Alexander the Great : Greek or SouthSlav

People are just people...wandering free spirits. So people take journey's. People wander into cultural-linguistic spaces, by choice or by chance. If that place is hospitable enough, civilized enough, and rich enough to accommodate their needs, some people would find these things attractive enough to settle. So in this regard, we can only talk about people like wandering free spirits, carrying with them some cultural baggage inherited from the previous cultural-linguistic space they decided to vacate. People have been uprooting themselves from since time immemorial, by their own free-choice or not, the point here is to illustrate the fact that biological make-up, blood and Dna, or not important factors on voyage to development of new ethnicity. People with history, with previous ethnicity, with previous cultural-linguistic affiliations, are free to place those things on-hold during acculturation, the transitional period that leads to proper assimilation. History tells us that within 200 years or 8 generations, people can replace previous ethnicity with new one, previous language with new one, previous culture with new one. I shall not cite examples - that is for the reader to investigate and research.

Long time ago, recorded in history, Slavic tribes uprooted themselves from primordial homeland, a journey which led them to wander into new Greco-Roman cultural-linguistic space. The settlement of the Slavs into Byzantium is well documented. FYRoM's immediate ancestors were the Draguvites, Sagudates and Berzetes. So FYRoM is Slavic in this regard. People-Dynamics ensured that within 200 years or 8 generations, the previous pre-Slavic population there, Slavicized. FYRoM then, has been Slavic place from since the 6th Century AD, a cultural-linguistic space that can boast continuum >1400 years of Slavic history, where the Slavic-language, culture, and tradition has been practiced for the same. FYRoM now though, appears to be in transition, on journey towards development of new ethnicity, incorporating new identity-factors which do not follow the laws People-Dynamics taught us. The peoples there appear to be on voyage towards discarding previous their Slavic inheritance, shedding their Slavic cultural-linguistic identity for Hellenic one.

FYRoM, without following the rules People-Dynamics taught us, where (i) peoples are free to wander into the cultural-linguistic space of others, (ii) people are free to settle there if they consider the place hospitable enough, civilized enough and rich enough to accommodate their needs, (iii) people are free to put on hold, their previous ethnicity during acculturation period, (iv) people are free to assimilate on acceptance by host community, (v) people are free to absorb the language culture and traditions of host community, (vi) people are free to develop same ethnic-feelings, same collective-memories, same national pride of the host nation. FYRoM did not follow these rules, instead, FYRoM follows path of usurping them.

1. Historically, Macedonians were not Greek and Greeks did not see them as Greek.

2. Linguistically, Greek language is based on a protoslavonic substratum

3. Genetically, Macedonians are related to ancient Macedonians and ice age Balkan inhabitants, while Greeks are related to the Phoenicians and Africans

4. Politically, Greeks have made many efforts to wipe out the Macedonian minority in Greece

5. even Plato recognized that Greek language is much younger than let's say Phrygian and other "barbaric" - protoslavonic languages.

6. Slavonic people are indigenous in the Balkans, while Greeks came much later, only after the ice age

7. The Slavonic history has been deformed through centuries because the roman - germanic pact needed arguments, why they were most suitable for being in charge of Europe, so they simply invented them


"Indo-Germanists" have conceded that the 'Kentum-Satem' division of I-E languages is artificial and obsolete since it (the Latin and Avestian word for 100) is but one of many isogloses.

A new division of Indo-European languages as “Core” and “Peripheral” is proposed.

INTRODUCTION

In 1786, Sir William Jones expressed his view that “Sanskrit is of more perfect structure than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, yet bearing to both of them a strong affinity as if sprung from some common source.
The same origin have also the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, and also Old Persian might be added to the same family.”

This was one of the cornerstones of modern linguistics.

Due to exclusive use of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and Germanic, the name "Indo-Germanic" was coined.
Observe that Slavic was not included.

The "Kentum-Satem" division of Indo-European languages was finalized by contributions of several authors in 1890.

While the 'Satem' languages display integrity and a core of similarities, those languages that used
to be called 'Kentum' lack cohesiveness.

