Heirs of Byzantium

I voted none of the above because I think the heirs re the turks and greeks.

Hello to You all.. I voted for the Bulgarians and Greeks because as the closest geograpfically Orthodox countries to what was once Byzantium I think they were influenced more than the others...

The only thing, Seko, what I do not understand where was it said (which exactly source) that they came from central Asia? All sources place them either north to Black Sea or close to Caucassus or even allow us to suggest that they lived as federats south of Danube. And all sources that you cited  suggest that they were authochtonous for North of Pontus.

Originally posted by Seko   Who am I really?   Who are you?

Originally posted by Anton   They are. Yet, you call "nationalistic historical revisionists" people who try to express alternative point of view.

The scary is the fact that they will immidiatley be called nationalists and revisionists.

Maybe the Balkanic approach towards Ancient heritage is far too biased.Maybe the side view is more realistic.Hre is the western idea about the Greek nation doctrine build up:

The Myth of Greek Ethnic 'Purity'

Macedonia and Greece, John Shea, 1997 pp.77-96

The most significant statements inside are:

Greeks as Slavs.

 In recent historical time other Europeans have held the view that the people of modern Greece have little ethnic connection with the ancient Greeks. Robert Browning, 32 a writer who is sympathetic to the Greeks, discusses the writings of the Bavarian Johann Philipp Fallmerayer, who in 1830 proposed that the Slav invasions and settlements of the late sixth and seventh centuries resulted in the "expulsion or extirpation of the original population of peninsula Greece. Consequently the medieval and modern Greeks ... are not the descendants of the Greeks of antiquity, and their Hellenism is artificial." Fallmerayer's view that not a drop of pure Greek blood is to be found in the modern Greek is often held to be extreme. A more moderate version of essentially the same idea was presented more recently by R.H. Jenkins. 

Just as Macedonia and other Balkan states were invaded by Slavs and other peoples from the north and from within the Balkans themselves, so were the lands that eventually were to become modern Greece. We need to examine this issue, since the modern Greeks repeatedly argue that they are direct ethnic descendants of the ancient Greeks and Macedonians. The fact is that the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural developments that these invasions created simply built upon similar movements of peoples into and out of the Balkans in the ancient past. 

 

Many of the views that follow explain that, whether the Greeks feel comfortable with the idea or not, their peoples are of diverse ethnic background, a great mix of the peoples of the Balkans, and have been for the past several thousand years. If all of the peoples of the Balkans were subjected to mixture of varying degrees with the invaders, as was certainly the case, then the argument might readily be made that modern-day Greeks are no more ethnically related to early Greeks than present-day Macedonians are to ancient Macedonians

 

There is much agreement among historians about the dramatic and overpowering influx of Slavic peoples to Greece. These people often intermarried and were assimilated in the "Roman" culture. Some writers tend to downplay the importance of the racial intermixture for Hellenization, suggesting that being a Hellene does not require particular racial antecedents. This is a point that modern Greeks appear unwilling to believe. Their preference seems to be simply to deny that "ethnological adulteration" ever took place. For example, in Macedonia, History and Politics (a publication sponsored by the Greek government and distributed throughout the English-speaking world) it is acknowledged (p. 10) that after Basil 11 there was a "solid Slav element" in Yugoslav and Bulgarian Macedonia, but it claims there was no impact at all in Greek Macedonia, or in Greece itself. The analyses from other sources lead us inevitably to a rejection of these claims. The Slavic influence in what is now Greece is clear

 

Edited by Ivailo - 28-Oct-2007 at 13:46

Not only boring but also with an agenda behind it. We've seen these kind of posts over and over again in this forum. What is clear is that these are not historical researches but exerts from different writers, sometimes mere travelers with no substantial value. An example is a copy of National Geographic I now hold in my hands, which mentions an article of a correspondent named Luigi Vilari who was mentioning about Macedonia is 1912: "Bulgarians are less witty and certainly not as smart as the Greeks or Vlachs", later: "they're not considered civilized" etc...you don't want to know what he's writing about the Albanians! This kind of superficial and perhaps prejudiced comments cannot be considered as historical research and same applies for some of the ridiculous claims mentioned above. They hide gross lies and agenda behind a shallow layer of truth (which is of course the fact that there have been certain movements of population).

Originally posted by Yiannis Not only boring but also with an agenda behind it. We've seen these kind of posts over and over again in this forum. What is clear is that these are not historical researches but exerts from different writers, sometimes mere travelers with no substantial value.

Edited by Byzantine Emperor - 28-Oct-2007 at 16:29

Originally posted by Antioxos As concern the last paragraph is totally racistic and is also wrong because an orthodox Christian could not marry a Muslim or even a  catholic and with this meaning we have many islamized Hellenes but not the opposite.