Race and ethnic origins of Slav Macedonians

[Deinokratos]

Ive always been interested in the racial and ethnic origins of the slavophone people of Macedonia. They claim to be radically different than the Greeks and Greeks in turn claim that they have nothing to do with the Ancient Macedonians, who were an ethnic-Greek people. The truth is, that most of the population appears to me to be a form of mediterranean.

This piece of information is in direct contradiction to both the Greek view, and the Slavo-Macedonian view. What are your (the forumites) views on the origins of the ethnic Slavo-Macedonians?































These are by no means the only physical types found in Macedonia, however it's a start for discussion, i believe.

[Cerdic]

If the Modern Greeks are largely descended from the Ancient Greeks, which seems plausible to me despite the slavicisation of lage parts of Greece in the Early Middle Ages, and the subsequent Frankish and Ottoman occupations. Then it follows logically that the slav-speaking inhabitants of FYRM are largely descended from the pre-slavic natives of that area, ie the classical Macedonians.

If the central Peloponnese could be slavic in speech for centuries, as it was, and modern Arcadians be largely descended from ancient Arcadians then the same must surely apply to the modern Macedonians, except that the re-Hellenisation of the Southern Balkans begun in the 9th century under Nikephoros I didn't reach them.

Having met only two slavic Macedonians in my life (both female post-graduate students studying at the University I work at) I can report that they were intelligent, attractive and very charming.

[Deinokratos]

Cerdic said:

If the central Peloponnese could be slavic in speech for centuries, as it was, and modern Arcadians be largely descended from ancient Arcadians then the same must surely apply to the modern Macedonians, except that the re-Hellenisation of the Southern Balkans begun in the 9th century under Nikephoros I didn't reach them.

.

I am curious though, is there any proof that the Peloponesos was Slavic in speech for centuries? Ive read, and correct me if i'm wrong, that the slavs of southern Greece failed to remain permanent in the area because they found themselves in a much larger pool of Greeks. Macedonia, being much closer to the original body of invading Slavs, was a different story. Though it's just a theory i suppose.

[Artemidoros]

Deinokratos said:

Ive always been interested in the racial and ethnic origins of the slavophone people of Macedonia. They claim to be radically different than the Greeks and Greeks in turn claim that they have nothing to do with the Ancient Macedonians, who were an ethnic-Greek people. The truth is, that most of the population appears to me to be a form of mediterranean.

This piece of information is in direct contradiction to both the Greek view, and the Slavo-Macedonian view. What are your (the forumites) views on the origins of the ethnic Slavo-Macedonians?

They can be both wrong and both have a point at the same time. Mediterranean or not, what has a person from Skopjie or Kumanovo got to do with ancient Macedonia, 100 km to the south? An Albanian from Korce has far more chance of sharing ancestry with the ancient Macedonians who live a few km to the south east. On the other hand, Slav-Macedonians from Greece or the south of FYROM would have a considerable chance of being related to the ancients. When the Slavs came to Macedonia, it was not vacant. Many Macedonians retreated to the south or in walled cities but most would have stayed. The mixing would have been inevitable, especially after the Christianization of the Slavs. Greek speakers became Slavic and Slavic speakers became Greek.
In my experience there are no significant differences phenotypically between Greek and Slavic speakers in Greece. I have never met anyone from the north of FYROM but from TV images of the war, I would say the differences with them are evident.

[Artemidoros]

Cerdic said:

If the central Peloponnese could be slavic in speech for centuries, as it was, and modern Arcadians be largely descended from ancient Arcadians then the same must surely apply to the modern Macedonians, except that the re-Hellenisation of the Southern Balkans begun in the 9th century under Nikephoros I didn't reach them.

There is no evidence central Peloponnese was Slavic speaking for centuries. There is no evidence that central Peloponnese was Slavic speaking as a whole, for any length of time.
There is only evidence that pockets of Slavic speakers in inaccessible parts of Taygetus spoke Slavic for centuries. There is also evidence of pockets of Slav settlers in other parts of the Peloponnese and the rest of mainland Greece.

The ancestors of these Arcadians never spoke Slavic. They are speakers of Tsakonian, a dialect directly linked to Doric Greek and nobody could have taught it to them , because nobody else speaks it.

[labi]

those are selected pics. typical macs look mostly slavic.

genetics speak for themselves. slavo-macs have an average 35% slavo-baltic gene. plus not to mention a much higher(20%) frequency of the so called dinaric gene.

there may be some similarity between macedonian greeks and slavo-macs. the slavic gene goes up above 20% in greek macedonia.

i will post a quote of a refrence from early 1900s by an english traveler. the greekish types appear around prespa lake.

even dark slavo-macs still look like slavs(thick hair, that wolfish face).......

homepage.ntlworld.com/waterloo/alexanda.jpg
[/img]

homepage.ntlworld.com/waterloo/grigor.jpg
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the first two do have some native balkan mix.


and ofcourse typical fyromians.......
www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Macedonia_FYR/photo68365.htm

[labi]

There is only evidence that pockets of Slavic speakers in inaccessible parts of Taygetus spoke Slavic for centuries.

thanks to albanians you have slavs no more.........

