Dorian invasion
Encyclopedia
The Dorian invasion is a concept devised by historians of Ancient Greece
to explain the replacement of pre-classical dialects and traditions in southern Greece
by the ones that prevailed in Classical Greece
. The latter were named Dorian by the ancient Greek writers after the historical population that owned them, the Dorians.
Greek legend asserted that the Dorians took possession of the Peloponnesus in an event called the Return of the Heracleidae . Classical scholars saw in the legend a hypothetically real event they termed the Dorian invasion. The meaning of the concept has changed several times, as historians, philologists and archaeologists used it in attempts to explain the cultural discontinuities expressed in the data of their fields. The pattern of arrival of Dorian culture on certain islands in the Mediterranean, such as Crete
, is also not well elucidated. The Dorians colonised a number of sites on Crete such as Lato
.
Despite nearly 200 years of investigation the historicity of the Dorian invasion has never been established. The meaning of the concept has become to some degree amorphous. The work done on it has mainly served to rule out various speculations. The possibility of a real Dorian invasion remains open.
The ancient tradition is that the descendants of Heracles
(the Heracleidae
), exiled after his death, returned after some generations in order to reclaim dominion their ancestor Heracles had held in the Peloponnesus. The Greece to which the traditions refer is the mythic one, now considered to be Mycenaean Greece
. The theme of the "return of the Heracleidae
" is considered legendary. The exact descent differs from one ancient author to another, the salient point being that in each case a traditional ruling clan traced its origin, thus its legitimacy, to Heracles.
The translation of "return" is strictly English; the Greek connotations are quite different. The Greek words are katienai and katerchesthai, literally "to descend", "come down" or "go down" or less commonly "be brought down." It means a descent from uplands to lowlands, or from the earth to the grave, or a rushing down upon as a flood, or sweeping down upon as a wind or a ship, or those returning from exile (which typically would have to be by ship). It is never used as a simple return home, which is a nostos (as in nostalgia or the "returns from Troy"
). The Heracleidae are not returning to a former home for which they are homesick, they are sweeping down upon the Peloponnesus in war, thus inviting the English translation of invasion.
There is, however, a distinction between Heracleidae and Dorians. George Grote
summarizes the relationship as follows:
, was driven from the state of Mycenae
into exile after the death of Heracles by a dynastic rival, Eurystheus
, another
family now assumed power. The Heraclids "endeavored to recover the possessions from which they had been expelled" but were defeated by the Ionians at the Isthmus of Corinth
. Hyllus staked peace for three generations against immediate reoccupation on a single combat and was killed by Echemus
of Arcadia
.
The Heracleidae now found it prudent to claim the Dorian land granted to Heracles: "and from this moment the Herakleids and Dorians became intimately united together into one social communion." Three generations later the Heracleidae with Dorian collusion occupied the Peloponnesus, an event Grote terms a "victorious invasion."
The first widespread use of the term "Dorian invasion" appears to date to the 1830s. A popular alternative was the "Dorian migration." For example, in 1831 Thomas Keightly was using Dorian migration in Outline of History; by 1838 in The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy he was using Dorian invasion.
Neither of those two words exactly fit the return, as they imply an incursion from outside a society to within, but the Dorians were not outside of either Greece or Greek society. William Mitford
's History of Greece (1784–1810) described a "Dorian conquest" followed by "a revolution in Peloponnesus so complete that, except in the rugged province of Arcadia, nothing remained unaltered." Grote
's first two volumes did not appear until 1846, although he was working on them since 1822.
In 1824 Karl Otfried Müller
's Die Dorier was published in German and was translated into English by Tufnel and Lewis for publication in 1830. They use such terms as "the Doric invasion" and "the invasian of the Dorians" to translate Müller's "Die Einwanderung von den Doriern" (literally: "the migration of the Dorians"), which was quite a different concept; presumably "invasion" was already current in English.
