Origins of Ancient Greece

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  • tchaiku
    Member
    • Nov 2016
    • 786

    Originally posted by Amphipolis View Post
    Readers should be warned that this is the work of an "alternative" author called Edo Nyland, not a scientist.

    Here's something enlightening from a review of one of Nyland's book: Odysseus and the Sea Peoples: A Bronze Age History of Scotland


    “...until I hold my breath.


    A century ago Samuel Butler built a case that "The Odyssey" was written by a woman in Sicily. George Bernard Shaw listened to one of Butler's lectures and became convinced. Robert Graves, author of "I, Claudius" was sufficiently intrigued that he later wrote a novel with Butler's claims as the basis. Whether true or not, it's generally agreed that "The Iliad" had a different, earlier author.

    However, the gyst of this book is that the story of Odysseus was borrowed by the Greeks from the British Isles, and that when restored to what is in Nyland's opinion their correct context, 1000 years is added to Scottish and Irish history. In a way, Nyland follows a number of others before him, such as whoever claimed that someone named Brutus fled Troy and founded Britain, or Vergil who composed "The Aeneid" to create a mythic past for Rome, or even those who sinisterly claim that somehow the Europeans are the real Jews and the modern Jews imposters, or Martin Bernal who claims all kinds of things.

    Following an historian named Edward Furlong, Nyland finds the supposed British roots to placenames and other words in the Odyssey. He also links the ancient Ogam inscriptions of the Celts (a writing system that is quite pre-Roman, not "early Christian" as Nyland states, and found throughout western Europe at the very least) with Basque. He assures us that the tale has been "dreadfully distorted and added to", which is something I'd apply to Nyland's book.

    It's still worth reading, because of the actual historical details he includes, and entertaining because of his unsubstantiated leaps. Go ahead, give it a try.

    Nyland used to have a website only. The website was still up last I checked, complete with the warning that he isn't "Dr. Edo Nyland, professor emeritus of geo-physics at the University of Alberta".”
    Thank you for this.

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    • tchaiku
      Member
      • Nov 2016
      • 786

      Originally posted by tchaiku View Post
      PYLOS WAS PREPARING FOR THE ATTACK
      "One of the most important tablets is entitled: 'Thus the watchers are guarding the coasts : command of Maleus at Owitono... 50 men of Owitono to go to Oikhalia, command of Nedwatas.... 20 men of Kyparssia at Aruwote, 10 Kyparissia men at Aithalewes.... command of Tros at Ro'owa: Kadasijo a shareholder, performing feudal service.... 110 men from Oikhalia to Aratuwa. Some of the last tablets written at Pylos speak of rowers being drawn from five places to go to Pleuron on the coast. A second list, incomplete, numbers 443 rowers, crews for at least fifteen ships. A much larger list speaks of 700 men as defensive troops; gaps on the tablet suggest that when complete, around 1000 men were marked down, the equivalent of a force of 30 ships".
      This one is from Micheal Wood.

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      • Starling
        Member
        • Sep 2017
        • 153

        The religious war stuff seems unlikely. It's too similar to all those invasion theories that assume cultural or population shifts have to happen violently. More probably the rival patriarchal cult simply overtook the matriarchal one over time. I remember something about Pandora originally being 'all-giver' rather than 'all given', likely being an aspect of the mother goddess or at least a far more benevolent iteration of the first woman than she's come to be portrayed due to deliberately misogynistic retellings from Athens. The change didn't just instantly happen so much as the original version was gradually overtaken in the following centuries.

        In any case pre Indo European languages seem to be categorized as languages spoken before the arrival of Indo European populations rather than by how related they are to each other so I'm not finding anything about the degree of relation between Basque and Ainu.

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        • tchaiku
          Member
          • Nov 2016
          • 786

          It is interesting but at the same time it sounds fishy. One can use this tactic and get a completely different story.

          However the Mycenaean langauge is questionably Greek at best.

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          • Amphipolis
            Banned
            • Aug 2014
            • 1328

            Originally posted by tchaiku View Post
            However the Mycenaean langauge is questionably Greek at best.
            If it was questionably Greek it wouldn't have been deciphered.

