The Greeks or Hellenes were never really a totally homogeneous group. Their language is considered an independent branch of the Indo-European group of languages, and the people came down in successive waves of migrating tribes from North of the Balkan Peninsula, settling in different regions of what is now the Greek nation.
For example, the Dorians in the 13th century B.C.E were the last of the Greek groups to migrate south from their area around the lower Danube River, pushing south by Slavic tribes migrating from further north and east.
In Greece, people lived in city-states that were constantly at war with each other. However, when a common enemy appeared, all disputes were forgotten, and the city-states joined in an alliance to fight the common foe.
We see this in the Homeric epics about the siege and fall of Troy, as well as the Persian incursion that resulted in the Thermopylae battle of 480 B.C.E (the sacrifice of Leonidas and the 300) and the naval battle of Salamis of the same year.
The Greek language developed in numerous dialects, depending on where the speaker was located. The main ancient language dialects were Attic, Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadian, and Doric, most of them with regional subdivisions. Some dialects are found in literary forms, while others are seen only in inscriptions.
Even in modern times, a resident of Northern Greece would have difficulty understanding many words in the current Cretan, Cypriot, or Ionian dialects.
Let’s not forget that different ethnic and cultural groups such as Rome and medieval Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, 19th century France, etc. were at times governing parts of Greece and left a linguistic influence, as well as a culinary legacy.
Through emigration and the establishment of Greek colonies, Greeks populated mainland Greece and Crete, Cyprus, Southern Albania, Anatolia, parts of Southern Italy, pockets in Southern France and Eastern Spain, and other regions of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The Greeks were mainly traders constantly in search of new markets.
Greek colonies were also found in Africa, including Egypt, present-day Tunisia, and as far south as the Congo. Later on, Alexander of Macedonia conquered the Persian Empire that extended from the Hellespont to present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fragments of the Greek language and traditions can still be found throughout the territories his generals governed.
Right after World War I, there was a very large Greek migration to Western Europe and the United States that continued until the early 1950s. Then, the migration patterns changed, and Greeks went mostly to Australia and the USA. Certain areas, such as the Northern Peloponnese, Crete, and the Aegean Islands, saw far more outgoing emigrants than mainland Greece.
From the early 1930s on, the main cities of Athens, Thessalonica, and Patras saw the brightest and best educated young people leaving Greece to study abroad in both European and American universities. This happened because the Greek higher education was considered inferior, and lucrative work prospects were extremely limited.
After graduating abroad, many never returned. This so called “brain drain” continues to a lesser degree, even today!
The earliest groups that populated Greece were the Mycenaeans and the Minoans –names given by archaeologists of the late 19th century. The names were given based on the most prominent Greek settlement of the Homeric epics – Mycenae – and the name of the legendary king of Central Crete, King Minos.
The Mycenaeans mostly lived around the Peloponnese, and the Minoans lived on Crete. We know much about the Mycenaeans from the plays of Aeschylus and the Homeric epics. We also know about them from the excavations of the Mycenae stronghold and finds of the 19th century German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann.
We know about the Minoans from the Athenian myths about the Minotaur and the conquest of Knossos, the capital of the Minoan civilization, as well as from Sir Arthur Evans, who not only excavated what he considered the “Palace of Knossos” site but also set about preserving and reconstructing parts of it.
In my opinion, Crete and its colonies had the most sophisticated civilization of the Stone and Bronze Age Mediterranean world. The island was a major trading partner to Pharaonic Egypt, exporting olives and olive oil, carob, medicinal herbs, wine, and honey to them. And that was way before Alexander conquered Egypt and left his general, Ptolemy (who was a Macedonian Greek), to run the country.
Another major Minoan trading and cultural center was the Bronze Age settlement on the volcanic island of Thera (Santorini), now known as Akrotiri.
Akrotiri was destroyed in the volcanic eruption that obliterated part of the island around 1500 B.C.E. That destruction supposedly gave birth to the myth of Atlantis, when Plato wrote about the story he was given by Sonchis of Saïte, an Egyptian priest.
