What is the Epimenides' Sleep? - The incredible story of the famous sage Epimenides

One of the most amazing, but also paradoxical stories from the time of ancient Greece is undoubtedly the story of Epimenides.

Both the concept of the cave and the concept of descending into it is not a simple matter, but hides a very serious initiation, connected with the revelation of secrets about life and death. Epimenides, one of the most famous sages who ever lived in Crete, slept in a cave for 57 whole years!

Epimenides is considered one of the most famous sages who ever lived in Crete. He was not only a religious teacher, but also known for his divination and prophetic abilities.

However, perhaps the knowledge of the most important event of his life has been preserved, thanks to which he has remained known until today.

Thus, his father once lost one of his sheep and sent his son Epimenides to the field where the sheep was lost, to look for it and bring it back.

Epimenides actually set out to find the sheep, but it seems that he got confused along the way and instead of reaching the field his father had shown him, he got lost and accidentally entered a cave. Being tired from the search for the sheep, he fell asleep.

What is particularly impressive, however, is that Epimenides slept in this cave for a whole 57 years! The memory of this paradoxical event has been preserved until our days by the proverbial phrase "Epimenides’ sleep".

But our story does not end here.

When Epimenides woke up, he went in search of the sheep again, believing that he had slept only a few hours.

But soon, in the effort of his new searching, he realized to his surprise that during his sleep everything around him had changed, since he could no longer recognize anything of what he knew before falling asleep.

The field had changed hands, even his village was undergoing very large and inexplicable changes, but even as he tried to find his own people, he found that he was no longer where he was before falling asleep.

Very soon Epimenides found that most of the people he knew had already died. Nevertheless, at some point he managed to find his brother, who by now was an old man and explained to him exactly what had actually happened.

Perhaps this event of Epimenides' sleep would not be so important if we did not have an important testimony from Diogenes Laertius.

In his book on Pythagoras, Diogenes Laertius mentions that Pythagoras traveled almost the entire world known at that time in order to come into possession of all the important initiations. On his way of searching the truth Pythagoras also visited Crete to meet Epimenides.

The esoteric knowledge that Epimenides possessed was thus so important that even Pythagoras aspired to be initiated by him and to complete his initiation, when together they descended into the famous "Idaeon andron", the cave where Zeus, the highest of the gods,  was born.

The revealing ancient text reads as follows:

...when he was in Crete with Epimenides, he came down to Idaeon andron

...Then (Pythagoras) visited Crete and descended to Idaion Andron accompanied by Epimenides, but also in Egypt to the depths;

but he also visited the shelters of the temples of Egypt.

and learned about the gods in secret.

Thus he learned the secret mysteries about the nature of the gods.

As we can see, Pythagoras shows a special predilection for visiting hidden mystical places in different parts of the planet, which are completely heterogeneous among themselves in terms of their religious beliefs.

With his attitude he proves that the inner initiation is in any case a valuable empirical knowledge necessary for our personal development.

We should add that "Idaion Andron" is a cave on a plateau on Mount Idi (Psiloritis) in Crete, where, according to Greek mythology, Zeus was brought up.

Today it is an important archeological site where excavations have been carried out since 1884 and various objects (archaic statuettes, vials, bronze shields) even from the Minoan period have been discovered.

It is therefore very likely that inside the “Idaion Andron” initiations took place on how to receive a divine education, similar to that of Zeus.

So, one of the results of this "Epimenides sleep" is the revelation of very important hidden secrets related to the understanding of the nature of God.

Undoubtedly, this is the highest knowledge that one can acquire and it can reveal to one the deepest meaning and the ultimate purpose of life, because both the concept of the cave and the concept of descending into it are not one and the same. It hides a very serious initiation, connected with the revelation of secrets about life and death.

Epimenides also became the occasion of a well-known paradox. In one of his poems he had written: "Cretans are always liars".

In the 19th century, on the basis of this sentence, the following logical paradox was formulated, also known as the Epimenides paradox: Epimenides says that all Cretans are liars, Epimenides is a Cretan, therefore Epimenides lies, therefore Cretans tell the truth, therefore Epimenides tells the truth, therefore Cretans are liars, and so on.

Epimenides' phrase was used by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Bishop of Crete, Titus, to rebuke the Cretans for their errors in the words of one of their own: "A prophet of their own said them; Cretans, you are liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." (1:12).

Cyprus: Mystery around a 9000 year old circular building

The use of a building of monumental proportions discovered on Mount Troodos by the excavation team of Nikos Efstratiou, professor of prehistoric archeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, remains unknown. The mystery of the prehistory of Cyprus is enriched.

