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The Proto-Greek language was the most recent common ancestor of all Greek dialects. Proto-Greek split off from its nearest Indo-European relatives sometime during the European Bronze Age (c. 3rd millennium BC) and possibly even earlier, though it is unknown whether the characteristic Greek sound-changes occurred within the Greek peninsula or if Proto-Greek speakers themselves migrated into Greece.
Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, [18] or possibly earlier. [19] The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, [20] making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language. [21]
Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. [6] Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree.
The relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822, a Greek was defined as any native Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece , a clause removed by 1840. [ 139 ]
The Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100 – c. 800 BC) refers to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BC to the rise of the first Greek city-states in the 9th century BC and the epics of Homer and earliest writings in the Greek alphabet in the 8th century BC.
Like poetry, Greek prose had its origins in the archaic period, and the earliest writers of Greek philosophy, history, and medical literature all date to the sixth century BC. [102] Prose first emerged as the writing style adopted by the presocratic philosophers Anaximander and Anaximenes —though Thales of Miletus , considered the first Greek ...
The name of Greece differs in Greek compared with the names used for the country in other languages and cultures, just like the names of the Greeks.The ancient and modern name of the country is Hellas or Hellada (Greek: Ελλάς, Ελλάδα; in polytonic: Ἑλλάς, Ἑλλάδα), and its official name is the Hellenic Republic, Helliniki Dimokratia (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία ...
In most classifications, Hellenic consists of Greek alone, [3] [4] but some linguists use the term Hellenic to refer to a group consisting of Greek proper and other varieties thought to be related but different enough to be separate languages, either among ancient neighboring languages [5] or among modern varieties of Greek.