| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Duncan
In: Yorkshire
|
|
 |
|
There are some glaring differences between what is being offered here.
Is, as Mick Harper says, Mycenaen culture essentially the same as Classical Greek?
| Mycenean Greece is pretty much the same people doing the same things in the same places in the same language as the Classical Greeks |
Or is it as Komorikid says?
| No the culture called Mycenaean wrote in a script that has been 'assumed' to be Proto-Greek which is 'assumed' to be Proto Indo-European (PIE)...none of the cities you listed ever existed in Greece BEFORE the classic period. Thucydides states that the Pelasgians were the first to establish Athens and they were not indigenous people... |
This is a huge gap in perspectives, boys. The reality of a culture called Mycenaen is really what is under discussion here. Did it exist as a major powerbase in Greece well before the Classical period? Was it Greek-speaking? Was it sufficiently well organised to launch a major war against an Anatolian city that Homer called Troy? Did it fall after the 12th Century BC leading to a Dark Age?
Fortunately there is plenty to go on archaeologically. There were cities based upon a 'palace' culture that are assumed to be the powerbases of Mycenaen culture. The artefacts, such as the famous Warrior Vase, figure of eight shields and armour like the Dendra Panoply show big differences from the later Classical armour such as the round Hoplon shield and the Corinthian style helmet. The Mycenaens also used chariots, javelins and swords whereas the later Greeks fought in phalanx using long-thrusting spears. The bronze weaponry also radio-carbon dates to the Mycenaen period. When we add the Hittite archives mentioning the Achehijawa as a western powerbase, Homer's Achaeans, and Korfmann's findings at Troy, I really don't see the issue or perhaps I'm just being obtuse.
To answer the questions I posed:
Did it exist as a major powerbase in Greece well before the Classical period? Highly likely
Was it Greek speaking? Highly likely
Was it sufficiently well organised to launch a major war against an Anatolian city that Homer called Troy? Highly likely
Did it fall after the 12th Century BC leading to a Dark Age? You've guessed it...
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
I am not Komoro's keeper. As for the dating, let me put it this way: if you had been brought up reading Homer as being, say, an eighth century description of Sparta et al, or if you had inspected a Mycenean helmet as being what the Greeks wore in battle a century or so before the Classical period, would you be shouting, "Anachronism" right now? Of course you wouldn't. But add half-a-millennium and you are still not shouting "Anachronism". Because that's the way you've been brought up.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Fortunately there is plenty to go on archaeologically. |
Well no, that's why it's called the Greek Dark Age.
| There were cities based upon a 'palace' culture that are assumed to be the powerbases of Mycenaen culture. |
Very well, accepted.
| The artefacts, such as the famous Warrior Vase, figure of eight shields and armour like the Dendra Panoply show big differences from the later Classical armour such as the round Hoplon shield and the Corinthian style helmet. The Mycenaens also used chariots, javelins and swords whereas the later Greeks fought in phalanx using long-thrusting spears. |
Nobody doubts that the Classical Age was different in all kinds of ways from what went before (and what went on elsewhere). That's why it's called the Classical Age and why we're so interested in it.
| The bronze weaponry also radio-carbon dates to the Mycenaen period. |
You can't carbon-date bronze weaponry. But if you mean they carbon-dated stuff associated with it, you should know that the whole science of carbon-dating had to be recalibrated (rather to the consternation of the organic chemists) in order to keep to the orthodox dates. The usual AE situation obtained:
1. Organic chemists were pleased to get some recognition for their newly-acquired skill in dating carbon.
2. The historians said, "Sorry. bub, but your dates are way out."
3. The chemists said. "We-e-e-ll..."
4. The historians said, "It's your choice of course but dating carbon has no other function than to provide historians with dates...so if we can't use it..."
