Who Owns Alexander the Great? It’s a Diplomatic Minefield.North Macedonia has claimed historical figures as part of a drive to build a national identity. That has ruffled the feathers of the Balkan nation’s neighbors.

The New York Times ^ | 19th June 2024 | Andrew higgins

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Cronos.

• Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

[vladimir998]

You might find this interesting: https://www.mpg.de/18495750/0330-evan-origins-of-the-avars-elucidated-with-ancient-dna-150495-x

[Rinnwald]

Something else for the Balkans people to fight over.

How dare you say that!

Blood Feud!

[Seruzawa]

I think Bosnia and Herzegovina should get involved too. If for no other reason than I like to see people have to type Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[Bigg Red]

mark

[discostu]

Iron Maiden. Duh

[Texan5]

Those Lebanese guys are Caucasian, racially speaking-their ethnicity is a different matter-they look a lot like any garden variety Italian or other person of Southern European ancestry-in fact the guy in the 2nd row without glasses looks a lot like my brother-before his hair turned gray-even the beard is the same. We are Hispanic-ancestors from Spain, not Lebanon...

I don’t get why Macedonians are insisting that Alexander is “theirs” exclusively when he was born in Greece. Maybe people in that part of Europe just like to argue over things like that...

[Verginius Rufus]

The original kingdom of Macedonia was in what is now Greece, but all or most of "North Macedonia" was conquered by Philip II and was known as part of Macedonia from then on. The Slavic Macedonian language is very close to Bulgarian--if that area had become part of Bulgaria (as almost happened) the local language would probably just be considered dialects of Bulgarian. But under Tito the people of the "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" within Yugoslavia were encouraged to develop their language as distinct from Bulgarian (both use the Cyrillic alphabet but slightly different versions of it).

If you can believe Herodotus, the ancient Greeks did not consider the Macedonians to be Greeks (apart from the ruling family), and scholars disagree on whether the ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of Greek or a separate language. Clearly Greek was widely understood--the Athenian poet Euripides died at the royal court and the people there must have been able to understand his plays. We lack texts in Macedonian.

Alexander the Great was not popular with the Greeks of his own time, especially the Athenians, Spartans and Thebans (he destroyed the city of Thebes). The Spartans fought a war against the Macedonians while Alexander was off fighting the Persians.

I don't understand the modern Greek obsession with Alexander when there are many ancient Greeks more deserving of admiration--Homer, Solon, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Leonidas, Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes and many others.

[Cronos]

the ancient “Macedonian kingdom” was a multi-national kingdom with a Greek ruling class and a Thracian/Dacian people.

the modern FYRO Macedonia is Bulgarian-Slavic people and they do have a lot of history until the conquest / captivity by the Ottoman Turks.

[Cronos]

The current Greeks are not ethnically “Christianized Turks”

heck, even the modern day Turks have only about 5% TurkIC genes.

In recent anthropological studies, both ancient and modern Greek osteological samples were analyzed demonstrating a bio-genetic affinity and continuity shared between both groups. There is also a direct genetic link between ancient Greeks and modern Greeks.

Though one could also note a Greek genetic link in modern day Macedonians as well (a small one but not zero)