The name Achaeans appears in the epic poem the Iliad—presumably written by the poet Homer of the ninth or eighth century b. c.e.— in reference to one group of the GREEKS who were said to have sacked Troy, an event that may have occurred in 1184 b. c.e. or a century earlier. Before archaeological discoveries of the 20th century that dramatically realigned the chronology of Greek prehistory, it was assumed the Achaeans were the first Hellenic people, that is, the first of the ancient Greeks who spoke Greek. it is now known that indo-European speakers of an early form of Greek had been in Greece for well over 1,000 years before the Trojan War. This period saw the rise, flowering, and collapse of an entire civilization, of which Homer and later Greeks of the classical period knew very little—that of the Mycenaeans—that lasted for almost 400 years (1600-1200 B. C.E.). Thus is makes little sense to apply the name Achaean to people much before the time of the Trojan War. Various groups of indo-European speakers first appeared in Greece perhaps as early as the fourth millennium b. c.e., long before this time. From at least 1600 b. c.e. peoples in southern Greece were highly influenced by the Minoans on Crete. By the end of the Greek Dark Ages, from the demise of Mycenaean civilization to about the eighth century b. c.e., a people living in a region called Achaea in the northern Peloponnese spoke a dialect, called Arcado-Cypriot, that resembled Mycenaean Greek more than any other in Greece.
ORIGINS
It is debated as to whether the Achaeans were the direct ancestors of the three main ethnic divisions of the later Greeks, the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians, or whether these represent the product of new indo-European migrations into Greece. After the mysterious collapse of the Mycenaean civilization in the 13th century B. C.E. there is a long dark period in Greece, during which writing was lost, cities vanished, and civilization stagnated or went into retreat. In the Iliad by Homer from the ninth or eighth century b. c.e., based on oral histories dating from these earlier Greek Dark Ages, the Achaeans are said to be the principal Greeks who sacked Troy (Homer also mentions Argives—people from Argos—and Danaans as taking part). By the beginning of the Archaic period in 750 b. c.e., however, only a small group of Greeks on the Peloponnese called themselves Achaeans; they lived in a small area of the northern Peloponnese, bordered on one side by high mountains and on the other by the Gulf of Corinth.
The origin of the Achaeans is clouded with uncertainty due to a lack of historical evidence from the Greek Dark Ages and the period before it and a relatively incomplete archaeological record (in part caused by the unscientific, treasure-hunting style of 19th-century excavators of Greek sites, particularly those of the Mycenaeans). It has also been somewhat controversial because of the association of the Hellenes with the roots of Western culture. For this reason the ancestors of the Hellenes were avidly sought by scholars, on the assumption that the progenitors of so great a race as the Greeks, the first bearers of Western civilization, must be very special. The early attempts to understand their origin resorted to interpreting the mythical story of the sons of Hellen, to whom Greece was parceled out as their inheritance, and who migrated with their people throughout Greece, warring and allying among themselves, until they finally produced the ethnic divisions found during the Archaic period. At that time these myths found their voice in the Boeotian poet Hesiod, who probably lived in the eighth century b. c.e.
These myths seemed to fit in well with 19th-century linguistic analysis of the origins of Greek as an Indo-European tongue. In this interpretation the Achaeans were a tall, fairskinned people who migrated from central Europe and encountered a shorter darkskinned Mediterranean people, related to the Minoans of Crete. By a process of conquest, these people came to inhabit Greece sometime between 1600 and 1500 b. c.e.
What archaeological evidence there is, however, combined with the presence of a large number of non-Indo-European place-names and roots in Greek, indicates that intermixing, and not conquest, was the rule. Moreover, other analyses place the appearance of Indo-European speakers in Greece much earlier, as far back as the fourth millennium b. c.e., and paint the picture of a long, gradual process of migration and repeated mingling with local populations.
