Challenge: Multiply the Greeks II

This is true if you take an essentialist view of ethnicity... On the other hand, just as you assert that the Anatolian Greek-speakers were merely the assimilated descendants of Hittites, Luwians, Lycians, Lydians, Phrygians, and whoever else, I could also argue that the Greeks of Greece proper were predominantly Minoans, Minyans, and Pelasgians. Ethnicity is not eternal and trying to view this discussion from a perspective that it is just doesn't work.

How do you define for this thread's sake what would be ethnically Greek, then?
 
They were actually predominantly Dorian, Ionians, and Aeolians.

I doubt it... As in the rest of ancient Europe, it was probably a case of "small group of invaders conquers large, pre-established, agricultural population and imposes their language and culture on them."
 
How do you define for this thread's sake what would be ethnically Greek, then?

That depends on the time and the place. Certainly, by the time of the early Middle Ages, the majority population of Anatolia shares undoubted cultural, linguistic, and historical ties to the majority population of Greece. They may not all be the descendants of Ionian settlers, but no one's going to call them "ethnic Hittites".
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
I guess this just highlights the ridiculousness of using ethnic categories period.

Now let's just wait for the rest of the world to catch on...
 
That depends on the time and the place. Certainly, by the time of the early Middle Ages, the majority population of Anatolia shares undoubted cultural, linguistic, and historical ties to the majority population of Greece. They may not all be the descendants of Ionian settlers, but no one's going to call them "ethnic Hittites".

That - and I'm not sure that's a bad thing - makes defining someone as "ethnically" Greek as opposed to Hellenized to the point of indistinguishable impossible, though.
 
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