“I spoke with a professor who challenged your claims about an unbroken lineage from Ancient Spartans,” I told him as I wiped fried pastry crumbs from my fingers. About 10 square wooden tables have been squeezed into the tiny space, while the clatter of dishes and the whoosh of espresso machines ensure there’s never silence. The kafeneio is small, but its privileged position right across the street from Neochori’s main square means it’s almost always busy. Sunburnt crowds trickled into the kafeneio while Oikonomeas sipped his coffee, watching nonchalantly as the establishment’s new proprietor tried to keep up with the increasing number of patrons. But this has nothing to do with the DNA of the inhabitants.” “Living in the same natural environment obviously leads the settlers to similar choices on many issues. “Natural anthropology and history are not aligned,” Gounaris said. Some historians and anthropologists say similarities between ancient and modern rituals – like the mourning songs – are strong indicators of a relationship between Ancient Spartans and modern Maniots, but Basil C Gounaris, professor of modern history at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, disagrees. Any trace of authentic Spartan DNA long ago disappeared all that’s left of the warriors are their legends. And he recalls watching his aunts gather the night before a family funeral to recite mourning songs at hair-raising frequencies, a ritual mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey.īut there’s no hard scientific evidence proving a direct link between today’s Maniots and the Ancient Spartans. They were reputed to be so ruthless that many conquerors simply steered clear.Īt 86, Oikonomeas still remembers his mother spooning hardboiled eggs into his mouth to make him stronger, insisting that as the only boy it was up to him to continue the family legacy. The Maniots as they became known were just as treacherous on the sea as they were on land, dabbling in small-time piracy and frequently travelling to other coastal nations as mercenaries. But the Spartans living on the Mani peninsula, sheltered from the rest of the Peloponnese by the Taygetos mountains, held strong, defending their territory for centuries from the Thebans, and later Ottoman, Egyptian and Franc forces, among others. But its dominance was short-lived: in 371BC, the Spartans were defeated by soldiers from the city-state of Thebes, sparking the downfall of Sparta. As a result, Spartan women were known for their independence.Īfter defeating Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta reached the apex of its power in the 5th Century BC. Women, on the other hand, played no role in the military, but they often received a formal education and were allowed to own property – rights rarely afforded to women in other Greek polis. Unlike the people of rival city-state Athens, who were artists and philosophers, the Spartans were fighters boys were said to begin military training at age seven, challenging one another in physical competition before becoming full-time soldiers at the age of 20. Nearly three millennia ago, when Ancient Greece was made up of ‘polis’, or individual city-states, much of the Peloponnese belonged to Ancient Sparta and its allies.
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