Talk:Dorian invasion

message: It would be cool if 142.173.109.116 could provide a citation for his expansion of this article, for the benefit of the curious. Also, please don't use the first person or a conversational style in writing Wikipedia articles. Thanks - Nat Krause 16:06, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: These two articles essentially belong together at Dorian, supporting one another until some subsection is overwhelmingly complicated and might stand on its own, represented at the main article by a concise paragraph. Perhaps there are three subsections to this part: 
#"The Greek view"
#"Race and Historians: the 19th century view"
#"Archaeology and the modern view" 
If you see other natural subdivisions, please insert them, and then let's get going with this interesting big article. --Wetman 06:43, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Dorian]]s and the "[[Dorian invasion]]"

message: I just created this article by breaking it out from Dorians. The commentary above this comment is legacy discussion addressed months  ago and no longer relevant. My reason for breaking it out is size. The reason for the size is that commentators not copied over to here were struggling with the many issues and seeming contradictions, which needed more explanation than a few paragraphs. The 1911 EB was a major source, but of course this whole field has practically developed since 1911. I'm done with this article for now but Dorians still needs some work. Ciao.Dave (talk) 13:04, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess it still needs work. It is an important topic. I will be going through here albeit slowly addressing my sins of omission and essayism. Anyone else can jump in you know. No need to put all the heat on me.Dave (talk) 12:04, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

text: Ah, I see my links have vanished mysteriously. Too hamfisted, I guess. My request stands that someone post before and after dialect maps that make clear the essential nature of the issue. ThanksJohundhar (talk) 14:54, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Article creation

message: For some reason, the article appears to be hell-bent on dismissing the Dorian invasion as unhistorical. 
As is heralded by section titles such as "Greek origin in Greece" and "Invasion or migration?". 
These are complete red herrings. Whether you want to call it an invasion or a migration is a matter of preference. Whether the Dorian migration "originated in Greece" depends on the arbitrary question of modern country borders. The point is that Doric Greek proper is intrusive to southern Greece and Crete, and must have got there by means of a migration during the Greek Dark Ages. Ths migration is termed "the Dorian migration". Whether it originated in northern Greece or in the Balkans just beyond the Greek border is a moot question. 
The current article style is that of an  setting up strawmen so it can shoot them down and dismiss the migration as legendary instead of examining what can be said about this prehistoric event.
--dab (𒁳) 09:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I could not disagree more with your take. The article as it stands does synthesize the most current sober views, and the debunking of the German school's racialist mistakes, which need to be cleared out of several Wikipedia articles (as does a still amazing number of reliance on Evans debunked conclusions).Carwon (talk) 16:31, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Carwon. I see you are in fact an expert or at least cognizant of the prevailing issues. I should probably tip you off, this discussion is not an objective critique. Maybe you have noticed the tags were put on by dab. I see you are new here. Dab is a German. In my opinion he takes the German party line. He is so predictable on that score you can almost mouth his reponses beforehand. I don't want to be unfair to anyone. The only answer to this problem is to respond to all the criticisms. That is why WP articles are so terrible. You spend all your time on questions such as these. Meanwhile the place fills up with uncontrolled junk. Naturally any student questions anything and everything. That is the nature of a student, and so do amateurs. We are so to speak taking the heat for the entire educational and publishing establishment. "Why does 2 and 2 have to be 4? I disagree with that! I want it to be something else!" Education is a tough game. I'll be going through this albeit very slowly. You probably don't have time to follow it but thanks for the support.Dave (talk) 11:57, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: article issues

message: I have tagged  the following phrase:
Families were so poor that they gave up bronze as a metal of jewelry and took to wearing simple iron rings and pendants
To my knowledge, iron was an expensive material in that era's Greece. For contrast:
Throughout the 7th to 6th centuries BC, iron artifacts remained luxury items reserved for an elite. - here
:Thanks for the ref. It ain't my opinion of course; however, WP articles are not sources. You can't fix everything in every article. You assert that iron was actually a precious metal. It certainly sounds like a matter of opinion that should have been referenced. Eventually I will check it. Meanwhile if you find it all that offensive, remove it. When in doubt, leave it out! The lack of a ref gives you the priviledge of doing that.Dave (talk) 11:43, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Cheap iron in 1000 BCE?

