The Coming of the Greeks [Paperback]

Robert Drews (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691029512 | ISBN-13: 978-0691029511 | Publication Date: October 17, 1994

When did the Indo-Europeans enter the lands that they occupied during historical times? And, more specifically, when did the Greeks come to Greece? Robert Drews brings together the evidence--historical, linguistic, and archaeological--to tackle these important questions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Into the ever-tangled and speculative debate on Indo-European origins comes this excellent book: lucid, critical, and refreshingly sober. -- D. F. Easton, The Classical Review



The fact that [a] pattern of localized Near Eastern takeovers coincides with the inception of chariot warfare, coupled with his carefully documented hypothesis that Proto-Indo-European-speaking (PIE) peoples in Armenia were responsible for the development and spread of chariot warfare, serves as the backdrop to Drews's innovative scenario for the arrival of the Greeks.... Such complete Near Eastern analogies involving archaeology, mythology, and linguistics, for example, have been rarely applied to support theories of PIE dispersal.... His research serves the critical function of provoking new views of a long-standing problem. -- Susan N. Skomal, American Journal of Archaeology

From the Back Cover

"An archaeological and linguistic whodunnit of the most fascinating sort, courageously tackling a much-argued problem from several disciplines at once.... No one dealing with the dispersal of the Indo-Europeans can ignore this book."--Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Occidental College

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 17, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691029512
• ISBN-13: 978-0691029511
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A late Proto-Greek arrival by chariot, June 8, 1999

By 

Rokus van den Dool - Hartog ([e-mail]... (Pereira, Colombia, South America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East (Hardcover)

Extremely interesting attempt to make sense out of the amazing findings encountered at the dawn of history. The author surely succeeds in giving a comprehensive and coherent view on the origins of the Greeks, their unity and differences, linking their arrival in Greece to their mastery of the chariot.

Less convincing is his attempt to insinuate the same importance of the chariot to the Proto-Indo-European question as a whole. It wouldn't debilitate his statement at all to recognize the Proto-Greeks as being just on the fringe of the great Indo-Iranian expansion wave, that itself was closely related to the development of the spoked wheel started only about 2000 BC when the main body of Indo-European expansion was already long on its way. This would also account for features in the Greek language that betray close contacts with Proto-Indo-Iranians rather than a common origin. Then the Proto-Greeks only became involved into the - in essence Indo-Iranian - movement a lot later (1600 BC as Drews proposes), after the subsequent invention of the chariot in a continuous tecnological development that was without doubt still spearheaded by certain Indo-Iranian groups.

Within the Greek context, however, the book is absolutely convincing and provides for a recommended and easy reading.

35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Alas, New Evidence, October 23, 1999

By 

S. M Stirling "Steve" (Santa Fe, NM United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East (Hardcover)

Drew's argument depends on the chariot being a 2nd-millenium BCE invention, made in the Middle East and/or Anatolia.

Unfortunately, recent archaeological digs in the Urals and Kazakhstan show that the chariot was inveted there -- in northern Central Asia and western Siberia -- no later than the 21st century BCE.

And since the chariots discovered in these graves were fully developed, the date may well be much earlier -- as far back as 3000 BCE, perhaps.

The attempt to date the entire Indo-European expansion to as late as 1600 BCE is also rather ludicrous.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Where did the Greeks come from? When?, December 30, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East (Hardcover)

Robert Drew begins by presenting an overview of a 100 year old debate "the coming of the Greeks" He then formulates a hypothesis based on the horsed chariot and concludes with an exact origin and time of the people who became Mycean Greece. This book was important to me as a lay scholar because 1) it dismissed the common wisdom of who the Aryans (PIE speakers) were 2) it soberly outlines the state of the art in archaeology and historical analysis -- what facts are important -- how do we know what we know 3) I have a better appreciation for the difficulties and clever hypothesis presented over the past 2 centuries for the origins of Western civilization. I wish it had fewer footnotes, more diagrams, less German - in short, for the lay person and not fellow scholars - however it was still very readable and I enjoyed steping into a cutting edge debate with experts about the origins of Greek civilization, and ultimately, Western heritage.