Black African Origins Of The Ancient Greeks Parts 1 and 2
By: Dr. Anu Mauro
It was common knowledge in ancient times that the Greeks were a spin-off of ancient and most revered Ethiopians. The Greeks themselves recorded their much vaunted relationship with the ancient Ethiopians heros in their holy books which narrate accounts of mythological Ethiopian derived heros such as
Hercules, Persus, Athene, Cassopia, Andromeda etc.
Below are some relevant myths (edited) with ‘exploratory’ notes.
ONE
MYTH NO. 8 –THE GREEK MYTHS: VOLUME 1
THE BIRTH OF ATHENE
According to the Pelasgians, the goddess Athene was born beside Lake Tritonis in Libya, where she was found and nurtured by the three nymphs of Libya, who dress in goat-skins. As a girl she killed her play-mate, Pallas, by accident, while they were engaged in friendly combat with spear and shield and, in token of grief, set Pallas’s name before her own. (hence the name PALLAS ATHENE) — Pg. 44
NOTE ON TEXT — By Robert Graves
1. Plato identified Athene, patroness of Athens, with the Libyan god-dess Neith, .. the aegis…. a magical goat-skin bag containing a serpent and protected by a Gorgon mask, was Athene’s long before Zeus claimed to be her father. Goat-skin aprons were the habitual costume of Libyan girls, and Pallas merely means ‘maiden’, or ‘youth’. Herodotus writes (iv. 189):
‘Athene’s garments and aegis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents.’ Ethiopian girls still wear this costume, which is sometimes ornamented with cowries, a yonic symbol.
— Robert Graves The Greek Myths: Published by Penguin Books
2…….Herodotus indicates that the loud cries of triumph, olulu, ololu, uttered in honour of Athene were of Libyan origin. . — Robert Graves: The Greek Myths.
NOTE by Anu Mauro
3. This noise producing activity in our time is now actually called
‘ullulation.’ It is the yodel like celebratory cry quite common all
across south Saharan Africa among contemporary African female populations.
Also use of this cry is still retained in the African descended cultures in the Levant (Palestine Syria Egypt etc. ) –Anu Mauro.
NOTE ON TEXT — By Robert Graves
4. Pottery finds suggest a Libyan immigration into Crete as early as 4000 B.C. ; and a large number of goddess-worshipping Libyan refugees from the Western Delta seem to have arrived there when Upper and Lower Egypt were forcibly united under the First Dynasty about the year 3000 B.C. The First Minoan Age began soon afterwards, and Cretan culture spread to Thrace and
Early Helladic Greece. —- Robert Graves The Greek Myths: 1
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PART TWO
But then who were the Libyans and how are they also connected to Perseus and Andromeda and Ethiopians? …especially bearing in mind that Chemmis, located on the Nile was the name given to ancient Egypt and also translates as black or charred and that the entire continent of Africa west of Egypt
was know as Lybia in ancient times. The two word answer is ‘origins’ and ‘ancestry.’
GREEK MYTH 60 –THE GREEK MYTHS: VOLUME 1
BELUS AND THE DANAAIDS
a. KING BELUS, who ruled at Chemmis in the Thebaid, was the son of Libya by Poseidon, and twin-brother of Agenor. His wife Anchinoe daughter of Nilus, bore him the twins Aegyptus and Danaus, and a third son third son, Cepheus.
Aegyptus was given Arabia as his kingdom; but also subdued the country of the Melampodes, (blackfeet) and named it Egypt after himself.
b. Fifty sons were born to him of various mothers: Libyans, Arabians, Phoenicians, and the like. Danaus, (who was) sent to rule Libya, had fifty daughters called the Danaids, also born of various mothers: Naiads, Hamadryads. Egyptian princesses of Elephantis and Memphis, Ethiopians, and the like.
c. On Belus’s death, the twins quarrelled over their inheritance, and as a conciliatory gesture Aegyptus proposed a mass-marriage between the fifty princes and the fifty princesses. Danaus, suspecting a plot would not consent and when an oracle confirmed his fears that Aegyptus had it in his mind to kill all the Danaids, prepared to flee from Libya.
d. With Athene’s assistance, he built a ship for himself and his daughters – the first two-prowed vessel that ever took to sea – and they sailed towards Greece together, by way of Rhodes.
i. Aegyptus now sent his sons to Argos, forbidding them to return until they had punished Danaus and his whole family. On their arrival, they begged Danaus to reverse his former decision and let them marry his daughters – intending, however, to murder them on the wedding night. When he still refused, they laid siege to Argos.
j. When the siege was lifted a mass-marriage was arranged, and Danaus paired off the couples: his choice being made in some cases because the bride and bridegroom had mothers of equal rank, or because their names were similar – thus Cleite, Sthenele, and Chrysippe married Cleitus, Sthenelus, and Chrysippus
k. During the wedding-feast Danaus secretly doled out sharp pins which his daughters were to conceal in their hair; and at midnight each stabbed her husband through the heart. There was only one survivor; on Artemis’s advice, Hypermnestra saved the life of Lynceus, because he had spared her maidenhead; and helped him in his flight to the city of Lyncea, sixty furlongs away.
