Throughout the Roman empire, meanders also are prevalent on pavement mosaics found in Roman villas, because Greek motifs often were adopted into Roman artwork and cultural traditions. The shield of Philip II of Macedon, conserved in the museum of Vergina, is decorated with multiple symbols of the meander. Alternatively, very ocean-like patterns of waves also appeared in the same format as meanders, which also may be thought of as the guilloche pattern. Greek vases, especially during their Geometric Period, likely were the main reason for the widespread use of Hellenic meanders. Perhaps symbolizing infinity and unity, many ancient Greek temples incorporated the sign of the meander. In ancient Greece meanders were among the most important cultural symbols.
For example, the guilloche on the depiction of the Investiture of Zimri-Lim at Mari contains the motif. It appears as space filling curves in the Ancient Near East. What often is described as the Hellenic meander, in fact, has a pre-Greek history.
A meander motif also appears in prehistoric Mayan design motifs in the western hemisphere, centuries before any European contacts.
202 BC) by way of trade with the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. 1000 BC -600 BC), frequently there is speculation that meanders of Greek origin may have come to China during the time of the Han Dynasty (c. Although space-filling curves have a long history in China in motifs more than 2,000 years earlier, extending back to Zhukaigou Culture (c. 1045 BC), and many traditional buildings in and around China still bear geometric designs almost identical to meanders. The meander is a fundamental design motif in regions far from a Hellenic orbit: labyrinthine meanders ("thunder" pattern ) appear in bands and as infill on Shang bronzes (c. The design is common to the present-day in classicizing architecture, and is adopted frequently as a decorative motif for borders for many modern printed materials. In ancient Greece they appear in many architectural friezes, and in bands on the pottery of ancient Greece from the Geometric Period onward. Meanders are common decorative elements in Greek and Roman art. On another hand, as Karl Kerenyi pointed out, "the meander is the figure of a labyrinth in linear form". On one hand, the name "meander" recalls the twisting and turning path of the Maeander River in Asia Minor (present day Turkey) that is typical of river pathways. Usually the term is used for motifs with straight lines and right angles and the many versions with rounded shapes are called running scrolls or, following the entomological origin of the term, may be identified as water wave motifs. Such a design also may be called the Greek fret or Greek key design, although these terms are modern designations even though the decorative motif appears thousands of years before that culture, thousands of miles away from Greece, and among cultures that are continents away from it. Among some Italians, these patterns are known as "Greek Lines". Meander motif in the streets of Rhodes (Greece), in pavement made from beach stonesĪ meander or meandros ( Greek: Μαίανδρος) is a decorative border constructed from a continuous line, shaped into a repeated motif.