The insecurity of the doctrine of Kentum affirmation is evident in the vacant space depicted by the “gray area” stretching between Eastern Baltic and Northern Adriatic (Diachronic map and the Gray Hole [6] along the Amber Road, Figure 2).
This is exactly the area occupied by the ancient Veneti - Venedi (and Wends).

The geographic location of the “gray area” also corresponds to the Corded Ware region of the Lusatian culture.

However, in 1965, G. R. Solta has shown that the 'Kentum-Satem' isogloss was overrated as a diagnostic feature and a tool of true componential analysis.
It ought not be revered as a defining wedge, which segregates Indo-European languages into two well-defined entities. It is only a single isogloss among many.

The new view resulted in a different division of Indo-European languages, namely into the core languages and peripheral languages.

At the same time, a working hypothesis about the origin of Europeans was presented.

CORDED WARE HORIZON AND THE HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION AROUND 2000 BC INDICATE A DRASTIC DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE REAL SITUATION AND THE LEARNED CONSTRUCT.
Consequently, the following points are presented:

#1. German attempt in the 19th Century to marginalize the Slavic role in the “Indo-Germanic” Languages was largely successful. This misinformation must be rectified, and the Slavic languages must be recognized as being key to the Indo-European phenomenon.
The Slavic languages are not to be viewed as a peripheral branch of the Indo-European Languages, but should be recognized as the trunk of the Language Tree from which the other branches received their substance and sustenance, Figure 3.

#2.“Indo-Germanic” is a neologism which SHOULD BE ABANDONED. Since Indo-Aryans branched off from the “Slavic Mother Tongue”(and “Slavic Mitochondrial and Y-chromosome genes”) some 9,000 years ago [7], and since Germanic Languages branched off from the “Balto-Slavic” source only perhaps 4,000 years ago and subsequently incorporated Celto- Italic elements:“It appears to point to a situation in which Germanic began to develop within the Satem Core (as evidenced by its morphology) but moved away before the final satem innovations.
It then moved into close contact with the “western” languages (Celtic and Italic) and borrowed much of its distinctive vocabulary from them...”, the term “Indo-Germanic” is as misleading as there would be in the animal kingdom the expression “Trilobito-Avian”(of trilobites & birds).

#3. We posit that the Slavic Languages as the organic trunk of the Indo-European Language Tree yield better terminology for the language branches. These branches would be Slav-Indoiranic, Slav-Armenanatolic, Slav-Tocharscythic, Slav-Suevandalgothic, Slav- Keltitalic and Slav-Helilyric.
Thus, for sake of a more accurate understanding of the phenomenon we must create a new lexicon. Based on the 19th Century word choice of “Indo-Germanic” it would seem legitimate to apply a more accurate designation such as “Indo-Slavic”. Similarly, to the west (based on the contributions of Ringe et al.) we are justified in using terminology such as “Germano-Slavic”.
Preliminary evidence had suggested to a few linguists that Tocharian A and B are somewhat linked to Italic (Kelt-Italic).
But based on geography, proximity, and the possible migration routes we are forced to accept Slavic as the missing link between western Europe and Chinese Turkistan.

#4. Dictates of foreign elites (German, Hungarian, Italian, French etc) have been imposed upon speakers of several Slavic languages and/or dialects.
However, standardized Slavic “literary” languages have also been forced upon the speakers of dialects. The ancient mosaic of the Slavic substratum throughout Europe was best preserved in those areas where national states failed to impose a standardized language dictated from capital cities.
Regional Slavic dialects survived best in Slovenia and adjacent (Slovenian speaking) regions of Italy, Croatia, Austria and Hungary.
Similar preservation of dialects survived among the Polabian Slavs, among the Lusatian Wend-Sorbs and in Moravia.

#5. Remarkably, Slavic elements persisted with great frequency in Old English of a thousand years ago. For example, in the Lords Prayer “Fader Ure”[9] Old English used the Slavic word for “bread”-“hlaf ” as in Chleb, Hleb, Chlieb, Chlib etc.
If one reads Psalm 23 in Old English it sounds much like a Slavic language. In this respect Old English is more Slavic than Modern English.
Cf. also the case of surnames [11]. Similar observations that an older version of a language is more similar to Slavic than a younger one, have been made also in the case of some other old languages, e.g. Sanskrit (Vedic vs. Classical Sanskrit, as well as vs. modern I-E languages in India), Etruscan p. 344, and Greek (Homer’s vs. Classical).

