Did the ancient Greeks get their ideas from the Africans?

Known today as Egypt, Kemet is one of the longest-lived cultures in the world. The great Greek scholars studied at the Kemetic temple-universities, and based their learning on the Kemetic system. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today as usual by staff
writer Josh Clark. How their dash say their Candida, So

(00:21):
I'm fabulous, So Candice is, I'm sure unless you've been
living under a rock and you know, if you're deaf
to the timber of Morgan Freeman's voice, you are well
aware that the summer has been all about the Olympics, right,
Oh naturally, So, I mean the eyes of the world
are on Beijing and China's looking back saying what are
you looking at? You know, um there looking at your

(00:42):
sm That's right, Yeah, that was that was a big deal.
Poor China has been very, very heavily criticized since they
got the Olympics. They are making a sustained effort to
alleviate that though, I will say, yeah, they are. I
read recently that they have lifted the internet restrictions that
they had based on on internet access for journalists who

(01:03):
are in the country right now. Um, they had promised
there would be no internet restriction for journalists, then there was,
and then they repealed it for the rest of the country.
It's Internet restrictions as usual, like you can't get on
any site that has anything to do with Tibet Taiwan. Apparently,
UM Amnesty International is not a very easily accessed site
over there in China. And so that's one of the

(01:25):
reasons why the International Olympic Committee was criticized for giving
the the Olympics two thousand eight Olympics to Beijing. Right,
Supposedly the Olympics are um there about freedom and humanity
coming together and table tennis. You know, that's exactly what
the Greeks originally meant it for. Because you know, of

(01:46):
course you wrote an article about how the first Olympics work.
I did I did? When were they held? Like the
sixth century a long long time so, and they were
first held in Olympia. Looks like I need to read
my own articles. Yes, they were held in the lower
and they used to compete for olive oil and stuff
like that and women and hide and lunch for life story.

(02:08):
You know, you know, uh, the Greeks that that's just
one of many things that is still around in our
modern world that we can thank the Greeks for, um,
other things like calculus, theater astronomy. Yeah, I was gonna say,
you know that your favorite show, Gossip Girl, it's based
on Greek dramatic theory. You realize that, right, that lit

(02:30):
degree you have on your bell, you can thank guys
like Homer for that, for creating modern literature. Yeah, and
there's a lot more esoteric things that the Greeks gave
to us to like the concept that the uh, the
the universe is laid out in a rational way. Or
how about that we have two different selves. A higher
self that thinks of things like spirituality and pursues knowledge,

(02:55):
and then there's a lower selve which is gravitating towards
baser instincts like our sexual the type and addiction physical
desires by the lower self. Unfortunately, it's something I struggle
with forging forward. But yeah, So so since the universe is,
you know, laid out through reason, we can use reason

(03:17):
irrational inquiry to explore it, right. Yeah. And what's fascinating
about the Greeks is that they didn't always have this
erudite civilization. There's something called the Greek Dark Ages, Yeah,
which was fascinating to me because I associate terms like
dark Ages and Renaissance with Britain essentially. But apparently this
was a cycle that happened in Greece long before it

(03:39):
ever did over in England. We're talking back and um
right around. Yeah, that my sitting an empire and explicably
crumbled and these have been people of learning and trade. Yeah.
And then all of a sudden the lines just went out. Yeah.
And and basically Greece turned inward. For about five undred years,

(04:01):
all trade ceased, um, politics ceased. It was basically it
was licking its wounds almost. And then about six b C.
We have the Olympics, we have Homer writing the Iliad.
It's just this huge explosion of knowledge, right, and this
is what we identify as classical Greek, right, the Greece
that we know of. Right. We also see the birth

(04:21):
of the democratic republic, one of the most famous hallmarks
of ancient Greek culture. Yes, the Socratic method of teaching. Um, basically,
physicians weren't around before then. Happocrates medicine. Yeah. So so
the Greeks gave us pretty much everything that we base
our world on now. And frankly, I guess the way

(04:43):
I would put it is that before the Greeks, you know,
started dropping knowledge on the world scene. Everybody on the
planet was just running around like a bunch of idiots.
So I would say, is that factor of fiction. Well, Josh,
it's not entirely an impos civil theory, but there was
actually a civilization that influenced the Greeks to an incredible extent.

