Emma knapping on the job.

Flint knapping has been done all over the world since the Paleolithic. Without it, there are many things man would not have been able to do. It revolutionised hunting, woodworking and leatherworking.

It is also something you can try yourself, or with your child, niece or nephew, or grandchild. All you need is a piece of flint and a hammerstone of somewhat harder quality.

Your First Try at Flint Knapping

Once you have found a suitable piece of flint and a hammerstone, you should put the flint against something to stabilise it as you work. This could be something like a log, but you will have better control if you are holding it towards your own body. Make sure the support is a fleshy area, such as the outer thigh, rather than a bony area, like the knee, as the impact of your strike might otherwise cause you bodily damage.

Hold the hammerstone so as to keep its underside entirely free from fingers. Trust me, you do not want to slam your thumb between two stones!

Strike!

You will soon learn to tell the difference between the sound made from a strike at an angle apt to break the stone – a highnote like glass – and an angle that will get you nowhere – a clanging thud like kitchenware.

You can then keep using the hammerstone to remove large pieces of flint, or a softer hammer of wood, bone or antler, to make smaller changes to the shape of your object.

Precautions

Though flint knapping is mostly safe, there are a number of precautions to consider to make sure your session doesn’t turn sour:

• Observers or other flint knappers should be several yards away or wear protective eye glasses. Tiny splinters of stone will fly about and they could lose an eye. You yourself are much less likely to injure yourself this way because the splinters will be mostly flying away from you. To be on the safe side, however, protect your own eyes as well.
• Watch your fingers! I know I already said this, but it bears repeating. Your fingers will turn purple if you forget.
• Keep some plasters on you! Some minor cuts can certainly occur.
• Never strike flint with flint! There is a reason we use hard hammer stones. If you strike porous rock with porous rock you can’t be sure it’s not the one in your hand that will break and your hand might not survive that.
• Do not try out your new sharp flint edge on yourself! A flint knife can be ten times as sharp as a surgical scalpel. One very brilliant knapper even made the tools for his own eye surgery by himself.

Instructional Videos to Get You Started

Make sure to check out the rest of Jim’s videos on his YouTube channel. Good luck with your knapping!

Lysimachus depicted in the manner of Alexander

Lysimachus

Lysimachus was born in Greece, but raised in Macedon and granted citizenship and rose to great standing. He was a bodyguard to Philip II and also to Alexander. After Alexander’s death, when the empire was carved up into new governorships, Lysimachus received greater Thrace.

Lysimachus’s career started slowly. He allowed himself to be an ally of others, in their attempts to rid themselves of their latest foe. He no doubt had his own reasons for these alliances, however. He slowly developed into a major power and eventually took both much of Asia Minor and Macedon itself.

In his later years, he became known as a ruthless ruler; his cities revolted and his friends deserted him. He died in battle at the age of 80, succeeded by his son Alexander.

Craterus

As history has it, Craterus was certainly one of the lesser successors even though he was a general under Alexander and given power in the most important province of them all: Macedonia itself.

When Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BCE, Craterus and Polyperchon were leading a large veteran force back to Macedon. They had just reached modern Turkey when they had to abort their mission and sail to Greece to help Antipater quell an uprising.

He then allied himself with other successors going against Perdiccas, but never got to see Perdiccas fall as he was killed in battle against Pediccas’s foremost successor ally: Eumenes.

Mosaic depicting Alexander the Great and Craterus hunting a lion.

Eumenes

Eumenes was the only successor without Macedonian citizenship. He was a Greek, though he had been employed by Alexander’s father since youth.

When Alexander’s empire was split up Eumenes became the governor of Cappadocia, a land at the time not even part of the empire. Perdiccas charged the generals Leonnatus and Antigonus with securing it for him, but Antigonus had no interest in doing so and Leonnatus simply tried to persuade Eumenes to join him in marching on Macedon and securing a wedding between Leonnatus and Alexander’s widowed sister to make Leonnatus part of the royal family.

Eumenes would have none of it, and ran off to Perdiccas to tell all. And because he was a true royalist and saw Perdiccas as the protector of the throne, to Perdiccas he remained loyal. When everyone turned on Perdiccas, Eumenes was sent to secure the northern borders. While he was there, however, Perdiccas was murdered and a warrant was put on Eumenes’s head. He had to flee. Within three years he had been found and executed.

