@@diogenessilviocemartins9019 True, we have seen their reactions to such attempts on a couple myths, best possible outcome was getting a lightning bolt in the face.
what the hell man, my school took a field trip to a meat processing plant while you guys were climbing mountains? is this some rick riordan reference or are you being serious?
That was the Annunaki 200,000 years ago, right before they came here and genetically engineered chimps to create humans to mine gold in Africa, so that they could use the gold dust to enforce their atmosphere and reverse the climate change they caused on their planet thousands of years before. (This is really a thing some people believe, look up Zecheria Sitchin)
I actually grew up near Mt. Olympus (on the sea-facing Pieria side). I would always face the mountain in the mornings when walking to school or going to catch the bus. I often wondered if the ancients ever climbed it. Now I finally know! Thanks! :)
This casts more light on the ancient Greeks realising that they are just as conflicted as modern people about the particulars of their beliefs. I suppose the exact idiosyncrasies really come down to the individual. I wonder if some goods were thought more tangible than others, maybe depending on their station within the pantheon.
Theologies have always existed and evolved, many schools competing. Secular people want to believe religions never evolve or are backward, but religion has always evolved as any other idea, from natural animism to some form of post-natural idealism. In a sense, human rights are also platonic supernatural beliefs (ideals of equality and fairness, unable to be described by science).
The Greeks thought that the Gods lived in a parallel reality essentially, as in they could not see the Gods, but they knew they were still there. They knew that when they summitted the mountain they wouldn’t see their Gods.
Pagan thought most of the times is utterly conflicted with the more literal and fanatical belief of Abrahamic faith. Paganism has myths, often contradicting one another, and as many interpretations as priests AND believers themselves. Hardly ever you find prescription and forced beliefs, and spirits or precepts from other faiths may be accepted and syncretised within the belief system. It's an inclusive system, not exclusive. It suggests and adds, contrary to dogma and substraction. Sounds unfamiliar huh?
Even early Christianity was like this. That whole mindset went down the drain with the increasing temporal and spiritual power of the Roman Church and the papacy, the result of Constantine's standardisation.
Imagine an ancient Greek priest standing in front of some shrine, saying: "Gods live in Mount Olympus!", and some dude in the crowd goes: "No, they don't! I was hiking there with my freinds last weekend, and we didn't see any gods..."
On average, I probably leave less than one RUclips comment a year so maybe that'll help this land harder: I love your channel, I love this question, and I love the "Short Answer... Yes, repeatedly"
You're the best video essayist. You pose a question and you answer it within the first 3 seconds so I don't need to listen to you for an hour, but you still provide context in case I want it anyway.
@@boejudden9011 if you look on wikipedia "According to Robert S.P. Beekes the word is of pre-Greek origin and he speculates that it originally meant "mountain".[12][14] It's worth noting that the word is also probably cognate with the Mycenean Greek word 𐀄𐀬𐀠𐀊𐀍 (u-ru-pi-ja-jo) which is, most likely, a term used to describe people, or possibly an ethnic group.[15]" So the dude was kinda right and you were wrong
I’ve had this question many times when I’ve studied Ancient Greece. I mean, it’s so easy to disprove that gods physically were present. I often wondered what the general belief was. Thank you for the short answer.
Those who didn't believe in the gods definitely sought to provide proof that they didn't exist. IIRC one of things they pointed to was a tomb in Crete that was inscribed with the name Zeus. The argument was that Zeus was a real man that was later elevated to the status of god by other men, and somewhere along the line the mortal origins were forgotten.
@@semiramisbonaparte1627 For the ancient mind, there is no distinction. The unseen is just another, higher level of reality which happens to overlap the seen.
@@semiramisbonaparte1627 There's a similar belief in Judaism with Jerusalem and Mount Zion, how there is a second "heavenly" Jerusalem that is a copy of the city on earth, and that Jerusalem represents more of a conceptual ideal of the city than a physical place. Interesting stuff
An audiobook version of "Naked Statues" is coming out around the end of September. Still don't know, however, if they're going to ask me to narrate it...
The existence of temples to the Gods on the mountain is enough to convince me that the ancient Greeks did understand it to be the home of the Gods -- for the simple reason that the mountain is where they went to ritually encounter those gods. They of course did not think like we do as post-enlightenment materialists who would deny the existence of the gods in that place if toga-clad deities couldn't plainly be seen walking around up there in the way that a man could be seen. Rather, it is clear to most people even now that when we reach the peak of a mountain, there is something special about that place. It is not like the normal places of our everyday lives, and there is no real practical reason to go to the top of a mountain. It is a spiritual experience even for the most modern person -- the ascent to something higher.
