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Classic Greece and its population's origins
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Supercar: [QB] Posted last year here [and on the Nile Valley forum], but here is another "Afrocentric" source on the Minoans, whom the Myceneans and the "classical" Greeks inherited much from; think of the Minoans as one of the folks through whom African and "SW Asian" culture flowed into Europe. Of course, this flow of culture continued to be the case well into the 'classical' Greek periods, but reading on... "The story of European civilization really begins on the island of Crete with a civilization that probably [b]thought of itself as Asian [/b](in fact, Crete is closer to Asia than it is to Europe). Around 1700 BC, a highly sophisticated culture grew up around palace centers on Crete: the Minoans. What they thought, what stories they told, how they narrated their history, are all lost to us. All we have left are their palaces, their incredibly developed visual culture, and their records. Mountains of records. [b]For the Minoans produced a singular civilization in antiquity: one oriented around trade and bureaucracy with little or no evidence of a military state.[/b] They built perhaps the single most efficient bureaucracy in antiquity. This unique culture, of course, lasted only a few centuries, and European civilization shifts to Europe itself with the foundation of the military city-states on the mainland of Greece. These were a war-like people oriented around a war-chief; while they seemed to have borrowed elements of Minoan civilization, their's was a culture of battle and conquest. We call them the Myceneans after the best-preserved of their cities, and their greatest accomplishment, it would seem, was the destruction of a large commercial center across the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor: Troy. Shortly after this defining event, their civilizations fell into a dark ages, in which Greeks stopped writing and, it seems, abandoned their cities. It was an inauspicious start for the Europeans: while the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians had enjoyed almost two thousand years of continuous civilization, in Europe the experiement began with the brilliance of the Minoan commercial states translated into the brief, war-like city-states of the Myceneans, only to slip back into the tribal groups that had characterized European civilization for almost all of its history. In spite of this, the basic character of European civilization is laid down in this early experiment; even though they slip into obscurity, the Greeks will permanently remember the Myceneans as the defining moment in their history. .. They [Minoans] were a people of magnificent social organization, culture, art, and commerce. There is no evidence that they were a military people; they thrived instead, it seems, on their remarkable mercantile abilities. This lack of a military culture, however, may have spelled their final downfall. [b]For the Minoans also exported their culture as well as goods, and a derivative culture grew up on the mainland of Greece, the Myceneans, who were a war-like people.[/b] Strangely enough, the direct inheritors of their traditions may have been the agents of their destruction. But we know now that Greek civilization began at least a millenium before the Age of Athens and almost eight hundred years before Homer. [b]It began off the mainland of Greece, in the Aegean Sea, in the palaces of the bureaucrat-kings of Minoa[/b]... The archaeological evidence points to only a few reasonable certainties about Minoan history. [b]Around 3000 BC, Crete was settled by a people who probably came from Asia Minor, who, by 2000 BC was already living in cities, trading with other nations in the Mediterranean, and employing a hieroglyphic system of writing, probably derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. [/b]This hieroglyphic writing would eventually evolve into a linear script. They built magnificent palace centers at Knossos, Phaistos, and Kato Zakros; these palaces seem to have dominated Cretan society. [b]We have no idea what language they spoke, but they certainly spoke a non-Hellenic language (that is, a language not closely related to Greek) and probably spoke a non-Indo-European language. [/b]" Source: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOANS.HTM [/QB][/QUOTE]
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