Greece
Ancient DNA reveals Minoan and Mycenaean origins
An analysis of ancient DNA has revealed that Ancient Minoans and Mycenaens were genetically similar with both peoples descending from Neolithic Anatolian and Aegean farmers who likely migrated to Greece and Crete. ... A paper* published today in Nature suggests that, rather than being recently arrived, advanced outsiders, the Minoans had deep roots in the Aegean. The primary ancestors of both the Minoans and Mycenaeans were populations from Neolithic Western Anatolia and Greece and the two groups were very closely related to each other, and to modern Greeks.
The Minoans and Mycenaeans occupy an important place in Greek, and European, history. The Minoan civilization (c. 2600 to 1100 BC) has been described as the first literate society in Europe,... The Mycenaean civilization (c. 1700 to 1050 BC) originated in mainland Greece eventually controlling the nearby islands, including Crete.... the researchers analyzed genome-wide data from 19 individuals ...
The researchers found that the Minoans, rather than coming from a distant civilization, were locals, descended from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean. They found that the Minoans and Mycenaeans were very closely related, but with some specific differences that made them distinct from each other. Both the Bronze Age Minoans and Mycenaeans, as well as their neighbors in Bronze Age Anatolia, derived most of their ancestry from a Neolithic Anatolian population, and a smaller component from farther east, related to populations in the Caucasus and Iran....
It was previously believed that this eastern ancestry was brought to Europe by steppe pastoralists from the north, who themselves shared this eastern ancestry. However, although the Minoans have this eastern heritage, they do not show genetic heritage from the northern steppe populations. On the other hand, the Mycenaeans show evidence of both eastern and northern genetic heritage. This indicates that, at least in some cases, this eastern heritage from the Caucasus and Iran arrived in Europe on its own, perhaps in a previously unknown migration event. It also indicates that the migration of the northern steppe pastoralists reached as far as mainland Greece, but did not reach the Minoans on Crete....
"Neolithic samples from Greece, down to the Final Neolithic, approximately 4100 BC, do not possess either type of ancestry, suggesting that the admixture we detect probably occurred during the 4th-2nd millennium BCE time window," ...
While they are not identical to the Bronze Age populations, modern Greeks are genetically closely related to the Mycenaeans. Modern Greeks show some additional admixture with other groups and a corresponding decrease in heritage from the Neolithic Anatolians. This suggests that there has been a large degree of population continuity in Greece, but it has not been isolated.
"It is remarkable how persistent the ancestry of the first European farmers is in Greece and other parts of southern Europe, but this does not mean that the populations there were completely isolated. There were at least two additional migrations in the Aegean before the time of the Minoans and Mycenaeans and some additional admixture later. ...
The Discovery that Revealed Ancient Humans Navigated the Seas 130,000 Years Ago
It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on Crete Island in Greece.... The team of archaeologists were carrying out excavations in a gorge on the island of Crete when they discovered a Palaeolithic site in the canyon of Preveli, where more than 30 hand axes and hundreds of other stone tools, such as cleavers and scrapers, made from quartz were found scattered across more than 20 different locations. Until this discovery, it was believed that ancient humans reached Crete, Cyprus, a few other Greek islands, and possibly Sardinia, no earlier than 12,000 years ago. However, remarkably, the stone tools found at Parkia were dated to at least 130,000 years old....
Archaeologists cannot be certain about whether the tools found on Crete were made by Homo sapiens or another pre-human ancestor. One hundred and thirty thousand years ago, modern humans shared the world with other hominids, like Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis....
Greek Flag of Turkic Symbol - 6000 B.C. ✠ TENGRI-CROSS ✠
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74F8qSF6egA
Greek Gods: The 7 Core Males Exposed
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/greek-gods-0012623
The ancient Greeks were a polytheistic people and worshiped a multitude of gods. The most important gods of the Greek pantheon were the Twelve Olympians, so-called due to the belief that they resided on the peak of Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece.
This group of deities consisted of Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Poseidon, and Zeus. This article will look at the male Olympians, i.e. Apollo, Ares, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Hermes, Poseidon, and Zeus...