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            • Starling
              Member
              • Sep 2017
              • 153

              Doesn't matter because Greek substitutes Hellene, which wasn't in use until the Dorians. Regardless of linguistic relation calling the Mycenaean language Greek is fallacious. Also there's all those 'pre-Greek' words that indicate a substratum of about 1-5 different languages, one of them Pelasgian. Since it's detailed how the Dorians adopted the local language after they showed up traces of their original language were likely added to the mix as well. Mycenaean and the later Greek language are at least different enough to be classified as separate languages.

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              • tchaiku
                Member
                • Nov 2016
                • 786



                The similarities are still striking though. You see lot of influence in Classic Greece, the vases, arts etc. My guess is that the Mycenaeans would probably be the Pelasgians.
                Last edited by tchaiku; 11-12-2017, 02:21 AM.

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                • Starling
                  Member
                  • Sep 2017
                  • 153

                  I found this one too, though I'm not sure where it's from or how reliable it is but not much else of worth turned up when I looked up Pelasgians.



                  To my understanding the Mycenaean civilization was a mix of Egyptian, Phoenician and probably what remained of the Minoan civilization as well as the Pelasgians. Perseus' wife Andromeda was Ethiopian so they may have had a presence there too.

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                  • tchaiku
                    Member
                    • Nov 2016
                    • 786

                    Homer uses the word ''xanthos'' to describe the Achaeans. Which means ''fair'' ''golden'' as in fair haired Achaeans. I don't think the Mycenaeans were really fair, the ancient DNA says so. Therefore I guess Homer must've been lying. I am pretty sure the Hellenes were not blonde too, but still.

                    Now I really like the tribute that the Hellenes paid to Egyptians;
                    “You Greeks are children”. That’s what an Egyptian priest is supposed to have said to a visiting Greek in the 6th century BC. And in a sense he was right. We think of Ancient Greece as, well, “ancient”, and it is now known to go back to Mycenaean culture of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. But Egyptian civilisation is much earlier than that: in the mid 2nd millennium BC it was at its height (the “New Kingdom”), but its origins go right into the 3rd millennium BC or even earlier.

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                    • Starling
                      Member
                      • Sep 2017
                      • 153

                      It's important to remember the relativeness of colour terms. Blue was pale, rus means blond but is clearly related to roux/rousse, which refers to red. These days it seems to be a common misconception that 'fair' means 'white' skin and platinum blond hair but the term basically just means lighter in relation to the usual, regardless of how dark the usual colour is.

                      Around the Mediterranean, fair is more likely to be used to distinguish between black hair and brown or dark brown and lighter brown, as well as between differing shades of tan and brown skin tones. Given that blue eyes were associated with misfortune and blindness it'd have to be a less common phenotype, for example. Blond hair, while not necessarily absent, wouldn't be the common phenotype either, especially since they're both recessive traits and ill suited for sun exposure.

                      Some hair colour charts:





                      If Xanthos refers to hair it could easily describe shades of brown in relation to darker browns or black, as well as the darker shades of blond, which would be more likely to occur than platinum blond.

                      Outside of hair colour, if taken to mean 'golden' it could easily refer to golden brown or 'olive' skin tones. The wikipedia page for human skin colour shows an image of a South African family to demonstrate variation in skin colour:




                      A lot of them could have their skin tone described as golden, mostly in the middle row.

                      Now here are some examples of hair and skin tone combinations you wouldn't expect to see among certain ethnic groups:













                      So basically lighter hair and eye colour can crop up pretty much anywhere and not necessarily in relation to lighter skin tones. Recessive traits are easier to maintain in small populations, which is why they're more commonly found in island populations where the gene pool is more limited and isolated from other groups. In mainland populations they tend to crop up more intermittently due to being dispersed among dominant traits, which is why natural blond hair seems to be harder to find these days.
                      Last edited by Starling; 11-12-2017, 03:19 PM.

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                      • tchaiku
                        Member
                        • Nov 2016
                        • 786



                        First, let’s clarify some terms. When modern historians speak of the Myceneans, they mean inhabitants of the powerful Late Bronze Age civilization that flourished around the Aegean sea around 1600–1100 BC. This civilization was Greek, in the sense that they spoke Greek; whether the inhabitants were ancestors of the classical Greeks, we do not know. It had several power centers, such as Pylos, Mycenae, Midea, Tiryns, and Thebes, of which Mycenae is the most prominent. This civilization had rich and highly centralized states, as revealed by its grand palaces and golden grave goods. It also had extensive trade links with each other and with the Near East, as evidenced by the uniformity of pottery found at different sites.