5. The chemists said, "Well, all right, you go ahead with your necessary calibrations but we can't actually put our name to it because we know of no reason for such variablity (we can provide you with a list of plausible possibilities). Tell you what, we'll leave carbon to you and we'll go off and start working on potassium, strontium and so forth because their half-lives put them way outside anything of interest to historians."
| When we add the Hittite archives mentioning the Achehijawa as a western powerbase, Homer's Achaeans, and Korfmann's findings at Troy, I really don't see the issue or perhaps I'm just being obtuse. |
Yes, obtuse. The Hittite archives are specifically dated ONLY by reference to contemporary Egyptian archives which is where the six hundred gap originated. It's an unfortunate fact that no culture has so far invented a dating system that can be independently validated. It's an AE matter that validation is always in the hands of the senior -ologists, irrespective of the security of their particular dating system.
| Did it exist as a major powerbase in Greece well before the Classical period? Highly likely |
Unavoidable in fact. So why, according to you is there a six hundred year gap between two consecutive Greek powerbases?
| Was it Greek speaking? Highly likely |
Unavoidable in fact. With a literate culture speaking and writing in Greek c 1200 and a literate culture speaking and writing in Greek c600 how come there is nothing in between?. Sure, it's possible everyone forgot...but then how did they magically remember it all again?
| Was it sufficiently well organised to launch a major war against an Anatolian city that Homer called Troy? Highly likely |
Unavoidable in fact. And what did the Classical Greeks spend their time doing? That's right, launching major wars against Anatolia aka the Persians. S'funny how they forgot their Anatolian obsession for a whole six hundred years.
| Did it fall after the 12th Century BC leading to a Dark Age? You've guessed it... |
Nah, guessing don't come into it. You're just repeating over and over again what the bloke at the front of the class told you.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wireloop
In: Detroit
|
|
|
|
| Greece DID NOT EXIST at the time of the Trojan War. It was part of the collective ancient memory of those who became the Greeks. |
I agree, and I'll go one step further in saying that I suspect that the 'Greeks' were not really Greek at all but Phoenician/Hebrew.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
|
|
|
|
|
You're right in saying the Greeks weren't Greek but they weren't Hebrew either. They were Europeans as well. The Pelasgians who founded Athens came from Atlantic Northern Europe; Pelasgain > Belasgi > Belgai > Belgium.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wireloop
In: Detroit
|
|
|
|
| You're right in saying the Greeks weren't Greek but they weren't Hebrew either. They were Europeans as well. The Pelasgians who founded Athens came from Atlantic Northern Europe; Pelasgain > Belasgi > Belgai > Belgium. |
Hi Kom, I was also insinuating the Pelasgians, but I associate the Pelasgians with the Philistines of ancient Canaan. The Hebrews, Phoenicians and the Philistines were all, IMHO, one 'type' of people with a common alphabet.
Here is an interesting etymology:
Pelas-gian = Philis-tine
In Egypt, a people called the Peles-et, generally identified with the Philistines, appear in the Medinet Habu inscription of Ramesses III, where he describes his victory against the Sea Peoples.
How do you link the Pelasgians to northern Europe besides through Belgium?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
|
|
|
|
| Hi Kom, I was also insinuating the Pelasgians, but I associate the Pelasgians with the Philistines of ancient Canaan. The Hebrews, Phoenicians and the Philistines were all, IMHO, one 'type' of people with a common alphabet. |
People who share common alphabets don't necessarily share the same genes. Phoenician (the language) mysteriously appears at the same time as Phoenicians (the people) appear in the Levant.
The Phoenicians were not native to the Levant; they immigrated there at some early time from no one knows where. Even modern historians are still debating their origin.
'According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel. These people, who had formerly reached the shores of the Erythraean Sea, having migrated to the Mediterranean from an unknown origin and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria....' Histories I
The Phoenicians' fame as mariners is only attested after the invasions of the Sea Peoples into the Eastern Med around 1200BC.
As for the Hebrews, they were a collection of desert nomads and shepherds with a patriarch schooled in Mesopotamia who spent 400 years under Egyptian authority and then suddenly started speaking and writing Phoenician 5 minutes after the first boat hit the beach. I'm not buying it.