1. The murdered men’s heads were buried at Lema, and their bodies given full funeral honours below the walls of Argos; ….Athene and Hermes purified the Danaids in the Lemaean Lake with Zeus’s permission. Lynceus later killed Danaus, and reigned in his stead.
Meanwhile, Aegyptus had come to Greece, but when he learned lphis sons’ fate, fled to Aroe, where he died, and was buried at Patrae in a sanctuary of Serapis
NOTE ON TEXT — By Robert Graves
l. This myth records the early arrival in Greece of Helladic colonists (from Palestine, by way of Rhodes, and their introduction of agriculture into the Peloponnese. It is claimed that they included emigrants from Lybia and Ethiopia, which seems probable. — Robert Graves The Greek Myths: 1
NOTE ON TEXT — by Anu Mauro
This myth also clearly suggests that the children of Dana-us i.e. the Danaids were of African or Ethiopic origin on both their maternal and paternal sides…note their mothers place origins, as well as the paternal connection with Aegyptus, Cepheus and Belus. –Anu Mauro.
NOTE ON TEXT — by James Brunson
” Throughout the Greek legends, an Africoid or dark-skinned people are associated with Danaus and the Danaids. (The poet) Aeschylus’s, “Suppliant Maidens”, describes the Danides as “Black and smitten by the “sun”. (In the poem) when the Danaids claim an ethnic kinship to Epaphos, son of Zeus, the Argive king Pelops, rebukes them:
Nay, strangers, what ye tell is past belief
For me to hear, that ye from Argos spring
For ye to Libyan women are most like,
And no wise to our native maidens here.””
—- James Brunson : The African Presence in the Ancient Mediterranean: Isles and Mainland Greece Pg. 48 African Presence in Early Europe– Edited by Ivan Van Sertima
NOTE ON TEXT — by Anu Mauro
So this places Ethiopics not only in the early migrant populations that settled in Greece but the Danaid link can also be used to connect Perseus himself to dark skinned Ethiopic elements not to mention Andromeda and her parents . This can be gleaned from the next installment of Greek myth (Part 3) wherein the great-grand father of Perseus, his grandfather as well as his mother are shown to have had Danaaid (hence African) connections.
— Anu Mauro
The Ethiopians are the oldest people in the history of man.
This type of history is never taught in schools. The common schools teach that the Europeans discovered America, Christopher Columbus was Italian, etc., etc., etc.
They never teach that the Spaniards killed over 80% of natives.
The artifacts prove that Ethiopians were in ancient Greece.
In addition: The Vikings, Africans and Chinese reached the Americas before the Spanish-Jew Columbus.
greeks are not necessary black, but the greeks do have a large percentage of black(sub-saharran african) blood though because e1b1, a haplogroup that originates in east africa, is 27 percent of todays greek blood in the modern day greek population. i would not say greeks are black though, i would say there a mixture of many bloods.
p.s the lebanese people have simular dna blood as the greeks do.
The Greeks were not black and blacks never created the Greek civillization. The Greeks were white, we can see that from their sculptures which have WHITE-COMPLEXION CHARACTERISTICS! The Greeks where never assocciated with central Africa. Only Solon is said to have reached the Ethiopians, who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH GREEKS. ”Ethiopians” is a name from the Greek mythology. The real Ethiopians never existed. The real Ethiopians were believed to be black, as the Greeks mention (PROOF: if the Greeks were black, they would have never criticised the fact that the Ethiopians are black) worshiped the Greek Pantheon. These Ethiopians didn’t even knew who Hyperion or who Zeus is. Solon thought they were the Ethiopians of mythology, so he named them after that. ALSO, the Greeks have pure blood. They were separated in tribes who were never mixed or lost from the footprints of ancient history.
The Greeks have nothing to do with Africans. They hadn’t even seen blacks before Solon travels to ”what-he-thought-was-Ethiopia”.
The only reason the Greek Pantheon is said to have ”travelled” around the Mediterenean (NOT CENTRAL AFRICA) is due to the Greek sea trade which was the greatest since the Minoan and Mycenean years.
