Monday, January 9, 2017

Wikipedia Trail: From Aesop's Fables to the Olympic Games

1. Aesop's Fables: I began with Aesop's Fables because it was the source of the story I based my Week 1 story on. Aesop's Fables is a compilation of fables which were written by the titular Aesop. Aesop was a slave who presumably lived in ancient Greece. The fables cover many topics including religion, ethics, and social issues.

Portrait of Aesop by Velázquez in the Prado, Wikimedia


2. Ancient Greece: I next moved the article on Ancient Greece, the area believed to be the home of Aesop. Many of those fables which originated so long ago survive to this day. The timeline of Ancient Greece includes the Archaic period, Classical Greece, Hellenistic Greece, and ended with Roman Greece. Technology and mathematics flourished during this period. Astronomy was created and Hippocrates, "father of medicine," lived during these times.


3. Western Culture: I then followed Ancient Greece to an article on Western culture; Ancient Greece provided the basis from which modern Western culture grew. Western Culture refers to the values, beliefs, ethics, etc which emerges from Europe. Western culture societies are primarily rationale-based which influences everything from science to politics. In fact, Western culture is where democracy begins, a very prominent form of government.


4. Olympic Games: Finally, I followed Western culture to the Olympic Games. Sports, after all, have always been a commonplace in Western cultures. The Olympic Games are a massive collection of competitions competed in every four years by many countries and include summer and winter versions. The Olympic Games originated in Olympia, Greece, from which they derive their name.



The Olympic Rings, Wikimedia

1 comment:

  1. You have provided the first Wikipedia Trail of the semester, Todd! Super! And Aesop can indeed get you to the Olympic Games... and if you follow a different set of links (and that's what's cool about the Trails: they go in so all kinds of directions), he could get you to the Buddha. And that's because there is a close connection between Aesop and the Jataka Tales told by Gautama Buddha in ancient India... and those in turn are related to the folktales in the Panchatantra. You could consider the Jatakas and Panchatantra to be something like brother and sister, while Aesop is a cousin. A distant cousin... but it's still all in the family! :-)

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