Do Ancient Greeks have African Origins?

[Carlin]

Were Spartans Phoenicians or Cadmeians? I believe what you are about to read is pretty self-explanatory.

http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt

Herodotus:

It happened that at this very time Theras, son of Autesion (whose
father Tisamenus was the son of Thersander, and grandson of Polynices),
was about to lead out a colony from Lacedaemon. This Theras, by birth
a Cadmeian, was uncle on the mother's side to the two sons of Aristodemus,
Procles and Eurysthenes, and, during their infancy, administered in
their right the royal power. When his nephews, however, on attaining
to man's estate, took the government, Theras, who could not bear to
be under the authority of others after he had wielded authority so
long himself, resolved to leave Sparta and cross the sea to join his
kindred. There were in the island now called Thera, but at that time
Calliste, certain descendants of Membliarus, the son of Poeciles,
a Phoenician. (For Cadmus, the son of Agenor, when he was sailing
in search of Europe, made a landing on this island; and, either because
the country pleased him, or because he had a purpose in so doing,
left there a number of Phoenicians, and with them his own kinsman
Membliarus. Calliste had been inhabited by this race for eight generations
of men, before the arrival of Theras from Lacedaemon.)

Theras now, having with him a certain number of men from each of the
tribes, was setting forth on his expedition hitherward. Far from intending
to drive out the former inhabitants, he regarded them as his near
kin, and meant to settle among them. It happened that just at this
time the Minyae, having escaped from their prison, had taken up their
station upon Mount Taygetum; and the Lacedaemonians, wishing to destroy
them, were considering what was best to be done, when Theras begged
their lives, undertaking to remove them from the territory. His prayer
being granted, he took ship, and sailed, with three triaconters, to
join the descendants of Membliarus. He was not, however, accompanied
by all the Minyae, but only by some few of them. The greater number
fled to the land of the Paroreats and Caucons, whom they drove out,
themselves occupying the region in six bodies, by which were afterwards
built the towns of Lepreum, Macistus, Phryxae, Pyrgus, Epium, and
Nudium; whereof the greater part were in my day demolished by the
Eleans.

The island was called Thera after the name of its founder. This same
Theras had a son, who refused to cross the sea with him; Theras therefore
left him behind, "a sheep," as he said, "among wolves." From this
speech his son came to be called Oeolycus, a name which afterwards
grew to be the only one by which he was known. This Oeolycus was the
father of Aegeus, from whom sprang the Aegidae, a great tribe in Sparta.

[George S.]

Carlin Pelasgian wasn't that a tribe of Macedonia .The pelasgian language & macedonian were similar.I think pelasgian went as far as crete.??Crete in ancient macedonian means to hide(00 kriet)..

[Carlin]

Carlin Pelasgian wasn't that a tribe of Macedonia .The pelasgian language & macedonian were similar.I think pelasgian went as far as crete.??Crete in ancient macedonian means to hide(00 kriet)..

Hi George, you are correct sir (although I wouldn't go so far as to speculate on the etymology of the term Crete).

Source: Hermes scythicus. [The author attempted to argue, rather unconvincingly, that the ancient Hellenes, Thracians, Pelasgi, etc. were all of Scythian and Gothic (Germanic) origin -- by reading this book I came to an idea that the Pelasgians and Thracians were likely one and the same people. Moreover, I would speculate that ancient/Classical Hellenes themselves were mainly of Thracian ancestry and spoke a very mixed language that was a Thracian (or Pelasgian) tongue by descent.

It's like comparing modern English to ancient Saxon, or modern Macedonian to Old Slavonic. Completely different languages, for obvious reasons, however English evolved from Saxon/Germanic just like Macedonian evolved from Slavonic. See page 57.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=OQYJAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hermes+scythicus&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6nvDUKeRKsTVyAHao4HYCQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA

We learn from Trogus Pompeius, as abridged by Justin, that the people of Macedon were anciently called Pelasgi. If we compare this testimony with that already brought from Strabo, that "the Thracians held Macedonia," we may reasonably conclude that the Pelasgi were Thracians (and/or vice versa):

Macedonians = Thracians = Pelasgi.