Who named the Erythraean Sea? My guess is the Phoenicians themselves. There is only ONE place in all of Europe that still bears this name, ERITH in Kent. Phoenician is a Greek name they called themselves Kenaani which can also be Keneti (Kynesoi, Kynesians, Cynesians) the ancient tribe that gave Kent its present name.
Erythia is the place where Heracles stole Geryon's cattle as one of his labours and the Pillars of Hercules were once the Straits of Dover according to Tacitus.
The country of Frisia is divided into two; called the greater and lesser, according to the measure of their strength. Both nations stretch along the Rhine, quite to the ocean; and surround vast lakes such as once have borne Roman fleets. We have moreover even ventured out from thence into the ocean, and upon its coasts common fame has reported the Pillars of Hercules to be still standing. Germania 34
The Greeks and the Phoenicians were European.
As I see it the REAL Trojan War was fought between England and the Continent with the Phoenicians supplying the ships (that's why it took ten years to mount the campaign) The War lasted for ten further years and devastated not only the combatants but their respective economies. The prize was the right to the Tin in Cornwall but the entire venture was for nought. The world was changing and the Bronze Age was at an end. The Iron Age was upon the ancient world and the power base had shifted to the Eastern end of the Med. So that is where those with the means and motivation headed -- The Sea Peoples. They took their ships, their languages and their superior maritime technology with them and became the Greeks, Minoans and Phoenicians of recorded history.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
|
|
|
|
Is it not ironic that we have three ancient cultures ALL with mysterious origins (Greeks, Minoans and Phoenicians) ALL developing in the Eastern Med around the same time, ALL having sophisticated maritime technology and ALL possessors of a alphabet.
My own opinion is that the Minoans developed the first of these written languages in relative isolation but still influenced Greek and Semitic texts. The Phoenicians immigrated to the Levant and adopted the local lingo but gave it something it never had, a written text in something the Phoenicians had hitherto been devoid of, a durable writing medium -- papyrus. Greek developed later from both as according to Thucydides and other early writers Greece took much longer to establish itself as Hellas. The Mycenaean and Ionian scrips (the oldest written Greek) appear to be precursors to Classic Greek.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wireloop
In: Detroit
|
|
|
|
| People who share common Alphabets don't necessarily share the same genes...... |
I'm not saying that the Phoenicians, Hebrews and Philistines all were native to the Levant, or were genetic cousins of one another. I'm just saying that they are all the same 'type ' of people in that they shared a common alphabet, insinuating that they shared some sort of a common literary ancestry (not just trade). This alphabet traveled around the Aegean and Levant obviously because the literature did. The problem is is that this alphabet (to my knowledge) is not found anywhere in northern Europe before the 1st century AD. So I cannot see northern Europe (as of yet) as the origin of the Phoenician people.
| Is it not ironic that we have three ancient cultures ALL with mysterious origins (Greeks, Minoans and Phoenicians) ALL developing in the Eastern Med around the same time |
There are many many cultures that have mysterious origins, but I will grant you that the appearance of these cultures at the same time needs an explanation.
| As for the Hebrews, they were a collection of desert nomads and shepherds with a patriarch schooled in Mesopotamia who spent 400 years under Egyptian authority and then suddenly started speaking and writing Phoenician 5 minutes after the first boat hit the beach. I'm not buying it. |
I don't buy it either.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Pulp History
In: Wales
|
|
|
|
Komori should read this link......... it alleges Britain as a Phoenician power base.........
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Duncan
In: Yorkshire
|
|
|
|
| Komori should read this link......... it alleges Britain as a Phoenician power base......... |
It makes fascinating reading P.H. but like almost every recent thing in this thread it's pure speculation.
