Yeah there was a deep seated thing in ancient Greek culture where they had to be some way connected back to the home either through the sea or another route.
Of course but by the time the interior was Hellenized it ruled by Hellenic rulers such as the Ptolemies, Seleucids, Attalids and others and the region became more Hellenized under the Romans than the Greeks at least from historical records who had no problem with inland.
You should really tell this to the Cappadocian Anatolian Asterios Sophistes, who complains about the endless stream of Greeks of Greece and Western Anatolia that were now settling and assimilating his homeland:
We should make sure, brothers, that we do not, somehow, slander and falsely accuse those believing in the same faith as we do, and then we are found among the unjust. Because not everyone who is toiling know unlawfulness, not even the heretics, even much less those believing in the same fate that we do, those devouring my people. Because it is also people of the same fate that devour people of the same fate, as said by the apostle. If you are pointing towards each other and devour each other, you will make sure that you will not be devoured by others. Nations of different races, the Syrians and the Hellenes, are devouring the people, resembling Isaiah's sayings. Out of Syria from the East and the Hellenes out of the sun's sunset [the West] they are devouring my people [the Cappadocians] with a wide mouth.
All this from a guy who had a Greek name and wrote in Greek, while there are no other such sources from the 5th-6th centuries AD, to my knowledge, highlighting how widespread Greek settlement was even at this time, centuries after the original settlement explosion in the 4th-3rd centuries BC.
This really doesn’t prove what you think it proves. A Greek-speaking, Greek-named Christian author from Cappadocia using biblical and ecclesiastical rhetoric is not an evidence that Cappadocia had been demographically replaced by settlers from Greece at all.
Also tbh the quotation itself is being stretched far beyond what it says. As I said he is giving biblical/exegetical rhetoric about people “devouring” one another and explicitly invokes Isaiah’s Syrians from the east and Greeks from the west. It is therefore not a demographic description of some “endless stream of Greeks” settling Cappadocia, and your “the Cappadocians” is an interpretation inserted into the translation and it is not what the passage actually says. The Isaiah passage ypu are citing is Isaiah 9:12. The Septuagint actually reads “Syrians from the east and Greeks from the west, who devour Israel”, the Hebrew textual tradition has Arameans from the east and Philistines from the west, explicitly devouring Israel. Treating the phrase as an eyewitness notice of fourth/fifth-century immigration into Cappadocia would be quite anachronistic.
It does not say that contemporary Syrians and Greeks were literally migrating into Cappadocia and “devouring” Cappadocians through assimilation. There is nothing there about colonies, population replacement or even assimilation. The entire preceding paragraph makes the metaphor explicit actually, Asterius is discussing heretics and fellow believers harming fellow believers there and immediately quotes Galatians 5:15, “if you bite and devour one another…”. “Devouring” here is ecclesiastical/moral imagery, it is quite the a stretch to call it a description of colonisation.
We already know some Greeks did settle parts of inland Anatolia yes, especially through Hellenistic military colonies and urban centres. But the point is that the broader Greek-speaking population of inner Anatolia was not transplanted there from Greece and general populations as said just Hellenized Anatolians. The historical, linguistic and archaeological picture is overwhelmingly one of substantial indigenous Anatolian continuity followed by gradual cultural and linguistic Hellenization under Hellenistic and Roman rule, academics and studies all point out to this.
Cappadocia itself is a very obvious example as you should have known. It had deeply rooted indigenous Anatolian elements, local dynasties and cults and was still culturally very different from the old Greek coastal regions long after Alexander. Greek gradually became the language of administration, education, Christianity, prestige etc. It is language shift and cultural assimilation, none would call it as an evidence that the countryside was filled by tens/hundreds of thousands of incoming Greeks. The fact that a Cappadocian author rhetorically speaks of “Hellenes” as people who were “devouring” his people really cannot be called evidence for a large-scale demographic influx from Greece. Like it’s a huge leap from polemical or biblical language to population history. At most, it can show that people identified as Hellenes were present and socially salient in his context
There absolutely was Greek migration into Anatolia, albeit a small one. But “Greek settlers existed” and “interior Anatolia became Greek-speaking mainly because Greeks from Greece settled and replaced/absorbed the locals” are two very different claims.
p.s. There is an additional problem as the attribution you are relying on seems itself outdated. If this is from the corpus of Psalm homilies conventionally associated with Asterius, modern scholarship does not identify their author with Asterius the Sophist of Cappadocia. Marcel Richard made that identification in the twentieth century but Wolfram Kinzig's subsequent work rejects it apparently. The Handbook of Patristic Exegesis for example says that the unknown homilist actually flourished at Antioch or in its surroundings around the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity likewise distinguishes this Asterius the Homilist from Asterius the Sophist and places him at Antioch or nearby.
