Cyprus-Forum.com

[kurupetos]

mine appeared 15,000 years ago in the mediterranean region.

Your what appeared 15,000 years ago?

Where was it before?

To a Cro-Magnon.

[supporttheunderdog]

... Indeed if it was Greek, it should likely by now have been translated ...

Why?

As for the rest of your rubbish ...

PMSL laughing at the response with not one shred of reasoned argument but as usual the normal pathetic abuse from you, because your rose tinted bubble of a world view is in danger of being burst.

You really are in denial.

Now spoken language is a systemised rule based use of a number of sounds to make words so there is consistency of understanding. Where one has a syllabic script the written characters match a sound. It therefore will follow the same rules as the spoken language so one can convert the characters to sounds, reconstruct the words and understand the written message.

Now one has linear B. Linear B is widely thought to be a latter adaption of Linear A and is known to represent Greek, and as it uses pretty much the same symbol set (80% correlation) it is thought that there is a similar correlation between the sounds represented by the symbol sets in A and B. However when converting the symbols in B to words it can be read as Greek. It follows Greek rules on word construct However assuming the correlation in sounds between A and B is correct one cannot do that with Linear A. The characters when converted to sounds and strung together as words simply do not correspond to Greek. It is therefore probabaly not Greek .

The rest I note you ignored. Typical.

[GreekIslandGirl]

PMSL laughing at the response with not one shred of reasoned argument

There's no point arguing with your opinions. The main problem with your posts is that you present your opinions (Greek-hating, culture-bashing, pro-Imperialist) as fact - and as GR! pointed out you don't even read information correctly in your hurry to express your opinion.

You presume, yet throw out as fact, that Linear A is "non-Greek" - just because we have not broken its code yet. Furthermore, written characters do not always match a sound, as you state - it's your limited knowledge jumbling things up but thrown around as fact. Annoying.

For example, you consistently try and make out no Greek culture existed for as long as is accepted by academic authorities (even I see now, denying the Maoris their history). That is your premise and you cannot shift with evidence.

And I see you ignored answering what you mean by "older (non-Greek) Minoan civilisations". What is the point when you even ignore what the start of this thread was about.

[supporttheunderdog]

As usual the name calling and abuse and not even an alternative positive case to which one can find any credible reference .

1) The older - (non Greek) Minoan Civilization is the civilization that autonomously developed in Crete. I have not argued against the autonomous development of Cretan Civilization: that is indeed a key point. It was truly autonomous and NOT Greek as it developed in the period before anything Greek developed. Its ' early origins can be traced from about 7000BC with the introduction of farming, achieving particular prominence from about 2700 BC, reaching at a peak from say 1900 BC onwards with the palace society, and spread from there into other parts of the Aegean and which existed until collapsing from about 1400 BC, when it was a destroyed (possibly by natural disaster) and then replaced by Mycenaeans as the dominant cultural group.

Rather it had an influence on the later developing Mycenaean Civilisation from about 1700 BC where there was nothing of comparative sophistication as the Minoan palace society until regular contact developed between the Mycenaeans and Minoans in about 1700 BC

The Minoans likely had a Levantine and/or Anatolian origin: see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-1809.2007.00414.x/full rather then being from Greece.

2) language of the Minoans.

Madam, are you flanneling here, or what?

The code is being cracked, slowly and some of that suggests Linear A might be related to Sanskritt, others think a Semitic language. Either way I do not think you will find many credible academics who would say that civilization was Greek Speaking: Indeed Micheal Ventris (who was one of the two main people who translated linear B) described that as Fantasy. That in fact is to deny the Minoans their unique history.

Your comments also show you do not understand what a Syllabic script is, or what Syllables are. If they are syllabic they must conform to rules of consistent correlation between symbol and sound. How otherwise can one make sense of the written language? It is how linear B works, which uses a very similar symbol set and which is plainly Greek. Indeed if Linear A represents Greek why then the need for Linear B? They overlapped in time, the common theory being that Linear B was an adaption of Linear A to Greek language structure for the then illiterate Mycenaeans , ie how the verbal sounds go together to make words, and that itself requires correlation between symbol and sound . It cannot be because of a language shift or dialect, because language does not shift so fast and if dialect there would be the commonalities which do not exist.



I have not BTW denied anything about Maori History. What I have commented upon is pre-Moari settlement. That shows you cannot read

[Lordo]

lets face it whilst my ancestors were living in cities with multi-story housing roads and drainage with and fresh water 8000 bm, your average greak was living in caves.

get over it.

[GreekIslandGirl]

1) The older - (non Greek) Minoan Civilization is the civilization that autonomously developed in Crete.

Sorry, but they were early Greeks not "non-Greeks".

The code is being cracked, slowly and some of that suggests Linear A might be related to Sanskritt, others think a Semitic language.

The Linear A code has not been cracked yet as you rightly said earlier so don't make stuff up about what it is related to to try and distance it from its Greek origins. And if it is related to Sanskrit for example, it doesn't make it "non-Greek" as you claim because Sanskrit and Greek are related as Indo-European languages!

