Who were the Greeks?

Abstract

HOW and through what ethnic migrations and changes were the essentially Mediterranean, almost Oriental, polity, culture, art, and religion of the Mgean Bronze Age transformed into the very different and distinctly European Hellenism in which western civilisation is so largely rooted? This question has confronted all historians since the discoveries of Schliemann and Evans. The answer elaborated by Prof. Myres in 600 closely reasoned pages is the first really serious attempt to co-ordinate into a single whole the bewilderingly diverse data upon which the solution must depend. He gives us for the first time a comprehensive synthesis of the deductions from geography and climatology, from physical anthropology and prehistoric archaeology, from comparative philology and religion, from recently discovered Hittite documents and freshly interpreted Egyptian records, and above all, from the now rehabilitated traditional history of the Greeks themselves as embodied in epic, legend, and genealogy. Who were the Greeks? Prof. John Linton Myres. (Sather Classical Lectures, Vol. 6.) Pp. xxxvii + 634. (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press; London: Cambridge University Press, 1930.) 7 dollars.