QuoteReplyTopic: Was there a Dorian Invasion? Posted: 19-Mar-2006 at 19:29
Originally posted by Maljkovic
Why can't a war result in both sides being destroyed? Because destruction of one side is brought on by the other side. When one side is destroyed, it can no longer destroy the other side. The result of this reasoning is that Peloponese was conqured by some outside power or that it fell under the rulling of a single Peloponesean city, and that the remains of this city have not yet been discovered. This unknown city would then be the only one that was conqured by the Dorians. But I doubt that, I believe Francis is right about the Dorians being only a migration.
My proof of that is the myth of Cyclop Walls. Greeks from later period (Dorians) believed these walls to be built by giants, which they would of known wasn't true if they had fought with the people who actually did build them (Acheans). Therefore, Achean civilization was destroyed before the Dorian arrival.
That's no "proof", at most some sort of arguable "indication".
Notice please that many centuries had passed through when we find the Greeks and teir cultural heritage again in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. Dorians may have called the walls Cyclopeans but they also talked of an invasion of Peloponesos, the conquest of Argos, ect.. They had such invasion as fundational myth, together with the legends of Herakles.
Yes, Dorian culture is pretty much simple, barbaric, but they kept oral memory of those times, while Athenians, for instance didn't.
According Herodotus mother home of Dorians (Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and the Dymanes) during theDeucalionKingdom were in the Pthiotis (middle Greece, close to Thessalia)and during DorosKingdom were in the Histiaiotis (Thessalia) region. When Cadmeians they turned out from there, Dorians it dwelt in Pindos and was called Makednian.
Thence moved afterwards to Dryopis (middle Greece) and from Dryopis it came finally to Peloponnesus (displacing the native Achaeans), and began to be called Dorian.
Dorians was a tribe migrated from its place to other and in any direction (Macedonia, Thessaly, Peloponnisos, Rhodos, Cretee.t.c.).
Now if we accept Herodotus work, Mythology (as you said) and finally the archaeological data, we found that Dorians never invaded outside to inside.
The Dorians originated from north, northwestern Greece ( Macedonia and Epirus). From these points they began to invade toward the south, into the center of mainland Greece, and then to the Peloponnesian, and the southern Aegean islands. Once their invasions of central Greece ceased, their descent to southern Greece produced waves of invasions through the Peloponnesus, into Crete, and westward to Rhodes. Dorian invasion in the Peloponnese is dated on the basis of the catalogues of the Spartan kings to 1148 B.C. or 1104 B.C. according to two different calculations, that little differ from the years 1125 B.C. or 1120 B.C. provided by archaeological data concerning the same event
but the Dorians on the contrary have been constantly on the move; their home in Deucalions reign was Phthiotis and in the reign of Dorus son of Hellen the country known as Histiaeotis in the neighbourhood of Ossa and Olympus; driven from there by the Cadmeians they settled in Pindus and were known as Makednoi; thence they migrated to Dryopis, and finally to the Peloponnese, where they got their present name of Dorians.
[Herodotus, Book I, 56]
A a reference by Diodorus of Sicily in his historical description of a Dorian migration in relation to Crete:
and it is said that the third race, the Dorians, reached Crete under the leadership of Tektamos, the son of Doros. And indeed it is said that the greater part of these peoples were gathered in the region around Mount Olympus
Pelopids and Heraclids the "Dorian Invasion" 1
Upon the death of Eurystheus an oracle tells the Mycenaeans to choose a Pelopid king and Atreus and Thyestes already installed in nearby Midea by Sthenelus contend for the prize. Atreus eventually wins out and his son, Orestes, returns to Mycenae and seizes the throne from Aletes, son of Aegisthus.
Orestes expanded his kingdom to include all of Argos, and he became king of Sparta by marrying Hermione, his cousin and the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. Finally, Tisamenus, Orestes' son by Hermione, the daughter of Helen, inherits the throne.