Had the same question a few months back and could only find modern climbs so just disappointingly assumed altitude sickness above 2,500m didn't lend to it happening. Thanks for the answer!
@@Fabianwew Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I used to live at 2800m elevation (small gambling town in the Rockies) and the only people that ever had a problem with air were certain old people from low-lying places like New Orleans. But 2500m is the answer that google gives.
A childhood question of mine. I knew the answer had to be yes. I was a dreadful tresspasser as a child so I know even if there were sacred laws people would get up there somehow. But this added detail is just what tween me ordered! Thx
Maybe the ancient Greeks believed that it was a long distance from heaven to Earth, but the distance from heaven to the peak of a tall mountain was drastically shorter, and the gods lived in an area of heaven which was directly over Mount Olympus and therefore was sort of connected to it. Ancient Mesopotamians believed something very similar to this, which is why they built ziggurats.
Considering that the Indo-European pantheon predates settled society, the myth that the gods live way up in a mountain was probably applied to whichever nearby mountain was tallest. When tribes settled in Greece, it just happened to become fixed in one location.
Yeah I saw a video a while ago about how all Indo-European religions contain elements of the beliefs of hunters from the neolithic who traveled the plains of Eastern Europe and Russia. Interesting stuff :)
Hellenic Paganism has a really good conceptualization of divinity. What they actually considered the actions of the divine to be was questionable, no doubt about that, but the Greeks, and even moreso the Romans, had pretty convincing ideas of what a God is.
After Tuesday's video, I will stop featuring material from the book in my videos. Believe it or not, in all of the videos I've made over the last three years, I've only used about 15% of the information that appears in "Naked Statues." If you buy the book, almost everything will be new - and none of it, starting next week, will ever be a spoiler!
A really interesting question rarely which is rarely asked! Since I study mountains and ancient Greeks for some months now, I can quite safely tell that there is no tangible evidence or literary refefernce that proves that even a single person made it to the top (Mitikas)
Plutarch (2nd century) and St Augustine (4th-5th century) report on annual pilgrimages up the mountain. Ceramic plates have been found dotted around the various plateaus and passes, and burned sacrifices have been found at the Agios Antonios peak (one of the five peaks of the Olympos massif).
@@kyrrekausrud5960 Yes Indeed, but my remark was about the peak Mitikas specifically, not the highest zone of the mountain in general.. Especially the discovery of the sanctuary on St. Antonios peak had been a quite unexpected and interesting find. I have written an essay about this one recently. St Antonios peak is only about 100 meters lower than Mitikas, but the feeling you get from standing there is quite different (I have been to the mountain quite a few times). The ground is quite soily there, whereas in Mitikas, Paramitikas, Scholio and Stefani the ground is really rocky and inclined. The routes to get to Mitikas are quite adverse and can potentially be dangerous even by the standards of our times. St Antonios feels like it is near Mitikas and far at the same. I suggest that the decision to make a sanctuary there had to do mainly with practical reasons and accessibility. Furthermore the location seems to hit a sweet spot between proximity and keeping a respectful distance from the Panteon.
Holy heck mind blown. I’ve always thought of Greek mythology as being this complete ancient Greek society constant and it sounds exactly like modern religion! Some Greeks observed it, others didn’t believe in it. Good job on the video.
First guy up there must have pondered on Socrates’ fate and made up a fine story of gods and banquets all over the place. “I’m still stuffed mate, so much food they made me eat”
"Our terrifying Gods command thunder and the ocean, they created us, and could destroy us with a single swipe." "Where do they live?" "Oh, over on that hill over there"
You become whatever you worship, and you worship whatever you’ve become. If people were degenerate, they projected their degeneracy onto the gods as well.