On one level the Einwanderung meant no more than the Heraklidenzug, the return of the Heracleidae. However, Müller was also applying the sense of Völkerwanderung to it, which was being used of the Germanic migrations. Müller's approach was philological
. In trying to explain the distribution of tribes and dialects he hypothesized that the aboriginal or Pelasgian population was Hellenic. His first paragraph of the Introduction asserts:
Müller goes on to propose that the original Pelasgian language was the common ancestor of Greek and Latin, that it evolved into Proto-Greek and was corrupted in Macedon and Thessaly by invasions of Illyrians. This same pressure of Illyrians drove forth Greeks speaking Achaean (includes Aeolian), Ionian and finally Dorian in three diachronic waves, explaining the dialect distribution of Greek in classical times.
In 1902, K. Paparigopoulos called this event the "Descent of the Heraclidae" stating that the Heraclidae came from Thessaly after being kicked out by the Thessalians who had been living in Epirus.
Paul Kretschmer
made a strong case that Pelasgian
was a pre-Greek substrate, perhaps Anatolian
, taking up a classical theme of remnant populations existing in pockets among the Greek speakers, in mountainous and rural Arcadia
and in inaccessible coasts of the far south. This view left Müller's proto-Greeks without a place to be, but Kretschmer did not return the Heracleidae or their Dorian allies from Macedon and Thessaly. Instead he removed the earliest Greeks to the trail leading from the plains of Asia, where he viewed the Proto-Indo-European language
as having broken up about 2500 BC. Somewhere between Greece and there a new cradle of the Greek tribes developed, from which Proto-Ionians at about 2000 BC, Proto-Achaeans at about 1600 BC and Dorians at about 1200 BC exited to swoop down on an increasingly less aboriginal Greece as the three waves of external Greeks.
Kretschmer was confident that if the unknown homeland of the Greeks was not then known, archaeology would find it. The handbooks of Greek history from then on spoke of Greeks entering Greece. As late as 1956 J.B. Bury's History of Greece (3rd edition) wrote of an "...invasion which brought the Greek language into Greece." Over that half-century Greek and Balkan archaeology united in an effort to locate the Dorians further north than Greece. The idea was combined with a view that the sea peoples
were part of the same north-south migration at about 1200 BC.
The weakness in this theory is that it requires an invaded Greece and its mirror image where Greek evolved and continued to evolve into dialects contemporaneously with the invaded Greece. However, although the invaded Greece was amply represented by evidence of all sorts, there was no evidence at all of its hidden mirror. Similarly, the sea peoples failed to show anywhere except in the sea for which the Egyptians named them. Retaining Müller's three waves and Kretschmer's Pelasgian pockets the scholars continued to search for the Dorians in other quarters. Müller's common ancestor of Greek and Latin had vanished by 1950, breaking that link, and by 1960 although given lip service still the concept of Greek developing outside of Greece had seen its best days.
, an early form of Greek written in a syllabary
. It became known as Mycenaean Greek. Comparing it with the later Greek dialects scholars could see that a development had taken place. For example, classical Greek anak-s, "king", came from a reconstructed *wanak- and a glance at Linear B turned up wa-na-ka.
Ernst Risch lost no time in proposing that there was never any more than one migration, which brought proto-Greek into Greece, and it dissimilated into dialects in Greece. Meanwhile the linguists closest to the decipherment were having doubts about the classification of proto-Greek. John Chadwick
summarizing in 1976 wrote:
In another ten years the "alternative view" was becoming the standard one. JP Mallory
wrote in 1989 concerning the various hypotheses of proto-Greek that had been put forward since the decipherment:
By the end of the 20th century the concept of an invasion by external Greek speakers had ceased to be the mainsteam view, (although still asserted by a minority), thus Geoffrey Horrocks writes:
If the different dialects had developed within Greece no invasions were required to explain their presence.
. Indeed, the Pylos tablets recorded the dispatch of "coast-watchers", to be followed not long after by the burning of the palace, presumably by invaders from the sea. Carl Blegen
wrote:
Blegen follows Furumark in dating Mycenaean IIIB to 1300-1230 BC. Blegen himself dated the Dorian invasion to 1200 BC.
