"Who Were The Asiatic Greeks?" Topic

Specifically, the ones featured in the DBM/DBA list I/52g Early Hoplite Greek? My google-fu has only yielded results regarding lanfuages and dialects. Where did they live? Were they Anatolian?

Thank you for any and all replies.

I have no idea about DBM/DBA but there were many Greeks in Asia Minor in the early Hoplite era. Known commonly as Ionians.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionians

Later on "Hellenics" of all sorts settled as far as Baktria and the Indus Valley.

"Ionians" would be a word I can do more research on. Thank you, Porkman.

The ancient "Greeks" didn't have a "Greece". They settled all over the place, including the Black Sea and Italy ("Magna Grecia") as well as modern Turkey ("Asia Minor"). Meanwhile much of modern Greece wasn't Greek.

Trying to find differences is like trying to find the difference in Germans who lived in what is now Poland compared to modern "Germany". It's an anachronistic concept.

Try also "Doric hexapolis".

I believe some of the Anatolian tribes, like Karians, Phygrians and Lydians were heavily Greek influenced. They may have hoplites etc.

There were Greek settlements all around the coast of the Black Sea and along the length of the Ionic coast.

Going in the other direction, Marseille (Massalia) was a Greek colony; and Kyrene over in what is now Libya.

"Trying to find differences is like trying to find the difference in Germans who lived in what is now Poland compared to modern "Germany". It's an anachronistic concept"

Differences are anachronistic? Far from it when it comes to Germans from both the present Federation of Länder and the now occupied territories.

Are we saying there's a hoplite haplotype?

The list assumes (with some good reason) that there are differences in the composition of the armies put out by different Greek states (and that those differences are worth bringing out in the game) – it is game specific rather than anachronistic …

Phil

Ionian is what I've always been led to believe.

Question is, who where the Ionians? Where they the original Greeks that survived the Dorian invasions or something else?

The anachronism would lie in imposing modern definition by origins within modern boundaries. It's been far more common in most of history to define people culturally, especially by language.

Ionia was colonised from mainland Greece as the Dorians began pushing in, c. 1000BCE

For some reason the population of Greek city-states exploded and they sent excess folks to colonize new cities, some in Anatolia.

Perhaps it was a population explosion, but Greece has no noticeable agricultural base, and it wasn't a period of plenty. The later Greek colonies were driven by economic reasons, so why not the early ones?

Perhaps it was analogous to the Vikings. An internal change in culture led people to look outward. They conquered and imposed their culture on the locals, but few actually moved.

Or it was merely the culture that spread from Crete, and then from Mycenae. The Etruscans and Romans picked up some of it, after all.

There is precious little evidence the Greeks conquered the Anatolian coast. They are recorded as being there in 1300 BC, if the Hittite "Ahhiyawa" is them. If true, then Ionia was Greek well before the Dorian invasions.

Until the 1920s there were a lot of "Asiatic Greeks ".
Then the Turks kicked them out.

I don't know if I would say the Turks kicked them out.

More correctly, the Ottomans committed genocide and forced migration upon the Greeks and Armenians. The Ottomans killed nearly a million Christian Greeks during Pontic (Greek) Genocide.

There are still lots of Asiatic Greeks on that long string of islands just off the Turkish coast which remained Greek – Chios, Lesbos, Samos, Rhodes and others.

The opening words in the historical introduction in Ancient Warfare, vol/issue VIII.2:

"The ancient Greeks originally divided themselves into four major tribes, namely the Dorians, Aeolians, Achaeans, and Ionians. Each of these tribes also spoke a distinct dialect (Doric, Aeolic, Ionic), apart from the Achaeans, who used a dorm of Doric. The Athenians believed themselves to be the original Ionians and spoke a variant dialect called Attic…Outside of Attica, Ionians lived on the island of Euboea, on the Cyclades, and in colonies settled in the central part of the west coast of Asia Minor, as well as on the islands off its coast, such as Chios and Samos. The Ionians thus occupied most of the central part of the Aegean, ranging from Attica and Euboea across the Cyclades and into what is not coastal Turkey. The latter region had been colonized from about the twelfth or eleventh century BC onwards, although we know that Mycenaeans already lived at Ephesus and Miletus during the Bronze Age."

Anyway, hence the Athenians' interest in their revolt. (Helping our Greek-speaking brothers oppressed in another country – sound familiar?). The article goes on to describe their environs which neighbored other major kingdoms and empires like Lydia. They must have interesting army lists

After all the massacres of the 1920's, Greece and Turkey swapped remaining populations. Turks and Greek Muslim converts from Greece to Turkey, Ionian Greeks and Turkish Christian converts from Turkey to Greece. The latter were referred to by Greeks as "baptized in yogurt".

After the peace, between 1/4 and 1/5 of the Greek population was displaced Ionian Greeks. The Greek-Turkish war of the early 20's featured a Greek attempt to conquer western Anatolia and Constantinople for a new Byzantium.

Ionia wasn't called Ionia before the arrival of the Ionians

Well,yes. But I have to call it something, and "the land that would become Ionia" is a bit of mouthfull!

During the Hittite period, the Greeks were confined mostly to the coastal areas of the south west and only expanded in the vacuum following the collapse.
Ahhiyawa is most likely referring to the Mycenaean kingdoms across the Aegean, in regards to diplomacy and conflict, not the then small settlements.

Possibly, but as I suspect you know, opinions differ considerably on this, even among experts.

Many maintain Ahhiyawa is Anatolian Greece, and that included substantial settlements in mid-Hittite times. I tend to agree, although I accept we have nowhere near enough evidence to really prove it.

It's worth noting that the Trojan war in the epics was between two sides who were culturally Greek. No suggestion that the Greeks went on to over-run the area. They withdrew.