5 ms·

One thing I badly want to know but fail attain. Who are the ancient Greeks that made up these myths?

by max_ 6y ago

chmod775 6y ago
We know some of the philosophers mentioned in the article, but pinpointing the origin of mythology is pretty much impossible. Most mythology is itself just earlier mythology that people adapted. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hesiod#/Life https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hesiod#/Life
- fogihujy 6y ago
  This. The myths, mentioned in the article, were written down at the end of the Greek dark ages, and probably has their roots in the folklore of the centuries before
gumby 6y ago
It seems likely they weren’t the same Bronze Age people like Hesiod, but rather Neolithic, pre-literate ancestors speaking some sort of proto-Indo-European language, the so-called Aryans.* Some of those folks later migrated into India, the north-east shores of the Mediterranean, and Persia (today’s Iran, i.e, “Aryan”), and possibly north west as well. * Ignore the contemporary racist use of this term, has caused the term to fall out of contemporary scholarly use. Calling them “proto-indo-europeans” isn’t really that inconvenient and avoids unfairly inflaming some people. It’s surprising how detailed a drawing we can make of these people from linguistic, cultural, archeological and DNA triangulation. Of course there’s no way to confirm the inferences, and there’s a big risk of bias (see what happened with the ancient word aryan!) but there is good scholarship. I would have avoided even mentioning th A-word but wanted to mention the Persian connection.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Only in early 20th-century racist fantasies is the term "Aryan" used to describe the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. In modern scholarly terminology, "Aryan" is only identified as a self-appellation of some speakers of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, not Proto-Indo-European itself. We don't know what the speakers of Proto-Indo-European called themselves. (Before anyone brings up the old claim, still in some pop-sci works, that Ireland's Irish name Eire comes from Aryan, that has been discredited for decades now.) Besides that, it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, both in Greece and in interaction with Anatolian peoples, and actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth.
  - gumby 6y ago
    > it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, ... actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth. Is that the case? It's been a couple of decades since I was immersed in the scholarship of this domain so it's quite possible there is more recent scholarship I'm utterly unaware of. It's pretty overt that there are common religious and linguistic elements of the ancient vedic and greek mythologies (less so with zoerastrianism) though it's indeed impossible to unscramble the egg to try to ascertain how much might have been brought in from some ur-culture and how much arrived via later transmission between cultures (that had an even longer history of trade). As for the use of Aryan, well, it's a millennia-old self-descriptive term in old Persian and Sanskrit, but I certainly agree its adoption by Europeans in the mid 19th century was in support of a particular racial Weltanschauung. Hence my specific calling out of this factor. Another trace can be found in the common (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Marathi etc) use of "Indo-European" vs the German "Indogermanisch''
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Work in reconstructing both Indo-European myth and Eastern Mediterranean myth has made great strides in the last 20–25 years. As I said, Greek myth has a handful of things that go back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Urheimat, but most of Greek myth must be derived locally from Greece, Anatolia and the Levant instead. The standard modern reference for all this is M.L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford University Press, 2007), and then you can mine its bibliography for more reading material. Exactly, Aryan is self-descriptive in Old Persian and Sanskrit, so only the Indo-Iranian branch and nowhere else in the Indo-European family. It is inappropriate to even mention this term if you are talking about the Proto-Indo-European-speaking community, not only because it is wrong, but also because it will only turn laypeople off because of the racist associations.

One thing I badly want to know but fail attain. Who are the ancient Greeks that made up these myths?

by max_ 6y ago

One thing I badly want to know but fail attain. Who are the ancient Greeks that made up these myths?

We know some of the philosophers mentioned in the article, but pinpointing the origin of mythology is pretty much impossible. Most mythology is itself just earlier mythology that people adapted. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hesiod#/Life https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hesiod#/Life

fogihujy 6y ago
This. The myths, mentioned in the article, were written down at the end of the Greek dark ages, and probably has their roots in the folklore of the centuries before

gumby 6y ago

It seems likely they weren’t the same Bronze Age people like Hesiod, but rather Neolithic, pre-literate ancestors speaking some sort of proto-Indo-European language, the so-called Aryans.* Some of those folks later migrated into India, the north-east shores of the Mediterranean, and Persia (today’s Iran, i.e, “Aryan”), and possibly north west as well. * Ignore the contemporary racist use of this term, has caused the term to fall out of contemporary scholarly use. Calling them “proto-indo-europeans” isn’t really that inconvenient and avoids unfairly inflaming some people. It’s surprising how detailed a drawing we can make of these people from linguistic, cultural, archeological and DNA triangulation. Of course there’s no way to confirm the inferences, and there’s a big risk of bias (see what happened with the ancient word aryan!) but there is good scholarship. I would have avoided even mentioning th A-word but wanted to mention the Persian connection.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Only in early 20th-century racist fantasies is the term "Aryan" used to describe the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. In modern scholarly terminology, "Aryan" is only identified as a self-appellation of some speakers of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, not Proto-Indo-European itself. We don't know what the speakers of Proto-Indo-European called themselves. (Before anyone brings up the old claim, still in some pop-sci works, that Ireland's Irish name Eire comes from Aryan, that has been discredited for decades now.) Besides that, it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, both in Greece and in interaction with Anatolian peoples, and actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth.
- gumby 6y ago
  > it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, ... actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth. Is that the case? It's been a couple of decades since I was immersed in the scholarship of this domain so it's quite possible there is more recent scholarship I'm utterly unaware of. It's pretty overt that there are common religious and linguistic elements of the ancient vedic and greek mythologies (less so with zoerastrianism) though it's indeed impossible to unscramble the egg to try to ascertain how much might have been brought in from some ur-culture and how much arrived via later transmission between cultures (that had an even longer history of trade). As for the use of Aryan, well, it's a millennia-old self-descriptive term in old Persian and Sanskrit, but I certainly agree its adoption by Europeans in the mid 19th century was in support of a particular racial Weltanschauung. Hence my specific calling out of this factor. Another trace can be found in the common (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Marathi etc) use of "Indo-European" vs the German "Indogermanisch''
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Work in reconstructing both Indo-European myth and Eastern Mediterranean myth has made great strides in the last 20–25 years. As I said, Greek myth has a handful of things that go back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Urheimat, but most of Greek myth must be derived locally from Greece, Anatolia and the Levant instead. The standard modern reference for all this is M.L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford University Press, 2007), and then you can mine its bibliography for more reading material. Exactly, Aryan is self-descriptive in Old Persian and Sanskrit, so only the Indo-Iranian branch and nowhere else in the Indo-European family. It is inappropriate to even mention this term if you are talking about the Proto-Indo-European-speaking community, not only because it is wrong, but also because it will only turn laypeople off because of the racist associations.