Duane W. answered • 11/07/21
Duane...Effective History, Classical Studies Teacher
This is a question where we must look back in time many thousands of years. Humanity as a species are wanderers. THere have been many migrations over the centuries. I think the biggest factor here is geography. For instance, when the Indo-Europeans entered Europe proper, they encountered many plants, anima;s and geographic features that they had never encountered before, thus they created new words, or in the case of the ancestors of the Greeks, borrowed words from the previous inhabitants because these things had to be identified. One can see the same process at work in early America. European settlers borrowed Native American names for tivers, mountains, and many things. A perfect exampl of this process is to be found in Greece, where words ending in assos, or ossos were borrowed from the Pelasgians and Minoans who either lived in Greece already, or heavily influenced the indigenous population. The early protp-Greek tribesmen came from the steppes of Russia and knew nothing about the sea, so when they came to Greece they borrowed the Minoan word, thalassa and it has come down into modern Greek from ancient times as the word for the sea.
The lack of education in Europe before 1700 was due to two main factors in my mind. One, the Church initially frowned on it because that would mean people would be able to read, process and form opinons about the bible, which would undermine Church power and authority. Two, the nobility and the aritocracy at a later date tried to suppress it for the same reason once the Industrial Revoution occurred. Knowledge gives us power, especially the power to know when we are being exploited. In ancient Sumer only the sons of priests could gain an education initially. That changed over the course of time as the merchant(middle class) developed. Previous to the 19th century most education was expensive and private. Publically funded schools did not exist. This kept knowledge in the hands of the few, enabling them to keep themselves in power. The same occurred in the South before the Civil War, where it was against the law to teach slaves to read. Always remember: knowledge empowers people.