message: My goodness what a storm! Well, first of all let me say that on the charge of writing in the essay style, more guilty than not. However, that has an unfortunate side effect. Most of those opinions, or "straw men," are not mine, they belong to someone else. We do have a comment by an expert that the article reflects the prevailing opinions. I should have put in more sources. As a result everything is now being questioned.  There really is no other course of action at this point than to go through it again objectifying it. You critics removed some material you thought was essayist and irrelevant, but you didn't get them all; moreover, some of the material you removed contained some points of view that should be in there better identified and more objectively.
Now a special message for you dab. Perhaps the rest of you are not acquainted with dab. He's an editor/administrator who lives in Germany and does not pull any punches. In many cases he likes to shock without any trace of civility. I can't really understand why he has not been removed as administrator. But here you are, dab, big as life as usual. I think you love it. However, I have my usual objections. First of all, your backing the original Dorian Invasion is nothing less than Germanist. Apparently we can't say anything without passing your Germanist criteria. That invasion as such has been out for a long time now. I have referenced that part pretty thoroughly. There are no "straw men." I don't know what you mean there. YOU might be a straw man as you appear to back some pretty strange ideas on WP. Here I find you are about as accurate as you usually are, not very. How do we defend ourselves against you? Well, I say this, but actually there is a lot you have done I have agreed with. So, you aren't all that bad. I find you are a very emotional man; to wit, "oh dear." Frankly if you  think some of us are not objective, by that standard you need to drill a hole through your tongue and put a rein on it, and I wouldn't put the reins in your hands. I suggest those of your wife's, but it is only a suggestion. All in good clean fun, dab.
So, there is nothing for it but to go through here repenting of my sins and trying to answer all these objections. The article is basically correct. You do have an expert opinion on that in the topic before last. All experts are welcome to pitch in at any time. This is going to take a while. It will be very slow as I do not have all the time in the world, certainly not the time dab seems to have. I hope you are not neglecting more important matters, dab. When I get through here I am taking off dab's tags. Dab, if you have further objections I insist you be very specific. Exactly what do you find a straw man or essayist? I will be removing any unspecified tags. I know you are an administrator. You are also a bully. I think it is time to face you right to the end, whatever that is. I see that in this article I have to justify everything. I think it is only fair for you to have to do so also. Do you think you are above the law, so to speak? A man must know his limitations.Dave (talk) 11:35, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply by the main author

message: I looked this over. Sorry, but it seems to me you recent editors have some sections pretty well messed up both in formatting and in content. Rich, you put a request for a citation on. I think you are hardworking and credible but if you look above the last ref covers it. I went to check these refs and discovered to my surprise I had not done them. Well thank you very much for your work on the refs. I can use that by doing a little more work to fix them. I'm using the Harvard ref system now and these refs do not look much like it. The recent editor on the meaning of invasion part, well, you are removing vital material. The ref asked for on that had already been given. I will have to put that material back, but I will re-edit it for objective language. The part that is my fault, well, I should have larded the refs on more thickly. To expect you to know that a statement was covered by a ref four sentences back is too much. Some removals I applaud. I will be leaving those out, such as the biographical comment on Chadwick. I don't know what got into me. That used to be my field I suppose. Attilios, I think you are credible also. I suppose I can bear a little ridicule from you. I have to check your changes more carefully. If I may evaluate myself - well, I did this article halfway between being experienced and non-experienced. Overall it is well-written. I'm good writer. I did have a tendency to use essay-type language here and there. You have taken those statements mainly out. In the definition of invasion section you took out too much. I will have to put it back. For accuracy and classical validity - well, I'm a good classicist and this is good classics. I do have a discussion comment backing me up. Dieter, well, he's off the wall. He's obviously letting his dislike of me pollute his job. Well, the rule is, you don't remove properly cited material without a good reason. When I finish here everything will be properly cited. You will have no reason to remove it. I was going to take Dieter's tags off right now on the strength of your corrections. However, I see your corrections aren't so correct so it still has multiple issues. I'm on this now. Don't take anything else out. Mark it if you want. I'm going to give it my painstaking treatment. I will be glad to discuss. You may offer some jovial ridicule. You may not offer any hate.Dave (talk) 02:18, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey of recent changes

