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Post by 88mmFlaK on Sept 1, 2004 11:43:05 GMT -5
Would the statement that "the Greeks have had essentially the same culture, language, and land for at least 3000 years" be a reasonable statement? I believe so, some others seem to feel that cultural preservation is an impossibility and not worth worrying about.
Aside from the adoption of Christianity, what are some other memes which might have been picked up and assimilated into modern Greek culture.
Also, what would be some other examples of well-preserved cultures (and ethnicities).
Thanks
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Post by buddyrydell on Sept 1, 2004 22:09:35 GMT -5
I'd say that's quite accurate. Modern Greek culture is very much like that of their ancient/classical ancestors, with some influences from their neighbors and/or due to the fact that every culture evolves with the times (i.e. the introduction of Christianity and linguistic additions from other languages, resulting in the demotic form of modern Greek). They are very much the same people they've been since their classical days, with some additions of Slavs, Turks, and others into the population but such is true for every nation's people.
To say that modern Greeks are just Greek-speaking Christian Turks is just simply showing ignorance. Likewise, to say that modern Italians have nothing to do with the ancient Romans is also utterly absurd. It's not as if I'm claiming that modern Greeks and Italians are pure, but they without question still have much of the blood derived from classical Greeks and Romans (of course the Romans were more of a mix of peoples, such as Latins, Etruscans, and even Greeks from Magna Graecia).
Those aforementioned peoples all contributed to the ethnogenesis of the original Romans prior to the era in which provincial subjects from all over the Roman Empire were granted Roman citizenship under the Edict of Caracalla (212 AD). Such is how strongly Romanized peoples as the Dacians of modern Romania came to think of themselves as "Romans." The Dacians had been granted Roman citizenship, and were at that point, Latin-speaking followers of Roman culture. This occurrence, combined with the strengthening of their identity because of the fact that they were surrounded by Slavs and Magyars for centuries, is how their land came to be known as Romania (Land of the Romans).
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Post by alex221166 on Sept 2, 2004 9:22:23 GMT -5
Obviously not. The ancient Greeks were a pagan people (with all that comes with it). Modern Greeks are Christians of the Orthodox variety. That alone makes the two different "cultures" incompatible, at least in a great deal of aspects.
Other than that, one has to consider the populations that at one time or another, occupied or interacted with Greece, namely the Turks. Some oriental musical influences can be spotted in Greek traditional music, and I suspect that the coffee and tobacco culture so much alive in modern Greece had its origin during the Ottoman rule.
After the Greek war of independence the Greeks started to revive the Greek culture. Every country needs its national symbols, particularly a country that had lost its freedom for so long. As such, I don't think that there was a clear cultural continuity between the ancient Greens and the post independence Greeks, largely because the early 19th century Athens was reduced to around 5000 inhabitants. It was mostly a rural society, not an urban one. I think that the best term to describe what happened would be the word "re-awakening".
I am obviously talking about culture, not about race. Considering most of the studies I have seen, there has been a clear racial continuity between the ancients and the modern Greeks. That is probably largely owed to Orthodoxy.
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Praetor
Full Member
Graecus in Fennia
Posts: 246
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Post by Praetor on Sept 3, 2004 3:05:51 GMT -5
Whle I have to agree that the adoption of Christianity by Greeks is a very crucial point since new dogmas and important practices of everyday life where introduced back then,I have also some importan objections.
Alex,first of all culture and religion are not one and the same so it is not accurate to say that a given population by changing its religion is erasing its culture. The only one I know that practically claims that culture starts and ends with religion is Samuel Huntingdon (read his masterpiece of political Science Fiction,The Clash of Civilizations a proof of his ignorance).
About the Turkish influence there is such but there is not point to stretch coffee and tobacco since the whole of Europe adopted them at a certain point.Isn't tobacco native in the Americas anyway?The most popular brand in Greece right now must be Camel or Marlboro and we have no special way of smoking or whatsoever. The main influence of the Ottoman is in the vocabulary especially among anatolian Greeks. There are oriental influences in Greek music but not in the traditional one. You see Bouzouki was introduced about 80 years ago,it was something brought in mainland Greece by Greek Anatolian refugees. Those Greeks were indeed more deeply affected by the much longer turkish rule upon them.Traditional Greek music is no tsiftetteli or zeibekiko,but something very far from that.
