The arguably greatest advancement of Athens was democracy. As you know democracy is what is used today in many western nations such as the US, UK, Spain, etc. Athens however did not invent the democracy, they use, they invented direct democracy. Direct democracy is when all decisions in government are voted upon by the people, unlike what is used today. Today nations use representative democracy which Rome invented. It’s what is used today when people are elected to make decisions and was created because of the vast distance between the people living in the Roman empire. In direct in direct democracy there were still people in charge, there were 9 of them. They were in charge of organizing the assembly (the place where the people met to vote) and counted/in charge of people that counted votes. The things discussed in the assembly would be anything from decisions on how the government should spend its money, to logistical decisions for the army, to diplomatic relations. There was also another group, made up of 500 people randomly picked to be part of a group that decided the main topics of what would be discussed in the assembly. The people picked would stay there for a year and would be able to stay for another year if they wanted to; the group also made sure government administrations did their job. There was also a higher group made of 50 people, the people there rotated every year, they also had a chairman, the chairman was chosen randomly each day. The chairman would keep the key to the treasury (where the money was stored); then when the next day came, he would give the key and the position of head of the government to the newly selected guy. While it is a very revolutionary idea only about 3,000 Athenians actively participated in politics. This was probably due to most people having to work all day just to get by. Also, it was only about 100 people that controlled the assembly and the rest of the government. These people were basically always the richest, most well-spoken, influential people. You could probably guess that though because sadly, throughout history, and even today to a good degree, these types of people are always the ones that end up getting in power.
Another great advancement of Athens was study and practice of medicine. Before people thought that diseases were punishment from the gods and getting cured was a gift from the gods. From 600-550 BC in Athens people started to conducted studies; it was found that certain things can influence how a disease acted/how its symptoms changed. Things such as temperature and any past trauma affected overall health and symptoms of diseases. It was also found that your resilience to things in general and more physical well-being meant you were less likely to get sick, and if you did, you were likely to have less severe symptoms. Considering the time, it really is amazing that people thought beyond what they thought controlled everything, looking for real ways things happened and ignoring the fairy tales people created (religion).
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The final great invention of Athens I will list is their advancements in astronomy. Using the position of the polar star between Greece and Egypt he assumed that the Earth is about 400,000 stades. Today we don’t know how long a stadia is, but we can assume that 400,000 would be 64,000 kilometers. They were also the first people to think the earth is round, they probably thought this at first due to magic reasons. They then however, after realizing the moon glowed due to light reflecting and how/why eclipses worked they thought that due to the earth’s shadow on the moon that it was a sphere, not a flat lid or floating on water like people had thought before.
In conclusion, whether it be innovations in how the government is run to medical advances that saved many, many people to the first objective looks at things bigger than themselves, Athens inventions have shaped history and society.
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