Indo-European race. What race did the ancient Greeks and Romans belong to? What races lived in ancient Greece

In publishing individual chapters, the first part of the book would become redundant and would only complicate understanding. Therefore, in this introduction to the series of articles presented by chapters from my book, I want to briefly outline exactly what goals I pursued when working on the text of the book. First of all, I wanted to rehabilitate the terms “Aryans” and “Aryan” for the scientific community. Removed from the use of scientists due to the political factor, these terms have narrowed excessively and turned into a designation of peoples (and their languages) directly related to those tribes of Indo-Europeans who conquered India and settled in Persia.

I believe that we need to return these terms to their original - correct interpretation. The Aryans are not only and not so much Iranian tribes, but a huge community of the most ancient civilization of northern Europeans, the first civilization on earth, a civilization whose influence we can feel all over the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Wherever a great civilization arose, at its origins stood representatives of northern Caucasians belonging to the great white race.

This leads to the second task - to show the history of civilizations through racial issues. After all, as a rule, our contemporary people have a very vague idea of ​​which civilization was created by which race, which races participated in their creation, which made up the majority of the population, and which were at enmity. At best, in the books there will be mentions that the creators of a particular civilization belonged to the great white or yellow races, but this is the maximum information that a person can learn if one does not delve into the research too seriously.

And finally, the third task that I set for myself is to study the signs on the basis of which we can talk about the Aryan community, about how the Northern European peoples manifested themselves in different historical conditions, which allows us to say that the community of Aryan nations existed for millennia back and still exists today. After all, all civilizations created by northern Caucasians - Aryans had a number of common features that manifested themselves regardless of whether it was the 3rd millennium BC. or 1st millennium AD

I hope I was able to solve these problems to the best of my ability. I really hope that my research will be useful for everyone who is interested in the history of not only their state, but also their people, their race, who are looking for a trace of the past going back centuries and millennia. We have something to remember and talk about, so we begin this publication, and we begin it with the history of civilization and people, about which, it would seem, if not everything, then a lot is known - from Ancient Greece.

Greek civilization

White race in Greece. Racial characteristics. Reflection of racial character in Greek mythology. Achaean invasion. Invasion of the Dorians.

The history of Greek civilization begins at the turn of the 3rd - 2nd millennium, when the Achaeans, a people classified as Aryan peoples, came to Greek soil from the north. Before the Achaeans conquered Greece, non-Aryan tribes who spoke a non-Indo-European language lived on its territory. Greek legends brought to us the memory of the most ancient inhabitants of Greece - the Carians, Luwians and others. It was these peoples who created the Early Minoan civilization, which is typologically similar to other civilizations of the Ancient East - Egyptian, the civilization of Mesopotamia and Ancient India. The pre-Greek tribes were not Northern Europeans either, belonging to the southern branch of the Caucasian race. One can assume a connection between the Early Minoan period and the archaeological culture of Vinca (including due to geographical proximity). This is confirmed by the fact that “during the period known to us as the Early Minoan, 3300-2200 BC, the number of brachycephals on the island (Crete) increased greatly, and some Minoan rulers of later times clearly belonged to the Anatolian type. ... A certain continuity can be traced in the development of culture until the arrival of the Achaeans around 1250 BC. Non-Indo-European elements characterize Minoan culture as a whole. Therefore, we have no reason to believe that it was created by Indo-Europeans."

But among the Asian peoples of the Carians and Luwians we meet the Pelasgians, who were undoubtedly a northern people who came to Greece before the Achaeans and created the civilization of the Minoan era. The Iliad and Odyssey mention the Pelasgians in connection with Crete and Troy, but the Greeks distinguished the Pelasgians from the "true Cretans". This is most likely a consequence of the noticeable anthropological differences between the northern Pelasgians and the southern Cretans. The Pelasgians had their own writing, which, judging by the surviving monument, was very similar to the runic writing of the Germans and Scandinavians. The memory of the Pelasgians and their cultural achievements remained in Greece for a very long time. Herodotus reported that it was the Pelasgians who built the wall around the Athenian Acropolis. The Pelasgian language is close to Etruscan and Hurrian. Its Indo-European origin has not been proven, but it is also not an Afroasiatic, Caucasian, Uralic, Altaic or belonging to another language family. The Pelasgian language is one of the ancient languages ​​whose origin is not clear. It is quite possible that he separated from the Proto-Indo-European linguistic community, even before its final formation.

The racial type of the pre-Greek peoples can be attributed to the Alpinids, who in the Bronze Age came to Europe from the East, from Anatolia, as well as to the Dinarics, who in turn also came to Europe from Asia. The Trypillian archaeological culture (VI - IV millennium BC) was created by people of the Dinaric racial type. The Alpine racial type appears to have been fundamental to the Vinca culture. The origins of the pre-Greek population of Crete, the Peloponnese and the southern Balkans go back to the Trypillians and Vinchans. The Mediterranean race, also belonging to the southern European branch of the great white race, also had a certain influence on the racial type of the early Minoan civilization. It was about the mixture of Alpinids and Mediterranids that G. Child wrote when he spoke about the increase in the number of brachycephals, that is, a characteristic characteristic of the Alpinid race. Both of these races, the Mediterraneans and the Alpinids, were races with dark skin, dark hair and eyes. The Minoan culture also had no connection with the Aryans. Although the Minoan writing has not yet been deciphered, the available evidence allows us to conclude that the language of the Minoans did not belong to the Indo-European languages. The center of the Minoan civilization was the island of Crete, after by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The Minoan civilization weakened and was conquered by the Achaeans in the 12th century BC.

In everyday life, the Achaeans retained the customs they brought from the north; in particular, their characteristic difference from the Mediterranean peoples was mustaches and beards. In contrast to the pampered Minoan civilization, the newcomers cultivated severity and masculinity, which found artistic expression in the art monuments of Mycenaean Greece. The favorite theme of Achaean palace paintings were scenes of war and hunting. Symbols of the power of the kings were massive fortifications on elevated places, surrounded by strong walls. The design of these fortifications differs markedly from Cretan architecture.

The racial type of the Achaeans was Northern European, the main race was the Nordic race, but the northern Cromanid race, common among the Aryans, was also quite widely represented. Anthropologist K.S. Kuhn directly connects the Achaeans with the Nordic representatives of the Corded Ware culture. On a fresco of the Peloponnesian city of Tiryns we see a white Achaean surrounded by red-skinned Minoans. The Achaeans brought with them the Aryan pantheon, where, unlike the ancient European Mother Goddess, male deities played the dominant role. The gods of the Achaeans were not chthonic but celestial in nature, which was also a common phenomenon among the Aryans. Chthonic deities, although they entered the Greek pantheon, bore many archaic features in their characteristics, which allows us to conclude that they were a consequence of the influence of more ancient pre-Aryan cultures on the Achaean civilization. It is also interesting that all the heavenly, solar gods of the Greeks are blondes, and the chthonic gods are brunettes. Thus, the mythology of the people reflected its racial history. The heavenly gods of the Greeks are shown in their mythology as fighters against chthonic evil - giants, snakes, and various monsters.

