This post contains part of a text I helped edit for the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (ΜΑΙCh).
All the auditoriums at MAICh have been given an ancient Greek name:
Archimedes, Epicurus, Heraklitus, Demokritus, Theophrastus, Socrates, Pythagoras, Thalis and
Aristotle. The auditoriums are used as both lecture theatres for students of
agronomy and
conference centre facilities for international gatherings. There is also a dining area, used for conferences and more formal meals, called the
Mediterranee, named after the Mediterranean sea that surrounds the island of Crete. It also reflects the multi-cultural nature of the institute - our students come from the countries bordering the Mediterranean's shores, as well as other European and Middle Eastern countries.
Generally shallow with an average depth of 1,500m, the Mediterranean reaches a maximum of 5150m just off the western coast of Greece. For such a small expanse of water, there is no other sea in the whole world that has a history as turbulent and bloody as that of the Mediterranean:
A meeting ground but also a dividing point: throughout
its history the Mediterranean brought together and concealed in its depths
blood and experience, riches and ransoms, goods and human efforts which never
reached their destination. In the past, its waters, changeable and threatening,
aroused fear and temptation; in our age, they have been tamed by technology and
despised.
Caught in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is fed by the Black Sea via the
Bosphorus, many rivers (the Nile in Egypt and the Rhone in France) and
the Atlantic Ocean (via the Straits of Gibraltar). It is not characterised by tides (something my children find hard to understand), due to the sea’s great rate of
evapotarion from the heat. The Mediterranean is the remnant of a vast
ancient sea, the Tethys, which shrunk 30 million years ago, after the collision
of the crustal plates carrying Africa and Eurasia. Today the Mediterranean
represents the complex and shifting tectonic plates which are fragmented
at their edges, which in turn make up the adjoining continents. This structural
instability produces the characteristic tangled mountain chains and valleys,
and the intricate coastal topography with numerous indentations, and the many
islands found within it. It also justifies the presence of volcanoes and
frequent earthquakes which shake mainly the area of the eastern Mediterranean. Crete is well known for its seismic activity, although in contemporary times, the earthquakes that have occurred have not caused major destruction as in other parts of Greece (they are mainly centred below water).
Falasarna
The geophysical unity of the Mediterranean
region promotes some uniformity in the coastal climate and vegetation of the
islands and peninsulas; the sea works as a stabilizing factor in this. The
distinctive features of the Mediterranean climate are the hot and dry summer
and the rainy and not too cold winter. In agricultural production, uniformity
is reflected in the restricted vegetation of the valleys between rocky
mountains, in the extensive cultivation of the vine and in the cultivation of
short-trunk trees, such as olive and citrus trees.
Agious Apostolous
The most hisotrically significant aspect of the
Mediterranean is that it is the geographical frame in which,
for some thousands of years, some of the oldest and greatest cultures
have rooted. In antiquity, when land transport was difficult due to the lack of
means for opening up satisfactory arterial routes, the sea was the
most appropriate method for the circulation of goods, people and ideas. Since
ancient times, art and science, people and civilisations have repeatedly met
across the waterways paved by ancient and modern seafarers. An old and distinct testimony of this meeting
can be found in the modern usage of the alphabet. The Phoenician letters, which
impressed the Greeks from very early on (before the 8th cent. BC) and were
transported to Greece, provided the impetus for the formation of the first
phonetic alphabet (the Greek alphabet), which served as a basis for the Latin
and modern European alphabets.
Kalamaki
Owing to their navigation skills, the
Phoenicians became the most famous and successful merchants of the ancient
world. According to Thucydides, however, the first Mediterranean people who became a thalassocracy (dominant sea power) were the ancient inhabitants of Minoan Crete. The traces of their contacts with other people of the known
world, the influence of their goods on other civilisations, and their
contribution to the flourishing of the Aegean, Mycenean and wider Greek (and
hence the earliest European) civilization is indisputable.
Paleohora
Following along the lines of the Minoans, the
Greek civilisation of historical times developed and flourished through an
unbroken relation to the sea. The epic hero Odysseus, a perennial symbol of the Greek spirit and vision, wandered for years
over the Mediterranean waters, but remained bound to his destination, his
homeland Ithaca. Contrary
to the Roman or Islamic people who distanced themselves from the Mediterranean
Sea as an inimical and alien element, the Greeks promoted their familiarity
with it. The famous cry of refuge: thalatta, thalatta! (sea, sea!),
uttered by Xenophon’s soldiers (4th cent. BC) when seeing the Aegean Sea for
the first time after months of travelling in Asia, reveals the sense of
homeland that the sea represents for Greeks. In the ancient Greek
language there was no special term for the Mediterranean Sea; it was simply known
as our own sea, the sea which lies from our side. For the Romans, this also seems to be true, at
least until the 2nd century AD when lulius Solinus coined the term mare
Mediterranean (not found in the surviving sources before the 6th cent. AD),
providing us with concrete symbols of the nature and image of the
Mediterranean, which was none other than the famous mare nostrum (our sea) the
sea which, after the sea battle at Actium, allowed the establishment of the
celebrated Pax Romona. A few centuries later, the Arabs managed to detach
and win for themselves important southern and eastern provinces of the Roman
Empire, helped partly by proving their prowess in that very sea.
Agious Apostolous
My children never took swimming lessons at a pool - they learnt to swim in the Mediterranean Sea. But the fate of our sea is under threat:
As if out of a desire for revenge, modern man attacks the
Mediterranean with toxic waste and corrupts it through tourism, exhausting it
with voracious fishing and recognising it only on the basis of strategic and
economic expediency - preferring to forget or to ignore that the Mediterranean
has been the nurse and the cradle of ancient civilisations, as well as of
familiar, inexhaustible cultures.
Agious Apostolous
I share my Mediterranean heritage with a host of other people, not just
Greeks, living near the shores of one of the most significant seas in
the world. I feel lucky to be living here, to have come back to the land
of my roots, as all my family's origins lie in the island of Crete.
This continuity, part of an 'inexhaustable culture', provides me with peace of mind. I don't fear the future
because, no matter what form it takes, I know that there will always be one.
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reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria
Verivaki.
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