Pseudoscience, "Rosetta Stone Hoax" and “University of Toronto”.

N.C. Flemming remark that the Pseudoscience corrupt the basis of factual knowledge available to the public, and particularly to students.  It also corrupt and debase the methodology of establishing empirical evidence for past events (in fields such as geology, archaeology, cosmology, or history), and hence the ability of students or the lay reader to distinguish fact from fantasy or invention. It follows that, in order to combat the slow but apparently remorseless growth of pseudoarchaeology, we must understand its appeal. It is impossible to provide the believer with an antidote if we do not comprehend the nature of the belief and the strength of its attraction.

Why I am saying all these?

Because, I read with a big surprise, that the University of Toronto will host (see the picture) two of the greatest promoters of the FYROM pseudoscience. Two Slavmacedonians Engineers Dr. Tentov and Dr. Boshevski promoted...

Demosthenes, Philip and the "Third Philippic"

The statement found in Demosthenes  3rd Philippic has been used time and time again by our beloved Northern neighbors, in an attempt to indicate that the Makedones were not considered Hellenes..
It is actually this quote that has been used:

Demosthenes, 3rd Philippic 31
But if some slave or superstitious bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! how much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave.

But did Demosthenes and the rest of the Hellinic world actually consider Philip and thus the Makedones as 'foreigners' which some strive to support based on the use of the term 'barbarian' ?
Demosthenes clarifies this for us in a different text.. titled, "On the False Embassy".. there we read:

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM by Ap. Vakalopoulos

REMARKS ON THE RACIAL ORIGIN AND THE INTELLECTUAL CONTINUITY OF THE GREEK NATION

The understanding of intellectual phenomena presupposes not only an adequate stock or knowledge and possess.ion of method but also a maturity of mind, since chiefly with deep personal experience are we able to stand before the remarkable historical and sociological phenomena and try to perceive the course they take in our highly comblex life. The main reason we require much time for the consideration and understanding of phenomena is that frequendy the great changes in history come about very slowly. They unfold gradually and imperceptibly without our being aware of them. The greatest difficulty of all is in following the pattern of these phenomena through the course of the centuries. Such problems are:  the famous origin of the modern Greeks and, second, other problems bound up with this first but nonetheless still thorny and much debated. These are problems concerning the relationships and common ground between the ideas of the Ancient and Byzantine world and those of the modern Greeks.
Moreover I would like to bring to mind the establishment of Roman colonies in various parts of the Greek territory,  in Epirus and Macedonia.....

SLAVIC HOMER IN SKOPJE & assorted Balkan fables: the case of the Slavic Trojans

by Miltiadis Elias Bolaris
FEB 15, 2011

HOCUS POCUS SLAVOMAKEDONIENSIS:

Bogus scholarly witchcraft in the age of Antikvizatsiyja
In notoriously unreliable sources, such as the "Slavic Nationalist Forum" (1) or the expatriate Skopjan misinformation website "MakNews" (2), it is naturally expected to stumble upon products of pseudo-scholarly emesis such as "A new theory about the Trojan era", by Tomáš Spevák, which in all seriousness proclaims nothing less than: "Ancient Trojans were SLAVS"!

The first question now is: Why should anybody waste their time answering such preposterous claims. The answer is clear: This text has been used in every internet posting imaginable to promote its obviously anachronistic case to unsuspecting readers that take its word at its face value. Why should it not? While the text is not backed up by any documentation to speak off, it does include some rather impressive quotes by none other than Homer, the poet of Iliad and Odyssey himself as well as by Tiberius Claudius, the Roman Emperor and by Professor Eugene Borza.

The "new theory about the Trojan era" starts with the following question:

Re: The Importance of Historical Truth and The Macedonian Issue

By Professor John Melville-Jones

Following the publication of the edited version of the after-dinner talk that I gave in October, a formal complaint was made to my employer (to which a polite reply was made, stressing the importance of academic freedom), and I received an e-mailed message from the United Macedonian Diaspora (which I thought, because of its name, must be a Greek organisation until I read what it had to say), together with a number of other e-mails. Many of these were merely abusive, but this didn’t surprise me, because I know from experience that when people hold strong beliefs that are based on faith not fact, and they are shown that these beliefs cannot be true, this is distressing to them, and they will very often become agitated, as they cling to their beliefs even more vigorously. None of the messages that I received addressed the issue that I raised in my talk in Melbourne, the proposed erection of the statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje. Two of them were, however, more thoughtful, and I have had some mild and civilised exchanges with their authors, as we define our positions.
Some of the points that were made were what I would call 'diversionary', such as the statement that the present population of the Greek province of Macedonia has nothing in common with its population in ancient times, being 'colonisers', referring to the fact that many of them were brought there from Turkey in the 1920s during the exchange of populations which led to Muslims being removed from...