Translated from Greek, “Hyperboreans” means “those who live beyond Boreas (North Wind)”, or, more simply, “those who live in the North”. Many ancient authors reported on the existence of Hyperborea and the Hyperboreans. Pliny the Elder - wrote about the Hyperboreans as a real people who lived near the Arctic Circle and were connected with the Hellenes through the cult of Apollo the Hyperborean. Not only Apollo, but also the hero-demigods Hercules and Perseus, had the epithet - Hyperborean. Another fact that brings the Greeks closer to the inhabitants of the north is the spread of labyrinths in the region of the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea coast, extremely similar to the labyrinths of the Minoans. Perhaps this indicates that the ancestors of the Pelasgians lived in the north of Europe before coming to Greece. The sages and servants of Apollo, Abaris and Aristaeus, who taught the Greeks, were considered to have come from the country of the Hyperboreans. They taught people new cultural values ​​- music, philosophy, the art of creating poems, hymns, and the ability to build temples. As the Greek poet Pindar wrote, the Hyperboreans are among the peoples close to the gods and loved by them. Just like their patron Apollo, the Hyperboreans are artistically gifted. A happy and carefree life among the Hyperboreans is accompanied by songs, dances, music and feasts; eternal fun and reverent prayers are characteristic of this people - the priests and servants of Apollo.

The mythology of the Greeks gives us another confirmation of the direct and immediate connection of the Achaeans with the Aryans. “The legendary Titans were the sons of an ancient Aryan god known in India - in the Vedic texts he is called Varuna - who was revered by the ancestors of the white race, and whose name the Hellenes preserved for many centuries: this is Uranus. The Titans, sons of Uranus, the most ancient god of the Aryans, were also Aryans and spoke a language that has great similarities with Sanskrit, Celtic and Old Slavic." A descendant of the titan Prometheus was the hero Deucalion, whom the Achaeans considered their ancestor, that is, the Achaeans directly traced their kinship to the times when the Aryan community was still united and did not have time to divide into separate nations.

The largest historical event of the Mycenaean civilization was the Trojan War, which took place in the 12th century BC. the union of the Achaean states led against the Trojan state. Homer's poems left us with a rich source of knowledge on Greek civilization and especially the military affairs of the Dorian period. The aristocracy rode to battle on two-wheeled chariots drawn by a pair of horses.

The warriors were protected by bronze armor and helmets; their protective weapons included a large shield covered in leather and painted with various images. The main weapon was a spear, with which a warrior from a chariot hit opponents. Two warriors rode in the chariot, one drove the horses, the second attacked the enemies and defended themselves.

The arming of ordinary community members was much simpler. Leather helmets reinforced with bone were used as protective equipment; the body was often protected by canvas clothing and a shield. The weapons were darts and swords. In battle, they first threw darts, and then, coming close, fought with swords. Many battles began with duels between the most noble warriors, who specifically sought each other out to measure their strength.

The unprivileged classes - artisans, farmers, cattle breeders - were free community members and often kept slaves who helped them in their economic activities. Also, the free Achaeans were the basis for the army. The slaves, according to the sources, came from other ethnic and racial groups and were represented by the inhabitants of Asia Minor or the Minoans who were captured as prisoners during the war. This is confirmed by the very name of the slaves - “rabiyaya”, which means booty of war.

The Achaeans had temples and priests, although there was no developed temple economy typical of eastern despotism. The high priest was the king. Management was carried out by the king, who convened a meeting of noble people for advice. Occasionally, to resolve the most important issues, a national assembly was convened. The warriors, having gathered, sat in rows; aristocrats were placed on a special dais. The tsar led the meeting, and he also determined which opinion was supported by the majority, which was decided by the strength of the cry of approval or indignation. In the people's assembly we see a trace of the times of the military democracy of the ancient Aryans, elements of which existed for thousands of years and were known to us in the Slavic Veche and in the German Things.

The military nature of Achaean society led to the fact that the Mycenaeans constantly carried out external expansion into the rich lands of the south and east. Thus, Knossos on Crete was captured, plundered and destroyed, invasions of Cyprus were carried out, and conquests in Egypt gave the Achaeans the name of the peoples of the sea. The Trojan War was one of these campaigns, its worldwide fame is due to the fact that the great poem of Homer has been preserved about it, while the songs of lesser-known poets have not reached our time. By the way, it should be noted that the song culture of the Achaeans was also very close to the Aryan tradition and finds its closest analogue in nothing other than Russian epics. Even the performance of Greek epic songs in its manner was similar to the manner of Russian storytellers telling epics, accompanying them with string music.

In search of living space, the Achaeans turned to colonizing nearby lands. Coming from the north to the fertile climate of Greece, the Achaeans increased their numbers, and they began to miss the small lands of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. The main directions of colonization of the Mycenaean era were the southern - to Crete, Cyprus and the islands of the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea and the eastern - to Asia Minor, where many Greek colonies were formed on the coast. The conquests of the Achaeans are reflected in Greek mythology. Both Perseus and Achilles were typical colonialists, developing new lands for the Mycenaeans. During the process of colonization, the racial unity of the Achaeans was eroded. The displacement with the Asian and Mediterranean races led to the gradual loss of the North European anthropological type, as a result of which the people of the Ionians - the Greeks who lived in Ionia - were formed on the coast of Asia Minor. The Ionians not only formed a separate Greek nation, but were also distinguished by their dialect, which, however, was quite similar to the Achaean. The Greek language separated very early from the Indo-European community (only the Hittite and Tocharian languages ​​are earlier). In the Late Achaean period, the Greek language was represented by 2 main dialects, Aeolian and Ionian.

The Achaeans did not stop at conquests and colonization of nearby lands and rushed further to the south, where the territories of rich Egypt were located. Around 1400 BC Egyptian sources record invasions of Achaean tribes. For almost two hundred years, Greek raids threatened the Egyptian shores and ravaged the country. Only through the efforts of the outstanding ruler Ramesses III was the onslaught of the Sea Peoples stopped. I will note here an indicative historical parallel between the expansionism of the Achaeans, with the regular raids of the Normans on Europe, which took place more than two millennia later. There is no doubt that the ethnic and racial stereotypes of the Aryan peoples turned out to be so strong that they acted among the Achaeans and their relatives by race - the Norman Vikings.

In the 12th century BC. Greece was invaded by the Dorians, another Aryan people who came from the north. Despite the attempts of some researchers to present the Dorians as less developed than the Achaeans, they stood at a higher level of civilization, since they knew and used iron, which made the Dorian army more effective against the Achaeans who used bronze weapons. The Dorians differed from other Greek tribes in their strict military discipline, militancy, stable family traditions, pride and simplicity of their way of life. They avoided luxury and excess. The highest embodiment of Dorian virtues was found in the Spartans, the creators of the Spartan state, which was admired by all of Greece. The cultural achievements of the Dorians were also great; it was the Dorian dialect that formed the basis of the literary Greek language.

Another argument about the high development of Dorian culture can be considered the fact that it was soon after the Dorian conquest that writing began to be used in Greece, which appeared in the 9th century BC. The Phoenician writing became the model for Greek writing, but this did not mean that the Semites played the role of creators of the Greek alphabet. From Phoenician writing, the Greeks borrowed only the idea of ​​signs that would convey not words or concepts, not syllables, but sounds. It is also impossible to ignore the possibility that Greek writing inherited the runic writing of the Pelasgians and, in turn, it was the Pelasgian writing that the Phoenicians used to develop their alphabet. At the same time, the Phoenician letter was very archaic, since letters were used only to convey consonant sounds, which did not ensure absolute accuracy in conveying meanings in writing. The Greeks were the first of all civilizations to use letters to convey both vowels and consonants, which made their alphabet the most accurate for expressing any meaning. We can say that the first step towards science was taken by the Greeks precisely after they created their alphabet.