The city has changed through its two millennia of occupation, but some things have not. There are still houses in these oldest parts of London that were built on the walls and foundations of two millennia ago. Their dimensions are the same today as they have always been. And just as she was then, London is today a bustling international metropolis.

As natural as she seems now, however, London is not evolve naturally from humble origins in the most natural place of occupation. She was thrust quite suddenly onto the Romano-British scene, but she took well to the spotlight and has appeared natural, for most part, ever since.

Map of Roman London, circa 400 CE.

London Before Roman Britain

Before there were Romans in London, there was also little else. Though many 17th to 19th century antiquarians have tried to see an ancient Celtic sacred landscape in their contemporary London, the sad fact remains that no archaeological evidence has indicated any settlement prior to the Roman invasion of Britain.

The only thing pre-Roman about London seems to be her name. Though no etymology has been universally accepted, most seem to think the word is either Celtic or even earlier. The most recent theory involves a reconstructed pre-Celtic word, *Plowonidonjon, translating roughly to boat river or flowing river.

Early Roman Military Encampment

The Romans arrived in Britain in the year of 43 CE and, like most foreign invaders, they were not met with open arms. The Trinovantes tribe put up a fight and the Romans pursued them through the neighbouring Catuvellauni territory, later home to the city of London, as the Trinovantes retreated to their capital Colchester.

Before the Roman army could enter Colchester, however, they had to sit tight and wait for the Roman emperor, Claudius, to travel from Rome to England to participate.

In the meantime, they set up an encampment and maybe even built a bridge across the Thames. The most likely place for such a bridge, geographically and geologically, would have been Westminster. A very early Roman road leading to Westminster suggests that the waiting Romans did indeed choose the most logical place. The encampment itself would have been close by.

Roman London was not a Military Site

But early London did not evolve out of a military encampment. Indeed, within the boundaries of Roman London not a single military object has been found. Nor have there been any finds to indicate a continuous settlement from the invasion in 43 CE.

When Emperor Claudius arrived, it would seem that the Roman army moved on. When London finally was founded, it was for other reasons entirely.

Why Found a Roman City at London?

A few years after the Claudian invasion of Britain, a strong Roman military presence in south east England was no longer a priority. But leaving the south east with a power vacuum would no doubt have had catastrophic results – at least from a Roman perspective. A Roman presence was necessary to govern and administer.

Even before there were Romans in London, there was a Celtic road running near or through it with a ferry, rather than a bridge, at Southwark or London Bridge. It had been abandoned for some years, but it was a decidedly good spot to found a city. A city here would control north and southward movement across the Thames, and, just as importantly, would allow merchants and their goods to thrive thanks to the availability of a deep-water port.

And so, they chose a site and laid out the first street of London, a nine meter (30 feet) wide main street now six meters below modern Lombard and Fenchurch Street.

It wasn’t always undisputed, though. In fact, though the January 1 New Year has ancient roots it was not fully adopted, even in its original home, in Christian Europe until the 18th century.

Julius Caesar Moved the New Year to January

Julius Caesar did not invent the January 1 New Year, but may have reintroduced it.

In ancient Rome, the New Year used to fall in March, following the much older Babylonian example of a New Year’s date near the Spring Equinox, just as is still the case for the Persian New Year. Romance languages still hint at this earlier custom by calling spring “the first season”. The French call it printemps, in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese it’s primavera, and in Romanian it’s primăvară.

At the time Julius Caesar was elected pontifex maximus and put in charge of reforming the calendar, which was quickly getting out of hand and displacing spring festivals into midwinter, it was customary for consuls to take office on January 1. The civil and the religious year had once been one and a the same, both running from January to December, so what Julius Caesar – or those he delegated the calendar work to – did was simply to realign the two and make January 1 the New Year again.

That was in 46 BCE, and thus 45 BCE was the first year in Rome – at least for some time – to officially start on January 1.

Multiple Calendars and the Church Year

Since Rome spread soon thereafter, expanding over the area between Britain and Syria, it would only seem logical that the January 1 date for New Year was quickly adopted uniformly and accepted ever thereafter. Of course, history is rarely straight forward.

Much as is the case today, even then in the Rome Empire there were multiple calendars in use at the same time. January 1 was the start of the year on paper, but not in practice.

Not even the spread of Christianity and the Catholic Church’s adoption of the Julian calendar would help. To this day, the Catholic liturgical year still begins with the First of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas Day. Many Catholic countries, however, began their years with Annunciation Day, which just so happens to be March 25 and rather close to the Spring Equinox. Others, like France, chose an Easter date, notably normally also near the Spring Equinox.