Alexander the Great at the Louvre for a unique exhibition

Opening days: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Duration: 1 hr. 30 mins.

Alexander the Great goes .. to France next October! And not just any place in France but at ''Le Louvre'', the country's most famous museum and one of the best museums on the planet. A major exhibition entitled "In the kingdom of Alexander the Great - Ancient Macedonia'' will be hosted at the famous museum from October 2011 until January 2012. Maybe October isn't too close, preparation, however, is almost completed, so that the artifacts will be sent to France from Greece.
The curator of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities of the Louvre Mrs Sophie Deschamp has travelled to all Macedonian cities in Northern Greece in order to....

Merry Christmas from Macedonia.!!!!

A question from a reader as regards the "Ancient Macedonian History"

A common question about Ancient Macedonian History is: “If Alexander A' was Greek, why was he called a Philhellene?”

Philhellene (φιλέλλην, meaning Greek-lover) is a term commonly used of non-Greeks. It is also a term for Greeks who sacrifice themselves for the common good. Plato states that the citizens should be both Greek and Philhellenes (Republic 470E). Agesilaus of Sparta was also called a philhellene (Xenophon, Agesilaus 7.4) because he was a good Greek.

More questions about Ancient Macedonia History are answered at http://macedonia-evidence.org/faq-history.html.

Exaugustus Boiοannes and the Macedonians

Exaugustus Boiοannes (Italian: Exaugusto Bugiano), son of the famous Basil Boioannes, was also a catepan of Italy, from 1041[1] to 1042[2]. He replaced Michael Doukeianos after the latter's disgrace in defeat at Montemaggiore on May 4. Boioannes did not have the levies and reinforcements that Doukeianos had had at his command. He arrived only with a Varangian contingent. Boioannes decided on trying to isolate the Lombard rebels in Melfi by camping near Montepeloso.

He stated the following prior to battle:

Byzantine Macedonia (324-1025)

Byzantine Macedonia (324 - 1025)

Greece: Birthplace of the modern world?

by Paul Cartledge
guardian.co.uk

E pluribus unum: "out of many – one". The one-time motto of the US reminds us that, much like most of the larger nation states today, ancient Greece was a mosaic of very different components: about 1,000 of them at any one time between c600BC and AD330. That is, there were a thousand or so separate, often radically self-differentiated political entities, most of which went by the title of polis, or citizen-state. Our term "Greece" is derived from the Romans' Latin name, Graecia, whereas the ancient Greeks spoke of Hellas – meaning sometimes the Aegean Greek heartland, at other times the entire, hypertrophied Hellenic world – and referred to themselves as "Hellenes".

In the foundational epics attributed to Homer, however, you won't find Greeks referred to as "Hellenes" but as "Achaeans", "Danaans", or "Argives". That was because the epics are set in a period before "Hellas" and "Hellenes" had become common currency – before, that is, the eighth century BC, when Greeks first started emigrating permanently from the Aegean basin and settling around the Mediterranean and Black Seas. By the time of Plato, around 400BC, Hellas stretched from the Pillars of Heracles (straits of Gibraltar) in the west to Phasis in Colchis (in modern Georgia) in the far east. Later, following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the pale of Hellenic settlement was extended even further eastwards, as far as Afghanistan and the Indus Valley of Pakistan.

Everyone who was not a Hellene by birth, language or culture was labelled a barbaros. Originally an...... 

Quran and Islam about the Great Alexander

Population changes in Macedonia under Ottoman Rule(14th-18th cent)

The first century of Ottoman rule in Macedonia is characterized by a marked decrease in the Christian population which was primarily due to Muslim Turkic colonization. The Yuruks, a semi-nomadic Turkic tribe, represented the majority of the newcomers, having already appeared in Macedonia since the 14th century. Most ofthem settled in the region of Thessaloniki, in Central and Western Macedonia (Yenitsa, Kilkis, Strornnitsa, Servia, Florina) and as far north as Monastir (Bitola). At the same time, the Christian populations retreated either to the western and southern mountainous regions or to Chalcidice.2