The building, dated to an early phase of the Ceramic Neolithic around the middle of the 7th millennium BC, was discovered on Mount Troodos at an altitude of 500 meters, surprising researchers who previously believed that prehistoric developments, especially those of the Ceramic Neolithic period, exclusively affected coastal areas and sites in Cyprus, such as Choirokoitia-Vouni, Kalavasos-Tenda and Apostolos Andreas-Kastro.

"The existence of such a stable, clean and large building in an area that was not the center of development is puzzling, and its further study will lead to useful conclusions," says Professor Nikos Efstratiou.

Who could erect a monumental building in an isolated position? And most importantly, what was the purpose of this building in a "camp" of hunter-gatherers in the upper part of the Xeros Valley, in the area of Paphos? The scientific community in Greece and Cyprus considers any hypothesis premature. It is possible that this was a meeting place for groups of breeders, but this also needs to be studied in depth to be confirmed. However, it reinforces the assessment of archeologists that during the early prehistoric years Mount Troodos was not an area where exclusively seasonal and marginal activities were carried out (hunting, gathering food), but on the contrary defined the constant presence of farmers and breeders, groups characterized, among other things, by intense mobility, contacts and the transport of raw materials such as picrolite - a type of stone with a bright blue color that came down the river.

The building was located in Agios Ioannis/Bretsia-Ano Roudia. It is a stone building with a diameter of at least 7 meters, extremely carefully constructed, with a double row of buildings preserved in very good condition, while inside there are indications of constructions - possibly rectangular columns. Smaller buildings and a garbage dump were also found. According to Mr. Efstratiou, the movable finds include a number of animal bones (sheep, goats, foxes), flint jewelry, chipped flint tools, ground tools and stone vessels.

It is noted that the 7th millennium BC for Cyprus is without the presence of pottery (non-ceramic phase), a strange fact, as throughout the mainland environment, pottery was already in use. Why communities in Cyprus were so late in making and using ceramic vessels is an inexplicable problem for researchers. The prevailing opinion is that prehistoric Cypriot society, because of its insular isolation, may have developed a conservatism that characterized many aspects of its tradition. The building's enigmatic use worries the scholarly community in Greece and Cyprus, while its unveiling upends the image of cultural peripherality for the mountainous Cypriot hinterland. Moreover, the new site joins the few excavations from the "pig-farming phase" (ca. 6400-5,600 B.C.) explored so far at Cyprus.

The building was located only a few dozen meters from the chronologically oldest hunting camp of the 9th millennium, that of Agios Ioannis/Bretsia-Roudia, which has been systematically excavated in recent years by the team of N. Efstratiou. During the excavations, the professor came across finds from the period after 6,500 BC and suspected that something else might have been located a little higher up. So he climbed up a few meters and came across a building of monumental proportions that seems to overturn much of what Cyprus knew until today about its cultural tradition and the role of the hinterland in prehistoric development.

The research was carried out in 2019 in two phases, in June and in November, with funds secured by the Rectorate of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and thanks to the kind sponsorship of Aegean Airlines, which, as every year, funds the transition of the research team. Apart from the use of the impressive circular building, the archaeologists now want to find out if it is the only building on the site or if this particular extensive terrace includes other structures with similar or different layouts and sizes. According to archaeologists from the Cyprus Antiquities Authority, there are already superficial indications that the Ano Roudia Terrace area most likely houses other buildings that are still waiting to be discovered. For example, traces of a stone enclosure(?) that may have encompassed the entire site have already been detected along the western side of the terrace and at various locations.

The presence of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Cyprus dates back at least to the 1960s, when George Bakalakis, Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, carried out excavations at Athienou in the province of Larnaca, an area that appears to have been inhabited since the 14th century BC. After that, there was no university excavation on the island for several years until N. Efstratiou came there in 2006-2007. As a professor of prehistoric archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, he researched Pindos for years and discovered archaeological finds that Neanderthals moved and hunted along the mountain peaks, while until recently it was known that they moved in the plains and other lower-lying areas.

"Having studied the importance of mountains in the development of prehistory, I thought it would be interesting to go to Cyprus and see what happened on Mount Troodos. The unveiling of the monumental building provides new information, and the study of the material will shed even more light on the prehistory of the island. We believe that the continuation of A.U.Th.'s excavations in Cyprus will also unearth other important finds from early prehistory and, most importantly, overturn years of stereotypes about the organization of Cypriot society thousands of years ago", he says.

It is pointed out that the early prehistory of Cyprus is today one of the most interesting and challenging topics in the archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean, covering a wide range of research and interpretation issues. This is, after all, the reason why it has rightly been the focus of international research interest in recent years. To date, the arrival of groups of hunters and food gatherers on the island in the mid-11th millennium BC and then of the "first farmers", who brought with them sophisticated forms of spatial, social, and economic organization from the continental Near East has been documented. For scholars, the narrative of the early prehistory of Cyprus represents an extremely interesting attempt at a prehistoric reconstruction of an island territory and the challenges it faced.