All the more confusingly, at least in hindsight, many places recognised January 1 as the start of the calendar year, but celebrated the New Year at one of these other dates.

A Slow Adoption of the January 1 Date

Celebrating a January 1 New Year date is sometimes known as the circumcision style of dating, as January 1 is traditionally the date of the circumcision of Christ.

The circumcision style came into fashion at “the official New Year” the 16th century. In 1544, The Holy Roman Empire adopted the circumcision style and in the next 50 years many nations, including all of Scandinavia, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal, had chosen January 1 as the official New Year as well. The British Isles, not including Scotland, lagged behind until 1752, favouring the annunciation style of dating.

If you are interested in finding out more about the history of all things New Year, Jennifer Ciotta has written about Historical Russian New Year’s Traditions and Dawn Ouedraogo has written about Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year Celebration, while Rachel Bellerby shares some information about The Medieval New Year Feast of Fools on Suite101.

Antipater

Antipater was an important figure already under Alexander’s father, Philip II. When Philip was away campaigning, he left Antipater in charge as regent of Macedon in his stead. He was a friend of Alexander’s mother, Olympias, and helped secure Alexander’s position as king when Philip died.

Unlike the other diadochi, Antipater did not participate in Alexander’s campaigns in the east. While the king was away, Antipater was the acting regent in Macedon. As such, he held tremendous power when Alexander died and once Perdiccas was out of the way he announced himself as regent of the entire empire and the guardian of the two kings, Alexander IV and Philip III Arrhidaeus.

Antipater brought the two kings back home to Macedon only to suddenly die of old age, leaving his position as regent to Polyperchon.

Coin of Cassander.

Cassander

Antipater’s son, Cassander, was none too pleased. He would much rather have been appointed regent himself, but instead his father had left him to spy on those others who might try to take power for themselves.

Cassander immediately sought an alliance with the other diadochi against Polyperchon, whom they drove from Macedon.

As the new regent and in control of Arrhidaeus he also ended up in war with Olympias, the mother of Alexander who was then the guardian of her grandson Alexander IV. Olympias killed Arrhidaeus and Cassander killed Olympias. The only threat left was Alexander IV, so Cassander imprisoned him and his mother and later had them both killed.

He did not get to enjoy his new empire, however. He died from oedema soon after becoming king.

Polyperchon

Like Antipater, Polyperchon was a general under Philip II, though, unlike Antipater, he had travelled with Alexander on his eastern campaign. In the month before Alexander’s death, Polyperchon was sent back to Macedon. He had already reached Asia Minor by the time Alexander died. He was thus able to get to Macedon and help Antipater defeat the Greek rebellion that followed Alexander’s death.

When Antipater died, Polyperchon was appointed regent. This put him in direct conflict with Antipater’s son, Cassander and that conflict lead to war with several other of the diadochi and had to flee Macedon. He settled in Greece, where he held onto some territory until his death.

Alexander had been less than clear about how his empire should proceed.

Alexander did little to indicate his wishes for the future of the empire. His second in command, Perdiccas, appears to have received the royal signet ring, but without instructions. One historian, Diodorus Siculus, would even have Alexander saying that he bequeathed his kingdom “to the strongest”, though other historians writing about Alexander’s death have him saying nothing at all.

It did not take long for everything Alexander had built to fall apart. Anyone who felt that they had any chance at power immediately started scraping for it. The later world has come to know these men as the diadochi, from the Greek word διαδοχοι (diadokhoi), meaning “successors”.

Alexander IV

Alexander IV was still in his mother Roxane’s womb when the fighting broke out about whether he or his half-uncle should be king. As the future presumed son of Alexander the Great he was favoured by the cavalry and the generals, but the infantry rejected him on account of his mother. She was a Persian from Afghanistan and thus, in their eyes, a barbarian not fit to breed kings.

Alexander IV was eventually made king simultaneously with his uncle, but he never ruled. At age 13, having lived his entire life in various forms of imprisonment, he was assassinated.

Philip III Arrhidaeus

Arrhidaeus was the son of one of the many wives of Philip II and thus Alexander’s half-brother. Though of similar age to Alexander he had never truly been a contender for the throne in Philip’s lifetime and does not appear to have held either civil or military command on account of a mental disability.

He reigned, side by side with his nephew Alexander IV, but never ruled. Ultimately he was shuffled back and forth between the contenders for power, until he was executed at the order of his father’s wife, Olympias, the mother of Alexander.

