Minoan civilization originated in Anatolia!

This doesn't really suprise me - both are palace cultures, both are architecturally quite similar (Anatolian civilisations also used similar styles of pottery in some respects and used the so called cyclopedic masonry). Moreover, both were palace cultures. One problem with this theory is that the artistic styles have not carried over to Myceanean culture - the Cycladic art was developed by the Myceanean and Sub-Myceanean palace cultures to a realism that was frankly much better than lets say, the Hittites or the Hurrians -

Edited by Aster Thrax Eupator - 13-Apr-2008 at 17:25

Aster I think the statue of the Neo-Hittite King never appeared. Is there any similarity with Agamemnon?

Aster there are many theories about whos art/architecture etc was developed in Greece. The fact that a wave of anatolian settlers came to Greece does not mean they imposed their art on the people already there. Also, when all these were a theory, i think it was Palmer who suggested that there were two migrations to Greece from anatolia. An early one and one around 2500BC. That means that the first wave of settlers who came under neolithic times, developed a separate art than the anatolian. Anyway, many theories, so far i guess it is only the farming that is pretty clear. The art part has a lot of future research.

I agree on the similarities with Egyptian. However, it is not just the Mycenaean art, but the Minoan too. There are similar figures (athena like ones, bulls) and patterns (infinity circles, axes) on several things around egypt and palestine. I don't know if this has anything to do with a possible migration of the aegians after the Thera erruption, but it is something that is easily noticed.


Do you have any good examples of images showing a reconstruction of Hittite temples? I think you had posted something many moons ago.

I agree on the similarities with Egyptian. However, it is not just the Mycenaean art, but the Minoan too. There are similar figures (athena like ones, bulls) and patterns (infinity circles, axes) on several things around egypt and palestine. I don't know if this has anything to do with a possible migration of the aegians after the Thera erruption, but it is something that is easily noticed.

Byrdsjanuary1954 wrote: But the Minoans weren't Greek. They were a completely different people.

Yes, but they became one of the basis for what later became Greek civilization. They might not have been Greek speaking, but they were spreaded from Crete, to the islands, to central Greece (Boiotia) and up to Macedonia (Bottia & Bottiki). In other words they have contributed genetically after several thousands years. The point is that their origin is from Anatolia, like many other people that unfortunately vanished.

What is the meaning of Minos/Minoan?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minos : It is not clear if Minos is a name or if it was the Cretan word for "King". Scholars have noted the interesting similarity between Minos and the names of other ancient founder-kings, such as Menes of Egypt, Mannus of Germany, Manu of India, and so on. There is a name in Linear A mi-nu-te that may be related to Minos. According to La Marle's reading of Linear A (see below), we should read mwi-nu ro-ja (Minos the king) on a Linear A tablet. The royal title ro-ja is read on several documents, including on stone libation tables from the sanctuaries, where it follows the name of the main god, Asirai (the equivalent of Sanskrit Asura, and of Avestan Ahura

In Avesta we read http://www.avesta.org/ka/niyayesh.htm : (I) praise the name of that Minoyan mino, the increaser, worthy to be praised, who always was, always is, and always will be; whose one name is Ohrmazd, the God who is the greatest among all, wise, Creator, supporter, protector, endurer, the lord of righteousness, forgiver, and dispenser of excellent and pure justice.

It is difficult to say what "Mino" means in Avestan and Persian languages, it should be a title, "Minoyan mino" is similar to "Shahan shah" (King of kings).

CiegaSordomud wrote: Referencing the Avesta to investigate the origin of the Minoans? My god, that's like using the bible to study evolution. Let's get this right. Besides the genetic evidence pointing to a non-Indo-European, Anatolian origin of the Minoans and Etruscans, we have linguistic and cultural evidence. Anatolia is just a region, the actual connection is to the Hurrian. http://www.geocities.com/mariamnephilemon/names/europa/minoan.html http://web.archive.org/web/20061001130423/http://www.anistor.co.hol.gr/english/enback/m992.htm Hurrian names and words are found in the few Minoan writings we have because they are their relatives. In terms of culture, the Hurrians (like their other relatives the Sumerians), believe in the sky diety ANU. Who was transmitted to the Aegean by the Minoans, and picked up as urANUs by the Greeks.  So the answer to the mystery of "how were the Etruscans influenced by the Greeks?" is, they weren't. The ancestors of the Etruscans left the Aegean to Italy as the Greeks were moving in. Simple right?

Basically, Anatolian in majority is Indoeuropean. The rest of the theories seem to have been dismissed. This is the most descend source i've found about the eteocretan language http://www.teicrete.gr/daidalika/index.htm

The site belongs to the university of Crete, so what you get there is recognised academic work.

I like Gareth Owens version (He has many texts on that site) who has studied a vast number of tablets, including many unpublished ones. He points into a Proto-IE language that has words in common with Hittite, Greek and Sanskrit.

He doesn't go by names, but he has been able to use many words in general, including ofcourse namings.

Just few samples...

Minoan                 Greek                  Sanskrit            English
PITERE                   PATERES             PITARA               Fathers
SIRUTE                   KERAIZO             SIRU                   to destroy

Minoan                   Greek                 Carian           Sanskrit         English
INAIJA                     IERA                    JERA              ISIRAH            holy

Minoan                   Greek                   English
DIKITE                    DIKNO                   Indicate

Also, if we use DIKTIS (the one who indicates in Greek) we might have the original word used in the tabled.

