Re: what race wa sresponsible for acheivements ancient Greec

Agamemnon wrote:

"VtSkier" <VtSkier@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:44f4g4F1nr44U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Martin Edwards wrote:

Matt Giwer wrote:

citizenoftheplanetearth wrote:

I am not a student of detailed info on ancient History especially
ancient Greece. I decided to come here to see any info that would
corraborate a guy of white and black mixed (in soc.culture.india) that
they were blacks racially. He didn't say in detail but he mentioned
minoan as if he was implying that they were blacks. He didn't spell it
out.

Black and white are not races. Caucasoid and Negroid are. Asian Indians are Causasoid regardless of their skin color.

Next question.

Balls. There is no such thing as Caucusoid: it is made up.


You're right, of course.

However....
Isn't naming something making something up?

What I think you want stress is that people are people
regardless of names other people give them. And yes,
caucusoid is a rather silly "name". The Caucasus
is such a small area of the globe.

Now to citizen's question.
What do you want to know? Were people with dark colored
skin at least in part responsible for the civilization of
ancient Greece? Maybe, maybe not. It appears that little
or no mention was made by the ancient Greeks about skin
color and there is little or no artistic evidence to call
attention to the same. Further, it is not possible to
determine a person's skin color from physical remains.

It is possible to determine a person's relationship to a
group of people from physical remains. This does not have
much to do with skin color however.

I think it would be hard to tell the skeleton of a person
from India from the skeleton of a person from Greece.
The person from India would have had, in all likelihood,
a lovely dark skin color in life, while the Greek would
probably have had a much lighter, close to white, skin
color in life.

Citizen, you state that you are a person of mixed racial
heritage. Well, so are most of us, especially if you
categorize "race" with skin color. I am of mainly north
European decent with a mixture of some native American.

I happen to think that racism is a fairly modern invention.
Perhaps the last 5 or 6 hundred years only. I think it
began with the importation and use of African Blacks for
slavery. Slavery existed for thousand of years before this
came about. But by and large, slaves were basically the
same racially as their masters. When Africans began to
be used as slaves, there was a bigger difference between
"them" and "us". In prior ages, when a slave was freed and
entered into the world of slave owners, all he had to do
to fit in was dress properly. When a black was freed, he
had the devil's own time changing his skin color.

This is a very brief explanation of why I don't think you
will find out a very clear cut answer to your question.

1) In the ancient world, very little was expressed
about a man's skin color.

2) Little is left in the way of records about skin color.

3) In civilization, there has been a continual mixing of
people and culture. Much of what we find in Greece, for
instance, may well have been invented in Egypt. Egypt had
for many years a ruling group called Nubians. It is
thought that the Nubians of then are the same as the
Nubians of now, that is, black. If so, then blacks can
be said to have provided some of the basis for Greek
civilization, but this is very circular.

TOSH.

The only Egyptians that had any infleunce on Greek civilisation were the Hyksos who were a coalition of Greeks, Europeans and Semitic peoples and the 18th and 19th Dynasties who were intermarried with Hittites and probably Greeks. Neither the Hyksos or the 18th and 19th Dynasties had any Nubian pharaohs. When the Nubian Dynasty ruled Egypt, Egypt had no diplomatic relations with Greece whatsover. In fact it was Ionian Greek mercenaries who helped the Egyptians remove the Nubians from power and made Psamtik I pharaoh.

Oh bother, You think I'm looking for *direct* connections where
there aren't any. You are thinking that I am saying that the
Nubian pharaohs *directly* influenced Greece when I'm not.
The fact that the "Egyptians" hired Greeks to remove the
Nubians would have had an effect on the Greeks. Yes?

Directly no. History/prehistory is not black and white. It
is thousands of gradations. It's the hummingbird effect again.
You didn't object to my Harrapan story, and you probably
shouldn't have objected to my Nubian one either, except
perhaps to make it clearer. This was much too short on my
part to make anything crystal clear.

The Harrapan civilization of the Indus Valley predated
the invasion of Indo-European peoples and therefore
probably were related to the Dravidian peoples of the
sub-continent. There is evidence for this in remnants of
Dravidian languages in Baluchistan. If so, they were most
likely very dark skinned, like Dravidians today. Did the
Harrapan civilization influence the Greeks? Since the
Harrapans predated the Greeks, it's not unlikely. Compare
some art from the Greek Archaic period and from Harrapa
and see if you can't see a resemblance. If the Harrapans
influenced Greek civilization, then most probably this
was an influence from a black civilization.

Not great answers and you may get better from elsewhere.

The invention which led to civilization, agriculture,
grew up independently in at least nine different areas of
the globe.

The fertile crescent of the middle east
China
Mexico
Andes and Amazonia
Eastern US
The sahel of Africa
Tropical West Africa
Ethopia
The New Guinea Highlands

Only the first one listed can be considered today
and probably for the last 10 thousand years, as
white man's territory. If indeed the people of the
fertile crescent were really white.

So again, did people from racially black areas
have influence on Greek civilization? Probably yes.


.

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