Origins of Ancient Greece

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  • tchaiku
    Member
    • Nov 2016
    • 786

    Hellenes look like Western Europeans in the sculptures. Especially like Nordic.

    Last edited by tchaiku; 04-20-2017, 05:52 AM.

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    • Carlin
      Senior Member
      • Dec 2011
      • 3332

      Originally posted by Amphipolis View Post
      Are you sure you understood the meaning of this passage?
      It's possible I didn't. What do you suggest?

      (I'm merely pointing out the reference/use of Carian in this context.)

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      • Amphipolis
        Banned
        • Aug 2014
        • 1328

        Originally posted by Carlin View Post
        It's possible I didn't. What do you suggest?

        (I'm merely pointing out the reference/use of Carian in this context.)
        The Greeks, then, sailed to Delos, and Mardonius wintered in Thessaly. Having his headquarters there he sent a man of Europus called Mys to visit the places of divination, charging him to inquire of all the oracles which he could test. What it was that he desired to learn from the oracles when he gave this charge, I cannot say, for no one tells of it. I suppose that he sent to inquire concerning his present business, and that alone.

        This man Mys is known to have gone to Lebadea and to have bribed a man of the country to go down into the cave of Trophonius and to have gone to the place of divination at Abae in Phocis. He went first to Thebes where he inquired of Ismenian Apollo (sacrifice is there the way of divination, as at Olympia), and moreover he bribed one who was no Theban but a stranger to lie down to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus. No Theban may seek a prophecy there, for Amphiaraus bade them by an oracle to choose which of the two they wanted and forgo the other, and take him either for their prophet or for their ally. They chose that he should be their ally. Therefore no Theban may lie down to sleep in that place.

        But at this time there happened, as the Thebans say, a thing at which I marvel greatly. It would seem that this man Mys of Europus came in his wanderings among the places of divination to the precinct of Ptoan Apollo. This temple is called Ptoum, and belongs to the Thebans. It lies by a hill, above lake Copais, very near to the town Acraephia. When the man called Mys entered into this temple together with three men of the town who were chosen on the state's behalf to write down the oracles that should be given, straightway the diviner prophesied in a foreign tongue. The Thebans who followed him were astonished to hear a strange language instead of Greek and knew not what this present matter might be. Mys of Europus, however, snatched from them the tablet which they carried and wrote on it that which was spoken by the prophet, saying that the words of the oracle were Carian. After writing everything down, he went back to Thessaly.

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        • Carlin
          Senior Member
          • Dec 2011
          • 3332

          Originally posted by Amphipolis View Post
          The Greeks, then, sailed to Delos, and Mardonius wintered in Thessaly. Having his headquarters there he sent a man of Europus called Mys to visit the places of divination, charging him to inquire of all the oracles which he could test. What it was that he desired to learn from the oracles when he gave this charge, I cannot say, for no one tells of it. I suppose that he sent to inquire concerning his present business, and that alone.

          This man Mys is known to have gone to Lebadea and to have bribed a man of the country to go down into the cave of Trophonius and to have gone to the place of divination at Abae in Phocis. He went first to Thebes where he inquired of Ismenian Apollo (sacrifice is there the way of divination, as at Olympia), and moreover he bribed one who was no Theban but a stranger to lie down to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus. No Theban may seek a prophecy there, for Amphiaraus bade them by an oracle to choose which of the two they wanted and forgo the other, and take him either for their prophet or for their ally. They chose that he should be their ally. Therefore no Theban may lie down to sleep in that place.

          But at this time there happened, as the Thebans say, a thing at which I marvel greatly. It would seem that this man Mys of Europus came in his wanderings among the places of divination to the precinct of Ptoan Apollo. This temple is called Ptoum, and belongs to the Thebans. It lies by a hill, above lake Copais, very near to the town Acraephia. When the man called Mys entered into this temple together with three men of the town who were chosen on the state's behalf to write down the oracles that should be given, straightway the diviner prophesied in a foreign tongue. The Thebans who followed him were astonished to hear a strange language instead of Greek and knew not what this present matter might be. Mys of Europus, however, snatched from them the tablet which they carried and wrote on it that which was spoken by the prophet, saying that the words of the oracle were Carian. After writing everything down, he went back to Thessaly.
          Cool.