Title" A History Of Greece From Its Conquest By the Romans To The Present Time B.C. 146 TO A.D. 1864.

Author: George Finlay, LLD


Volume VI(6).

pg 28-29

The district of Bardunia took its name from a Byzantine castle, high up on the slope of Taygetus, near the sources of the river Passava. It comprised the south-eastern declivities of the mountain, which run out into a broad ridge overlooking the lower valley of the Eurotas, and extending almost to the sea-coast near Marathonisi. For three centuries this district was possesed by Albanian, which were without any tradition concerning the period at which their ancestors had colonised the country, or embraced Mohammedanism. It may, perhaps, be inferred from this ignorance, that the Barduniots expelled the Sclavonian population, which the Byzantines writers tell us occupied the district at the time of the Turkish conquest, and that they embraced Mohammedanism to become landlords instead of peasants.

[Cerdic]

I'm sorry but for the Modern Greeks to be descended from the Ancient Greeks then the majority of the other populations of the Balkans must also be largely descended from the pre-Roman natives.

You can't have special pleading just for the Greeks.

Language is a cultural trait much like any other, it is mutable. It does't take massive ethnic replacement to change the language that people speak. The modern English speak a hybrid language which is essentially a modified version of French, no one seriously thinks that overwhelming numbers of Northern French came over with William the Conqueror and swamped the natives.

Large areas of the Southern Balkans were inhabited by Slavic speakers between 580 - 950 AD, Cyril and Methodius were fluent in the Slavic dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica. Basil the Macedonian was probably a Slav, alternatively he was given an Armenian ancestry, please note not a Hellenic one. As the Byzantine emperors from Nikephoros I onward re-asserted their power in the Southern Balkans the natives (and certainly there must have been Greek speaking areas alongside Slavic) came under increasing pressure to become culturally assimilated into Byzantine civilisation, which meant speaking Greek and being Christian. If you don't speak the same language as the tax collector you tend to get ripped off more, if you can't speak for yourself in a law court you can be penalised. These were great forces in re-introducing Greek to areas which had become slavicised. Later, and further north this was less the case, after Cyril Slavs could address God in their own tongue and with their own alphabet. The Bulgarian kingdom and to a lesser extent the Serbian principalities developed their own independant traditions of law and governance which the later Byzantine Emperors (John Tzimiskes, Basil II etc.) did little to interfere with when these areas came under their control. Thus the forces behind re-Hellenisation petered out in the central and northern Balkans.

BTW I once shared a house with a Greek girl from Athens who had the brightest red hair I have ever seen. So a red haired Macedonian is no surprise to me, and doesn't suggest a non-Balkan origin. Strange that Serbs look more like Albanians and Greeks than Russians or Ukrainians if they are mostly of trans-Danubuian slav origin.

[Deinokratos]

Cerdic said:

I'm sorry but for the Modern Greeks to be descended from the Ancient Greeks then the majority of the other populations of the Balkans must also be largely descended from the pre-Roman natives.

You can't have special pleading just for the Greeks.

Language is a cultural trait much like any other, it is mutable. It does't take massive ethnic replacement to change the language that people speak. The modern English speak a hybrid language which is essentially a modified version of French, no one seriously thinks that overwhelming numbers of Northern French came over with William the Conqueror and swamped the natives.

Large areas of the Southern Balkans were inhabited by Slavic speakers between 580 - 950 AD, Cyril and Methodius were fluent in the Slavic dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica. Basil the Macedonian was probably a Slav, alternatively he was given an Armenian ancestry, please note not a Hellenic one. As the Byzantine emperors from Nikephoros I onward re-asserted their power in the Southern Balkans the natives (and certainly there must have been Greek speaking areas alongside Slavic) came under increasing pressure to become culturally assimilated into Byzantine civilisation, which meant speaking Greek and being Christian. If you don't speak the same language as the tax collector you tend to get ripped off more, if you can't speak for yourself in a law court you can be penalised. These were great forces in re-introducing Greek to areas which had become slavicised. Later, and further north this was less the case, after Cyril Slavs could address God in their own tongue and with their own alphabet. The Bulgarian kingdom and to a lesser extent the Serbian principalities developed their own independant traditions of law and governance which the later Byzantine Emperors (John Tzimiskes, Basil II etc.) did little to interfere with when these areas came under their control. Thus the forces behind re-Hellenisation petered out in the central and northern Balkans.