Pelasgians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelasgians
refer either to the ancestors or forerunners of the Greeks, or to all inhabitants of Greece before the emergence or arrival of Greeks aware of their Greekness. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all the indigenous inhabitants of the Aegean Sea region and their cultures, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world".... An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelargos ("stork") and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Egypt, where they nest.... the ancient Greek word for "sea", pelagos and the Doric word plagos, "side" (which is flat) shared the same root, *plāk-, and that *pelag-skoi therefore meant "the sea men", where the sea is flat. This could be connected to the maritime marauders referred to as the Sea People in Egyptian records....
The Pelasgians first appear in the poems of Homer: those who are stated to be Pelasgians in the Iliad are among the allies of Troy. In the section known as the Catalogue of Trojans, they are mentioned between mentions of the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of south-eastern Europe (i.e., on the Hellespontine border of Thrace).... In the Odyssey, Odysseus, affecting to be Cretan himself, instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete, "language mixing with language side by side". Last on his list, Homer distinguishes them from other ethnicities on the island: "Cretans proper", Achaeans, Cydonians (of the city of Cydonia/modern Chania), Dorians, and "noble Pelasgians". The Iliad also refers to "Pelasgic Argos", which is most likely to be the plain of Thessaly, and to "Pelasgic Zeus", living in and ruling over Dodona... According to the Iliad, Pelasgians were camping out on the shore together with the following tribes, Towards the sea lie the Carians and the Paeonians, with curved bows, and the Leleges and Caucones, and the goodly Pelasgi....
Poets after Homer
One of the first was Hesiod; he calls Dodona, identified by reference to "the oak", the "seat of Pelasgians", thus explaining why Homer, in referring to Zeus as he ruled over Dodona, did not style him "Dodonic" but Pelasgic Zeus. He mentions also that Pelasgus (Greek: Πελασγός, the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians) was the father of King Lycaon of Arcadia. Asius of Samos (Ancient Greek: Ἄσιος ὁ Σάμιος) describes Pelasgus as the first man, born of the earth. In Aeschylus's play, The Suppliants, the Danaids fleeing from Egypt seek asylum from King Pelasgus of Argos...He claims to rule the Pelasgians and to be the "child of Palaichthon (or 'ancient earth') whom the earth brought forth". The Danaids call the country the "Apian hills" and claim that it understands the karbana audan (accusative case, and in the Dorian dialect), which many translate as "barbarian speech" but Karba (where the Karbanoi live) is in fact a non-Greek word. They claim to descend from ancestors in ancient Argos even though they are of a "dark race" (melanthes ... genos). Pelasgus admits that the land was once called Apia but compares them to the women of Libya and Egypt and wants to know how they can be from Argos on which they cite descent from Io. In a lost play by Aeschylus, Danaan Women, he defines the original homeland of the Pelasgians as the region around Mycenae.
Sophocles presents Inachus as the elder in the lands of Argos, the Heran hills and among the Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi, ..."Tyrsenians-Pelasgians"....
Euripides calls the inhabitants of Argos "Pelasgians" in his Orestes and The Phoenician Women. In a lost play entitled Archelaus, he says that Danaus, on coming to reside in the city of Inachus (Argos), formulated a law whereby the Pelasgians were now to be called Danaans.
The Roman poet Ovid describes the Greeks of the Trojan War as Pelasgians in his Metamorphoses....
Hecataeus of Miletus in a fragment from Genealogiai states that the genos ("clan") descending from Deucalion ruled Thessaly and that it was called "Pelasgia" from king Pelasgus. A second fragment states that Pelasgus was the son of Zeus and Niobe and that his son Lycaon founded a dynasty of kings of Arcadia....
Acusilaus asserts that the Peloponnesians were called "Pelasgians" after Pelasgus, a son of Zeus and Niobe.
According to Hellanicus, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings:... During Nanas's reign, the Pelasgians were driven out by the Greeks and departed for Italy. They landed at the mouth of the Po River, near the Etruscan city of Spina, then took the inland city "Crotona" (Κρότωνα), and from there colonized Tyrrhenia. The inference is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly (and indirectly of the Peloponnese) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans.
