After getting back from our trip to Volos the squad needed some time to rest. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday pretty much consisted of going to classes and running around the National Garden by our college.
It has been very interesting learning about ancient Greek society, from both the Classics course taught by Alex but also my mythology course taught about Nina (Greek professor). Reading ancient mythology is honestly pretty fun and it makes me wonder how and why they came up with these things? We are beginning to learn more about the why but I still have lots of questions. Alex’s lessons on the early bronze age in Greece have been terrific at framing the time period and adding context into why things ended up the way they are. We learned a lot about the Cyclades this week, which is this group of islands:
Its fun to imagine all the activity that was going on around this area, although a lot of it was war.
Later in the week, on Thursday, we made a trip to the Cycladic art musuem. There was tons of very impressive artifacts, especially when you consider the tools they had at the time (mainly obsidian and bronze chisels). The most significant findings were these marble, hand-crafted female figurines (and there were loads of them):
Its hard to tell from this image but they are INCREDIBLY thin. You can almost see light coming through when you look at the back. Here is another famous work:
These works really tie into the ideology of the societies of this time, in which they thought humans were the center of everything, which is why a lot of the figures are depicting humans. This contrasts with other civilizations, during this time and before/after, who dedicated a large portion of their artwork to gods/divine beings.
During the weekend, a couple of my friends and I made a trip to the beach. Got some nice Greek salad, saganaki, and of course calamari:
Overall, awesome week, looking forward to whats next.