I’d love to know more about the temple he mentions on the mountain. Does anybody have any article on it? I tried searching online but i only get results about Zeus’s temple in Olympia :/
If I had lived there in the time, I would have believed that the gods did not exist in the material world on Gaia's creation unless they had a reason to, like punish humanity, hide from other gods to have affairs or to toil with mortal affairs as they see fit. Olympus would be outside the material world, because don't forget that the world is their relative by blood, as well as Tartarus and the darkness itself, they would not consider those areas their "domain" because quite frankly they are primordial incarnates that have existed for longer than time and are infinitely more powerful than them. The Gods of Olympus exist by the grace of Gaia and the Abyss alone. But that's just my interpretation, that's what's cool about mythology, its not religion so I'm not offending anyone :)
@@shreyvaghela3963 You forget the Greek settlers of Anatolia. We do not know how the non Greeks called those mountains. Plus, there is Olympus (mountainous again) of Carpathos, Cyprus and Lesbus. Also, those "Olympuses" of Asia Minor are very close to the seashore in regions where Greek settlers lived. Moreover, the Hittite and Hurrian heartlands were far in the East. Thus, supposed influence (as in other cases) is on the level of speculation and almost unfounded.
Completely unfounded and not researched theory but maybe they had the temple near the summit and took the sacrifices to the peak for the gods, when they leave natural elements knock them all off the peak and every time they return either everything is gone or some wasn’t and they assume the gods would not accept part of it for some petty deity reason.
@@Meeminator if you’ve been there you know you can easily climb up it without any training, it’s an oversized hill since the trail is almost completely straight leading to the summit
This is the exact question I asked my lecturer back in university. If the Ancient Greeks really thought their gods lived on Mt Olympus, wouldn't that belief be dealt with pretty smartly just by climbing up and taking a peek? They would probably have to retcon their religion by saying that the gods were invisible or that they didn't "really" live on the mountain etc. My lecturer did not know the answer.
I mean they(Christians/Catholics) think their gods in the clouds and let me tell you I was in a plane just the other day ain’t nothing but clouds up there
That’s a shame, isn’t it? The world should be an enchanting place, but our modern conception has reduced it to nothing more than a complex machine. I, for one, reject materialism.
Did Ancient Romans make art for fun? Like how we doodle or do arts and crafts today. I feel like all I know about art throughout history is about only the most famous artists. Hopefully you understand what I’m trying to ask :) love your channel
We know they did graffiti that is remarkably similar to modern day graffiti so I'm sure they must have doodled. Would love to know if any of it survives, though.
@@Zikar There exists a graffito in Pompeii which is a caricature of a political candidate during an election. The caricature has a big nose just like a modern cartoon, and always reminded me of the drawings in the Asterix books.
Honestly the question demonstrates a very primitive view of theology. It’s like saying “have Christians ever flown an airplane?” They have and it didn’t surprise anyone to find that Jesus was actually living in the clouds with all the angels because only a child would actually think that. The Greeks knew that the gods didn’t actually live on the physical mountain of Olympus. Olympus is both a physical mountain and a mythological form, an axis mundi or the point on which the universe revolves. So by saying the gods lived on Mt. Olympus they were saying the gods lived at the center of the universe.
Don't worry! I have reserved all the best stuff for the book. In all my videos, I use only a very small fraction of the material you'll find in "Naked Statues." Everything in this video, for example, came from a single page.
There were actually quite a few mountains named Olympus in the Greek world (scholars to speculate that "Olympus" meant something like "mountain" in a pre-Greek language). In any case, the Greeks definitely climbed the Mount Olympus in Cyprus, since there was a temple of Aphrodite near the top.
Okay. As an indian we have mt meru. But in reality there is no physical mountain named meru not on Himalayas nor anywhere. It's mythical kind of like axis mundi. There is a mundi going through the entire universe and it only passes through earth.
Maybe the Mycenaean Greeks or even before believed that, before the resources to climb a large mountain were available? That would make a lot of sense, then later Greeks got curious, found nothing up there, and revised the myths to make a little more sense.
@Bronski Turboski I always liked the fact that the Greeks expressed scepticism of Pytheas's book because he described the sea as becoming "congealed" in Northern Europe, clearly describing sea ice. You can go further back than that to the Odyssey, where Homer at one stage describes people living so far north that they can fit in two working days in one 24 hour period - describing the "midnight sun" in summertime.
it bothers me that so many people are disconnected with the esoteric nature of western societies. mountains are always an interesting 'as above so below' dynamic
I climbed olympus back in 348 BCE, When i woke up, i felt a hand made of light touch me and i woke up in 2008 as a 4 year old. Weird... I could've sworn i was studying under someone...