(Page 57: "..Thrace, the parent country of Pelasgi")

Although this may seem surprising to many, it seems that the Leleges were (after the age of Homer) denominated as Mysomacedones, or Macedonians mingled with Mysians. They are thus designed by Ptolemy, and apparently by Pliny. Strabo also stated that "many held the Leleges to be the same with the Carians."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leleges

The Leleges were one of the aboriginal peoples of the Aegean littoral, distinct from the Pelasgians, the Bronze Age Greeks, the cretan Minoans, the cycladic Telkhines, and the Tyrrhenians. The classical Hellenes emerged as an amalgam of these six peoples. The distinction between the Leleges and the Carians (a nation living in south west Anatolia) is unclear. According to Homer, the Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe; However, Herodotus states that Leleges had been an early name for the Carians. The fourth-century BCE historian Philippus of Theangela, suggested that the Leleges maintained connections to Messenia, Laconia, Locris and other regions in mainland Greece, after they got overcome by the Carians in Asia Minor.

- Here I would ask a question, why an amalgam of "only" six peoples? There could have been more, or less. What about Phoenicians, Egyptians, or Lydians? Why "six"?

PS:

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.

http://www.palaeolexicon.com/default.aspx?static=14&Language_ID=13

Origins of the Carians

Even though Carians are mentioned frequently in ancient literature, most things about them remained a mystery. Until the 80's, when the Carian writing was finally deciphered, we knew nothing about the nature of their language. Carians were labelled as anything except Indo-Europeans. What we know now, is that the Carian language belonged to the Luwic group of Indo-European Anatolian languages together with Lycian1. However, most ancient authors place the Carians originally in Hellenic lands. It is likely that the Carians constituted the pre-Greek substratum of Greece2, which resulted the rich Luwic nomenclature of the Helladic area and the Aegean.

In search of their pre-history, it would be, once again, wise to trust Herodotus, who was half-Carian by blood. He reports the Cretan account, where the Carians dwell in the Aegean islands and are subjects to the “ Minoan” King Minos. They do not pay any tribute, but they supply the Cretans with ships and seamen when needed. By their campaigns with Minos, they became famous as mercenaries and in fact the name “Carian” became almost synonymous with “mercenary”3. At this point of time, the Carians are known as Leleges, a name which has been very confusing for historians. In fact, Leleges are a group of people who posse on some accounts as Carians and on other accounts as a distinct nation, closely related to the Carians4. With the Ionian and Dorian advance to the islands, the Carians end up in the mainland. On the other hand, according to Herodotus again, the Carians wanted to pose as natives of Caria. They said that Lydos and Mysos, fathers of the Lydian and Mysian nation respectively, were brothers of their founding father Car. Herodotus believes however, that the natives of Caria, were the Kaunians, a nation that adopted the Carian language (or Carians adopted the Kaunian). The Kaunians on their turn claimed to have come from Crete. That was the case for the Lycians too; Herodotus tells us that they came from Crete, after have been expelled by Minos.

This is were the genealogy of the Carians become complicated. If we have to go by the Carian account, then how come their founding father Car becomes King of Megara5 in the Hellenic mainland? How can the Mysians, who seem to have been speaking a very different language from Carian6, be related to them? Why are not the Lycians and Caunians included in the Carian genealogy? The fact of being continuously driven out from their lands, might have created the “urge for an autochthonous origin”. The truth is that their relation to the Greeks must have passed through many “love and hate” situations. The first Ionians that settled in Caria did not bring women with them, but married with the local Carian women. That means that the populations of the Carian coast was initially mixed and the later waves of Greeks must have caused an early Hellenization7 of the Carian populations, without however wiping out language and identity. Indeed, archaeologically speaking, their culture appears as little more than a reflection of contemporary Greek culture8 and there's a serious lack of bronze age finds in Caria, other than those of Mycenaean and Minoan type. More or less, Carians must have been existing as a nation within a nation and came to some form of symbiosis with the Greeks. As Strabo puts it “they were unable to live apart from the Greeks”9.

Now, If the Greek writers were indeed right about the migration of the Carians to the coast of Asia Minor, when did this occur? In the other side of the Aegean lies the answer. The land of Karkisa as it is called in the Hittite records might be Caria of the 14 th century BC. Taking into consideration the Carian ethnonym “KRK” and “krka” used by the Phoenicians and the Persians respectively, then the chances of Karkisa being Caria are high.

[Carlin]

Direct quotes/points from "Thracians and Mycenaeans", by Jan G. P. Best, Manny M. W. De Vries.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=7ucUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA197&dq=Leleges+Thracians&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9snCUMj8JsqDyAGW2YC4Cg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Leleges%20Thracians&f=false

- The archaeological and linguistic material leads us to the conclusion that Greece was inhabited by THRACIANS and (WEST-)LUWIANS during the Middle Bronze Age.

