Indo-Europeans (Pomeroy, Burstein, Donlan, and Tolbert Roberts 1999)

[Guest guest]

" During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was

considerable conjecture about the nature of the social organization,

and culture of these earliest Greek-speakers. It was assumed that

the Indo-Europeans were a superior race of northern horse-

riding " Aryan " warriors, who swept down into southern Europe and

violently imposed their languages and customs on the weaker,

unwarlike, agrarian natives. Such suppositions were the products of a

racially biased Eurocentrism. No scholar today accepts any part of

this " Aryan myth, " which was the pretext for many crimes against

humanity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in

the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis and Fascists in the 1930's and

40's.

The most we can safely say about these incoming Indo-European Greek

speakers is that for subsistence they practiced herding and

agriculture, and they knew metallurgy and other crafts, such as

pottery and cloth-making. Of their society, we can surmise only that

they were organized in families and larger groups (clans and tribes)

that were patriarchical (the father was the supreme authority figure)

and patrilineal (descent was reckoned in the male line). Their

primary divinity was Zeus, a powerful male god; and they were a

warlike people with a hierarchical leadership system. The once

common notion that the pre-Indo-European societies of Greece around

2000 BC were polar opposites—peaceful, nonhierarchical, and

matriarchical (where descent, inheritance, and authority came down

through the mother)—is now discredited. In most respects, except for

language, religion, and some relatively minor features (such as

architecture and pottery), the two peoples were probably very similar

(Pomeroy, Burstein, Donlan and Tolbert Roberts 1999, pp. 10-11). "

" Despite this vast outpouring of scholarship, interpretations of

Alexander's character and goals differ widely. Historians have cast

Alexander in many roles; as the chief agent in the spread of

Hellenism, as an idealistic believer in the unity of mankind, as an

Aryan superman, and, more recently, as a brutal conqueror without

constructive plans for the future of his empire. The reasons for

this lack of agreement on even the most basic issues of Alexander's

biography among Greek historians are clear: the limitations of the

available sources for his life and reign and historians' difficulty

in transcending their own historical context (Pomeroy, Burstein,

Donlan and Tolbert Roberts 1999, p. 398). "

Comment: The authors seem to be unsure if these " Indo-Europeans "

even existed. Assuming they did, they reject the Pontic steppe horse

chariot theory in favor of Renfrew's farming hypothesis.

Pomeroy, S. B., Burstein, S. M., Donlan, W. and Tolbert Roberts, J.

(1999). Ancient Greece: a political, social, and cultural history.

New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0-19-509742-4 (cloth).

M. Kelkar