          The Carian language
          Palaeolexicon is an online dictionary and word study tool for ancient languages.


          - One could use with caution the phrase - “Barbarians” in a Greek disguise - to give a quick description of the ancient nation known as the Carians. Did you know that many famous Greeks were actually of Carian origin? The “father of history”, Herodotus was half Carian from his fathers side, who was called Lyxes or Lỳkse in native Carian. Cleoboulos the Philosopher, one of the seven sages of Greece, was a Carian from the city of Lindos, who has been attributed one of the wisest and most classical sayings ever “Moderation is the best thing”; a phrase that became a trademark of Greek culture. Thales the Miletian, one of the greatest philosophers and by many entitled the “father of science”, was also Carian. Maybe you're also familiar with Mausolos, whose burial chamber “the Mausoleum”, became one of the seven wonders of the world. The wealthiest person in history of mankind and King of Lydia, Croesus, was half Carian. It appears in the end, that the Carians were much more than their relatively poor fame.

          - Carian belongs to the Indo-European family of Anatolian languages, together with Hittite, Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic Luwian, Palaic, Lycian, Lydian, Sidetic and Pisidian. More precisely, it forms part of the so-called ‘Luwic’ group of Anatolian languages.

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          • Carlin
            Senior Member
            • Dec 2011
            • 3332

            The historical antiquities of the Greeks, By Wilhelm Wachsmuth


            - The Caucones dwelt in Messenia, Arcadia, Triphylia, and as far north as Dymae - Strabo reckons them amongst the barbarians, who were said to have inhabited Greece in the most remote ages.




            - The Caucones, who, according to history, inhabited the line of sea-coast which extends from the Mariandyni as far as the river Parthenius, and to whom belonged the city Tieium, are said by some writers to be Scythians, by others a tribe of Macedonians, and by others a tribe of Pelasgi.
            Last edited by Carlin; 06-25-2017, 05:52 PM.

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            • Carlin
              Senior Member
              • Dec 2011
              • 3332

              Ancient History Sourcebook:
              Pausanias (fl.c.160 CE):
              Description of Greece, Book II: Corinth


              [2.1.2] Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans. This change is due to the Achaean League. The Corinthians, being members of it, joined in the war against the Romans, which Critolaus, when appointed general of the Achaeans, brought about by persuading to revolt both the Achaeans and the majority of the Greeks outside the Peloponnesus. When the Romans won the war, they carried out a general disarmament of the Greeks and dismantled the walls of such cities as were fortified. Corinth was laid waste by Mummius, who at that time commanded the Romans in the field, and it is said that it was afterwards refounded by Caesar, who was the author of the present constitution of Rome. Carthage, too, they say, was refounded in his reign.

              [2.3.7] But as their death was violent and illegal, the young babies of the Corinthians were destroyed by them until, at the command of the oracle, yearly sacrifices were established in their honor and a figure of Terror was set up. This figure still exists, being the likeness of a woman frightful to look upon but after Corinth was laid waste by the Romans and the old Corinthians were wiped out, the new settlers broke the custom of offering those sacrifices to the sons of Medea, nor do their children cut their hair for them or wear black clothes.

              URL:

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              • tchaiku
                Member
                • Nov 2016
                • 786

                While it is difficult to gauge the intermixture that took place between the older established inhabitants and the infiltrating Greeks wherever they may have come from, the tradition of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean may have had an even greater impact on the physical nature of the people. It has been estimated that in classical times the number of slaves in Attica was roughly equal to the number of free inhabitants, or around 100,000." In Sparta there was an even greater proportion of slaves, and most of them, the helots, were Messenians. While the slaves of Athens were a wide racial mix and therefore less likely to unite on the basis of a common language, these Messenian helots of Sparta all spoke Greek, and had a kind of group self-consciousness. Thus they presented "special problems of security for their Spartan masters, whose numbers were constantly on the decline."

                Changes in the ethnic composition of Greek city-states are illustrated by the comments about the case of Piso. Piso, who had been the recipient of an unhelpful decision by a vote of the Athenian city assembly, "made a violent speech in which he said that the latter-day Athenians had no right to identify themselves with the great Athenians of the days of Pericles, Demosthenes, Aeschylus, and Plato. The ancient Athenians had been extirpated by repeated wars and massacres and these were mere mongrels, degenerates, and the descendants of slaves. He said that any Roman who flattered them as if they were the legitimate heirs of those ancient heroes was lowering the dignity of the Roman name."

