What Happened to the Greek Settlers in Ancient India and Pakistan?

the nation of Greece today as a rather minor country in the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe and one could be forgiven for thinking that the nation has a minor influence on world culture and international affairs although the small nation of only 10 million people might not seem to be at much interest there was a time long ago in Greek architecture language and culture was one of the most dominant forces on the planet and as such Greek history is perhaps one of the most studied fields of any civilization in classical history today however before this the area of the Greek city-states were largely seen as backwards divided and relatively weak in the state of international relations it would take a great ruler to unite the various Greek territories and even then it was very dubious as to whether this task could be accomplished directly before the rise of Macedon the Persian Empire specifically the outcome ended dynasty was one of the most impressive empires to span the earth rivaling the mighty Roman Empire and having the distinction of spanning through three separate continents of Europe Africa and Asia from a historical standpoint the Persians had always had a strategic advantage when expanding their empire having the Gulf to the south of them and the mountains to their north this led many great Persian dynasties to erupt from the Iranian plateau and although mighty they were not invincible the most vulnerable position probably would have been along their northwestern border that being the Aegean Sea near Anatolia although it's been heavily romanticized in modern Western cinema the rivalry between ancient Greek and Persian armies had always been quite palpable and indeed the Persians had a very difficult time conquering the relatively puny Greek city-states at Athens and Sparta even though there was no concerted effort to unite against the I commented Empire at the time directly west of this vulnerability point was ancient Macedonia located in the modern country of Macedonia although their culture is more Slovaks and Hellenic today and the region of northern Greece and in this ancient Macedonian Kingdom was born the man that was destined to conquer their gargantuan neighbor to feast alexandros 2/3 of macedon that are known as Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC as the son of the macedonian king philip ii although his father had big plans for uniting the Greek people and battling the Persians he was assassinated when Alexander was only 20 years old granting him the full might of the Macedonian fleet and army as the youngest king of Macedon Alexander largely succeeded in uniting the Greek people Sam's a few of the more staunchly independent city-states on the Peloponnese Peninsula and the region of efforts as well as absorbing the region of Thrace which at the time was largely Hellenic and culture as well still unsatisfied with his feed Alexander set his sights on the entirety of the Persian Empire which again had the single most powerful military of its day starting at the age of only 20 years old Alexander began one of the most unanimously successful military campaigns in all of history with the young general being universally undefeated in any battle with the Persians or other folks starting in Asia Minor or modern Turkey Alexander's forces marched east and themselves through the Levant and into Egypt cutting through the one major weak point of the Persian Empire during this period of mass conquest began a process known as hellenization where many aspects of Greek culture permeated these sections of world especially in the Middle East and North Africa as we discussed in the last video brief style temples and statues were erected all over the Levant and Egypt as well as many cities being renamed with a Greek name such as the 20 cities in the former Empire named after Alexander himself Greek language became the lingua franca of many areas nearly overnight especially the region of Asia Minor and 11th which was one of the main reasons that the Anatolian languages a separate branch of indo-european went extinct by the age of 30 about a decade later Alexander had effectively conquered and subjugated the largest and most powerful Empire the world had ever seen largely using the wisdom personally taught to him by famous Greek philosopher Aristotle himself and although he never had a chance to personally execute the previous Empire documented gary's the third he was fairly ruthless in his battle tactics which is one of the reasons he was so successful the last area the macedonian king was to conquer were the southern fringe of Central Asia and the western fringe of the South Asian subcontinent and Alexander never had a chance to advance into the heartland of Hindustan seeing how he would die prematurely only two years later in the city of Babylon in modern Iraq which depending on the account was either from accidental food poisoning or from a rival purposefully poisoning his drink and a ploy to assassinate him either way following his death his rapidly build unstable Empire immediately devote into a multitude of civil wars that shattered the Empire he had built in the previous decade although Greek culture would be retained in the western part of the Macedonian Empire that being Anatolia the Levant and Egypt for hundreds of years all the way up until the fall of the Byzantines nearly a millennia later the Greek presence in the eastern portion of the Empire was largely fleeting but there being relatively few Greek colonists and settlers in that region of the Empire and Greek was largely a periphery language taking a backseat to Persian Bactrian and other Iranian languages however following the collapse in the Central Asian part of the Empire pepping parts of modern Turkmenistan Uzbekistan and Afghanistan the Greek language and culture was able to take word in government and many parts of their society leading to the emergence