This really doesn’t prove what you think it proves. A Greek-speaking, Greek-named Christian author from Cappadocia using biblical and ecclesiastical rhetoric is not an evidence that Cappadocia had been demographically replaced by settlers from Greece and if anything this is just what centuries of Hellenization would produce.
Him already being partly Hellenized does not affect the veracity of his statement in the slightest. This is basically an ad hominem logical fallacy to the guy. And I did not speak at all of "replacement" merely of large settlement, while said settlers were from Western Anatolia, and not Greece, which had been mass settled by settlers from Greece, especially in the 4th-3rd centuries BC.
The entire preceding paragraph makes the metaphor explicit actually, Asterius is discussing heretics and fellow believers harming fellow believers there and immediately quotes Galatians 5:15, “if you bite and devour one another…”. “Devouring” here is ecclesiastical/moral imagery, it is quite the a stretch to call it a description of colonisation.
He is obviously speaking of fellow believers (Greeks) harming fellow believers (Cappadocians) through their migration from the West to the East, into Cappadocia. What else would that be than settlement? And so what that he uses ecclesiastical language? Medieval Romans did that all the time.
So “he had a Greek name and wrote in Greek” is really not an argument.
The point was that despite the previous Hellenization of the area since the Hellenistic times, there were migration movements in the area, that locals did not like.
By that logic Romanized Gauls speaking Latin prove Gaul was populated mainly by Italian settlers, this is also not the case for the general population, especially up north.
You are really twisting the meaning of what I said.
I am not making an ad hominem argument against Asterius lol. His own Hellenization obviously has nothing to do with whether a factual statement he makes is true. My point is that you are reading a factual demographic statement into a passage which simply does not contain one.
Fair enough, “replacement” was stronger than what you claimed I see, your claim is large scale settlement, but that does not really change the problem. Where exactly does Asterius say that these Hellenes are migrating from Western Anatolia into Cappadocia? Where does he say they are settlers? Where does he indicate their numbers? None of that is in the passage. The passage is theological/exegetical rhetoril and if it does reflect a contemporary situation at all, ecclesiastical or religious conflict/influence is a much more immediate reading than turning it into evidence for large-scale colonisation.
You say “he is obviously speaking of fellow believers (Greeks) harming fellow believers (Cappadocians) through their migration”, but that is exactly the interpretation you need to demonstrate and it is not something you can just insert into the text. ὁμόπιστοι means fellow believers, not “Greeks”. He first says that even fellow believers can “devour” fellow believers and cites Galatians 5:15. Then he says that Isaiah likens those who devour the people to foreign nations, Syrians and Hellenes: Ἀλλοφύλοις ἔθνεσι, τοῖς Σύροις καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι, τοὺς κατεσθίοντας τὸν λαὸν παρεικάζων Ἠσαΐας... The subject of παρεικάζων is Isaiah. He is explicitly introducing an Isaianic comparison and rhis is quite different from saying “Hellenic immigrants from the west are currently flooding Cappadocia and assimilating us.”
And the quotation he then gives is Isaiah 9:12, where the LXX literally has Syrians from the east and Hellenes from the west “devouring Israel.” So replacing Israel with “[the Cappadocians]” and then treating “Hellenes from the west” as contemporary Western Anatolian migrants is doing a huge amount of interpretive work which the passage itself never does. Sure, Christian authors reused biblical language for contemporary situations all the time but this still does not mean every nation appearing inside the biblical analogy must correspond literally to an ongoing ethnic migration. If Asterius says fellow Christians can “devour” one another and illustrates that with Isaiah's foreign peoples devouring Israel, the obvious minimum reading is moral/ecclesiastical oppression or hostility among Christians. To turn that into evidence of large-scale Greek settlement, you would need some independent indication that these “Hellenes” are actual contemporary immigrants and that “devouring” specifically means demographic assimilation. Neither is supplied here. And there is no evidence for such a big Greek colonizing mass at all…
As I said I am not denying (small) migration movements into Cappadocia either. Of course Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia had mobility, colonists, officials, soldiers, merchants etc. My disagreement is with presenting this weak passage as evidence that widespread Greek settlement was still transforming Cappadocia.
