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"The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Br

by natded 5y ago

"The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BCE).", interesting. I think the author is convinced they were Greeks, then?

rsj_hn 5y ago
Yes he makes this case in the blog, supported by some recent discoveries. It also has a good overview of population flows in the region up to that time. Really a great blog with lots of references.
- rendall 5y ago
  References, perhaps, but no footnotes. He makes confident assertions about which current scholarly consensus is far less certain. It would be nice if he highlighted that. For instance, contrast the tone of his blog post with the tone of this article, quoting the researcher whose findings Nimitz references[*]: > "Some interpretations of ancient texts have suggested that the Philistines were one of the groups that comprised the Sea Peoples," study leader Michal Feldman, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, told Newsweek. > "Our genetic results could fit with this hypothesis since we detect a movement of people that crossed the Mediterranean and reached Ashkelon in the relevant time period—around the 12th century B.C. However, from the genetics we cannot determine whether these ancestors of the Philistines that migrated to Ashkelon were indeed part of the Sea Peoples or not." [emph. mine] I think footnotes, particularly for assertions like this that he believes to be true - or that he chooses to gloss over for the sake of narrative - but that scholars are not so convinced, would lift his writings out of the realm of entertainment. As it is, unfortunately, his writings - as entertaining as they are - could mislead readers like me who prefer accurate uncertainty over inaccurate but consistent and entertaining narrative. [*] https://www.newsweek.com/biblical-philistines-sea-peoples-dna-1447114 https://www.newsweek.com/biblical-philistines-sea-peoples-dn...
adrian_b 5y ago
The article references some of the evidence that a part of the Sea People were Greeks. The ancient sources list a large number of different tribes which composed the Sea People. Whether all of them were Greeks or some of them had a completely different origin, nobody knows. Of the Greeks we know more, as they had later known descendants, so we have a chance to identify their ancestors, either by DNA tests or by some cultural aspects. Of the many other people that had existed in Southern Europe and who are mentioned in ancient sources, but who were later assimilated by the Greeks or by the Romans, we know much less, so it is difficult to identify any of the Sea People who might have been related to them.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  I thought Nuragic peoples (Sardinians) were in pole position?
panick21_ 5y ago
Its questionable if they were a confederation, or how connected they were to each other. I don't think people would usually call the vikings a confederation. I think there is fair evidence that some names refer to places in Greek. At the same time seem to refer to cities in other places. Those however could be Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily. Or maybe non Greeks in those places. I don't think single origin explanations work all that well.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Calling them "Greeks" is more than a bit incorrect and a kind of back-porting of the concept of Hellenism into a very pre-Hellenic time. Even if it's true that the Sea Peoples were Mycenaeans or Achaeans, they did not call themselves "Hellenes" nor have anything like the sense of a Hellenic identity that developed much later in the iron age. I think of these people as groupings of war chieftans and landholding warrior aristocracies and their crews, conducting raids abroad and territory at home, similar to the crews of Viking ships. Similar in that they had skill with ships, and similar in holding onto older Indo-European traditions of raiding (back to Yamnayan cattle raids on the Pontic steppe), class structures (warrior/priest/farmer) and systems of managing subjects and fiefdoms. Calling them "Greeks" is about as accurate as calling the old Vikings "Norwegians" or "Swedish". Related by descent, but not nearly the same, and almost 1000 years separating them.
- phonypc 5y ago
  >Calling them "Greeks" is about as accurate as calling the old Vikings "Norwegians" or "Swedish". Related by descent, but not nearly the same, and almost 1000 years separating them. I mean... wouldn't the people of the British Isles during the Viking Age have called the raiders Danes, or Norsemen? Not vikings? If your invaders speak Greek and come from the area of Greece, calling them Greek seems to make sense, albeit obviously not in a way equivalent to Hellenes.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    They didn't speak Greek. They spoke a bunch of languages that predated Greek. There was no place called Greece then, and the people of the time had all sorts of words for the various groupings, but Greek/Hellene wasn't one of them. It's best not to transplant our national identities into the past where they don't make sense. Nationalist mythologies can and have been used for some pretty awful things.
    - phonypc 5y ago
      Mycenaeans spoke Greek. I've didn't say anything about national identities. If you don't think there was some ethno/cultural/religious/linguistic category in the rough shape of "Greek" before they started calling themselves Hellenes... that's weird.

