:

 

GREEK-ROMAN CULTURE:

 

Art Ages:

I age: Lineal, Warrior               II Age: Realist, Trader    III Age: Formal, baroque.

Youth=Energy                        Maturity                              Old Age=Information

 

                                                       Visual Art:

 

Hoplite VII BC              Praxiteles, 330 BC            Laoocont  I BC

Verbal Art:

I Age: Epic, Arrogant:       II Age: Sensorial, Logic:    III Age: Baroque, extinctive:

 

    Noble Ajax, treat me not                 "The Universe is                            When a civilization is

    as though I were some                      a  living being                               so corrupted, that defies

     young boy or woman                       with a body                                    any attempt of reform,

      that cannot fight                                     and a brain "                      the philosopher, can only

     since I have tasted                                                                                 observe, and wait  its extinction

    the blood and glory of the sword

   Ilyad,  Homerus, ±IX BC                       Phaedo,   Plato, V C BC            Thoughts;  Seneca  I AD

 

The age of  iron infantry, the age of Greece and Rome.

 

In Greek art, it is self-evident that artistic forms goes through a lineal, realist and mature age; as the Greek age comes to a dawn.

Greek art is born when the Greek civilization is founded by the first iron infantry that arrives to Greece coming from the Indo-European mines of the Balkan area. Those iron warriors that will destroy Crete, are the founders of Greece.

Accordingly its first art is lineal, simple. Its statues are called Kuroi. They are rigid, full of energy, force and smiling optimism. Its literature is legal and epic. It is the age of Solon and its 'draconian' laws, extremely rigid, and of heavy penalties. In fiction is the age of Homer and its great odes to war and heroism.

However the civilization matures, as warriors settle down, and it arrives the classic age of Athens, of Phidias and Praxiteles. Their work is realist, and sensitive. Energy and information is in balance. The art also reproduces all over the Mediterranean and ancient world. It is the age of expansion of the Greek culture. Literature also reaches its height of creative thought, and understanding of social love, and social harmony in the works of Socrates, and Plato. In fiction Sofocles talks about the collective fate of heroes. In architecture, man is the measure of all things, and so buildings like the Parthenon are in balance with human size.

When the civilization of Greek fails to evolve military, it becomes conquered by an external horde of barbarians. First the Macedonian and then the Romans. Art looses freshness, and we witness on one side a return to the simplicity and massive size of warrior art, [Macedonian art, and Roman art]; and on the other side, in those works made by the descendant of classic Greeks, an age of excessive form, and suffering. It is the age of Pathos, the Hellenistic age, of works like the Laoocont.

In literature appears the satyr, and the prophecy of extinction [Demostenes]; while in philosophy Aristotle resumes the entire trajectory of Greek thought, in a comprehensive 'final will', whose perfection will not be reached again.

We show those ages with 3 well-known works. An old Kuroi  warrior - a lineal statue of the beginning of the civilization;the Dionysius by Praxiteles, perhaps the most classic sculptor of all human history; and a Hellenistic statue repeated ad infinitum, in baroque periods, because of its complex forms and suffering expression, the Laoocont.