It is common sense if you look at Spartas history.Originally posted by Dan_Grr@Mar 29 2005, 01:44 PM
How do you know that? Have you made a rigorous DNA test to every Greek? Can you smell the assumption you were talking about?
In AD 406 Alaric destroyed the city, and at a later period Laconia was invaded and settled by Slavonic tribes, especially the Melings and Ezerits, who in turn had to give way before the advance of the Byzantine power, though preserving a partial independence in the mountainous regions. In fact, Slavic tribes were found in the Peloponnese until well into Ottoman times. It has been theorized that speakers of the now-moribund Doric derived language of Tsakonian are the descendants of Spartan refugees of the barbarian invasions.
The Franks on their arrival in the Morea found a fortified city named Lacedaemonia occupying part of the site of ancient Sparta, and this continued to exist, though greatly depopulated, even after William II Villehardouin had in 1249 founded the fortress and city of Mistra, on a spur of Taygetus some 3 miles northwest of Sparta.
This passed shortly afterwards into the hands of the Byzantines, who retained it until the Turks under Mahommed II captured it in 1460. In 1687 it came into the possession of the Venetians, from whom it was wrested in 1715 by the Turks. Thus for nearly six centuries it was Mistra and not Sparta which formed the center and focus of Laconian history.
You seriously believe that the Spartans from 500 BC stayed untouched for 2500 years?
Sparta started to exist only through Dorian migration, so how can you claim that spartans have mixed with barbarians? In order for Sparta to mix with anyone, they would have needed to exist in the first place when the dorians arrived.Im sure you have studied History for having said something like that, but follow it with me. Werent the greeks, as a civilization, formed by a group of semi-barbarians, the dorians coming from the north and all that, that we've studied? So, whithout the Greeks, would have been the Spartans? And so, you are denying barbarian mix where there is all the evidence for that.