Preview: Upcoming Ancient Greek Transect (Mesolithic to Medieval) from Biomuse.

[TetaEglantina]

I'd largely agree but if we are talking about the steppe-Balkan mixed tribes which lived for a time to the North of the Aegean (say around Bulgaria-Macedonia-South Albania in particular), these were already Greeks before even entering the Aegean. Like the Epirotic tribes and Macedonians etc. were never fully Mycenaean, but they were still Greek. From the ethnolinguistic and genetic point they were "even more Greek" than the Mycenaeans, since those were a later daughter group which conquered the Aegean and mixed with the locals - split from the original tribes they descended from.

Mycenaean can't be equated with the Greeks ethnolinguistically, but of course, just like you say, there is no Mycenaean culture and civilisation without these Greeks coming down and mixing with the locals, which created a new kind of more advanced and city state-already more sea-oriented culture of the Mycenaean GREEKS.

The "original Greeks" were pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, no traders or seafarers. The descriptions of the Northern tribes recapitulate that. One of the better known ones were the Molossians:

Molossians

Molossians, Greek History, Greece Online Encyclopedia

www.hellenicaworld.com

The ancient sources in the Wikipedia article on Macedonians is also great:

Ancient Macedonians - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Original ancient Greeks = Mycenaeans = 1750BC
Ancient Macedonians didn't form until after Dark Ages a thousand years later. If anything Mycenaeans are the pure Greeks and definitely more pure than the Ancient Macedonians would have been

 

[blevins13]

There was no "Mycenaean civilization" before proto-Greek speakers arrived. Greek ethnogenesis begins when the steppe bunch starts to mix with the local aegean people so there was no such thing as "pure Greek". Greeks are the outcome of this merge.
Saying "pure greek" settled in epirus and changed Mycenaean civilization from Anatolian like to Greek like is akin to saying Cortes and his Spaniards, were the pure mexicans and changed New Spain from nahuatl to mexican like. It is absurd.

The norther route in my opinion would imply the following.
For the Mycenaean there was no real mixing, only few intruder, some of they came from Cetina Culture. So the only option here is that the Pure Greeks culturally affected the Mycenaean (people that leave in Peloponnesus) from the mountains of Epirus.

While the southern route seems more logical:
Mycenaean were indoeuropian after all coming directly from Anatolia as the legend says, Pelops came from Anatolia.

 

[blevins13]

One of these days we will have enough samples so that we can stop all these silly ultra nationalist theories.

There is nothing ultra here the same unresolved discussion.

 

[Riverman]

Original ancient Greeks = Mycenaeans = 1750BC
Ancient Macedonians didn't form until after Dark Ages a thousand years later. If anything Mycenaeans are the pure Greeks and definitely more pure than the Ancient Macedonians would have been

The Greek tribes to the North of the Mycenaeans were there before the Mycenaean culture was formed. There can be no doubt about that. And they persisted into the later historical period. Of course, they were not "the" Macedonians, Molossians etc. at that time, but their predecessors.

 

[blevins13]

The Greek tribes to the North of the Mycenaeans were there before the Mycenaean culture was formed. There can be no doubt about that. And they persisted into the later historical period. Of course, they were not "the" Macedonians, Molossians etc. at that time, but their predecessors.

The Greek tribes to the North of the Mycenaeans were there before the Mycenaean culture was formed. There can be no doubt about that. And they persisted into the later historical period. Of course, they were not "the" Macedonians, Molossians etc. at that time, but their predecessors.

So on the Kamenica paper which according to you are the Pure Greeks.

 

[Dianatomia]

Thessaly used to have vast lakes even until recently. No doubt such a fertile territory must have attracted populations. These populations may have flurished there in the Early Bronze Age. And no doubt that indigenous people inhabited the area when the indo-European speakers arrived. It is likely that the pre-proto-Greek speakers arrived in that area in the Early Bronze Age. The amagalm of those people resulted to what we know as the proto-Greeks. This is when the Indo-European Greek speakers borrowed dieties like Zeus. Hence the oracle of Zeus in Dodona. The native people must have still lived and survived in the Thessalian fertile plain until the time of the Trojan war. They are also called Pelasgians.

