QuoteReplyTopic: Why not Hellas? Posted: 07-May-2005 at 02:41
The worldwide famous anthropologist of Moscow University Dr I. I. Roginski notes that in the southern part of the Balkans a wide border between the Dinaric and the front Asian anthropological types is located. Therefore, in this area some of the general problems of the classification of the European and front Asian populations may be ascertained. It must be also noted that by this work, the critique of the racist fabrications, regarding the genesis of the ancient Greek civilization, is found. (Note: meaning the racist theories supporting that contemporary Greeks are not descendents from the ancient and this is the reason why their civilization today falls short compared to that of the developed countries. On the contrary, besides the groundless comparison if for instance the traditions would be taken into account the scientific verification regarding the biological continuity of Greeks once more proves that the socio-historical and geographical conditions are the main factors ruling the peoples cultural level.).
The director of the Anthropological department of the Academy Ethnographic Institute in Moscow, Dr M. G. Levin added: ...It may seem paradox that many European peoples have been studied less than the peoples from Australia, Melanesia and other remote countries, Greece being one of the lesser examined ...A. N. Poulianos work completes this missing knowledge. The writer is fully aware of the methodology of the anthropological researches, has strictly kept all the necessary terms and paid suitable attention. The director of the Anthropological Institute and Moscow Anthropological Museum Dr B. P. Yiakimov stated: " My own view is that Mr A. N. Poulianos work represents the most perfect recapitulation regarding the Anthropology of Greeks."
From the other side of Atlantic, in USA, the director of the Smithsonian Institute, G.L. Angel, in a book review of The origins of the Greeks at the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (No 22, v. 5, 1964, p. 343) writes: Aris Poulianos correctly verifies that there is a full genetic continuity from ancient to contemporary times.
In the newspaper "NEA" of 25-1-1962, it is mentioned that: The scientific study of A. N. Poulianos refutes the dogmatic theory of the Greek hater, German historian Fallmerayer, who lived from 1790 to 1861, the time of the Greek fight for independence. Him (Fallmerayer) altogether dogmatically, that is without prior anthropological research - and therefore self-evidently anti-scientifically - tried to support the theory that Greeks are mainly Slavs. The researcher (A. Poulianos) ends by mentioning that the anthropological study, with the necessary historical and linguistic data, is necessary for the solution of ethnogenetic problems.
The present is the reflection of the past and in this lays its historical value. If the past helps us understand the present, the present helps us meditate on the future.
Thereinafter Aris Poulianos studied other 10.000 individuals and hundreds of skeletal remains from various Eurasian sites. The Greek groups, which were less represented in his PhD thesis (Aegeans, Peloponnesians, Pindos mountains), were finally studied after his return to Greece in 1965.
THE ORIGINS OF THE CRETANS AND AEGEANS
The basic conclusion (A. Poulianos 1971,1999) is that the contemporary population of Crete (based on a sample of 3.000 individuals) and the Aegean sea as a whole including the hinterland of Thrace and Asia Minor remained unaltered at least since the Minoan era and belongs to the aegean indigenous anthropological type. The migrations, which occurred during several historical periods, resulted in some light variations, but did not change the morphology of the original type. The influences do not exceed more than 1-3 % and this homogeneity betrays once again that the dwellers of the Aegean basin in general are locally born, at least since the Mesolithic epoch, that is 15.000 years BP (before present).
In 1987, the Italian Professor of Anthropology G. Facini during the 2nd World Congress of Palaeoanthropology in Torino, announced the existence of a 50.000 years human skeleton from Crete, with a morphology similar to the contemporary Homo sapiens sapiens and not that of the Neanderthal man. The announcement never reached the Greek Media, once the Hellenic Ministry for Culture stayed, as it was expected, indifferent!
In January of 1999, the medical magazine Tissue Antigens (vol.53) published an article based on blood studies, regarding the origin of Cretans. The final conclusion of this article is that the today inhabitants of Crete have a greater kinship to the Berbers, to the Semites and even to the Japanese than to the Greeks (who, as they allege, arrived 4.000 years ago in Greece!). In this way the origin of Cretans is transferred to Africa or to the Middle East 10.000 years ago. Seven professors from Spain and three from Greece sign the article and unfortunately they reached the above conclusion following a route of low scientific standards, since they were based on a sample of only 135 individuals only the HLA gene is studied. They also little respected deontology, because ignoring the previous and more accurate anthropological bibliography, since the phenotype is represented by thousands of genes. Along this slippery way, also the work of A. Mourant et al: The distribution of human blood groups and other polymorphisms, University of Oxford, 1976, pp 1055, is missing from their bibliography. In this edition it is referred that the HLA gene is an unreliable basis to exact conclusions on such matters, since it makes the inhabitants of Basque, Iceland and Congo to have bonds of kinship. It may be noted that views of this kind appeared since 1965, i.e. in a time when studies of molecular biology based on human DNA were not yet started, curiously coordinated toward the same direction (for example see the opposing Athens newspaper Athinaiki, 15/4/1966 : Cretans do not derive from Phoenicians and Semites.).
