Kanaris
Amicus
This just in>>>> Nobody gives a crap!
Posts: 9,587
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Post by Kanaris on Jan 3, 2008 2:26:49 GMT -5
I know one thing for sure..... that you are a bright fellow..and a gentleman..... and I wish more Turks were like you.... maybe one day my wish will come true.
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Post by meltdown711 on Jan 3, 2008 3:55:30 GMT -5
Sorry Aadmin, but this is not really all that applicable to a great extent. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine etc. had various Greek colonies that became centers of administration, however, the vast vast majority of the outside population was not Greek and nor did it have any contact with Greeks. Not to mention that the very urban areas were very very intermixed.
Take Alexandria for a second. The most famous Hellenistic city. It had a Greek quarter, Egyptian quarter, Jewish quarter... etc. etc. Even in these areas, although a dominant group, Greeks remained a minority in the larger scheme of things. Even if it all mixed with the rest, I very very much doubt that the genetic leftover would be THAT heavy. Especially when we talk about strains through indirect contact(Ethiopians to Greeks).
Once the Hellenistic Age died, the Greek population faded very very fast and traces of it seem to have vanished quite fast. Greeks in the mideast were an urban centered creature in a sea of non-Greeks.
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Post by yahadj on Jan 3, 2008 10:33:21 GMT -5
Wow, I am flattered. Thanks. I just try to look on things in broader aspect.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Jan 3, 2008 13:03:45 GMT -5
Toskali711: Sorry Aadmin, but this is not really all that applicable to a great extent. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine etc. had various Greek colonies that became centers of administration, however, the vast vast majority of the outside population was not Greek and nor did it have any contact with Greeks. Not to mention that the very urban areas were very very intermixed.
Take Alexandria for a second. The most famous Hellenistic city. It had a Greek quarter, Egyptian quarter, Jewish quarter... etc. etc. Even in these areas, although a dominant group, Greeks remained a minority in the larger scheme of things. Even if it all mixed with the rest, I very very much doubt that the genetic leftover would be THAT heavy. Especially when we talk about strains through indirect contact(Ethiopians to Greeks).
Once the Hellenistic Age died, the Greek population faded very very fast and traces of it seem to have vanished quite fast. Greeks in the mideast were an urban centered creature in a sea of non-Greeks. Even the Jews of Alexandria were fully Hellenized culturally for most part and it was during that period that their holly book Torah was translated into Greek and afterwards was the only remaining Torah (meaning being in Greek language) that was used as one to be translated back into Hebrew language. Surely these Jews were not pure Jews (hence why most Jews today have Greco-Roman appearance as opposed to Semitic appearance, ex. Arabians) as the level of Hellenization was so intense that Jews even had a civil war among themselves as far as will Hellenizm prevail or Judaism (the only time in Jewish history that Jews themselves were on a brink of losing their own identity). Certainly if there was a handful of Greeks in these regions such situation would never develop as such numbers would not be sufficient to make such big impact. The Seleucid Kingdom, which arose after the Persians were defeated by Alexander the Great, sought to introduce Greek culture into the Persian world. When the Greeks under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, supported by Hellenized Jews (those who had adopted Greek culture), attempted to convert the Jewish Temple to a temple of Zeus, the Jews revolted under the leadership of the Maccabees and rededicated the Temple to the Jewish God (hence the origins of Hanukkah) and created an independent Jewish kingdom known as the Hasmonaean Kingdom which lasted from 165 BCE to 63 BCE, when the kingdom came under influence of the Roman Empire. linkNow back to Egypt, the level of Hellenic or Helenizing influence can be seen by the fact that 1/3 of current Coptic vocabulary is greek and that is still till today (meaning it was easily more then that in the past, especially during Greek rule of Ptolemies ) "Approximately one-third of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek, though borrowings are not always fully adapted to the Coptic phonological system and may have semantic differences as well. There are instances of Coptic texts having passages that are almost entirely composed from Greek lexical roots." linkAgain this level of Hellenization among certain (more important or more numerous) native populations could not have been achieved with a handful of Greeks. The Hellenized urbanization of former Persian empire (all the Alexandria's and other cities) was bringing magnitude of Greeks from across Haimos, Anatolia and south Italy there. These Greeks had to be numerous as opposed to populations which were mainly rural (as even today Urban population is always more populous versus rural and when any given country reaches greater level of urbanization it also has far more people then previously). And Greeks, and later Romans were mainly urbanized societies. It is very easily conceivable that Greek cities of say todays Albania would have more people then surrounding Illyrian tribes unless such tribes would also have a similar level of urbanization. " In the Hellenistic times, the Macedonians – following the death of Alexander – hellenized the Syrians, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Armenians and a number of other smaller ethnic groups along the Middle East and Central Asia." linkHellenizing all these people with a handful of Greeks, I don't think so. It is inconceivable as far as logic is concerned as no new population will accept fully another culture without at least initial force as well as continued and strong strong presence (most effective trough masses of people). Alexander was even responsible for attempting to influence his troops to intermix with local as to more easily Hellenize them and this would also have been a contributing factor in Hellenization. The fact that even though there were numerous inter-greek wars in Alexandrian world ( link ) strongly suggests that numbers of Greeks/Hellenes (including all Hellenized Haimians and Anatolians in Diaspora considering that is what they would have felt like at the time and place) ha to be considerable otherwise any one of these conflicts would have easily spelled doom for these Hellenistic states as locals would have used the opportunity to revolt. "The city of Pergamum became a major centre of book production, possessing a library of some 200,000 volumes, second only to the Library of Alexandria[1]. Athens retained its position as the most prestigious seat of higher education, especially in the domains of philosophy and rhetoric, with considerable libraries in her possession[1]. The island of Rhodes boasted a famous finishing school for politics and diplomacy. Famous alumni of Athens and Rhodes were the Romans Cicero and Mark Antony respectively[1]. Alexandria was arguably the second most important centre of Greek learning, boasting a Great Library with 700,000 volumes and a Small Library with 42,800[1]. Antioch as well was founded as a metropolis and centre of Greek learning which retained its status into the Christian era.[1]" linkand finally Obviously these Alexandrian cities would not have achieved such importance in a Hellenic world and even more importantly would not have become such cultural centers of this world unless there was an immense Greek influence within them and certainly this would not have been present without a mass of initial Greek speakers (or initial agents of Hellenization). "The term Hellenistic (derived from Ἕλλην Héllēn, the Greeks' traditional self-described ethnic name) was established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen to refer to the spreading of Greek culture and colonization over the non-Greek lands that were conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. The Hellenistic age marks the unification of the Greek world, sharing a common culture based on that of 5th and 4th century BC Athens, along with a fusion of Near Eastern cultures.[1] The period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and Kingdoms in Asia and Africa.[2] Those new cities were composed by Greek colonists who came from different parts of the Greek world, and not from a specific "mother city" (metropolis) as before.[2] The main cultural centers expanded from mainland Greece, to Pergamon, Rhodes, as well as to new Greek colonies such as Antioch and Alexandria. This mixture of Greek-speakers gave birth to a common Attic-based dialect, known as Hellenistic Greek, which came to absorb and replace all idioms of the Greek language." link
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