DNA evidence on Ancient Greek women...

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by kostas68

By this myth wasn't emphasized Oedipus' health problems but the old curse... .

That is true and I agree with you Kosta that the "swallen foot" thing is an "external" element of the lavdakid myth. The thing is that I prefer "decifer" and analize myths in 2 elements:
1) The "vehicle" myth/tale
and
2) The "mythems" (a term introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure ) are the elementary units of the myth (the mythological "signs") analogusly like the "phonems" (phonetic signs) are the "elementary units of the language.

1)The "vehicle" myth/tale is an ordinary fairy tail theme. A love-story , a warrior's revenge , a great war etc ..It's function is to make sure that the mythems "carried" by this story will be transfered to the other generations.This "vehicle" myth in our case is the Lavdakid , one of the "favorite" families of the myths (Labdakids , Atrids ..etc). That forms the plot of the story , it defines it's characters and their relation.
2) Now the 2nd category , the "mythems" , I thing that represent "codified" prehistoric information that is been carried by the tale. After all the myth is the first attempt of explanation based on phantasy instead of logic.

So I have this "strange" habbit to "search" the other meanings in a myth that are ususally expressed by "outsider" signs.

To make some examples:

1) In the promethean myth the "vehicle tale" is the punishment of the weak's helper by the authority (Zeus punishes Prometheus for helping humans)."Fire" represents knowlegde and when the "inferior" humans have it they became "like gods" ..a think that of course is not apriciated by the last (no authority likes to see it's "slaves" becaming more "strong" ..no ???).
Now the vehicle tale explains the reason for punishment ..not the peculiarity of the punishment. Zeus could of punished Prometheus in an infinity of eternal ways ...why did he choose the "eagle and the REGENERATING LIVER" theme ?? This answer is not intrinsecle of the myth , but it is of those who created the myth ...Is it pure lack that the liver is one of the very few human organs that can regenarate ?? If we don't "concentrate" in the vehicle tale ..isn't this a great "proof" that somehow the prehistoric populations knew that the liver can rigenarate ..a thing well known by modern medicine (if you like the modality is called "no organotypic regenaration" ...the remaing liver growes to fill the vacuum , but the new tissue although metabolicaly functional it has not the typical istoarchitettonics of the normal hepatic tissue).

2) The Odyssey . Cyclops is one of the many adventures of Odysseus . Lets see it's signs a little closer.
i) Gigantic
ii) Ancients "located" the cyclops islands somewhere in Italy no ?
iii) one eyed

Now I'm asking ...what is Gigantic , "one eyed" and is located in the Italian islands (Sicily , Stromboli) ???

That's right ..the VOLCANOES !!!! "Cyclop" was the mythological form that the first mycenaean colonists -and there where mycaenean colonies in south Itlay long before the Khalcideans founded Ischia and Cuma- gave to the volcanoes they show in Italy .... gigantic , crater = one-eyed etc....

although it's only a "peripherical" issue in the whole Odyssean plot ..it's very interesting ...In sostain of that ..in Odyssey Cyclops are only uncivilized goatheards ..NO ?? ..In older myths there are only 3 of them Arges (crater's glitter) , Sterops and Brontes (Volcanic noises) and they are sons of Uranus and Gaia ..not like "our" Odyssean Polyphemus who was Poseidon's son ...

These "old cyclops" or "extra-Odyssean" cyclops if you like are mentioned in the "titanomachy" as "Hephaestus' metallurgic assistances" who made the weapons of the gods ..Again Hephaestus , fire , Volcano ...

I inserted all this only to say why I was affascinated when I read Dumezil & Vernant connection of Oedipus' name as the etymological cause of his "exposure" ... An "everyday" IE life (exposition of the babies) loan to the particular labdakid tale ...Although I must agree with you that the tale itself has another reason for the name Oedipus..as you said "post-expositional" ..and of course there is no mention about Oedipus' congenital problems.

So if you ask me what I think of the Oedipodean myth ..I say that originaly it could be a simple story of an exposed criple baby who managed to survive and returned to take revenge from his father.
By time and after generations and generations of "incomplete" transfering ...the boy ceased to be "criple" , became beautiful and of royal descent and the cause of his exposition became "Delphical" /Supernatural ...prophecy ..and finaly there was a need for a new etymology of his name which is the "post-expositional" hanging by the feet that we know from the story.

[zefs]

Worst article of the weekid women wield power in Greece 3,500 years ago?

Ancient Greek societies were, like the vast majority of other societies, patriarchal. Even as Athens moved toward an early version of democratic government around 500 B.C., men ran the show. But according to an article published on Sunday in the British newspaper The Observer, everything we knew about Greek gender relations was wrong.

The Observer article, titled “DNA Explodes Greek Myth About Women,” reports on a Manchester University study of DNA that dates back to the Mycenaean civilization from around the 16th or 17th century B.C., more than a millennium before the classical Athens of Socrates, Pericles, and Plato. What the scientists actually found through DNA analysis was that two skeletons located in a royal grave together were brother and sister, not husband and wife as archaeologists had previously thought.

The researchers’ study and their subsequent news release were tempered in their enthusiasm, saying that the find showed that Greek women from that era may have been able to achieve high social status—if they were born into a powerful family. Previously, they said, they thought women could only ascend to any kind of influence my marrying a wealthy man. The Observer, however, wrote that find elevated the status of Mycenaean women from little better than servants to places where they “often played key roles in running affairs of state.”

That’s overstating things by quite a bit, according to MIT ancient historian William Broadhead. “The presence of a brother and sister in this grave instead of a husband and wife actually changes little,” he told DISCOVER. “I would expect all the women in an imperial court to be buried in more or less similar fashion, regardless of any formal or informal power they might have wielded while alive.”

The Observer quotes Terry Brown, a member of the research team, as saying that “this discovery shows both the man and the woman were of equal status and had equal power.” But even if that was true for these two people, it doesn’t overturn much of anything, Broadhead says. Historians didn’t previously hold that these women were “chattel” or slaves in a man’s world, and it’s a stretch of the evidence to suggest that Ancient Greek women as a whole were power brokers based on such a small finding. “The article plays the classic rhetorical trick of exaggeration at both ends,” says Broadhead.
discovermagazine.com

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by Andrew

Well about the position of the women that is well known....
All the pre-greek societies were MATRIARCHALS and the Carians in Asia Minor continued on being so in historic times.

About the marriage between brothers and cousins ..that confirmes what NGL Hammond said about the archaic nomadic tribes of the Balkans: "In the early Balkans , the small tribe was the organized unit of social life and it seems that it maintained it's identity by ENDOGAMY (IN-BREEDING)".
The masters of Mycenae were descended from that proto-hellenic nomadic tribes ...so they continued their tribal usances in the new urban way of life.
So when a small tribe practices endogamy ..sooner or later everybody ends related to everybody ...

Andrew I don't believe endogamy means (In-Breeding). What it actually means is that a person marries within his or her own tribe/clan or village. It did not necessarily in-breeding.


As for the article it provides only an opposite view of the sisters role which was buried next to her brother. One thing the researchers are not mentioning is that they could have AS WELL have been not just brother and sister but husband and wife. A very common practice with nobility since the earlies civilizations.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by Spartan

Andrew I don't believe endogamy means (In-Breeding) .

I used Endogamy for intra-tribal marriage ... I thought in-breeding was a synonym ... if it is not ..then it was my mystake ..SORRY !!