A destruction by Dorians has its problems (see next section) and is not the only possible explanation. At approximately this time Hittite
power in Anatolia collapsed with the destruction of their capital Hattusa
and the late 19th
and the 20th
dynasties of Egypt also suffered invasions of the Sea Peoples
. Another theory, reported for instance by Thomas and Conant, attributes the ruin of the Peloponnesus to them:
The identity of the foes remained a question. The evidence on sea peoples
indicates that some of them may have been Greek. Michael Wood suggests relying on tradition, especially that of Thucydides
:
In summary, the Mycenaean world disintegrated through "feuding clans of the great royal families." The possibility of some sort of internal struggle had long been under consideration. Chadwick
after following and critiquing the development of different views, in 1976 settled on a theory of his own: there was no Dorian invasion. The palaces were destroyed by Dorians who had been in the Peloponnesus all along as a subservient lower class, and now were staging a revolution. Chadwick espoused the view that northern Greek was the more conservative and proposed that southern Greek had developed under Minoan influence as a palace language..
After the Greek Dark Ages
, much of the population of the Peloponnesus spoke Dorian; the evidence of Linear B
and literary traditions, such as the works of Homer
, is that they spoke Achaean before, and it must have been Mycenaean Greek. Equally as significantly, society in the Peloponnesus had undergone a total change from states ruled by kings presiding over a Palace economy
to a caste
system ruled by a Dorian master ethnos at Sparta
.
According to the scholar H. Michell: "If we assume that the Dorian invasion took place some time in the twelfth century, we certainly know nothing of them for the next hundred years." Blegen admitted that in the sub-Mycenaean period following 1200: "the whole area seems to have been sparsely populated or almost deserted."
The problem is that there are no traces of any Dorians anywhere until the start of the Geometric period at about 950 BC. This simple pottery decoration appears to be correlated with other changes in material culture
, such as the introduction of iron weapons and alterations in burial practices from Mycenaean group burials in tholos tombs to individual burials and cremation. These can certainly associated with the historical Dorian settlers, such as those of Sparta in the 10th century BC. However, they appear to have been general over all of Greece; moreover, the new weapons would not have been used in 1200.
The scholars were now faced with the conundrum
of an invasion at 1200 but a resettlement at 950. One explanation is that the destruction of 1200 was not caused by them, and that the quasi-mythical return of the Heracleidae is to be associated with settlement at Sparta c. 950.
The quest for the Dorian invasion had begun as an attempt to explain the differences between Peloponnesian society depicted by Homer
and the historical Dorians of classical Greece. The first scholars to work on the problem were historians researching the only resources available to them: the Greek legends. The philologists (later linguists) subsequently took up the challenge but in the end only brought the problem into sharper definition. Finally the archaeologists have inherited the issue. Perhaps some distinctively Dorian archaeological evidence will turn up or has turned up giving precise insight as to how and when Peloponnesian society changed so radically.
The historians had defined the Greek Dark Ages
, a period of general decline, in this case the disappearance of the palace economy
and with it law and order, loss of writing, diminishment of trade, decrease in population and abandonment of settlements (destroyed or undestroyed), metals starvation and loss of the fine arts or at least the diminution of their quality, evidenced especially in pottery. By its broadest definition the dark age lasted between 1200 and 750, the start of the archaic
or orientalizing period, when influence from the Middle East via the overseas colonies stimulated a recovery.
A dark age of poverty, low population and metals starvation is not compatible with the idea of great population movements of successful warriors wielding the latest military equipment sweeping into the Peloponnesus and taking it over to rebuild civilization their way. This dark age consists of three periods of art and archaeology
: sub-Mycenaean, Proto-geometric and Geometric. The most successful, the Geometric, seems to fit the Dorians better, but there is a gap, and this period is not localized to and did not begin in Dorian territory. It is more to be associated with Athens
, an Ionian state.
Still, the Dorians did share in the Geometric period and therefore to find its origin might be perhaps to find the origin of the Dorians. The Geometric originated by clear transition from the Proto-geometric. The logical break in material culture is the start of the Proto-geometric at about 1050 BC, which leaves a gap of 150 years. The year 1050 offers nothing distinctively Dorian either, but if the Dorians were present in the Geometric, and they were not always in place as an unrecorded lower class, 1050 is most likely time of entry. Cartledge says humorously:
The question remains open to further investigation.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
to explain the replacement of pre-classical dialects and traditions in southern Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
by the ones that prevailed in Classical Greece
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
. The latter were named Dorian by the ancient Greek writers after the historical population that owned them, the Dorians.