Towards the end of the 15th century it was the tum of Jews to come in lagre numbers from Central and Western Europe and settle, mainly in Thessaloniki. The Askenazim, Jews of German and Hungarian origin, were the first to arrive, but the most numerous group was that of Spanish Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. Other groups came from Sicily and Southern Italy and still more from Portugal in 1497. Jews of Western origin came to be known collectively as Sefardim (Spanish Jews). During the 16th century the Jewish element moved towards the interior of Macedonia and by the end of the century Jewish communities had been established at Skopje (Uskub), Monastir, Kavala, Drama, Serres, Siderocausia of Chalcidice, and elsewhere.3

However, the Jews were not the only mobile part of the population during the 16th century. Christian populations also began to move towards the plains. One part headed for Chalcidice where metallurgy was flourishing:

Recent Research on ancient Macedonia by Pr. R. Malcolm Errington

Recent Research on ancient Macedonia by Pr. R. Malcolm Errington

Source:istorie.ugal.ro

Writer Marko Attila Hoare fails

Writer Marko Attila Hoare, a British integral nationalist (see Smith at national identity 1991, page 79) in a recent article at his blog(http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com), try to explain the nationality of the ancient Macedonians.
How a modern writer try to define the nationality in a field of the Classicism raise a lot of questions.
Hoare's article fails in two things.

First fail is to take adequately into account the important distinction, first proposed by Max Weber (1921) and since used by social anthropologists, between objective and subjective ethnicity. Objective ethnicity is a biological category which defines groups of human beings in terms of their shared physical characteristics resulting from a common gene pool. Subjective ethnicity, however, describes the ideology of an ethnic group by defining as shared its ancestors, history, language, mode of production, religion, customs, culture, etc., and is therefore a social construct, not a fact of nature (Isajiw 1974).

Objective and subjective ethnicity may and often do overlap, and the subjective, ideological boundaries between ethnic groups may be commensurate with objective ethnic boundaries (Barth 1969), especially where an ethnic group has been isolated or has rigorously avoided intermarriage.

Second fail is the...

Shah Nameh/Sikander(Great Alexander)

The Shahnameh (The King's Chronicles) is an enormous poetic opus written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi around 1000 AD and is the national epic of the cultural sphere of Greater Persia. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shāhnāmeh tells the mythical and historical past of Greater Iran from the creation of the world up until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century. The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran.

The Shâhnameh recounts the history of Persia, beginning with the creation of the world and the introduction of the arts of civilization (fire, cooking, metallurgy, law) to the Aryans and ends with the Arab conquest of Persia. The work is not precisely chronological, but there is a general movement through time. Some of the characters live for hundreds of years but most have normal life spans.

The work is divided into three successive parts: the mythical, heroic, and historical ages. At the the historical age A brief mention of the Ashkānīyān dynasty follows the history of Alexander and precedes that of Ardashir I, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty.

The following text describe the age of the Great Alexander.

The Occupants of Tomb II at Vergina. Why Arrhidaios and Eurydice must be excluded

ON 21 April 2000 Science published an article by Antonis Bartsiokas titled 'The Eye Injury of King Philip II and the Skeletal Evidence from the Royal Tomb II at Vergina'. In it he criticised some observations made by Prag, Neave and Musgrave in earlier publications concerning possible trauma to the cranium and facial asymmetry. In an attempt to identify the man in the main chamber of Tomb II at Vergina as Philip III Arrhidaios rather than Philip II, he also argued that the bones had been burned dry, degreased and unfleshed. This paper  answer his criticisms, and refute his dry cremation argument, pointing out that, far from strengthening the claim for Arrhidaios, it weakens it considerably.
Dr Jonathan Musgrave of the University of Bristol's Centre for Comparative and Clinical Anatomy and colleagues argue that evidence from the remains is not consistent with historical records of the life, death and burial of Arrhidaios, a far less prominent figure in the ancient world than his father Philip II.
Dr Musgrave said:

Macedonia in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods

Open publication - Free publishing - More macedonia

Louvre Alexander the Great exhibition to travel to Dion

A rare exhibition of engravings from the Louvre Museum on Alexander the Great's campaigns, crafted by renowned French artists, will be traveling outside of France for the first time, to be exhibited at the Center of Mediterranean Mosaics in Dion, Pieria prefecture, as part of the 39th annual Olympus Festival.

The Festival proper takes place every summer with concerts and stage performances at the Ancient Theater of Dion, and various fringe events, including exhibitions, are staged in other venues.

.travel-greece.org/nothern_greece/

Prehistoric Macedonia

Prehistoric Macedonia by Kostas Kotsakis