Heads up, Joe/Bear/Chimp, incoming rounds from Eric Voeglin's "The World of the Polis," volume 2 of "Order and History", LSU Press. That's Louisiana State University in case you think it's a child's book. It only has words in it Chimp, no pretty maps for you to look at:
"Town settlements in the Aegean area at large went as far back as the Third Millennium B.C. The principal centers of Mycenaean civilization assumed the form of the fortified
citadel, the residence of the prince, surrounded by an open settlement, the asty. This
aggregate, the pre-Doric city, in most cases did not survive the Doric invasion--though
in the most important instance, that of Athens, the continuity between the Aegean
settlement and the later polis seems to have remained unbroken. The Hellenic type of
the polis was probably created by refugees from the Greek mainland who had either
conquered old settlements or founded new ones on the EASTERN coast of the Aegean. From the Anatolian coast the newly created form then spread, through mimesis, TO the Greek mainland. "
"The process of transition from Achaean to Hellenic society is fairly clear in its outlines, but almost completely dark in the detail. The physical destruction through the barbarian invasion must have been terrific. With the settlements and palaces, the economic basis of the higher crafts had perished; and possibly the art of writing was lost, too. Into this shattered territory moved, circa 1100, the Dorians, followed by the northwestern Greeks. While the earlier invaders had only moved through the area, leaving no noticable ethnic traces, the new immigration resulted in massive settlements, of Dorians in the Argolis,Laconia and Messinia on the Peolopennesus, on Crete and Rhodus, of northwestern Greeks in Achaea and Elis, in Aetolia and Phocis. Under this pressure the Aechaeans emigrated in large numbers over sea to the islands and the Anatolian coast. From these enforcements of the Aechaeans by related Greek tribes, from the Ionian migration and the reshuffling of populations resulted the ethnic composition and territorial expanse of the society which, by the eighth century, emerged as the Hellenes. The astonishing feat of these centuries was the maintenance of civilizational continuity with the Mycenean, and through the Mycenean with the Minoan phases of Greek society. This was the feat of the Achaean aristocrats who preserved their traditions, howevermodified by the new situation, through the dark centuries and now, as the IONIANS of the islands and Anatolia, became the center of civilizational revival for the whole Hellenic area."
Yeah, Chimp, it looks like the Ionian and Dorian cultures coexisted from about 1100 to at least 500 BC, and the Ionian culture centered on the Anatolian (Turkish) coastal town of Miletus, until the Persian war destroyed it. Any more snappy comments, genius? |
