Ethnic Cleansing in Ancient Attica & Lemnos

Herodotus

2,257 words

In The Histories, the Greek historian Herodotus relates an account of a conflict between (Greek) Athenians and a group identified as “Pelasgians.” The story encodes ideas of racial/cultural difference, expulsion, miscegenation, mass murder, and, especially, racial (genetic) dominance that are still relevant today.

The story is related in Book Six, §§6.137–6.140. At some unknown date prior to Herodotus’ time, but still remembered, the Athenians expelled the Pelasgians from Attica, the ancient division of the eastern Greek peninsula constituting the territory of Athens. The Pelasgians were a culturally and (probably) racially distinct indigenous group. They were expelled either “justly” or “unjustly.”

After expulsion, the Pelasgians settled on the island of Lemnos in the northern Aegean off the coast of present-day Turkey, where they plotted their revenge.

Athenians & Pelasgians

The racial background of the Pelasgians is too complex and indeterminate to examine here in detail. In general, “Pelasgian” is the name Greek writers applied to the indigenous (earliest known) pre-Hellenic inhabitants of ancient Greece, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean. Some modern scholars regard them as pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Greece, while others consider them common ancestors of the Greeks and Italians.

From Herodotus one gets the impression that they were non-Greek indigenes, remnants of whom still survived as distinct peoples in his day. Yet he writes early in the book: “The Athenians, a Pelasgian people, had occupied Attica and never moved from it . . .” He alludes to surviving pockets of Pelasgians as speaking a barbarian (non-Greek) tongue. “[T]he people of Attica being originally Pelasgian, must have learned a new language [Greek] when they became Hellenes” (1.56–1.57; see also 8.44).

This is puzzling in light of his later discussion of the Pelasgian-Athenian conflict in Book Six, where the two groups seem ethnically, and even racially, distinct. Yet hybridization (on Lemnos) is a major element in the story, illustrating how easy it is for racial cohesion to break down once the extremely fragile but all-important sexual/reproductive boundary essential for racial integrity and survival is breached.

Another statement by Herodotus suggests racial distinction: “[T]he same Pelasgians who settled in Athenian territory had earlier inhabited Samothrace . . .” (2.51) Samothrace is an island in the northern Aegean Sea just north of Lemnos, the island to which the Pelasgians went after being expelled from Attica.

Herodotus says Hellenes—the most encompassing term for all classical Greeks—had always spoken Greek, but a significant portion of their demographic expansion occurred through racial or ethnic amalgamation:

As for the Hellenes, it seems obvious to me that ever since they first came into existence they have always used the same language. They were weak at first, when they were separated from the Pelasgians, but they grew from a small group into a multitude, especially when many peoples, including other barbarians in great numbers, had joined them. Moreover, I do not think the Pelasgians, who remained barbarians, ever grew appreciably in number or power. (1.58) (Emphasis added.)

By definition, the barbarians (foreigners) who “joined” (amalgamated, or miscegenated, if they were racially distinct) with the Hellenes were non-Greek-speakers according to the Herodotean account. And, as noted, the Athenians, who were very powerful and notable among the Hellenes, are described as Pelasgians who adopted the Greek language. The picture presented is of Greek demographic expansion through genetic absorption of substantial numbers of non-Hellenes, combined with the relative demographic stagnation or collapse of those Pelasgians who resisted admixture.

Population Expulsion from Attica

Nevertheless, in Book Six Herodotus describes a conflict between two apparently distinct racial or ethnic groups in Attica—Pelasgians and Athenians—and the subsequent expulsion of the Pelasgians from the land. The Pelasgians migrated to various places, but particularly the island of Lemnos, where they drove out the existing inhabitants, the Minyans, said to be descendants of Lemnian women who had murdered all of the island’s men, and the crew of the Argo, the legendary ship belonging to Jason and the Argonauts who sailed to the Black Sea in quest of the Golden Fleece. The dispossessed Minyans, in turn, settled in Sparta, where they intermarried with Spartans before driving out native inhabitants further west on the Peloponnese and settling there. (4.145-4.150)

Ancient Greece & the Aegean Sea: Athens & Attica; islands of Samothrace & Lemnos in the northern Aegean just south of Thrace.

