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Did the ancient greeks, celts, and germanics know about their indo european roots, and origins?
Did they know they came from the Caucasus region between Black Sea, and Caspian Seas?
The Greeks had colonies on the Black Sea Coast. But if they originally from that area, thn perhaps these are not colonies at all, but initial settlements from which they launched expeditions through the Dardanelles, and then in the Aegean.
You keep reading history backwards from the perspective of modern Europeans; in other words, self-centered retrojection, like projectile vomit.
That's okay, lots of people do it and and it's so easy because most of the "work" has already been done for you.
But also consider making the effort to "read" history as it is occurring, assuming no knowledge of what occurred later, which is actually very hard to do because relatively very little was written and even less has survived. You need to combine that precious little with archaeology and then make your own interpretations.
Just for example, 19th century European archaeologists discover stone sculptures in some abandoned sites in the Syrian desert and conjure up elaborate speculations about religions and gods, then these interpretations become memes repeated generation after generation until this day. I view these same sculptures in books, but I don't read the historians' captions, I just look at them and have the impression that these are just family momentos, idealized images of the patrons' fathers and mothers.
Ancient writers did something similar; a "first" writer conjured up some elaborate speculation on the origin or cause of this people or that, of this phenomenon or that, and writers of later generations just kept repeating the same thing over and over again.
You keep reading history backwards from the perspective of modern Europeans; in other words, self-centered retrojection, like projectile vomit.
That's okay, lots of people do it and and it's so easy because most of the "work" has already been done for you.
But also consider making the effort to "read" history as it is occurring, assuming no knowledge of what occurred later, which is actually very hard to do because relatively very little was written and even less has survived. You need to combine that precious little with archaeology and then make your own interpretations.
Just for example, 19th century European archaeologists discover stone sculptures in some abandoned sites in the Syrian desert and conjure up elaborate speculations about religions and gods, then these interpretations become memes repeated generation after generation until this day. I view these same sculptures in books, but I don't read the historians' captions, I just look at them and have the impression that these are just family momentos, idealized images of the patrons' fathers and mothers.
Ancient writers did something similar; a "first" writer conjured up some elaborate speculation on the origin or cause of this people or that, of this phenomenon or that, and writers of later generations just kept repeating the same thing over and over again.
I would say no, they did not know, multi generational memories rarely survive more than a few generations, with writing things can last much longer, but we are talking about prehistory. The few memories that do make it turn into myths where it gets very hard to distinguish fact from fiction. For instance some people suggest that the Greek Centaur is a depiction of early memories of natives who saw proto-Indo-Europeans riding on horse back and as they swept through Greece the natives who never saw such a thing before would describe them as half man half horse. And yes just because Greeks and other Eurasian ethnics groups are linguistically related, doesn't mean they are genetically related. It would be like saying that Peruvians originated from Spain because they speak Spanish.
Proto-Indo-European was spoken between 4500 BC to 2500 BC. In comparison classical Greece existed between 500 BC to 300 BC. That is a difference of 4200 to 2000 years. I don't even think the Greeks knew they were related to the Hittites.
Did the ancient greeks, celts, and germanics know about their indo european roots, and origins?
Did they know they came from the Caucasus region between Black Sea, and Caspian Seas?
The Greeks had colonies on the Black Sea Coast. But if they originally from that area, thn perhaps these are not colonies at all, but initial settlements from which they launched expeditions through the Dardanelles, and then in the Aegean.
Well, given that they didn't have services like 23 and Me or Ancestry available, I am somewhat at a loss how these ancient people would have found out their genetic origins.
Most aboriginal people have some sort of creation myth, and in general these myths are nothing more than must myths.
But also consider making the effort to "read" history as it is occurring, assuming no knowledge of what occurred later, which is actually very hard to do because relatively very little was written and even less has survived.
Apart from the topic at hand, I think this is an important point that is often overlooked in history and even commentary in other fields. Much of history is simply opportunity and immediate purpose -- like picking what appears to be stable stepping stones crossing a stream. Maybe you make it safely across, maybe you get wet, maybe you drown. The earliest humans to leave Africa were just taking one day at a time and happened to stumble into new territory. That is often what makes up our history...repeated over and over.
What history the Greeks knew didn't extend much further back than the first Persian War. They were uncertain of the dates, or the details, of the reforms of Solon or the tyranny of Pisistratus - and the dates, and reasons, for the Lelantine, Megaran, and Sacred Wars, even down to the order in which they happened, were unknown to them.
What passed for knowledge was mythological make-believe. The Athenians believed that they were autochthonous ("born of the earth"), but smeared their closest neighbors (Thebes and Argos) as being the spawn of Phoenicians and Egyptians, or not true "Greeks".
Probably not, or at most only part of it. Even until a few years ago, before ancient remains started getting DNA tested, we were in the 'dark' in many respects (and still are in many others). Herodotus however did explicitly mention that the Ancient Greek speakers moved from somewhere else to Greece.
Did the ancient greeks, celts, and germanics know about their indo european roots, and origins?
Did they know they came from the Caucasus region between Black Sea, and Caspian Seas?
The Greeks had colonies on the Black Sea Coast. But if they originally from that area, thn perhaps these are not colonies at all, but initial settlements from which they launched expeditions through the Dardanelles, and then in the Aegean.
No. No more than they could have known that we all began in Africa many thousands of years before that.
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