Indigen's theory of indigenous culture

[Risto the Great]

Other words have existed in the past. As an example, "Hellenistic" has been used by academics for quite a long time.

[Mastika]

Other words have existed in the past. As an example, "Hellenistic" has been used by academics for quite a long time.

Hellenistic is an adjective, Hellenisation is a verb describing the actual acquisition.

[Risto the Great]

I do not believe we have enough proof that an actual acquisition ever took place. And I do not think the last 200 years (of Greek Phanariotes kissing Ottoman arse) is an appropriate measure of the relationship of the Greek language to the people in the region.

[TrueMacedonian]

What do you mean. I am sure that you know that Greek replaced Latin as the administrative language of the Byzantine empire in 620.

For all of you people dislike the word "Hellenisation", what word would you use to describe the adoption of the Greek language? Please, do find me a better one.

Listen Bill, I really don't have time to bicker with someone who believes that Macedonian is the be all and end all of languages. And that somehow a frontier land which was being constantly marauded, attacked and pillaged somehow managed to spread an imaginary language to the far reaches of Europe. Feel free to have the last say.

The proper term(s) would most likely be Romanization (since this was a Roman empire and the people called themselves Romans as well as their language) or Christianization.

[osiris]

hell even in the 19th century most greeks called their language romaica while the majority population which was mainly Albanian and vlach as its been pointed out in our history section many times didnt even speak romaic but spoke their own .

if greece first prime minister couldnt speak greek then why would the arvaniti and vlach peasants.

greece in the 19th century was over 90% peasant.

athens was a tiny town of less than 5000 half who were turks.

Hellenization that called itself romaic yeah thats a good one and so true, true macedonian thank you for that interesting observation

[Pelister]

There is an idea out there that our history is a product of 19th and 20th century nationalism.

It is a common belief among the university professors of Western institutions, that we have absolutely no claim to the ancient Macedonians, and furthermore, that our 'identity' is a construct, a result of nationalism.

None of these professors have ever bothered to actually familiarise themselves with Macedonian culture.

For example, one of the longest Macedonian ballads of Alexander the Great was first recorded in the 1840's. These villagers not only considered themselves to be Macedonians, but believed through oral traditions, that they were the descendants of the ancient Macedonians...

This "ballad" and "their beliefs about who there were" was not a product of 19th century nationalism. In fact most of the same scholars argue that there was no 'Macedonian' nationalism until the early 20th century.

In this context, Indigen has a strong point.

What this example demonstrates is that people were calling themselves just Macedonians, and "believed" through their ballads and songs which were passed on orally (remember they were illiterate peasants) that they were "related" to the ancient Macedonians - before - modern nationalism.

[TrueMacedonian]

There is an idea out there that our history is a product of 19th and 20th century nationalism.

It is a common belief among the university professors of Western institutions, that we have absolutely no claim to the ancient Macedonians, and furthermore, that our 'identity' is a construct, a result of nationalism.

None of these professors have ever bothered to actually familiarise themselves with Macedonian culture.

For example, one of the longest Macedonian ballads of Alexander the Great was first recorded in the 1840's. These villagers not only considered themselves to be Macedonians, but believed through oral traditions, that they were the descendants of the ancient Macedonians...

This "ballad" and "their beliefs about who there were" was not a product of 19th century nationalism. In fact most of the same scholars argue that there was no 'Macedonian' nationalism until the early 20th century.

In this context, Indigen has a strong point.

What this example demonstrates is that people were calling themselves just Macedonians, and "believed" through their ballads and songs which were passed on orally (remember they were illiterate peasants) that they were "related" to the ancient Macedonians - before - modern nationalism.

Before modern nationalism? When do you think nationalism was born? And when did it arrive in the balkans?

[Pelister]

Before modern nationalism? When do you think nationalism was born? And when did it arrive in the balkans?

I am not certain about the topic of nationalism, but I think that according to historians the earliest forms of modern nationalism can be dated back to the late medievil period. The French revolution gave the movement a kick start. When did nationalism reach Macedonia? I'm not sure precisely.

What I wanted to highlight was the point that if Macedonians in villages in and around Prilep, for example, have been passing on oral traditions about Alexander the Great for many, many centuries, and knew that they were Macedonians, through these oral traditions - then our association with the name 'Macedonia' and with the name 'Alexander the Great' is more than a by-product of nationalism. Which if I understand correctly is the point Indigen has been trying to make (I may have misunderstood of course). There are specific cultural and regional specific elements to the Macedonian ethnic group that have informed us who we are, and informed us about where we come from, or who our descendants are. These oral traditions did not come down in the last wave of nationalism - they predate it by many, many centuries, and possibly for thousands of years.

Its not "nationalism" for "some" ethnic Macedonians to say they are the descendants of the ancient Macedonians, if there is evidence that that is what their oral traditions are telling them.

[TrueMacedonian]

I am not certain about the topic of nationalism, but I think that according to historians the earliest forms of modern nationalism can be dated back to the late medievil period. The French revolution gave the movement a kick start. When did nationalism reach Macedonia? I'm not sure precisely.