Greeks' brains were configured differently to ours. They used myth in the same way we today use metaphor, as a language tool to help describe things which are difficult to describe with simple words. These men were much smarter than us and operated on more levels.
The first dude must have been pretty severely disappointed.
Dude was lucky he didn't find Olympus. Imagine the gods' reaction to a mortal entering their domain uninvited.
@@diogenessilviocemartins9019 "WHO DARES ENTER MY DOMAIN"
"Uhhhh, hey.... my names paul.. I just climbed up right over there."
@@diogenessilviocemartins9019 True, we have seen their reactions to such attempts on a couple myths, best possible outcome was getting a lightning bolt in the face.
No they had a much different understanding of “gods” we are so materialistic that most people will never understand what they mean
"Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum - I spell the blood of .......... "
I climbed Olympus with my school it was awesome. The peak was surrounded by dark clouds and there was lightning
You dodged a bullet there, seems Zeus was on a good mood that day.
Me too, I loved it so much that i made it my pfp.
Zeus was wanking that time huh
Actually seeing lightning on Mt Olympus must have been fantastic!
what the hell man, my school took a field trip to a meat processing plant while you guys were climbing mountains? is this some rick riordan reference or are you being serious?
Did the ancient Greeks ever climb Olympus Mons on Mars though? I don’t think there’s any evidence they haven’t 🤔
gottem
deez nutzz
In Dan Simmons' Illium they did
@@WTfire10 Mons Pubis
That was the Annunaki 200,000 years ago, right before they came here and genetically engineered chimps to create humans to mine gold in Africa, so that they could use the gold dust to enforce their atmosphere and reverse the climate change they caused on their planet thousands of years before.
(This is really a thing some people believe, look up Zecheria Sitchin)
I actually grew up near Mt. Olympus (on the sea-facing Pieria side). I would always face the mountain in the mornings when walking to school or going to catch the bus. I often wondered if the ancients ever climbed it. Now I finally know! Thanks! :)
Ετσι ακριβώς
I would expect you to know it.
Χάχα από τον πλαταμωνα είσαι;
"wassup, jerry how was your hiking trip."
"well. bad news, guys"
This casts more light on the ancient Greeks realising that they are just as conflicted as modern people about the particulars of their beliefs. I suppose the exact idiosyncrasies really come down to the individual. I wonder if some goods were thought more tangible than others, maybe depending on their station within the pantheon.
Theologies have always existed and evolved, many schools competing. Secular people want to believe religions never evolve or are backward, but religion has always evolved as any other idea, from natural animism to some form of post-natural idealism.
In a sense, human rights are also platonic supernatural beliefs (ideals of equality and fairness, unable to be described by science).
The Greeks thought that the Gods lived in a parallel reality essentially, as in they could not see the Gods, but they knew they were still there. They knew that when they summitted the mountain they wouldn’t see their Gods.
@@josephang9927 tbh usually when I talk about the fact that religions evolve religious people are the ones that claim their religion never changed
Pagan thought most of the times is utterly conflicted with the more literal and fanatical belief of Abrahamic faith. Paganism has myths, often contradicting one another, and as many interpretations as priests AND believers themselves. Hardly ever you find prescription and forced beliefs, and spirits or precepts from other faiths may be accepted and syncretised within the belief system. It's an inclusive system, not exclusive. It suggests and adds, contrary to dogma and substraction. Sounds unfamiliar huh?
Even early Christianity was like this. That whole mindset went down the drain with the increasing temporal and spiritual power of the Roman Church and the papacy, the result of Constantine's standardisation.
Imagine an ancient Greek priest standing in front of some shrine, saying:
"Gods live in Mount Olympus!",
and some dude in the crowd goes:
"No, they don't! I was hiking there with my freinds last weekend, and we didn't see any gods..."
Priest: “Someone kill that guy”
must be fun getting decapitated
@@remainprofane7732 I just imagine Zach Hadel saying that as the priest.
@@lettersnumbers3048 you were definitely more likely to be poisoned or exiled, but you'd have to be pretty vocal against the temple, or the government
@@PixelLife101 "Don't let him have his jacket! Get em outta here!"
“The short answer: yes” 00:03
Give this man an award 🥇
On average, I probably leave less than one RUclips comment a year so maybe that'll help this land harder: I love your channel, I love this question, and I love the "Short Answer... Yes, repeatedly"
This is how you plug a book, I’ve never wanted to buy something in an ad before. Edit: before this video I mean.