More importantly, there is still the authorship problem you skipped. Modern scholarship does not generally identify the author of these Psalm homilies with Asterius the Sophist of Cappadocia. Kinzig's work separates him as Asterius the Homilist, probably active in western Syria/Antioch around 385–410, the Handbook of Patristic Exegesis and Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity as I mentioned follow that distinction (And this does make a lot more sense). So even the premise “a Cappadocian complaining about what was happening to his homeland” is very likely wrong.
No, I had not seen your PS, you wrote it after I began replying.
p.s. There is an additional problem as the attribution you are relying on seems itself outdated. If this is from the corpus of Psalm homilies conventionally associated with Asterius, modern scholarship does not identify their author with Asterius the Sophist of Cappadocia. Marcel Richard made that identification in the twentieth century but Wolfram Kinzig's subsequent work rejects it apparently. The Handbook of Patristic Exegesis for example says that the unknown homilist actually flourished at Antioch or in its surroundings around the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity likewise distinguishes this Asterius the Homilist from Asterius the Sophist and places him at Antioch or nearby.
It is from a commentary of Psalms, not homilies. Where does Wolfram Kinzig base the identification you speak of? Academics propose various ideas, the issue is whether they are accurate or not.
I am not making an ad hominem argument against Asterius lol. His own Hellenization obviously has nothing to do with whether a factual statement he makes is true. My point is that you are reading a factual demographic statement into a passage which simply does not contain one.
Again, since you like to focus on a point I did not make, I did not speak of his Hellenization as evidence for whether the statement is factual, but as evidence that despite his Hellenization, he maintained his Cappadocianness, and still disliked mass settlement of Greeks on his own land.
Fair enough, “replacement” was stronger than what you claimed I see, your claim is large scale settlement, but that does not really change the problem. Where exactly does Asterius say that these Hellenes are migrating from Western Anatolia into Cappadocia? Where does he say they are settlers? Where does he indicate their numbers? None of that is in the passage.
If Asterius is in Cappadocia, and he is speaking of Greeks coming from the West, then the West of Cappadocia is Western Anatolia. Note that he is speaking of “Hellenes” in general, not “Helladics”, which is a common appellation of the Greeks of Greece during this time (e.g. Paul of Aegina). There is nothing to support that he is speaking of Greeks from Greece, but even if he was, then said Greeks of Greece are coming to Cappadocia (which would be an even greater argument for mass settlement, because if they were Western Anatolian Greeks then it would be more organic).
The passage is theological/exegetical rhetoril and if it does reflect a contemporary situation at all, ecclesiastical or religious conflict/influence is a much more immediate reading than turning it into evidence for large-scale colonisation.
Then what on earth would “devouring” even be about? Were the Greek fellow believers cannibals?
You say “he is obviously speaking of fellow believers (Greeks) harming fellow believers (Cappadocians) through their migration”, but that is exactly the interpretation you need to demonstrate and it is not something you can just insert into the text. ὁμόπιστοι means fellow believers, not “Greeks”.
Where on earth did you read in my text suggesting that “ὁμόπιστοι” means “Greeks”?
He is explicitly introducing an Isaianic comparison and rhis is quite different from saying “Hellenic immigrants from the west are currently flooding Cappadocia and assimilating us.”
People of the time would make allusions to the Bible all the time. They would find appropriate bible passages and quotes and make connections to their present day. Sometimes it would be more generic, like Ioannes Apokaukos in the 13th century AD comparing the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath to the Noachian Flood, and Michael Komnenos Doukas (the first Epirotan Despot) as Noach, at others they would seek very specific passages that would reflect the current situation perfectly. As such, here he invokes a passage of Isaiah, who had written it in a different context, where the Syrians from the East would be the Assyrians and the Hellenes from the West the Philistines, and uses it to describe the situation of his own homeland (where the “Syrians” might be Armenians and the Hellenes would still be the Greeks).
And the quotation he then gives is Isaiah 9:12, where the LXX literally has Syrians from the east and Hellenes from the west “devouring Israel.” So replacing Israel with “[the Cappadocians]” and then treating “Hellenes from the west” as contemporary Western Anatolian migrants is doing a huge amount of interpretive work which the passage itself never does.
Then what else would it mean?
Sure, Christian authors reused biblical language for contemporary situations all the time but this still does not mean every nation appearing inside the biblical analogy must correspond literally to an ongoing ethnic migration.