What I wanted to highlight was the point that if Macedonians in villages in and around Prilep, for example, have been passing on oral traditions about Alexander the Great for many, many centuries, and knew that they were Macedonians, through these oral traditions - then our association with the name 'Macedonia' and with the name 'Alexander the Great' is more than a by-product of nationalism. Which if I understand correctly is the point Indigen has been trying to make (I may have misunderstood of course). There are specific cultural and regional specific elements to the Macedonian ethnic group that have informed us who we are, and informed us about where we come from, or who our descendants are. These oral traditions did not come down in the last wave of nationalism - they predate it by many, many centuries, and possibly for thousands of years.

Its not "nationalism" for "some" ethnic Macedonians to say they are the descendants of the ancient Macedonians, if there is evidence that that is what their oral traditions are telling them.

Oral traditions are an indicator for certain aspects of culture. But oral traditions are not an ethnic indicator nor an indicator that is spot on, as you aussies often say. For example, where would we put Krali Marko who is shared by Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Serbia in oral folk traditions?

[Pelister]

Oral tradition is a pretty big thing for an illiterate people who pass their traditions on orally, through songs, poems, ballads, and other forms of folklore.

If the Macedonians learned about their ancestry, about their relationshiop with the ancient Macedonians, through these various oral traditions - then their identity does not come from 19th century nationalism. The nationalism is simply a political manifestation of what is in fact already there.

[Bratot]

Hellenistic is an adjective, Hellenisation is a verb describing the actual acquisition.

How it can be Hellenisation if the Greeks called themselfs - Romans?

Can you define this "hellenisation"?


The term "Byzantine Empire" was introduced in 1557, about a century after the Fall of Constantinople by German historian Hieronymus Wolf, who introduced a system of Byzantine historiography in his work Corpus Historiae Byzantinae in order to distinguish ancient Roman from medieval Greek history without drawing attention to their ancient predecessors.

The phrase "Byzantine Empire" was coined and popularized by French scholars such as Montesquieu, an influential figure of eighteenth century intellectual life.. He was the same author whose seminal volume The Spirit Of The Laws did much to inspire the Founding Fathers of the United States in their writing of the American Constitution. Like other thinkers of his time, Montesquieu revered the ancient Greeks and Romans with immoderate enthusiasm as masters of politics and culture to be emulated. Following a Western European tradition that extended back to the early Middle Ages, Montesquieu regarded the Empire at Constantinople as corrupt and decadent. Although he wrote a long history of the Empire at Constantinople, Montesquieu could not bring himself to refer to the Empire at Constantinople with the noble names of "Greek" or "Roman." From the obsolete name "Byzantium," Montesquieu used the word "Byzantine." The word "Byzantine" denoted the Empire and connoted its supposed characteristics: dishonesty, dissimulation and decadence. The English scholar Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire treated the Empire after the sixth century as an epic of unrelieved degradation and corruption.

The people who lived in the "Byzantine Empire" never knew nor used the word "Byzantine."
They know themselves to be Romans, nothing more and absolutely nothing less. By transferring the Imperial capital from Rome on the Tiber to the New Rome on Bosphorus, dubbed Constantinople, the Emperor Constantine I had transferred the actual identity of Rome to the new location. Long before Constantine I, the idea of "Rome" had become dissociated from the Eternal City on the Tiber. For a Roman meant a Roman citizen, whereever he lived. Before the Imperial period, in 89 BC, a Roman law had granted Roman citizenship to people throughout Italy. Afterwards, citizenship became extended to an increasing number of people in different parts of the Empire. In 212, Emperor Caracalla declared all free persons in the Empire to be Roman citizens, entitled to call themselves Roman, not merely subject to the Romans. Within a few decades, people begin to refer to the entire Empire less often [in Latin] as "Imperium Romanorum" [Domain of the Romans] and more often as "Romania" [Romanland]


The names by which things are called are important in shaping our interpretation of reality. People are often surprised to discover that historical labels which define the past are inventions of later scholarship and ideology, not parts of the past itself. Men and women of the Middle Ages did not know that they lived in the Middle Ages: people who lived in Classical Athens or Renaissance Italy suffered the same disability. The people of the "Byzantine Empire" had no idea that they were Byzantine. They regarded themselves as the authentic continuators of the Roman world: the Romans living in Romania.

http://www.romanity.org/htm/fox.01.en.what_if_anything_is_a_byzantine.01.htm

[Bratot]

It was Alexander I of Macedon (ruled for nearly 50 years in first half of 5th century BCE and active in the Persian Wars) who gained admission to the Olympics, Herodotus 5 .22. To the best of my knowledge, Herodotus does not say why the judges admitted him. Jonathan Hall's important book, Hellenicity, argues that before the Persian Wars, the term "Hellene" was "aggregative," i.e. Used to distinguish certain groups in central Greece and to exclude others. It was a sign of power and prestige, not of language, and was denied to "lesser" groups whose bloodlines were no different: Helots, Perrhaiboi, Magnesians, Aetolians, Arcadians (p. 169 -171). Interpretation of passages like Herodotus 5 .22 is difficult, but "language" is not mentioned. After the Persians came, "Hellene" came to be defined "oppositionally," i.e. Anyone who opposed the Persian.

Daniel Tompkins
James L. O’Neil, Sydney
“Doric Forms in Macedonian Inscriptions”

http://alunsalt.com/2009/05/29/macedonia-from-bad-to-worse/

[osiris]

bratot you are an amazing person keep up the great work

[julie]

Bratot, you are awesome

[Soldier of Macedon]

Bratot is a valued and valuable member of the MTO, and has been since he joined our ranks.