- According to literary tradition Boeotia was once occupied by "barbarous" tribes, of which the Hyantes, Phlegyans, Aones and Leleges were the most prominent.

- The Hyantes, at the arrival of Kadmos ("who is clearly associated with the first Greeks", direct citation from the book) and his Phoenicians were forced to flee to Phokis and to Aetolia. It seems likely that Hyantes are to be identified with the Thracians.

- Hyantes, Phlegyans, Aones, Abantes (or Abantians) = Thracian and/or Pelasgian tribes.

- Aones shared their territory with Leleges. Leleges testified to inhabit coastal regions and districts of southern Greece (Argolid, Messenia, Megarid!) where they are identified with the Carians. Leleges are to be looked at as west-Luwian population groups.

Page 191: In a series of comprehensive studies dedicated to the subject, it has convincingly been pointed out by Jan Best that the introduction of Minyan Ware, which took place in successive waves, one during the EH II/III transitional period, c. 2200 B.C. (Lerna, Kirrha), and another during the EH III/MH I transitional period, c. 2000 B.C. (Eleusis, Eutresis), was due to proto-Thracian immigrants colonizing the Greek peninsula from the northern Balkans, where this particular pottery culture is already attested for the preceding period.

Page 199: "..Carian persisted as a kind of church Latin until well into historical times."


Quote from Herodotus:

"..for it is the height of folly to maintain that these Ionians are more
Ionian than the rest, or in any respect better born, since the truth
is that no small portion of them were Abantians from Euboea, who are
not even Ionians in name; and, besides, there were mixed up with the
emigration Minyae from Orchomenus, Cadmeians, Dryopians, Phocians
from the several cities of Phocis, Molossians, Arcadian Pelasgi, Dorians
from Epidaurus, and many other distinct tribes. Even those who came
from the Prytaneum of Athens, and reckon themselves the purest Ionians
of all, brought no wives with them to the new country, but married
Carian girls, whose fathers they had slain."

http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt

[Carlin]

Diodorus Siculus, I.28-29

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1A*.html

28 1 Now the Egyptians say that also after these events a great number of colonies were spread from Egypt over all the inhabited world. To Babylon, for instance, colonists were led by Belus, who was held to be the son of Poseidon and Libya; and after establishing himself on the Euphrates river he appointed priests, called Chaldaeans by the Babylonians, who were exempt from taxation and free from every kind of service to the state, as are the priests of Egypt;61 and they also make observations of the stars, following the example of the Egyptian priests, physicists, and astrologers. 2 They say also that those who set forth with Danaus, likewise from Egypt, settled what is practically the oldest city in Greece, Argos, and that the nation of the Colchi in Pontus and that of the Jews, which lies between Arabia and Syria, were founded as colonies by certain emigrants from their country; 3 and this is the reason why it is a long-established institution among these two peoples to circumcise their male children, the custom having been brought over from Egypt. 4 Even the Athenians, they say, are colonists from Saïs in Egypt, and they undertake to offer proofs of such a relationship; for the Athenians are the only Greeks who call their city "Asty," a name brought over from the city Asty in Egypt. Furthermore, their body politic had the same classification and division p93of the people as found in Egypt, where the citizens have been divided into three orders: 5 the first Athenian class consisted of the "eupatrids,"62 as they were called, being those who were such as had received the best education and were held worthy of the highest honour, as is the case with the priests of Egypt; the second was that of the "geomoroi,"63 who were expected to possess arms and to serve in defence of the state, like those in Egypt who are known as husbandmen and supply the warriors; and the last class was reckoned to be that of the "demiurgoi,"64 who practise the mechanical arts and render only the most menial services to the state, this class among the Egyptians having a similar function.

6 Moreover, certain of the rulers of Athens were originally Egyptians, they say. Petes,65 for instance, the father of that Menestheus who took part in the expedition against Troy, having clearly been an Egyptian, later obtained citizenship at Athens and the kingship.66 . . . 7 He was of double form, and yet the Athenians are unable from their own point of view to give the true explanation of this nature of his, although it is patent to all that it was because of his double citizenship, Greek and barbarian, that he was held to be of double form, that is, part animal and part man.