Herodotus says the Pelasgians were expelled either “justly or unjustly I cannot say, I merely recount what others have told me” (6.137).

The “unjust” account is that the Athenians gave territory in Attica to the Pelasgians as payment for building the original wall surrounding the Acropolis. The land was worthless and infertile, but the Pelasgians succeeded in making it productive. The Athenians, overcome by greed, then wanted it for themselves, and so expelled the Pelasgians from it.

According to the “just” version, the youthful daughters and sons of the Athenians fetched water from springs southeast of the city near Pelasgian territory. The Pelasgians “violated” the girls (presumably, sexually molested or raped them). In addition, they plotted to attack Athens, but were discovered before they could execute their scheme.

Notable in Herodotus’ account is the application of the concept of justice and injustice to expulsion, or even the wholesale killing, of a presumably non-Hellenic race originally from someplace else (the island of Samothrace).

In our day, injustice, even the most unrestrained, vicious kind, does not deeply trouble most people’s consciences unless the culture instructs them it should. This is true of murderous anti-white racism, Communism, and Zionism. It is not crime or evil as such that matter, but their social construction and presentation.

Universal acquiescence to the things Jews routinely do to whites everywhere, or do in the Middle East, or within Israel, and condemnation and suppression of effective responses, never mind proportional ones, is conclusive on this point. “Opposition” is nonexistent, muted, or completely meaningless. Most whites would rather their own people be totally wiped out by Jews and government than, say, unceremoniously and expeditiously deport the masses of aliens now in their midst—illegally smuggled in without the people’s consent—and take all other steps necessary for survival.

Consequently, it is clear that genocide is not really a deep affront to their ostensibly tender sensibilities so long as it is politically correct (though illegal—a crime under existing law), conforms to dominant (immoral) social norms, and has the sanction of authority, cultural and governmental. The Western response to Communism versus Nazism exhibited the same characteristics.

The Athenian expulsion was not a transfer of Pelasgians from Attica to someplace else at Athenian expense following prior arrangement with the rulers and inhabitants of some specified destination(s), the way Abraham Lincoln’s resettlement policy for American Negroes sought removal only a) voluntarily b) after prior formal agreement with receiving locales and c) with expenses of both receiving countries and emigrants paid for by American taxpayers. No, it was an unceremonious “Get out! We don’t give a goddamn where you go!”

Herodotus writes: “The Athenians say they proved themselves so much the better men than the Pelasgians that though they could have [justly] killed them when they were caught plotting, they instead simply ordered them to depart from their territory” (6.137) (emphasis added). Not only was unceremonious expulsion—a curt order to leave—“just,” but Athenians felt they would have been within their rights to kill the Pelasgians for their crimes.

Though Herodotus does not choose between the conflicting accounts of what happened, in light of subsequent developments on Lemnos, the Athenian version seems more credible.

The Pelasgians of Lemnos, hungry for revenge, sailed warships to Attica, where they kidnapped a large number of Athenian women attending a female religious festival at which few or no men were present. The raiders transported the women to Lemnos and made them their concubines. Though the men retained their own wives and families, they produced many half-breed children by the Athenian women.

A Case of Racial Dominance

Subsequent developments look like a case study in racial dominance. (“Racial Dominance,” 2014)

Human races can be arranged in a dominance hierarchy. Some races are more dominant than others. In our natural habitat, we (Aryans) were the most dominant race on earth. This dominance was not the result of technology, disease, or any kind of superficial geographical or climatic accident, as Jews like Jared Diamond, eternally grinding racist axes, falsely claim. It was genetic. It was innate.

Today, Jews occupy the pinnacle of the global dominance hierarchy. They subjugated whites as quickly and easily as our predecessors subjugated blacks, Amerindians, and East Asians. (Yes, despite East Asians’ higher intelligence as measured by IQ tests, we are the dominant race. The two traits are distinct.)