#6. We can lump certain language branches into “super-branches” like Iranian languages can be lumped with languages of India into Indo-Iranic, and Celtic and Italic languages can form a super-branch “Keltitalic”.
But, ultimately all the branches and super-branches issue from the Slavic trunk. The Slavic languages did not grow out of an “Indo-Germanic” trunk.

#7. Proto-Slavic is in fact synonymous with Proto-Indo-European and aught to be replaced in all literature.

#8. Slavic languages (because they were the substratum in Europe) continue to be more mutually intelligible than do the more recent Germanic, Romance, Celtic and other languages on the Continent.

#9. The Veneti of northern Italy and Wendi, Venedi and other Slavic people of western 93 and central Europe and (especially along the Amber Trail) who share similar spelling were the prototype Slavs and prototype Indo-Europeans. From here they had spread to Vladivostok to the east and Greenland (and North America) to the west, and India to the south east.
The Slavic people did not move westward from the Pripyat River marshes merely 1500 years ago but were autochthonic population of Europe since the Stone Age.
If there were any Slavic migration of any significance they would be in modern times towards Vladivostok. The Slavic toponymy observed in many parts of Europe [15] could be inherited from prehistoric Venetic-Slav populations or their predecessors.

CONCLUSION

From the proto-Slavic core in the Southeastern, Southern and Central Europe (originated from the Adriatic, Danubian, Aegean, and Black-Sea refugia during the Last Glacial Maximum) the people expanded, especially after the introduction of agriculture and stockbreeding in Neolithic.

After the Roman conquest, and especially after German conquest, the Slavic communities in western Europe (Great Britain, France) and central Europe (Germany, Switzeland, Austria, Hungary, Italy) experienced gradual decline and were finally systematically assimilated during last centuries.


Greeks are one of many children nations of the Veneti - Slaveni mother nation



'How do you explain pur n udor?' I suspect that pur, which, like udor n kuon, is found in Phrygian, is a foreign word; for the Hellenes have borrowed much from the barbarians, and I always resort to this theory of a foreign origin when I am at a loss...

Plato, Cratylus

There is an element of which he is unable to give an account. These unintelligible words he supposes to be of foreign origin, and to have been derived from a time when the Greeks were either barbarians, or in close relations to the barbarians.

[link to www.gutenberg.org]


Greeks are ok,
but they must not forget their Slavic roots


The affinity of the Slavic and Greek languages has recently been attempted to prove in several works. Dankovsky in his work, Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven, Presburg 1828, contends that a knowledge of the Slavic language is of highest importance for the Greek scholar, as the only means by which he may be enabled to clear up obscure passages and to ascertain the signification of doubtful words. Among the historical proofs, he furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of striking analogy.

"Of three sisters," he observes, "one kept faithful to her mother tongue - the Slavic language; the second gave to that common heritage the highest cultivation - the Greek language; and the third mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom - the Latin language." A work of the same tendency has been published in the Greek language, by the Greek priest Constantine, Vienna 1828. It contains a vocabulary of 800 pages of Russian and Greek words, corresponding in sound and meaning.
[link to www.gutenberg.org]

The Greeks are descendants of the Slavonic,

c. 5700–4500 BCE

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

[link to upload.wikimedia.org]



ancient Macedonians were not greek
[link to www.slideshare.net]