29 1 In the same way, they continue, Erechtheus also, who was by birth an Egyptian, became king of p95Athens, and in proof of this they offer the following considerations. Once when there was a great drought, as is generally agreed, which extended over practically all the inhabited earth except Egypt because of the peculiar character of that country, and there followed a destruction both of crops and of men in great numbers, Erechtheus, through his racial connection with Egypt, brought from there to Athens a great supply of grain, and in return those who had enjoyed this aid made their benefactor king. 2 After he had secured the throne he instituted the initiatory rites of Demeter in Eleusis and established the mysteries, transferring their ritual from Egypt. And the tradition that an advent of the goddess into Attica also took place at that time is reasonable, since it was then that the fruits which are named after her were brought to Athens, and this is why it was thought that the discovery of the seed had been made again, as though Demeter had bestowed the gift. 3 And the Athenians on their part agree that it was in the reign of Erechtheus, when a lack of rain had wiped out the crops, that Demeter came to them with the gift of grain. Furthermore, the initiatory rites and mysteries of this goddess were instituted at Eleusis at that time. 4 And their sacrifices as well as their ancient ceremonies are observed by the Athenians in the same way as by the Egyptians; for the Eumolpidae were derived from the priests of Egypt and the Ceryces from the pastophoroi.67 They are also the only Greeks p97who swear by Isis, and they closely resemble the Egyptians in both their appearance and manners. 5 By many other statements like these, spoken more out of a love for glory than with regard for the truth, as I see the matter, they claim Athens as a colony of theirs because of the fame of that city.


Pausanias, II.30.6, II.38.4, IV.35.2, IX.5.1

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1A.html

II.30.6

TROEZEN, MYTHICAL HISTORY
[2.30.5] So much I must relate about Aegina, for the sake of Aeacus and his exploits. Bordering on Epidauria are the Troezenians, unrivalled glorifiers of their own country. They say that Orus was the first to be born in their land. Now, in my opinion, Orus is an Egyptian name and utterly un-Greek; but they assert that he became their king, and that the land was called Oraea after him and that Althepus, the son of Poseidon and of Leis, the daughter of Orus, inheriting the kingdom after Orus, named the land Althepia.

[2.30.6] During his reign, they say, Athena and Poseidon disputed about the land, and after disputing held it in common, as Zeus commanded them to do. For this reason they worship both Athena, whom they name both Polias (Urban) and Sthenias (Strong), and also Poseidon, under the surname of King. And moreover their old coins have as device a trident and a face of Athena.

[2.30.7] After Althepus, Saron became king. They said that this man built the sanctuary for Saronian Artemis by a sea which is marshy and shallow, so that for this reason it was called the Phoebaean lagoon. Now Saron was very fond of hunting. As he was chasing a doe, it so chanced that it dashed into the sea and he dashed in alter it. The doe swam further and further from the shore, and Saron kept close to his prey, until his ardor brought him to the open ocean. Here his strength failed, and he was drowned in the waves. The body was cast ashore at the grove of Artemis by the Phoebaean lagoon, and they buried it within the sacred enclosure, and after him they named the sea in these parts the Saronic instead of the Phoebaean lagoon.

[2.30.8] They know nothing of the later kings down to Hyperes and Anthas. These they assert to be sons of Poseidon and of Alcyone, daughter of Atlas, adding that they founded in the country the cities of Hyperea and Anthea; Aetius, however, the son of Anthas, on inheriting the kingdoms of his father and of his uncle, named one of the cities Poseidonias. When Troezen and Pittheus came to Aetius there were three kings instead of one, but the sons of Pelops enjoyed the balance of power.

[2.30.9] Here is evidence of it. When Troezen died, Pittheus gathered the inhabitants together, incorporating both Hyperea and Anthea into the modern city, which he named Troezen after his brother. Many years afterwards the descendants of Aetius, son of Anthas, were dispatched as colonists from Troezen, and founded Halicarnassus and Myndus in Caria. Anaphlystus and Sphettus, sons of Troezen, migrated to Attica, and the parishes are named after them. As my readers know it already, I shall not relate the story of Theseus, the grandson of Pittheus. There is, however, one incident that I must add.

[2.30.10] On the return of the Heracleidae, the Troezenians too received Dorian settlers from Argos. They had been subject at even an earlier date to the Argives; Homer, too, in the Catalogue, says that their commander was Diomedes. For Diomedes and Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, who were guardians of the boy Cyanippus, son of Aegialeus, led the Argives to Troy. Sthenelus, as I have related above, came of a more illustrious family, called the Anaxagoridae, and he had the best claim to the Kingdom of Argos. Such is the story of the Troezenians, with the exception of the cities that claim to be their colonies. I will now proceed to describe the appointments of their sanctuaries and the remarkable sights of their country.