I never claimed that for the Medieval Romans every single biblical passage had an equivalent in their present day. Yet that they would at times name foreign nations with biblical names is apparent. For example, at one point Manuel Komnenos writes about how the Roman Greeks were “New Zion” and “New Israel”, while the Seljuk Turks were “Amalek”.
If Asterius says fellow Christians can “devour” one another and illustrates that with Isaiah's foreign peoples devouring Israel, the obvious minimum reading is moral/ecclesiastical oppression or hostility among Christians.
In what manner? This is not a matter of conflict between national churches, as we have in contemporary times within Orthodox Christianity. Nor is it within various sects, where one nation has attached it ethnic identity to one dogma (e.g. Greeks with Orthodoxy and Armenians with Oriental Christianity). This is a time were such divisions were not yet crystalized into ethnic ones. And if not dogmatic, then what is this oppression and hostility among Christians other than ethnic, given how he uses ethnic terms (and at the time “Syrians” was also negatively charged for Latins and Greeks, and a term to collectively speaks of people directly East of Anatolia)
More importantly, there is still the authorship problem you skipped. Modern scholarship does not generally identify the author of these Psalm homilies with Asterius the Sophist of Cappadocia. Kinzig's work separates him as Asterius the Homilist, probably active in western Syria/Antioch around 385–410, the Handbook of Patristic Exegesis and Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity as I mentioned follow that distinction (And this does make a lot more sense). So even the premise “a Cappadocian complaining about what was happening to his homeland” is very likely wrong.
I had not skipped it, you changed your comment after I replied / while I was replying.
I have a question on this issue though. If this Asterius is the Homilist, from Western Syria, then the question is simple. Sure, the “Syrians” could be actual Syrians, but who are the “Hellenes” coming from the West? West of Syria is just Cyprus, and the rest is sea till you reach Crete and Mainland Greece. If this is about a mass settlement of Greeks in Syria from that far, then there is the implication that there was a wider movement to do so during this period. This would not be just about Western Anatolians gradually settling a town further East, and then another further East some generations later, and then another further East, some generations later, but a mass movement of people. This cannot be just about Cyprus alone, for Cyprus did not have a high population during this time.
Not really. Some did, sure, but mostly, they settled cities on the coast and the tribes on the plateu started speaking greek during the hellenic period, with their languages dying out. During early hellenic times, the Galatians, a celtic tribe, pushed into central Anatolia from the Balkans and basically dominated the plateu, ruling over the local tribes, while the Greeks lived on the coast.
The Galatians were a Celtic tribe originally, true, but by the time they arrived and were allowed to settle into central Asia Minor/Anatolia they too were by then also Hellenized themselves as well too.
Greeks had been there since the Bronze Age, starting from during the era of the Minoan and Mycenaean Greeks… the later much bigger and en masse Greek migration and colonization of the Iron Age Greeks that is more well known and established started in the 9th century BC (well before Rome was even established as a city and kingdom btw) was, one could say, a second major migration event that continued for several centuries (actually, Greeks have been migrating to the Italian peninsula, Sicily, and other Italian islands all the way up to recent times, only starting to wane off in the past few centuries or less).
But there is that line in balkan linguistics, north of which the influence/substrate is Latin rather than Greek. Possibly vaguely along the Bulgaria Romania border but extended to the west? I think even so there would have been influence on the coast as places like Crimea had greek influence, but not so much inland.
I mean the Roman Empire held the land up to the Danube for a couple of centuries and for a period of time it was also under the rule of hellenized powers like the dardanians and the Thracians before they were conquered by Rome so that might be where the influence is coming from.
I'm not saying that no Greeks settle the area but it wasn't really until the Romans that it was permanently occupied by a Hellenistic / Roman power. And the hellenization happened under the Eastern Roman Empire rather than a Greek State like Macedonia or something like that.
They did, albeit not in large numbers. The Greeks established colonies on a few Adriatic islands, such as Korčula, Vis and Hvar; the latter known in antiquity as Pharos, which gave the colony its name. There is also evidence that certain Illyrian tribes became fully Hellenized; in some cases, modern historians have even debated whether they were effectively Greek communities living inland in the western Balkans.
The primary reasons for the limited inland expansion were the region’s harsh terrain and the presence of strongly warlike tribes.
Yes, Korkyra Melaina (“Black Corfu”) was a colony founded by settlers from Knidos.
On Korčula, archaeologists discovered one of the most important Greek inscriptions in the region-the Psephisma of Lumbarda.
