Note: this topic is from . Thanks ek_hornbeck. There are probably older ones to come, I've been scanning the topic hits for "DNA" in the title.
Posted on 08/03/2017 9:21:11 AM PDT by ek_hornbeck
DNA is shedding light on the people who built Greece's earliest civilizations.
Researchers analysed genetic data from skeletons dating to the Bronze Age, a period marked by the emergence of writing, complex urban planning and magnificent art and architecture.
These ancient Aegean people were mostly descended from farmers who had settled the region thousands of years earlier.
But they showed signs of genetic - and possibly cultural - contact with people to the north and to the east.
Dr Iosif Lazaridis, from Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, and colleagues focussed on burials from the Minoan civilization, which flourished on the island of Crete from 2,600 to 1,100 BC, and the Mycenaean culture, which was existed across Greece from 1,600 -1,100 BC.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The article wrongly says that Minoan Linear A can be read but not translated. It can’t be read. There may be some characters which resemble those in Linear B and may have had the same sound (they are both syllabaries) but if enough symbols had known values they might have deduced what language it was, or at least placed the language in a known language family. It could be related to the language spoken on the nearby part of Asia Minor since some similar place names are found in both areas.
I read it it did not ...
It is just a wee bit surprising for the reasons you mention.
This seems consistent with the cultural and archaeological evidence. Notably, some readings of the myths about Greek gods have long posited that they reflect a merging of two distinct peoples, with the tempestuous male gods marking the introduction of patriarchal cultures brought by peoples from the Eurasian steppes.
So, NOT out of Africa.
Paging Mary Lefkowitz...
Afrocentric Marxists ignored abundant evidence that the Ancient Egyptians were a Middle Eastern people rather than black Africans, so why should this be any different? The motives behind "Black Athena" were political rather than scientific, and so facts and science are irrelevant to this type of so-called "scholar."
Note: this topic is from . Thanks ek_hornbeck. There are probably older ones to come, I've been scanning the topic hits for "DNA" in the title.
“Black Athena”. I read the first 2 volumes of that book in grad school (the second time around, reliving stress from the dissertation).
While I had no competence in the numerous linguistic arguments the author made, I knew something about some of the others.
He got those entirely wrong. Can’t tell you what anymore, this was 1995, but it was total BS.
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