II.38.4

[2.38.4] From Lerna there is also another road, which skirts the sea and leads to a place called Genesium. By the sea is a small sanctuary of Poseidon Genesius. Next to this is another place, called Apobathmi (Steps). The story is that this is the first place in Argolis where Danaus landed with his daughters. From here we pass through what is called Anigraea, along a narrow and difficult road, until we reach a tract on the left which stretches down to the sea;

IV.35.2

[4.35.2] I have shown in earlier passages40 that, when the Nauplians in the reign of Damocratidas in Argos were expelled for their Laconian sympathies, the Lacedaemonians gave them Mothone, and that no change was made regarding them on the part of the Messenians when they returned. The Nauplians in my view were Egyptians originally, who came by sea with Danaus to the Argolid, and two generations later were settled in Nauplia by Nauplius the son of Amymone.

IX.5.1

THEBES, MYTHICAL HISTORY

[9.5.1] V. The first to occupy the land of Thebes are said to have been the Ectenes, whose king was Ogygus, an aboriginal. From his name is derived Ogygian, which is an epithet of Thebes used by most of the poets. The Ectenes perished, they say, by pestilence, and after them there settled in the land the Hyantes and the Aones, who I think were Boeotian tribes and not foreigners.
[9.5.2] When the Phoenician army under Cadmus invaded the land these tribes were defeated; the Hyantes fled from the land when night came, but the Aones begged for mercy, and were allowed by Cadmus to remain and unite with the Phoenicians. The Aones still lived in village communities, but Cadmus built the city which even at the present day is called Cadmeia. Afterwards the city grew, and so the Cadmeia became the citadel of the lower city of Thebes. Cadmus made a brilliant marriage, if, as the Greek legend says, he indeed took to wife a daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. His daughters too have made him a name; Semele was famed for having a child by Zeus, Ino for being a divinity of the sea.
[9.5.3] In the time of Cadmus, the greatest power, next after his, was in the hands of the Sparti, namely, Chthonius, Hyperenor, Pelorus and Udaeus; but it was Echion who, for his great valor, was preferred by Cadmus to be his son-in-law. As I was unable to discover anything new about these men, I adopt the story that makes their name result from the way in which they came into being. When Cadnius migrated to the Illyrian tribe of the Encheleans, Polydorus his son got the kingdom.[/FONT]

[momce]

Interesting...the "hellenes" seem to be an external force in the ancient world...there was an attempt to draw a relation between tribal development and the ancient hellenic language which failed...my thought is maybe "hellenes" is not even an ethnic identifier at all

[George S.]

momce you hit the nail on the head there is no such thing as a hellene it's just a play on words.The greeks haven't worked out yet of who they are & have resorted to hellene as termilogy not an ethnic denotation.

[momce]

yes hellenes seems to be more an economic-cultural phenomenon..some observations,:

(1) there seems to be a huge gap between "greek" tribal development and language development-is it dialectical? if not it cannot be something real but invented
(2) greeks are mostly an urban phenomenon even in the ancient world
(3) they live mostly around coastal areas in urban settlements, based on sea-borne commerce
(4) the countryside is not "greek", even the cities have mixed populations many of them obviously of non-greek origin..the settlements themselves may or may not be of greek origin but may have been taken over
(5) the ancient greece borrows alot of things from other cultures especially Egyptian, Libyan etc
(6) Christianity and modern state machines allowed people to be assimilated faster and easier and made them forget their origins(related to Romes destruction of ancient tribal structures)
(7) capitalism made the entire process of destruction, assimilation more efficient
(8)hellenes have seems no connection to the land whatsoever, in fact they are something of an oddity in the entire Balkan-the ancient myths about origins are most likely lies and inventions to justify politics
(9) it explains why there is no such thing as a modern greek folk culture since its all borrowed from other peoples, probably the original inhabitants of the Balkan and also the Turks-i.e the real greek petitbourgeois culture probably died with the ancient world, "hellenes" were a superstructural phenomenon that disappeared when the socio-economic conditions dissappeared

So there is no homogeneity there or political-cultural and geographic continuity but an attempt to force things in ones favour for various reasons. So there is alot to retrieved in many senses.