I agree, well done. It is outside my budget now, I checked Amazon price, but worth a wishlist add.
Your immediate answering guaranteed my like, and I'm more than interested to listen to the context for the whole video too.
Fascinating! I'd never considered how they might view the actual mountain.
You're the best video essayist. You pose a question and you answer it within the first 3 seconds so I don't need to listen to you for an hour, but you still provide context in case I want it anyway.
Awesome video, and extra points for the short answer at the beginning, such a refreshing curteousy.
"Second comes right after first!". - Buzz Aldrin
er, i was second..
I read somewhere that Olympus may have also been the name of an early mountain tribe that dominated the early Greeks.
literally never seen or heard that theory anywhere, so you can prob assume it's bunk
@@boejudden9011 if you look on wikipedia "According to Robert S.P. Beekes the word is of pre-Greek origin and he speculates that it originally meant "mountain".[12][14] It's worth noting that the word is also probably cognate with the Mycenean Greek word 𐀄𐀬𐀠𐀊𐀍 (u-ru-pi-ja-jo) which is, most likely, a term used to describe people, or possibly an ethnic group.[15]"
So the dude was kinda right and you were wrong
Just pre-ordered the book. Thank you for all the work on this interesting and informational channel!
I paused the video to read the description on the back of your book. I was overjoyed to see that you are a Wolverine!
Go Blue!
I climbed this mountain before with some tall pale skin guy and he yelled "Zeus your son has returned, I bring the destruction of Olympus"
I’ve had this question many times when I’ve studied Ancient Greece. I mean, it’s so easy to disprove that gods physically were present. I often wondered what the general belief was. Thank you for the short answer.
Maybe Mount Olympus wasn't a physical place on Earth.
@@semiramisbonaparte1627 Bingo. that's the obvious explanation. Much like heaven was never actually supposed to be in the clouds.
Those who didn't believe in the gods definitely sought to provide proof that they didn't exist. IIRC one of things they pointed to was a tomb in Crete that was inscribed with the name Zeus. The argument was that Zeus was a real man that was later elevated to the status of god by other men, and somewhere along the line the mortal origins were forgotten.
@@semiramisbonaparte1627
For the ancient mind, there is no distinction. The unseen is just another, higher level of reality which happens to overlap the seen.
@@semiramisbonaparte1627 There's a similar belief in Judaism with Jerusalem and Mount Zion, how there is a second "heavenly" Jerusalem that is a copy of the city on earth, and that Jerusalem represents more of a conceptual ideal of the city than a physical place. Interesting stuff
Nothing like a fresh toldinstone upload. An audiobook narrated by you would slap.
An audiobook version of "Naked Statues" is coming out around the end of September. Still don't know, however, if they're going to ask me to narrate it...
@@toldinstone So you’ve got confirmation for your audiobook! Happy to hear.
The existence of temples to the Gods on the mountain is enough to convince me that the ancient Greeks did understand it to be the home of the Gods -- for the simple reason that the mountain is where they went to ritually encounter those gods. They of course did not think like we do as post-enlightenment materialists who would deny the existence of the gods in that place if toga-clad deities couldn't plainly be seen walking around up there in the way that a man could be seen.
Rather, it is clear to most people even now that when we reach the peak of a mountain, there is something special about that place. It is not like the normal places of our everyday lives, and there is no real practical reason to go to the top of a mountain. It is a spiritual experience even for the most modern person -- the ascent to something higher.
Very beautifully expressed. Thank you
Maybe the Olympus has a good reception. As some sort of divine 5g tower.
It’s kind of like that wacky theory that the pyramids of Giza were some sort of ancient wireless communication device.
@@TheAurelianProject They "triangulate" the signal.
I like this idea it’s fun
Had the same question a few months back and could only find modern climbs so just disappointingly assumed altitude sickness above 2,500m didn't lend to it happening. Thanks for the answer!
I like your profile picture
Takes much more than 2500 for altitude sickness.
@@Fabianwew Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I used to live at 2800m elevation (small gambling town in the Rockies) and the only people that ever had a problem with air were certain old people from low-lying places like New Orleans. But 2500m is the answer that google gives.
Ive been to 4000m and litterly the only thing that happened was my ears popped
Your videos are amazing, always improves my day when I see you post a new one
A childhood question of mine. I knew the answer had to be yes. I was a dreadful tresspasser as a child so I know even if there were sacred laws people would get up there somehow. But this added detail is just what tween me ordered!