Komorikid writes:
| As I see it the REAL Trojan War was fought between England and the Continent with the Phoenicians supplying the ships (that's why it took ten years to mount the campaign) The War lasted for ten further years and devastated not only the combatants but their respective economies. The prize was the right to the Tin in Cornwall but the entire venture was for nought. The world was changing and the Bronze Age was at an end. |
When was this? The iron age began much earlier in the Middle East than it did in Europe. Wiki says: Classically, the Iron Age is taken to begin in the 12th century BC in the ancient Near East, ancient India (with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization), and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages). In other regions of Europe, it started much later. The Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe. Iron use, in smelting and forging for tools, appears in West Africa by 1200 BC, making it one of the first places for the birth of the Iron Age.
| The Iron Age was upon the ancient world and the power base had shifted to the Eastern end of the Med. So that is where those with the means and motivation headed -- The Sea Peoples. They took their ships, their languages and their superior maritime technology with them and became the Greeks, Minoans and Phoenicians of recorded history. |
This is kind of all-of-a-sudden. Wiki tells us: The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus in the late 2nd millennium BC (circa 1300 BC). From here it spread rapidly throughout the Near East as iron weapons replaced bronze weapons by the early 1st millennium BC. Anatolia's use of iron (from 2000 BC onward) had developed by at least 1500 BC into the manufacture of weaponry superior to bronze. The use of iron weapons by the Hittites was believed to have been a major factor in the rapid rise of the Hittite Empire. Because the area in which iron technology first developed was near the Aegean, the technology propagated equally early into both Asia and Europe, aided by Hittite expansion. The Sea Peoples and the related Philistines are often associated with the introduction of iron technology into Asia, as are the Dorians with respect to Greece.
Now remember that Hittite sources refer to the city they called Wilusa and that the Greeks called Illios as being on the border zone between the Achehijawa in the west and themselves in the East. The Hittites even sent an army to the Wilusan border.
Again, it's back to this idea of a Dark Age. Dorians carrying Iron weapons sweeping into Greece from Britain/Belgium/Anatolia etc. and destroying the Mycenaen palace culture. If they are the Sea Peoples from Egyptian records then yes, pretty damn destructive. BUT the Mycenaens wrote in Linear B and spoke Greek. So did the Dorians (Sparta, Corinth, Argos etc.) and the Ionians (Athens). Same people and no need for a western European source. The Trojan War was fought where Homer says it was: Troy, a large city controlling the trading lanes through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. Later Greeks were well aware of the tradition. Did Alexander not visit the place on his way to overthrow the Persians, as Arrian tells us?
I think we can discount the idea that the Phoenicians and the Greeks are the same people. The Phoenicians went on, as we know, to found Carthage and their colonies in western Sicly came into direct conflict with the Greek colonies on the east of the island. A totally different people. DNA studies conducted on the modern Lebanese population have shown strong matches with the Tunisians. Now it is always possible that the Phoenicians came from Belgium but I think we need some evidence beyond sketchy etymology. I'm sure if I ask my five year old he'll tell me they come from Finland because that's where the 'phones come from.
I'm more interested in this notion of a split between Mycenaen culture with its bronze age weaponary and Classical Greece with its iron. Mick points to the 'five hundred year gap' proposed by Velikovsky. He also mentions the unreliability of radio-carbon dating. My understanding is that it is still the principal technique used by Archaeos to date the world around us. The BBC's archaeology night a couple of weeks ago aired a programme looking at the dating of Silbury Hill. From fresh material discovered as a result of the Hill's partial collapse, it is now possible to place it at 2400 BC +/- a generation. That's pretty specific stuff. They now place it right at the cusp of the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age in Britain, and squarely back to the time of the Beaker People. Am I to take it that this is all bollo*** and that it really could be much older or much younger?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
|
|
|
|
| Komori should read this link......... it alleges Britain as a Phoenician power base......... |
Forget the link... Been There, Done That, Bought the T-Shirt
And the Book as well.
Very interesting read from a man who proposed this back in the beginning of last century. Unfortunately for Waddell his continual references to 'Arians' (in the anthropological sense) throughout the book, which was written around the rise of Adolph Hitler, endeared him to no one; least of all academia at the time.
