Shackled skeletons excavated from mass grave in 8th-5th century BC Greece

Angela

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The results will be extremely interesting and hopefully would add some more light on the rise of Athens and the origins of its people which I think is still very much debatable.
 
The results will be extremely interesting and hopefully would add some more light on the rise of Athens and the origins of its people which I think is still very much debatable.

The whole transition period after the collapse of the Bronze Age palatial civilizations of the Aegean and the Near East is really murky in general.

In terms of this particular period, this is what was going on in Greece:

"776 BC: Traditional date for the first Olympic Games c. 750: Greek cities start planting colonies on other Mediterranean coasts, adapt the Phoenician alphabet for their own use, and later adopt metal coinage from Lydia, in Asia Minor
594: Solon gives Athens a new constitution; this is the start of the rise of democracy in Greece
490-479: The Persian Wars - Athens and Sparta lead the Greeks in defending their land against invasion from the huge Persian Empire
447: Work begins on the Parthenon in Athens, then at the height of its glory
431-404: The Second Peloponnesian War - Athens is defeated by Sparta, which now becomes the leading power in Greece."

It's going to be important to get precise dates for the skeletons. If they're dated to around 480 BC could they be Persian prisoners of war, or would they have been killed at the battle sites? At other times they could be Greeks. Or maybe they were rebellious slaves who had been captured in a battle?

Getting ancient dna is one thing; then you have to interpret it.
 
I would be very interested to compare the genomes (and Y-DNA) of elite Greeks vs Greek slaves, and see the evolution over time. Same for the Romans. We have no idea at present how much of the modern population descend from slaves imported from other countries.

The only evidence we have of how much DNA ancient slaves contributed to modern gene pools is from Iceland. There, it looks like about 20% of male lineages and about 50% of female lineages today came from Irish and Scottish slaves taken by the Vikings. Looking at admixtures, modern Icelandic people are actually closer to the Irish than to the Swedes, so the maternal proportion (very difficult to assess from mtDNA haplogroups) could be even higher than 50%.

I wonder how ancient Greek and Rome compare? Considering that both the ancient Greeks and Romans relied much more on slaves to run their economy (mines, farms, road building, household work, entertainment), I would expect an even higher proportion.

It has been argued that slaves didn't procreate much as they weren't free. But that's nonsense. Slaves were valuable commodities, sold on markets. If you owned slaves, having them breed together created more wealth. So the more children they had the better. Additionally there is now ample evidence that the Romans liked to acquire beautiful female slaves (especially exotic blondes and redheads) and that they often had children with them. These children were typically freed once their reached adolescence or adulthood. In fact, most of the freed slaves in ancient Rome could have been the offspring of Roman patricians with their slaves. If that is the case, that genetic contribution of slaves wouldn't show up on the Y-DNA line, but nevertheless contributed a big share of the total admixture. However things are surely more complicated as there is a very clear north-south gradient for genetic admixtures in Italy that cannot be explained by an excess of Celtic or Germanic slaves in the north. That's why I am awaiting with great interest any data from ancient Rome and Greece.
 
it will be very dificult to figure out where these skeletons came from
 
The first slaves may have been pre-IE or IE-Anatolian or both but that's speculation. During historical times they may have been Greek hostages from other Greek city states or prisoners of war. A form of slave trade must have existed with the Scythians. "Scythian archers" acted as police forces in Athens altough the term 'Scythian" might mean something else here. There were Thacian, Illyrian mercenaries. The Greeks also interacted with the Phoenicians, the Egyptians etc

About Graeco-Scythian slave trade: http://www.pontos.dk/publications/books/bss-1-files/BSS1_08_Gavriljuk.pdf
Possible origin of many foreign slaves (approximately) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoles_culture
 
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by the date and the place
we probably speak about Lavrio Λαυριο punished workers,

from Phaliro to Lavrio it was a naval road to send food suplies etc to the silver mines,
the existance of chains, means probably they were convicted to mine working,
so they could be people who cheat or steal the public (κοινον), even Atheneans, people who crimed, slaves that did not pay or make troubles,
the Athenean constitution as described by Aristotle, and later by Plato through the story of Socrates, althoug was not strict, had strong punishments at certain crimes,
even work deep at mines for years away from sunlight, to force drink poison.
Athenean society after Kleisthenes was not so strict, and was 'free' more than Sparta, but there were crimes which had strong punishment,
these people can even be Atheneans convicted
 
officially the Phaliro cemetery

estimated 1200 tombs
from them
only 15 are the 'shackled dead' less than 1,25 % of the total
358 are child tombs, 30% of the cemetery tombs
88 are burial ashes 7%, cremation was done mainly to soldier who died at a campaign, it was difficult to carry the body, so they return the asses to be burned at home land, unofficially it is possible
15 are animal tomps
etc

so probably the shackled ones might not be slaves, but rather convicted Atheneans, without exclude any other possibilities.

a video from sponsor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB3hDTYZZDI
 
new informations give a πολυανδριον,
so the 15 men that were with shackles are a total of 80, all young all healthy, and they are from 7 century BC,
we could say that they might be connected with κυλωνειον αγος, but that can not be certified,
they are not burried properly, they were thrown to the pit with the face down,
in that case, I mean if they are the men of Κυλωνας surely we can find Athenean or Megara DNA,
κυλων was a noble, but escape, but we can not certify his followers the 80 dead at which class they belong,
but surely were either Athenaioi either Megareis citizenes and not slaves

http://www.news.gr/ellada/koinonia/...kos-tafos-me-alysodemenoys-skeletoys-sto.html

http://www.novasports.gr/epikairoti...sodemenous-skeletous-sto-faliro/#.Vw6cLFQ5TTQ

http://www.gazzetta.gr/plus/article...i-sto-faliriko-delta-mia-simantiki-anakalypsi

about κυλων

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

https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Κυλώνειο_Άγος


faliro_b1.jpg


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