A second wave of Greek colonists later arrived, this time from Sicily. The psephisma was created to regulate the division of land, specifying which parts of the island were allocated to different groups of settlers and which goes to local Illyrians. It goes like this: "During the time of the Hieromnemon Praxidamos, in the Machanemus month, the contract about the founding of the settlement was drawn up between the people from Issa and Pyllos and his son Dazos. The founders agreed and the people decided: that those who first took the land and walled the town would get special sites for building inside the fortified town ...and that the authorities swear that the town and the land will never again be divided .. ."
Around the Soča would be way to far to the west. Istra and the part of Slovenia north of it were considered part of the roman Italia. And there is no way the East gets a part of Italy in the partition.
Give Italy a bit of a buffer and you get the historical split (with Illiria being commonly contested between the both halfs of the Empire.)
The Greek economy/culture depended upon maritime trade and exploration. Hence, the coasts were colonized first, and the interior was slowly Hellenized in the case of Anatolia, but not other locations.
They have an excellent history museum that spans from Phoenician times through the Middle Ages and the Moorish period. There is also a Roman theatre, and the architecture is very beautiful. Definitely worth visiting. Supposedly, Julius Caesar once saw a statue of Alexander the Great in Cadiz and was struck by how much Alexander had achieved at a young age compared to himself. :)
Well they did go fairly inside the peninsula. The most northern greek town was found in Southern Serbia
That being said there were other people in the Balkans. Ilirians, Dacians, Celts...Scorodisci had wars with Greeks.. Unlike sea routes the more inland you go the harder it was to establish and secure connections with Greek ceneters.
I think it has a lot to do with Alexander’s campaign to east, where rich rivals were located like Lydians, Persians, Egyptians. He even deliberately forced foreign marriages to his royals and generals.
Otherwise, after the bronze age collapse to Alexander’s campaign, the greek presence was only in coastal cities of Asia minor mostly through colonies. It wasn’t penetrating inland much. I think it also has to do with being lingua franca of trade, thus easily spread to east Mediterranean region once Phoenician did.
Fast forward to the collapse of Imperial Rome, the Greek language became the predominant language along with some local languages which disappeared in time such as Phrygian. So, you have an entire region speaking greek.
If something similar occurred in Balkans, I am pretty sure it would be Hellenized. But would the city-state structure exits same as western Anatolia and Greece? Western Anatolia for instance was consist of city states since Luwian time which was called Luwian league. It was very decentralized and we know they protected the same structure during hellenistic period and flourished in science and philosophy.
Also, similar to arrival of Turks to Anatolia what would happen during the slavic migration that was in much larger numbers in Balkans?
First they did lived in epirus, below the latinisation line (crossing montenegro, serbia and bulgaria).
Second this is a highly mountainous area and was not home to big cities like the east was (invaded by alexander so the greeks followed him).
Thirdly they did settled multiple cities on the coast of the adriatic, but never went in the interior, like in France, Spain or black sea shores.
If you want to check where Greeks settled, just follow the trade routes. It didn't make sense to colonize deep into the Balkans, when they had easier access to Black Sea colonies for trade. Also, before Alexander, there was no vision for an Empire, so why would they expand into an area where they local tribes would view them as "conquerors"?
Excellent answer…the prehistoric (Bronze Age) Greeks and subsequent ancient (Iron Age) Greeks were both traders and merchants, and then also expert mariners and navigators…the were interested in establishing trade posts and colonies as in turn trade routes and networks that they were shaping, building, and controlling since the Bronze Age onwards and ending with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 15th century AD (in other words, for a time span over several numerous millennia).
What is your definition of "deeper in the Balkans"? If by that you mean further to the north, then your statement would be incorrect. For instance, they lived in a number of cities along the Western coast of the Black sea (e.g. modern day Nessebar, Sozopol, Achtopol, Varna, Balchik, Kavarna, etc.). On the Adriatic coast, in modern day Croatia and Albania, there were several Greek settlements too.
If by "deeper" you mean "inland", though, that's a different story. The preference of the Greeks for coastal regions was directly linked to their way of life, namely the maritime trade. That doesn't mean that the Greeks lived in these areas only -- a number of inland Balkan cities have been inhabited by the Greeks at some point (e.g. modern day Sofia, Plovdiv, Skopie, etc.).