2. And now, in the first place, I cannot but greatly wonder at those men, who suppose that we must attend to none but Grecians, when we are inquiring about the most ancient facts, and must inform ourselves of their truth from them only, while we must not believe ourselves nor other men; for I am convinced that the very reverse is the truth of the case. I mean this,—if we will not be led by vain opinions, but will make inquiry after truth from facts themselves; for they will find that almost all which concerns the Greeks happened not long ago; nay, one may say, is of yesterday only. I speak of the building of their cities, the inventions of their arts, and the description of their laws; and as for their care about the writing down of their histories, it is very near the last thing they set about. However, they acknowledge themselves so far, that they were the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Phoenicians (for I will not now reckon ourselves among them) that have preserved the memorials of the most ancient and most lasting traditions of mankind; for almost all these nations inhabit such countries as are least subject to destruction from the world about them; and these also have taken especial care to have nothing omitted of what was [remarkably] done among them; but their history was esteemed sacred, and put into public tables, as written by men of the greatest wisdom they had among them. But as for the place where the Grecians inhabit, ten thousand destructions have overtaken it, and blotted out the memory of former actions; so that they were ever beginning a new way of living, and supposed that every one of them was the origin of their new state. It was also late, and with difficulty, that they came to know the letters they now use; for those who would advance their use of these letters to the greatest antiquity pretend that they learned them from the Phoenicians and from Cadmus; yet is nobody able to demonstrate that they have any writing preserved from that time, neither in their temples, nor in any other public monuments. This appears, because the time when those lived who went to the Trojan war, so many years afterward, is in great doubt, and great inquiry is made, whether the Greeks used their letters at that time; and the most prevailing opinion, and that nearest the truth, is, that their present way of using those letters was unknown at that time. However, there is not any writing which the Greeks agree to be genuine among them ancienter than Homer's Poems, who must plainly he confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay, the report goes, that even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that their memory was preserved in songs, and they were put together afterward, and that this is the reason of such a number of variations as are found in them. 3 As for those who set themselves about writing their histories, I mean such as Cadmus of Miletus, and Acusilaus of Argos, and any others that may be mentioned as succeeding Acusilaus, they lived but a little while before the Persian expedition into Greece. But then for those that first introduced philosophy, and the consideration of things celestial and divine among them, such as Pherceydes the Syrian, and Pythagoras, and Thales, all with one consent agree, that they learned what they knew of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and wrote but little And these are the things which are supposed to be the oldest of all among the Greeks; and they have much ado to believe that the writings ascribed to those men are genuine.

3. How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to be so proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are acquainted with antiquity, and that have delivered the true accounts of those early times after an accurate manner? Nay, who is there that cannot easily gather from the Greek writers themselves, that they knew but little on any good foundation when they set to write, but rather wrote their histories from their own conjectures? Accordingly, they confute one another in their own books to purpose, and are not ashamed. to give us the most contradictory accounts of the same things; and I should spend my time to little purpose, if I should pretend to teach the Greeks that which they know better than I already, what a great disagreement there is between Hellanicus and Acusilaus about their genealogies; in how many eases Acusilaus corrects Hesiod: or after what manner Ephorus demonstrates Hellanicus to have told lies in the greatest part of his history; as does Timeus in like manner as to Ephorus, and the succeeding writers do to Timeus, and all the later writers do to Herodotus nor could Timeus agree with Antiochus and Philistius, or with Callias, about the Sicilian History, no more than do the several writers of the Athide follow one another about the Athenian affairs; nor do the historians the like, that wrote the Argolics, about the affairs of the Argives. And now what need I say any more about particular cities and smaller places, while in the most approved writers of the expedition of the Persians, and of the actions which were therein performed, there are so great differences? Nay, Thucydides himself is accused of some as writing what is false, although he seems to have given us the exactest history of the affairs of his own time.

Title: Against Apion

Author: Flavius Josephus

[link to www.gutenberg.org]


The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a transnational world
by Loring M. Danforth

chapter II, page 54:
"This process of forced Hellenization was accompanied by a deliberate attempt on the part of the Greek government to bring about drastic changes in the ethnic composition of forced emigration and colonization. In a series of population exchanges between Greece and Bulgaria over 80.000 Macedonians were forced to emigrate from Aegean Macedonia to Bulgaria, while 23.000 Greeks from Bulgaria were settled in Aegean Macedonia. Similarly in the exchange of populations that took place between Greece and Turkey in 1923 400.000 Turks were forced to leave Greece for Turkey, while 1.200.000 Greeks from Asia Minor were settled in Greece. Of these Asiatic Greeks, 640.000 were settled in Aegean MAcedonia as part of a deliberate Greek policy of colonization of the area. By 1928 the Greek population of Aegean Macedonia had risen from 21% to 70%."
[link to books.google.si]