In the Histories, the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus...classified the Pelasgian language as "barbarian" and discussed various areas inhabited (or previously inhabited) by Pelasgians/Pelasgian-speakers along with their different neighbors/co-residents:... Pelasgians who still exist in settlements above Tyrrhenia in the city of Kreston, formerly neighbors to the Dorians who at that time lived in the land now called Thessaliotis; also the Pelasgians who once lived with the Athenians and then settled Plakia and Skylake in the Hellespont; and along with those who lived with all the other communities and were once Pelasgian but changed their names. If one can judge by this evidence, the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language. And so, if the Pelasgian language was spoken in all these places, the people of Attica being originally Pelasgian, must have learned a new language when they became Hellenes.... Furthermore, Herodotus discussed the relationship between the Pelasgians and the Hellenes, which, according to Pericles Georges, reflected the "rivalry within Greece itself between [...] Dorian Sparta and Ionian Athens." Specifically, Herodotus stated that the Hellenes separated from the Pelasgians with the former group surpassing the latter group numerically: As for the Hellenes, it seems obvious to me that ever since they came into existence they have always used the same language. They were weak at first, when they were separated from the Pelasgians, but they grew from a small group into a multitude,...
In Book 2, Herodotus alluded to the Pelasgians as inhabitants of Samothrace, an island located just north of Troy, before coming to Attica. Moreover, Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians simply called their gods theoi [Thor, or Thauth?] prior to naming them on the grounds that the gods established all affairs in their order (thentes); the author also stated that the gods of the Pelasgians were the Cabeiri. Later, Herodotus stated that the entire territory of Greece (i.e., Hellas) was initially called "Pelasgia". In Book 5, Herodotus mentioned the Pelasgians as inhabitants of the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.
In Book 6, the Pelasgians of Lemnos were originally Hellespontine Pelasgians who had been living in Athens but whom the Athenians resettled on Lemnos and then found it necessary to reconquer the island. This expulsion of (non-Athenian) Pelasgians from Athens...
In Book 7, Herodotus mentioned "the Pelasgian city of Antandrus" and wrote about the Ionian inhabitants of "the land now called Achaea" (i.e., northwestern Peloponnese) being "called, according to the Greek account, Aegialean Pelasgi, or Pelasgi of the Sea Shore"; afterwards, they were called Ionians. Moreover, Herodotus mentioned that the Aegean islanders "were a Pelasgian race, who in later times took the name Ionians" and that the Aeolians, according to the Hellenes, were known anciently as "Pelasgians." In Book 8, Herodotus mentioned that the Pelasgians of Athens were previously called Cranai.
In the History of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek historian Thucydides wrote about the Pelasgians stating that: Before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion [...] the country went by the names of the different tribes, in particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all. The author regards the Athenians as having lived in scattered independent settlements in Attica; but at some time after Theseus, they changed residence to Athens, which was already populated....
In the Roman Antiquities, Dionysius of Halicarnassus...He goes on to add that the nation wandered a great deal. They were originally natives of "Achaean Argos" descended from Pelasgus, the son of Zeus and Niobe. They migrated from there to Haemonia (later called Thessaly), where they "drove out the barbarian inhabitants" and divided the country into Phthiotis, Achaia, and Pelasgiotis, named after Achaeus, Phthius and Pelasgus, "the sons of Larissa and Poseidon."...
In his Description of Greece, Pausanias mentions the Arcadians who state that Pelasgus (along with his followers) was the first inhabitant of their land...When Arcas became king, Pelasgia was renamed "Arcadia" and its inhabitants (the Pelasgians) were renamed "Arcadians". Pausanias also mentions the Pelasgians as responsible for creating a wooden image of Orpheus in a sanctuary of Demeter at Therae...
Strabo dedicates a section of his Geography...As for the Pelasgi, almost all agree, in the first place, that some ancient tribe of that name spread throughout the whole of Greece, and particularly among the Aeolians of Thessaly....
Pelasgians spoke Greek based on the fact that areas traditionally inhabited by the "Pelasgi" (i.e. Arcadia and Attica) only spoke Greek and the few surviving Pelasgian words and inscriptions (i.e., Lamina Borgiana, Herodotus 2.52.1) betray Greek linguistic features despite the classical identification of Pelasgian as a barbaric language....