What I really need to mention is that it is really pointless to compare classical Greece with modern one. One must comprehend the cultural evolution through history. From classical times to hellenestic ones and the major role of Alexander in this process ("globalization" of Greek culture) then the Roman era that affected us greatly through both Christianity and the Imperial ideal which led into the Byzantine era. The Eastern Roman empire was the fusion of the traditional Greek antiquity with the Imperial Roman (and Christian of course) factor. This is the main difference between the ancients and us today. And no, Greeks didn't attempt to reconnect with the ancient past after the war of independence. The flags we adopted were by no means ancient while the Roman symbols were (and still are) in use for many centuries through Church. Greeks started readopting Ancient Greek names in favor of Christian ones even from the 13th century ,much before the Ottoman conquest. What happened was the awakening of Nationalism ,a common practice in each and every one of the European states after the French revolution and Napoleon. The more archaic Katharevousa language (which is more or less identical to Hellenestic Koine which is intelligible even by modern Greeks of today) was an idiotic attempt of some elite which failed in a few decades.
What I want to say is simple. We are today children of those Greeks that show their empire collapsing under the Venetians,Normans,Franks,Turks etc. And those fathers were the bearers of 1200-1400 years of imperial history. Modern Greeks certainly do not share the same culture with the Atheneans of 5th century BC but we still have lots in common.The sacred sense of hospitality,the deep localism,numerous pagan practices that outlived the Christian witchunt,the significance of bread and olives ,the unstopable use of ancient Greek names that became christian for 3 millenia or even more (Alexandros,Eleni,Theodoros,Andreas etc etc) and many more.
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Post by Dienekes on Sept 3, 2004 4:53:40 GMT -5
Modern Greek culture is the continuation of ancient Greek culture. In fact, the distinction between a modern and an ancient Greek culture is purely chronological, as there has never been a break in continuity between the two. Ancient and modern Greek cultures are simply phases of the single Greek culture, and the distinction between the two is the creation of Western historians and their zeal to catalogue and organize historical material. Greeks should not fall into this historicist trap, as they often unfortunately do.
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Praetor
Full Member
Graecus in Fennia
Posts: 246
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Post by Praetor on Sept 3, 2004 10:50:37 GMT -5
Greeks should not fall into this historicist trap, as they often unfortunately do. This remark isn't against my post,is it? I think I pointed enough the importance of the cultural continuumin of our nation.
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Post by Dienekes on Sept 3, 2004 16:43:45 GMT -5
This remark isn't against my post,is it? I think I pointed enough the importance of the cultural continuumin of our nation. No, it's a general remark. In the West, scholars have created a historicist view of history of ancient glory, medieval decline and modern rennaissance. Many Greeks have internalized this model and try to apply it to Greek history, often disowning in the process the medieval period and focusing on an idealized view of the ancient period.
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Post by Artemidoros on Sept 3, 2004 18:52:54 GMT -5
While I agree with Dienekes that there is unbroken continuity in Greek culture, I would like to point out that even in many areas where the Greek language is no longer spoken there is a form of continuity. Symbolically I post a picture of the Cathedral of Syracuse (Il Duomo), which incorporates 26 Doric columns of the Temple of Athena. Alex, I do not know exactly what 88mmFlak means by preservation but you can not refrigerate culture. One of the enduring qualities of Greek culture is its ability to absorb ideas from outside, filter, retain, develop and finally pass them on again. Modern Greek culture enlessly draws from the bottomless reservoir of its past and not going to the gym in the nude is not incompatible with reading Plato.
