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Is it true blacks were in ancient greece
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    Posted: 16-Sep-2007 at 11:19
Originally posted by Dinakos

 
Mediterranean and Alpine, with a small mixed Dinaric element. There was some diversity among the ancient Greeks; they weren't all Mediterraneans. There probably were some lighter-pigmented Greeks, but few or none were of the Nordic variety, who were idealized by the Nazis. One does not need to consider ancient Greek phenotypes to know that blond Nordic types did not exist in ancient Greece. One only needs to know a modicum of history to know that there was no sophisticated civilization in northern ancient Europe from which Nordic types emigrated and settled in Greece to form the advanced civilization.
 
 


This Nordic theory is an ideal that was presented by authors like Karl Earlson and Arthur Kemp. Both are characterized as racists. Arthur Kemp presented in his work artworks from the Aegean Islands where he had changed the hair colour of the people depicted to blonde in order to claim a connection.


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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Sep-2007 at 11:24
Pretty clear. Aryanism and Afrocentrism are racist theories that put the dogma before the fact.
 
What were Greeks? Just Greeks, like you hear. That's the point. They were not the Aryans of Earlson and Kemp and not the Nigerians of Diop or Sertima either. They were a mediterranean people called the Greeks since the beginning of recorded history, and they are still called Greeks.
 
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Sep-2007 at 07:35

I agree, Pinguin! I don't see why, after all the conversations that we have about these things, people still come onto the forum and get into long winded debates about this rubbish! The Admins should add to the banner "USE REPUTABLE SOURCES ONLY!". I don't think, however, that we can call old-school classiscists and ancient historians "rascist" - they subscribed to the Roman-centric view that was typical of the age and so can't be held responsable.

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Posts: 1813 		  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Sep-2007 at 08:18
Originally posted by Aster Thrax Eupator

The Admins should add to the banner "USE REPUTABLE SOURCES ONLY!". 



I agree...Strongly agree! They's always a page made by a romantic person that is not a historian, that appears here adnd there.


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Posts: 253 		  Quote andrew Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Sep-2007 at 20:52
Greek philosophers felt that being Greeks is more of a state of being rather then a race similarly to how the Egyptians viewed themselves.
 
A lot of Greek culture is home grown unlike 'Black Athena' which I read and think is rubbish. For example the use of columns was believed to be given to the Greeks from the Egyptians and Phoenicians...not true. Looking at history by taking a holistic aproach we can see how the Greeks used the idea of a column.
 
Egypt--->Phoenicia/Persia--->Asia Minor--->Greece.
 
As you can see ideas travel and so do people. Were their Black people in Greece? Sure, but many of their culture was home grown showing that Blacks, unlike Black Athena states, was just a type of people living contrary to their belief thinking it was a direct influence of sub-Saharan Africans.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Sep-2007 at 21:25
Originally posted by andrew

... 
A lot of Greek culture is home grown unlike 'Black Athena' which I read and think is rubbish.... 
As you can see ideas travel and so do people. Were their Black people in Greece? Sure, but many of their culture was home grown showing that Blacks, unlike Black Athena states, was just a type of people living contrary to their belief thinking it was a direct influence of sub-Saharan Africans.
 
Yes, "Black Athena" is rubbish, and that has been exposed already by books like "Not out of Africa".
 
Now, the idea there were many "Sub-Saharian" Africans in Greece is also false. First, Blacks weren't many in Greece to start with, because "native" Greeks, or the "greek people" is Indoeuropean (or Caucasian if you preffer). Multiracial societies, like Chicago or New York of today, where not common in the ancient world and people was usually more uniform than today. Yes, there are exceptions. Egypt and Ethiopia come to mind. However that wasn't the case of Greece in classical times.
 
In second place, the only "Black" people that was known in classical times in the Mediterranean world were the Ethiopians. The fact is, Ethiopia was part of the network of civilizations that spread from Spain and Carthago to Mesopotamia, and from there to India and even China. Because it was part of that network, ethiopian merchants were "present" in lot of old civilizations, and also "white" foreigners usually visited Ethiopia as well.
 
West Africans, on the other hand, were a quite mysterious people. No real large scale contact existed with Western SS Africa up to Middle Ages times. So, "those blacks" would hardly be "present" in Greece in classical times at all. Exceptions exist, of course.
 
I abandon this thread here, before it goes in circles..
 
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Posts: 3987 		  Quote hugoestr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Sep-2007 at 21:42
No, they weren't. :)

I know that I am coming very late to the conversation, but here is my little contribution, which I am sure that others have already said.

The main source of attributing Greek thought to Africa is a Greek, Herodotus. Herodotus, the traditional Western father of history, was an early traveler, and it appears that he spent some time in Egypt. He recognized that it was a great and old civilization, and reported on it. Because he felt that it was older, he makes some claims that certain Greek practices or technology comes from Egypt.

