# Who were the pre-Greek Greeks? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 23, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429 "2012-01-23T20:49:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/21 "2012-01-24T13:53:04Z")
So where does Homer and the Illiad/Oddessy fit in all this? Supposedly the events they are based on happened somewhere around 1200BC and were oral history ever since then, until someone wrote it down closer to the classical age. Were the Doric invaders organized and settled enough to be the minor kings of the region and play the role in the invasion of Troy by then? Or did did they come after; did Homer appropriate the hero stories of the culture recently displaced? That sounds less likely if it was an invasion and displacement. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/22 "2012-01-24T14:16:24Z")
“Invasion and displacement” doesn’t mean that the original inhabitants either left or were killed. It could mean the invaders became a ruling class. Take for instance the Roman invasion of Gaul. The Gauls weren’t totally killed off, instead they became serfs for their new Roman overlords. And eventually they ended up speaking the language and following the customs of the Romans. And so today except in a few places they speak Romance languages and not Gaelic languages in France. ---
**Author:** ![Walther\_Ego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8dc957/32.png) [@Walther\_Ego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walther_Ego)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/23 "2012-01-24T14:22:28Z")
All the (Greek) heros of Homer are Achaeans and that sets them as non-Dorians. Despite they came from all over Greece. In the Greek tradition, the Doric invasions were central in explaining the complex variety of dialects, but they were a clear distict group, different from a number of other tribes or dialects. Their march after the Trojan war explained the magnificent Götterdämmerung of the late bronze world, the Doric were supposed to destroy the Homeric civilization. But this begs the question why they adopted the tales of the conquered and the destruction of people who were powerful because of tin trade can be explained by tin coming nearly worthless. So your last sentence is really central to the theory that there were no Doric invasions, or they were just a shadow of what ancient Greeks thought. ---
**Author:** ![Walther\_Ego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8dc957/32.png) [@Walther\_Ego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walther_Ego)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/24 "2012-01-24T14:29:48Z")
Last sentence being that of MD2000’s. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/25 "2012-01-24T18:12:25Z")
> [@Paralogic](#): > > I sincerely doubt that even if the Greeks drew from any Anatolia sources, the sources they drew from were as sophisticated as the Greek cultural creations. > > It does not make sense to witness such an amazing cultural development in the ancient Greek reality, and assume the same reality existed anywhere else before them. At one point the Greeks were in a dark age, producing nothing of cultural significance. A few centuries later, they had classical civilization up and running. There had to be a period, a process, in which they developed higher culture and intellectual life, to go from 0 to 60. During that period, they were in direct contact with already-old Anatolian civilization and learned the alphabet and other arts of civilization from them. The alphabet enabled literacy to spread farther than it had with Linear B. I know the classic image is Athena springing from Zeus’s head already armored up, but in reality the Greek intellectual culture she represented took centuries to develop. Like all cultures, they took input from their neighbors. In the period from the end of the dark age to the flowering of Greek literature with Homer and Sappho, they had to learn to write, build, farm, etc. I’m saying during that period they needed to be, and were, open to input from the advanced civilizations they were in contact with. All cultures are blended and involve syntheses of indigenous with imported factors. The Mexicans say they have Three Cultures: Native, Spanish, and the synthesis of the two: Mexican. Mexico has a national character very distinct from Spain, based in its indigenous traditions. But it would not exist as we know it without the Spanish input (which includes the alphabet). ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/26 "2012-01-24T18:16:31Z")
Whoa, Paralogic got banned out from under us while I was writing my reply to them. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/27 "2012-01-27T19:10:27Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > 😕 😕 I think this is the first time I’ve heard of “Minoan Linear B.” It’s > > Minoan Linear A > Mycenaean Linear B I had always associated both with Minoan, although doing so need not be mutually exclusive with Mycenean. Here is are some Wiki experpts: [Wikipedia Article on “Linear B”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B) > [@](#): > > Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries (LH IIB/LH IIA1/early LH IIIA2, ca. 15th century BC) and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization. Most clay tablets inscribed in Linear B were found in Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing. > > The script appears related to Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, and the later Cypriot syllabary, which recorded Greek. Although of the five archeological sites mentioned only Knossos is on Crete, Knossos provided more Linear B-bearing artifacts than all the other sites combined. Later in the article Wiki referrs to a _“demonstrated a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture on Crete…”_ ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2012, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429/28 "2012-01-27T19:25:24Z")
> [@colonial](#): > > I had always associated both with Minoan, although doing so need not be mutually > exclusive with Mycenean. > > Here is are some Wiki experpts: > > [Wikipedia Article on “Linear B”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B) > > Although of the five archeological sites mentioned only Knossos is on Crete, > Knossos provided more Linear B-bearing artifacts than all the other sites combined. > > Later in the article Wiki referrs to a _“demonstrated a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture on Crete…”_ Correction, Wiki is garbled: Cydonia is also on Crete, and two more mainland sites are identitifed: Tiryns and Chania. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-the-pre-greek-greeks/610429.md?page=1)