The ancient Macedonians regarded the Greeks as potentially dangerous neighbors, never as kinsmen. The Greeks stereotyped the Macedonians as "barbarians" and treated them in the same bigoted manner in which they treated all non-Greeks. Herodotus, the Father of History, relates how the Macedonian king Alexander I(498-454 BC), a Philhellene (that is "a friend of the Greeks" and logically a non-Greek), wanted to take a part in the Olympic games. The Greek athletes protested, saying they would not run with a barbarian. Historian Thucydidis also calls the Macedonians barbarians, and so did Thracymachus who called Archelaus a barbarian who enslaved Greeks. Demosthenes, the great Athenian statesman and orator, spoke of Philip II as:

"... not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honors, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave." [Third Philippic, 31] [link to www.historyofmacedonia.org]





greek gene = african gene E
Haplogroup E3b (E1b1b) represents the last major migration out of North Africa into Europe. There are 3 main subgroups (subclades); V13, V22, and V12. E-V13 is the most common subgroup and is associated with ancient Greek expansion and colonisation.


indigenous balkan gene = slavonic gene I2a
Haplogroup I2 may have originated in south-eastern Europe some 17,000 years ago

[link to rochelineages.wordpress.com]

Macedonia:Understanding Haemus-Peninsula People-Dynamics

FYRoM is free to follow ages-old natural path that facilitates discarding old cultural-linguistic baggage for new replacement ones. People-Dynamics tell us that people are just people...wandering free spirits. So people take journey's. People wander into and out of, cultural-linguistic spaces, by force, by choice or by chance. If that place is hospitable enough, civilized enough, and rich enough to accommodate their needs, some people would find those things attractive enough to settle there. So in this regard, we can only talk about people like wandering free spirits, carrying with them some cultural baggage inherited from the previous cultural-linguistic area they decided to vacate.

People have been uprooting themselves from since time immemorial, by their own free-choice or not, the point here is to illustrate the fact that biological make-up, blood and Dna, are not important factors on voyage towards development of new ethnicity. People with history, with previous ethnicity, with previous cultural-linguistic affiliations, are free to place those things on-hold during acculturation, the transitional period that leads to proper assimilation. History and the laws of People-Dynamics tell us that within 200 years or 8 generations, people can replace ethnicity with new one, replace language with new one, replace culture with new one. I shall not cite examples - that is for the reader to investigate and research.

Long time ago, recorded in history, Slavic tribes uprooted themselves from steppe primordial homeland, a journey which led them to wander into new Greco-Roman cultural-linguistic area. The settlement of the Slavs into the Byzantine Empire is well documented. FYRoM's immediate ancestors were the Draguvites, Sagudates and Berzetes. So FYRoM is Slavic in this regard. People-Dynamics ensured that within 200 years or 8 generations, the previous pre-Slavic Greco-Roman population there Slavicized, by force, or by fee-will. On this basis, FYRoM has been Slavic place from since the 6th Century AD, a cultural-linguistic area that can boast continuum >1400 years of Slavic history, where the Slavic-language, culture, and tradition has been practiced there for the same. FYRoM now though, appears to be in transition, on a journey towards development of new ethnicity, incorporating with it new identity-factors which do not follow the laws People-Dynamics taught us. The peoples there appear to be on voyage towards discarding their Slavic inheritance, shedding their Slavic cultural-linguistic identity for a Macedonian Hellenic one.

FYRoM, without following the rules and laws People-Dynamics taught us, where (i) peoples are
free to wander into, and outof, the cultural-linguistic spaces of others,(ii) people are free to settle, if they consider the place hospitable enough, civilized enough and rich enough to accommodate their needs,(iii) people are free to put on hold, their previous ethnicity during acculturation period,(iv) people are free to assimilate on acceptance by the host community,(v) people are free to absorb the language culture and traditions of host community,(vi) people are free to develop same ethnic-feelings, same collective-memories, same national pride of the host nation. FYRoM did none of these things. FYRoM did not follow the rules and laws of People-Dynamics, instead, FYRoM follows unnatural path of usurping them.

Macedonians are Greek by virtue of their own historical self-ascriptions. If it walks like a Greek and talks like a Greek...then it cannot be Slavic, signing-on like Macedonian.