[Carlin]

"Hellenization" and Southern Phoenicia: Reconsidering the Impact of Greece Before Alexander, by Susan Rebecca Martin

Page 30-31:

- Jonathan Hall states that self-awareness arose on the mainland from inter-Greek relationships and only as early as the sixth century.
- Greek self-awareness was most likely cemented in, or at least was developed by, its confrontation with the Persians. It was in the fifth century that the idea of Hellenism really began to take shape, around the same time that the Hellenization of Phoenicia allegedly began. Several recent studies have rightly taken this idea to task, questioning the extent to which Greeks considered themselves a national group and challenging the Greek/anti-Greek or "oppositional" approach so often associated with the idea that the Persian Wars were the major catalyst for the creation of Hellenic identity.
- In Greece, we can speak of various autonomous groups emerging from the Dark Ages that only sometimes (even rarely) recognized their commonality through culture, or Hellenism.

Page 34:

- Through the example of language, a process is suggested which "barbarians" could become increasingly at "being Greek". Hellenes and barbarians are not perceived as antithetical but as different points on the same continuum. They represent different (cultural) possibilities.

Page 36:

- A plurality of models existed. These models seem to have been quite fluid and could be interpreted and reinterpreted at will - even by the same author in the same book.

Page 38-40:

- According to Claudius Iolaus, the "Dorians" were considered Phoenicians. In the passage, "Phoenician" is not ethnically antithetical to (the unstated) "Hellene" but is still important to describing "Dorian" identity.
- In the case of the Phoenicians "Dorians" in Claudius Iolaus, I think it better to understand "Phoenician" and "Hellene" as cultural groups encompassing various identities and ethnicities (etc.), some of which were shared.
- Instead of seeing neat categories of Greek/non-Greek, or imagining "barbaroi" becoming Hellenes by moving through a checklist of Greek traits, we see that there were multiple degrees of interaction with a variety of outcomes in different periods and regions. One could speak Greek, or be tied ethnically to some Greeks, while still maintaining an Amphilochian, Karian or Phoenician identity.
- Greek material culture appears in Phoenicia and exists way before Alexander's conquest.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=m2k_8JtTgsAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hellenization+Phoenicians&hl=en&sa=X&ei=i1LVUMjiDo680AHV44HIBg&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAA

[Carlin]

I understand ethnicity to be a subjective social concept established through "fictive kinship and descent, common history and a specific homeland". Ethnic identity was self-consciously asserted through myth, genealogies and other variables of collective identity.

[Carlin]

So there is no clear recipe for the archetypal Hellene against which the non-Hellene can be measured and weighed. Both descriptors must have changed over time and space, in reaction to different stimuli. As a category, "Hellene" (like "Phoenician") is unstable, variously applying some combination of cultural behaviors, kinship ties and general genealogical ties, quasi-national identity, intra-Hellenic identity, and so on, depending on context. Inclusion or exclusion as a Hellene is not necessarily located in clear-cut difference or absolute otherness. Rather, difference was probably located within categories of what was apparently the same. Likewise, cultural conjunctions "serve to underscore, not to undermine" cultural distinctiveness.

[Carlin]

Excerpts from Hellenicity by Jonathan Hall (2005)

http://books.google.ca/books?id=F4Am6gcP0GsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Jonathan+Hall&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GcnYUOSPKq6G0QHO-4GQDA&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ

Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity

http://books.google.ca/books?id=jJBh7BjUlAMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Jonathan+Hall&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GcnYUOSPKq6G0QHO-4GQDA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA

"Although the Greeks themselves believed in polygenetic origins within
the Balkan peninsula in Greece, the discovery of the Indo-European
language group prompted scholars to view Greek speakers as immigrants
from an original Indo-European homeland. Furthermore, the fact that
Greek civilization is known predominantly—and, prior to the emergence
of the discipline of archaeology, exclusively—through its literary
remains has tented to promote the Greek language as the quintessential
expression of Greekness. The result is that a horizon has been drawn
between a pre-Greek chronological phase and a properly Greek era,
signaled by the arrival of the first Greek speakers. Chapter 2 charts
the various attempts that have been made to date this arrival by means
of perceived disjuncture in the archaeological record and argues,
firstly, that these supposed cultural breaks are becoming ever more
illusory as our archaeological knowledge increases and, secondly that
the very assumptions that apparent material innovations should signal
the arrival of a new language and that a linguistic group necessarily
equates with a self-conscious ethnic group are, on the basis of
comparative anthropological evidence questionable (Hall 2005, p. 5)."

"More importantly, the biblical account of unilineal or monogenetic
origins in the Near East dictated that the ancestors of the Greeks
must have arrived from OUTSIDE Greece (Hall 2005, p. 37, emphasis in
the original)."

