The Real Ethnic Composition of Modern Greece

[Risto the Great]

Difficult to dispute the physical characteristics that link them.

[YuriB]

Hi all! I just ran into this article, which reminded me of this forum. You might know about it already but a quick search didn't show anything.

The article suggests a much stronger connection of Greeks with farmers in Anatolia (modern day Turkey), Caucasus and Iran. Less of a connection but still present from hunter gatherers from the north. Having lived outside Greece for many years now, I can also confirm that the people who seem to look most like Greeks are Iranians, Turks and Iraqis. Although, the connection I see might be more recent due to the population exchange. Or maybe it's just me seeing this 😊

BTW, hope you're all healthy given the COVID situation.. NZ, as you might know, is in lockdown..

URL:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23310

Title:
Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans

Abstract:
The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. We have assembled genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete, Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, and their eastern neighbours from southwestern Anatolia. Here we show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean1,2, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus3 and Iran4,5. However, the Mycenaeans differed from Minoans in deriving additional ancestry from an ultimate source related to the hunter–gatherers of eastern Europe and Siberia6,7,8, introduced via a proximal source related to the inhabitants of either the Eurasian steppe1,6,9 or Armenia4,9. Modern Greeks resemble the Mycenaeans, but with some additional dilution of the Early Neolithic ancestry. Our results support the idea of continuity but not isolation in the history of populations of the Aegean, before and after the time of its earliest civilizations.

[Carlin]

URL:

https://www.academia.edu/48876353/ARVANITES_THE_FOUNDERS_OF_MODERN_GREECE

Page 22: "Vangelis Liapis, a scholar and author of several books on Arvanites would say: One day at school, in history class, I was courageous and asked the teacher why the book does not say that those who brought freedom to Greece were Arvanites? The answer I got was two fierce slaps followed by silence. It was the second injury that was slowly starting to create a wound in my soul."

Page 238: "Giannis Lazaris writes about why they are called Greeks today: Greeks did not exist even as a name. And there were no Greeks during the Ottoman period, of course. The inhabitants of the area of Greece were citizens of the Ottoman Empire, Romiots, i.e., Christians where some of whom spoke Romeika (who are abusively called Greeks today) and many other Arvanites, Vlachs, Turks, etc."

[sydney]

By the end of the 15th century, the influence of the Italian language and culture (including in some ways the Roman Catholic church) assumed a predominant role in the island (Corfu).

Until the second half of the 20th century the Veneto da mar was spoken in Corfu, and the local Greek language assimilated a large number of Italian and Venetian words, many of which are still common today. Indeed, even before the fall of the Byzantine Empire much of the population in Corfu spoke the Veneto da mar or the Mediterranean Lingua Franca Sabir as a second, or first, language.

According to historian Ezio Gray, the small communities of Venetian-speaking people in Corfu were mostly assimilated after the island became part of Greece in 1864 and especially after all Italian schools were closed in 1870. However, the Italian language maintained some importance, as can be seen by the fact that poets like Stefano Martzokis (Marzocchi was the surname of the father, an Italian from Emilia-Romagna) and Geranimos Markonos, the first from Corfù and the second from Cefalonia, wrote some of their poems in Italian during the second half of the 19th century.

URL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfiot_Italians

Regarding the piece in bold about the Italian schools - the Greeks sure move swiftly! I often question though whether the assimilated peoples suffer from Stockholm syndrome and quite like the notion of being “descendants of the ancients”.

[Carlin]

In 1878, many Arvanitovlachs took part in the revolutionary movement against the Turks and after its failure, left for Corfu and Lefkada. In Corfu, most settled in Gatitsa. G. Weigand, in 1889, writes that the Arvanitovlachs of Corfu numbered about 2,000 families.

[Carlin]

By the end of the 15th century, the influence of the Italian language and culture (including in some ways the Roman Catholic church) assumed a predominant role in the island (Corfu).

Until the second half of the 20th century the Veneto da mar was spoken in Corfu, and the local Greek language assimilated a large number of Italian and Venetian words, many of which are still common today. Indeed, even before the fall of the Byzantine Empire much of the population in Corfu spoke the Veneto da mar or the Mediterranean Lingua Franca Sabir as a second, or first, language.

According to historian Ezio Gray, the small communities of Venetian-speaking people in Corfu were mostly assimilated after the island became part of Greece in 1864 and especially after all Italian schools were closed in 1870. However, the Italian language maintained some importance, as can be seen by the fact that poets like Stefano Martzokis (Marzocchi was the surname of the father, an Italian from Emilia-Romagna) and Geranimos Markonos, the first from Corfù and the second from Cefalonia, wrote some of their poems in Italian during the second half of the 19th century.

URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfiot_Italians

[Soldier of Macedon]

That's a very interesting proposed connection/origin of the word. I'm not sure how the term "Katun" became associated with Vlachs.

