Posted on 06/19/2024 7:39:23 AM PDT by Cronos
The center of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, a Balkan country born just 33 years ago as an independent state, is awash in history.
A statue of Alexander the Great looms over the central square. One of his father, Philip II of Macedon, towers above a nearby piazza atop an oversize pedestal. The city is also littered with tributes in bronze, stone and plaster to generations of other heroes from what the country sees as its glorious and very long history.
The problem, though, is that most of the history on display is claimed by other countries. Present-day North Macedonia, has no real connection to Alexander the Great, who lived 2,000 years ago down the road in what is now Greece, and many of the other historical figures honored with statues are Bulgarian.
...North Macedonia’s identity-building has long infuriated Greece, which claims ancient Macedonia as part of its own heritage and has a region named after it. Also angry is Bulgaria, another neighbor very possessive about some of the historical figures, particularly a 10th-century Bulgarian ruler, whose statues now crowd the center of Skopje.
...Alexander was born in a city now in Greece. He did not live on the territory of what is today North Macedonia, historians generally agree, or speak its Slavic language. Slavs arrived in the area hundreds of years later
...after the disintegration of Yugoslavia as nationalists began looking for ways to strengthen their fragile new state.
...As part of a deal with Greece in 2018, it agreed to call itself North Macedonia, a name the Greek government accepted as sufficiently distant from the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia and Alexander the Great.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
She is not a big fan of Alexander the Great either. “I don’t feel connected to him at all. Not linguistically, not culturally, not emotionally.”
Where was he born, relative to modern day Macedonia?
That’s who owns his history.
Oh, it’s Great, not Grape, in the article. Never mind.
So is this like when white liberals and blacks claim that white historical figures - like Hannibal or Cleopatra - were black?
However he was ethnically Greek - his family was from Greece proper and they ruled over a mixed-"race" empire of Greeks and Dacians/Thracians
He was not Slavic like the majority of people in North Macedonia - the Slavs came in the 6th century with the collapse of the Avar Khaganate (Avars were Mongol-ic people) and the Graeco-Romans moved south, depopulating the lands
It would be like the English claiming King Arthur (a Briton ruler who fought against the Anglo-Saxons) as their own
Yup and it's even more egregious for the case of Hannibal - he wasn't black OR white - but of Canaanite origin, so brown Lebanese!
Cleo was a pure Macedonian Greek with perhaps at best some Persian genes from her great-great-great-grandmother, a daughter of Seleucus the Great and a Persian noble woman
Though the way that family had full-brothers marrying full-sisters means that their gene pool was VERY concentrated
Thank you for that.
If he’s Greek, that’s who should be celebrating his history.
I agree with you in principle, that if a person doesn’t have anything to do with your history than you shouldn’t be building statues in their honour.
He probably looked like one of these Lebanese lads
And if they want to go back in history, why not hold REAL sub-Saharan black skinned heroes?
Like
Pharaoh Shabaka of the 25th dynasty - the Nubians who conquered Egypt and restored much of its cultural heritage after the Assyrian conquest
King Mansa Musa of the Mali empire
Or the great Ethiopian rulers like Yekuno Amlak
or the way that Christianity was preserved in Nubia and sudan until the 12th century when it was snuffed out by the Mohammedans --> I strongly recommend The Faras gallery at the National museum in Warsaw, Poland
Actually I’m not saying “ if a person doesn’t have anything to do with your history than you shouldn’t be building statues in their honour.”
Alex ruled over a kingdom that once held part of what is now Northern Macedonia and he’s kind of well-known, so it makes sense to celebrate him.
however Northern Macedonia is looking for a past, kind of like Slovakia — FYROM is actually Bulgarian in ethnicity and language and was cut off by the creation of Yugoslavia.
It has no self-identity yet.
kind of like Moldova which is part of Bessarabia.
Slovakia is similar, though not the same - they were dominated by Magyars, Czechs and Poles for centuries culturally and in the case of Magyars politically that they have not had a chance to develop their own high culture and they have no past to harken back to.
The Ukrainians aren’t in the same boat as they can point back to Kyivan Rus and to the Hetmanate
Tell me your nation hasn’t done anything relevant in the last 5t00 years without telling me. lol
His father, Philip II of Macedon’s tomb was discovered undisturbed near Verginia, Greece, north of Thessaloniki, and is the site of a small excavation museum, built within the tomb mound itself. The best exhibit of an historic site I’ve ever seen. They recovered hundreds of artifacts, including the full armor he was buried in, shorter grieves on one side for his game leg. All beautifully displayed.
Oh great. Something else for the Balkans people to fight over. Awesome.
In an everchanging world, it’s good to know the people of the Balkans are still willing to go to war with each other over disputes dating back three centuries before Christ.
All slavers.
Not original Greeks, see?
So the Christianized Turks who inhabit modern Greece are pissed off at them for even claiming to be Macedonian.
The Kalash peoples of Kalash Valleys Chitral Pakistan are unique to Pakistan and their genetic heritage. Its always been rumored Alexander the Great & his army( s) had ventured into asfar as this area. A group of very peaceful with their ownculture and customs far removed from Islam.
Over the years they have suffered as the result of many campaigns to convert them to Islam. Some did turn and many are unhappy about it.The use of broadcasting the daily call to prayer and propaganda has had a mental impact on this small population of almost 4,000 people &
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