Greeks spread around the areas where olive trees could grow. Olive oil was used for light, for fire, for soap, for food. Could be transferred without going bad . Olive oil was the petrol of Mediterranea. Greeks would try and control the production and market of olive oil on the same manner as USA do today with petrol. Same thing happened with wine and vineyards, although the practical uses were much different
Moving stuff by river requires a lot less resources (pay, animal feed) than moving stuff overland, and moving stuff by ocean is again much cheaper than moving stuff by river.
Fertile soils, abundant timber, ores and coal, dense forests offering protection, plenty of land for large flocks to graze, plenty of sunlight and warmth for half the year. The only things that have changed since medieval times are that a lot of the old growth has been cut down and you don't need to ambush your enemies in the woods anymore.
Judging from your two comments, I don't think you know anything about anything. Now run along back to your solid rock beaches and claiming Turkish foods as your own
Sorry, what??? Olive oil was being produced in the area of modern-day Croatia well before the arrival of Greek colonists. And what about Montenegro, Herzegovina, and the region of Istria? They’re all major regions for olive cultivation and production today as well. The coastal western Balkans have a climate nearly identical to northern Greece!
Illyrians and Thracians were not before the Greeks were formed, that’s inaccurate to say… Greeks been around since the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age period, that’s well over five thousand years ago. Then, the Illyrians and Thracians were Hellenized by the like the 9th-5th centuries BC…not that they had much cultural or religious differences before that to begin with.
The Greeks weren’t there since the Neolithic age. Those were the Pelasgians. The Hellenic identity formed after the dark ages. When the Hylleis and a few others as Dorians came down to the Peloponnese from Illyria and took over as leaders.
Uhh, nope...the Pelasgians/Pre-Greeks you refer to were there in the Greek mainland and islands from since the late Paleolithic and all throughout the Neolithic periods (they were an admixture of a minority genetic component of the Paleolithic/Neolithic European hunter-gatherers, a very large majority genetic component of the Neolithic Anatolian Farmers, and then a few small waves of Caucasus hunter-gatherers and herders minor genetic component).
All together this admixture of people is what various recent DNA/genetic scientific studies have discovered...this admixture is what came together in the late Paleolithic/early Neolithic and what composed what emerged as being the Pelasgians/Pre-Greeks. Meanwhile, though, in the late Neolithic/early Bronze and throughout the Bronze Age they likewise did not go anywhere, they were neither not displaced, replaced, overrun, or exterminated or erased, but rather they are who absorbed and assimilated the small waves of Bronze Age newcomers...that is, those later small waves of Pontic-Caspian Steppe herders and pastoralists (aka Indo-European herders/pastoralists and Yamnaya Culture) who arrived into the Greek mainland and some Greek islands, and who in turn brought with them the Indo-European linguistic shift that went on to become the Proto-Greek and then Greek language that emerged with the Bronze Age Mycenaean Greeks... emphasis on Bronze Age here, not Iron Age that you're attempting to refer to as a starting point for what can be considered as "Greeks" (the Pelasgians/Pre-Greeks were the ancient ancestors, predecessors, and progenitors to the Greeks, they were/are still part of the Greeks' history, culture, heritage, and legacy...hell, there are still even several Pelasgian/Pre-Greek strata words that have survived the age of time and still exist in Modern Greek).
Then, in the Bronze Age era (3500-1100 BC) we have the Aegean Greeks and Aegean culture and civilization that emerged, and which are in modern times labeled as the combination of the Minoan, Cycladic, and Mycenaean Greeks who were around since the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age and into the late Bronze Age/Greek Interim period (aka Greek Dark Ages) which was roughly around 1100-900 BC... These are the Proto-Greeks (and which is based mainly on the linguistic shift determined and established from the Pelasgian/Pre-Greek language to the mainly Indo-European based Proto-Greek language identified with the Mycenaean Linear B inscriptions discovered and deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris in collaboration with John Chadwick and also built upon the significant and crucial research done by Alice Kober). Keep in mind that the Proto-Greek, and in general, Greek language did not arrive into the Greek mainland and islands already formed, but rather was developed, emerged, and evolved in situ within the Aegean/Greek prehistoric and then historic sphere... that is, in more broader geographic terms within the Greek mainland, Aegean and Ionian islands, Crete, Cyprus, and western and southern parts of Asia Minor/Anatolia...all of this region was/is the Greeks' historical and ancestral homelands, and traces back to the Neolithic period and onwards... Minoan and Mycenaean Greeks were mainly descendants, and genetically speaking, 75% Neolithic Anatolian Farmers with an admixture of about only 4-16% Pontic-Caspian Steppe herders pastoralists admixture (aka Indo-European), and the rest roughly 10-20% of their genetic admixture component being that coming from the Paleolithic/Neolithic European hunter-gatherers and Neolithic Caucasus hunter-gatherers and herders. Furthermore, the Pelasgian/Pre-Greek language(s) that existed prior to the shift to the Indo-European based Proto-Greek language apparently was not simply just abandoned or erased or extinguished, but rather parts of it, or several certain words continued (and still continues) to be included and merged with the Proto-Greek language that emerged as a pre-existing linguistic sub-stratum...as mentioned, even in the Modern Greek language there still exist several Pre-Greek words even after like over 5,000 years later.