In western Anatolia, many toponyms with the "-ss-" infix derive from the adjectival suffix also seen in cuneiform Luwian and some Palaic; the classic example is Bronze Age Tarhuntassa (loosely meaning "City of the Storm God Tarhunta"), and later Parnassus possibly related to the Hittite word parna- or "house". These elements have led to a second theory that Pelasgian was to some degree an Anatolian language, or that it had areal influences from Anatolian languages.... Pelasgians spoke an Indo-European language and were, more specifically, related to the Thracians... Pelasgians were a sub-group of the Bronze Age Sea Peoples and identifiable in Egyptian inscriptions as the exonym PRŚT or PLŚT. However, this Egyptian name has more often been read as a cognate of a Hebrew exonym, פלשת Peleshet (Pəleeth) – that is, the Biblical Philistines....
Pelasgians had migrated from Asia Minor to the Aegean basin in the 4th millennium BC.... Certain mythological stories or deities that seem to have no parallels in the mythologies of other Indo-European peoples (e. g., the Olympians Athena, Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite, whose origins seem Anatolian or Levantine). Non-Greek inscriptions in the Mediterranean... Robert Graves asserts that certain elements of that mythology originate with the native Pelasgian people (namely the parts related to his concept of the White Goddess, an archetypical Earth Goddess) drawing additional support for his conclusion from his interpretations of other ancient literature: Irish, Welsh, Greek, Biblical, Gnostic, and medieval writings....
Pelasgians with the Ibero-Caucasian peoples of the prehistoric Caucasus, known to the Greeks as Colchians and Iberians....
Attica revealed Neolithic dwellings...Athenians as the descendants of the Pelasgians, who appear to descend continuously from the Neolithic inhabitants in Thessaly. Overall, the archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the Acropolis was inhabited by farmers as early as the 6th millennium BC....
Lemnos....Hephaisteia (i.e., Palaiopolis) where the Pelasgians, according to Herodotus, surrendered to Miltiades of Athens. There, a necropolis (c. 9th-8th centuries BC) was discovered revealing bronze objects, pots, and more than 130 ossuaries.... Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the Mycenaean Greek ra-mi-ni-ja, "Lemnian woman", written in Linear B syllabic script.
Boeotia...These fortified mountain settlements were...inhabited by Pelasgians up until the end of the Bronze Age....Pelasgian inhabitants sought to distinguish themselves "ethnically" and economically from the Mycenaean Greeks who controlled the Skourta Plain....
Larissa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larissa_(mythology)
In Greek mythology, Larissa or Larisa (Greek: Λάρισσα) was the name of two different figures that appears in various accounts:
Larisa was a nymph from Thessaly. She was described by Pausanias as a daughter of Pelasgus, son of Triopas, king of Argos. Hellanicus states that the sons of Poseidon and Larissa were Achaios, Phthios, and Pelasgus. These sons left Argos and arrived in Haemonia (Thessaly) where they drove out the barbarian inhabitants and divided the country into three parts, calling them, after their names, Phthiotis, Achaia and Pelasgiotis.... coins depict Larissa seated, holding a hydria and with a spring nearby, confirming her status as a nymph....
Larissa was the daughter of the Pelasgian prince, Piasus and wife of Cyzicus, king of the Dolionians, the people of northwestern Asia Minor visited by the Argonauts....
Danaë
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%C3%AB
Parents: Acrisius and Eurydice. Consort: Zeus, Polydectes. Children: Perseus.
In Greek mythology, Danaë was an Argive princess and mother of the hero Perseus by Zeus. She was credited with founding the city of Ardea in Latium during the Bronze Age.
Danae was the daughter and only child of King Acrisius of Argos by his wife Queen Eurydice or Aganippe...
Nymph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymph
Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are typically tied to a specific place or landform, and are usually depicted as beautiful maidens. They were not necessarily immortal, but lived much longer than humans before they died. They are often divided into various broad subgroups, such as the Meliae (ash tree nymphs), the Naiads (freshwater nymphs), the Nereids (sea nymphs), and the Oreads (mountain nymphs)...