the probable origins of ancient Greece

bicicleur 2

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it is ealy Heladic
on the cycladic islands, not mainland Greece

Excavations on a tiny island in the Aegean Sea – 125 miles southeast of Athens – are revealing the earliest truly monumental complex of buildings ever unearthed anywhere in the Greek world.

Dating back 4,600 years, the site may also have been part of the inspiration for a key aspect of Greek religion – the idea that mountain tops were the dwelling places of the gods.

The complex – on a mountain peak-shaped islet off the coast of the Aegean island of Keros (part of the Cyclades archipelago) – is totally changing archaeologists’ understanding of prehistoric Greece.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...alio-bible-pyramids-crete-milos-a8997666.html


IMO it coincides with the arrival of more Iran Neo ancestry and haplo J2 in Anatolia, the Levant and the Aegean
 
Thanks, Bicicleur.

Amazing what was there all along and we had no idea.

"[FONT=&quot]From the south, the island would have been visible from many miles away as a gleaming white pyramid-shaped mini-mountain rising out of the sea."

"[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It is not known for sure whether the pyramidic shape was in any way significant. But the place had certainly been specifically selected as a religious site in preference to other much higher, more impressive and potentially more accessible mountains that did not have that shape.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]What’s more, pyramidic shapes were, at precisely that time, coming to be regarded as sacred just 500 miles to the southeast in ancient Egypt(indeed it is also at that time that there are the first signs of Egyptian influence on nearby Crete)."

"In the ancient Egyptian context, pyramid shapes were associated with a god of creation, Atum. He was believed to inhabit a pyramid-shaped rock (a “pyramidion” or “Benben” stone) that was seen as symbolising the mythical “primordial mound” (representing the first dry land) which (much as in the book of Genesis) rose out of a “chaotic sea” at the time of creation.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]What’s more, that pyramidic stone symbolised the sacred place where the first rays of the sun illuminated the primordial mound at the time of creation – and the pyramidic shape of the pyramidion (the idealised primordial mound) was seen as symbolising the slanting rays of the sun as they descended from the sky to earth.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Indeed, the ancient Egyptians used to cover their symbolic “pyramidions” in gold leaf so that they would shine and glisten in the sun (potentially for the same or similar reasons that the Dhaskalio architects went to so much trouble to ensure that their pyramid-shaped island sanctuary would also glisten in the rays of the sun).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"The Mesopotamians and others had similar “primordial mound rising out of watery chaos” creation myths – and it is conceivable that Dhaskalio rising out of the sea symbolises some Cycladic version of those wider sacred cosmological concepts.""

"What’s more, the architects “terra-formed” the pyramid-shaped island “mini-mountain”, known in recent centuries as Dhaskalio (possibly just meaning “islet”), to create around 1,000m of artificial terracing, arranged in six “steps” on its steep slopes.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]These roughly six-metre wide terraces appear to have been built specifically to accommodate all the buildings. The summit itself was not initially built on – but instead had a small, probably sacred, open area where votive offerings may have been deposited.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“Our investigation has been transforming our understanding of early Bronze Age Cycladic culture and suggests that these very early Greeks were organisationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought,” said the project’s co-director Michael Boyd, of Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research."

So, from the Cyclades to Egypt and Crete and from Crete to mainland Greece.

I agree about the source of this organization, design and world view.

I'd love to see a real reconstruction of it. [/FONT]
 
probably some boasting was around

just like wanting to have the tallest building in the world today

somehow the newcomers to the area wanted to impress
 

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