Here is a random site, which defines "what" was a Katun - but doesn't go into the origin of the term:
https://dictionary.university/Katun

I mentioned khatun/hatun because of the reference to Vlach women in the screenshots you posted. If katun was meant as something else (like settlements) then it is probably a different word that coincidentally looks very similar. Page 623 of Fine's book doesn't go into the origin of the term either.

[Carlin]

The word khatun/hatun (lady, woman), a Turkic word most likely borrowed from an Iranian language, was mentioned well before the 12th century. It wasn't common in the Balkans before the Ottoman occupation and without having read the text in question (or knowing much about this Ioannes Trachaniotes), I'm not sure how it came to be that an Athonite monk would have used it in the year 1109.

That's a very interesting proposed connection/origin of the word. I'm not sure how the term "Katun" became associated with Vlachs.

Here is a random site, which defines "what" was a Katun - but doesn't go into the origin of the term:

https://dictionary.university/Katun

[Soldier of Macedon]

First mentioning of the word katun (cătun, katund) comes in a text by Ioannes Trachaniotes, monk at Ivirion monastery dating from 1109 regarding the dilemma the Athonites monk had about the several Vlach "katounai" with about 300 families.

The word khatun/hatun (lady, woman), a Turkic word most likely borrowed from an Iranian language, was mentioned well before the 12th century. It wasn't common in the Balkans before the Ottoman occupation and without having read the text in question (or knowing much about this Ioannes Trachaniotes), I'm not sure how it came to be that an Athonite monk would have used it in the year 1109.

[Carlin]

[Carlin]

"Most of the so-called Greeks of that region (Thrace) was in fact Gagauz."

[Carlin]

The diverse origins of modern Greeks. In northern Greece, villagers sing traditional Gagauz songs. Their grandparents were Gagauz (Turkish-speaking Christians) who lived in Turkey but classified as 'Greek' during the population exchange and sent to Greece.

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexsakalis/status/1397167356762365954

[Carlin]

[Carlin]

M. Rangabe, eminent publicist and statesman of Greece, claims that almost all the Greeks of Epirus are Vlachs, hellenized in the course of the last four centuries (Courrier d'Orient, July 15, 1874).

--- Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales publié sous la direction de MM. les docteurs Raige-Delorme et A. Dechambre · Volume 84, 1877

[Carlin]

1) Handbook for Travellers in Greece: Including the Ionian ... , John Murray (Firm), 1900

"The spoken Greek of the present day is more or less mixed with Turkish, Italian, or Albanian words, according to the geographical or political condition of each separate district. 'In the Ionian Islands,' says Leake, 'most ideas above the ordinary usage of the vulgar, and even many of the most common phrases, are denoted by Italian words with Romaic terminations and inflexions; and thus the language of these islands is one of the most corrupt in Greece.' But the substitution in 1852 of Greek for Italian as the official language has made a great change there." Among seafaring Greeks, both in the Ionian and Aegean seas, many nautical phrases and technical terms, borrowed from the Venetians and Genoese, are still in use."

2) Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year ... with Accompanying Papers, Volume 1, By United States. Bureau of Education, 1898

"In the fifteenth century bands of Wallachians were to be found as far south as the Taygetos Mountains."

3) Munsey's Magazine - Volume 28 - Page 237, 1903

"Not only are there Albanians in Eleusis, two hours' drive from Athens, but another foreign race is largely represented in the near vicinity of the city. In its environs are many Wallachians, the remnants of the old Wallachian kingdom which once embraced Aetolia, Acarnania, and Thessaly..."

4) The English Historical Review - Page 657, Mandell Creighton, Justin Winsor, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, 1904

"On the other hand a few Wallachs wandered about Athens , some Albanian Mussulmans were employed in guarding the entrances to the town , and in all the villages of Attica the inhabitants were of the Albanian race..."

5) Greece and the Greeks of the Present Day - Pages 49 & 50, Edmond About, 1857

"Every evening at sunset, long files of Albanians are to be met on the roads, coming back with their wives from the labour of the fields. They almost all dwell on the slopes of the Acropolis, on the spot where dwelt formerly the Pelasgi. The Wallachs sleep in the air on the hillside among their flocks. It was thus that Eumeus lived of old... The dogs of the Wallachs are like those of Eumeus, ferocious animals, against which it is well to be provided with a javelin. ...

The Maltese, those Savoyards of the Mediterranean, are numerous at Athens and Piraeus; they are reckoned at more than fifteen hundred. By a rather curious exception, in Greece they are of unreproachable honesty, while at Smyrna and Constantinople they form the dregs of the populace. At Constantinople, robbery and assassination is their chief occupation; at Athens, they go on errands, and are the masons and gardeners - they divide with the robust inhabitants of Maina all the severe labours which the journeymen of Athens would refuse."