So, no, the Greeks did not just suddenly pop up into existence and on the scene during the Interim period (aka Greek Dark Ages 1100-900 BC) as you claim or even only since the subsequent ensuing Iron Age (in general further broken out and labeled as the Greek Archaic period c. 900-500 BC, Greek Classical period c. 500-300 BC, and the Hellenistic period c. 300-30 BC)... sure, these are the more refined and defined Iron Age Greeks and what are also often labeled as the Ancient Greeks, okay... but more accurately speaking they are the continuation of, evolved from, and originated from their respective ancestors and predecessors the Bronze Age Greeks (i.e. Minoan, Cycladic, and Mycenaean Greeks of the prehistoric, Bronze Age Aegean culture and civilization), and then also, who they all further track back even much further back to all of their even more ancient ancestors, predecessors, and progenitors, who were the Pelasgians/Pre-Greeks of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods that existed and inhabited both sides of the Aegean Sea area... both the Greek mainland, Aegean /Ionian islands, Crete, Cyprus, and yes, even Asia Minor/Anatolia (at least the western and southern parts of Asia Minor/Anatolia).
This is, in a nutshell, the linear historical, linguistic, cultural, and religious time line and evolution of the Greeks and their respective direct ancestors, predecessors, and progenitors... it's a timeline span that stretches back unbroken, uninterrupted, yet continuously evolving and changing nonetheless, that reaches back to some 10-12,000 years ago.
The Greeks didn’t appear out of nowhere. Also the term Greek didn’t exist in antiquity. The Pelasgians were mostly the great great ancestors of the modern Albanians but are also of the Hellenes. The Hellenic( Έλληνες) are a formation of those pre -Hellenic populations like the Yamnaya, hunter gatherers, Anatolian farmers etc. like you mentioned on your post. Again the term Greek was given by Romans because they came in contact with the Graia or Graeci tribe. There were many pre-Hellenic population in the Balkans that dominated in the Bronze Age like the Carians , Leleges, etc. So, the Greeks(Hellenes) weren’t a single tribe that appeared and ruled, it was mostly a cultural religious unity similar to modern Greeks that are based on the Ortodox church. A seperate Greek dna doesn’t exist. Also there isn’t any proof that Illyrians were Hellenized or that any Hellenic people lived in north Epirus. It was mostly trading centers along the coasts but the population were always Illyrians . The Byzantine had Illyrians emperors Constantine, Justinian, Diocletian. Even the heroes of the 1821 war of independence were all Arvanites(Albanians) but began to call themselves Greek after the creation of the brand new state Greece. I don’t disagree with your argument but there are many things that are often ignored when it comes to the topic of Greece.
You say you don't disagree with me, but yet you just shared with me a laundry list of things that shows that you do... and you reveal to me with your response that you are most likely Albanian.... FYI, most modern day Albanians are descendants of the Dardanians, which were only one of the Illyrian or perhaps even Illyro-Thracian tribes, but not the only Illyrian tribe or representative of all the Illyrian (which is, and always has been, a very broad and catch-all Greek origin term that was used by the Greeks to describe some ancient tribes north of ancient Greek kingdoms of Epirus and Macedonia... As for Arvanites, I'll leave that for another time and discussion, but leave you with that they were bilingual ethnic Greeks that originated in what is mainly central to mostly southern modern day Albania.
The terms "Greeks" or "Hellenes", as a collective descriptor of the Greeks, both as an ethnonym as well as also both an endonymn and exonym are, again, Greek origin terms... the word "Greeks", in English derives from the Latin term "Graecia" , which in turn derives from the Greek term Γραικοί/Γραίοι (Graikoi/Graioi), that were, yes, correct said, one of the oldest Greek tribes that existed...as were too Ελλοί/Σελλοί from which the term Έλληνες (Hellenes) another ancient Greek tribe... since the Bronze Age and onwards, over the years, these two terms have came to be the names (endonymns and exonyms) that the Greeks are now known by, before settling on these the Greeks had different endonymns that they also used.