The Heracleidae ("children of Heracles") return to the Peloponnese, led by Hyllus, the son of Heracles, and Iolaus, Heracles' nephew, and contend with the Pelopidae ("children of Pelops") for possession of the Peloponnese.
The Heracleidae base their claim to power on their descent, through Heracles, from Perseus, the founder of Mycenae, whereas Tisamenus was a Pelopid whom the Heracleidae regard as a usurper.
The Dorian Invasion 2
After a year, the Heracleidae are driven out by plague and famine. Upon consulting the Delphic oracle, they were told that they had returned before their proper time: the god said they should await "the third crop."
Accordingly, after three years, the Heracleidae invade the Peloponnese again, and Hyllus challenges the Peloponnesians to single-armed combat. In the ensuing duel with Echemus, king of Arcadia, Hyllus is killed and the Heracleidae undertake to withdraw for fifty years.
The Heracleidae invade again, under the leadership of Aristomachus, the son of Hyllus and Heracles' grandson. But Aristomachus is slain in combat with Tisamenus and his army, and the Heracleidae withdraw once again.
Upon consulting the oracle again, the Heracleidae are told that "the third crop" referred to the third generation of Heracles' descendants.
The Return of the Heracleidae under Heracles' great-grandsons is finally successful although Aristodemus is slain by a thunderbolt, and his sons Procles and Eurysthenes assume leadership of his forces.
Temenus, Procles and Eurysthenes (the sons of Aristodemus), and Cresphontes cast lots for the kingdoms. Temenus becomes master of Argos, Procles and Eurysthenes of Sparta, and Cresphontes of Messenia.
Cresphontes secured the rule of Messenia for himself by the following stratagem: it was agreed that the first drawing of lots was for Argos, the second for Lacedaemon, and the third for Messenia. Both Temenus and the sons of Aristodemus throw stones into a pitcher of water, but Cresphontes cast in a clod of earth; since it was dissolved in the water, the other two lots turned up first.
I am showing that seeing as the only evidence for an "invasion" predates the Dorians, and the collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Dorians did not "invade" Mycenaean Greece and destroy it.As such, there is then no evidence that there was a Dorian invasion as opposed to a Dorian migration. Of course, you can feel free to prove me wrong.
A Dorian migration sounds closer to the mark. Was the Dorian period marked by wider cultural change in the aegean region/? Yes. It seems that the Dorian period, was also marked by new writing systems - and the assimilation of native culture. Could this have happened without some kind of military conquest? Don't know. The arrival of the first Greeks aruably spans a period of about a 1000 years - early to middle bronze age - until that is sorted out, its hard to say who destroyed the Mycenean civ.
The last I have read about the Mycenae civilization or more precisely about the Late Bronze Age is that all those nations, and civilizations were rather killed by a persistent drought lasting nearly 250 years.
This late information has been possible because we had developed diverse ways to measure past temperatures with diverse methods. We had been extracting undersea mud cores and for this period the temperature of the surface of the Sea in the Easter and West Mediterranean had been a few degrees colder. Other samples extracted from the Red Sea and near the Gulf of Oman had produced as well lower temperatures om the sea surface. Also samples from the Dead Sea and from some speleothermes in a cave in Syria. They take samples from stalactites and are able to tell the temperature for some period of time. In cases of drought they can see that the stalactites had ceased to grow. Th destructions, the fires, were the desperation of some warrying people searching for food.
You can see a video on this
Eric Cline | 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk
Or this one
Documentary Film ║ Bronze Age Collapse ★ 2016 (New)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ0m0Gr1-fI
I think this recent information would solve most of the problems.
My idea is that during a time, this land was almost inhabited because of the drought. As the situation become better, population was recovering and new immigrants arrived with iron arms. This people was a real minority and became the new masters of the land. They probably spoke and IE language like the previous people that were also bronze age immigrants. The language was not that different.
The aristocratic classes were the warriors and the rest were peasants and herders to provide food for the warriors.
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