Re: what about the influence of the franks/venetians on the islands?


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Posted by kosta on May 27, 2002 at 00:38:23:

In Reply to: Re: what about the influence of the franks/venetians on the islands? posted by gertrude on May 26, 2002 at 06:47:29:

: actually i based it on observations of historians and anthropologists. not just an assumption. Also the 'blond Greeks' (i.e. the Dorians) never reached Cyprus. It was only the Myceneans (hence the similarity in dialect with northern Pelop.).

Nobody can yet say for sure what the color of the Myceneans was, or even that of the Dorians for that matter. An interesting aside: some anthropologists recently reconstructed the faces of various Mycenean rulers using skulls found in the tombs. You probably know what I'm going to say next: they *all* looked Alpine. If blonde Cypriots are of Frankish extraction, how do you explain all the blonde and red-headed Syrians and Lebanese (especially in the mountains) just a hop, skip, and jump away? Are these people "Franks" too? How about all the fair Turks that live along the coast, or all the fair Greeks in neighboring Islands?


: the 'oriental' element in Cyprus (i.e. the indigenous population) was of Minoan related extraction. The Minoans (according to most historians) do come from the East. The was no other element in Cypriot society back then. Suffice it to mention here even that the present Rhodesian dialect, derived from Homeric times and still today containing many of its elements, is *exactly* the same as that of Cyprus-pointing to a common culture.

I pray, do tell me who these "historians" are. I've never heard of anyone saying Minoans were from the East. That's a pretty bold claim, being that recorded history doesn't go back far enough to substantiate their presence outside the Aegean and peripheral areas. I could say they came from San Francisco and nobody would be able to prove me wrong. I'm not flat-out denying, but just point me to where you got this info.

Cyprus, for your information, has played host to many kinds of people since prehistoric times, and it's history parallels that of the surrounding mainland as much as it does the Aegean. There is proof of movements from as far away as the Caucasus into Cyprus, and the skeletal material clearly shows that the dominant element of Cypriot society, long before the Greek era, was the semi-Indo-European Armenoid type found in the surrounding continental areas. You can't fight empirical evidence.

Also, the fact that the Rhodesian dialect is the same as that of Cyprus says absolutely nothing about who specifically spoke them.


: The Phoenicians weren't 'dark' as such-their descendants the Christian Lebanese are quite European looking (like continental Greeks *not* original islanders). So the 'dark dark' Cypriots, according to historians again, are an admixture of Greek descendants with Turks. Those are mostly in the West of the island.

In case you don't know, the word "Phoenician" derives from a word meaning "color of a ripe date." The Phoenicians were so dark that Greeks used them as a "standard" to measure dark Caucasians with. In the Greek world, dark, foriegn-looking sailors were often called Phoenicians regardless of whether they really were such. Kind of like how American people indiscriminately label all dark South Americans "Mexicans." Of the Caucasian world, Greek authors consistently wrote of pink people, milky-white people, olive people, and "Phoenicians." Zeno, founder of Stoicism and honourary Cypriot, was constantly refered to as "the Phoenician."


: Also there are many arguments against the 'purity' of a Greek race the strongest one being the acceptance and adoption of ancient Greeks (from Alexander onwards) of the customs of their subjects (inter-marriage fascilitating this) and the mixture of the Serbian/Bulgarian/Greek/Romanian populations of the Byzantine era (according to some giving more blond hair etc to modern Greeks, especially up in the North where the distinction between Slavic and Greek very touch and go).

Just because there are many arguments doesn't mean any of them are valid, and adopting others' culture doesn't mean "race mixing." If that were true, we'd all be homogenized by now. It's pretty naive to think that one's being part of an empire means that he racially becomes his ruler and vice-versa. Millions of peasants don't just "pick up and move" when they find out their country is countrolling some other, or when their country is being controlled.

The Greek race is "pure" enough to merit it's own little branch on the genetic tree of the Caucasoid world. Greeks don't cluster very closely genetically to anyone (the implication being there hasn't been gene flow with other groups for a very long time). The Latins cluster (Franks, Italians, Spanish, etc.). The Germanics cluster. Slavic and Middle-Eastern groups show clustering. But Greeks, like their strange language whose relatves have become extinct, pretty much sit alone. Greeks' only remotely close relatives, in fact, are the Albanians. This says a lot, as Albanians are an aboriginal Balkan group of similar origin. Of course, I'm not saying Greeks are 100% pure, but it's going to take a very creative person to be able to refute all the evidence that exists and is constantly pouring in with new research.




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