Group items tagged

Archaic period

Late Bronze Age

at each period there were plenty of city-states using a different system, and there were many which never did become democracies or tyrannies at all.

Athenian democracy did not really give power to everyone

Athens at this time had an empire

many Greek city-states kept oligarchic government, or tyrannies, or monarchies, through this whole time

The Greeks had a lot of different kinds of governments, because there were many different city-states in ancient Greece, and they each had their own government.

between about 2000 and 1200 BC, all Greek city-states seem to have been monarchies,

Most of the people in Athens couldn't vote - no women, no slaves, no foreigners (even Greeks from other city-states), no children.

Sparta is the most famous of these, though actually Sparta had two kings, usually brothers or cousins, at the same time.

priests had quite a lot of influence over the people.

Priests also collected a tenth of whatever the peasants had produced from their land over the course of the year. This was called a "tithe."

Anyone who was suspected of disagreeing with the church's teachings was called a heretic and burnt at the stake.

even if they did make it to heaven in the afterlife, they would have to spend a thousand years in purgatory to be cleansed of their sins on earth. So, many rich people would pay the church to say extra masses for them in the hope that it would reduce the amount of time in purgatory.

more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement,

Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.'

omething from the middle ages. Jerry-built from whatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow—"a low, soot-blackened log kennel that was as cold as a cellar," with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells. Looking around in the dim light, the visitors saw that it consisted of a single room. It was cramped, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists—and, astonishingly, home to a family of five:

Have you ever eaten bread?

he daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. "When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded like a slow, blurred cooing."

a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century.

Peter was a personal enemy and "the anti-Christ in human form"—a point he insisted had been amply proved by Tsar's campaign to modernize Russia by forcibly "chopping off the beards of Christians."

Things had only got worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov's brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into forest.

our Lykovs then—Karp;

wife, Akulina

son named Savin

Natalia, a daughter who was only 2.

wo more children had been born in the wild—Dmitry in 1940 and Agafia in 1943—

d neither of the youngest Lykov children had ever seen a human being who was not a member of their famil

new there were places called cities where humans lived crammed together in tall buildings. They had heard there were countries other than Russia. But such concepts were no more than abstractions to them. Their only reading matter was prayer books and an ancient family Bible. Akulina had used the gospels to teach her children to read and write, using sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink. When Agafia was shown a picture of a horse, she recognized it from her mother's Bible stories. "Look, papa," she exclaimed. "A steed!"

e traversed 250 kilometres [155 miles] without seeing a single human dwelling!"

They fashioned birch-bark galoshes in place of shoes. Clothes were patched and repatched until they fell apart, then replaced with hemp cloth grown from seed.

pinning wheel a

A couple of kettles served them well for many years, but when rust finally overcame them, the only replacements they could fashion came from birch bark.

heir staple diet was potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

bundance

stream. Stands of larch, spruce, pine and birch yielded all that anyone could take.... Bilberries and raspberries were close to hand, firewood as well, and pine nuts fell right on the roof."

rmanently on the edge of famine.

not until the late 1950s, when Dmitry reached manhood, that they first trapped animals for their meat and skins. Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion

Agafia's unusual speech—she had a singsong voice and stretched simple words into polysyllables—convinced some of her visitors she was slow-witted; in fact she was markedly intelligent, and took charge of the difficult task, in a family that possessed no calendars, of keeping track of time. 

mitry, a

urious and perhaps the most forward-looking member of the family

Perhaps it was no surprise that he was also the most enraptured by the scientists' technology.

many happy hours in its little sawmill, marveling at how easily a circular saw and lathes could finish wood.

he Lord would provide, and she would stay, she said—as indeed she has. A quarter of a century later, now in her seventies herself, this child of the taiga lives on alone, high above the Abakan.

"horseplay

prisoner's bas

Checkers

bob for apples and go on hunts

cockfights and bullbaiting.

"King of the Bean," where a small bean would be baked inside bread or cake, and the one who found it in their portion would be crowned king of the holiday feast.

wrestled, swam, fished and played a game that was a cross between tennis and handball.

Chess was widely popular and often a source of gambling entertainment;

Dice were easy to carry and were played in all ranks of society, even among the clergy.

Some games played during the Middle Ages, including bowling, prisoner's base, blind man's bluff (also called hoodman's blind), and simple "horseplay" are still played today.

both in the traditional format and in a simpler version played with dice.

Checkers were a popular pastime, as was backgammon. Children wrestled, swam, fished and played a game that was a cross between tennis and handball. Medieval knights would incorporate training in recreation, performing gymnastics and running foot races.

Spectators in the Middle Ages were often drawn to cockfights and bullbaiting.

recreation for most adults was drinking in the local tavern.

villagers would bob for apples and go on hunts in the surrounding f

orests,

if the castle lord permitted.

Hawks were trained to hunt game birds and every medieval castle had a falconer, assigned to train young birds for this sport.

Medieval Christmas games included "King of the Bean," where a small bean would be baked inside bread or cake, and the one who found it in their portion would be crowned king of the holiday feast.