                Such historical ideas make it clear that even two thousand years ago the notion of ethnic purity amongst the Greeks was difficult to sustain. The ethnic mix continued over the next two thousand years. As Nicol has observed, "The ancient Greeks were, after all, of very mixed ancestry; and there can be no doubt that the Byzantine Greeks, both before and after the Slav occupation, were even more heterogenous.”

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                • tchaiku
                  Member
                  • Nov 2016
                  • 786

                  In the fourth-century AD, the Jewish physician and sophist Adamantios, described the “true Hellene” thus:
                  “Wherever the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we see proper tall men of fairly broad and straight build, neatly made, of fairly light skin and blond; the flesh is rather firm, the limbs straight, the extremities well made. The head is of middling size, and moves very easily; the neck is strong, the hair somewhat fair, and soft, and a little curly; the face is rectangular, the lips narrow, the nose straight, and the eyes bright, piercing, and full of light; for of all nations the Hellene has the fairest eyes.”[Günther (1927) 157.]

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                  • Liberator of Makedonija
                    Senior Member
                    • Apr 2014
                    • 1595

                    Originally posted by tchaiku View Post
                    In the fourth-century AD, the Jewish physician and sophist Adamantios, described the “true Hellene” thus:
                    “Wherever the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we see proper tall men of fairly broad and straight build, neatly made, of fairly light skin and blond; the flesh is rather firm, the limbs straight, the extremities well made. The head is of middling size, and moves very easily; the neck is strong, the hair somewhat fair, and soft, and a little curly; the face is rectangular, the lips narrow, the nose straight, and the eyes bright, piercing, and full of light; for of all nations the Hellene has the fairest eyes.”[Günther (1927) 157.]
                    Taken from a German source from the late 1920s so would question the legitimacy of this
                    I know of two tragic histories in the world- that of Ireland, and that of Macedonia. Both of them have been deprived and tormented.

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                    • tchaiku
                      Member
                      • Nov 2016
                      • 786

                      Some points:
                      - Troy was destroyed during the Sea's people invasion (Levant, Anatolia and Egypt were also attacked) in the 12th/11th century.
                      -Some Mycenaean cities were sacked before Troy. While The Mycenaeans were completely destroyed in the same century as the Trojans.
                      - Greece was plugged into a dark age for 300 years the system of writing, arts, the way of life of Mycenaeans was gone. The Hellenes reappear in 8th century BC with an alphabet influenced by Phoenicians.
                      - Among the Sea People were the Denyen (could be Danaoi) and Ekwesh (could be Acheans).

                      Could it be that the early Hellenes were the Northern strangers?

                      ''We get a glimpse of the fall of the Mycenaeans from a tablet found at the palace of Pylos. The palace was destroyed by an invasion from the sea. Most of the tablets recovered there describe preparations for the attack. The first attack involved attacks on the priests but no burning. The scribes had a chance to write about it before the 2nd attack which destroyed the palace.

                      The enemy grabbed all the priests from everywhere and without reason murdered them secretly by simple drowning. I am calling out to my descendants (for the sake of) history. I am told that the northern strangers continued their (terrible) attack, terrorizing and plundering (until) a short time ago. Py FR 1184 (Michael Ventris translation) ''

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                      • Starling
                        Member
                        • Sep 2017
                        • 153

                        Weren't the Danai and Acheans already settled in Greece during the Mycenaean period?

                        Greeks and Celts have similar words for bear and oak. The Greek word for oak is drys while the welsh one is derw. That's where the word druid comes from. Dryads were oak nymphs in Greek mythology, though I'm not sure which text they were mentioned in. The ancient Greek word for bear was aktos, while the Celtic one was art/arth. In Gaul there was a Celtic bear goddess named Artio. Ursa major is associated with the north star and is tied to the word arctic, so there's definitely some evidence for them coming from the north.

                        Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth behind the Myth of Shangri-la by Victoria LePage, 1996
                        Link Google books removes some pages so I there's some stuff missing.