message: "*  Note that the online edition omits the critical bibliography, which features works only in German, and includes Müller but not Kretschmer. Also the online version runs paragraphs and section headings together. The paragraph division is not the one of the article."
Whew. Someone has someone too cowed to act. The editor has written everything that is wrong with it into the ref! Moreover, the editor is right. I never did like that site. We should just take it out! We don't have to live with that stuff. If they want to be used by us let them get their act togther. WP does have an EB template pulling up the WP version of the EB article: "EB1911|The Dorians" But, no one has put any such article in. It takes a lot of work to put those in. My suggestion is, until someone has the time and inclination to do it, let's leave EB 1911 out. There is a Google Books duplication we could put in. But, this whole article in here because the 1911 article is too obsolete even to consider. What do we want that for? Let's leave it alone.Dave (talk) 15:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: On-line Britannica

message: Is there a way for an editor to rename this "Dorian Invasion Theory"? It could then be put in it the context all the current work puts it in, not as an historic fact, but what it really is: a reflection of prejudices within early archeology. In archeology journals and schools today the "Dorian invasion" is not about any invasion of "Dorians" but about pitfalls and errors and bias in early archaeology. IE it is taught and seen as a case study in mistakes made, not as an actual occurrence. This article needs to reflect that. And I am not talking about a distinction between migration and invasion since there is no evidence whatsoever that the Dorians were not simply there all along. 68.45.42.194 (talk) 02:39, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi. I can give you some good reasons why the article should keep its current name, but also I want to say,I don't think you are drawing valid conclusions. This is NOT - I repeat NOT a debunking of the Dorian invasion. For all we know there might have been one. We can't totally discard that view, which is like our concept of Homer. Maybe there was a Homer, maybe not, but the poems are probably not the work of a single poet. What we are presenting here are various explanations of the cultural change in southern Greece. There is no right or wrong. Each theory has its strength and weakness. Scholarship followed a certain course of acceptance but that does not mean it is the RIGHT one. Ive known that course to run the gamut of criticism and then suddenly snap back to the original view in other topics. Kretschmer may well be coming back in some areas. These scholars, you know, they like to argue with each other. That's what they do. This article only presents the main line of arguments. If anyone knew, they wouldn't have to argue. It is a question of who is in and who out at the moment. Maybe Kretschmer will return to claim his true inheritance! I don't see any predjudice of early archaeology, and I don't see this as being about pitfalls and errors. If archaeologists are trying to discover pitfalls they sure are doing a good job but hat aspect continues right on in the present. I never saw the Dorians as any sort of case study of pitfalls and you can't use lack of evidence as any proof that the Dorians were there. There was a linguistic and cultural change. We said that. The Dorian invasion is a possible explanation. We said that. There are problems with it. We said that. What we did NOT do is present any of it as the scientific truth according to which it can be pronounced bunk. So, what do you say we leave it as it is? Most of ancient history is larded with the recent concepts of scholars - in some quarters it has been a standing joke - but we don't usually invent names declaring the concept to be phony. This article is about the concept of the Dorian Invasion, right or wrong, or no matter how anyone sees it. I say we should just leave it.Dave (talk) 04:03, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: No offense, Dave, but it seems to me you are missing the central point of the original post. The poster was primarily arguing for a simple name change, whereas your counterarguments almost entirely deal with his claims about the credibility of the Dorian Invasion Theory. You yourself seem to recognize that the Dorian Invasion is one of several theories, so why exactly are you opposed to renaming the article? An alternative, of course, would be to rename it "Post-Mycenaean Dialect Shift in the Peloponnese" or some such, since that seems to be the only relatively certain event here. (I say relatively, since all we really know is that the dialect spoken by the common people after the dark age was different from the dialect written by palace scribes in the Mycenaean period and as we all know the written language of the upper class does not necessarily bear much resemblance to that spoken by the commoners.) To get back to the point, however, your reply to the original post actually seems like a ringing endorsement of a name change to me, so unless you do in fact have some arguments against it, why don't we change it? Maitreya (talk) 13:29, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Could the title e changed?  Being Greek, I know it by two terms: Κάθοδος τῶν Δωριέων ("Descent of the Dorians" - much better than "Invasion" as the latter may imply that the Dorians were of a totally different ethnicity than the Mycemnean populations they subdued)and Ἐπιστροφὴ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν ("Returhn of the Heracleids (descendants of Hercules".  I would clearl;y opt for "Descent of the Dorians" or "Dorain Descent"! Apostolos Vranas (talk) 07:14, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: can this article be more properly named please? 