Thx
I just discovered your channel, and absolutely love it! I will be buying your book!
I've thought about this so many times since I was in middle school. Thanks for the answer!
Just found this channel and man I’m glad I did what a great channel!!!
Maybe the ancient Greeks believed that it was a long distance from heaven to Earth, but the distance from heaven to the peak of a tall mountain was drastically shorter, and the gods lived in an area of heaven which was directly over Mount Olympus and therefore was sort of connected to it. Ancient Mesopotamians believed something very similar to this, which is why they built ziggurats.
Really enjoy all your work, thank you
almost book time! my reading schedule is nearly emptied in anticipation
i wanna time travel!
Congratulations on #1 on Amazon; Ancient Roman History
Considering that the Indo-European pantheon predates settled society, the myth that the gods live way up in a mountain was probably applied to whichever nearby mountain was tallest. When tribes settled in Greece, it just happened to become fixed in one location.
Yeah I saw a video a while ago about how all Indo-European religions contain elements of the beliefs of hunters from the neolithic who traveled the plains of Eastern Europe and Russia. Interesting stuff :)
much love for the short answer!
Loving your content
I love history, and your vids are intriguing...pre-ordered your book 😃
If i ever climb Olympus the first thing i'll do is to scream, "Zeus!!!! Your son has returned."
love your videos bro. Only time I willingly watch ads lol
RUclips really, really, REALLY wants me to watch this clip...so here I am.
I think our concept of mt meru is a better counter to this
THESE VIDEOS ARE SUPERB
best book title ever
Great video
I subscribed simply because he gave me the answer I wanted in the first ten seconds.
Excelent videos big fan
Now I want to hike Mt. Olympus!
Are there any pictures of ruins of this altar on Olympus?
I’m gonna have to buy your book now I mean all these little tidbits I neeed Moore
Thank you so much for that short answer thing
Thank you for the short answer
Hi Ryan, there will be an Spanish version of the Book? I will be very interested on it!
My editor claims that a Spanish edition is coming, but to the best of my knowledge the translation has not been commissioned yet. Hopefully soon...
@@toldinstone Im hoping to get there! Only if you open donations or something, people would like to take part to make real a Spanish version :)
Hellenic Paganism has a really good conceptualization of divinity.
What they actually considered the actions of the divine to be was questionable, no doubt about that, but the Greeks, and even moreso the Romans, had pretty convincing ideas of what a God is.
i can appreciate the intro
I’m starting to be so tempted to buy this book... ugh but then it’ll be spoilers for all your next videos 😩
After Tuesday's video, I will stop featuring material from the book in my videos. Believe it or not, in all of the videos I've made over the last three years, I've only used about 15% of the information that appears in "Naked Statues." If you buy the book, almost everything will be new - and none of it, starting next week, will ever be a spoiler!
@@toldinstone guess I’ll have to make a trip to the bookstore then 🥰🙏
interesting question.. can't wait to know
A really interesting question rarely which is rarely asked! Since I study mountains and ancient Greeks for some months now, I can quite safely tell that there is no tangible evidence or literary refefernce that proves that even a single person made it to the top (Mitikas)
Plutarch (2nd century) and St Augustine (4th-5th century) report on annual pilgrimages up the mountain. Ceramic plates have been found dotted around the various plateaus and passes, and burned sacrifices have been found at the Agios Antonios peak (one of the five peaks of the Olympos massif).
@@kyrrekausrud5960 Yes Indeed, but my remark was about the peak Mitikas specifically, not the highest zone of the mountain in general.. Especially the discovery of the sanctuary on St. Antonios peak had been a quite unexpected and interesting find. I have written an essay about this one recently. St Antonios peak is only about 100 meters lower than Mitikas, but the feeling you get from standing there is quite different (I have been to the mountain quite a few times). The ground is quite soily there, whereas in Mitikas, Paramitikas, Scholio and Stefani the ground is really rocky and inclined. The routes to get to Mitikas are quite adverse and can potentially be dangerous even by the standards of our times. St Antonios feels like it is near Mitikas and far at the same. I suggest that the decision to make a sanctuary there had to do mainly with practical reasons and accessibility. Furthermore the location seems to hit a sweet spot between proximity and keeping a respectful distance from the Panteon.