Later on, let's say Middle Bronze Age, this amagalm of people now referred to by us proto-Greeks, moved South towards the Pelopponesse. There they found more native populations. Perhaps even more advanced, because they were closer to Crete. But they were also akin to them, since they absorbed natives in Thessaly and Epirus. They absorbed them as well. The mixture resulted to the Mycenaen culture. They also migrated to the islands in different waves and absorbed them. But there were some islands still which were Pelasgian. As historians mention. By the Classical era the Aegean was all Greek speaking.

 

[Riverman]

Thessaly used to have vast lakes even until recently. No doubt such a fertile territory must have attracted populations. These populations may have flurished there in the Early Bronze Age. And no doubt that indigenous people inhabited the area when the indo-European speakers arrived. It is likely that the pre-proto-Greek speakers arrived in that area in the Early Bronze Age. The amagalm of those people resulted to what we know as the proto-Greeks. This is when the Indo-European Greek speakers borrowed dieties like Zeus. Hence the oracle of Zeus in Dodona. The native people must have still lived and survived in the Thessalian fertile plain until the time of the Trojan war. They are also called Pelasgians.

Later on, let's say Middle Bronze Age. this amagalm of people, now referred to by us proto-Greeks, moved South towards the Pelopponesse. There they found more native populations. Perhaps even more advanced, because they were closer to Crete. But they were also akin to them, since they absorbed natives in Thessaly and Epirus. They absorbed them as well. The mixture resulted to the Mycenaen culture. They also migrated to the islands in different waves and absorbed them. But there were some islands still which were Pelasgian. As historians mention. By the Classical era the Aegean was all Greek speaking.

Indeed, only the exact timing can be discussed for these processes.

 

[blevins13]

Indeed, only the exact timing can be discussed for these processes.

This Thessaly lakes scenario holds a lot of water. To support it, it will take a study similar to Kamenica that shows the transition of Thessaly settlements from the arrival of “Pure Greeks” to their transition to Mycenaean Culture.

So far we do see any major impact of the steppe people in Mycenaean culture, archeologically or genetically.

 

[Dianatomia]

This Thessaly lakes scenario holds a lot of water. To support it, it will take a study similar to Kamenica that shows the transition of Thessaly settlements from the arrival of “Pure Greeks” to their transition to Mycenaean Culture.

So far we do see any major impact of the steppe people in Mycenaean culture, archeologically or genetically.

The problem I have with this ‘pure Greeks’ notion is that it two dimensional.

The first Greeks as we know them had undergone an evolution of ethnogenesis. Their language perhaps borrowed as much as 40 % from the indigenous people, many customs, deieties, traditions as well as a substantial amount of genetic material.

Just like Europeans today who, as we know, have multiple ancestral and cultural dimensions. Similarly we can only speak of proto-Greeks after they were formed in the Thessalian plain and in the mountains of Epirus. Before that, there were no Greeks. Just the various ingredients which, with time, created the people which we can can identify as Greeks.

 

[TetaEglantina]

The problem I have with this ‘pure Greeks’ notion is that it two dimensional.

The first Greeks as we know them had undergone an evolution of ethnogenesis. Their language perhaps borrowed as much as 40 % from the indigenous people, many customs, deieties, traditions as well as a substantial amount of genetic material.

Just like Europeans today who, as we know, have multiple ancestral and cultural dimensions. Similarly we can only speak of proto-Greeks after they were formed in the Thessalian plain and in the mountains of Epirus. Before that, there were no Greeks. Just the various ingredients which, with time, created the people which we can can identify as Greeks.