How do you feel, watching your brothers and sisters steadfastly affiliating to the cultural-linguistic Identity of their regional-historical ancestors.

Macedonians are blood-kin to Greeks like Spartans!

If you are Haemus-native and speak Slavic - respect your brothers and sisters for retaining as close as possible the Identity-characteristics of the ancestors.

Greeks shall not give-up on Macedonia. You cannot have something that belongs in Greek cultural-linguistic space.

Haemus-people are just Haemus-people...wandering free spirits. So Haemus-peoples take journey's...forced-ones, planned-ones, or random-ones. Haemus-people have been wandering into, and out of, cultural-linguistic spaces from since time immemorial. In the Haemus, we are all Greek to some degree, it's just that some of us are more Greek than others. I mention Greeks because it is through them, that the resident host culture still continues it's presence in the peninsula of it's birth. Hellenism is a dominant resilient culture from since the times of proto-Greeks. So it stands to reason that todays Greeks stand proud, at the forefront of long chain of Greek-speakers, representing a cultural-linguistic continuum spanning millennia. Greeks today look back at themselves and awe at their inheritance. FYRoM has no right to blemish this! to humiliate Greeks, ridicule Hellas and belittle Hellenism.

FYRoM South-Slavs look back at themselves and frown at their inheritance. FYRoM inherited from Slavdom, Slavic things, like (i) Slavic identity, (ii) Slavic language, (iii) Slavic history, (iv) Slavic heritage, (v) Slavic legacy.
FYRoM's paternal ancestral-ethnicity remains unrecognized, undesirable, unwanted-Slavic. FYRoM discards unwanted-Slavic things for desirable Hellenic things. Evidently, the Macedonian name, identity, history, heritage, legacy, are far more desirable for FYRoM than their Slavic equivalents.

Ancient Haemus-people in closest proximity to Greeks, Hellenized themselves, willingly and voluntarily. Illyrians, Thracians and Hellenes...their derivatives, and combinations of them, in whole or in part, live on in the Haemus through Greeks. Continuity always follows path of least resistance. The Greeks of today are the only Haemus-peoples wanting to keep as close as possible, the identity-characteristics of their Paleo-Haemus ancestors. FYRoM and Turkey, and others, do the exact opposite. They superimpose Paleo-Haemus identities on modern day South-Slavs or modern day Turks, who keep nothing of the Haemus in themselves or their culture.. And if by some unexplained phenomenon to do with People-Dymanics, some old-Haemus stuff should be detected in modern-day South-Slavs and modern-day Turks, the question should lean towards the 'How' and the 'When' did this happen - interaction with Greeks maybe ?

When Greek wanders off, into cultural-linguistic space not his own, and when Slav does the same - and when both of them decide to absorb foreign culture not their own, taking on wives and raising children...and when this cycle repeats to >8 generations long - at which point, do they stop being Greek or Slav alike. The answer of course is they don't stop being Greek or Slav alike. It is their offspring that lose something, incrementally, generation after generation, until the last vestiges of their paternal forebears ethnic-racial, cultural and linguistic inheritance is lost confined to history. Diasporas >8 generations into their adopted inheritance look back at themselves and acknowledge their Greek or Slavic heritage, knowing full well, that long time ago in the distant past, their Greek and Slavic forebears decided to go on a journey, forced, planned, or random-one.

The point is this: FYRoM cannot compete on equilibrium with Greeks, over history or longevity of heritage in the Haemus [Greek] peninsula. Greeks sit at the top end of hierarchicle table whilst FYRoM South-Slavs sit long way down the seating arrangement. And of the partial-Greeks in their fold...well, they sit closer to the top-end but still distanced. People-Dynamics dictate that when a people-group insist on continuing to practice, as close as possible, the language and identity-characteristics of their Paleo-Haemus ancestors - there is very little nearby peoples can do, but watch and awe the cultural-inheritance of their Greek-Hellenic neighbours!