The Dorians were close in origin to the Achaeans, but, being isolated from connections with the southern lands, they retained their Nordic racial type unchanged. Ethnic proximity was confirmed by the similarity of language and mythology, since the Dorians were considered the descendants of Dor, the son of the ancestor of the Greeks Deucalion. The Dorians themselves believed that they descended from Hercules, the semi-divine hero of the archaic era. Hercules was perhaps the most archaic demigod of the Greeks, since his weapon was a wooden club, and instead of armor and a helmet, he used the skin and skull of a lion. In the image of Hercules, the Dorians preserved the most ancient signs of the Aryan civilization of the Neolithic.

The racial makeup of the Dorians is well known. It is represented in many monuments of ancient Greece, in literary descriptions, primarily in the poems of Homer, created in a period when racial mixing had not yet affected a significant part of the Greeks. If we turn to written sources, we will see that Homer describes the appearance of the Greeks (based on the appearance of the Dorians, whose contemporary he was), using adjectives such as: “light-eyed”, “fair-haired”, “fair”, “tall” . In the text we will find the following descriptions:

“The bright-eyed daughter of Egiokh spoke to the son of Peleus”
“... Odysseus the city fighter rose up
With a scepter in his hands; and with him the bright-eyed maiden, Pallas"
“Bright Atrid, and now, as before, you are strong in soul.”
“...and Meleager the fair-haired one is dead”
“...fair-haired Menelaus will strike in battle”
“...and henceforth with the fair-haired son of Atreus”
"...fair-haired Adrasta"
"...the fair-haired wife of Agameda"

The warlike Dorians quickly brought the Achaeans under their rule, partially subjugating and partially displacing them into the mountainous, less fertile lands of Attica, Achaea and parts of the Aegean islands. The arrival of the Dorians opened the Dorian period in the history of Greece, which is also called the Homeric period, since the great poet created his works around the 8th century BC. Homer's poems are also a source for the history of the Achaean period, since they describe many archaic elements that disappeared from the life of the Greeks after the Dorian conquest, and at the same time often describe life in Greece in the later period after the Dorian orders had established themselves in the entire peninsula.

What changes have occurred in Greek society? Firstly, the Dorians further strengthened the aristocratic specificity of the Greek state. Instead of hereditary kings of the Mycenaean era, power increasingly became the prerogative of kings chosen from among the aristocracy. Or the power of the king is supplemented by the introduction of senior government positions that dealt with issues of military administration and justice. So in Corinth the aristocracy began to choose a king from among them. In Athens, which, although not conquered by the Dorians, experienced their strong cultural influence, the king was given a supreme military leader - a polemarch, a regent - an archon and a panel of judges - the themosphetes. And over time, the power of the hereditary king was completely replaced by the power of an elected ruler who bore the title of archon-basileus.

Secondly, the Dorians finally approved the political organization of the Greek states as city-states - poleis. The policies were a political organization of free Greeks, formed as a result of the unification of several clans (a phenomenon called synoicism). The policy carried a strong tribal element, since belonging to the policy was inextricably linked with origin from one of the clans included in the policy. Citizenship of the polis was impossible to buy; it was the right of blood, not the right of property, that ensured the existence of this system. The polis was, as it were, a means of raising the status of even its poorest citizen to the status of a noble man, warrior and ruler.

Thirdly, the aristocracy of Greek civilization reached its peak after the Dorian conquest. Within the framework of the polis system, not only power belonged to the aristocracy, but also power turned the entire people into an aristocracy. At the head of the policy, as a rule, there was a council of elders, heads of clans. The highest positions in the state government system were occupied by persons of noble birth, but at the same time, the people's assembly was also preserved, in which all male citizens of the polis participated. For the first time in history, therefore, already within the framework of the state, and not before the state systems of military democracy, all representatives of the people were constituted as the ruling class. Free residents of the policy who did not have a tribal (that is, ethnic and racial) connection with the phyla (tribes) of this policy did not have civil rights, although they could live in the city and own property. Thus, in Dorian Greece, a phenomenon appeared that later became known as racial and ethnic segregation.

Such a researcher as V.B. also wrote about this. Avdeev: “The Greeks divided the whole world into their own, that is, the Hellenes, and all others, that is, the barbarians. Already this division, which dates back to pre-philosophical times and does not have a specific author, indicates the original racial and, most importantly, concrete nature of the thinking of the ancient Greeks. “Friend - foe” - this rule, then elevated to the rank of a cultural absolute, leaves us no chance for error.” In turn, J. de Gobineau, as if continuing his thought, made a conclusion about the aristocratic foundations of Greek civilization: “Thus, the Aryan-Greek, sovereign in his home, a free man in the square, a real feudal lord, had undivided dominion over his slaves, children, and servants and the bourgeois."

Homeric poetry depicts to us the psychological types of the aristocratic environment: the ruler Menelaus, the military leader Achilles, the colonizer Odysseus - all these types were familiar and close to contemporaries who recognized themselves in them. Homer's ideals are aristocratic ideals and he addresses the bearers of aristocratic culture and self-awareness. They were most close to the lines dedicated to the great warriors and rulers - the streams of the gods, or the story about the punishment of the rebel, the plebeian Thersites, by the way, described with typical features of the southern races, that is, even from the point of view of physical anthropology, alien to the Nordic Greeks. The highest goal of the noble is not profit or momentary success, although Homer’s heroes are not alien to the desire for wealth, but what worries them most is posthumous glory, the eternal memory of the hero and his exploits.

Mikhail Diunov

G. Child "Arias", p. 78

Subsequently, Troy was inhabited by the Teucrians and Tyrsenians, who, according to researchers, belonged to the “peoples of the sea”, which will be discussed further

R. Virchow “Alttrojanische Gräber und Schädel”

“The structure of political unity in Crete undoubtedly resembled in its character the great eastern despotisms. The land was most likely state property. In addition to the king and the aristocracy, there was also a layer of artisans.. Apparently there was slavery, but not of the “classical” type, which we find later in Greece and Rome, but “domestic” slavery characteristic of the East” - K. Kumanetsky “History of Ancient Culture Greece and Rome", p.19

There with. 20

See: S.S. Coon “The Races of Europe”, The Greeks

J. de Gobineau “Essay on the Inequality of Human Races”, Chapter III

R.Yu. Whipper, History of the Ancient World, p. 77

There, p. 79

Tell el-Amarna Archive

More on this in Chapter 4.

J. Irmscher, R. Jone “Dictionary of Antiquity”, p. 192

Moreover, it was the Dorians who, more than other Greek peoples, sought to preserve their national uniqueness and racial phenotype. It was Dorian Sparta that resisted the mixing of Greeks with eastern peoples longer than other Greek states.

See: Angel, J. Lawrence, 1944, A racial analysis of the ancient Greeks: An essay on the use of morphological types, American Journal of Physical Anthropology

K. Kumanetsky Decree. op. With. 33

V.B. Avdeev “Racial thinking among the ancient Greeks”

J. de Gobineau Decree. op. Chapter III

"Forty-one Late Helladic skulls, dating from 1500 to 1200 BC and again originating from Argolis, may include the skulls of the "divine" conquerors. Among them, one fifth are brachycephalic, and apparently mainly belong to the Kyriot Dinaric type. Of the long-headed skulls, a significant number are large and have more distinct markings, and a smaller part are of the Mediterranean type. The similarity with the northern types and especially with the Corded ones is even stronger than before. This increase in non-Minoan features may be associated with the arrival of the Homeric ancestors heroes.
This image carries us through the entire Bronze Age."