In his book, On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch gave a detailed description of the Greek wise men who visited Egypt and received advice from the Egyptian priests. Thales of Miletus, Solon, Pythagoras, Lycurgus of Sparta, and Plato all supposedly traveled into Egypt to converse with the priests. Cultural tourism is NOT a new phenomenon!
The very sophisticated ancient city of Akrotiri was unearthed by Greek archaeologist, Prof. Spyridon Marinatos, when he conducted excavations between 1967 and 1974, and it’s a fascinating site to visit.
It’s debated whether Akrotiri was truly the site of Atlantis because Plato said Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which is the Strait of Gibraltar.
Nevertheless, the Akrotiri excavations by Prof. Marinatos have proved that it had a very advanced, trade-oriented civilization that traveled beyond the southern Mediterranean Sea, based on frescoes of shipping and African animals decorating Akrotiri buildings.
The Mycenaean civilization became known mostly from the Homeric epics. The Mycenaean language was the most ancient form of written language that has been discovered and deciphered. It was used mainly for recordkeeping and inventories at royal palaces, as well as some large “international” trade ventures. We don’t actually know what the spoken language sounded like.
Having stamped ideograms even earlier than Linear B (a later written form), the disk of Phaestos was discovered in 1908 at the Minoan “palace” of Phaestos (south-central Crete).
On its two sides, it bears the oldest known imprinted text of unknown content, as there isn’t enough information to decode the text. It’s the earliest example of written Greek, back to more than 3,700 years ago, making Greek the oldest European language that is still in use today.
Much of our medical, economic, and technical nomenclature was developed in Greece. Yes, “atom” is a Greek word (meaning the smallest that can’t be divided into even smaller units), “mechanism” is a Greek word, “esophagus” is a Greek word (meaning interior for eating) and “grammar” is a shortened Greek word (from grammatiki, meaning the proper letter sequencing in a word).
Linear B, a Greek dialect of Bronze Age Aegean, was a later version of the Minoan language and was discovered on tablets initially in Crete and later at Pylos, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Thebes. Linear B was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, as there were many sample tablets available to researchers.
Greece uses two versions of the modern/formal Greek language – one used in formal documents and some of the older but still published newspapers, and one spoken every day, which is more idiomatic and incorporates more foreign words.
The language was initially formed in the mid-19th century at the intellectual and literary center of Athens once Greece became a kingdom after its liberation from the Ottoman Empire. It was formed to “cleanse” the language from the many foreign (Ottoman, Arabic, French, and Italian) words that had been incorporated in the spoken language during the years of occupation.
Many of the modern sciences also have their roots in Ancient Greece. Even a modern vending machine owes its roots to a Greek – Hero of Alexandria – who was a mathematician, physicist, and engineer living around 10–85 C.E.
His invention took coins and dispensed holy water. When someone put a coin into the machine, it would drop into a pan that was attached to a lever. The weight of the coin in the pan would pull on the lever, releasing a flow of water, until the weight of the coin would make the pan slant enough to slide the coin in a container below.
Since coins had different weights depending on their value, the device would dispense appropriate amounts of the consecrated water. Hero also invented the steam engine! As the Ecclesiastes said, there is nothing new under the sun!
Manos Angelakis is one of the founders, the former Managing Editor for 25 years, the current Managing Editor Emeritus, and Senior Food & Wine Writer of LuxuryWeb Magazine. He is an accomplished travel writer, photographer, and food and wine critic based in Hackensack, New Jersey. As a travel writer, he has written extensively about numerous cities and countries. Manos has also been certified as a Tuscan Wine Master and has traveled to wine-producing areas in order to evaluate firsthand the product of top-rated vineyards. In the past year, he has visited and written multiple articles about Morocco, Turkey, Quebec City, Switzerland, Antarctica, and most recently the South of France. Articles in other publications include Vision Times and Epoch Times.
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