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Reconstruction of Paleoenvironmental Conditions of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Influence of Geography on Greek Colonisation

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Reconstruction of Paleoenvironmental Conditions of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Influence of Geography on Greek Colonisation Masaryk University Faculty .of Arts Department of Classical Studies Ancient history Lukáš PATRNČIAK Reconstruction of Paleoenvironmental Conditions of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Influence of Geography on Greek Colonisation Bachelor´s Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Marek MEŠKO, M.A., Ph.D. 2019 Acknowledgement First of all, I express my gratitude to my supervisor, Marek Meško, for his patience, guiding and support. I would like to thank Johannes Preiser-Kapeller from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and Adam Izdebski from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow for consulting the topic and helping me to get access to important related works. I would like to give my thanks to Martin Finné from the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University for sharing paleoenvironmental data. I thank Vojtěch Pavliska for language and grammatical revision of the thesis. The maps were built in the ArcMap version 10.6 software of ESRI Company, distributed by Masaryk University via student licence. Declaration I hereby declare that this bachelor thesis is a result of my own work, carried out under the super- vision of Mgr. Marek Meško, M.A., Ph.D. All sources used in this thesis have been properly cited. Brno, 28th June 2019 …………………………………... Lukáš PATRNČIAK TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................................... 4 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 5 2 GREEK COLONISATION OF THE MEDITERRANEAN ................................................................. 6 2.1 Ionian colonisation ................................................................................................................... 7 2.2 Great Greek Colonisation ....................................................................................................... 8 2.3 Classic Colonisation ................................................................................................................. 9 2.4 Hellenistic Colonisation ......................................................................................................... 10 3 GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING ............................................................................................................. 11 3.1 Weather and climate ............................................................................................................... 11 3.2 Tectonic setting and landscape ............................................................................................. 12 3.3 Rivers, seas, and coastlines .................................................................................................... 13 4 METHODS OF PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH ............................................................... 15 4.1 Radiometric methods ............................................................................................................. 15 4.2 Incremental dating .................................................................................................................. 16 4.2.1 Tephrochronology ................................................................................................... 16 4.2.2 Dendrochronology .................................................................................................. 16 4.2.3 Speleothems .............................................................................................................. 16 4.2.4 Palynology ................................................................................................................. 17 4.2.5 Lacustrine and marine sediments .......................................................................... 17 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................... 18 5.1 Environmental overview ....................................................................................................... 18 5.1.1 Climate changes ....................................................................................................... 18 5.1.2 Tectonics ................................................................................................................... 19 5.1.3 Sea-level changes ..................................................................................................... 20 5.1.4 Landscape ................................................................................................................. 20 5.2 Greece ...................................................................................................................................... 21 5.2.1 Peloponnese ............................................................................................................. 21 5.3 Aegean Sea ............................................................................................................................... 23 5.4 Asia Minor ............................................................................................................................... 23 5.5 Black Sea coasts ...................................................................................................................... 24 5.6 Magna Graecia ........................................................................................................................ 26 5.6.1 Sicily ........................................................................................................................... 26 5.6.2 Southern Italy ........................................................................................................... 26 6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 28 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................ 29 APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................................. 33 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BCE before common era (year 0) BP before present (year 1950) CAH Cambridge Ancient History CE common era (after year 0, common dating) FGrH Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Hdt. HERODOTUS Hist. Histories Hom. HOMER Il. Illiad Od. Oddysey OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary Pl. PLATO Phd. Phaedo Plut. PLUTARCH Vit. Vitae Parallelae Them. Themistocles Quaest. Nat. Quaestiones naturales Str. STRABO Geog. Geographica Thuc. THUCYDIDES 4 1 INTRODUCTION Geographical space along with its characteristics is the base condition for existence and prosperity of every civilization. Soil fertility, suitable climate, access to natural resources, composition of eco- systems - these are only a few of many determinants defining the quality and course of evolution of human society in the specific area. It is not a coincidence that the oldest ancient civilizations began to evolve in fertile floodplains in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China, where the generosity of natural conditions exceeded society usage of food and resources. Closely related system of geospheres guarantees that even a minor change of a single geo- graphical attribute could lead to a series of another natural adaptations on new conditions, which the human society also must react to. It means that behind every greater long-term historical break- point stands an actual status of environment. Civilizations in ancient times were able to react rela- tively well to the new conditions by altering the landscape and balancing the missing resources by foreign trade. Within this context, the historical breakpoint should be seen as civilization expan- sionism, when the climate change or overpopulation forced this very civilization to partly migrate or conquer new territories with their military forces. The historical events are inseparably depend- ent on local and global geography. This correlation starts to work in reverse sometime during the 19th century, when on the contrary, humans start to expressively alter the geographic and climatic attributes by their acts. There are no new data presented in this bachelor thesis. Based on paleoenvironmental re- search that has been already done, the thesis tries to explain the past stage and the influence of selected geographical inputs on the process of chosen historical event of ancient Greece. The cho- sen event should be of longer duration so that not so high-resolution paleo-data could be applied, which should show a long-term climate change. The ability of immediate environmental events, such as volcano eruptions, earthquakes or even storms, to affect the course of history, cannot be denied. The chosen period should be peaceful. During a war, the population tends to mirror the current political situation or their survival instincts, instead of reflecting the environmental state. The time and space setting is based primarily on the data availability. The individual environmental factors can be variable between two neighbouring locations and are, of course, also variable in time. The thesis focuses on events running during the age of highest time density of acquired data in the area most densely occupied by sample sources, from which the reconstructions were made. This description suits the periods of Greek’s colonisations of the Mediterranean Sea. Firstly, the work concentrates on the Greek colonisation and its era. It describes
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