The Known World to the Ancient Greeks

[really]

I know that Alexander The Great went till India. My question is whether the Ancient Greeks in Alexander's time knew about peoples living further than India?

I often read that the Silk Road was the road connecting the cultures and religions from China to Rome. It existed from about 100 BC. I wonder whether the Ancient Greeks knew about it.

Anyone has comments?

[Prokomenos]

Im sure they knew that people lived that far. Now if they knew what kind is a different story..

[really]

Why, that's easy to answer, Prokomenos. Barbarians!
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[Behelit]

Originally Posted by really
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Why, that's easy to answer, Prokomenos. Barbarians!
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lol ! Well Greeks did already go to India because he was also following the path of Dionysos if my memory is right.
He did go farther than Dionysos in fact
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[really]

Dionysos? The semi-god?

[really]

This is an interesting article explaining about Greco-Buddhism, i.e. the influence of Hellenism on Buddhism, and the exchanges between Greece and the East. From what I have read about the Silk Road, there has never been mention of Greece, although I have read that the Indian Emperor Ashoka's edicts were both in the Indian language of that time (Sankrit I think they call it) and in Greek.

Because it is the first article I read that mentions Greece, that's why I post it, even though it has to be read with a grain of salt. Although the influence of Hellenism is very obvious on the Buddhist statues along the Silk Road, unlike it is mentioned in the article, I doubt that it ever reached Eastern countries like China, Japan, Korea etc. because Buddhism itself (not only the statues) had to be converted to fit into those Asian cultures before being accepted widely.


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[Behelit]

Originally Posted by really
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Although the influence of Hellenism is very obvious on the Buddhist statues along the Silk Road, unlike it is mentioned in the article,

Greeks made the first statue of Buddha , you could only see parts like his feet for exemple.
Greeks made him like looks like Apollo ( you can see it in the hair ).

Ici des articles bien interessant :

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[Behelit]

Originally Posted by really
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Dionysos? The semi-god?

Alexander knew Dionysos traveled before him because of the vinyards he has planted.

Here i diden't readed the site but i think you can find some answers

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[Ellinas]

Dionysos was a general, which was mythologized later. There is an epic called "Dionysiaka" written by Nonnos in the 5th century AD which presents some information about the expeditions of Dionysos in Asia, always with the mythical element being present.

Regarding to the question, which was the known world to ancient Greeks. Europe, North Africa and Middle East were the most familiar parts to them. Britain and Ireland were known, especially after the campaigns of Pytheas there. Pytheas also did a campaign in Africa, reaching Mt Cameroon by following the African coast from the Herculean columns (Gibraltar channel), however the area souther was ignored by the ancient Greeks. From Asia, Indua, the areas of present day European Russia and their people were familiar to Greeks.
Regarding the Far East, it's something ambiguous. The most possible is that they knew the existence of the civilizations there, but they did not have direct contact with them. Often in ancient texts there is a characterization of some barbaric peoples as "Sauromatai" which means "lizard-eyed" - it looks like a characterization for Mongoloids, probably Chinese tribes and Mongoloid tribes of Scythia and the nearby areas.

If we go more in the past they are myths about the lands across the ocean or Atlantis, but it isn't concluded if there is a relation of these myths with the American continent or islands in the Atlantic (Azores, Canarian islands etc.)

We are always talking about what the scholars and educated people of that era knew. Many of the average people of that era probably did not knew that there is something else beyond Greece.

[really]

Those are nice links, Behelit, thanks. I find it very surprising that the Indians did not have their own representations/statues of Buddha at the beginning but that both streams of Buddhist representations were Hellenistic. I wonder if it was because the Indians are stronger on Hinduism. I am going to read that link on Dionysos, I did not know he really existed.

Ellinas, yes, I think in Herodotus' "The Histories" it is mentioned something like you said. The thing that surprises me is that we see the extent of Hellenism so far along the Silk Road and it did not seem like there was direct contact between Greece and the Far East. Maybe it was way too far.

This is all very interesting. The thing that has always struck me the most is why it seems that the ancient civilizations produced their greatest thinkers in the period around 500 BC. So I was thinking was it an independent phenomenon or have there been interchanges of ideas/cultures between them. They did not have Internet the way we do now.
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