BTW I once shared a house with a Greek girl from Athens who had the brightest red hair I have ever seen. So a red haired Macedonian is no surprise to me, and doesn't suggest a non-Balkan origin. Strange that Serbs look more like Albanians and Greeks than Russians or Ukrainians if they are mostly of trans-Danubuian slav origin.

Basil the Bulgar-slayer(the Macedonian") was not a slav, and ive never heard that he was a slav either, other than from political websites of FYROM. He, like the entire Macedonian dynasty was of Armenian origin.(though of Greek culture).

I'm sorry but for the Modern Greeks to be descended from the Ancient Greeks then the majority of the other populations of the Balkans must also be largely descended from the pre-Roman natives.

Not neccesarily. I mean, the entire region of coastal and mountainous Albania was never reached by the Slavs, so whoever lived there never came in contact with Slavs or Bulgars, they dont have an equal chance of being descendents of slavs or bulgars or avars, etc. Same applies to mountainous areas of Greece (vs. valleys like the Axios-Vardar, where the Macedonian Slavs would settle). Constantine Porphynetus also mentions the fact that he settled various tribes of slavs (dragovitsi) to the northwest of Thessaloniki after their defeat along with the Saracens in the siege of Thessaloniki. These slavs were never driven out, never slain (like the slavs in the north peloponesos) . It would see that the slavs of Macedonia are primarily descended from these people, but it does seem that from the pics i posted, there is more than a little indigenous blood in them.

[Artemidoros]

Cerdic said:

You can't have special pleading just for the Greeks.

The point I made was that the territory they inhabit was Paeonian and not Macedonian. I did not say they had no ancestry from ancient populations. The fact that they have genes aplenty from central and eastern Europe is another point I made. One red hair-haired girl does not prove it, R1a Y-chromosomes at a high frequency does a better job.
No special pleading for the Greeks. Just the fact we speak the Greek language, live in the same country as the people we claim we descend from, and are genetically similar with the only other nation in the Balkans who claim to be indigenous, the Albanians, separate us from FYROMians.

PS. The Macedonian Dynasty were actually Armenians from Thrace. It was then called the Theme of Macedonia. They were from Adrianople I think.

[Cerdic]

Deinokratos said:

Basil the Bulgar-slayer(the Macedonian") was not a slav, and ive never heard that he was a slav either, other than from political websites of FYROM. He, like the entire Macedonian dynasty was of Armenian origin.(though of Greek culture).


.

I would refer you to the following:

"The question of the origin of the founder of the Macedonian dynasty has called forth many contradictory opinions, mainly because sources vary greatly on this point. While Greek sources speak of the Armenian or Macedonian extraction of Basil I, and Armenian sources assert that he was of pure Armenian blood, Arabic sources call him a Slav. On the one hand, the generally accepted name "Macedonian" is applied to this dynasty, but on the other hand, some scholars still consider Basil an Armenian, and still others, especially Russian historians prior to the seventies of the nineteenth century, speak of him as a Slav. The majority of scholars consider Basil an Armenian who had settled in Macedonia, and speak of his dynasty as the Armenian dynasty. But in view of the fact that there were many Armenians and Slavs among the population of Macedonia, it might be correct to assume that Basil was of mixed Armeno-Slavonic origin. According to one historian who has made a special study of Basil’s time, his family might have had an Armenian ancestry, which later intermarried with Slays, who were very numerous in this part of Europe, and gradually became very much Slavonized. A more exact definition of the Macedonian dynasty from the point of view of its ethnographic composition might be Armeno-Slavic. In recent years scholars have succeeded in determining that Basil was born in the Macedonian city of Charioupolis."

At the time Armenian ancestry, with the Armenian princes claiming descent from the Biblical King David and Armenia having been one of the first officially Christian countries , would have been considered as being much more "respectable" in Byzantium than a slavic ancestry. There may have been some pressure on the court to produce a fittingly exalted ancestry for Basil after he became prominent as a friend of, then co-emperor with, Michael III "the Drunkard." Basil's early mentor, a very rich woman who adopted him, seems to have been a Hellenised slav herself.

[Cerdic]

Speaking as an outsider I see a physical resemblance between Serbs and Albanians for example, one slavic speaking the other speaking an apparently native Balkan language. Similarities include: above average (for Southern Europe) height, colouring, facial features and head shape. I do not see any appreciable similarity betweeen the Serbs and their fellow slavic speakers from the generally accepted Slav homeland. If ethnicity went with language then one would expect Serbs to closely resemble the people found in the regions bordering the Pripet Marshes, which lie on close to the mutual borders of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia where the Slavs originated.

