Twelve hundred years of Pythagoras' cultural history

I post normally on Wednesday afternoons, but I've fielded some questions on last week's post that I wanted to address without taking space away from new topics. It is tempting to trace western cultural roots to the Greeks, but this is arbitrary: the reason they are given special emphasis is that they are the earliest culture to leave behind writing. Prior to, say, 550BC there is no real historical record. Prior to about 700BC there is little-to-no literary record. The reason, again, is the development of alphabets: the people's writing. For at least a millennium prior to that, writing was mainly used by centralized governments and religious authorities. Their purposes seemed mainly to have been religious observation, mundane record keeping and other functionary necessities, and state propaganda (inscriptions on monuments, etc). Exceptions certainly exist, such as the epic of Gilgamesh, the code of Hammurabi, and some scientific/technical works such as astronomical observations, mathematical texts, harvesting and planting techniques, etc.

Pythagoras' cultural inheritance would have seemed rather thin to us, which may help explain why he travelled so far to gather knowledge---he was seeking out the remnant heritage of the destroyed high cultures of a past age. With no writing, very little was handed down through the Greek dark age aside from the assortment of myths and observances, along with a more-or-less confining field of religious strictures (exemplified by Hesiod's Works and Days) of the isolated cultures that settled down after the fall of the old realms.

For us in the modern world, knowledge is sought in the present, or in the future. Pythagoras, too, wanted to break out of the outmoded traditions that were perhaps useful to a simpler age, but no more. But in his time, knowledge lay in a deep, vanquished past.

For the visual among us, I am attaching a rough historical timeline of the eras surrounding Pythagoras: from the fall of the great empires, through the long dark ages, and on to the next ages of empires.