Greek legend asserted that the Dorians took possession of the Peloponnesus in an event called the Return of the Heracleidae . Classical scholars saw in the legend a hypothetically real event they termed the Dorian invasion. The meaning of the concept has changed several times, as historians, philologists and archaeologists used it in attempts to explain the cultural discontinuities expressed in the data of their fields. The pattern of arrival of Dorian culture on certain islands in the Mediterranean, such as Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
, is also not well elucidated. The Dorians colonised a number of sites on Crete such as Lato
Lato
Lato was an ancient city of Crete, the ruins of which are located approximately 3 km from the small town of Kritsa. The Dorian city-state was built in a defensible position overlooking Mirabello Bay between two peaks, both of which became acropolises to the city...
.
Despite nearly 200 years of investigation the historicity of the Dorian invasion has never been established. The meaning of the concept has become to some degree amorphous. The work done on it has mainly served to rule out various speculations. The possibility of a real Dorian invasion remains open.
Return of the Heracleidae
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
(the Heracleidae
Heracleidae
In Greek mythology, the Heracleidae or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles , especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira Other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus...
), exiled after his death, returned after some generations in order to reclaim dominion their ancestor Heracles had held in the Peloponnesus. The Greece to which the traditions refer is the mythic one, now considered to be Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece was a cultural period of Bronze Age Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites...
. The theme of the "return of the Heracleidae
Heracleidae
In Greek mythology, the Heracleidae or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles , especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira Other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus...
" is considered legendary. The exact descent differs from one ancient author to another, the salient point being that in each case a traditional ruling clan traced its origin, thus its legitimacy, to Heracles.
The translation of "return" is strictly English; the Greek connotations are quite different. The Greek words are katienai and katerchesthai, literally "to descend", "come down" or "go down" or less commonly "be brought down." It means a descent from uplands to lowlands, or from the earth to the grave, or a rushing down upon as a flood, or sweeping down upon as a wind or a ship, or those returning from exile (which typically would have to be by ship). It is never used as a simple return home, which is a nostos (as in nostalgia or the "returns from Troy"
Nostoi
The Nostoi , also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks, was a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse...
). The Heracleidae are not returning to a former home for which they are homesick, they are sweeping down upon the Peloponnesus in war, thus inviting the English translation of invasion.
There is, however, a distinction between Heracleidae and Dorians. George Grote
George Grote
George Grote was an English classical historian, best known in the field for a major work, the voluminous History of Greece, still read.-Early life:He was born at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent...
summarizes the relationship as follows:
"Herakles himself had rendered inestimable aid to the Dorian king AegimiusHyllus, a PerseidAegimiusAegimius was the Greek mythological ancestor of the Dorians, who is described as their king and lawgiver at the time when they were yet inhabiting the northern parts of Thessaly. He asked Heracles for help in a war against the Lapiths and, in gratitude, offered him one-third of his kingdom...
, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithae .... Herakles defeated the Lapithae and slew their king Koronus; in return for which Aegimius assigned to his deliverers one third part of his whole territory and adopted HyllusHyllusIn Greek mythology, Hyllus was the son of Heracles and Deianira, husband of Iole, nursed by Abia....
as his son."
Perseus
Perseus ,Perseos and Perseas are not used in English. the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths of the Twelve Olympians...
, was driven from the state of Mycenae
Mycenae
Mycenae is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 11 km to the south; Corinth, 48 km to the north...
into exile after the death of Heracles by a dynastic rival, Eurystheus
Eurystheus
In Greek mythology, Eurystheus was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean strongholds in the Argolid, although other authors including Homer and Euripides cast him as ruler of Argos: Sthenelus was his father and the "victorious horsewoman" Nicippe his mother, and he was a grandson of the hero...
, another
"After the death ... of Herakles, his son Hyllos and his other children were expelled and persecuted by Eurystheus ... Eurystheus invaded AtticaThe PelopidAtticaAttica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
, but perished in the attempt .... All the sons of Eurystheus lost their lives ... with him, so that the Perseid family was now represented only by the Herakleids ...."
Pelops
In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....
family now assumed power. The Heraclids "endeavored to recover the possessions from which they had been expelled" but were defeated by the Ionians at the Isthmus of Corinth
Isthmus of Corinth
The Isthmus of Corinth is the narrow land bridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of the mainland of Greece, near the city of Corinth. The word "isthmus" comes from the Ancient Greek word for "neck" and refers to the narrowness of the land. The Isthmus was known in the ancient...
