
How the Black Sea shaped the ancient Mediterranean world - apollinaire
https://www.historytoday.com/reviews/around-other-pond
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lorenzfx
There is hardly anything in this article on the influence of the Black Sea on
the Mediterranean world. The article is a review of a book on Mithridates and
the Kingdom of Pontus (which had a lot of contact with the Mediterranean
states).

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phist_mcgee
I was also really disappointed about how it did a good old bait and switch as
well. Grab your interest by mentioning hannibal, then switch to talking about
some guy's research of a little known personal kingdom on the shores of
Turkey. Hardly what the title would lead you to believe.

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scottlocklin
The archaeology of Crimea is pretty interesting; abandoned Soviet submarine
bases, Genoese castles, Pontic and Byzantine ruins. Chersonesus was one of the
most fascinating places I've visited ... and you can go swimming amidst
Greek/Pontic ruins. I'm assuming the rest of the Black Sea coast is similarly
interesting.

Kind of difficult to get there as an American at this point, but for everyone
else.

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082349872349872
My socioeconomic determinism conspiracy theory for the filibustering of
Crimea: one can find deepwater ports anywhere, but how else were the Moscow
elite supposed to send their children to Artek?

Artek then:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NepI7BTYpnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NepI7BTYpnY)

and now:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMTN6udbBKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMTN6udbBKc)

~~~
scottlocklin
Thanks for that; stayed in a hotel near there when I visited Yalta.

I tried using Ukrainian politeness on people in Crimea in ~2011 and got what
amounted to "speak Russian or die Americano running dog," so my theory of what
happened there is considerably simpler.

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cpursley
Most Crimeans were speaking Russian as a first language well before the
takeover (the Russian Empire took the peninsula directly from the Ottoman
Empire and started moving Russians in after). You'd be about as likely to
encounter Crimean Tartar as Ukrainian.

~~~
gimmeThaBeet
That's why I find the Crimea situation so complicated, making the big
assumption that I have the history correct.

You have the Tatar Exile during WWII, people re-settling the area, and then
later Crimea was borderline on being independent or part of Ukraine during the
dissolution.

So you end up with the fact that, whether right or wrong, Crimea is full of
ethnic Russians who were lukewarm about being part of Ukraine in the first
place. So as sketchy as the whole annexation was, was it wrong? I honestly
can't say it is, which is probably why Russia felt they were able to take that
chance.

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vkou
> So as sketchy as the whole annexation was, was it wrong?

As a Russian who generally thinks that both Russia and NATO need to back down
from the pissing contests they engage in...

Yes, it was wrong. Ukraine was done wrong by it. It was not done legally. Even
if it was done with respect to the doctrine of self-determinism (I generally
approve of secessionist movements), it was not done _correctly_. There are
correct means of going about secession, and the War in Donbass was not one of
them. It was a thin pretense for other geopolitical ambitions.

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082349872349872
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalatta%21_Thalatta%21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalatta%21_Thalatta%21)

(I wouldn't be surprised if the turkey scenes in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_2YTkxWug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_2YTkxWug)
were filmed in the former Pontus. The clip itself shows the _telenovela_ can
be found in any culture...)

Edit: people in the Pontic region traditionally were into (vertical)
transhumance instead of transhumanism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumance#Caucasus_and_nort...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumance#Caucasus_and_northern_Anatolia)

~~~
toyg
...?

~~~
082349872349872
Sorry, had to manually url-encode the exclamation marks. Try now.

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vmh1928
This article covers a broader time frame of the history of the region. I think
it's a bit much to say, as the article says, that the Greeks were "gobsmacked"
by the rise of the Kingdom of Pontus. The area has a very long history in the
ancient world.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontus_(region)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontus_\(region\))

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peshooo
As the topic is about the Black Sea, this could also be interesting for the
audience - one of the oldest gold treasures found (4,600 BC to 4,200 BC):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_Necropolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_Necropolis)

More pictures in the Bulgarian version of the article.

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ajtulloch
For folks interested in this, Fernand Braudel's magnum opus "The Mediterranean
and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" is an incredible work of
history, studying the Mediterranean and the societies around it.

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082349872349872
The "making of" is almost as impressive: Braudel was an involuntary resident
of Oflag XII-B while working on it.

