Cyprus-Forum.com

[CBBB]

Why don't Cypriots behave more like Greeks anymore?

Because they never did in the first place! It appears that the Greek methane of superiority has gotten to your head after a brief holiday there, but luckily you’re back in Cyprus now and the swollen head will quickly deflate.

We should be so lucky!

[Piratis]

Cypriots are descendants of the very first Greeks, the Mycenaeans, who had the first Greek civilization and inhabited the Greek mainland before other Greek tribes (Dorians) moved in Greece.

We are talking about an era long before the great Greek civilization that everybody knows, and long before even the Greek alphabet was invented.

I am of the opinion that Cypriots are more Greek than the Greeks. The Greek language that is spoken here (we will ignore for the moment all the non-Greek words that have leaked into our dialect) is much closer to the original (ancient?) Greek than that currently spoken on the mainland.

Your observation is correct:

The earliest known dialect is Mycenaean Greek, the language reconstructed from the Linear B tablets produced by the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age in the late 2nd millennium BC. The classical distribution of dialects was brought about by the migrations of the early Iron Age[2] after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Some speakers of Mycenaean were displaced to Cyprus while others remained inland in Arcadia, giving rise to the Arcadocypriot dialect. This is the only dialect with a known Bronze-age precedent. The other dialects must have preceded their attested forms but the relationship of the precedents to Mycenaean remains to be discovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_dialects

[SSBubbles]

I am of the opinion that Cypriots are more Greek than the Greeks. The Greek language that is spoken here (we will ignore for the moment all the non-Greek words that have leaked into our dialect) is much closer to the original (ancient?) Greek than that currently spoken on the mainland.

If you are talking about attitudes, what is traditional about the way the "kalamaras" act now?

So, this is why Greeks and Cypriots do not understand each other?

[Get Real!]

Cypriots are descendants of the very first Greeks, the Mycenaeans, who had the first Greek civilization and inhabited the Greek mainland before other Greek tribes (Dorians) moved in Greece.

We are talking about an era long before the great Greek civilization that everybody knows, and long before even the Greek alphabet was invented.

I am of the opinion that Cypriots are more Greek than the Greeks. The Greek language that is spoken here (we will ignore for the moment all the non-Greek words that have leaked into our dialect) is much closer to the original (ancient?) Greek than that currently spoken on the mainland.

Your observation is correct:

The earliest known dialect is Mycenaean Greek, the language reconstructed from the Linear B tablets produced by the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age in the late 2nd millennium BC. The classical distribution of dialects was brought about by the migrations of the early Iron Age[2] after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Some speakers of Mycenaean were displaced to Cyprus while others remained inland in Arcadia, giving rise to the Arcadocypriot dialect. This is the only dialect with a known Bronze-age precedent. The other dialects must have preceded their attested forms but the relationship of the precedents to Mycenaean remains to be discovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_dialects

I disagree completely. Cypriots are the descendants of Phoenicians who came from Minor Asia and later formed civilized communities including that of the world famous Choirokitian (more than 5,000 years before any Mycenaean ever allegedly set foot on the island) and later Sotira.

http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/ ... oitia.html

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/848

By the time Mycenaeans had supposedly arrived on Cyprus to trade at around 1200BC, the Cypriots ALREADY had an alphabet which the Greeks pinched from them to form their own!

http://www.ancientscripts.com/cypriot.html

http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/3208.html

http://phoenicia.org/alphabetcontrov.html

The Mycenaeans that first arrived did not have an alphabet so they cannot be considered “civilized”.

The arrival and subsequent settlement of the Mycenaeans on the island of Cyprus does not and cannot alter the island’s previous 5,000+ years of history in any way or form so any notion that today’s “Greek Cypriots” are “Greek” is nonsense.

And I’m still looking for a shred of evidence to prove that Mycenaeans even arrived on this island at that time let alone anything else, because if the Cypriots came up with the alphabet then inscriptions found from that period do not point to any Greek settlers which is what they’ve been relying upon all this time!

[Get Real!]