"Greek literature and art provide abundant evidence of the pigmentation and characteristic facial features of the ancient inhabitants of Hellas. The Olympian gods, the ancestors of the half-heroes, were for the most part fair-haired, with ivory shins and golden hair. Athena had blue eyes, but Poseidon had black hair According to Homer, these gods were not much different from their descendants, most of whom had white skin and golden hair.
Odysseus' messenger Eurybates had dark skin and curly hair; Achilles' son Neoptolemus was red-haired, and perhaps his mother was brunette. Spartans were described as fair-haired, and in the 5th century, Athenians, in search of a fair ideal, dyed their hair golden yellow using herbs. Artists who painted vases from the 6th to the 4th centuries BC. could distinguish between light and dark colors using conventional types of glaze and used this distinction to represent both living models and heroes.

Greek terminology included both blue and brown eyes, as well as green (olive leaf color); In skin color, pinkness, pallor, reminiscent of cream cheese or the skin of unripe apples, honey color and dark color were distinguished. Phoenician traders and dark-skinned sailors of other nationalities were given the name "phoinix" - a color compared to that of a ripe date or a bay horse. Thus, both within and outside Greek society, all pigmentation variations known to modern Europeans could be found."

"In general, from the portraits of the Athenians and the clay masks of the Spartans, one can get the impression that they resembled modern Western Europeans. However, this resemblance becomes less clear in the art of Byzantium, where modern Middle Eastern faces are more common."

But this is already a late period.
This is what Kuhn writes about the earlier one, which also contained a Nordic element.

“Twenty-five Middle Helladic skulls represent the period after the arrival of the Corded People or “mound population” from the north and during the seizure of power by the Minoan conquerors from Crete. Of these, 23 come from Asia, and two from Mycenae. Needless to say, the population of this time was in highly mixed. Only two skulls are brachycephalic; both of them are male, and both are associated with very short stature. One of them is of medium size, with a high arch, a narrow face and a narrow nose; the other is chamerine and with a very wide face. Apparently they represent are two different broad-headed types, both of which are likely to be found in Greece today.
The long-headed type is not uniform: some skulls with large vaults and strongly pronounced brow ridges, with deep grooves in the area of ​​the nose bridge, resemble the type of neolethic dolichocephals - both the long-headed and corded type. Fuerst believes that a large number of them are very similar to Late Neolithic skulls from Scandinavia of approximately the same age...
...the remaining long-headed skulls, which probably more accurately represent the bulk of the Central Greek population, belong to the type with a high nose and weakly projecting skull bones, familiar from Crete and Asia Minor of the same era. They are also of short stature, while a few specimens are of the large-headed type, as expected above."

Aristotle

Aeschylus

Euripides

Homer

Solon

Theophrastus

(John Harrison Sims)

In recent films about Ancient Greece such as " Troy", "Helen of Troy" And " Three hundred Spartans"actors of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic origin were filmed, such as Brad Pitt and Gerard Butler. We see the same thing in new films about ancient Rome, such as" Gladiator"(starring Russell Crowe) and the TV series" Rome"But is this choice of directors justified from a historical point of view? Did the ancient Greeks and Romans really belong to the Northern European type?

Today, most historians of ancient culture remain silent on this matter. For example, Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek culture at Cambridge and an expert on Sparta, writes for an educated lay audience, but nowhere in his works does he discuss the racial origins of the Spartans. Several years ago I tried to find out from a number of professors of ancient culture what race the ancient Greeks belonged to - but they just shrugged their shoulders, indicating that, they say, no one knows this, and the question itself is not worth studying. Nowadays, interest in the racial identity of the ancients seems to be considered unhealthy, and all evidence in favor of their Nordic origin is ignored for fear of giving rise to dangerous mentalities.

However, even a hundred years ago, Europeans were convinced that many Greeks and Romans belonged to the same race as themselves. In the famous 11th edition" Encyclopedia Britannica", published in 1911, notes:

"the preservation of blond hair, light skin color and eyes among the nobility of Thebes and a number of other places indicates that the fair-haired type, characteristic of northwestern Europe, penetrated the Greek lands even before the beginning of the classical era".

Further it is said there that the first Greeks, or Hellenes, were Nordics, one of the " blond tribes of northern Europe, which was known to the ancients under the name "Celts""Even Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and socialist, argued 60 years ago that the Hellenes" were fair-haired invaders from the North who brought the Greek language with them" ("History of Western Philosophy", 1946).

Nowadays, interest in the race of the ancients is considered unhealthy.

Today's scientists have dissociated themselves from this unanimous opinion in the 60s. " Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece", released by Penguin in 1996, satirizes " the undoubtedly dubious racial theories on which this reconstruction of antiquity is largely based", but does not offer any theory in return, recognizing only that " The origins of the Greeks remain a highly controversial issue"The author, however, makes the following surprising confession:

"A range of ideas about the origins of race developed in the 19th century, and although they are probably partly based on historical tradition, archeology or linguistics, they were often combined with other, more controversial assumptions".

Beth Cohen in her book " Not a classical ideal: Athens and the creation of the image of the “other” in Greek art"(2000) argues that the Thracians, distant cousins ​​of the Greeks, were characterized by" the same dark hair and the same facial features as the ancient Greeks".

However " Encyclopedia Britannica" quite rightly wrote about the blond hair of the Thebans. Thebes was the main city of Boeotia, a rich agricultural region in central Greece. Fragments of an ancient travelogue dating back to 150 BC indicate that the Thebans were " the tallest, most charming and graceful in all of Hellas. They wear their golden hair in a knot on top of their heads.".

Detail of the painting of an Athenian urn, which apparently depicts a Pelasgian woman.

Nowadays, scientists reject such myths, but the latter would not have survived if they generally contradicted the popular memory of the ancients. This myth is consistent with what experts in ancient culture have long believed: the Hellenes migrated to mainland Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea in several " waves"The first of the Hellenes to arrive were the Ionians and Aeolians, then, several centuries later, the Achaeans, and finally the Dorians.

Early Bronze Age Greek civilization was, of course, influenced by Minoan and other Mediterranean cultures, but it was also undeniably Greek. Records in Linear B, circa 1500 BC. AD which became fundamental in Cretan culture, were deciphered and turned out to be a form of the ancient Greek language.

Around 1200 BC this culture, called Mycenaean, fell into decline: its cities were destroyed and abandoned by the inhabitants, and Greece was plunged into the Dark Ages for 400 years. The destruction was probably partly caused by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and was later attributed by the Greeks to invasions from the north.

Waves of Hellenic warriors burned the Mycenaean citadels and became the ruling race in Greece. They also sacked Troy, and Homer's Iliad"It is about them. They, apparently, largely destroyed the Mycenaean culture: the Greeks forgot writing, art, city life and trade with the outside world died out.

We learn something about the first Hellenes from " Iliad". The poem was first written down in the second half of the 8th century BC, at the end of the Greek Dark Ages, when the Phoenicians taught the Greeks to write again. It tells of events that occurred four or five centuries earlier.

We believe that this poem is about the Greeks, but Homer's warrior heroes belong to the Achaean nobility, and we must assume that it was they who destroyed the Mycenaean civilization, and not the Dorians, who invaded Greece and ousted the Achaeans a century later. Archeology confirms this assumption, since Troy was burned around 1200 BC, and the beginning of the Trojan War is traditionally dated to 1184 BC. Various ancient historians date the Dorian invasion to 1149, 1100 or 1049 BC.

There is good reason to believe that Homer wrote down stories that reached him through the Dark Ages. The storyteller lived in Ionia, a region on the Aegean coast that today belongs to Turkey, and if his stories were fiction, he would have made them heroes of the Ionians. However, he sings the praises of the fair-haired Achaean nobility: the great warrior Achilles has “blond hair”; the greatest Achaean strategist Odysseus" reddish"; from his wife Penelope" white cheeks the color of pure snow"Agameda is renowned as a healer and expert on medicinal plants" brown-haired"; and the Spartan king Menelaus, the husband of Helen, is named " fair-haired".