Holy heck mind blown. I’ve always thought of Greek mythology as being this complete ancient Greek society constant and it sounds exactly like modern religion! Some Greeks observed it, others didn’t believe in it. Good job on the video.
First guy up there must have pondered on Socrates’ fate and made up a fine story of gods and banquets all over the place. “I’m still stuffed mate, so much food they made me eat”
Thanks, I’ve wondered about that since I was a kid.
Interesting. I’ve often wondered.
"Our terrifying Gods command thunder and the ocean, they created us, and could destroy us with a single swipe."
"Where do they live?"
"Oh, over on that hill over there"
Me after finding the cliff
i now what i must do
For gods that were either everywhere, nowhere or very far away, they managed to have a lot of nooky with the mere mortals....
Zeus at least was mostly on your bed, your bath, and around whenever you got naked it seems.
You become whatever you worship, and you worship whatever you’ve become.
If people were degenerate, they projected their degeneracy onto the gods as well.
I’d love to know more about the temple he mentions on the mountain. Does anybody have any article on it? I tried searching online but i only get results about Zeus’s temple in Olympia :/
He says it's a sanctuary of Zeus. So perhaps it isn't a temple, but just an altar and a clearing or something.
I found it. Just go to images after looking up “alter of Zeus in Olympus” and scroll down a bit
People think they need to hold out on the answer but I watched because you gave the answer
The short answer thing you do is great
sub because of the short answer. what a fuckin hero
If I had lived there in the time, I would have believed that the gods did not exist in the material world on Gaia's creation unless they had a reason to, like punish humanity, hide from other gods to have affairs or to toil with mortal affairs as they see fit. Olympus would be outside the material world, because don't forget that the world is their relative by blood, as well as Tartarus and the darkness itself, they would not consider those areas their "domain" because quite frankly they are primordial incarnates that have existed for longer than time and are infinitely more powerful than them. The Gods of Olympus exist by the grace of Gaia and the Abyss alone.
But that's just my interpretation, that's what's cool about mythology, its not religion so I'm not offending anyone :)
Definitely on my climbing list.
There's also a Mount Olympus in Turkey near the eternal flames of the chimera.
That actually makes more considering how much greeks actually borrowed from anatolian hittites and hurans
@@shreyvaghela3963 You forget the Greek settlers of Anatolia. We do not know how the non Greeks called those mountains. Plus, there is Olympus (mountainous again) of Carpathos, Cyprus and Lesbus. Also, those "Olympuses" of Asia Minor are very close to the seashore in regions where Greek settlers lived. Moreover, the Hittite and Hurrian heartlands were far in the East. Thus, supposed influence (as in other cases) is on the level of speculation and almost unfounded.
This was on a playlist where I was listening to some fire rap and I thought this intro was actually pretty lit for a intro lool
Completely unfounded and not researched theory but maybe they had the temple near the summit and took the sacrifices to the peak for the gods, when they leave natural elements knock them all off the peak and every time they return either everything is gone or some wasn’t and they assume the gods would not accept part of it for some petty deity reason.
I mean if you been to mount Olympus you’ll know it’s just an oversized hill, theres probably not even a black diamond if it actually snowed enough
It’s most definitely not a hill but it’s also not comparable in size to the largest mountains and mountain ranges
@@Meeminator if you’ve been there you know you can easily climb up it without any training, it’s an oversized hill since the trail is almost completely straight leading to the summit
@@knucklesskinner253 ??? It's a mountain. Come on, man...
@@knucklesskinner253 and africa is an oversized island and the oceans are just large lakes
@@markosgelos3321 you get it dude
FINALLY I GET THE PROPER ANSWER TO THIS!
"short answer, yes"
Me: "Oh thank you"
- moves on to the next video
I feel very dumb. Im 28 years old and all this time I thought mt Olympus was fictional. I know about the mountin on Mars.
Some Greek: Climbs the mountain
Zeus: **Drunk** "Heeeey! Wazzup! Welcome to **Hicup** the Big Mountain!"
This is the exact question I asked my lecturer back in university. If the Ancient Greeks really thought their gods lived on Mt Olympus, wouldn't that belief be dealt with pretty smartly just by climbing up and taking a peek? They would probably have to retcon their religion by saying that the gods were invisible or that they didn't "really" live on the mountain etc. My lecturer did not know the answer.
I mean they(Christians/Catholics) think their gods in the clouds and let me tell you I was in a plane just the other day ain’t nothing but clouds up there
🤡
@@Fvckcorbin we do think God is in the clouds?