It’s my country, people! I study History, I know! I know more than any wanna-be who has nothing better to do from writing books about facts that couldn’t be more wrong! How can the Greeks be black when they’re famous for being one of the nations that never went too far from Greece when in a war, etc?
wrong. many of those statues are fakes made during the renaissance.
The orignal occupants of the Greek isles were from the immediate south: AFRICA.
get over it.
Oh, the truth hurts! The Greeks were ruled over by Black men! Love it!
Damn straight. Greeks are simply the lighter shaded members of the Black race.
If it’s true and the Ethiopians and Greeks have very few traditions that are alike, it’s because of trade. TRADE! Libyan artifacts in Crete? TRADE! Stuff from Africa in Greece? TRADE! TRADE! TRADE! From the ”so-called-Ethiopians” to the Egyptians and then to Greeks. Still, the Ethiopians have nothing to do with the Greek civillization and shouldn’t even be called Ethiopians.
I hate it when people try to corrupt History just because they’re jealous of other nations or have nothing better to do.
Not saying about this site, but about books and wanna-be archaeo/anthropologists.
I’ll be very glad if your read my messages.
Trade ?? no.
The original occupants were African…..who were then overun by the Dorians and Ionians “whites”…..get over it.
It is obvious and has always been based on Greek mythology itself.
Hollywood has us all mixed up in the brain.
Zeus needs to meet my three cousins with sickle cell anemia. (I am Greek). Of course we have Black origins. Why people cannot accept that, I do not know. Many Greeks have.
Face it zeus.
The caucus mountains is all you get.
Stop being a culture vulture.
Stop pretending to be moors.
People hate to face facts face it people your derivative of the black man African black man ……. being black is not whack being black is a fact and beautiful to boot …….
Here it is folks. Definitive evidence. Greeks descended from Ethiopians….like it or not. DNA tells all.
“Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group”(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11260506)
Greeks are the only “white European” people to develop sickle cell anemia as well as two forms of skin cancer found “only” in Blacks. Quite true about the Black Africans having profoundly influenced Greece, even genetically.
Haha! Surprise, Euro-Negroes! Europeans don’t even exist, as Europe itself doesn’t exist! There’s only Asia and Africa. Some supposed European groups (Mediterranean/Middle Easterners) are of Levantine descent. A long time ago, the Levant was originally inhabited by some kin folk of the Nilotic/Sahara-Sehel (Sudanese), they allowed themselves to mix and eventually be totally absorbed by these other folks from West-Eurasia; these West Eurasians folks were themselves mixed Neanderthals, thus a new group was created (much like the mestizos of today-are they Native Americans or Spanish?). Some of these Levantine (Afro-Asiatic) folks returned south (Africa) and settled all along the Nile and North Africa (maintaining or re-introducing most of their blackness), while other Levantines ventured further north into fake Europe (becoming whiter and whiter). Because all of this is backed by genetics, Euro-fakers want to claim North Africa, especially Egypt as white, then they’ll start saying crazy stuff like, “skin-color doesn’t matter-they’re cacausoid”! Funny how they want to both deny and affirm their Africaness all at the same time! Go figure! If it weren’t for Africans, Neanderthals, and Asian mix, the Euronuts wouldn’t even exist! I’m not even going to mention how anthropologists the world over will tell you those ancient burial sites were re-used hundreds, if not thousands of times throughout history. So, when some of these folks are dug up, they may appear more fake-Euro because they were buried there when these areas were re-infiltrated (Greek/Roman) during later periods!
HA HA! The truth hurts! The Greeks were the ones who did NOT get away from my BROTHAS!
The ancient Greek historian Anaxagoras (fifth century BC) wrote of “very tall, broad featured, ebon skinned, woolen haired invaders from beyond the Midlothian (Egyptian) deserts having conquered and settled most of the later Hellenic (Greek) dominion”. Translators estimate Black African rule in Greece to have existed between 1450 and 1100 BC. However, it initially was quite brutal. Anaxagoras goes on to write of an “extant slaughter of men and boys at the hands of the conquerors, and the ravaging of women so as to firmly implant the seed of the conquerors within the blood of the early Hellenes (Greeks)”. He does conclude by writing how “the rule of these invaders became one of benevolence, culture and prosperity upon the now subdued Hellenes (Greeks) choosing to accept their fate as well as their new masters”. Another historian, Praxiteles, writes how the Dorians and other northern invaders ultimately drove out the Black Africans, but that is another story. The fact remains that Greeks have profound levels of Black African cultural AND genetic ancestry. However, dear folks, those early Black Africans initially brutalized and enslaved their own victims, those being the Greeks.