In the footsteps of the ancients.

I was born in a British colony in Africa that was founded in 1890, Southern Rhodesia, and now live in the USA which is about to celebrate its 250th birthday As a nation, and specifically California, which joined the Union in 1850. All young countries with basically no ancient history behind them. Having said that, they all have indigenous history going back thousands of years, but not western civilizations. For the purposes of this story I’m going to tell you, it’s our ancient western civilizations I’m talking about.

I came across my first exposure to an old civilization when I visited Italy, and Venice to be precise. Yes, there were old buildings and canals, and cathedrals, but what really hit home, was when I stumbled onto a drinking fountain in a square in the middle of town while walking around exploring. It was a stone structure, with water pouring out of a small spigot in the middle. A young boy was drinking the water. After he was finished and walked away, I approaned the drinking fountain and took a sip. It tasted so good (I love water) , it was cold and refreshing, no chemical taste like American city water. There was a plaque mounted on the stone work explaining that the fountain was built and had been running continuously since 1 BC. Wow, that blew my mind! Since Roman days, the ancient Romans had piped in a mountain spring to the middle of Venice and constructed a Stone fountain for the city dwellers to be able to drink when they were thirsty, and that it had been running continuously all this time, over 2,000 years. Amazing. I saw a Venetian boy drinking from it, I as a visitor had drunk from it, and I could imagine millions of people over that time period had drunk the Fabulous tasting water from it. I could imagine also the Roman workers and engineers from 2,000 years ago designing, planning and building it. And it’s still works. That ancient civilization is still alive.

the next experience I had was in Turkey, in Epheses, which was an ancient Greek city first, then a Roman city, before it was finally abandoned. I was visiting Turkey with Jme, my wife, and my son, Rob. We walked all around the site, sat on the public latrines, walked on the white granite cobblestone roads, gazed at the ruin of the public library and explored the inside of the luxury houses of the wealthy occupants from thousands of years ago. And that was wonderful. It was so sunny and with all the bright white stone, as a merchant I would have sold sunglasses 😎 for a living. But when we made it to the theatre carved into the hillside, and my son stood on the stage and Jme and I sat on the top row of stone seats while he sang to us, it felt like I had traveled back in time 2,000 or more years to when the citizens of Ephesus were being entertained. The acoustics were amazing, and experiencing it first hand like this was fantastic.

I had many more experiences in the Czech Republic and Poland touring abandoned castles from the 12th and 13th centuries. The most interesting was hiking in the Bohemian Paradise, or Cesky Raj. It is a national park, thousands of miles large, with towns and villages in side the boundaries, and castles and caves. As we hiked up a rocky trail, with cliffs and hand carved caves with wooden ladders and walkways built on them, we learnt from a Czech friend that back in the Middle Ages the villagers would hide in the caves, pulling the ladders up behind them so the advancing armies could not kill them. Or take their livestock. When the army left the area, they would climb down and go back to their villages. Until the next time. The ladders and walkways are maintained as a historical monument, and I have been up there experiencing it first hand. Again, I have been walking in the footsteps of the ancient or old civilizations and I feel a closeness to those old societies.

In 1969, I was a young boy and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and plant an American flag. Maybe one day, thousands of years from now, a tourist will visit that site, touch that flag, read the plaque that says we have come in peace, and will feel a connection through the years to our civilization we have now, just as I have felt a connection with the ancient civilizations I have seen.

We are all connected.