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Post by alex221166 on Sept 3, 2004 20:50:52 GMT -5
Alex, I do not know exactly what 88mmFlak means by preservation but you can not refrigerate culture. One of the enduring qualities of Greek culture is its ability to absorb ideas from outside, filter, retain, develop and finally pass them on again. Modern Greek culture enlessly draws from the bottomless reservoir of its past and not going to the gym in the nude is not incompatible with reading Plato. Artemidoros: bullsfighting in the Iberian Peninsila is at least 2500 years old, some people believe that bullfighting was introduced in Iberia by the Phoenicians or even the Minoans. Now, with the exception of bullfighting, liking olive oil and other dairy products, modern Iberians and ancient Iberians have very little in common. Our society is a lot different - largely thanks to the Romans -, Catholicism and the Reconquista shaped the Portuguese psyche, and the Age of Exploration changed it for good. Can I say that there is a clear continuity between my ancestors from 2500 years ago and myself? No, I can't even garantee that I would find clear signs of Lusitanian nationalism until the late XIV century. Throughout our history, we were able to preserve a great deal of our culture but a substantial portion was either lost or replaced by new things. The most famous Portuguese cake is made of Portuguese eggs, Brazilian sugar and Indian cinnamon: part of the reason why they are so cherished by us Portuguese is exactly because they are a symbol of our history and of what was added to our very Iberian culture by our history. I am talking about changes that happened 500 years ago, let alone ones that could have happened 2000 or 3000 years ago... Portugal is not Greece and Greece is not Portugal, but I find it hard to believe that a country that was under foreign occupation for 300 years received no cultural contributions from the occupier. I already mentioned tobacco - which was introduced in Europe by Portugal, and then in France by the French ambassador in Lisbon who was called Jean Nicot (Nicot -> Nicotine). I also mentioned coffee (which I believe was known as "Turkish Coffee" in Greece prior to the war of independence). These two are very practical examples, of everyday life, that Greek culture was influenced by foreigners. And I am talking about coffee, I am not even talking about such an important fact as the adoption of Christianity as a state religion or receiving Greek refugees from Kaffa, Trebizond or Smyrna who differed at least to some extent in their regional culture (that is partly why they were generally poorly welcomed by the mainland Greeks). When a Greek says that there is a clear continuity between the ancients and the moderns, that sounds to me as reasonable as when I see an Irish dressed like a druid "like his ancestors". What is the main difference between the two examples? Books. Greeks wrote them. The Irish didn't. As such, their culture was better preserved, and the Druids' was lost for good. HOWEVER, when you have to learn from books that means that the continuity was at some point lost, and re-learnt from the preserved source. Of course, some traditional cultural aspects are likely to have survived through the centuries, particularly in the most isolated villages. The main point remains unchaged: no man is an island, and the same can be said about a culture.
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Post by 88mmFlaK on Sept 4, 2004 1:22:14 GMT -5
Kind thanks to everyone for your keen insights. It is quite correct that culture cannot be preserved in the most literal sense, like taking a snapshot, and expecting that hundreds or thousands of years later for it not to be altered in some way, by the many new discoveries, migrations, or change of rulership.
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Post by Dodona Underground on Sept 4, 2004 14:46:29 GMT -5
Kind thanks to everyone for your keen insights. It is quite correct that culture cannot be preserved in the most literal sense, like taking a snapshot, and expecting that hundreds or thousands of years later for it not to be altered in some way, by the many new discoveries, migrations, or change of rulership. Wait, wait! Don't close the barn door yet! 8mmFlaK, what do you think of this: To get a definitive answer to the question of this thread, we’d have to have a way to objectively analyze the contents of culture A and culture B. Then we’d have to have a set of criteria by which we determine that they are completely different cultures and not just variants of the same culture. If it’s even possible, that method would be too costly and time-consuming. So everyone here has cleverly attempted to work around the problem. I don’t see how the claim of continuity solves the problem. At a certain level, culture that is passed down from father to son doesn’t change very much, in spite of traumas. A good example here in America is the African American. He was taken from his homeland and forced to change his language. He lost his religion, his literature, his songs, etc. Yet, hundreds of years later, his music has striking similarities to West African music. Was