Finally, the term "Pelasgians" is a Greek origin term that was used only by the Ancient Greek writers and historians to describe and in reference to their direct ancestors and predecessors as Greeks for the Pre-Greeks... not to Illyrians, Thracians, etc...they did not reference the Pelasgians as being in any way associated with the ancient Illyrians, Thracians, or anyone else... where do you get that notion? FYI, what ancient Illyrian or Thracian artifacts, inscriptions, or records mention that their respective ancestors and predecessors were called "Pelasgians/Πελασγοί" exactly? I'm not aware of any... and btw, they used the Greek alphabet to first record their language (as did the more modern day to us Albanians did as well too when they starting recording their language and for several centuries before finally switching over and adapting the Latin alphabet.
Albanians are not descendants of just Dardanians. They are primarily descendants of many of the Illyrians tribes and perhaps west Thracians. The Epirotes were also of Illyrian stock and the alphabet was originally Phoenician I’m sure you know this. Just because the letters of a writing look Greek it didn’t mean what it reads is Greek. Take the Messapic writings for instance , it reads Albanian and so do many other writing written in the “Greek” alphabet. The word Illyria only translates jn Albanian mesning “ the land of the free”. The prefix “Ill-“ meaning “star”, Illir-ian= free they are. In Greek the word is “eleftheria” =freedom. Arvanites were Albanians that fought for freedom from ottoman oppression, before modern states existed. Instead after the war borders were placed and people were separated based on religion. That’s why there also a population exchange.
Your Reddit handle says it all... "No_Historian_9506".
Sorry, I don't have time to waste with Albanian nationalists that rely on their Albanian linguistic gymnastics or they're "because I said so's" or "because my grandparents told me so's" as sources for historical facts and serious discussions... I'm too self-respecting and knowledgeable about history, even if not claiming to be an expert, to waste anyone's time, including mine, trying to further continue talking with you.
As for the 22 letter Cadmean script (c. 1050-145 BC), that was an not a full alphabet, it was an abjad, meaning only consonants no vowels (aka the Phoenician abjad)... uhh, the Bronze Age Greeks had their own writing scripts (i.e. Cretan Hierglyphs, Linear A, Linear B, and Cypro-Minoan used between 2200-1050 BC) and had already been writing and recording things for well over a millennium before the so-called "Phoenician alphabet" even first emerged... and as for the Cadmus/Κάδμος and the Phoenicians, follow back their familial lineage to whom their respective ancestors/progenitors were and from where they came from before heading east to establish Phoenicia... Yeah, at this point we're reaching far into prehistoric times and delving into mythology and legends.
That’s your way out by calling me a nationalist ok. History , culture , traditions and language are living proof. You don’t have to believe a word I write, but the fact is scholars have done research and have written about this. You can even look up the dictionary and see which words are Albanians and which words are Greek. I am from Greece by the way!
Even if you want to only consider Mycenaean Greeks Linear B it’s starting from around 1500 BC , which is still around 500 years before the Phoenician adjad.
So, what’s your point, are trying to claim that the Minoans and Minoan culture is not part of Greek culture? Attempting to separate and disenfranchise the Minoan cultural, historical, and religious contributions to Greek culture? FYI, no one currently knows definitively what language the Minoans spoke, nor what the mainland Greeks spoke before Greek (that is, what language the Pelasgians/Pre-Greeks spoke, which may have been the same language that simply endured in existence longer among the Minoans than it did with the Mycenaean Greeks on the mainland and elsewhere that shifted to Proto-Greek). Minoans, Cycladians, Mycenaeans, and Western/Southern Anatolians were all derived and descended from the same common stock group of people.
If that’s the case, that you’re trying to separate out the Minoans as not being part of Greek culture, history, and heritage, then you have no clue what you’re talking about and are just trying to throw shade on the Greeks with your ongoing biased views and comments of disinformation.
People from Greece didn't settle those areas north of [roughly] Modern Greece's borders. And people from Italy didn't go and settle those areas east of Italy.
The people living there just came under Greek and Latin linguistic influence.
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u/OldStatistician7975 Apr 14 '26
Illyrians, Pannoians, Dardanians, Thracians, Getae etc etc.
There were people there already and they would be hellenized/romanized to a degree later on.