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1. What do you think was the main secret to Alexander the Great's enormous success?

1. What do you think was the main secret to Alexander the Great's enormous success?

3. Explain the big advance in language mentioned in the lecture, which might have been even more significant than the invention of the wheel.

3. Explain the big advance in language mentioned in the lecture, which might have been even more significant than the invention of the wheel.

Herodotus and Thucydides created the world's first history.  They wrote about the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars and unlike today's history weren't biased but just wanted to record the truth.

The big advance in language was the development of the alphabet, with individual letters.  This made it much easier to create new words, especially abstract ones, since, in the cuneiform system, you had to make new complex symbols for every word.

4. Pick a significant advance in knowledge by the Greeks and comment on it.

4. Pick a significant advance in knowledge by the Greeks and comment on it.

I find it interesting that we still publish copies of the Iliad and Odyssey to this day, thousands of years after they were composed, and how parts of their stories, especially the Trojan Horse and Achilles' heel, are part of our culture.  I wonder what other stories and poems like that were written in Ancient cultures but were long since lost, which could have been just as influential.

I find it interesting that we still publish copies of the Iliad and Odyssey to this day, thousands of years after they were composed, and how parts of their stories, especially the Trojan Horse and Achilles' heel, are part of our culture.  I wonder what other stories and poems like that were written in Ancient cultures but were long since lost, which could have been just as influential.

[[Category:World History lectures]]

[[Category:World History lectures]]