As for their historical, linguistic and archaeological arguments the situation is no better. For example they make the hypothesis that when 10.000 years ago Sahara became a desert, perhaps the Berbers migrated to Crete creating the Minoan civilization. In other words, instead of trying to find a way to survive they constructed ships, and went to Crete! Did not the authors really wonder about the probability that Cretans, rulers of the high seas at the time, traveled the opposite way, as many ancient sources refer? Moreover, the Saharas succulent sojourn faced an abrupt end about 5.500 years ago.(see Sara Simpson, Scientific American Oct.1999, p.19) and naturally not 10.000 ago when the last fluvial climatic conditions (cataclysm) occurred.
However, this hematological work may be considered as just a hoax and not as related to analogous to Cyprus situations. It is only sad, in the verge of the 3rd millennium, to see scientific journals publishing uncritically such essays.
THE PELOPONNESIAN POPULATION (1977/
Th. Pitsios conducted the anthropological research regarding the Peloponnesian population, under the guidance of Dr A. Poulianos, preliminary announced in "Anthropos" (1977, v. 4, p. 5-36). It has verified the basic conclusions of The origin of the Greeks, completing the anthropometrical data with 1582 individuals. In 1978 it was published in a separate edition of the Anthropological Association of Greece (book No 2), dedicated with love to his master.
Not really familiar to Hebrew but I know that the Hellinic translation of O.Testament Zechariyah chap. 9. 13 mentions the sons of Hellas but while searching for it online, I found that the english translated text uses the name "Javan". Don't know what to make of it.
Yiannis is correct that "Javan" meant "Ionians", at least originally, but was extended to include all Greeks. It was taken from more archaic Greek form Iavones, thus the form Yavan which was known among the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Aramaeans. This points to an Archaic period familiarity amongst the peoples involved. The Aramaic word actually made it to India, where the Greeks were known as Yavanas. The Persian form Yauna derives from the later Greek form Iones, at the time of the conquest of Lydia (c. 547 BC). Its kind of ironic that the Persian form also made it to India, where Greeks were also known as Yonas.
The Hellenes were first called "" ("Graeki" with the letter "G" pronounced "Y" as in "Yard") by the Illirians (present day Italians), when the former arrived in Italy from ancient Dodoni (city in Epirus, Greece) as colonists. According to another source, these colonists named or ("Graii" or "Graeci"), came to Italy from ("Graia"), an ancient town in Viotia, Greece (maybe contemporary Tanagra) and founded a new Hellenic Colony there with the name Nea Polis (which means New City, later to become known as Napoli, or Naples in English). This was the very first time that the Latins came close to the Hellenes (Greeks) and thus named them all "Graeci" after the citizens of Graia; and given that most modern European languages originate from Latin, the word "Graecus" became the root for all other respective names for and () ("Hellen" and "Hellas" or "Hellada"), e.g. Greek-Greece, Grec-Grèce, Grieche-Griechenland. Maybe the name "Hellenes" came from a greek tribe which lived near Dodoni and was called (S)Elli and this name was spread as Dodoni was one of the main ancient greek religion centers.
Later on, during the first Christian centuries, the word " " (Hellenes) became a synonym to "heathen", in order to distinguish the followers of old faith from those of the new -official- religion, and along with ("Romii", originating from "Romans") and (=of Greece), the name (Graeki) stayed in use until the foundation of the new Hellenic state in 1832AC. From that time on, the ancient terms Hellas and Hellines are used primarily in the interior of this small peninsula in South-East Europe to identify the country and its inhabitants, while the ones originating from Graeci remain in the vocabularies of the European languages.
And that Eurovision song... (I am joking)
Actually I have a high place in my heart for Norwegians.
They are the silent "always-there" people who only speak when they have something of essence to say. And that is a virtue!
For example they make the hypothesis that when 10.000
years ago Sahara became a desert, perhaps the Berbers migrated to
Crete creating the Minoan civilization. In other words, instead of
trying to find a way to survive they constructed ships, and went to
Crete! Did not the authors really wonder about the probability that
Cretans, rulers of the high seas at the time, traveled the opposite
way, as many ancient sources refer?
I don't know much about Cretan anthropology but Berbers seem to be
direct descendants from Paleolithic populations of the area (Gafsa
culture). At that time Crete and the Greek islands were deserted and
mainland Greece doesn't seem to have been either a very densely
populated region.
The date of 10,000 years ago is obviously a gross oversimplification as
the Sahara didn't became a desert till much later, when agriculture was
already extended through all the Mediterranean basin.
I'm not trying to defend anything but Neolithic North Africa is still
pretty much unknown and therefore hides some potential in explaning the
expansion of Meditearranean Neolithic and related cultures. For
instance, in Southern Spain there is an unconnected early culture
dating from the very beginnings of European Neolithic in the 6th
milennium... while nothing is proven about its origins some North
African connection can't be discarded either considering the limited
ammout of info we have about North African Neolithic.
Is all this about Y-chromosome haplogroups or what?
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Topic: Why not Hellas?
we are good at getting stuff right sometimes..
