The Birth of Athena, from
Attic Pottery, 540 B.C.

In an earlier posting, I mentioned astronomer Carl Sagan and his observation wherein human development shows that fortunate characteristic of humankind tending to associate and cooperate in ever larger numbers.  Unfortunately, there is often a state of warfare and subsequent oppression that unites disparate peoples in language, culture, and religion. 

Because China always has been a near homogeneous society, new peoples actually chose this culture outright, whether conquered by the Chinese or conquering the Chinese themselves.  In the Western Classical Era world, this was quite different.

In the Classical Era, the Greeks and Romans recognized this attribute of war as a uniting constituent.  Both Greek and Roman cultures recognized not one, but two very different gods of war:

Greek         Roman

Ares                 Mars

Ares - God of War

Male gods -- gods of war in the aspects of blood lust, cruelty, domination, and death.

Athena            Minerva

Female gods -- gods of war in the aspects of discipline, strength, military strategy, and warrior skill. Athena's birth tale involved an incredible trepanation event (see image above).

Additional aspects of Athena/Minerva regard the peace and administration of new people after a victory, to include assimilation of peoples into a greater society. 

In 2001, I stood on an abandoned road in County Galway, Ireland.  On this road were eighty-seven abandoned farms.  One hundred and fifty years has passed, but the population of Ireland is just now over half it was in the 1850s.  And so these farms are still vacant, the closest home over three miles away. One of these farms belonged to an ancestor of mine, but just which farm was his, I will never know.  What I can know is that English domination of Ireland had significant mark on why my ancestor left Ireland for America, at a time where the Irish deluged America, Canada, Australia, and a dozen other nations in search of a new homes.

So now I’m in America, joined by Indians, Pakistanis, Australians, South Africans, and many others that are, in effect, my colonial cousins.  As difficult and different are the many stories behind why we are here, there is a fascinating component behind each of our histories:

Without the English Empire, none of us would share some type of English heritage and language skills, helping us make it in a world where English is the language of computers and international commerce.