Minoan                   Greek                     English                   IE
DAMATE                  DAMETER                 Mother Earth          MATE (Mother)


Anyway...I can continue for ages, with examples in Sanskrit, Hittite, Tocharian and other indoeuropean languages. Since, the language is unknown to us, you will see many possible translations by many. The thing is that those who specialize in the aegian languages, have use other methods when separating the words.

For example, I could very fast make a selection of words from the tablet context and cognate words that would just work for one example.

E.g

Poto = Greek for drink
Tinu = (tinos) whose in Greek
Ida = i saw in Greek
Kuro = boy in Greek
Dosomo = (dose mou) give me
etc etc...

However, the way i showed above is not the way it works...The linguists know how to separate words, find suffixes and prefixes and then recognise verbs, adjectives etc.

As for the Etruscans...They moved to Italy more than a millenia later after the recognisable Greek material culture appears in the area. Furthermore, they probably came from Lydia. The Islands, had the Leleges (Carians?) and other aegian populations.





Edited by Flipper - 25-Oct-2008 at 10:37

Linguists who only seek out Indo-European sources as explanations are dishonest, especially in Anatolia where other languages predate IE. Infact, these pre-IE languages influenced early Indo-European speakers who were moving into the region from the west. Minoan and Etruscan are not IE, they are related to Hurrian; both derive from the same language family as Sumerian. The mainstream considers all these languages "isolates," to maintain their pet theories, and not have to revise decades of their misinformation to the public.

Sumerian         Minoan          English

BAR-LU              MA-RU           wool

SIR                    SIRUTE         raze

GU                     KU-RO          totality

PA                     PA-DE           father

(DAM-BAN-DA)   DA-MA-TE      (concubine) Demeter, her main epithet was mistress

http://www.smso.net/Linear_A
http://home.comcast.net/~foxvog/Glossary.pdf

Furthermore, any similarity with IE words near Anatolia or Armenia is based on an earlier substratum (Hurrian). Including Armenian, which is almost blatant because a prominent Hurrian kingdom, Urartu, was located there.


Edited by CiegaSordomud - 25-Oct-2008 at 18:10

The mainstream scholar establishment does care about the public's interested in history and related topic. This is why the most recent popular discoveries always deal with the similar themes of "European" Kennewick man and "Celtic" Tocharians. So most of the mainstream support goes to forment popular and romantic beliefs, not objective discovery. We have the legend of the Scythians taking a large chunck of the dialogue, where its mostly the same weak sources echoing of each other, for lack of substantive evidence.

The origin of culture that spread neolithic agriculture to the West and East is not in Mesopotamia, its in Iran. It is not discussed simply because they cannot attach Aryan or Indo-Iranian to them, since it occured 10,000 or more years ago. Genetic studies also disprove many old ideas, but again the mainstream is still sticks with the same theories. They overlook the connections between supposed 'isolates' like the Etruscans, Minoans/Pelasgians, Tyrrhenians, Hurrians, Sumerians, Subarians, Caspians, Marhasi, Jeitun, Andronovo, proto-Turks. All the evidence is there in many varied sources, just because the mainstream isnt providing you with a neat little documentary about what they deem to be acceptable truth doesnt change the facts.

The 'mainstream' is the establishment that publishes information in layman books and other popular media only based on select academic sources. There are many scholars, researchers and archeologists who do work in different fields, and im sure they dont care about public opinion just their work and making a living. But the industry itself pushes only select ideas, sometimes regardless of their validity or value, out to the public. Isnt that simple to understand?

Which is why we have many magazines, books, documentaries that talk about history in vague catchwords such as "Eurasian", "Indo-Iranian", "Scythian", "Kurgan" just to get certain individuals tingly. So they talk about the connection between people a quarter of the world away occuring in a short time frame, Tocharians and Indo-Europeans. But forbid you from even hypothesizing that groups sharing similar elements and living right next to each other, Hurrians and Sumerians, might have a relation the same way different IE groups have with one another. So for their pet IE theories they create large "trees" that connect distant groups/languages etc. (which in most cases is fine), but if you do the same with other groups then there's "not any shred of evidence". Just because 80% of IE/Aryan theories are parroting the same line for decades and have accumulated so much BS, you cant ignore newer information and theories that bring forth new ideas. An example is the once universally held belief that the Andronovo complex was the origin of "Indo-Iranians", turns out it isnt, its proto-Turkish. The establishment wont shout this little detail out on any documentary or book, its only found in some recent articles, which require subscription to be seen in full.

Compare the amount of occurences different terms appear in Jstor, lets see on what the majority puts more enphasis on. The mythtical Scythians, or actual provable archeological, ethnic groups and sites.


Results 1 - 10 of about 2,200 from jstor.org for Scythian

Results 1 - 5 of 5 from jstor.org for Jeitun

Results 1 - 10 of about 25 from jstor.org for Marhasi

Results 1 - 10 of about 92 from jstor.org for Oghuz

Results 1 - 10 of 10 from jstor.org for Wusun