"Although claims for a northern European origin have not been entirely
abated today, they are largely outnumbered by proposals for an
Indo-European Urheimat in either the steppes of Southern Russia or,
more recently, Anatolia. The debate is still far from being resolved
to universal satisfaction, but with regard to specifically Greek
origins the question most frequently posed has not been "from where?"
but rather "When?" (Hall 2005, p. 28)."

"Schmidt (proponent of the wave model) himself did not question the
existence of an original PIE languages, but the Russian linguist
Nikolai Trubetskoy (1939) raised the possibility that originally
dissimilar "Indo-European" languages could have gradually come to
resemble one another through repeated contact and borrowing. Parallel
examples of this phenomenon are offered by the languages of the
Balkans; the Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese languages in southeast Asia;
the Indo-European, Dravidian and Munda languages of the Indian
subcontinent; and the Indo-European and Caucasian leagues of the Black
Sea and Caspian areas. The question is whether the undeniably closer
and more numerous correspondences among Indo-European languages can
similarly be explained by an exceptionally long period of contact an
development, but either way it is clear that linguistic innovation
need to require the sort of mass immigration that archeologist have
sought in the material record (Hall 2005, p. 44, parenthesis added)."

"The whole debate on the "coming of the Greeks" has been characterized
by the repeated tendency to confuse emic (internal/subjective) and
etic (external/objective) categories. Even if we are prepared to
accept that a number—be it large or small—of Indo-European speakers
arrived in the Greek mainland at a certain point in time and imposed
their language on the substrate language of their predecessors, that
does not in itself indicate the commencement of Hellenic identity as
the Greeks themselves conceived it. The history of a language or of
cultural practices is not necessarily the same as the history of the
people who are later identified—and identify themselves—with these
markers (Hall 2005, p. 45)."


Hall, J. M. (2005). Hellenicity: between ethnicity and culture.
Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-31330-6

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34.1 (2003) 65-66

Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. By Jonathan M. Hall (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002) 312pp. $50.00

In a famous passage (Histories, 8.144), Herodotus has the Athenians chastise the Spartans for fearing that Athens might capitulate to the Persians. Several deterrents, according to the Athenians, keep them from betraying Greece—the places of worship that the Persians had destroyed andthe elements constituting a "common Greekness" (to Hellenikon)—common blood and language, common shrines to the gods, common sacrifices, and common customs. This seems to be straightforward testimony to the ancient Greek conception of Hellenic ethnicity, but Hall demonstrates that communally shared Panhellenic identity was unstable and, at most times, less salient than other collective identities, especially in pre-classical Greece apart from Athens.

This study traces the formation of a collective Hellenic identity in Greek antiquity, referring throughout by neologism to ancient Greek ethnic consciousness as "Hellenicity." Hall begins by setting out his methodological and theoretical positions on the study of ethnic identity. For him, ethnicity represents a constructivist "imagined community," not any primordial Stammbaum, and ethnicity "denotes both the self-consciousness of belonging to an ethnic group ('ethnic identity') and the dynamic process that structures, and is structured by, ethnic groups in social interaction with one another." The most important aspects of ethnic self-ascription are mythic common descent and kinship, an association with a geographical locality or region, and a sense of common historical experience. Above all, ethnicity is attitudinal and selective, and it is strategically employed in particular historical configurations in the interests of its constituency.

Hall takes up the question of ancient Greek origins, offering a good historical synthesis of modern archaeological and linguistic work on the problem of when Greek-speaking peoples first arrived in Greece. But this question is of peripheral importance to Hall's study. He argues that Greek-speakers' penetration into the Greek peninsula came gradually over an extended period of time, and that the idea of a massive population influx of Greek speakers is untenable. The main ethnic sub-categories of the ancient Greeks—Achaeans, Ionians, Aiolians, and Dorians—only emerged in local conditions during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. Panhellenism was a sporadic and ephemeral force in ancient Greece. It peaked under extraordinary circumstances—prospects for united aggression, the threatened security of Hellas, or international crisis for the collective Greek city-states. Hall suggests that we look to the great athletic festivals for origins; in this context, Hellenism may have been an aggregrative ethnicity that operated across geographically contiguous regions to weld together a transregional aristocracy against lesser status groups. "Hellenicity" clearly emerges only in the fifth century B.C.E., and then it was largely the production of imperial Athens, which acted as "the new self-appointed arbiter of cultural authenticity." Hellenic identity thus came to be measured increasingly in terms of culture and education rather than of putative descent groups through a process that reached its completion during the Hellenistic age.