According to the “History of the Alphabet” below it follows this path…

1. Egyptian writing
2. Phoenician writing
3. The Cypriot style of writing
4. The Greek alphabet

http://www.wisedude.com/history/alphabet.htm


And another site which verifies the Cypriots got it first…

“The Cypriots invented an alphabet consisting of 56 signs of unknown word syllable system, each of them consisting of a different consonant and vowel.
The Greeks traders learned to write individual sounds of the Phoenician's language. In 800 BC, they modified the symbols and invented the Greek alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet included more consonants than the Greeks needed for their language, so they used the extra signs for vowel sounds. Thus they improved on both Cypriot's and Phoenician's ideas so that they could spell any word they wanted.”

http://library.thinkquest.org/26890/alphabet.htm


Birthplace Of Greek Alphabet Identified…

"This has enormous implications for the history of the alphabet," Woodard says. "I think for the first time we can confidently pinpoint where the Greeks developed the alphabet, which has been a big unknown."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 151297.php

[repulsewarrior]

...my opinion, saying Cypriots were "greek" because they speak Greek, is like saying Americans are "british" because they speak English. as a matter of fact, it is like saying that the world is "english" because 90% of its population has the ability to communicate in this language, much like 3,000 yrs ago when the "world' had "greek" as a common language.

it may appear that Greek Cypriots are bending over backwards to be an accommadating people, but i believe that their focus is growth and prosperity; as in customer satisfaction. whereas the economy of Greece is not in the same mode, and Greeks are more satisfied [(like the French)very strong unions etc.] with the economy they have.

[Piratis]

GR, sorry mate, but what you write is totally unhistorical. Not even the references that you give support what you said.

I disagree completely. Cypriots are the descendants of Phoenicians who came from Minor Asia and later formed civilized communities including that of the world famous Choirokitian (more than 5,000 years before any Mycenaean ever allegedly set foot on the island) and later Sotira.

Just about everything in what you said above is wrong.

Chirokitia was a prehistoric settlement with 300 to 600 inhabitants that was abandoned at around 6000BC leaving the island uninhabited for about 1500 years. It has absolutely nothing to do with Phonecians. Phonecians did not exist at that time.

A few words about Phonecians:

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day Lebanon, Syria, Palestinian territories, and Israel. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean between the period of 1550 BC to 300 BC.

So nothing to do with Chirokitia or the Sotira group (another prehistoric settlement). Neither they came from Asia Minor. The Phonecians came to Cyprus at about the same time that the Greeks came and they founded Kition (Citium), (modern day Larnaca). However the Greeks at the same time settled in all the rest of Cyprus and founded several cities, like Paphos, Kerynia, Salamis etc.

Here is a map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... echen1.jpg

The Mycenaeans that first arrived did not have an alphabet so they cannot be considered “civilized”.

The arrival and subsequent settlement of the Mycenaeans on the island of Cyprus does not and cannot alter the island’s previous 5,000+ years of history in any way or form so any notion that today’s “Greek Cypriots” are “Greek” is nonsense.

And I’m still looking for a shred of evidence to prove that Mycenaeans even arrived on this island at that time let alone anything else, because if the Cypriots came up with the alphabet then inscriptions found from that period do not point to any Greek settlers which is what they’ve been relying upon all this time!

There were not 5000 years of history. It was just some small pre-historic settlements. According to your own sources:

While the earliest examples dating from as early as 1500 BCE cannot be read, comparisons clearly show that the Cypriot syllabary seemed to have derived from Linear A, and therefore is like a sibling to Linear B. For this reason, sometimes the script at this very early stage is called Cypro-Minoan, to distinguish it from the Cypriot script used for writing Greek after the 12th century BCE.

So, there was indeed a script in use in Cyprus about 200 years before Greeks arrived (not 5000) but that script is based on Linear A and B of Minoan Crete, it can not be read, and it is called Cypro-Minoan. The Cypriot Script, was used for writing Greek. Do you read your own sources GR?

So not only the inscriptions of the Cypriot Sylabary point to the existence of the Greeks in Cyprus, but the inscriptions themselves are in Greek!

Conclusion:

Yes, some small prehistoric settlements existed in some specific spots in Cyprus before Greeks arrived. Such pre-historic settlements existed everywhere. In fact Cyprus, being an island, had way less than most places, and not very ancient either. In other places you can find very ancient settlements (caves etc) from the time that first Humans appeared (Homo Sapience, Neanderthals etc).