"Pure" Greeks are Mycenaeans and they mixed with the Minoans. Mycenaeans didn't stay in the mountains of Epirus, they built cities all over Greece except for the Epirus region in fact -

Mycenaean Greece - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

You are claiming that all steppe migrants became ancient Greeks. Some Steppe people became Mycenaeans (Greeks) and other Steppe people created other civilisations or didn't do much

 

[blevins13]

The problem I have with this ‘pure Greeks’ notion is that it two dimensional.

The first Greeks as we know them had undergone an evolution of ethnogenesis. Their language perhaps borrowed as much as 40 % from the indigenous people, many customs, deieties, traditions as well as a substantial amount of genetic material.

Just like Europeans today who, as we know, have multiple ancestral and cultural dimensions. Similarly we can only speak of proto-Greeks after they were formed in the Thessalian plain and in the mountains of Epirus. Before that, there were no Greeks. Just the various ingredients which, with time, created the people which we can can identify as Greeks.

The close clustering of BA-IA populations from Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and northern Greece is also confirmed in proximate qpAdm models, as the Çinamak MLBA-IA samples derive most of their ancestry from the West Balkans (Tables S8-S9), with a possible 15-25% contribution from a southeast Balkan source (Bulgaria EIA, Greece BA Mycenaean) after the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) (Table S9). Based on the above, the MBA-IA populations of a large geographic region spanning northern Greece, North Macedonia and the entire Adriatic coast, including the region of modern Albania, form a uniform genetic cluster with similar admixture proportions (Fig. 3B) that persists for at least 1.500 years and transcends the linguistic boundaries identified by classical authors (7, 9). Our findings are further reinforced by IBD-sharing between certain samples from Albania and North Macedonia (Table S20) (50).

 

[Dianatomia]

The close clustering of BA-IA populations from Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and northern Greece is also confirmed in proximate qpAdm models, as the Çinamak MLBA-IA samples derive most of their ancestry from the West Balkans (Tables S8-S9), with a possible 15-25% contribution from a southeast Balkan source (Bulgaria EIA, Greece BA Mycenaean) after the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) (Table S9). Based on the above, the MBA-IA populations of a large geographic region spanning northern Greece, North Macedonia and the entire Adriatic coast, including the region of modern Albania, form a uniform genetic cluster with similar admixture proportions (Fig. 3B) that persists for at least 1.500 years and transcends the linguistic boundaries identified by classical authors (7, 9). Our findings are further reinforced by IBD-sharing between certain samples from Albania and North Macedonia (Table S20) (50).

What is your point? That MBA Logas samples are the pure Greeks? So the Mycenaeans are not?

The first Greeks may have reached admixture levels of that of Logas at some point during the early phase of their ethnogenesis. Probably changed soon after.

 

[blevins13]

What is your point? That MBA Logas samples are the pure Greeks? So the Mycenaeans are not?

The first Greeks may have reached admixture levels of that of Logas at some point during the early phase of their ethnogenesis. Probably changed soon after.

The statement is clear I don’t need to make another point here.

MBA-IA populations of a large geographic region spanning northern Greece, North Macedonia and the entire Adriatic coast, including the region of modern Albania, form a uniform genetic cluster with similar admixture proportions that persists for at least 1.500 years and transcends the linguistic boundaries identified by classical authors.

 

[Dianatomia]

The statement is clear I don’t need to make another point here.

MBA-IA populations of a large geographic region spanning northern Greece, North Macedonia and the entire Adriatic coast, including the region of modern Albania, form a uniform genetic cluster with similar admixture proportions that persists for at least 1.500 years and transcends the linguistic boundaries identified by classical authors.

How do you know it persisted 1500 years? In all those regions? Including Greece?

And also, I don’t see similar admixture proportions at all. Quite the contrary. I see a tremendous amount of genetic variety from North to the South of the Balkans.

My guess is that the coastal areas of Northern Greece were inhabited by Minoan like people. As did Thessaly, until this mixture occurred.