by natded 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

Yes he makes this case in the blog, supported by some recent discoveries. It also has a good overview of population flows in the region up to that time. Really a great blog with lots of references.

rendall 5y ago
References, perhaps, but no footnotes. He makes confident assertions about which current scholarly consensus is far less certain. It would be nice if he highlighted that. For instance, contrast the tone of his blog post with the tone of this article, quoting the researcher whose findings Nimitz references[*]: > "Some interpretations of ancient texts have suggested that the Philistines were one of the groups that comprised the Sea Peoples," study leader Michal Feldman, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, told Newsweek. > "Our genetic results could fit with this hypothesis since we detect a movement of people that crossed the Mediterranean and reached Ashkelon in the relevant time period—around the 12th century B.C. However, from the genetics we cannot determine whether these ancestors of the Philistines that migrated to Ashkelon were indeed part of the Sea Peoples or not." [emph. mine] I think footnotes, particularly for assertions like this that he believes to be true - or that he chooses to gloss over for the sake of narrative - but that scholars are not so convinced, would lift his writings out of the realm of entertainment. As it is, unfortunately, his writings - as entertaining as they are - could mislead readers like me who prefer accurate uncertainty over inaccurate but consistent and entertaining narrative. [*] https://www.newsweek.com/biblical-philistines-sea-peoples-dna-1447114 https://www.newsweek.com/biblical-philistines-sea-peoples-dn...

adrian_b 5y ago

The article references some of the evidence that a part of the Sea People were Greeks. The ancient sources list a large number of different tribes which composed the Sea People. Whether all of them were Greeks or some of them had a completely different origin, nobody knows. Of the Greeks we know more, as they had later known descendants, so we have a chance to identify their ancestors, either by DNA tests or by some cultural aspects. Of the many other people that had existed in Southern Europe and who are mentioned in ancient sources, but who were later assimilated by the Greeks or by the Romans, we know much less, so it is difficult to identify any of the Sea People who might have been related to them.

selimthegrim 5y ago
I thought Nuragic peoples (Sardinians) were in pole position?

panick21_ 5y ago

Its questionable if they were a confederation, or how connected they were to each other. I don't think people would usually call the vikings a confederation. I think there is fair evidence that some names refer to places in Greek. At the same time seem to refer to cities in other places. Those however could be Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily. Or maybe non Greeks in those places. I don't think single origin explanations work all that well.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

Calling them "Greeks" is more than a bit incorrect and a kind of back-porting of the concept of Hellenism into a very pre-Hellenic time. Even if it's true that the Sea Peoples were Mycenaeans or Achaeans, they did not call themselves "Hellenes" nor have anything like the sense of a Hellenic identity that developed much later in the iron age. I think of these people as groupings of war chieftans and landholding warrior aristocracies and their crews, conducting raids abroad and territory at home, similar to the crews of Viking ships. Similar in that they had skill with ships, and similar in holding onto older Indo-European traditions of raiding (back to Yamnayan cattle raids on the Pontic steppe), class structures (warrior/priest/farmer) and systems of managing subjects and fiefdoms. Calling them "Greeks" is about as accurate as calling the old Vikings "Norwegians" or "Swedish". Related by descent, but not nearly the same, and almost 1000 years separating them.

phonypc 5y ago
>Calling them "Greeks" is about as accurate as calling the old Vikings "Norwegians" or "Swedish". Related by descent, but not nearly the same, and almost 1000 years separating them. I mean... wouldn't the people of the British Isles during the Viking Age have called the raiders Danes, or Norsemen? Not vikings? If your invaders speak Greek and come from the area of Greece, calling them Greek seems to make sense, albeit obviously not in a way equivalent to Hellenes.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  They didn't speak Greek. They spoke a bunch of languages that predated Greek. There was no place called Greece then, and the people of the time had all sorts of words for the various groupings, but Greek/Hellene wasn't one of them. It's best not to transplant our national identities into the past where they don't make sense. Nationalist mythologies can and have been used for some pretty awful things.
  - phonypc 5y ago
    Mycenaeans spoke Greek. I've didn't say anything about national identities. If you don't think there was some ethno/cultural/religious/linguistic category in the rough shape of "Greek" before they started calling themselves Hellenes... that's weird.