Perdiccas

Perdiccas was Alexander’s second in command at his death. He received the king’s signet ring and was thus the de facto ruler of the empire. When Arrhidaeus and Alexander IV were jointly made kings, Perdiccas was established as their guardian and regent.

But Perdiccas could not hold the empire together. Alexander’s generals, now made governors, became too powerful and had too many ideas of their own. He too wanted more and tried to establish himself by marrying into Alexander’s family, but he failed and was murdered soon thereafter.

Leonidas led 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.

Few men have lost as great a battle yet been so celebrated for it as has Leonidas of Sparta.

It was the summer of 480 BCE and a vast Persian army was on the march with a single goal: subduing all of Greece. The only path they could possibly take into Greece proper went through the pass of Thermopylae. The Greeks knew this and had amassed there an allied force of 7,000 from several city-states, headed by Leonidas as his army of 300 Spartans. There they waited for the arrival of the 150,000 – according to some ancient sources: several million – Persians.

The Greeks held out two days of intense battle. Then, the story goes, a local resident by the name of Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks and showed the Persians a small path leading around the Greek forces. Realising that his army was being outflanked, Leonidas dismissed most of the allies. Left behind to protect the pass were only Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, and a back-up of 1,100 Thespians and Thebans. Unsurprisingly, they were slaughtered.

Leonidas was born the middle son of Anaxandridas II, one of Sparta’s two co-kings, in around 540 BCE. As a middle son, and one with older half-siblings at that, his path to the throne wasn’t obvious. After his father’s death, Leonidas’ half brother Cleomenes succeeded to the throne.

It was at Cleomenes’s death in 489 BCE that Leonidas became co-ruler of Sparta. The circumstances around Leonidas’s succession to the throne are suspect and some historians believe that Cleomenes was indeed assassinated to put Leonidas on the throne.

Little is known about Leonidas’s life but he was married to his half-brother Cleomenes’s daughter, Gorgo, who was somewhere around 30 years his junior. Even less is known about her, but she is exceptional in being one of the few women named, and even praised, from this period of Greek history.

That’s it for λ. Until it’s time for μ, feel free to nominate ancient great Greeks of any letter of the alphabet following λ in the comments section.

Minoan, Helladic and Cycladic

Though often included in Greek history, the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete and its contemporaries – the Helladic civilisation of mainland Greece and the Cycladic civilisation of the Cyclades – were not truly Greek civilisations. These early and middle Bronze Age peoples were part of a population that existed before the migration of Indo-Europeans into the area. Ethnically, there is no continuation between these peoples and the Greeks.

Reconstructed Minoan fresco

That is not to say Minoan, Helladic and Cycladic civilisations should be written out of Greek history entirely! These civilisations were very influential on what would become Greek culture. Some would argue that Greek speaking peoples only began to flourish and exhibit significant regional impact under this influence, in particular that of Minoan culture.

Elements of Minoan history and religion are also present in later Greek mythology, though how close to historical truth these accounts are is hard to say.

Mycenaean

The Mycenean civilisation is so named after the archaeological site of Mycenae, though many other sites, such as Thebes and Athens, were also part of the Mycenaean culture. So far as the evidence allows us to determine these things, these peoples were the first to speak a language identifiable as Greek. The evidence that I speak of are palace inventory lists written in an early form of Greek using an alphabet adapted from the non-Greek Minoan culture.

Mycenaean culture flourished roughly between 1600 and 1100 BCE. At its birth, Minoan culture was one of the most influential in the region and it clearly influenced Mycenaean art and architecture. As a result, Mycenaean culture is often compared and contrasted with the Minoans’.

Their warlike nature, for example, is often touted with reference to the Mycenaeans’ tendency to build closed and defensible palaces and legends of Mycenaean conquest, such as the Trojan war. The Minoans, by contrast, left their palaces open for attack and are known to have enjoyed an expansive international trading network. The simple conclusion is that Minoans influenced peacefully by trade and the Mycenaeans influenced by conquest.

Mycenaean funerary mask, traditionally placed over the face of the buried corpse.

While that is naturally an all too simplistic model of history, there is some truth to it. Mycenaean civilisation was dominated by a warrior aristocracy and they most certainly conquered or subdued other peoples, including the Minoans. That is not to say that Mycenaean culture bred inefficient traders. Mycenaean goods have been found as far away as in Britain.