there a cultural preservation movement? Were there Afro-centric schools? No. He just watched and listened to his parents. Even in this age of advanced technology, brain-washing techniques and mass communication, No one has discovered a way to completely wipe out the culture of an individual, much less an entire society. I think that “nurture” is strong, but you may see genetics at work here as well. But discontinuity isn’t necessary to explain radical cultural change. A culture could gradually evolve into a radically different culture. Are you willing to accept the possibility that the Mayan civilization may have evolved in a continuous, unbroken line from something like the Amazonian Yanomamo? If so, is your point that the whole dynamic changes when a culture reaches something like a neolithic stage of development? Disruptive stimuli such as invasions, immigrations, political revolutions and major changes in technology, the economy, religion, etc. don’t necessarily constitute a break or a death of a culture. But I don’t see how you can say that they don’t have a major impact on the trajectory of the cultural evolution. Over the long run, they mean the difference between Yanomamo and Mayan. About Christianity and Alex’s point. I’ve read the Bible and I’ve yet to see in it any demands that pagan cultures can only be reformed by first destroying them totally. Thus, the heritage of the gentiles becomes Christian as long as it conforms to Christianity. The mission of the Neapolitan St. Thomas Aquinas had this as a starting principle. But who really thinks that Christianity is merely a cultural accretion? Christianity brings in doctrines of original sin, Satan, the 10 commandments, the sermon on the mount, the passion of Christ, atonement, the focus on the kingdom of heaven and away from the world, the apocalypse, etc. Love it or hate it, but admit that it’s much bigger culturally than loan-words and music. It goes straight to the nature of man, his place in the universe, and how he should live. It’s a closed religion that doesn’t lend itself to syncretism. How could it not have a great cultural impact on those who took it seriously?
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Post by Artemidoros on Sept 4, 2004 19:15:30 GMT -5
Artemidoros: bullsfighting in the Iberian Peninsila is at least 2500 years old, some people believe that bullfighting was introduced in Iberia by the Phoenicians or even the Minoans. Now, with the exception of bullfighting, liking olive oil and other dairy products, modern Iberians and ancient Iberians have very little in common. Our society is a lot different - largely thanks to the Romans -, Catholicism and the Reconquista shaped the Portuguese psyche, and the Age of Exploration changed it for good. Can I say that there is a clear continuity between my ancestors from 2500 years ago and myself? No, I can't even garantee that I would find clear signs of Lusitanian nationalism until the late XIV century. Throughout our history, we were able to preserve a great deal of our culture but a substantial portion was either lost or replaced by new things. The most famous Portuguese cake is made of Portuguese eggs, Brazilian sugar and Indian cinnamon: part of the reason why they are so cherished by us Portuguese is exactly because they are a symbol of our history and of what was added to our very Iberian culture by our history. I am talking about changes that happened 500 years ago, let alone ones that could have happened 2000 or 3000 years ago... The Greek nation was formed much earlier than the Portuguese. The Greeks never called coffee Turkish. It was the West Europeans that did, because it was introduced to them by Ottoman subjects - Greeks and Jews. The Greeks learnt very little from the Turks and most of it before the fall of Constantinople. For example they learnt to slit the nostrils of their horses. When they became Ottoman subjects they were no longer allowed to keep horses as a rule. It was the Turks who learnt an awful lot from their subject peoples. I am not saying the Greeks did not absorb Eastern influences. We have been absorbing foreign influences for thousands of years and we continue to do so now. I am sure you agree that a culture that does not interact is condemned to stagnation and eventual death. Of course we have changed in many respects. We are different from the previous generation and those who lived in the 19th century but we are the same nation. The longer you go back in time the more differences you will find. There is no cut off point though. There isn't a single event that has acted as a catalyst and transformed the Greeks into a different nation. Christianity was a major change but Dionysus lives on in the Christian Apokries (Carnival). The Parthenon became a church of St Mary in all its ancient pagan glory. The ancient wisdom (selectively I must admit) was preserved by the Church (of all people ). Neither the Turkish occupation managed to cut off the Greeks from their roots. They always looked down on the Turks and considered them barbarians. They never forgot the Byzantine Empire or the glory of ancient Greece. There is a small church in Epirus with old frescoes on the walls. I can not