Furthermore, current thinking on ethnicity has moved away from simple linkages between culture and genetic traits such as skin color and body type. Such genetic differences indeed have long existed between Europeans living in different regions of the continent; they are most pronounced in regions around the periphery, such as Scandinavia and the Mediterranean region, where people were genetically isolated. But the study of prehistoric movements of genetic traits is not sufficiently advanced to give more than a very general idea of such movements, and certainly not fine-tuned enough to assign suites of traits such as height and skin color to bearers of cultures known only archaeologically.
The picture of the Achaeans as a tall, fairskinned people who entered Greece from the north may have more to do with the desires and beliefs of modern lovers of Greek civilization, especially in 19th-century Germany and Great Britain—the desire to have some genealogical connection with the classical Greeks, however distant, and the racist belief that the glories of Greek civilization could not have been the product of dark-skinned southern Europeans alone. It is of course entirely possible and even probable that blond-haired, fair-skinned peoples entered Greece at some point in its history, but evidence for this before historical times (when the cELTS invaded, for example)—when it happened and whence they might have come—is lacking at present.
LANGUAGE
The Achaeans spoke perhaps the earliest form of Greek, referred to as Achaean. It is thought to be related to Mycenaean. Later in their history some among them probably spoke other Greek dialects, depending on location, such as Arcado-cypriot (Arcadian and cypriot) and Attic.
HISTORY
Around 1450 b. c.e. the Minoan civilization collapsed, and the Mycenaean civilization that had emerged on Greece during the Minoan New Palace period (from 1600 b. c.e.) took over the Minoan trading network in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. This civilization was located primarily on the Peloponnese and called Mycenaean after the city of Mycenae, which was excavated in the 19th century, providing the first glimpses of the riches of this second Aegean civilization.
The records of a people of Asia Minor, the Hittites, mention a group who settled the islands of the Aegean and parts of Asia Minor during the 14th and 13th centuries b. c.e., and call them the Ahhiyawa. This word may be related to the word Achaean; the identity of the Ahhiyawa is uncertain, however. They could have been Mycenaean Greek traders. They could have played some role in the 12th-century fall of Troy, which was located in Asia Minor, and could have later been remembered in Homer’s time as the Achaeans. However, there is no evidence that the Mycenaeans participated in the 12th-century destruction of Troy This event occurred in the context of a tidal wave of destruction that swept the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 b. c.e., bringing down Mycenaean civilization; threatening the great powers of the time, the Egyptians and the Hittites, as well as states in Syria, Palestine, and cyprus; and causing widespread population movements, depopulation, and devastation of some regions. Taken at face value the Iliad indicates that the Achaeans in the Trojan War were among the agents of this destruction (whether they were primary agents, or merely the beneficiaries of events caused by other forces). Thus whatever the relationship the Ahhiyawa/Achaeans had with Mycenaean civilization, they seem to have played a role in its downfall, possibly as part of internecine rivalries among Mycenaean power blocs that furnished the material for the Iliad and other related poetic epics of later times.
There is much evidence of aggressive warrior groups raiding far and wide in the Mediterranean region in this period. Egyptian records of the time tell of armies of warriors whom the Egyptians called collectively SEA Peoples. Among these were a group called by the Egyptians the Shekelesh. A new kind of pottery dating from this time found in southern Italy and Sicily may have been made by the Shekelesh, whose name lived on in later times as Siculi, Iron Age inhabitants of Sicily. Another group called the Shardana by the Egyptians may have been from or lived on the island of Sardinia.
Egyptian depictions of the Sea Peoples show them wearing distinctive horned helmets corresponding to those worn by bronze statuettes found throughout the Mediterranean dating to after the demise of Mycenaean civilization and in a clearly new style not derived from Mycenaean art. Non-Mycenaean pottery (“Barbarian” or “Coarse” Ware) and weapon types from this time with affinities to material from north of Greece have been found in Greece and Troy, lending credence to the idea that warrior groups from abroad had entered the region.