Such pre-Greek settlements existed in Greece itself. Are you going to say that in Greece the people are not Greeks because before the Greeks arrived there were some pre-historic settlements there??

In Crete before the Greeks there was the Minoan civilization. Are the Cretans not Greeks either?

And what about say Turks? In Asia minor whole empires and civilizations existed for 1000s of years before the Turks came, not just some small pre-historic villages.

So yes, the Greeks in Cyprus (as well as everywhere else in Greece), mixed with any existing people, as well as with the people that came after. However the Greeks were much more, and the Greek civilization was the strongest, and this is how Greece in general and Cyprus in particular became Greek.

There is no such thing as "pure blood" or anything like that. What matters is the culture and language of the people. This is what makes somebody Greek, or French or Turk or English. In Cyprus we have a Greek culture and Greek language uninterrupted for 3500 years. How many places in the world can you find that can compare to that?

[Piratis]

GR, if I am not wrong you lived abroad for most of your life and maybe you personally don't have Greek as mother tongue and that is why you might not feel as Greek.

Thats fine. I am not going to tell you what you are, you have to decide that yourself. Thing is that by becoming less Greek you didn't become "Chrokitian" You didn't start talking "Chrokitian" or having Chirokitian traditions. (you don't even know what those things are like). You just become less Greek and more English (or whatever). If you stayed and raised your children there then after some generations your grand grand grand children would be fully assimilated, and they would not be Greek (or Cypriot) at all.

Of course there are some other Cypriots that discard their own history solely for political reasons, because they are trying to appease the Turkish minority which apparently hates everything Greek and is not willing to accept the history of this island. Knowing you however I know you are not one of these people. Maybe Bananiot is like this, but I think he would just avoid answering in some way than deny that he is Greek.

[Paphitis]

Here are some more facts about the Pre-historic settlement of Choirokitia:

The settlement of Khirokitia is situated on the slope of a hill in the valley of the Maroni River towards the southern coast of the island about 6 km from the sea.

Subsistence methods practiced by its Neolithic inhabitants included farming crops and herding cattle.

It is a closed village, cut off from the outside world, apart from by the river, by a strong wall of stones 2.5 m thick and 3 m at its highest preserved level. Access into the village was probably via several entry points through the wall.

The buildings within this wall consist of round structures huddled close together. The lower parts of these buildings are often of stone and attain massive proportions by constant additions of further skins of stones. Their external diameter varies between 2.3 m and 9.20 m while the internal diameter is only between 1.4 m and 4.80 m. A collapsed flat roof of one building found recently indicates that not all roofs were dome shaped as was originally believed.

The internal divisions of each hut were according to the purpose of its usage. Low walls, platforms designated work, rest or storage areas. They had hearths presumably used for cooking and heating, benches and windows and in many cases there is evidence of piers to support an upper floor. It is believed that the huts were like rooms several of which were grouped around an open courtyard and together formed the home.

The population of the village at any one time is thought not to have exceeded 300 to 600 inhabitants. The people were rather short - the men about 1.61 m on average and the women about 1.51 m. Infant mortality was very high and life expectancy was about 22 years. On average adult men reached 35 years of age and women 33. The dead were buried in crouched positions just under the floors of the houses. In some instances provision was made for offerings so presumably a form of ancestor cult existed inside households.

The village of Khirokitia was suddenly abandoned for reasons unknown at around 6000 BC and it seems that the island remained uninhabited for about 1.500 years until the next recorded entity, the Sotira group.

http://www.mlahanas.de/Cyprus/Geo/Choirokoitia.html

[Piratis]

my opinion, saying Cypriots were "greek" because they speak Greek, is like saying Americans are "british" because they speak English.

Native Americans have their own language, culture and traditions, so they are definitely not English. If the Native Americans spoke English and had an English culture for 1000s of years then yes they would be English.

Furthermore, you have to distinguish ethnicity from citizenship. For example all Arabs belong to the same ethnicity, but they have several countries.

Some people of the same ethnicity choose to be in separate countries, and others where forced to. In our case we were forced to be separate from the rest of Greece. It was not our choice.