                        P.190
                        Guénon claims that long before the Indo-European races arose the tropics were differently distributed and that a great Hyperborean culture flourished around the Arctic Circle. Shambhala was then known as the “white island” and the “sacred isle”, and Meru as the “white mountain” that stood in the middle of the island, a triangle of light- “the initiatic triangle” - radiating at its summit. At that time Atlantis lay to the West.

                        Numerous sources support that Shambhala once lay near the North Pole. The Scythians, a branch of Vedic peoples who roamed the Central Asian steppe in the first millennium BC, told of a wonderful place similar to Shambhala that lay far to the north. They said that if one travelled far enough, one came to lands of mythical and fantastic tribes and beyond them, to the Ripean mountains, which lay in a desolate waste of snow and darkness that no mortal could cross. Beyond that barrier lay a beautiful country, warm and sheltered from the icy winds outside, where the sun rose and set only once a year, as it does within the Arctic Circle, and there a happy race lived in parklands full of flowering trees.
                        P.205
                        It is clear that the Atlantean shared many significant points of similarity with that of the Hyperboreans, and and that hieratic centers like these, governed by great dynasties of priest-kings, were once a prominent feature in the landscape of early civilization. If the Athenians had not forgotten their former Achaean world, they would have recognized the striking parallels between Plato’s lost city and the homeland of the Hyperboreans and would have understood their factual basis. But Athens was a city-state shipwrecked in time; it had no past. To its populace even Homer’s reminiscences of long-gone historical sagas had acquired by the 6th century BC no more than the cultic gloss of myth. Their Bronze Age world had been forgotten.
                        P. 211
                        However, there are others who join Spanuth in asserting that Atlantis lay in the North Sea and that the Atlanteans and the Hyperboreans were one and the same race, thus arriving independently at the same conclusion as Blavatsky and Guénon. Pytheas of Massilia, a learned geographer of the fourth century BC who explored the Atlantic sea extensively as well as the Cronian Sea (as the North Sea was then called), was of this opinion. His observations and astronomical measurements, unique in his day, and his account of his travels in the Baltic region provoked centuries of disbelief and arguments among Greek scholars, especially as he also called Basiliea/Electris by the name of Scheria, Homer’s name for the royal island of the Phaeacians, the race Odysseus visited in the Cronian sea, and who also claimed to be descended from Poseidon.
                        P.214-215
                        Spence’s hypothesis is unsatisfactory on its own, but when we combine it with Guénon’s statement that through the ages Wisdom centers have been established as subsidiaries of the primary center, more or less superseding it though strictly in a hierarchical fashion, it is feasible to suppose there have been several Atlantises and that with the vast spans of time involved the Egyptian records may well have included elisions and inaccuracies concerning them. The first Atlantis settlement could have been built near Antilles, as Spence suggests, and have disappeared forever under the rising seas at the end of the last Ice Age, though it is something we shall never know for certain. But if so, then the Atlantis of which the Saitian priests spoke is most likely to be a sanctuary rebuilt elsewhere, a secondary or tertiary center which began as a Neolithic settlement and expanded and rose to great prominence and power as described, and which met its end in some general disaster of which history has a known and legible record.

                        The most likely such event is the invasion of Mediterranean lands by the northern federation of the Sea Peoples: an invasion which threatened Egypt but did not overcome it, thanks to the military aid of a number of other similarly threatened nations, including Athens. This great attack by sea and land by skilled seafarers from the north was more or less contemporaneous with the devastation of Mycenaean Greece, possibly major flooding, as well as with the mysterious global disaster at the end of the thirteenth century BC that ruined many other lands and their great cities and empires. The last Atlantis may well have perished at that time.
                        Everything that has been written about Atlantis suggests a basic historical reality, however distorted by time and confused reportage. It also suggests, as has been said, a close connection with Shambhala; and in fact the legend of Atlantis has converged with that of the Altai region in a number of different contexts. Guénon, for instance, applies similar archetypical designations to both Atlantis and Shambhala. In India, he says, Shambhala is called “the white isle” and the “abode of the blessed”, after the original polar “white isle”. But in Celtic tradition the “white isle”, the “isle of the Saints” and the “isle of the Blessed” are names also applied to the terrestrial paradise in the West that is sometimes located in Ireland, Britain or Heligoland, and which refers to Atlantis.