message: 
I think the problems in the discussion have been addressed by all the editors, myself included. I don't see any essay-type material any more. For the expertise, well, some of us are classicista and we have a few comments and ratings asserting the accuracy. Bachman is not an expert or he would not have called for an expert. This article asserts the current view of the Dorian invasion. I'm not done with it yet - more reference checking and reference-formatting. I must say, there is certainly more that could be added. I'm not saying saying the article is perfect at this point, only that it does not need these tags. I feel I should point out, this is not the place to air your personal views on the Dorians or whether you agree or disagree with this or that scholar. If you have evidence of additional theories or explanations I would say, throw your hat in the ring. By now it should be plain that this sort of liberal arts article needs references on just about every generalization. And I must say, if you look at some of the sources - most are available online - you will see that this really is just a general overview of the main theories. The sources go into detail, chapter after chapter, book after book. One has to admire the command of language and detail of the early German scholars. About all we can do in this sort of article is introduce the topic.Dave (talk) 03:34, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Done with my revisit for now. If you want further clarification put specific requests on, AFTER you already have checked the links. I would not expect to see any more general tags without clarification in the discussion of some very good reasons. If you got more material you want to add or can improve the article in any way go right ahead. The accepted courtesy is not to rewrite it unless it is wrong. There is a certain tendency to think that just because you write different you write better. Do your English comp homework.Dave (talk) 21:37, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Tag removal

message: The article is more problematic than ever following the edits of early August and will need extensive tagging and rewrite. No offence to editor Botteville/Dave but it seems clear they are not relying on current work but older works. This is a wikipedia affect of older works being accessable. I think the recent editor is unaware that the supposed linguistic shift is now seen as much less pronounced, that there is zero evidence for different pottery style, and that the return of sons of Heracles is now seen as unrelated to the supposed Dorian invasion. Even the main Dorian article is getting poor edits spilling over from the amatuer work on this and that is a shame. 68.45.42.194 (talk) 04:52, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Worse than ever

message: I tagged the conclusion, which has no refs at all and largely ignores other possibilities.  Chadwick posits an indigenous population of Dorians in a prosperous region overthrowing their palace masters, for which there is essentially no evidence and few parallels.  The section concludes that a well-armed invader would leave better archaeological remains, but a mass movement of desperate people from the north, driven perhaps by the progressive dessication of the region, might well have disrupted the established civilization to the point that nearly everyone starved.  So the "Dorian Uprising" is hardly the last man standing. -- Elphion (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section tagged -- Jan 2012 

message: This article needs approximate dates of when this supposed invasion/shift happened (even if it did not happen).  There's nothing there for casual readers to bite on to get a sense of time.  Walrasiad (talk) 18:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates? 

message: It is generally accepted that the Dorians established themselves in Peloponnesus in the middle of the 11th century BC. In the section is mentioned 950 BC, which is wrong. C.Mossè, speaks for "The doric illusion", e.g the theory that  the Mycenaean centres were  destroyed by the Dorians, or that a Doric civilization substituted the Mycenaean. It seems that the destruction of the palaces was due to large population movements in the East Mediterranean at the end of the 13th century BC. However there was a Dorian migration, allthough it was not the main cause of the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces.  C. Mossé (1984) "La Grèce archaique . Edition du Seuil   C.M.Bowra believes that "nature protects Greece from any swift attack by a huge army by land, but Greece is convenient for a gradual penetration. Immigrants can settle between the mountains without even notice, until they make their next move".  C.M.Bowra (1957 ), "The Greek experience". W.P.Publishing Compamy.  In that regard, it is possible that the Dorians moved southward organized in small bands until they established themselves in the land. Anyway, we cannot say that the Dorians were invented.
jest 16:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Invasion or migration: The Doric delusion 

message: The article talks about "The Return of the Heracleidae", but then seems to imply that "return" is a bad translation of what ought to be "descent".  Is "The Return of the Heracleidae" the well-established English name of this supposed event?  Is so, this should be stated, and if not should "return" be replaced with "descent"?  On the other hand, the criticism of "return" seems confused - if as stated "return from exile" is one of the accepted meanings of the Greek, then "return" would be a reasonable translation, and the lines about "they're not returning home because they are homesick" seem rather irrelivent as no-one has claimed they were. Iapetus (talk) 12:06, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The phrase being translated is Ἐπιστροφὴ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν.  The first word does in fact connote returning, and the legend has the descendants of Heracles returning from exile.  Several non-native-English-speaking editors have added passages obsessing about "return" vs "descent", but the latter makes no sense in English in this context, and these passages in the article are largely unintelligible. -- Elphion (talk) 17:59, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Return" of the Heracleidae 