(05:07):
And I know, hold the phone. We're talking about the chemites,
and these are the people of ancient Egypt. And you know,
we all know what ancient Egypt was responsible for. You know,
we have the Pyramids, we have the Sphinx, we have
incredible knowledge and fields like um, astronomy and medicine. There
was a very ancient I guess medicine practitioner, Imo tap

(05:30):
and his observations about disease and the human physiology would
later influence even Hippocrates when he became the father of medicine.
And what I mean you and we've talked about the
Pyramids before in how in the Wonders of the world
that kind of thing. This is like ancient, remote antiquity,
though is and how could it possibly influence the Greeks. Well, essentially,

(05:52):
they weren't so isolated from the Greeks. The Greeks knew
that the chemites were doing a pretty good scholarly thing
over in their corner of the world, and so they
would actually travel to Egypt for university essentially, and they
would go and and study with the chem It's there
was actually a forty year program that scholars were expected
to follow. It's a pretty serious commitment. And this forty

(06:15):
year program turned out a man who essentially was both
scholar and priest. No man in general, that was the
idea of scholar slash priest. That's kind of a long program,
especially considering the life expectancy for that time, probably wasn't
too terribly longer than forty years. No, and as far

(06:36):
as we know, no one from Greece completed the program.
I think that Pythagorast got the farthest was at Fagoras, Yeah,
he did twenty three years. Well yeah, And so what
you're saying is that the Greeks actually traveled to Egypt
to learn. They didn't come up with their ideas on
their own. Well, not exactly. It would sort of be like,
you know, going to university today and taking a class

(06:58):
in literature and then essentially you know, taking the fundamentals
that you learn about reading poetry and understanding allegory and symbolism,
and then later on, twenty years down the road, interpreting
a brain new poem with these fundamentals that you that
you've honed in class under experts, essentially, And they had
this system called the cometic mystery system, and this comprised

(07:21):
math and writing, and physical science, and religion and the supernatural.
And this relates back to the idea of the scholar
priest that I was talking about earlier, and the notion
was that you would take all these different components of
intelligence and sort of amalgamate them into really rational explanations
about the universe. And one of the first Greek scholars

(07:44):
to go of Or and study with the Chamas was
able to harness these skills take them back and he
used his knowledge to accurately predict solar eclipse, and he
showed the Greeks how you can measure the distance of
a ship at sea attention precisely, and went credibility to
the system. And so you had more and more people
going over to Egypt to study, people like Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato.

(08:09):
They all went, well, let me ask you this. Then,
did the Greeks like hide the fact that that they
went to Africa to learn. Why don't we know this,
I mean, why do we thank the Greeks and not
the chemites. There's a couple of theories behind us, and
the first is that the idea of Enlightenment and that
movement also originated out of Europe, and that really pushed

(08:30):
the idea upon people that intelligence was about rationality. It
had nothing to do with ideas pertaining to the supernatural
or to spirituality. So there was a very strict economy there,
and that could very well explain why. And more, credence
wasn't lent to the kmetic mystery system because it did
include science and physics. Are the supernatural? Yeah, Europe was

(08:51):
looking for scholars, they weren't really looking for scholar priests.
So the Greeks basically just took the rational reason part
out of their their what they were taught. Yes, and
now I think that that was a part that they
honed and that was the part that was appreciated with
scholarly circles, and that was I guess passed down through
generations of scholars. But there's also a more controversial explanation

(09:12):
for that too. You like this on a controversy. Well,
hold onto your seat. Um. Another thing that emerged out
of Europe was prejudice toward the African continent. And I
I feel pretty safe in saying that because we've all
read stories about you know, colonial exploits and that continent.
You know, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of

(09:33):
my favorite, well not my favorite, but it's a very
poignant example of what uh a wealthy and learned people's
interpretation of natives is. You know, these people are living
in land that they don't you know, they don't know
what value it holds monetarily, They're not using their full
capabilities of their minds and bodies. And so I think

(09:53):
a lot of Europeans and Westerners in general thought these
people couldn't possibly have come up with something so sophisticated
as things like astronomy or math. But in fact they did.
And so there have been plenty of scholars these days,
and you know, plenty of activists who have been setting
to right the wrongs of these past perceptions, and so
we are starting to re recognize, not to stutter, re

(10:17):
recognize the contributions of the Chamites. Well that's good, Thank you,
Thanks for clearing that up my higher and lower self
both thank you for that than just the handwaves. Fine,
if you want to learn even more about the Chamites,
you can read did the ancient Greeks get their ideas
from the Africans? On how to works dot or more
on this than thousands of other topics because at how

(10:38):
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