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                        • tchaiku
                          Member
                          • Nov 2016
                          • 786

                          Mycenae in this context refers to both the city and the whole bronze civilization.

                          -Troy faced destruction many times in 1000s and 1100s. My question would be how come the victory of Achaeans is followed with destruction of Mycenaean in the same period and even earlier phases? How did Homer manage to preserve this enriched oral heritage when the writing system, art, culture of Mycenaeans had vanished and remained 'frozen' for 300 years? Would it be much more easier for Homer, if Trojan story was established mainly in 900s/1000s.

                          - Destruction of Mycenaean cities before the fall of Troy:
                          In c. 1250 BC, the first wave of destruction apparently occurred in various centers of mainland Greece for reasons that cannot be identified by archaeologists. In Boeotia, Thebes was burned to the ground, around that year or slightly later. Nearby Orchomenos shared the same fate, while the Boeotian fortifications of Gla were deserted. In the Peloponnese, a number of buildings surrounding the citadel of Mycenae were attacked and burned.

                          - Sparta places an important role in Iliad however Mycenaean influence in Sparta is minimal.

                          - The name Mukanai (Mycenae) is thought not to be Greek but rather one of the many pre-Greek place names inherited by the immigrant Greeks.

                          -The relation with the Homeric Pylos and Mycenaean Pylos is somewhat problematic:

                          Last edited by tchaiku; 10-28-2017, 08:10 AM.

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                          • tchaiku
                            Member
                            • Nov 2016
                            • 786

                            The Basque connection:

                            Edo Nyland has explained how the Saharan language was spoken in all of Europe as a common language, because almost the entire population of Europe had migrated from the Sahara when the formerly productive land became a desert (see Climate). With the coming of the new cults of the sky gods from Anatolia, all of them promoted male domination. Priests had been sent to many parts of Europe with orders to destroy the ancient religion of the Goddess, wipe out the tribal system, create nations, introduce private landownership and invent new languages with different scripts for each new nation. This meant that every new language had to be based on the old Saharan language because there was no other from which to work. The newly created languages are known today as the Indo-European "family" of languages. The old Saharan language survives as Basque in Europe and in a more compromised form as Dravidian in India and Ainu in Japan.

                            With this background, it is not difficult to suggest that the tragic turmoil in the eastern Mediterranean was the result of a religious war. The aggressively expanding new religion had to be stopped and the people of the Goddess united in one massive effort to eliminate the culprits, an effort which involved more than 1,000 ships. The Hittite empire was destroyed by the Kirrukaska (called Kaska in the clay tablets) from the Black Sea coast and the Sea Peoples from the south. The Egyptians documented a great deal of this war on the walls of Ramses III's temple at Medinet Habu and other places. According to these descriptions, the Sea Peoples had come from their islands in the midst of the Great Green Sea, now known as the Atlantic Ocean. The travels of Odysseus describes the homecoming of one or more of these groups, which must have been composed of Irish, Scots, Phaikians (Vikings), Berbers and Canary Islanders, possibly in concert with the Sardinians and the Corsicans. The much later crusades to the Holy Land must have looked like a replay in miniature.


                            PYLOS TABLET PY Fr 1184


                            "The enemy grabbed all the priests from everywhere and without reason murdered them secretly by simple drowning. I am calling out to my descendants (for the sake of) history. I am told that the northern strangers continued their (terrible) attack, terrorizing and plundering (until) a short time ago."

                            PYLOS TABLET PY Ta722

                            I fell back in fear from the (huge) massacre afflicted on us during this nightmare of suffering. They decided then to burn our refuge and to beat us. All were dragged from the stable and done evil with hammer blows. This filthy deed.
                            PYLOS TABLET PY Sa 794


                            "While remembering the terror, we had to recover from the defeat by gently giving very
                            good care to the afflicted and performing surgery."


                            KNOSSOS TABLET KN Gg 702


                            The northerners have started the work of burying in the forest after a nightmare of agony during which they gored, destroyed, and drowned mercilessly while robbing. When we were left alone many were still shivering and frightened after this nightmare of agony.

                            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".

                            Last edited by tchaiku; 11-10-2017, 12:31 PM.

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                            • Amphipolis
                              Banned
                              • Aug 2014
                              • 1328

                              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".”

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