Since Jews are dominant over whites, who, in turn (prior to subjugation), were dominant over all other races, Jews are ipso facto dominant over all races on earth, just as their teachings, psychology, and deeply-held convictions tell them they are. They aren’t better than other people, they’re worse, but they are dominant.

The idea of racial dominance was formulated by WASP physical anthropologist Carleton Coon, professor at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, in his book The Origin of Races (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). Other works by Coon include The Races of Europe (1939) and The Living Races of Man (1965).

In The Origin of Races, under the subhead “The Dominance of Groups,” he wrote:

Dominance has two meanings in zoology: the dominance of individuals in social groups, as shown by the peck order and the like, and the dominance of one kind of animal over another. We are concerned here with the second meaning only.

Groups of dominant animals may range in diversity from whole orders to families to genera and even to species. . . . Even within a species such as ours [Homo sapiens], certain subspecies and races may show dominance over others. [Emphasis added.] This is part of the evolutionary process. . . .

This is why rabbits and foxes, when let loose in Australia, raised such havoc with the local fauna [animals], and why, in another sense but following the same principle, the white settlers have replaced the aborigines in the wetter sections of the same continent. (pp. 48–50)

The mothers of the half-Greek children taught them the Athenian language and way of life. But it is their apparently innate behavioral traits that are particularly striking: “Their children were unwilling to mingle with the children of the Pelasgian women, and if any of them were struck by the children of the Pelasgian women, they would all rush to help and defend one another. Moreover, these boys deemed it their right to rule over the others and dominate them” (6.138).

This looks like a straightforward case of racial dominance. For one thing, “the language of Attica and the way of life of the Athenians” taught to the children by their mothers probably occurred by default. The fathers or the Pelasgian community could have handled matters differently, but neglected or chose not to do so. The Athenian women were left to their own devices and did the natural thing.

Moreover, the Athenian women were disadvantaged in every respect: demographically, socially (as kidnapped concubines—the word “concubine,” used by the translator, literally means a secondary wife of inferior social and legal status), economically, and in terms of group cohesion and identity (alone without men of their own race in a strange land, cut off from their native culture—“the way of life of the Athenians”—and with half-breed children).

The fact that the children were genetically half-Pelasgian does not nullify this inference. It is well-known that half- and quarter-Jews exhibit racially dominant traits. That’s why Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws. Many Gentiles are outraged that a group of non-Jews had the temerity to delineate their own group, but, nevertheless, Germans recognized a fundamental fact about admixture with Jews and acted in a reasonable manner to protect and perpetuate their own people.

Similarly, American Negroes possess substantial white admixture. Some anthropologists, such as 1960s Jewish race analyst Stanley Garn, classified them as a distinct “new” hybrid race (i.e., not genetically identical to sub-Saharan Africans) for that reason. After a minority of American blacks were resettled in Liberia, they created their own caste, distinct from the mass of native West African Negroes, over whom they ruled for more than a century.

Brutal Ethnic Cleansing on Lemnos

Herodotus concludes:

When the Pelasgians recognized [what was happening], they discussed it, and as they deliberated, they were struck by a dreadful thought, that if these boys were so determined now to help one another in opposition to the sons of their wedded wives, what, then, would they do as grown men? After they had considered this awhile, they resolved to kill the sons of the Attic women, and that is what they did, and they slew their Attic mothers, too. (6.138)

Once a race has successfully asserted its natural dominance over another, it distorts the normal cultural and biological processes of the lower group. Gradually a new socialization process is instituted that alters the latter’s leadership cadre. Natural leaders are deemed inimical to the interests of the new ruling class and are eliminated—even murdered in some cases—while the fortunes of ambitious, sufficiently talented and energetic individuals belonging to the subordinate group but willing to work against the vital interests of their own people are advanced.

The Athenians and Pelasgians recognized this, consciously or not. The Athenians dealt with the problem in a relatively humane fashion, but firmly and without giving the matter a second thought. The Pelasgians should have avoided the problem on Lemnos altogether by not creating it in the first place, but once they recognized its existence they solved it brutally and inhumanely.