Waddell travelled to Tibet at a time when it was dangerous to do so, learned their language and read many of their ancient texts. He wrote extensively on ancient cultures and their languages, myths and legends.
One of his major works was the British Edda in which he puts forward the notion that the Norse and Icelandic legends are British in origin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Waddell
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | Komorio is correct to ask "Who were the Greeks?". But the even more profound question is "What is Phoenician?" |
More correct is when?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
|
|
|
|
| Now remember that Hittite sources refer to the city they called Wilusa and that the Greeks called Illios as being on the border zone between the Achehijawa in the west and themselves in the East. The Hittites even sent an army to the Wilusan border. |
But this seems to contradict your assumption
| In the earliest reference to this land, in a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta, it is called Ahhiya. Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy. However the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars, even following the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B is an early form of Greek. |
| Again, it's back to this idea of a Dark Age. Dorians carrying Iron weapons sweeping into Greece from Britain/ Belgium/ Anatolia etc. and destroying the Mycenaen palace culture. If they are the Sea Peoples from Egyptian records then yes, pretty damn destructive. BUT the Mycenaens wrote in Linear B and spoke Greek. So did the Dorians (Sparta, Corinth, Argos etc.) and the Ionians (Athens). Same people and no need for a western European source. |
So the Iron Age Dorians trashed the Mycenaeans, became Sparta, Corinth, Argos and the Ionians, then promptly threw away their iron weapons and reverted to bronze. Yes, that's right folks, every battle of the Classic period was fought with BRONZE weapons right up to and including Alexander the Great.
| The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus in the late 2nd millennium BC (circa 1300 BC). From here it spread rapidly throughout the Near East as iron weapons replaced bronze weapons by the early 1st millennium BC. Anatolia's use of iron (from 2000 BC onward) had developed by at least 1500 BC into the manufacture of weaponry superior to bronze. The use of iron weapons by the Hittites was believed to have been a major factor in the rapid rise of the Hittite Empire. Because the area in which iron technology first developed was near the Aegean, the technology propagated equally early into both Asia and Europe, aided by Hittite expansion. |
So that means the Bronze Age Mycenaeans launched a full scale ten year battle in a theatre of war that had been in possession of superior iron weapons for over 300 years.
Try that one on a 6 year old.
| This of course is the best possible evidence for the redating since clearly Mycenaean Greece is pretty much the same people doing the same things in the same places in the same language as the Classical Greeks. So sticking seven-eight-nine hundred years and an entire Dark Age in between them is such a non-starter I'm amazed that even the dreary old scholars don't smell at least a very small rat. |
| I'm more interested in this notion of a split between Mycenaean culture with its Bronze Age weaponry and Classical Greece with its iron. Mick points to the 'five hundred year gap' proposed by Velikovsky. |
This would be a reasonable proposition except they weren't doing the same thing and that's the problem.
If we take away the 500 years how do you explain the following;
Mycenaeans:
Pantheon of bickering Gods with human weaknesses
Culture rooted in fear of the unknown and the Gods
Human Sacrifice
Animal and agricultural sacrifice
Horse culture with chariots
Cremation and Barrow tombs
Writing in a syllabary script
Writing on clay tablets
Entire corpus of simple lists and inventories
Classic Greece
Pantheon of esoteric Gods
Respect for human life
Votive offerings
Culture rooted in logic and philosophy
Infantry culture
Pit graves covered by monuments or stellae
Writing in an alphabetic script
Writing on papyri scrolls and codices
Entire corpus of or epic poetry, literature, and scientific documents
If Velikovsky's chronology is to be believed, in 100 years the Greeks experienced the greatest intellectual transformation in the history of the world.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| Anatolia's use of iron (from 2000 BC onward) had developed by at least 1500 BC into the manufacture of weaponry superior to bronze. |
Since Homer describes a Bronze Age war, placed at 1200 BC or later, doesn't this absolutely rule out Troy being in Anatolia?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