                        Beginning around 1200 BC, a series of terrible events begin to happen that would destroy this civilization and many others around the Mediterranean. Pylos and Midea are destroyed. Mycenae is reduced to a small and insignificant village. Tiryns survived, but its palace did not. Writing is completely lost throughout the Greek world. The population plummets. Pottery is not only much less advanced, but is distinct from city to city, indicating the lack of trade. Greece, after suffering this Bronze Age collapse, is now in the Dark Ages.

                        When Greece emerged from the Dark Ages 300 years later, around 800 BC, the new civilization is completely different. The writing system now uses a different script, adapted from that of the Phoenicians. Instead of highly centralized monarchies, Greece is now divided into thousands of city states, each with their own form of government. The Greeks living after the Dark Ages knew nothing about the Mycenean civilization that preceded them except bits and pieces preserved in legend, like the Iliad and Odyssey. The world depicted in these epics, however, is a poor and seemingly illiterate society where kings have relatively limited power. Nowhere in the Iliad or Odyssey does anyone read or write, for example, and even the queens (Helen, Penelope) weave in their spare time. While there are unquestionably some remnants of Mycenean civilization in these epics—including the Trojan War, which most historians believe actually happened—the world depicted is mostly that of the Dark Ages.

                        To the Classical Greeks, therefore, Mycenae was a small town that had no special significance. I’ll let 5th century BC Athenian historian Thucydides explain:

                        Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the armament.

                        And here is Thucydides on what happened after the Trojan War:

                        Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before, some of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded subsequently to the war with Troy.

                        But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an object, the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere- the old form of government being hereditary monarchy with definite prerogatives- and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself more closely to the sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys were built; and we have Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest sea-fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans; this was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time.

                        As you can see, Thucydides didn’t know about the Mycenaean civilization, the collapse that it experienced, or the dramatic discontinuity that the Dark Ages represented. In his account, nothing dramatic happens between the Trojan War (which he probably believed to have happened circa 1200 BC) and Ameinocles going to Samos (around 700 BC).

                        Enough about the Mycenaeans. Who did the classical Greeks think they were descended from?

                        They divided themselves into 4 main tribes: Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, and Achaeans. The Ionians inhabited Athens and cities along the western coast of modern Turkey. Both Herodotus and Strabo agree that they are of Athenian descent (which is not to say that they’re right). The Dorians inhabited mostly the Peloponnese, and were said to have migrated from the north-western parts of Greece. The Aeolians were said to originate from Thessaly; Boetians were allegedly descended from a group of Aeolians driven from Thessaly, as Thucydides tells us in the quote above. The Achaeans are the most fascinating bunch. Homer uses “Achaeans” as a generic term for all Greeks, but the classical Greeks used it to refer to people inhabiting the region of Achaea in the Peloponnese. According to Herodotus and Pausanias, these people were originally from Argolis and Laconia before moving to Achaea. One hypothesis for the Bronze Age collapse (the Dorian Invasion) is that the Dorians came down into Greece, driving out the Achaeans that originally lived there and forcing them to flee to defensible mountainous regions. The region of Achaea, under this hypothesis, is where they fled, and the classical Greeks’ Achaeans are the descendants of these refugees.

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                        • Carlin
                          Senior Member
                          • Dec 2011
                          • 3332

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                          • tchaiku
                            Member
                            • Nov 2016
                            • 786


                            Minoan Palaces, how cool.

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                            • Carlin
                              Senior Member
                              • Dec 2011
                              • 3332

                              I might have posted this before, but here goes.

                              Ancient Athens was a radically multicultural and multiethnic society

                              Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity, By Margaret C. Miller

                              It is a commonplace of modern scholarship that the Athenians hated and despised the Persians, but the claims of contempt are disproved by the evidence of archaeology, epigraphy, iconography and literature, all of which reveal some facet of Athenian receptivity to Achaemenid Persian culture. The Athenian response was as richly complex as the spheres of interaction: both private and public, elite and sub-elite. It appears in pot shapes, clothing, luxurious display and monumental architecture. This innovative study, the first comprehensive collection of evidence pertaining to the relations between Athens and Persia in the fifth century BC, aims to make this evidence better known and in so doing to argue that the social culture of classical Athens was not the monolithic construct it might appear.


