{"id":100720,"date":"2026-06-01T02:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T06:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=100720"},"modified":"2026-02-04T22:30:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T03:30:30","slug":"the-ancient-greeks-01-what-made-them-special-d-alphabetic-writing-the-rise-of-secular-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/01\/the-ancient-greeks-01-what-made-them-special-d-alphabetic-writing-the-rise-of-secular-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ancient Greeks: 01 &#8211; What Made Them Special? (d) Alphabetic Writing: the Rise of Secular Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XhaWx_iDsyE?si=BnLi0DXPfXcicAG8\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>seangabb<\/strong><br \/>\nPublished 31 Jan 2026<\/p>\n<p>Greece: A Brief History, c.700 BC &#8211; 500 AD<br \/>\nThis section explains the most important structural innovation of Greek civilisation: alphabetic writing.<\/p>\n<p>It contrasts the Greek alphabet with the complex writing systems of Egypt and Mesopotamia, showing how earlier scripts restricted literacy to priestly and bureaucratic elites. By encoding sound rather than meaning, the Greek alphabet transformed writing into a general-purpose tool.<\/p>\n<p>The section explores how this made possible secular literature, philosophy, mathematics, and science. Figures such as Euclid and Eratosthenes are discussed, along with the emergence of written proof, abstraction, and cumulative intellectual traditions.<\/p>\n<p>The central claim is that without alphabetic writing, there is no secular intellectual life in the modern sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>seangabb Published 31 Jan 2026 Greece: A Brief History, c.700 BC &#8211; 500 AD This section explains the most important structural innovation of Greek civilisation: alphabetic writing. It contrasts the Greek alphabet with the complex writing systems of Egypt and Mesopotamia, showing how earlier scripts restricted literacy to priestly and bureaucratic elites. By encoding sound [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,7],"tags":[1527,588,174,778,1468,134],"class_list":["post-100720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","tag-ancientgreece","tag-egypt","tag-innovation","tag-mathematics","tag-seangabb","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qcw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100721,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100720\/revisions\/100721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}