As for gene markers, I would expect the inhabitants of the central and northern Balkans to have a greater similarity to the lands north of the Danube than the present day Greeks have as they would always have had more interaction with the European hinterland than the Greeks on their rocky peninsula and islands. The problem is when did the trans-Danubian genetic markers enter the northern and central Balkans? Just because there is a recorded change in language in the 7th C AD doesn't mean that this is when the majority of the markers arrived. It is just a convenient peg to hang it on. For all we know the ancient Macedonians, Paeonians and Northern Thacians had more central European genetic markers than the peninsular Greeks had.

[buddyrydell]

Well I don't know about the Macedonian Slavs, but my guess is they are simply an amalgamation of the Slavic invaders and the previous inhabitants whom the Slavs imposed their language upon (Macedonian Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians, etc.). That would make sense.

It should come as no surprise as to why Balkan Slavs often resemble Greeks or Italians more so than they do Ukrainians or Russians. The Slavic invaders imposed their language and culture upon pre-Slavic Balkaners, hence as to why Serbs and Croats often have that so-called "Dinaric" look whereas Russians are generally fairer and with often different features. However, I do agree that one may still discern some common Slavic traits among the various groups of modern Slavs (the "wolfish" face example that someone mentioned) because there is still some common ancestry.

Also, if we want to be rational, modern Greeks are of predominantly ancient Greek descent with some admixture from Slavs, Thracians, and perhaps Turks as well. I'd bet the most admixture (due to geographical proximity) in Greeks would be northern and northeastern Greece. Greeks have been shown to be closer genetically to Italians than to either Slavs or Turks (which strongly suggests that modern Greeks are of mostly ancient Greek descent since many Italians have ancient Greek ancestry as well).

[Deinokratos]

Cerdic said:

I would refer you to the following:

"The question of the origin of the founder of the Macedonian dynasty has called forth many contradictory opinions, mainly because sources vary greatly on this point. While Greek sources speak of the Armenian or Macedonian extraction of Basil I, and Armenian sources assert that he was of pure Armenian blood, Arabic sources call him a Slav. On the one hand, the generally accepted name "Macedonian" is applied to this dynasty, but on the other hand, some scholars still consider Basil an Armenian, and still others, especially Russian historians prior to the seventies of the nineteenth century, speak of him as a Slav. The majority of scholars consider Basil an Armenian who had settled in Macedonia, and speak of his dynasty as the Armenian dynasty. But in view of the fact that there were many Armenians and Slavs among the population of Macedonia, it might be correct to assume that Basil was of mixed Armeno-Slavonic origin. According to one historian who has made a special study of Basil’s time, his family might have had an Armenian ancestry, which later intermarried with Slays, who were very numerous in this part of Europe, and gradually became very much Slavonized. A more exact definition of the Macedonian dynasty from the point of view of its ethnographic composition might be Armeno-Slavic. In recent years scholars have succeeded in determining that Basil was born in the Macedonian city of Charioupolis."

At the time Armenian ancestry, with the Armenian princes claiming descent from the Biblical King David and Armenia having been one of the first officially Christian countries , would have been considered as being much more "respectable" in Byzantium than a slavic ancestry. There may have been some pressure on the court to produce a fittingly exalted ancestry for Basil after he became prominent as a friend of, then co-emperor with, Michael III "the Drunkard." Basil's early mentor, a very rich woman who adopted him, seems to have been a Hellenised slav herself.

Hm. That is definitley an interesting theory, though i would at least like to see the source. I usually stick with more established scholarly opinions on things, rather than historical "revisionism", not that revisionism is always wrong, just that it usually makes claims that are either a.) absurd and ignore what we know about history. or
b.) express points that cant be proven false or true.

This hypothesis about the Macedonian Dynasty seems to fall a little in both categories.

[Cerdic]

The point is perhaps moot as Basil I seems to have regarded his heir and successor Leo the Wise as having been fathered by his mentor and eventual victim Michael III. Michael forced Basil to marry a mistress of his, it seems likely that Michael continued to have sexual relations with her following the marriage. This is supported by the fact that Basil was so unsure of Leo's loyalty that he once had him arrested for carrying a dagger in his presence, even though they were hunting at the time (and daggers would have been normally worn). It is also supported by the fact that on Basil's death Leo immediately had Michael IIIs body exhumed and re-buried with imperial honours in the imperial burial vault in the Apostolikon church. The subsequent members of the Macedonian house would therefore have been genetically a continuation of the Armorian dynasty.

Having said this Basil I would not have been the first parvenue emperor to have been given a doctored ancestry, Constantine the Great claimed descent from a previous emperor Claudius Gothicus. Diocletian and Maximian, who seem to have been of Illyrian peasant stock developed a confection linking themselves to the gods Jupiter and Heracles in order to exalt their status.