A first evidence of the presence of man of the Neanderthal period, (600.000 – 300.000 years ago) can be found at Scalea in the Province of Cosenza in the cave of Torre Talao, where an abundance of flints and fossil fauna has been found.
Historical period starts when first Greek settlers has arrived – VIIIc. B.C... The foundation of Locri, Crotone, Sibari, Reggio, Caulonia and many other colonies, also on the Tyrrhenian coast, caused the flourishing of a great civilization.
This greek-calabrian civilization had its maximum development around the III c. B.C. and it produced men who became known throughout the world, such as Pythagoras, Milo, Zaleucus,Nosside, Timeo, Ibico and others.
Roman rule has not left remarkable traces in Calabria. The Romans built the Capua-Reggio road and tried to improve the roads of Calabria leading towards Sicily.Rome did not aim either at the Romanization or the military control.
In 61 AD St. Paul, going to Rome, landed at Reggio Calabria and the evangelization of the Region began.
During the decline of Roman Empire we had, in Calabria, the significant experience of Flavoi Aurelio Cassiodoro. He was a very close collaborator of Teodorico, who tried to promote the fusion between Romans and Barbarians and founded near Squillace a center of study and research , known as Vivariense.
The Bizantines conquer Calabria in the middle of VI c., and left so deep traces in the Calabrian culture, that they recreated, in an ideal natural surrounding an evocative corner of the Orient. In the VI and VII centuries began the immigration towards Calabria, of so-called Basilians, monks coming from East Asia, where that were persecuted by Muslims. The Basilians are important because they preserved codices, sacred images, works of art from destruction and because they kept alive great Greek-Bizantine cultural traditions.
The Muslims conquer Sicily in X c. and Calabria was not safe place to live. It was a lot struggles between Muslims and Christians during X – XII cc. Help was unusual – the Normans. In the year 1049 starts Norman period in Calabria’s history. The Normans reorganized the administration of territory and linked it efficiently with a central authority. They also bring and plant Latin culture instead of Greek.
The Angevins dynasty in XIII - XIV centuries fail to organized strong state in the Calabria. While in Europe the great absolute monarchies were developing, in Calabria the unitary state of Frederick II was crumbling.
The Aragonese domination began with the conquest of the kingdom of Naples by Alfonso d’Aragona(1442) and it was marked by internal struggles amongst the barons or between Aragonese and Angevins.
The Neapolitan domination, tolerated by the population who preferred the tyrrany of a king to the more insistent oppression of the local barons seemed destined to last for a long time although it was responsible for a general decadence of the region: but one cannot forget that to the Neapolitan State is owed some very important industrial enterprises in the steelworks at Mongiana and in the textile industry.
The earthquake of 1783 and the projects made by engineers of half Europe for the reconstruction of the inhabited areas dew the attention of the whole world to Calabria but the glorious epoch of civic splendor tied to Magna Grecia and Cassiodorus is a faraway memory.
When it seemed that all must remain like this in state of immobility without hope, the echo of “Spring of Nations” in 1848 with its idea of the Italian Risorgimento arrived here. The Carboneria spread everywhere and one could count patriots by the hundred. The idea of Unity was welcomed impetuously by the Calabrians but it was a deception: the illusion had already gone from the revolutionaries during the war. Afterwards we had a long and complete lack of interest on the part of the Italian Government until the fifties when with the Casa per il Mezzogiorno finally begins a political programme for the development of the region with varying results in the successive decades.
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