Hello all,
I found this site via some casual online searching for information on ancient Greek DNA and must say that the knowledge and discourse seems to be very high indeed! I have learned some things I did not know so I am certainly glad I found my way here.
That being said, as I kept reading I could not believe I was running into pages and pages of copy-and-paste propaganda to do with the FYROM-Greece dispute, for two main reasons. One, is it truly allowed that someone can post reams and reams of literal diarrhea culled from any-and-all of the main FYROM-ian revisionist sites? I mean if that is the case, logic would follow that I could now start copying-and-pasting any-and-all Greek sites as well and just do the same here in an attempt to rebut?
Is this seriously tolerated? Isn't that called spamming or ******** in most places?
The second reason, is that there is actually appears to be quite a limited knowledge on the subject frankly. I don't claim by any means to be other than a genetic illiterate, so I won't attempt to debate something that I have a limited knowledge in, but it seems the same can be said for almost all the posters here on the subject on ancient Macedonian history. If you ignore the obviously juvenile ranting’s of the one FYROM-ian poster, who seems to not have a clue in regards to the subject or context of what he/she is posting, there are some serious misconceptions on here.
First, to clarify, I will play devil's advocate and say that by even the most extreme definition, namely that the Macedonians were not "Greeks", then even so, they certainly were, and are, exclusively part of the Greek cultural legacy. Even from this extreme vantage point, ancient history is replete with this evidence. Even in this narrowest of interpretations, Herodotus, who visited Macedon and reported, "as the Macedonians themselves say..." that they themselves declared themselves as Greeks, and Thucydides later on concurs. You have the thousands of thousands of inscriptions, gravestones, coins and such all in Greek. If they didn't speak it, they certainly endorsed it to such a degree that in all the centuries of the Macedonian kingdom not one non-Greek testament remains. Then you have the mere fact that Macedon eventually conquered the southern Greek states, and then went on to conquer much of the known-world of the time, and inaugurated the Hellenistic era, so named because of the spread of Greek language and culture through all the lands they touched, to such a degree that even thousands of miles away, and eventually separated by hostile powers, the Indo and Bactrian Greek kingdoms leave no archaeologist or historian in doubt what language and culture they belonged to. Again, a Macedonian superpower so neglectful and disdainful of their own language and culture as to not leave one trace? French may have been the lingua franca of much of the nobility and diplomats at one time, but don’t tell me the English, Russians, or German and other peoples, just threw away their language so completely as to leave not a whiff of it? The same applies as well with English today.
Of course, that is again only giving the benefit of the doubt to the skeptics. I could go on all day about this, but suffice to say that when Hesiod in the 8th century BC is already including the Makedones as part of the larger Hellenic family, or when the Persians are referring to them alongside their fellow Ionian “Greeks” and the other Greeks are sending envoys to them to participate in the pan-hellenic festivals and this while Macedon is a minor regional power, far below the notice of Athens, Thebes, or Sparta, it’s really hard to believe the Macedones weren’t Greeks.
We could even trace the Macedonians right through the Middle Ages and Byzantine era to clearly show, they really had nothing to do with the late coming Slavic (and surprisingly, many Turkic) invaders that primarily occupy ancient Paeonia and today’s FYROM.
This is what is so irritating to most Greeks regarding FYROM. I would go to the length that I would hope that the Greek government never accepts a name with Macedonia in it period as being the only honest stance, but have to live with the realpolitik that it will most likely have to be a geographic qualifier.
On a side-note, would anyone be able to say which is the most likely "original" Indo-European haplogroup?
I found this site via some casual online searching for information on ancient Greek DNA and must say that the knowledge and discourse seems to be very high indeed! I have learned some things I did not know so I am certainly glad I found my way here.
That being said, as I kept reading I could not believe I was running into pages and pages of copy-and-paste propaganda to do with the FYROM-Greece dispute, for two main reasons. One, is it truly allowed that someone can post reams and reams of literal diarrhea culled from any-and-all of the main FYROM-ian revisionist sites? I mean if that is the case, logic would follow that I could now start copying-and-pasting any-and-all Greek sites as well and just do the same here in an attempt to rebut?
Is this seriously tolerated? Isn't that called spamming or ******** in most places?
The second reason, is that there is actually appears to be quite a limited knowledge on the subject frankly. I don't claim by any means to be other than a genetic illiterate, so I won't attempt to debate something that I have a limited knowledge in, but it seems the same can be said for almost all the posters here on the subject on ancient Macedonian history. If you ignore the obviously juvenile ranting’s of the one FYROM-ian poster, who seems to not have a clue in regards to the subject or context of what he/she is posting, there are some serious misconceptions on here.
First, to clarify, I will play devil's advocate and say that by even the most extreme definition, namely that the Macedonians were not "Greeks", then even so, they certainly were, and are, exclusively part of the Greek cultural legacy. Even from this extreme vantage point, ancient history is replete with this evidence. Even in this narrowest of interpretations, Herodotus, who visited Macedon and reported, "as the Macedonians themselves say..." that they themselves declared themselves as Greeks, and Thucydides later on concurs. You have the thousands of thousands of inscriptions, gravestones, coins and such all in Greek. If they didn't speak it, they certainly endorsed it to such a degree that in all the centuries of the Macedonian kingdom not one non-Greek testament remains. Then you have the mere fact that Macedon eventually conquered the southern Greek states, and then went on to conquer much of the known-world of the time, and inaugurated the Hellenistic era, so named because of the spread of Greek language and culture through all the lands they touched, to such a degree that even thousands of miles away, and eventually separated by hostile powers, the Indo and Bactrian Greek kingdoms leave no archaeologist or historian in doubt what language and culture they belonged to. Again, a Macedonian superpower so neglectful and disdainful of their own language and culture as to not leave one trace? French may have been the lingua franca of much of the nobility and diplomats at one time, but don’t tell me the English, Russians, or German and other peoples, just threw away their language so completely as to leave not a whiff of it? The same applies as well with English today.
Of course, that is again only giving the benefit of the doubt to the skeptics. I could go on all day about this, but suffice to say that when Hesiod in the 8th century BC is already including the Makedones as part of the larger Hellenic family, or when the Persians are referring to them alongside their fellow Ionian “Greeks” and the other Greeks are sending envoys to them to participate in the pan-hellenic festivals and this while Macedon is a minor regional power, far below the notice of Athens, Thebes, or Sparta, it’s really hard to believe the Macedones weren’t Greeks.
We could even trace the Macedonians right through the Middle Ages and Byzantine era to clearly show, they really had nothing to do with the late coming Slavic (and surprisingly, many Turkic) invaders that primarily occupy ancient Paeonia and today’s FYROM.
This is what is so irritating to most Greeks regarding FYROM. I would go to the length that I would hope that the Greek government never accepts a name with Macedonia in it period as being the only honest stance, but have to live with the realpolitik that it will most likely have to be a geographic qualifier.
On a side-note, would anyone be able to say which is the most likely "original" Indo-European haplogroup?