The Dark Ages

During a period of around 1200 to 1050 BCE, all Mycenaean palaces were either abandoned or destroyed. No one knows why; we are completely in the dark about what happened, which is also how historians have named the period.

The hows are fairly certain: local conflict, broken trade routes due to conflict elsewhere, population movements and significant population reduction all contributed to this period of no major architecture, no written language, de-urbanisation, isolation from the international markets, and destroyed infrastructure.

The whys are much less certain. There are theories about natural disasters, pandemics, the invasion or migration of a people speaking another dialect of Greek called Doric, and the war and plunder rampage of a band of eastern warrior pirates known only as the Sea People. No one theory quite fits with the archaeological record.

Economic stability only really returned in the 8th century BCE. At that time, the Greeks were adapting a new alphabet for themselves out of the Phoenician writing system.

Archaic

Archaic sculpture

With the Archaic Age, circa 750 to 500 BCE, came reurbanisation and population growth. It was also an age of new grand architecture and art under the influence of oriental trends. The marble sculptures we have come to associate with ancient Greece have their beginnings in this period.

It was a period of renewed social and political organisation. Personal kingdoms were for most part replaced by the polis, a city-state system, though some poleis, like Sparta, retained kings as their heads of state. Greek warfare also developed in this period into the orderly phalanx of later eras.

Greek civilisation was booming! To make trade more efficient, the Greeks set up permanent trading ports and towns in foreign lands as far away as Spain. It didn’t take long before true Greek colony states started cropping up all across the Mediterranean.

Classical

The Classical Era is roughly encompassed by the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BCE and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

The Parthenon is probably the best known piece of Classical architecture

It is the age we most associate with ancient Greece. It the the era of Athenian democracy, of philosophers, of scientists, of historians, and of great temples and exquisitely life-like art. But, it is also the era of long wars and strife. This period saw, amongst other conflicts, saw a 27 year long conflict between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies, as well as 49 years of volatile relations with the Persians.

Hellenistic

Then came a Macedonian king by the name of Alexander and he, with some help from his father before him, unified Greece and avenged his people by conquering the vast Persian Empire. But Alexander suddenly died, and this vast Empire he had created was split up between his generals who proclaimed themselves as kings.

This was the beginning of an entirely new era in Greek history. Now, you could live in Italy or in in Afghanistan and still be Greek. This vast empire – really a collection of smaller empires with their own kings – allowed for great movement of both goods and people. Leaving one’s home town to seek fortune abroad became a real option. People there would be speaking Greek too, the city structure would be the same and the buildings would be the same. The Hellenistic period was the era of the great library of Alexandria.

This, of course, is an idealistic view of the Hellenistic era. Subdued native cultures, the slavery that often followed, and even the more benign cultural interactions are overlooked. Nothing is ever quite this simple, but for Greek monoculture it was a golden age.

The end of independent Greece

It all came to an end of sorts in 146 BCE, when the Romans conquered the Greek peninsula. Though, not quite. While Greece itself was under Roman political control kingdoms ruled by Greeks, such as Egypt, remained independent longer. Greek Syria did not become Roman until 63 BCE and Egypt remained independent until, while in conflict with Rome, its Greek queen Cleopatra VII killed herself in 30 BCE. Greece was not independent again until after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

Cleon first came to attention in the scene of Athenian politics in the 430s BCE as an outspoken opponent of Pericles, the most prominent Athenian statesman of the Classical Age. His original grievance with Pericles was the latter’s leniency with the enemy, lead by the Sparta that Cleon hated almost as much as the nobility. He came to lead something of an anti-Periclean party and went as far as to build a legal case and prosecute Pericles for squandering the public wealth. Cleon and his friends won, but Pericles was highly popular and soon reinstated again.

When Pericles died in 429 BCE, Cleon stepped forward and styled himself as the champion of democracy. His popularity soared, and anyone who might oppose him found themselves in the defence section of the ancient Athenian equivalent of a court room.

Unlike Pericles, Cleon favoured active and expansive war policies. He is attributed with raising the tribute for allied states with more than 300%. He also made such characteristic decisions such as killing all adult men and selling all women and children into slavery of revolting allied cities. The warmongering image of Pericles passed down to us through his contemporaries may be slightly unfair, as the contemporary writers who mention him were in direct opposition of him, but within months of Cleon’s death there was peace between Athens and Sparta.

That’s it for κ. Until it’s time for λ, feel free to nominate ancient great Greeks of any letter of the alphabet following κ in the comments section.