Greek Games: How Ancient Greek Philosophy Humanizes Rational Choice Theory

“The history of thinking about rational choice is an important yet long neglected facet of the history of democracy.”

Josiah Ober

In 1949, E.R. Dodds gave the Sather Classical Lectures and soon thereafter published a hugely influential book, The Greeks and the Irrational. When invited to give the 2019 Sather Lectures, I honored his 70th anniversary by choosing a topic that dropped just two letters from Dodds’ title. 

Developed from those lectures, my new book The Greeks and the Rational asks two main questions: Why is social cooperation so difficult? And how is it even possible? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary theories of rational agency and ancient Greek theories of practical reasoning. They arise because humans are at once deeply interdependent social creatures (“political animals” in Aristotle’s famous description) and highly sophisticated calculators of advantage. Because we are interdependent members of social communities, it is essential that we cooperate with one another in seeking our common welfare. But because individual self-interest can be maximized by selfishly taking advantage of others’ cooperation, we are constantly at risk of being preyed upon by opportunistic free riders. Societies that over-compensate for that risk are insufficiently cooperative and under-supply common goods. But societies that fail to detect and punish free-riding are vulnerable to the machinations of an unscrupulous few.

Since the mid-20th century, theorists of decision and games, working in the fields of mathematics, economics, and political science have come up with answers to these key questions about humanity. Their answers concern choice and action, and are predicated on a set of intuitions about human motivation, cognition, desire, and belief. Those intuitions were translated into mathematical formulae, so that choice problems and solutions could be expressed algebraically. The resulting body of “rational choice theory” describes the conditions under which self-interested agents will (or won’t) choose cooperation.

Rational choice theory has been highly influential but remains controversial. Some pioneering choice theorists were very concerned with the threat of nuclear warfare. Mathematical techniques have been widely adopted by economists and political scientists seeking to better understand markets and political institutions. As a result, modern choice theory is sometimes regarded as a dehumanizing product of a historically unprecedented era, one in which the terrifying shadow of nuclear catastrophe is uneasily conjoined with a capitalistic celebration of greed.

My book shows that ancient Greek writers ­– philosophers, historians, and dramatists – shared a set of intuitions about motivation and action that were strikingly similar to the intuitions underpinning contemporary rational choice theory. The Greek intuitions were refined into a general theory that sought to explain the role of self-interest in human behavior. Moreover, anticipating modern choice theorists who teach their readers to be effective strategic reasoners (Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff, The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life), the Greek Sophists made their students experts in the use of strategic reasoning – for good or ill. Although the Greeks never developed the algebraic expression that is so characteristic of modern choice theory, the similarity between ancient and modern explanations of strategic behavior shows that the modern rational choice theory is not merely a product of uniquely modern circumstances.

The ancient Greek theorists of choice are especially worthy of our attention because they conjoin assumptions about individual self-interest with a concern for practical limits on rationality. As experimental psychologists and behavioral economists have shown, real people seldom act in the very narrowly self-interested way that early choice theory predicted. The Greek historians Thucydides and Herodotus were likewise fascinated with the gap between the theory of purely self-interested strategic rationality and observed behavior. Greek lawmakers, most notably in Athens, employed assumptions about rational behavior, and about expected deviations from perfect rationality, in designing and revising the institutions that enabled a mass of citizens to rule themselves. The history of thinking about rational choice is an important yet long neglected facet of the history of democracy.

Plato and Aristotle built the theory of motivation and choice associated with the Sophists into the foundation of their ethical and political theorizing. But they went a big step further. Like the Sophists, they assumed that rational agents gained their desired ends by making strategic choices among available options. The philosophers then added that truly rational agents rationally choose their desires. This advanced form of ethical rationality eventually came to be identified with rationality itself.

My book shows that the Greek philosophers, like the historians and dramatists, were active participants in a broader intellectual community concerned with both theory and practice. A community of ethically rational persons would not raise questions about cooperation. But the Greek philosophers knew that most of us are not saints. They saw that political philosophy must account for the problems of cooperation that arise because humans are at once strategically rational and only imperfectly so.

The big questions about cooperation are not uniquely or even especially modern. The Greeks came up with compelling answers to those questions, and they did so without resorting to advanced mathematics. Greek thinkers could not have solved all of today’s cooperation problems. Yet they can show us that these problems arise because we are human, not because we are modern. By reference to ancient Greek thought, we see more clearly that investigating rational choice-making is not a dehumanizing exercise. It does not reduce humans to mechanical calculators of costs and benefits. Indeed, it is an inherently humanistic undertaking – a vital part of our ongoing inquiry into the distinctive beings we are.