Because the numbers of these artifacts, however, are small, organized, wholesale invasion is unlikely. What we seem to be seeing in the evidence concerning the Sea Peoples is the waxing in strength and numbers of pirate groups from all over the Mediterranean, who had long been preying on the lucrative trade routes of the Mycenaeans and others; at some point the Sea Peoples may have been joined by warriors from the north. As did the VIKINGS of the first millennium C. E., who began as small-scale raiders and later caused great swathes of destruction, the Sea Peoples, a diverse group of warrior bands, may have helped bring down Mycenaean civilization.
The Ahhiyawa/Archaeans may have been one group who were part of the Sea Peoples; other groups may have been ancestral to the Dorians, lonians, and Aeolians who constituted the main linguistic/ethnic groups of post-Dark Ages Greece. On the other hand, by the end of the Dark Ages, a group speaking the dialect closest to Mycenaean Greek, Arcado-Cypriot, called themselves Achaeans. They lived between the mountains of Arcadia and the Gulf of Corinth in a remote area known as
Achaea. Their dialect was also spoken on Cyprus, where the majority of European-made swords and knives dating from immediately after the Mycenaean collapse have been found. Here a brief phase of prosperity and cultural flowering took place, in stark contrast to most of the larger region. A bronze statuette of a warrior with horned helmet was found at Enkomi on Cyprus. This combination of Mycenaean-derived language, cultural flowering, and northern artifacts may point to an alliance between Mycenaean elites and northern warrior bands. Groups of Mycenaean nobility, accompanied by Achaean warriors hired to protect them, could have fled central Greece to Cyprus to the east and to Achaea, protected by mountains, to the west. In any case, whether the term Achaean refers to a group of Mycenaeans or to a tribe of northern warriors remains an open question.
Achaea
In the seventh century b. c.e. the Achaeans founded at least 12 cities in Achaea, including Patras, which were joined for mutual defense into the First Achaean League. The Achaeans of Patras sent colonists to Sicily during the seventh century alongside other Greeks, but Achaea largely remained isolated from the rest of the Greeks and the conflicts of that time. The First Achaean League dissolved in the fourth century b. c.e. after joining Greek opposition to the invasion by Macedonians under Philip II. In 323 b. c.e. his son, Alexander the Great, completed the conquest of Greece, putting an end to classical Greece and ushering in what is known as the Hellenic period.
The Second Achaean League formed in 280 B. C.E. and, with additional cities, managed to expel the Macedonians from Corinth in 247 B. C.E. Strife with the people of the city-state of Sparta interrupted any hopes for the liberation of Greece, when the Achaeans enlisted Macedonian aid against them and then fell back under their control. In 198 B. C.E., during the war between Rome and Macedonia, the Achaean League went over to the Romans and won control over almost all of the Peloponnese. The Romans themselves warred with the Achaeans in 146 b. c.e., defeated them, and created the Roman province of Achaea.
CULTURE (see also Greeks; Mycenaeans) Because the identity of the Achaeans is not known with certainty, it is impossible to define
Their culture beyond that presented in conjunction with theories of their history Well-crafted swords and statuettes of warriors with horned helmets perhaps are evidence of the Achaeans as a warrior people something like the Vikings.
The study of the Achaeans and attempts to determine their relationships with the other peoples of ancient Greece—the Minoans, Mycenaeans, Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians— draw on mythology, literature, linguistics, and archaeology. Much of their story takes place in prehistoric times, and it is next to impossible to connect names recorded centuries later with peoples known only through scattered artifacts.
Achrjani See Pomaks.
Belgium and southeastern Netherlands and are also discussed as Gauls. They are sometimes grouped among the BELGAE, a subdivision of Gauls. Because they claimed partial descent from the Germanic Cimbri and Teutones, who had been an earlier threat to Rome, the Aduatuci were attacked by the Romans under Julius Caesar; their entire population was sold into slavery in 57 b. c.e.
World History