Craige B. Champion
Syracuse University

[momce]

the problem is to get that greek jack in the box out of Macedonia to get that hunchback of notre dame out of Macedonia..holy shit greece are like the guy riding the bicycle with popcorn and candy thinking everywhere he goes is greece and trying to trap people in his cage hahaha

[Carlin]

1) Carian inscriptions from Karabournaki (Salonika)

http://www.academia.edu/2263452/Two_Carian_Inscriptions_from_Karabournaki_Thessaloniki_Greece_in_K._Konuk_ed._Stephanephoros._De_leconomie_antique_a_lAsie_Mineure._Hommages_a_Raymond_Descat_2012

2) Greek-Carian Bilingual inscriptions from Athens

http://books.google.ca/books?id=WJbd0m6YaFkC&pg=PA762&lpg=PA762&dq=Carian+inscriptions+in+Athens&source=bl&ots=sya5ocIEma&sig=AyXgfVmWFb0UPfnD8amtSxVANR4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=U_vZUPT9L8LJ0QHIxID4BA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Carian%20inscriptions%20in%20Athens&f=false

3) Carians/Leleges in Greece (Map)

http://www.palaeolexicon.com/Assets/Carian/map_of_caria.jpg

4) The Land of Ionia: Society and Economy in the Archaic Period, By Alan M. Greaves.

"The predominance of inscriptions from a religious context may be a product of Ionian Greek epigraphic habits at the time (i.e. the use of inscriptions may have been limited to cult practices), or indicate that Greek was not widespread in the wider community.."

5) The First Greek speakers

http://www.palaeolexicon.com/default.aspx?static=14&Language_ID=1

- A hard task in history is to define who the first Greek speakers were and how they emerged. First of all, the term Greek/Hellenic is something that cannot be used as an ethnonym in the prehistory of the early speakers of this language. Neither can early written forms of Greek set a date to the formation of the ethnogenesis, the language and the culture of these people. In the last centuries many scholars have tried to bound language and archaeology into a date that would signify the so called 'coming of the Greeks'. There are still questions that remain unanswered and others that have more than one explanation.

- From those two theories it is evident that we cannot identify the first Greek speakers nor date their first presence easily. It is like asking where were the English when Julius Caesar invaded Britain? There's no answer to that. To talk about the 'coming of the Greeks' means that we suppose the pre-existence of the Greek language outside Greece, a hypothesis for which there is no evidence. The motherland of the Greek language has always been, the area of the present state of Greece. Just like modern English was formed in England out of Anglo-Saxon heavily contaminated with Norman French and other foreign bodies. The traditional view of waves of Greek-speaking warriors marching down the Balkans to subjugate Greece is an old one.

- The Greeks also knew that some of their countrymen spoke other languages (e.g Eteo-Cretans - meaning true Cretans) or that people they lived with side by side were not originally Greek (e.g the Carians, Leleges).

- In 1963, Chadwick was the first to propose that the Greek language did not exist as we know it before the 20th century BC, but was formed by the mixture of an indigenous populations with invaders who spoke another PIE language. When these newcomers (mello-Greeks) reached Greece, they mixed with the previous inhabitants, whom they succeeded in subjugating, and borrowed from them many words for unfamiliar objects. The mispronunciation of the PIE words by those aboriginals led to permanent changes in the phonetics. Both the indigenous inhabitants and the newcomers started to form a group that in the future would become the Greeks. Future discoveries might throw some light into the Greek language prehistory. What is certain right now, is that the first Greek speakers had a multi-ethnic/lingual prehistory. In other words the fusion of cultures and languages of the Greek mainland and the Aegean starting from the neolithic period until the Trojan war has been the mother of the Hellenic tongue.


What is certain right now, is that the first Greek speakers had a multi-ethnic/lingual prehistory. In other words the fusion of cultures and languages of the Greek mainland and the Aegean starting from the neolithic period until the Trojan war has been the mother of the Hellenic tongue.

[momce]

What are you talking about??? Show me a black Greek....and please don't post that picture of the black Greek basketball player who immigrated from Nigeria The average height in Greece is 5 foot 10 for men, and the average with women is five foot four.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

You can find similar numbers throughout Europe.

And no, tallness and hairless-ness is a strong association with African people...when's the last time you saw an African with arm hair, back hair, leg hair, etc.?

Some modern greeks look black actually . I think the mistake here is to confuse black with egyptian, libyan and semitic which is more likely as opposed to pure black which is more nubian.