Your comments also show you do not understand what a Syllabic script is, or what Syllables are. If they are syllabic they must conform to rules of consistent correlation between symbol and sound. How otherwise can one make sense of the written language? It is how linear B works, which uses a very similar symbol set and which is plainly Greek. Indeed if Linear A represents Greek why then the need for Linear B? They overlapped in time, the common theory being that Linear B was an adaption of Linear A to Greek language structure for the then illiterate Mycenaeans , ie how the verbal sounds go together to make words, and that itself requires correlation between symbol and sound . It cannot be because of a language shift or dialect, because language does not shift so fast and if dialect there would be the commonalities which do not exist.

This above is a typical example of how you make things up when you lack knowledge.

We don't know what Linear A represented - you seem to think it had to be a spoken language. You went as far as to claim all characters represent a sound and when I pressed you on that you started to go all round the houses.

Well, think of something like the infinity symbol (horizontal figure of 8-like character). Does that represent a sound? No! It represents an idea or a concept! So you can have characters that do not represent sounds or speech. In the end, I believe this is what Linear A could be found to represent --- ideas and concepts. Especially since it was used a lot on religious objects. And that, dear boy, explains, despite your angst, why you can have two or more 'languages' co-existing. Stop thinking your limited capabilities can in any way explain Greek achievements!

[yialousa1971]

Lovely bit of migratory DNA studies, putting an end to some historical prejudice ....

The first advanced Bronze Age civilization of Europe was established by the Minoans about 5,000 years before present. Since Sir Arthur Evans exposed the Minoan civic centre of Knossos, archaeologists have speculated on the origin of the founders of the civilization. Evans proposed a North African origin; Cycladic, Balkan, Anatolian and Middle Eastern origins have also been proposed. Here we address the question of the origin of the Minoans by analysing mitochondrial DNA from Minoan osseous remains from a cave ossuary in the Lassithi plateau of Crete dated 4,400–3,700 years before present. Shared haplotypes, principal component and pairwise distance analyses refute the Evans North African hypothesis. Minoans show the strongest relationships with Neolithic and modern European populations and with the modern inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau. Our data are compatible with the hypothesis of an autochthonous development of the Minoan civilization by the descendants of the Neolithic settlers of the island.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4 ... s2871.html


http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/05 ... n-origins/

You beat me to it.

I did wonder where you'd got to on this one.

Nice Principle Component graph (below) showing clustering of Laconia-Cyprus-Chios-Euboea scattered around Greece-general.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4 ... 71_F5.html

Eat this dog.

[supporttheunderdog]

this is what Greek reporter says

Specifically, the genetic material showed more similarities with samples from the Bronze Age and Neolithic populations that lived in Europe and had most probably moved there from the Middle East or Turkey. Experts now argue that the Minoan civilization was locally developed by Neolithic farmers who reached the island approximately 9,000 years ago. - See more at: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/05 ... j5d7f.dpuf

I do not disagree with that. I have never subscribed to the North African Hypothesis but have always looked at the original inhabitants of Cyprus, Crete and Greece forming part of a west ward migration out the Levant or Eastern Anatolia starting about that time.

The key point is that at that time they were not what one would call Greek in terms of linguistics or religion. what one could call Greek is widely recognised to have arisen out a fusion between those peoples and what was probably a third wave of peoples who came out steppes to the North of the Black sea (the Kurgan Hypothesis) and entered what is now Greece in about 2000 BC, brining with one root ( probabaly the major one) of the language that became Greek also introducing the male pantheon element into what before was a middle eastern mostly female deity system. The Name Mycenae btw is thought to be a derivation of a pre-Greek place name which came into Greek as a loan word.

[GreekIslandGirl]

Sure, some people came to Greece over time from other places. That's the same anywhere. But the Minoans are the continuation of the earliest inhabitants (that's what the article confirms) and all are known as early Greeks - just like the cave-dwellers of Britain are known as early-Brits. The rest of your spouts are irrelevant. Greeks have changed over time - that doesn't mean they were not Greek or are not Greek now. Look how much the English have changed from the time of Shakespeare.

So, have you finally accepted that not all symbols represent a sound?

[Paphitis]

Sure, some people came to Greece over time from other places. That's the same anywhere. But the Minoans are the continuation of the earliest inhabitants (that's what the article confirms) and all are known as early Greeks - just like the cave-dwellers of Britain are known as early-Brits. The rest of your spouts are irrelevant. Greeks have changed over time - that doesn't mean they were not Greek or are not Greek now. Look how much the English have changed from the time of Shakespeare.

So, have you finally accepted that not all symbols represent a sound?

Yes Greeks have changed over time for the worse! Don't you see the way they carry on?

Every one else has progressed!

You see why Greeks are so sensitive about their Ancient alleged roots? because that is all they got to hold on to, even if it may be inaccurate. Today, the country is a basket case and they keep looking back rather than look forward, and work for the country to develop it from its current slumber.