Barbarians In The Gate

The mere mentioning of the term barbarian inevitably invokes the image of an Attila or a Genghis Khan. This is primarily due to our Greco-Roman cultural heritage, in which these ancient savages loom large among hordes of qualified candidates. The word barbarian supposedly came from the sound “bar-bar” which the Greek uttered in mock of the unintelligible languages spoken by foreigners. In other words, aliens who spoke languages unknown to the Greeks were deemed barbarians, people from cultures inferior to theirs. Indeed, it is thought that the name Berber for the ancient tribe that dwelled in North Africa was directly derived from this sound. Perhaps the Greeks considered the Berbers their archetypical barbarians.

The ancient Greeks were surrounded on all sides by barbarians with, perhaps, an exception to the south where the ancient Egyptian culture flourished. The greatest enemy of the Greeks faced, undoubtedly, according to history books, was the Persians, and they were deemed barbarous. In fact, crushing the Persians was tantamount to preserving Western culture. To the north roamed the Scythians, a steppes tribe versed in horseback warfare. To the immediate north the Macedonians were quickly becoming strong, and to the west the Italian tribes were also gathering strength, among these the Romans were notable. It is interesting to note that when the Romans eventually overcame Greece, they considered the Greeks barbarians, while at the same time diligently learning from them.

The Greek civilization began sometime in the 10th to 8th century BC. It was by no measure the oldest civilization on earth. When the Greeks arrived on the scene, many older civilizations had already had their run. Egypt was already more than two thousand years old. The Hittites had already come and gone. Mycenae, Minoan Crete, Babylon, Assyria, and others were in decline or on the way to extinction. Who were the Greeks, then, and where did they come from? Indeed, what kind of people were the Greeks? We know little about the pre-history ancient world. Sumer suddenly appeared in Mesopotamia with a highly developed culture as if they had been transplanted from elsewhere, and nobody has the gumption to call them barbarians, which, in any case, would have been anachronistic.

The “history before history” has stoked the fascination of many a scholar, and works aimed at uncovering the stories of our ancestors are still very much going on in earnest. This work is one of those works; an attempt to construct a story of pre-history human migrations based on extant historical records.

Stay tuned.