Also Elena herself" blonde hair", and even fair-skinned slave girls: " fair-haired Hekameda", "white-lanitic Chryseis" And " fair-haired Briseis". This is important: after all, if even some slaves were fair-haired, it means that the Nordic type was inherent not only to the Achaeans, but also to other peoples of the Aegean world.

In the descriptions of Homer and Pindar, most of the Olympian gods appear fair-haired and " clear-eyed", that is, gray-, green- or blue-eyed. Demeter has " fair-haired" or " golden" hair; " golden-haired"Leto, the mother of Apollo, is also named. Aphrodite -" golden-haired", and Athena is described as " fair-haired and clear-eyed"and also like" gray-eyed goddess"Two of the gods have dark hair - Poseidon and Hephaestus. Let us remember how Xenophanes complained that all peoples imagine their gods to be similar to themselves.

The last of the Greek invaders were the Dorians; they put an end to the rule of the Achaeans and probably forced the Aeolians and Ionian Hellenes (among whom, undoubtedly, the ancestors of Homer) to migrate en masse across the Aegean Sea to the shores of Asia Minor. The Dorians, who settled in the fertile Eurotas Valley in the southern Peloponnese, were the direct ancestors of the Spartans of the classical era and considered themselves the only pure Dorians.

Here's what Werner Jaeger, director of the Institute for the Study of Classical Antiquity at Harvard, wrote:

"The national type of invaders was preserved in its purest form in Sparta. Pindar borrowed from the Dorian race his ideal of a blond noble warrior, which he used to describe not only Homer’s Menelaus, but also the greatest Greek hero Achilles, as well as all the “fair-haired Danaans” in general.[that is, the Achaeans who fought at Troy] heroic era" ("Paideia: Ideals of Greek Culture", 1939).

The Greeks of the classical era did not consider themselves autochthons, that is, the original inhabitants of their land. On the contrary, they were proudly called " epeludami", considering themselves the descendants of later settlers and conquerors. Notable exceptions were the Arcadians and Athenians, whose rocky lands apparently attracted little attraction from armed colonizers.

Let us consider in detail the formation of the human race from the point of view of esotericism. In Theosophy it is generally accepted that the development of mankind is divided into seven stages. At each stage of evolution, that is, stage, according to theosophical concepts, one of the seven basic types of man, the root race, predominates.

Root race is a theosophical term used to designate each of the seven stages of human evolution on any planet in esoteric anthropogenesis, set out in E. Blavatsky’s book “The Secret Doctrine” (1888). During any of seven such stages of evolution, sometimes called small circles, one of the seven basic types of man predominates. The Secret Doctrine states that the development of indigenous races is inextricably linked with changes in the geographical face of the planet: the destruction of some continents and the emergence of others. However, Blavatsky notes, it should be borne in mind that both for racial evolution and for the displacements and movements of continental masses, it is impossible to draw a clear boundary between the end of the old order and the beginning of the new.

It is assumed that intelligent life on Earth was created purposefully by a whole complex of higher forces, for which there are no words in human languages. The first monads, created simultaneously with the emergence of the Earth, consisted of subtle bodies and were devoid of intelligence. This was the First Race. Gradually all the primary monads disintegrated, and from their elements the Second Race was formed. These were monads similar to the first ones, but in the course of evolution they found a new method of reproduction, which can be described as “secreting an egg.” Gradually this method became dominant. And as a result, the Third Race arose - the race of the Egg-born, who at the beginning also did not have a dense, physical body (the geological conditions on Earth were then unsuitable for the physical existence of protein bodies).

The third race, which arose at the beginning of the Archean era, quickly developed to the level of separation of the sexes and the formation of the rudiments of intelligence. The first three subraces (traditionally there are seven of these subraces within the boundaries of the “basic” races, according to Theosophy) of the Third Race gradually built up a dense shell, until finally, during the period of the fourth subrace of the Third Race, the first, in fact, people with a real physical body appeared. This happened during the era of dinosaurs, i.e. around 100–120 million years BC. The dinosaurs were big, and people looked the same: up to 18 meters tall or more.

In subsequent subraces, their growth gradually decreased. Proof of this, according to Theosophy, should be the fossil bones of giants and myths about giants. The first people did not yet have a complete set of bodies: they did not have a conscious soul, i.e. bodies of spiritual mind. The higher primates (monkeys) originated from these human animals. After this, according to one version, the higher powers-creators, who brought about intelligent life on Earth, introduced into the consciousness of people those actually rational principles that allowed them to act as teachers of subsequent generations.

The last subraces of the Third Race created the first intelligent civilization of people on the proto-continent of Lemuria, according to other versions - Gondwana. This continent was located in the Southern Hemisphere and included the southern tip of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and in the north – Madagascar and Ceylon. Easter Island also belonged to the Lemurian culture.

During the period of the seventh subrace of the Third Race, the Lemurian civilization fell into decay, and this continent itself went under water. This happened at the end of the Tertiary period, i.e. about 3 million years BC. (The third race is sometimes called the Black Race. Its descendants are considered to be black tribes, African and Australian.)

At that time, the Fourth Race had already arisen - the Atlantean race on the continent called Atlantis (it is assumed that the northern edge of Atlantis extended several degrees east of Iceland, including Scotland, Ireland and the northern part of England, and the southern edge - to the place where Rio is now located -de Janeiro). The Atlanteans were the offspring of the Lemurians, who moved to another continent about a million years before the death of Lemuria.

The first two subraces of the Atlantean race descended from these first settlers from Lemuria. The third subrace of the Atlantean race appeared after the destruction of Lemuria or Gondwana: these were the Toltecs, the Red Race. According to theosophy, the Atlanteans worshiped the Sun, and their height reached two and a half meters. The capital of the Atlantean Empire was the city of the Hundred Golden Gates. Their civilization reached the pinnacle of its development precisely during the period of the Toltecs or the Red Race. This was about 1 million years ago.

The first geological catastrophe, which occurred about 800 thousand years ago, disrupted the land connection of Atlantis with future America and Europe. The second - about 200 thousand years ago - divided the continent into several islands, large and small. Modern continents emerged. After the third catastrophe, about 80 thousand years BC, only the island of Poseidonis remained, which sank about 10 thousand years BC.

The Atlanteans foresaw these catastrophes and took measures to save their scientists and the knowledge they had accumulated: they built giant temples in Egypt and opened the first schools of esoteric wisdom there. Esotericism in that era acted as a kind of state philosophy and a familiar view of the world. In the face of the threat of the destruction of the continents, the highest Initiates were considered to be of the highest value, thanks to whom ancient knowledge was able to survive thousands of years. The catastrophes of Atlantis caused new waves of migrations and the following subraces of the Fourth Race arose: the Huns (fourth subrace), proto-Semites (fifth), Sumerians (sixth) and Asians (seventh). The Asians who mixed with the Huns are sometimes also called the Yellow Race, and the proto-Semites and their descendants who formed the Fifth Race are called the White Race.

Modern humanity is interpreted by esotericism as the Fifth or Aryan race, which also traditionally includes seven subraces, of which only five are currently available: 1) Indians (light-skinned tribes), 2) younger Semites (Assyrians, Arabs), 3) Iranians, 4) Celts (Greeks, Romans and their descendants), 5) Teutons (Germans and Slavs). The Sixth and Seventh Root Races must come later.

