Rome

[The Brain]

Wasn't there a Black Athena Talks Back or somefink too?

[Caliga]

Like 1421?

I own a copy of 1421.  I consider it a great fantasy adventure story. 

[The Brain]

Like 1421?

I own a copy of 1421.  I consider it a great fantasy adventure story. 

You do realize it's alt-fantasy, right?

[crazy canuck]

Wasn't there a Black Athena Talks Back or somefink too?

Are you thinking of "Not out of Africa."  Bernal generally got the worst kind of response you can get in Academia - silence.

[The Brain]

Wasn't there a Black Athena Talks Back or somefink too?

Are you thinking of "Not out of Africa."  Bernal generally got the worst kind of response you can get in Academia - silence.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Athena-Writes-Back-Responds/dp/0822327171

[The Minsky Moment]

Bernal's argument that 19th and early 20th century archaeology and ancient histiorophy was rife with dubious theories grounded in racist and racialist assumptions is fine as it goes, though far from innovative.  To the extent he repeats their error by importing back the contemporary social concept of race into vastly different times and places, he commits similar errors of anachronism. 

That European material culture had "Afro-asiatic" roots is close to being a geographic truism - since agriculture, animal domestication, urbanity, metal-working techniques, brewing, viticulture, writing, etc. originated in what is now western Asia and Egypt and diffused out to the continent of Europe from there.  But Bernal's agenda is not simply to make this obvious point but to make similar (if more politically correct) mistakes to the earlier scholarship he decries - ie use a canned analysis of ancient history to fit a contemporary political agenda.

[Queequeg]

Well those same dudes think Aesop was black too, so I guess they think the ancient Greeks were all black. 

I've known Greeks who claimed that all Greeks were tall, blond, blue-eyed ... before they were occupied by the Turks.

Amusing.

The opposite is much closer to the truth.  A lot of depictions of the Early Altaic pictures show them with blond or red hair and blue eyes, and all of them were tall.  Genghis Khan had red hair and green eyes, for instance, and even today in Greece blond hair is considered a Turkish trait. 

On the other hand, the Greeks in contemporary art tended to have Jewfros and big noses.  They'd probably look quite a bit like the contemporary people, though there has undoubtably some admixture with migrant Assyrians, Armenians, Slavs, Italians, Turks and Normans since the 500 BCs, you'd probably have a reasonably similar mixture in Ancient Greece (just replace them with Egyptians, Phonecians, Phrygians, Anatolians, Dacians, Thracians, Sythians, etc...).

Its actually really, really hard to change the genetic makeup of an area without a huge catastrophe (like Smallpox in the Americas).  The vast majority of linguistic-cultural shifts in Eurasia were adoptions of the conquering culture by the vast majority of natives rather than genocide or large scale colonization.

[I Killed Kenny]

I was reading about Constatine I. I think his story would make a great Rome II series. Don't you think?

no love for constantine?

[vinraith]

The opposite is much closer to the truth.  A lot of depictions of the Early Altaic pictures show them with blond or red hair and blue eyes, and all of them were tall.  Genghis Khan had red hair and green eyes, for instance,

Really? Never heard that one, got a source handy I could have a look at?

[Razgovory]

One of these days you'll have to explain to us how is it someone so 'vastly intelligent' managed to remain a high school teacher in the middle of nowhere; it should prove entertaining.

You see Grallon, some people have this thing called empathy.  It means that intelligent people can choose to spend their life trying to help young people rather than trying to molest them.

I wish I had some of that.  Also I still confuse Grallon and garbon.  I'd probably be nice to garbon if I didn't keep confusing him with a child molestor.

[Razgovory]

I know, but it's just that I find that particular story impossible to believe.  For one, having been to Capri and seen the site of Villa Iovis, I find it hard to imagine someone scaling the sea cliffs leading up to it (unless erosion has changed them considerably since then), not to mention hard to believe this guy could have just walked up to Tiberius unimpeded by guards.  I do see Tiberius rubbing the guy's face off with a fish though 

I've been there to.  I figured he just took the road like everyone else.

[crazy canuck]

One of these days you'll have to explain to us how is it someone so 'vastly intelligent' managed to remain a high school teacher in the middle of nowhere

As the father to two boys who are not too far from attending high school I am grateful that people as intelligent as Grumbler do indeed choose to be teachers.

[Queequeg]

The opposite is much closer to the truth.  A lot of depictions of the Early Altaic pictures show them with blond or red hair and blue eyes, and all of them were tall.  Genghis Khan had red hair and green eyes, for instance,

Really? Never heard that one, got a source handy I could have a look at?

Rashid-al-Din for a description of Genghis. 

The Early Altaic peoples would have been a collection of recently Turkified peoples, most of them of various Indo-European (Iranian, Gothic or Tocharian) or Uralic peoples.  There is a ton of evidence for this and I'm not sure how much you want/need. 

Off the top of my head;
The Huns, the first (probably) Altaic people to make it to Europe, had among their host people with Iranian, Tocharian, German and Uralic names, and a few different types of Turkic groups.  Some of the initial Turkification would have happened then, resulting in a mixed people.  Every succeeding wave would have been more "Asian" looking in all probability, as the latest Steppe people is forced to conquer settled people due to pressure from the East, and the slaughter of Genghis would have made a big impact.

That said, even today you get a hint of it: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Uyghur_girl.jpg

Also, the "asian" look of the Anatolian Turks is (surprisingly) a modern development, as Ottoman commentators talk about the spread of the "Tatar Eyes" with the massive migration in the wake of the Russian conquests.  Just 500 years ago Anatolia would have looked a lot different ethnically. 

[Caliga]

Anatolian Turks look Mediterranean to me.  I've actually always assumed they are at least 50% Greek and/or Armenian in 'genetic' origin.

[Queequeg]

Anatolian Turks look Mediterranean to me.  I've actually always assumed they are at least 50% Greek and/or Armenian in 'genetic' origin.

Generally speaking, yes, Turks look like the nation closest to them; Greeks in Edrine, Armenians in Kars, Syrians in Diyarbakir, and the genetics reflect this (most Turks around Izmir are genetically close to the people there in Homer's time). 

That said, you run into some incredible diversity, presumably some of it from the Tatar migration into Turkey which massively changed society (disturbing the balance in Anatolia, partially responsible for the Armenian/Assyrian/Greek genocide).  So you have Turks who could be Romanian (Attaturk) and those who could be mixed Japanese-Iranian (Mehmet Kurtulus).