. Hyllus staked peace for three generations against immediate reoccupation on a single combat and was killed by Echemus
Echemus
In Greek mythology, Echemus was the king of Arcadia. He succeeded Lycurgus, and married Timandra, daughter of Leda and Tyndareus of Sparta.Timandra bore him a son, Laodocus, before deserting Echemus for Phyleus, the king of Dulichium....
of Arcadia
Arcadia
Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
.
The Heracleidae now found it prudent to claim the Dorian land granted to Heracles: "and from this moment the Herakleids and Dorians became intimately united together into one social communion." Three generations later the Heracleidae with Dorian collusion occupied the Peloponnesus, an event Grote terms a "victorious invasion."
The term "invasion"
Neither of those two words exactly fit the return, as they imply an incursion from outside a society to within, but the Dorians were not outside of either Greece or Greek society. William Mitford
William Mitford
William Mitford , English historian, was the elder of the two sons of John Mitford, a barrister and his wife Philadelphia Reveley.-Youth:...
's History of Greece (1784–1810) described a "Dorian conquest" followed by "a revolution in Peloponnesus so complete that, except in the rugged province of Arcadia, nothing remained unaltered." Grote
George Grote
George Grote was an English classical historian, best known in the field for a major work, the voluminous History of Greece, still read.-Early life:He was born at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent...
's first two volumes did not appear until 1846, although he was working on them since 1822.
In 1824 Karl Otfried Müller
Karl Otfried Müller
Karl Otfried Müller , was a German scholar and Philodorian, or admirer of ancient Sparta, who introduced the modern study of Greek mythology.-Biography:...
's Die Dorier was published in German and was translated into English by Tufnel and Lewis for publication in 1830. They use such terms as "the Doric invasion" and "the invasian of the Dorians" to translate Müller's "Die Einwanderung von den Doriern" (literally: "the migration of the Dorians"), which was quite a different concept; presumably "invasion" was already current in English.
On one level the Einwanderung meant no more than the Heraklidenzug, the return of the Heracleidae. However, Müller was also applying the sense of Völkerwanderung to it, which was being used of the Germanic migrations. Müller's approach was philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
. In trying to explain the distribution of tribes and dialects he hypothesized that the aboriginal or Pelasgian population was Hellenic. His first paragraph of the Introduction asserts:
Müller goes on to propose that the original Pelasgian language was the common ancestor of Greek and Latin, that it evolved into Proto-Greek and was corrupted in Macedon and Thessaly by invasions of Illyrians. This same pressure of Illyrians drove forth Greeks speaking Achaean (includes Aeolian), Ionian and finally Dorian in three diachronic waves, explaining the dialect distribution of Greek in classical times.
In 1902, K. Paparigopoulos called this event the "Descent of the Heraclidae" stating that the Heraclidae came from Thessaly after being kicked out by the Thessalians who had been living in Epirus.
Kretschmer's external Greeks
Toward the end of the 19th century the philologistPhilology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
Paul Kretschmer
Paul Kretschmer
Paul Kretschmer was a German linguist who studied the earliest history and interrelations of the Indo-European languages and showed how they were influenced by non-Indo-European languages, such as Etruscan....
made a strong case that Pelasgian
Pelasgians
The name Pelasgians was used by some ancient Greek writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or who preceded the Greeks in Greece, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world." In general, "Pelasgian" has come...
was a pre-Greek substrate, perhaps Anatolian
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
, taking up a classical theme of remnant populations existing in pockets among the Greek speakers, in mountainous and rural Arcadia
Arcadia
Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
and in inaccessible coasts of the far south. This view left Müller's proto-Greeks without a place to be, but Kretschmer did not return the Heracleidae or their Dorian allies from Macedon and Thessaly. Instead he removed the earliest Greeks to the trail leading from the plains of Asia, where he viewed the Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
as having broken up about 2500 BC. Somewhere between Greece and there a new cradle of the Greek tribes developed, from which Proto-Ionians at about 2000 BC, Proto-Achaeans at about 1600 BC and Dorians at about 1200 BC exited to swoop down on an increasingly less aboriginal Greece as the three waves of external Greeks.
