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Comment by Tsiklon | Hacker News Reader

That tree was planted in the era of Classical Greece; if it could speak of the epochs and people it saw, it would have had many tales to tell.

This is as much a cultural loss as it is an economic loss. I have no connection to Greece or it’s people, but this saddens me.

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Talking about old:

There is another tree in Crete that is 4k old.... (yes, 4,000 years old). It even pre-dates the Greeks, as they arrived in the area only around 1400-1450bc. It was planted by the Minoan people... and it is still there today making olives.

They're not sure how old it is. The best guess range is 2,000 to 4,000 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_tree_of_Vouves

Both, Olive tree of Vouves (aka "Elia Vouvon", 2000-5000 y.o)[0] & 'Olive tree burned in Eva fire' (unnamed, 2000 y.o.)[1], are in the List of oldest trees (with estimated ages) on Wikipedia.

Here is photo of 'Olive tree burned in Eva fire', uploaded on Jan 19, 2004 (photo taken not later than that date).[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees#cite_ref-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees#cite_ref-...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110827125521/http://outdoors.w...

[img] https://web.archive.org/web/20121027221058im_/http://image09...

Well, that English chap Ventris proved that the Myceneans were in fact Greek, as per his “Greek nightmare”, but was killed before he could prove that Linear A & hence the Minoans were Greek. But the majority of scholars contend that King Minos etc were Greek

The Myceneans were likely ethnically Greek and seem to have spoken an early version of Greek. I have not seen anything to indicate if the Minoans (who were distinct from Myceneans) were ethnically Greek, but their language does not appear to be Indo-European. If it were, it would be easier to translate. If the Minoans were ethnically Greek, that suggests that there were a population of people on the mainland and on Minos that spoke a non-Indo-European language and that that language was larger displaced on the Greek mainland by Indonesia-European immigrants who transferred their language to the native people and that evolved into the various kinds of Greek language.

It's really hard to follow your logic, especially your version of the 'facts'. The Myceneans are proven to be Greek beyond doubt, and their writing system Linear B is Greek- is a settled among scholars. The Minoans, outside of their homeland of Crete, had colonies in mainland Greece, other Aegean islands (Santorini), Sicily, and as far as Spain. Using the indo-european language is a tortured logic thread

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