Long time ago the Haemus peninsula was known as the Greek peninsula, when Greeks were the dominant peoples and Hellenism was the dominant culture. Now, the Haemus is predominantly Slavic and Turkic...reflected in name change from Haemus to Balkan-peninsula. The native name of the region has given way to the exogenous one. Place names change when population dynamics change - that's what happened with the Haemus. Massive influx of Avaro-Huns and Bulgar-Slavs changed the demographic and the geopolitical landscape. Today, Greeks struggle to maintain a Greek presence in the one time Greek-peninsula. Everything Greek is slowly being eroded and dismantled. Some Slavs challenge the very existence of Greeks in their own primordial homelands whilst some Turks challenge Greek maritime sovereignty of the Aegean Sea and the Islands that dot it up to the coast of Asia-Minor. Under these conditions Greeks are forced to spend large amounts of their GDP on military hardware in order to meet those challenges. Greece differs from the rest of Europe in that no other EU country has this type of handicap to overcome.

Paranoid you might say, but the historical reality records the many threats and challenges Greeks have faced from since their first arrival to the Greek peninsula.

From the north, South-Slavic revisionist propaganda attempts to rewrite the demographic history of the Haemus-peninsula...erasing Greek history from Macedonia, wiping out with stroke of a pen, the presence of Greeks in the Kingdom that was once ruled by King Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. From the east, Turks do the same. Slavs take Macedonia whilst Turks take Troy, in their warped pseudo-historical narratives, South-Slavs exclude Greeks from Macedonia whilst Turks exclude Greeks from Troy. No other European country is handicapped in this way but Greece. No other EU country faces these kind of challenges from neighbouring states, but Greece.

FYRoM is too Slavic a state to covet the Macedonian name for country-name...sovereign state-name, nationality, language and ethnicity whilst Turkey is too Turkic a country to covet the history and heritage of Troy. FYRoM and Turkey are unique in this respect in that both countries attempt to connect their peoples to pre-Slavic populations and pre-Turkic populations that once existed there before (i) Slavic arrival to the Haemus, and (ii) Turkic arrival to Asia-Minor.

The point is this: The demographic history of the Haemus [Greek] peninsula should not be messed with in order to accommodate the revisionist fantasies of some pseudo-historical propagandists from FYRoM and Turkey.

Blood and Dna belong to race, if race can be defined to mean the morphological correlation between people-groups, scattered or not, found sharing same similar skeletal frame who's features relate to distinguishable anthropological skull type. Ethnicity is different. Ethnicity is cultural, something learned, under strict authoritarian conditions or not.

Today, Nations are rarely made up of just one type of people-group, sharing the same distinguishable racial features, dressed in same local traditional woven attire, subscribing to same similar belief system, recollecting same collective-memory through folklore, waving same national symbols, feeling same sense of pride in their achievements from the past to the present.

Nation building today is difficult. FYRoM is a case in point, a prime example where newly emergent country attempts to construct semblance of nation, following instruction from the ACME little red book of Nation building.

Alongside that ACME little Red Book of Nation Building is also another little book, entitled the ACME little Red Book of Population Dynamics...sold in Twin Pack. Understanding people-dynamics is essential when building Nations from disparate ethnically programmed people-groups, each of them carrying their own unique cultural-baggage. Under these conditions, a unifying factor is sought, under which all of them could unite.

In FYRoM, some bright spark came up with the idea to unite everyone under the banner of Makedonism, the ideology who's doctrine attempts to instill in the peoples there a sense of ethnic-pride in ancient-Macedon, the Greek Kingdom that was ruled by King Philip of Macedon, a powerful hero figure in antiquity who's son Alexander the Great conquered the then known, ancient world.

The problem for those FYRoM Nation builders is this: Macedon is Greek Kingdom. Macedonians are Hellenic on that basis. The rest is history...

Those who know history, know, that Greeks have lived in Macedon for >3 Millenniums. Macedonians have endured...

1...Persian excruciations
2...Celtic invasions
3...Roman occupation
4...Hunnic barbarity
5...Ostro-Gothic treachery
6...Slavic settlement
7...Pope inspired crusades
8...Catholic betrayal
9...Turkish domination

...and after all that, Macedonians survived to tell the tale. Greeks presence in Macedon preserved, from since the days of King Karanus 808-778 BC.

On resolution and final conclusion - The FYRoM name dispute, although puny in comparison, would list 10th on that survival chart above!