Kretschmer was confident that if the unknown homeland of the Greeks was not then known, archaeology would find it. The handbooks of Greek history from then on spoke of Greeks entering Greece. As late as 1956 J.B. Bury's History of Greece (3rd edition) wrote of an "...invasion which brought the Greek language into Greece." Over that half-century Greek and Balkan archaeology united in an effort to locate the Dorians further north than Greece. The idea was combined with a view that the sea peoples
Sea Peoples
The Sea Peoples were a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty and especially during year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty...
were part of the same north-south migration at about 1200 BC.
The weakness in this theory is that it requires an invaded Greece and its mirror image where Greek evolved and continued to evolve into dialects contemporaneously with the invaded Greece. However, although the invaded Greece was amply represented by evidence of all sorts, there was no evidence at all of its hidden mirror. Similarly, the sea peoples failed to show anywhere except in the sea for which the Egyptians named them. Retaining Müller's three waves and Kretschmer's Pelasgian pockets the scholars continued to search for the Dorians in other quarters. Müller's common ancestor of Greek and Latin had vanished by 1950, breaking that link, and by 1960 although given lip service still the concept of Greek developing outside of Greece had seen its best days.
Greek origin in Greece
Additional progress in the search for the Dorian invasion came about as a result of the decipherment of Linear BLinear B
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
, an early form of Greek written in a syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
. It became known as Mycenaean Greek. Comparing it with the later Greek dialects scholars could see that a development had taken place. For example, classical Greek anak-s, "king", came from a reconstructed *wanak- and a glance at Linear B turned up wa-na-ka.
Ernst Risch lost no time in proposing that there was never any more than one migration, which brought proto-Greek into Greece, and it dissimilated into dialects in Greece. Meanwhile the linguists closest to the decipherment were having doubts about the classification of proto-Greek. John Chadwick
John Chadwick
John Chadwick was an English linguist and classical scholar most famous for his role in deciphering Linear B, along with Michael Ventris.-Early life and education:...
summarizing in 1976 wrote:
"Let us therefore explore the alternative view. This hypothesis is that the Greek language did not exist before the twentieth century B.C., but was formed in Greece by the mixture of an indigenous population with invaders who spoke another language .... What this language was is a difficult question ... the exact stage reached in development at the time of the arrival is difficult to predict."
In another ten years the "alternative view" was becoming the standard one. JP Mallory
JP Mallory
James Patrick Mallory is an Irish-American archaeologist and Indo-Europeanist. Mallory is a professor at the Queen's University, Belfast.-Biography:...
wrote in 1989 concerning the various hypotheses of proto-Greek that had been put forward since the decipherment:
"Reconciliation of all these different theories seems out of the question ... the current state of our knowledge of the Greek dialects can accommodate Indo-Europeans entering Greece at any time between 2200 and 1600 BC to emerge later as Greek speakers."
By the end of the 20th century the concept of an invasion by external Greek speakers had ceased to be the mainsteam view, (although still asserted by a minority), thus Geoffrey Horrocks writes:
"Greek is now widely believed to be the product of contact between Indo-European immigrants and the speakers of the indigenous languages of the Balkan peninsula beginning c. 2,000 B.C."
If the different dialects had developed within Greece no invasions were required to explain their presence.
Destruction at the end of Mycenaean IIIB
Meanwhile the archaeologists were encountering what appeared to be a wave of destruction of Mycenaean palacesMycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece was a cultural period of Bronze Age Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites...
. Indeed, the Pylos tablets recorded the dispatch of "coast-watchers", to be followed not long after by the burning of the palace, presumably by invaders from the sea. Carl Blegen
Carl Blegen
Carl William Blegen was an American archaeologist famous for his work on the site of Pylos in modern day Greece and Troy in modern day Turkey...
wrote:
"the telltale track of the Dorians must be recognized in the fire-scarred ruins of all the great palaces and the more important towns which ... were blotted out at the end of Mycenaean IIIB."
Blegen follows Furumark in dating Mycenaean IIIB to 1300-1230 BC. Blegen himself dated the Dorian invasion to 1200 BC.
