The Modern era depicts the time of history starting with the Greeks, though there is a cursory mention of a few other civilizations in the "Fertile Crescent" preceding the Greeks. I suppose history has to start somewhere, but why is it that we seem to start with the Greeks?
I would submit that we start with the Greeks historically because the Greeks were the first to become enamored with rational, whole numbers.
These rational numbers are very straight-forward, very orderly. They add and multiply relatively easily, and they are easy to talk about and convey. They are the numbers that Pythagoreans once worshiped in ancient Greece, doing mathematical calculations, honing their minds for perfection worthy of the afterlife. However, the Pythagoreans had a great distaste for geometrical numbers that they designated "irrational". These were numbers that arose when one tried to calculate a circle or a spiral.
Even today with super-computers we cannot completely calculate the number of Pi. No one ever will, since the number is infinite and cannot be contained. The number which describes a spiral is a similarly infinite number.
The ancient-Celts seemed to delight in the symbolism of the spiral and the circle. Many other ancient people, and some modern people, have also given credence to the spiral and circle as a meaningful icon. For some it has even been a building block, so to speak.
Spirals are seen everywhere in nature. Spirals are seen in the unfolding of plants, in the swirling water of a stream, in regular pattern of leaves growing around a branch, in the waves of the ocean, in the clouds of the sky, in whorl of a "cowlick" on a child's head, in the stirring of a cook-pot, in the fingerprint on your finger, in the leaves blowing in a wind-storm. They would seem to show the hand of the Deity at work in the universe, transforming one thing into another.
Combination and creation itself occurs only when there is turbulence, allowing one thing to dissolve and mix with another.
(Continue with comments about the golden rectangle, how it comes to be drawn via the Fibinaci Series, it's ratios of 2:3, 3:5, 5:8, 8:13, 13:21, the spiral that it builds, the relationship that all Rosaceae family plants have with that ratio via their leaf spiraling on the branch, and their flowers, the importance that the Rose family has to the roots of European culture, i.e., the blackthorn, the rowan, the hawthorn, and the apple.)
(Possibly describe that these trees only grow naturally upon the banks of streams in temperate climates, where nature is somewhat wild but healthy)
Copyright © 2004 J. G. Jones