Cyprus-Forum.com

[Paphitis]

you guys talk a lot of shit.

You read shit often?

I hope all that was a load of your mind. Next time spare us the imagery.

You must have a saw head though.

[Oracle]

What a shame I cannot join you in your hearty discussion, made lengthy by the degree of ignorance of Michalis' Phoenician theory (exemplifying the catastrophe of allowing ignorant men a PC and access to blogs ) .... and as for GR!'s ancient links that are about as accurate as the Bible; I sense desperation and a weakening of conviction (not likely to admit to us though)

The study with the "fingerprint" of DNA (not identified as a gene) which is found in a number of groups around the Mediterranean merely confirms the trading routes with these groups of people (again why GR! cannot claim a pure Choirokitian line). The Phoenician DNA has merely not been selected out and if you care to like for some ancient viral DNA you would be able to trace its migration through closely residing groups of people. That does not make us VIRUSES.

I'll attend to this in greater detail when I have time, but meanwhile here is a warning from one of the Research Group ...

Groves also cautions that one should not interpret the findings as suggesting the Phoenicians were restricted to a certain place.

[Get Real!]

Here’s a good read for you both…

2.6 The Invention of the Dark Ages, and Resulting Disputes.

When Schliemann excavated the famous Shaft Graves at Mycenae in Greece in the 1870's, he found they contained some scarabs bearing the names of Amenhotep III and his wife Queen Tiy. So, when Petrie later found much similar Mycenaean pottery at Pharaoh Akhenaten's short lived capital city of Amarna, between Memphis and Thebes, such was the confidence in the correctness of Egyptian chronology that it was used to date the entire contents of the graves of the Late Helladic age at Mycenae to not later then about 1300. Egyptian dates were also applied at other sites to artefacts and everything else that was obviously contemporary with them, such as architectural and technological designs and developments. Art historians and other scholars noted their obvious and close affinities with those clearly datable in Greece, Syria and Mesopotamia to a period some 500-700 years later. Because of these similarities, many scholars, including Petrie, at first accepted the early Egyptian dates for the start of the Mycenaean era, but concluded that it must have lasted for some 7-800 years, making it flow continuously into the Greek Archaic period of the 7th century. But by the beginning of the 20th century it became clear, again from archaeology and Egyptian dates, that the Mycenaean era ended no later than around 1200BC. According to Greek tradition the Mycenaeans were believed to have been overrun by the Dorians from Northern Greece, but no evidence could be found in Greece for people, alive or dead, to fill the yawning gap between the 12th and 9th centuries. To fill these empty years, the concept of the Dark Ages of Greece was invented.

No rational explanation has ever been offered to explain why the Greeks disappeared, where they went to, why they returned, and how they managed to resume their artistic and cultural development some half a millennium later with no apparent break in continuity. And worse, no Dark Age was heard of among any of the early classical Greek and Roman writers, who lived some two millennia nearer that time. So this idea was not well received by modern art and Greek historians. It led to many heated and bitter academic disputes. Around the turn of the century A S Murray, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, excavated a previously unopened tomb of Mycenaean age at Enkomi on Cyprus, and published some of the ivory carvings it contained. These showed such a striking resemblance to later Greek and Assyrian work that he unhesitatingly assigned the tomb and all its contents to the 9th-7th century. His conclusions were based on a long study of a uniquely extensive range of Mediterranean and Mesopotamian sculpture, pottery and other artefacts that surrounded him daily at the British Museum. This gave him no reason whatsoever to believe in a Greek Dark Age. For his disbelief he was roundly blasted as a heretic by Sir Arthur Evans, who believed uncritically in the Egyptian dates. Evans had recently achieved wide public acclaim for his discovery of a mortuary temple at Knossos on Crete [11], which he theatrically presented to the world as a great king's palace. He was not about to have his dates for the Mycenaean and their Minoan predecessors downdated by anybody. His blast, and Egyptian dates, eventually carried the day, and Evans' romantic illusions of antiquity have contributed to the insolubility of many archaeological and art historical problems to this day. Further details of this incident are set out in a paper by Velikovsky entitled 'The Scandal of Enkomi' [12]

Another British Museum based scholar, H R Hall, was totally convinced that some of the items from Mycenae Grave Circle A belonged to c900 or later. He therefore suggested that priests opened up early D18 graves after an interval of some 600yrs, stole nothing, but piously inserted later items. This rather incredible idea not surprisingly received little support, but it illustrates the huge pressure being placed upon archaeologists and art historians, once they were forced to accept Egyptian dates for the Late Helladic period, to invent an explanation for these anachronisms.