According to the teachings of Theosophy, all human races and their subraces perform one or another task of universal human evolution. When one race completes its mission, then the next one appears to replace it, and this is always connected with the transition of human civilization to a new stage.

Continuing the topic of ancient civilizations, I offer you a small compilation of data on the racial genetic and ethnic history of the Hellenic world - from the Minoan era to the Macedonian expansion. Obviously, this topic is more extensive than the previous ones. Here we will dwell on the materials of K. Kuhn, Angel, Poulianos, Sergi and Ripley, as well as some other authors...

To begin with, it is worth noting several points related to the pre-Indo-European population of the Aegean Sea basin.

Herodotus on the Pelasgians:

“The Athenians are of Pelasgian origin, and the Lacedomonians are of Hellenic origin.”

“When the Pelasgians occupied the land that is now called Greece, the Athenians were Pelasgians and were called Cranai; when the Cecrops ruled, they were called Cecropides; under Eret they turned into Athenians and, eventually, into Ionians, from Ionus, son of Xuthus"

“...The Pelasgians spoke a barbarian dialect. And if all the Pelasgians were such, then the Athenians, being Pelasgians, changed their language at the same time as all Greece.”

“The Greeks, already isolated from the Pelasgians, were few in number, and their number grew due to mixing with other barbarian tribes”

“...The Pelasgians, who had already become Hellenes, united with the Athenians when they also began to call themselves Hellenes”

In the “Pelasgians” of Herodotus, it is worth considering a conglomerate of various tribes that have both autochthonous Neolithic origin and Asia Minor and Northern Balkan origin, which went through a process of homogenization during the Bronze Age. Later, Indo-European tribes who came from the north of the Balkans, as well as Minoan colonists from Crete, were also involved in this process.

Middle Bronze Age Skulls:

207, 213, 208 – female skulls; 217 – male.

207, 217 – Atlantic-Mediterranean type (“basic white”); 213 – European alpine type; 208 – East Alpine type.

It is also necessary to touch upon Mycenae and Tiryns, the civilizational centers of the Middle Bronze Age.

Reconstruction of the appearance of the ancient Mycenaeans:

Paul Faure, "Daily life in Greece during the Trojan War"

“Everything that can be extracted from the study of skeletons of the early Hellenic type (XVI-XIII centuries BC) with the modern level of anthropological information only confirms and slightly complements the data of Mycenaean iconography. The men buried in Circle B of the royal tombs at Mycenae averaged 1,675 meters in height, with seven exceeding 1.7 metres. Women are mostly 4-8 centimeters lower. In circle A, two skeletons are more or less well preserved: the first reaches 1.664 meters, the second (the bearer of the so-called mask of Agamemnon) - 1.825 meters. Lawrence Angil, who studied them, noticed that both had extremely dense bones, massive bodies and heads. These people clearly belonged to a different ethnic type from their subjects and were on average 5 centimeters taller than them.”

If we talk about the “god-born” sailors who came from overseas and usurped power in the old Mycenaean policies, then here, most likely, we are dealing with the ancient Eastern Mediterranean tribes of seafarers. The “God-born” were reflected in myths and legends; the dynasties of Hellenic kings who lived already in the Classical era began with their names.

Paul Faure about the type depicted on the death masks of kings from the “God-born” dynasties:

“Some deviations from the common type on gold masks from burial grounds make it possible to see other faces; one is especially interesting - almost round, with a fleshier nose and eyebrows fused at the bridge of the nose. Such persons are often found in Anatolia, and even more often in Armenia, as if deliberately wanting to give substantiation to the legends according to which many kings, queens, concubines, craftsmen, slaves and soldiers moved from Asia Minor to Greece.”

Traces of their presence can be found among the populations of the Cyclades, Lesbos and Rhodes.

A. Poulianos about the Aegean anthropological complex:

“He stands out for his dark pigmentation, wavy (or straight) hair, medium-sized chest hair, and above-average beard growth. The influence of Western Asian elements is undoubtedly evident here. By the color and shape of the hair, by the growth of the beard and chest hair in relation to the anthropological types of Greece and Western Asia, Aegean type occupies an intermediate position"

Also, confirmation of the expansion of seafarers “from across the sea” can be found in the data dermatology:

“There are eight types of prints, which can easily be reduced to three main ones: arcuate, looped, whorled, that is, those whose lines diverge in concentric circles. The first attempt at comparative analysis, made in 1971 by professors Rol Astrom and Sven Erikeson on material from two hundred Mycenaean specimens, turned out to be discouraging. She showed that for Cyprus and Crete the percentage of arc prints (5 and 4%, respectively) is the same as for the peoples of Western Europe, for example Italy and Sweden; the percentage of looped (51%) and whorled (44.5%) is very close to what we see among the peoples of modern Anatolia and Lebanon (55% and 44%). True, the question remains open about what percentage of the artisans in Greece were Asian emigrants. And yet the fact remains: the study of fingerprints revealed two ethnic components of the Greek people - European and Middle Eastern."

Approaching more detailed description population of Ancient Hellas - K. Kuhn about the ancient Hellenes(from the work "Races of Europe")

“...In 2000 B.C. there were present here, from a cultural point of view, three main elements of the Greek population: local Neolithic Mediterraneans; newcomers from the north, from the Danube; Cycladic tribes from Asia Minor.

Between 2000 BC and the Age of Homer, Greece experienced three invasions: (a) the Corded Ware tribes who came from the north later than 1900 BC, and who, according to Myres, brought the Indo-European basis Greek language; (b) the Minoans from Crete, who gave the “ancient pedigree” to the dynasties of rulers of Thebes, Athens, Mycenae. Most of them invaded Greece later than 1400 BC. © “God-born” conquerors such as Atreus, Pelops, etc., who came from across the Aegean Sea on ships, adopted the Greek language and usurped the throne by marrying the daughters of the Minoan kings ... "

“The Greeks of the great period of Athenian civilization were the result of a mixture of various ethnic elements, and the search for the origins of the Greek language continues...”

“The skeletal remains should be useful in the process of reconstructing history. The six skulls from Ayas Kosmas, near Athens, represent the entire period of mixing of Neolithic, "Danubian" and "Cycladic" elements, between 2500 and 2000. BC. Three skulls are dolichocephalic, one is mesocephalic, and two are brachycephalic. All faces are narrow, noses are leptorrhine, high orbits..."

“The Middle Helladic period is represented by 25 skulls, which represent the era of the invasion of the newcomers of the Corded Ware culture from the North, and the process of increasing the power of the Minoan conquerors from Crete. 23 skulls are from Asin, and 2 are from Mycenae. It should be noted that the populations of this period are very mixed. Only two skulls are brachycephalic, they are both male and both are associated with short stature. One skull is of medium size, with a high skull, a narrow nose and a narrow face; others are extremely broad-faced and hamerrin. They are two different broad-headed types, both of which can be found in modern Greece.

Long skulls do not represent a homogeneous type; some have large skulls and massive brows, with deep nasal cavities, reminding me of one of the variants of the Neolithic dolichocephals from Long Barrow and the Corded Ware culture ... "

“The rest of the dolichocephalic skulls represent the Middle Helladic population, which had smoothed eyebrows and long noses similar to the inhabitants of Crete and Asia Minor in the same era...”