@@Fvckcorbin People hate Christianity yet know absolutely nothing about it as made clear by this statement
@@slavvingsquats2146 christians and Christianity proved you don't need to know anything about something to hate it
We are so materialistic that it ruins literally everything magical about the world.
That’s a shame, isn’t it? The world should be an enchanting place, but our modern conception has reduced it to nothing more than a complex machine.
I, for one, reject materialism.
Theres a Mount Olympos on Cyprus too, im under the impression it is older than the Olympus in Thessaly.
Did Ancient Romans make art for fun? Like how we doodle or do arts and crafts today. I feel like all I know about art throughout history is about only the most famous artists. Hopefully you understand what I’m trying to ask :) love your channel
We know they did graffiti that is remarkably similar to modern day graffiti so I'm sure they must have doodled. Would love to know if any of it survives, though.
@@Zikar There exists a graffito in Pompeii which is a caricature of a political candidate during an election. The caricature has a big nose just like a modern cartoon, and always reminded me of the drawings in the Asterix books.
Honestly the question demonstrates a very primitive view of theology. It’s like saying “have Christians ever flown an airplane?” They have and it didn’t surprise anyone to find that Jesus was actually living in the clouds with all the angels because only a child would actually think that. The Greeks knew that the gods didn’t actually live on the physical mountain of Olympus. Olympus is both a physical mountain and a mythological form, an axis mundi or the point on which the universe revolves. So by saying the gods lived on Mt. Olympus they were saying the gods lived at the center of the universe.
Yeah I passed by within viewing distance of Mount Olympus a number of times but it was always shrouded in clouds.
I love the series but wonder if I’ll be ruining the experience of reading the book if I keep indulging 😅
Same
Don't worry! I have reserved all the best stuff for the book. In all my videos, I use only a very small fraction of the material you'll find in "Naked Statues." Everything in this video, for example, came from a single page.
@@toldinstone proof a picture is worth a 1000 words
Everywhere, nowhere, or very far away :)
Where is the mosaic at 1:51 from?
The Archaeological Museum of Rhodes
The gods just moved somewhere else once random people started climbing their mountain.
lovely. would you like to tell everybody where the mountain is located??
Did they ever climb mount olympus in Cyprus I recently realized there were 2 mountains in ancient greece called like this XD
There were actually quite a few mountains named Olympus in the Greek world (scholars to speculate that "Olympus" meant something like "mountain" in a pre-Greek language). In any case, the Greeks definitely climbed the Mount Olympus in Cyprus, since there was a temple of Aphrodite near the top.
@@toldinstone Thanks! :)
Okay. As an indian we have mt meru. But in reality there is no physical mountain named meru not on Himalayas nor anywhere. It's mythical kind of like axis mundi. There is a mundi going through the entire universe and it only passes through earth.
Maybe the Mycenaean Greeks or even before believed that, before the resources to climb a large mountain were available? That would make a lot of sense, then later Greeks got curious, found nothing up there, and revised the myths to make a little more sense.
I wonder if there was a guy who climbed it and looked around for all the gods and then he was just like “Those bastards lied to me.”
Did the Greeks ever reach Northern Europe?
Yup
Search about Hyperborea.
@Bronski Turboski I always liked the fact that the Greeks expressed scepticism of Pytheas's book because he described the sea as becoming "congealed" in Northern Europe, clearly describing sea ice. You can go further back than that to the Odyssey, where Homer at one stage describes people living so far north that they can fit in two working days in one 24 hour period - describing the "midnight sun" in summertime.
it bothers me that so many people are disconnected with the esoteric nature of western societies. mountains are always an interesting 'as above so below' dynamic
They'd rather make memes and donate to BLTM.
I climbed olympus back in 348 BCE, When i woke up, i felt a hand made of light touch me and i woke up in 2008 as a 4 year old. Weird... I could've sworn i was studying under someone...
I had a stroke trying to read and understand what just happened
For a second I thought one of the pictures was mount chillad from gta 5
Greeks' brains were configured differently to ours. They used myth in the same way we today use metaphor, as a language tool to help describe things which are difficult to describe with simple words. These men were much smarter than us and operated on more levels.
I've climbed Olympus just so I could get an eagle view of the top.
Next video: Did Grecians swim in lakes?
Woah I always wondered