remember if they are 17th or 18th century but they depict the ancient Greek philosophers as saints. You need a door to the past. Books can be a door. Written speech generally. I was on the Acropolis a couple of weeks ago. The first time for my children. My wife has very little Greek ancestry and little enthusiasm for antiquities but saw a name curved on stone with the word "poietes" next to it. "He was a poet" she said. After so many visits there, for the first time in her life, she went and bought an archaeological book as soon as we came down the hill. Art is a door too. It helps you connect. Nothing does it better than your own language though. Years ago, on my first visit to the British Museum I came face to face with this sarcofagus: I had a representation of the young Greco-Egyptian in front of me and a farewell message from his loved ones in Greek. I could undertsand it. Instantly, exactly as it was written: "Artemidoros, be brave". Right there, in a foreign country, I felt a connection to people who lived in Egypt almost 2,000 years ago. We are different but the link is not broken. You might not agree or understand but at least you know why I chose Artemidoros as my internet alias
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Post by alex221166 on Sept 5, 2004 9:08:11 GMT -5
I had a representation of the young Greco-Egyptian in front of me and a farewell message from his loved ones in Greek. I could undertsand it. Instantly, exactly as it was written: "Artemidoros, be brave". Right there, in a foreign country, I felt a connection to people who lived in Egypt almost 2,000 years ago. We are different but the link is not broken. You might not agree or understand but at least you know why I chose Artemidoros as my internet alias Actually, I think that your post opened some doors. Language is indeed very important to keep traditions alive. You said that books were doors to the past. Well, if you need a door it is because you have a wall in between. It could be a thick wall or a very thin one, but the point remains one: to cross from one room to another, you need to go through the door. Now (and this is where I think you may have made a very good point) is that once you cross the door, you may notice that the two rooms look remarkably similar. HOWEVER, the "connection" between the two was lost (except through the door). Doors mean that something was lost, that there is a wall in between. Greece is much older than Portugal, but that was besides my point. If anything, it makes a lot harder for Greek culture to preserve itself (since the time span is much larger). Please notice that I am not falling into that pseudo nordicist crap that Greeks used to be Nordics or that modern Greeks have decayed or something... All I am saying is that with time, cultures change to a point where one can't say that they are the same.
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Post by Crimson Guard on Sept 5, 2004 9:31:06 GMT -5
<<Byzantine Empire or the glory of ancient Greece.>>
i do not mean to be a nitpicker,but it should be "Roman Empire",and sides the Byzantine Empire wasnt real,its a misnomer.
Ghost!
Using Afro-American's is not a good example.They are not only mixed racially and no longer " Pure African",their culture in the Americanas is mix of Indian and European influences aswel as African.So its a mutation/hybrid.No way are tehy the same thing or a good example.
In fact they shouldnt even be called Afro-Americans...that name is misleading,it also implys that all people from Africa are Negro's,which of course is not the case.
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Post by Dodona Underground on Sept 5, 2004 16:36:46 GMT -5
... Using Afro-American's is not a good example.They are not only mixed racially and no longer " Pure African",their culture in the Americanas is mix of Indian and European influences aswel as African.So its a mutation/hybrid.No way are tehy the same thing or a good example. ... I agree with part of that. Americans of sub-Saharan West Africa ancestry (AOSSWAA for short? ) are not ethnically the same as sub-Saharan West Africans. I wasn't claiming that the "ethnic distance" between them and their ancestors equals that of modern Greeks and their ancestors. I wasn't comparing them to Greeks in any way. I was using them as an example of how some parts of culture persist in the face of forces that one might expect would wipe them out. To clarify what I'm saying, I'm stepping out on a limb and disagreeing with D. P., Buddy, et. al. and agreeing with Alex (his conclusion, not his reasons). It's a tough call. If we could plot culture on a Cartesian plane, the closest Euclidean distance to the point of ancient Greek culture would be the point of modern Greek culture. We know why. But are they close enough to be considered the same? I say no. My criterion is the cultural impact of the Christian religion. Please don't take what I've said as a criticism of the sincerity of anyone's faith. A devout Christian could make a strong case that Christianity hasn't had much impact on specific cultures, even cultures that he admires. An atheist could take the opposing view.
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