And he is right, in a very general sense. People in the Mediterranean had frequent cultural exchanges, and Egypt, being an older civilization, may have been the source of many practices.

At the same time, if you read Herodotus, you will realize that the man is what we today call "ethnocentric." So he misreads other culture by assuming that many practices and features are the same as the Greek ones that he was familiar with. (And for an ancient, he is actually pretty good at understanding cultural differences, if I remember correctly)

In other words, Herodotus may attribute to the Egyptians things that are purely Greek though cultural misunderstanding.

Also, if I remember correctly, this, and the curly hair found in pottery, is pretty much the heart of the evidence for Black Athena. A pretty hollow heart, I would say

Black Athena is probably the book that hurts Afrocentrism the most. Is debating an unwinnable position.

It is a lot more productive to look at the modern history of Africa and the Africa diaspora, and to explore the great diversity of African throughout the years.

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Posts: 0 		  Quote AndronicusRex Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-Sep-2007 at 17:33
Sure, as slaves.  They never had any real influence on Hellenic culture, to suggest otherwise is absurd.  A brief survey of ancient Greek history and art will suffice to prove this.
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Posts: 2888 		  Quote Anton Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-Sep-2007 at 22:14
Originally posted by AndronicusRex

A brief survey of ancient Greek history and art will suffice to prove this.
 
To compare things you need to know them both.
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Posts: 0 		  Quote AndronicusRex Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Sep-2007 at 03:21
I do know them, and I know that Greek writers mention no blacks of note as contributing majorly to Hellenic civilization, and their artwork depicts an exclusively White European population, with the exception of a few minor works depicting slaves or foreigners.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Sep-2007 at 04:10

It is amazing how much pseudohistory has made inroads into reality. The idea that there was a major Black minority in Greece comes from the United States. It is just a projection of the reality of the United States back to ancient Greece by a group of writers with an agenda: Afrocentrism. Books like "Black Athena" were the beginning of it.

However, serious schollars have shown already that most of those claims are just lunacy.
 
Two books:
 
(1)  Not Out of Africa
Was Greek Culture Stolen from Africa?
Modern Myth vs. Ancient History

Professor%20Lefkowitz

 
Amazon.com
Wellesley classics professor Mary Lefkowitz takes aim at the basic claims of leading proponents of Afro-centrism, in this expansion of her New Republic article exposing flaws in the argument that black Africans were responsible for the great civilizations of Egypt and Greece that brought praise from historians and criticism from Afrocentrists. Lefkowitz argues that the Greeks' African heritage touted by Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop is based upon a single dubious source and that Egyptians never considered themselves black Africans, in fact, that they consciously disassociated themselves from blacks. She argues that the legacy of these two cultures remains so rich even foes of European civilization want to claim that legacy for themselves. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
"I am defending academic standards," declares Wellesley College classics professor Lefkowitz, expanding on a New Republic article that brought her praise from historians and criticism from Afro-centrists. Her methodical study, moderate in tone, does not survey the full flower of Afro-centrism in American curricula but takes potent aim at some of the basic claims of leading proponents of Afro-centrism. For example, she shows that influential Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop asserted the Greeks' African heritage based on a single, highly dubious source. Similarly, she explains how claims tracing Greek religion and philosophy to Egyptian origins are based on clearly suspect Greek sources. Moreover, she shows how those Afro-centrists who say the Greeks borrowed an "Egyptian Mystery System" from Africa are actually relying on an 18th-century French novel. This book is a sobering rebuttal of those academics too spineless to challenge teachings based more on identity politics than on solid scholarship.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 
 
 
(2)
Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (Paperback)
by Stephen Howe (Author)
 
 
Afrocentrism, asserts Oxford historian Howe in this forceful scholarly critique, is a dogmatic ideology promoting a mythical vision of the past that involves an erroneous belief in fundamentally distinct African ways of knowing and feeling. Using archaeological and other studies, he refutes the claims of influential Afrocentrist Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop, who held that ancient Egypt was a black African civilization and that a single cultural system unified the African continent. Howe deftly exposes the shaky underpinnings of Cornell historian Martin Bernal's popular tome, Black Athena, which claims that classical Greece was massively indebted to Egyptian and Semitic sources, and to Egyptian colonization. Tracing the evolution of Afrocentric views from 19th-century pamphleteers, romantic anthropologists, occultists and political activistsAboth black and whiteAthrough contemporary Black Muslim doctrine and what he considers the distortions of U.S. academics such as Leonard Jeffries, Ron Karenga and Molefi Asante, Howe finds that much Afrocentric writing "slips from ethnocentrism and neoconservatism into full-blown racism, sexism and homophobia." A major contribution to the debate, this dense study will appeal mostly to scholars. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc
 
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Sep-2007 at 10:15
Well then, those titles should quieten our Afrocentrists...if they can be made to!
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