Among other scholars disagreeing with these early dates was Cecil Torr. He also felt strongly that the monumental, traditional and genealogical evidence from Egypt and Greece could not justify a Dark Age. In the 1890's he issued a public challenge to Petrie to justify his chronology, and exposed some unsubstantiated assumptions in Petrie's archaeological reports. In 1896 he published Memphis and Mycenae [13] giving a lower Egyptian chronology based solely on monumental evidence. Since, however, Torr did not attempt to dispute that Shishak was Sheshonk I, a major reduction of the chronology was impossible, so the ensuing debate faded out with neither side altering their position.

http://www.sis-group.org.uk/ancient.htm#p2

[Oracle]

Also, another point before I resume normality .... These DNA fingerprints are more evident the more unrelated people are. Which is why they are used in paternal identification studies. You cannot without total infallibility, prove someone is related to someone else, but you can more easily establish the reverse. Differences in DNA are easier to find than similarities. (Not necessarily genes though .... this needs more clarification ... later!)

If such ancient DNA fingerprints were sought amongst Cypriots and Greeks, they may not be found because of the degree of similarity ... not because of dissimilarity

Again, if one goes back further, one may find that that DNA fingerprint was introduced to the Phoenicians by a Cypriot sailor; thrived amongst the Phoenicians, then after changes with time or not, it found its way back.

It may also be a surviving sequence from the main branch I described to GR! which goes back circa 20,000 years and it has been retained in a greater proportion in some groups in the Med than others.

There are a number of scenarios which this short study has not addressed, but as always initial findings are put out to justify grants.

Many, many exceptions ... But no time, must dash

[Get Real!]

“Despite more than a century of excavation at Mycenaean palace sites, no one has ever excavated a Mycenaean town.”

http://www.archaeology.org/0801/abstracts/homer.html

Did Mycenaeans really exist or are they a figment of Homer’s imagination like the rest of Greek mythology?

“Maggidis, director of the Dickinson College Excavation Project and Survey in Mycenae, thinks he knows where the rest of the people, until now absent from the archaeological record, might be.”

Yeah, in Homer’s head…

[Get Real!]

How does Homer match up with the real world of the Bronze Age?

• Bronze Age places in Homer: Pylos, Mycenae, Ithaca, Troy itself, several others
• Bronze Age objects in Homer: boar's tooth helmet; sword with silver-covered rivets; tower shield of ox-hide; chariots for use in battle; metal inlay technique; single combat; megaron
• Non-Bronze Age elements in Homer: hoplite battle technique--massed ranks of infantry (introduced c. 700 B.C.); use of chariots misunderstood--used as taxis, not fighting vehicles; burial customs--cremation instead of inhumation the norm; Gorgon's head as shield device--c. 700 B.C.
• Why this mixture? In an oral tradition, poems change with each retelling
• in each age, new elements introduced, old ones remain
• the result is a conglomerate; elements from each period poem passed through

THEREFORE: can't use Homer to confirm historicity of anything: history begins with artifacts, not myth

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/cc302k/Greece/02.Myc.htm

[Get Real!]

Who would've thought the Simpsons would play such a role in Cyprus?

Did the Trojan war really happen?
(GR note: the main reason Mycenaeans became famous!)

"The short and fast answer to this question is: No. That is because the Trojan War story falls into the category of myth."

http://www.cerhas.uc.edu/troy/q404.html

[Get Real!]

Time and time again I come across…

“We are almost as much in the dark about Mycenaean history and society as we are about the Minoans.”

Yet some of my fellow compatriots are in the “light” and know everything about the “Mycenaean" great achievements on the island of Cyprus located some 600 miles away west from where the Mycenaeans were supposed to exist… and by some divine intervention the Middle East located just 50 miles away on the east of Cyprus has nothing to do with Cyprus!

The best way to describe today’s documented Late & Middle Bronze Age Cypriot history is this summation…

“Climbing on Homer’s delusional bandwagon”

[Get Real!]

Where are those hellenic turnips gone? I suspect an agreed damage-control withdrawal...

[Talisker]

The Mycenaean Greeks first reached Cyprus around 1600 BC, with settlements dating from this period scattered all over the island. Another wave of Greek settlement is believed to have taken place in the period 1100-1050 BC, with the island's predominantly Greek character dating from this period

Paphiti, what you posted is the OLD theory which is now being slowly laid to rest including the alleged year of the Mycenaean “arrival” now moved to 1200-1300BC instead of 1600BC.

In the past, archeologists and historians would find 100 Persian style pots, as an example, in Scotland say and automatically assume that Persians “must have” overrun and dominated the Scots! Such was the stupidity of assumptions with which “history” was written. The “Mycenaean arrival” theory is also based on gadgets found on the island but it never occurred to anyone that they may have been purchased from them or even copied here.

Using the old erroneous frame of mind, the archaeologist of 5,000AD could be forgiven for thinking that the whole world was conquered by the Japanese in the 20th century after finding traces of Japanese car parts all over the world!

I'm loving the theory that the cleverest and most advanced cultures were not expansionist at all, they never really invaded and settled anywhere new, but sneaked into strategic locations at the dead of night and left a few hidden souvenirs so that a few thousand years later archaeologists and historians would confer 'empire' status upon them.

And thanks for explaining my feelings of kinship with the Iranians.