of a new power in the region known as the greco-bactrian who were largely bilingual in the native Bactrian and Greek which is brought by the foreign invaders as well as thousands of Greek colonists and soldiers that settled in the region the greco-bactrian Empire was largely an intermediate power between the South Asian Mauryan Empire to the east and the Parthians and emerge in Romans to the West with Greek culture being especially apparent in Greek style architecture and artwork found data to that time period were the most bizarre fusions of eastern and western culture in the bactrian Empire was the emergence of Buddhism as the main religion in the greco-bactrian society and its syncretism with ancient Greek mythology and contrary to a common sense would entail Buddhist was spread from west to east through the bacterial Kingdom into Central Asia and then on to East and Southeast Asia not the other way around so in a way simply from one man's life goal Greek culture was able to spread not only through the heartland of the Middle East but also to the Far East as well as could be expected the greco-bactrian kingdom would fall once again to a new Persian dynasty around 125 years after its establishment but before it fell the greco-bactrian king demetrius the first invaded and established even further greek kingdoms east of the empire this time with a different base culture the Greek community to the east of Bactria was perhaps even more unstable than the latter being located on the fringes of the South Asian subcontinent mostly in Afghanistan and the Punjab and Kashmir regions of modern Pakistan and India however the last of these various Greek kingdoms although never united as a single entity still managed to survive past the Greco back shams and was ruled over by Greek or indo-greek kings long after Athens sell to the Romans in the West the culture of these various Greek kingdoms in South Asia were largely a fusion of European and North Indian customs with official languages used in the government being primarily Greek with the secondary language or language of the common civilians being one of many Indian languages such as Sanskrit which is the precursor to modern-day Hindi and many other South Asian languages the religion of the various indo-greek kingdom was a fusion of Hinduism Buddhism and Greek mythology eventually the indo-greek kingdom would fall to the emerging power of Kashan are on the same region of Central and South Asia who are also descended from the Iranian Bactrian peoples and although they initially used Greek as a language in government as a legacy of the indo-greek kingdom this was soon replaced by Bactrian which at the time was still written in the Hellenic alphabet another influence of the Macedonians the Kashan also had significant influence from the East Asian Yugi people as well as the Scythians from Central Asia and it wasn't until 375 ad that the Kishan would finally fall and alas also fell the last of the dynasties to attend directly influenced by the rise of the Macedonian Empire and Alexander's conquests the exact number of ethnic Greek civilians and soldiers that settled in the Indian subcontinent is unknown as the ancient Macedonian Empire was never well-established enough to initiate a comprehensive census like the Romans but seeing how the population of the Indus River Valley area was around three to four million two thousand years ago and initially 60,000 soldiers from Greece settled in the area at the time Alexander finished his conquest and a further two hundred thousand ethnic Greeks sailed in either bacteria or the indo-greek kingdom around three percent of the gene pool about Pakistan and Afghanistan is of Greek origin while some studies placed Greek DNA in modern ethnic congeries from both India and Pakistan and numbers as high as 15% which along with the Indo Scythians from pre Mongol Central Asian descent would explain why clan jobbies and cash marries are probably the fairest of all Indian ethnic groups and have a relatively high number of people with light-colored eyes and hair were there Alexander's conquests where a net positive for the world is definitely up for debate but one thing for certain is that the rise of the Macedonian Empire was truly an impressive feat for the time bridging the gap between eastern and western culture by uniting an area wider than that of the continental United States spanning areas as diverse as modern Bulgaria to Egypt to the northwest corner of the Indian subcontinent even though the area was never fully homogenized through Greek culture and in all actuality it probably never could have been the ancient Greeks and Macedonians certainly had a huge impact on many parts of their former Empire and traces of their architecture language religion and genetics can be seen in many of the modern people groups of the region and it's truly astounding to think that such an unassuming nation such as ancient Greece could have had such a large and permanent impact on the world even a place as exotic and faraway as Pakistan and India be sure to let me know your thoughts on Alexander the Great the rise of the Macedonian Empire and the last of the indo-greek kingdom of South Asia which a lot of people probably didn't know about and I thought was a truly fascinating subject as always they for watching everyone there's been Mason and I'll see you next time

Channel: Masaman

Views: 1,343,368

Keywords: masaman, What Happened to the Greek Settlers in Ancient India and Pakistan, Greeks, Greece, Pakistan, India, Indians, Pakistanis, European people, White People, Indian People, Desi, Indian American, Greek American, History, Greek Empire, Hellas, Hindu, Hinduism, Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great's Empire, Greek History, Indian History, Afghanistan, Persians, Iranians, Persian Empire, Iran, Persia, Ancient Greece, Macedonia, Macedonian Empire, Indo-Greek, Indo-Bactrians

Id: j5uke7vIaFM

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2017