A destruction by Dorians has its problems (see next section) and is not the only possible explanation. At approximately this time Hittite
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
power in Anatolia collapsed with the destruction of their capital Hattusa
Hattusa
Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River ....
and the late 19th
Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt
The Nineteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt was one of the periods of the Egyptian New Kingdom. Founded by Vizier Ramesses I, whom Pharaoh Horemheb chose as his successor to the throne, this dynasty is best known for its military conquests in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria.The warrior kings of the...
and the 20th
Twentieth dynasty of Egypt
The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of ancient Egypt are often combined under the group title, New Kingdom. This dynasty is considered to be the last one of the New Kingdom of Egypt, and was followed by the Third Intermediate Period....
dynasties of Egypt also suffered invasions of the Sea Peoples
Sea Peoples
The Sea Peoples were a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty and especially during year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty...
. Another theory, reported for instance by Thomas and Conant, attributes the ruin of the Peloponnesus to them:
"Evidence on the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean kingdom of PylosPylosPylos , historically known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former...
describing the dispatch of rowers and watchers to the coast, for instance, may well date to the time that the Egyptian pharoh was expecting the arrival of foes."
The identity of the foes remained a question. The evidence on sea peoples
Sea Peoples
The Sea Peoples were a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty and especially during year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty...
indicates that some of them may have been Greek. Michael Wood suggests relying on tradition, especially that of Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
:
"... let us not forget the legends, at least as models for what might have happened. They tell us of constant rivalries with the royal clans of the Heroic Age - AtreusAtreusIn Greek mythology, Atreus was a king of Mycenae, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae....
and ThyestesThyestesIn Greek mythology, Thyestes was the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, King of Olympia, and father of Pelopia and Aegisthus. Thyestes and his twin brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olympia...
, AgamemnonAgamemnonIn Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...
and Aigisthes, and so on ...."
In summary, the Mycenaean world disintegrated through "feuding clans of the great royal families." The possibility of some sort of internal struggle had long been under consideration. Chadwick
John Chadwick
John Chadwick was an English linguist and classical scholar most famous for his role in deciphering Linear B, along with Michael Ventris.-Early life and education:...
after following and critiquing the development of different views, in 1976 settled on a theory of his own: there was no Dorian invasion. The palaces were destroyed by Dorians who had been in the Peloponnesus all along as a subservient lower class, and now were staging a revolution. Chadwick espoused the view that northern Greek was the more conservative and proposed that southern Greek had developed under Minoan influence as a palace language..
Invasion or migration
Greek Dark Ages
The Greek Dark Age or Ages also known as Geometric or Homeric Age are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BC, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th...
, much of the population of the Peloponnesus spoke Dorian; the evidence of Linear B
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
and literary traditions, such as the works of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, is that they spoke Achaean before, and it must have been Mycenaean Greek. Equally as significantly, society in the Peloponnesus had undergone a total change from states ruled by kings presiding over a Palace economy
Palace economy
A palace economy or redistribution economy is a system of economic organisation in which a substantial share of the wealth flows into the control of a centralized administration, the palace, and out from there to the general population, which may be allowed its own sources of income but relies...
to a caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
system ruled by a Dorian master ethnos at Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
.
According to the scholar H. Michell: "If we assume that the Dorian invasion took place some time in the twelfth century, we certainly know nothing of them for the next hundred years." Blegen admitted that in the sub-Mycenaean period following 1200: "the whole area seems to have been sparsely populated or almost deserted."
The problem is that there are no traces of any Dorians anywhere until the start of the Geometric period at about 950 BC. This simple pottery decoration appears to be correlated with other changes in material culture
Material culture
In the social sciences, material culture is a term that refers to the relationship between artifacts and social relations. Studying a culture's relationship to materiality is a lens through which social and cultural attitudes can be discussed...
, such as the introduction of iron weapons and alterations in burial practices from Mycenaean group burials in tholos tombs to individual burials and cremation. These can certainly associated with the historical Dorian settlers, such as those of Sparta in the 10th century BC. However, they appear to have been general over all of Greece; moreover, the new weapons would not have been used in 1200.
