Bulgaria Discovery Sheds Light on Ancient Thracians

[Awar]

Well... not really. The importance of Illyrians in the area was over-bloated
thanks to some 19th century "historians".

Two of the largest cities in Serbia have names derrived from Celtic toponyms.
Other cities are either Slavic translations or 'mutated' original names, toponyms etc.
The language of Slavic peoples along the coast of the Adriatic are FULL of ancient
pre-Slavic, even pre-Roman words.

Besides, the area has been in the hands of everyone. Since the 2nd millenium BC,
when the area of Illyrian influence was the largest, over the times when
these areas were conquered by other old Balkan peoples, through the time it was
a Roman teritory, Byzantine, or belonged to independent rulers of Epir,
or to Serbian kingdom/empire, to the Turks, Italians etc.

[White Falcon]

I never knew our president has a hobby.

[Awar]

Incredible!

[Reltih]

Dr Kitov - the archaeologist has the hobby of being a croatian president ?

[Awar]

Kitov-Mesić

[Zrinski]

OMG!!! Mesic has an evil twin brother

[Graeme]

Stipe Mesic, an interesting looking man. Do you think he'll see out his second term. He is no spring chicken. Slavonia forever.

[Nemesis]

Just a couple of thoughts.

Wasn't Orpheus a Thracian that obviously spoke and wrote his works in the Hellinic language? He obviously did, which means that either the Thracians weren't a totally barbaric nation or from very early times they were strongly Hellinized.

Not sure if this is the same find but if it is, there was also a ring featuring an Olympic rower in what Georgi Kitov called an unrivaled find in the study of classical antiquity. Obviously because we know that ONLY Hellinic "people" took part in the ancient Olympics, a fact that brings the Thracian closer to Hellinic origin.

Now, couldn't this Olympic ring and the mask found, which when compared to Agamemnon's mask and added to other finds/info, like artifacts, culture, Gods (see Dionysus and Orpheus), common Heroes/city founders (Myltiades, Hagnon, Byzas, Abderos), myths, the few Thracian inscriptions written in Hellinic and the tombs in Seuthopolis just to mention some, be enough to begin such a connection?

What if we add some ancient quotes to the above list?

---------- a. "When Seuthes heard all that, he said that he trusted all Athenians, because he knows that between him and them there is a kinship, and thus he considers them as his dear friends."

[Seuthes was the King of Southern Thrace]

(Seuthes' ancestor Teres, and First King of the Thracian Odrysians, was in fact Tereus who married the daughter of the Athenian King Pandion and had lands in Phocis. This happened in the remote antiquity. Events described here take place ca. 400 B.C.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon, -Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter II, 31


---------- b. (Seuthes replied Maisades was my father, and he ruled the Melanditae, the Thynians and the Tranipsae.[Thracian tribes].

(The Thracian Tribal names are all Greek etymologically.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon, -Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter II, 32


---------- c. (Xenophon said We intend to go to a place where the soldiers will be able to find food for themselves. There, we will hear what Aristarchus the Spartan has to say and what you have to propose, and we shall choose to go with whomever proposals' sound more beneficial to us.

(King Seuthes replied I know many villages that are not far away one from the other, where food can be found in abudance.

(Seuthes could speak and understand Attic Greek, thus he was able to converse with Xenophon, an Athenian, directly without the intervention of an itepreter.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon, -Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter III, 8-10


----------- d. When they were close at the gates, and they were preparing themselves to enter and dine, they met a certain Heracleides from Maronia.

(Maronia was a Greek City on the Thracian Coast between Abdera and Doriscon Lt. Doriscum. Heracleides was King Seuthes' aid-de-camp.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon‚-Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter III, 16


----------- e. Then Seuthes arose, and drunk along with Xenophon all the wine in their cups, and then, together, they shed the last drops of the wine on the ground, as a "sponde".

(A "Sponde", was an Archaic Greek Custom, documented to be practised at least from the time of the Trojan War. Achilles, Menelaus, Patroclus, Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus, Hector, Paris, Priamus, in short terms everybody as early as 1260 B.C. to honour the Gods. The practicing of the same custom by the Thracians means that, they had common customs with the Greeks.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon, ‚-Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter III, 32


----------- f. (Seuthes said Prepare yourselves and wait. When the time is right I shall come with my Peltasts take you and lead you with the help of the Gods.

(Greeks and Thracians had the same Gods, i.e. the twelve Olympian Gods.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon,-Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter III, 36


----------- g. And [thus] as a password, they set the name of the Godess Athena, because of the kinship between Athenians and Tracians.

Source:
---------
Xenophon, -Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter III, 39


----------- h. (The Thynians, one of the Thracian tribes Seuthes and Xenophon wage war against, attack the Greco-Thracian Army. Book VII, Chapter IV, 12-19)

(And) they even called out the name of Xenophon as well, and challenged him to step out of the (keep) to kill him, otherwise they threatened him that they would burn him where he stands.

(It is clear that even the Thynian tribesmen, commoners in other words, spoke Greek. Knowledge of the Greek language was not limited to Noblemen only.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon,-Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter IV, 15


----------- i. Because many of the Odrysians left their mountain homes to take part in his [Seuthes'] military operations because they have learned of his achievements.

(Seuthes was the son of the King of the Odrysians, a Thracian tribe that lived in the Thracian mountains, not in the Thracian coast.)

Source:
---------
Xenophon,-Anabasis: Book VII, Chapter IV, 21


CONCLUSION:
-----------------
There were clearly many ties, linguistic, cultural, racial, as well as religious between the Thracians and the Greeks.

As the evidence of the Archaic Thracian King Tereus tells us, contacts between the mainland Greeks and the Thracians are as old as at least 8th cent. B.C.

Of course there is even more evidence in the Iliad.
Some other connections as I posted above can be found in religion:

Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.1
Tells us how the the Thracian women plotted the death of Orpheus, in this same text we also find a list of other Hellinic Gods.

Again in Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.5.1
We find that only Thracian women were allowed to enter sanctuary of Herakles at Erythrae he also mentions them visiting the temple of Athena at Priene.