                              Some keypoints - pages 81 to 84:
                              - Pritchett concluded from his study of the Attic Stelai that at least 70 per cent of all slaves in Attica were foreign barbaroi who derived from the east and north-east rather than the west.
                              - There is good evidence of the use of barbaroi as nurses and paidagogoi in wealthy households, like the Thracian nurse on an Athenian loutrophoros and Alkibiades' Thracian paidagogos.
                              - Table 3.1 presents and lists the Ethnic distribution of foreign slaves in Attica (there are slaves from Thrace, Scythia, Kolchis, Kappadokia, Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Lydia, Karia, Syria, Persia, Arabia). From analysis of evidence, Ehrenberg concluded that Lydian and Phrygian slaves predominated, but Table 3.1 suggests rather that in addition to Phrygians, Thracians and Karians rather than Lydians were most numerous.
                              - By the second half of the fifth century, Athens and the Peiraieus had become a home to many metics of non-Greek origin, including a population of Egyptians.
                              - There existed a 'Little Phrygia' in the immediate vicinity of Athens.
                              - All the new cults known came from the same countries whose products and slaves were imported into Attica. Thrace, the major exporter of slaves, sent Bendis, known in Attic red-figure in the 440s and already incorporated into the Athenian cult structure by 429/8. Adonis came to Athens by the third quarter of the fifth century. Phrygia sent Sabazios (who was also Thracian).
                              - How can we explain the introduction and growth of foreign cults in the fifth century other than through the existence of a population of non-Greek metics?

                              Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World, edited by Claire Taylor, Kostas Vlassopoulos

                              This volume examines the diversity of networks and communities in the classical and early Hellenistic Greek world, with particular emphasis on those which took shape within and around Athens. In doing so it highlights not only the processes that created, modified, and dissolved these communities, but shines a light on the interactions through which individuals with different statuses, identities, levels of wealth, and connectivity participated in ancient society. By drawing on two distinct conceptual approaches, that of network studies and that of community formation, Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World showcases a variety of approaches which fall under the umbrella of 'network thinking' in order to move the study of ancient Greek history beyond structuralist polarities and functionalist explanations. The aim is to reconceptualize the polis not simply as a citizen club, but as one inter-linked community amongst many. This allows subaltern groups to be seen not just as passive objects of exclusion and exploitation but active historical agents, emphasizes the processes of interaction as well as the institutions created through them, and reveals the interpenetration between public institutions and private networks which integrated different communities within the borders of a polis and connected them with the wider world.


                              Keypoints (pages 129, 133, 136-7, 139, 141):
                              - Athens of the classical period, that is the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, was a slave society. There were more slaves than adult male citizens, quite possibly several times as many. A large majority of these slaves seem to have been imported from non-Greek societies, from a wide variety of different places, with many coming from Thrace and the coast of Asia Minor.
                              - Rosivach argues that almost all slaves in Athens were non-Greeks.
                              - Non-Greek slaves made up the vast majority of slaves at Athens.
                              - Inscriptions reveal that Phoenicians in Athens sometimes used names representing Greek translations of Phoenician theophoric originals.
                              - Menander (fr. 877) depicts a Thracian, presumably a slave in Athens, boasting of his origins:

                              "All Thracians, and especially we Getae - for I myself proudly claim to be of that tribe - are not terribly self-controlled......"

                              - In Menander's Aspis (205-8) another slave makes the ironic comment that "I am a Phrygian. Many things that appear noble to you Athenians seem shocking to me - and converse is true".

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                              • Amphipolis
                                Banned
                                • Aug 2014
                                • 1328

                                Originally posted by Carlin15 View Post
                                Table 3.1 presents and lists the Ethnic distribution of foreign slaves in Attica (there are slaves from Thrace, Scythia, Kolchis, Kappadokia, Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Lydia, Karia, Syria, Persia, Arabia). From analysis of evidence, Ehrenberg concluded that Lydian and Phrygian slaves predominated, but Table 3.1 suggests rather that in addition to Phrygians, Thracians and Karians rather than Lydians were most numerous.
                                Table 3.1 refers to the ethnic distribution of all foreign slaves presented... in Greek comedies. Now, that is an interesting approach.

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