The scholars were now faced with the conundrum
Conundrum
Conundrum may refer to:* A riddle whose answer is or involves a pun or unexpected twist* A logical postulation that evades resolution, an intricate and difficult problem- Literature :...
of an invasion at 1200 but a resettlement at 950. One explanation is that the destruction of 1200 was not caused by them, and that the quasi-mythical return of the Heracleidae is to be associated with settlement at Sparta c. 950.
Closing the gap
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
and the historical Dorians of classical Greece. The first scholars to work on the problem were historians researching the only resources available to them: the Greek legends. The philologists (later linguists) subsequently took up the challenge but in the end only brought the problem into sharper definition. Finally the archaeologists have inherited the issue. Perhaps some distinctively Dorian archaeological evidence will turn up or has turned up giving precise insight as to how and when Peloponnesian society changed so radically.
The historians had defined the Greek Dark Ages
Greek Dark Ages
The Greek Dark Age or Ages also known as Geometric or Homeric Age are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BC, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th...
, a period of general decline, in this case the disappearance of the palace economy
Palace economy
A palace economy or redistribution economy is a system of economic organisation in which a substantial share of the wealth flows into the control of a centralized administration, the palace, and out from there to the general population, which may be allowed its own sources of income but relies...
and with it law and order, loss of writing, diminishment of trade, decrease in population and abandonment of settlements (destroyed or undestroyed), metals starvation and loss of the fine arts or at least the diminution of their quality, evidenced especially in pottery. By its broadest definition the dark age lasted between 1200 and 750, the start of the archaic
Archaic period in Greece
The Archaic period in Greece was a period of ancient Greek history that followed the Greek Dark Ages. This period saw the rise of the polis and the founding of colonies, as well as the first inklings of classical philosophy, theatre in the form of tragedies performed during Dionysia, and written...
or orientalizing period, when influence from the Middle East via the overseas colonies stimulated a recovery.
A dark age of poverty, low population and metals starvation is not compatible with the idea of great population movements of successful warriors wielding the latest military equipment sweeping into the Peloponnesus and taking it over to rebuild civilization their way. This dark age consists of three periods of art and archaeology
Greek art
Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan prehistorical civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the ancient period...
: sub-Mycenaean, Proto-geometric and Geometric. The most successful, the Geometric, seems to fit the Dorians better, but there is a gap, and this period is not localized to and did not begin in Dorian territory. It is more to be associated with Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, an Ionian state.
Still, the Dorians did share in the Geometric period and therefore to find its origin might be perhaps to find the origin of the Dorians. The Geometric originated by clear transition from the Proto-geometric. The logical break in material culture is the start of the Proto-geometric at about 1050 BC, which leaves a gap of 150 years. The year 1050 offers nothing distinctively Dorian either, but if the Dorians were present in the Geometric, and they were not always in place as an unrecorded lower class, 1050 is most likely time of entry. Cartledge says humorously:
"It has of late become an acknowledged scandal that the Dorians, archaeologically speaking, do not exist. That is, there is no cultural trait surviving in the material record for the two centuries or so after 1200 which can be regarded as a peculiarly Dorian hallmark. Robbed of their patents for Geometric pottery, cremation burial, iron-working and, the unkindest prick of all, the humble straight pin, the hapless Dorians stand naked before their creator - or, some would say, inventor."
The question remains open to further investigation.
See also
- Ancient Greek dialects
- Comparative methodComparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
- Dorians
- Doric GreekDoric GreekDoric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...
- DorisDoris- Geography :* Doris , region of Asia Minor inhabited by Dorians* Doris , region in central Greece in which the Dorians had their traditional homeland* Doris, Iowa, USA- People :* Doris, mother of Antipater...
- DorusDorus-People:*Dorus de Vries, Dutch footballer*Dorus Rijkers, Dutch lifeboat captain*Stage name of Dutch comedian Tom Manders-Greek mythology:*Dorus, son of Hellen and founder of the Dorian nation*Dorus, son of Apollo and Phthia, and the father of Xanthippe...
, the eponymous founderEponymAn eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named... - Greek Dark AgesGreek Dark AgesThe Greek Dark Age or Ages also known as Geometric or Homeric Age are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BC, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th...
- Historical linguisticsHistorical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
- SpartaSpartaSparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
- Vedic PeriodVedic periodThe Vedic period was a period in history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed. The time span of the period is uncertain. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas, was composed roughly between 1700–1100 BCE, also...