This Drone Accidentally Found an Abandoned Area and Made a Historical Important Discovery

There have been a lot of discoveries and many inventions that have become a thing purely due to a serendipitous moment. When luck, timing, and fate come together, some pretty amazing things can happen. In this video, we’ll take a look at some of the most astonishing things that were discovered by pure chance!

From a mysterious shell grotto to a terrifying Chinese mummy, here are 15 most amazing accidental historical discoveries.

The Real Lost World: New Caledonia

"The Lost World" is often seen in media, in things like King Kong's Skull Island, Jurassic Park, or your local Walmart. But there is an actual lost island out there, which harbors a diverse array of bizarre and unique species from ages past. The wonderful, but vulnerable, New Caledonia.

12 Most Strange And Incredible Finds In The Forest

There’s a reason so many fairy tales and folk legends warn us about wandering into the depths of a forest. They’re dark, they’re scary, and it’s easy to get lost in them. We all know that fairy tales aren’t real, but there’s still plenty of reason to be wary of what you might find in a forest. On the other hand, you might come across an amazing sight of the kind you’re about to see in this video!

Archaeologists Discover the Secrets of Egypts First Pharaoh

They say that all great journeys begin with a single step, and likewise did one of the oldest known empires in history. Long before the rule of Rameses the Great, who built more monuments than any other pharaoh and was famous for fathering some 200 children, or King Tut, whose youth, early death, and tomb discovery placed him at the forefront of Egyptian history, there was a very significant but far less well-known king who paved the way for all of them and was responsible for the birth of this civilization that fascinates archaeologists even today.

In today’s video, we will see who was the pioneer of this extraordinary society that lasted for more than 3000 years!

Have Archeologists Found The Real Tomb Of Christ?

The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a documentary which makes a case that the 2,000-year-old "Tomb of the Ten Ossuaries" belonged to the family of Jesus of Nazareth. Watch the documentary below!

Where does gold come from?

Did you know that gold is extraterrestrial? Instead of arising from our planet’s rocky crust, it was actually cooked up in space and is present on Earth because of cataclysmic stellar explosions called supernovae. CERN Scientist David Lunney outlines the incredible journey of gold from space to Earth.

Three Ancient Mysteries Of Legendary Cities Long Lost

In this series, we travel to the buried remains of some of the Ancient World's most enduring mysteries. From the Angkor Wat, to the buried legions of the Terracotta Army, to the long-lost city of Troy.

Socrates: Greatest Quotes on Life

Socrates was an Ancient Greek philosopher who is credited as founding western philosophy. This video contains some of his wisest quotes that have been fully narrated by our voice actor.

A good quote can offer a lifetime of experience in a simple sentence or statement. They are lessons forged through the overcoming of obstacles and set backs that are passed on to others like a baton in a relay race. They say, "here's what I learned, now use it and go even further."

4 Prehistoric Animals That Scientist Got Wrong

Paleontology is a fascinating field that utilizes an array of meticulous methods to best depict what the creatures of old were like: extinct dinosaurs, mammals, reptiles, you name it. However, even though scientists have come a long way in this area, it doesn’t mean it was a smooth road. And through the years, there have been more than a few mistakes, and sometimes a mistake is so significant, it changes how we think about a certain animal, but the silver lining (as seen with these 4 creatures) is that these giant mishaps make for interesting discussions.

20,000-Year-Old Ice Age Mystery Solved

Most of us will have seen the many examples of Palaeolithic cave art, beautifully drawn and coloured and dominated by animal imagery. Ice Age humans were so much more than mere survival specialists; they were so much more than nomadic hunter gatherers.

Our ancient ancestors were not simple people. They could build intricate houses from the bones of mammoths, they created and perfected the art of stone tool making, they accurately shaped animals from stone, they had a culture, burial rites and belief systems and yes, from Europe to Siberia and beyond, they were able to survive the harsh conditions of the Ice Age.

Their paintings though are truly incredible and this stone canvas in the Lascaux Cave is arguably one of humanity’s greatest artistic achievements.

Having a personal interest in Ice Age cultures meant I was fascinated to read the news this week, that a furniture conservator, an amateur called Ben Bacon may have solved a truly ancient mystery – the meaning behind seemingly random, markings – lines, dots and shapes – that were painted next to or onto animals by Ice Age artists.

Mr Bacon suspected that these markings had a specific meaning, an idea shared by many archaeologists, but amazingly, it’s an amateur that may have solved it. They're charting the mating seasons of various animals according to an ancient lunar calendar! Watch the video to learn more!

Mysterious Ancient Egyptian Discovery That Will Blow Your Mind

The history of Ancient Egypt is one of the most intriguing eras in human history, which has been researched for thousands of years. There is much conjecture regarding what Ancient Egyptians actually looked like, even though we have many surviving artifacts from this time period. There is a common trope in Western drama where Egyptians have light complexion or dark hair. Is that really the case, though? Alternatively, did ancient Egyptians have a black race?