“...41 skulls from the Late Helladic period, dated between 1500 and 1200 BC. BC, and having their origin, for example, from Argolid, must include a certain element of “God-born” conquerors. Among these skulls, 1/5 are brachycephalic, mainly of the Cypriot Dinaric type. Among the dolichocephalic ones, a significant part are difficult-to-classify variants, and a smaller number are low-growing Mediterranean variants. The similarity with the northern types, with the Corded Ware culture type in particular, seems more noticeable in this era than before. This change of non-Minoan origin must be associated with the heroes of Homer"

“...The racial history of Greece in the classical period is not described in such detail as in those periods that have been studied previously. There may have been slight population changes here until the beginning of the slave era. In Argolid the Mediterranean element is represented in its pure form in only one of the six skulls. According to Kumaris, mesocephaly dominated Greece throughout the Classical period, both in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. The average cephalic index in Athens, represented by 30 skulls, during this period is 75.6. Mesocephaly reflects a mixture of various elements, the Mediterranean being dominant among them. Greek colonies in Asia Minor display the same combination of types as in Greece. The mixture with the Asia Minors must have been masked by the noticeable similarity between the populations of both shores of the Aegean Sea."

“The Minoan nose with a high bridge and a flexible body came to classical Greece as an artistic ideal, but portraiture of people shows that this could not be an ordinary phenomenon in life. Villains, funny characters, satyrs, centaurs, giants and all undesirable people are shown both in sculpture and in vase paintings as broad-faced, snub-nosed and bearded. Socrates belonged to this type, similar to a satyr. This alpine type can also be found in modern Greece. And in early skeletal materials it is represented by some brachycephalic series.

In general, it is surprising to contemplate portraits of Athenians and death masks of Spartans, so similar to modern inhabitants of Western Europe. This similarity is less noticeable in Byzantine art, where one often finds images similar to those of contemporary Middle Easterners; but the Byzantines mostly lived outside of Greece.
As will be shown below(Chapter XI) , modern inhabitants of Greece, oddly enough, are practically no different from their classical ancestors»

Greek skull from Megara:

The following data is given Lauren Angel:

“All the evidence and assumptions contradict Nilsson's hypothesis that the Greco-Roman decline is associated with an increase in the reproduction of passive individuals, the bastardization of the originally racially pure nobility, and the low level of their birth rate. Since it was this mixed group that appeared during the Geometric period that gave rise to the Classical Greek civilization."

Analysis of the remains of representatives of different periods of Greek history, reproduced by Angel:

Based on the above data, the dominant elements in the Classical era are: Mediterranean and Iranian-Nordic.

Greeks of the Iranian-Nordic type(from the works of L. Angel)

“Representatives of the Iranian-Nordic type have long, high skulls with strongly protruding occiputs that smooth out the contour of the ovoid ellipsoid, developed eyebrows, and sloping and wide foreheads. Significant facial height and narrow cheekbones, combined with a wide jaw and forehead, create the impression of a rectangular “horse” face. Large but compressed cheekbones are combined with high orbits, an aquiline protruding nose, a long concave palate, massive wide jaws, chins with a depression, although not protruding forward. Initially, representatives of this type were both blue-eyed and green-eyed blonds and brown-haired people, as well as burning brunettes.”

Greeks of the Mediterranean type(from the works of L. Angel)

“Classical Mediterraneans have a fine-boned physique and are graceful. They have small dolichocephalic heads, pentagonal in vertical and occipital projection; compressed neck muscles, low rounded foreheads. They have fine, beautiful facial features; square orbits, thin noses with a low bridge; triangular lower jaws with a slight protruding chin, subtle prognathism and malocclusion, which is associated with the degree of wear of the teeth. Initially, they were only below average height, with a thin neck, brunettes with black or dark hair."

Having studied the comparative data of ancient and modern Greeks, Angel draws conclusions:

"The racial continuity in Greece is astonishing"

“Poulianos is correct in his judgment that there is a genetic continuity of the Greeks from antiquity to modern times”

For a long time, the question of the influence of northern Indo-European elements on the genesis of Greek civilization remained controversial, so it is worth dwelling on several points concerning this particular topic:

The following writes Paul Faure:

“Classical poets, from Homer to Euripides, persistently portray heroes as tall and fair-haired. Every sculpture from the Minoan era to the Hellenistic era endows goddesses and gods (except perhaps Zeus) with golden locks and superhuman stature. It is rather an expression of an ideal of beauty, a physical type not found among mere mortals. And when the geographer Dicaearchus from Messene in the 4th century BC. e. is surprised by the blond Thebans (dyed? red?) and praises the courage of the blond Spartiates, he only thus emphasizes the exceptional rarity of blonds in the Mycenaean world. And in fact, in the few images of warriors that have come down to us - be it ceramics, inlay, wall paintings of Mycenae or Pylos. we see men with black, slightly curly hair, and their beards - in those cases, if they have any - are black as agate. The wavy or curly hair of the priestesses and goddesses in Mycenae and Tiryns is no less dark. Wide open dark eyes, a long thin nose with a clearly defined, or even fleshy tip, thin lips, very light skin, relatively short stature and a slender figure - we invariably find all these features on Egyptian monuments where the artist sought to depict “the peoples that they live on the islands of the Great (Great) Green.” In the XIII, as in the XV century BC. e., most of the population of the Mycenaean world belonged to the ancient Mediterranean type, the same one that has been preserved in many regions to this day."

L. Angel

“there is no reason to assume that the Iranian-Nordic type in Greece was as lightly pigmented as the Nordic type in northern latitudes”

J. Gregor

“...Both the Latin “flavi” and the Greek “xanthos” and “hari” are generalized terms with many additional meanings. “Xanthos,” which we boldly translate as “blonde,” was used by the ancient Greeks to define “any hair color other than jet black, which color was probably no lighter than dark chestnut.” ((Wace, Keiter ) Sergi)..."

K. Kuhn

“...we cannot be sure that all prehistoric skeletal material that appears to be North Caucasian in an osteological sense was associated with light pigmentation.”

Buxton

“With regard to the Achaeans, we can say that there seems to be no basis for suspecting the presence of a northern European component.”

Debets

“In the Bronze Age population we generally find the same anthropological types as in the modern population, only with a different percentage of representatives of certain types. We cannot talk about mixing with the northern race."

K. Kuhn, L. Angel, Baker and, later, Aris Poulianos were of the opinion that the Indo-European language was brought to Greece along with the ancient tribes of Central Europe, which became part of the Dorian and Ionian tribes, assimilating the local Pelasgic population.

We can also find indications of this fact in the ancient author Polemona(who lived during the era of Hadrian):

“Those who managed to preserve the Hellenic and Ionian race in all its purity (!) are rather tall men, broad-shouldered, stately, well-cut and fairly fair-skinned. Their hair is not completely blond (that is, light brown or blond), relatively soft and slightly wavy. The faces are wide, high cheekbones, thin lips, straight noses and shiny eyes full of fire. Yes, the eyes of the Greeks are the most beautiful in the world."

These features: strong build, medium to tall height, mixed hair pigmentation, wide cheekbones indicate a Central European element. Similar data can be found by Poulianos, according to the results of whose research the Central European Alpine type in some regions of Greece has a specific gravity of 25-30%. Poulianos studied 3,000 people from various regions of Greece, among which Macedonia is the lightest pigmented, but at the same time, the cephalic index there is 83.3, i.e. an order of magnitude higher than in all other regions of Greece. In Northern Greece, Poulianos distinguishes the Western Macedonian (North Indian) type, it is the most lightly pigmented, is sub-brachycephalic, but, at the same time, is similar to the Hellenic anthropological group (Central Greek and Southern Greek type).

As a more or less clear example Western Macedonian complex devil - Bulgarian-speaking Macedonian:

An interesting example is the example of fair-haired characters from Pells(Macedonia)

In this case, the heroes are depicted as golden-haired, pale (as opposed to mere mortals working under the scorching sun?), very tall, with a straight profile line.