message: I've removed the following paragraph from the section "Closing the gap".  Whoever added this has mangled the quote sufficiently that Mossè's point is not clear.  (And what I take to be the point has already been made.)  Someone familiar both with Mossè's book and with English may want to add this back in some form.
:C.Mossè suggests that there is not any archaeological evidence  that a "Doric civilization" substituted the "Achaean civilization, and that the Dorian methods of a war-society, was a myth created by the scientists who were based on the  "Spartan delusion". The Dorians who spoke a different dialect were mixed with the local population, when they migrated  to the new lands C.Mossè (1984). La Grèce archaique, d' Homére à Eschyle. Editions du Seuil, p.p 34,35
-- Elphion (talk) 17:16, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote from Mossè 

message: If we consider Vinca culture, it would be quite logical to know that Doriens were Serbs. But, someone has hidden all facts linked to Serbs! Please, can anybody spread and clear this hypothese? Serbs still use chyrilics letters - similar to Greecs that were all copies of Vinca symbols (=Serbs culture)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.227.244.217 (talk) 08:28, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's just nationalist rubbish. The Slavs were nowhere around the area at this period in time.50.111.62.84 (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

text: No original research. Especially such cruft as this.50.111.62.84 (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Doriens = Serbs ? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Dorian invasion. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120328101841/http://www.theshens.com/Jacob-Felsch_Problems%20Mycenaean%20Chronology.pdf to http://www.theshens.com/Jacob-Felsch_Problems%20Mycenaean%20Chronology.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:13, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: A lot of information in the article is contradictory. Of course there are different theories, but we cannot say that the Dorians were invented. An area in west Greece near Peloponnese  is still called  "Doris" and a city nearby "Lidoriki". If someone reads the article, he gets the impression that the Dorians were an historical myth. However it seems that their homeland in Greece was mountainous Epirus (Encyclopedia Britannica) and they moved gradually to the south. Aristotle (Meteorogica), places the "old Greece" in the area between Dodona and river Achelos. There are two oracles in the region, the "oracle of the dead" near the river Acheron, and the oracle of Dodona. There is not any archaelogical evidence that a "Dorian civilization" substituted the "Mycenean civilization" because the Dorians were uncivilized, and they preferred to live in mountainous areas. The Ancient Greek tradition insists on the "descent of the Dorians" and this can explain the general disorder and destructions after the collapse of the Mycenean civilization. The "Achaean dialect" includes the Cypriot, the Arcadian and the Aeolic, and it had great differences with the Doric dialect.(S.Ya.Lurye (1957):"Kultura Mikenoskoi Gretsi" Academy USSR, Moscow, Lenigrad). We don't know if the Dorians caused the destruction of the Mycenean palaces, however they were destroyed during one generation with a direction west to south. This cannot be attributed to internal fights (Mylonas Andronikos), because the palaces were not rebuilt. The theory of Chadwick that the Dorians lived together with the Myceneans (doreo:slave) is not generally accepted, because the Dorians established themselves in Peloponnese in the middle of 11th century BC. New theories reject the "Dorian invasion", but they don't give a satisfactory alternative for the displacement of the Greek dialects. New findings suggest that a new type of pottery appears in these areas  and that the walls of Mycenea were reinforced before the final destruction.Jestmoon(talk) 17:57, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradictions 

message: This article doesn't give a sourced summary of what modern scholars believe about the Dorian invasion. It consists of a covert attempt at a rebuttal of the notion that there ever was one, presented as a history of the concept, its allegedly flawed origins and alleged disproving by later data. If most scholars don't believe such an invasion ever happened, this should be stated. If they do, the article should start by explaining clearly and in detail what they do believe. It should only consist of a 'history of the failed concept' like Phlogiston theory if it can be demonstrated that most historians do view the Dorian invasion as a failed concept.
Some of the remarks seem clearly motivated by Greek nationalism - stuff to the effect of 'how dare anyone suggest that some Greeks could 'invade' other Greeks? All Greeks are brothers, have always been and shall always been so!'  87.126.21.225 (talk) 10:51, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horrible. How is this article tolerated on WP at all?