In comparison with them - image detachment of hypaspists from Macedonia:

In the depiction of the heroes, we see the emphasized sacredness of their image and features that are as different as possible from “mere mortals,” embodied by the hypaspist warriors.

If we talk about works of painting, then the relevance of their comparison with living people is doubtful, since the creation of realistic portraits begins only in the 5th-4th centuries. BC. – before this period, the image of features that are relatively rare among people dominates (an absolutely straight profile line, a heavy chin with a soft contour, etc.).

However, the combination of these features is not fantasy, but an ideal, the models for the creation of which were few. Some parallels for comparison:

In the 4th-3rd centuries. realistic images people are beginning to become widespread - some examples:

Alexander the Great(+ supposed reconstruction of appearance)

Alcibiades / Thucydides / Herodotus

On the sculptures of the era of Philip Argead, the conquests of Alexander and in the Hellenistic period, which are distinguished by higher realism than in earlier periods, dominates Atlantic-Mediterranean(“basic white” in Angel’s terminology) type. Perhaps this is an anthropological pattern, or perhaps a coincidence, or a new ideal under which the traits of the depicted individuals were subsumed.

Atlanto-Mediterranean variant, characteristic of the Balkan Peninsula:

Modern Greeks of the Atlanto-Mediterranean type:

Based on the data of K. Kuhn, the Atlanto-Mediterranean substrate is largely present throughout Greece, and is also the basic element for the populations of Bulgaria and Crete. Angel also positions this anthropological element as one of the most prevalent in the Greek population, both throughout history (see table) and in the modern era.

Antique sculptural images displaying features of the above type:

These same features are clearly visible in the sculptural images of Alcibiades, Seleucus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Antiochus and other representatives of the Classical era.

As mentioned above, this element dominates among Bulgarian population:

2) Tomb in Kazanlak(Bulgaria)

The same features are noticeable here as in the previous paintings.

Thracian type according to Aris Poulianos:

"Of all the types of the southeastern branch of the Caucasian race Thracian type most mesocephalic and narrow-faced. The profile of the nasal bridge is straight or convex (in women it is often concave). The position of the tip of the nose is horizontal or raised. The slope of the forehead is almost straight. The protrusion of the wings of the nose and the thickness of the lips are average. In addition to Thrace and eastern Macedonia, the Thracian type is common in Turkish Thrace, in the west of Asia Minor, partly among the population of the Aegean Islands and, apparently, in the north, in Bulgaria (in the southern and eastern regions). This type is closest to the central one, especially to its Thessalian variant. It can be contrasted with both the Epirus and Western Asian types, and is called southwestern..."

Both Greece (with the exception of Epirus and the Aegean archipelago), as the zone of localization of the civilizational center of the Classical Hellenic civilization, and Bulgaria, with the exception of the northwestern regions, as the ethnic core of the ancient Thracian community), are relatively tall, dark-pigmented, mesocephalic, high-headed populations, whose the specificity fits within the framework of the Western Mediterranean race (see Alekseeva).

Map of peaceful Greek colonization 7th-6th centuries. BC.

During the expansion of the 7th-6th centuries. BC. Greek colonists, having left the overpopulated poleis of Hellas, brought the grain of classical Greek civilization to almost all parts of the Mediterranean: Asia Minor, Cyprus, Southern Italy, Sicily, the Black Sea coast of the Balkans and Crimea, as well as the emergence of a few poleis in the Western Mediterranean (Massilia, Emporia, etc. .d.).

In addition to the cultural element, the Hellenes brought there the “grain” of their race - the genetic component isolated Cavalli Sforza and associated with the zones of the most intense colonization:

This element is also noticeable when Clustering of the population of South-Eastern Europe by Y-DNA markers:

Concentration of various Y-DNA markers in the population of modern Greece:

Greeks N=91

15/91 16.5% V13 E1b1b1a2
1/91 1.1% V22 E1b1b1a3
2/91 2.2% M521 E1b1b1a5
2/91 2.2% M123 E1b1b1c

2/91 2.2% P15(xM406) G2a*
1/91 1.1% M406 G2a3c

2/91 2.2% M253(xM21,M227,M507) I1*
1/91 1.1% M438(xP37.2,M223) I2*
6/91 6.6% M423(xM359) I2a1*

2/91 2.2% M267(xM365,M367,M368,M369) J1*

3/91 3.2% M410(xM47,M67,M68,DYS445=6) J2a*
4/91 4.4% M67(xM92) J2a1b*
3/91 3.2% M92 J2a1b1
1/91 1.1% DYS445=6 J2a1k
2/91 2.2% M102(xM241) J2b*
4/91 4.4% M241(xM280) J2b2
2/91 2.2% M280 J2b2b

1/91 1.1% M317 L2

15/91 16.5% M17 R1a1*

2/91 2.2% P25(xM269) R1b1*
16/91 17.6% M269 R1b1b2

4/91 4.4% M70 T

The following writes Paul Faure:

“For several years, a group of scientists from Athens - V. Baloaras, N. Konstantoulis, M. Paidousis, X. Sbarounis and Aris Poulianos - studying the blood types of young conscripts of the Greek army and the composition of bones burned at the end of the Mycenaean era, came to a double conclusion about that the Aegean basin shows a striking uniformity in the relationship of blood groups, and the few exceptions recorded, say, in the White Mountains of Crete and Macedonia, are matched by the Ingush and other peoples of the Caucasus (while throughout Greece the blood group is “B” "approaches 18%, and group "O" with slight fluctuations - to 63%, here they are noted much less frequently, and the latter sometimes drops to 23%). This is a consequence of ancient migrations within the stable and still predominant Mediterranean type in Greece."

Y-DNA markers in the population of modern Greece:

mt-DNA markers in the population of modern Greece:

Autosomal markers in the population of modern Greece:

AS A CONCLUSION

It is worth drawing several conclusions:

Firstly, Classical Greek civilization, formed in the 8th-7th centuries. BC. included various ethno-civilizational elements: Minoan, Mycenaean, Anatolian, as well as the influence of North Balkan (Achaean and Ionian) elements. The genesis of the civilizational core of Classical civilization is a set of processes of consolidation of the above elements, as well as their further evolution.

Secondly, the racial genetic and ethnic core of Classical civilization was formed as a result of the consolidation and homogenization of various elements: Aegean, Minoan, North Balkan and Anatolian. Among which the autochthonous East Mediterranean element was dominant. The Hellenic "core" was formed as a result of complex processes of interaction between the above elements.

Third, unlike the “Romans,” who were essentially a polytonym (“Roman = citizen of Rome”), the Hellenes formed a unique ethnic group that retained family ties with the ancient Thracian and Asia Minor populations, but became the racial genetic basis for a completely new civilization. Based on the data of K. Kuhn, L. Angel and A. Poulianos, between modern and ancient Hellenes there is a line of anthropological continuity and “racial continuity”, which manifests itself both in comparisons between populations as a whole, as well as in comparisons between specific micro-elements.

Fourth, despite the fact that many people have an oppositional opinion, Classical Greek civilization became one of the bases for Roman civilization (along with the Etruscan component), thereby partly predetermining the further genesis of the Western world.

Fifthly, in addition to influencing Western Europe, the era of Alexander's campaigns and the Diadochi wars was able to give rise to a new Hellenistic world, in which various Greek and Oriental elements were closely intertwined. It was the Hellenistic world that became fertile soil for the emergence of Christianity, its further spread, as well as the emergence of the Eastern Roman Christian civilization.