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> But it's completely absurd to call that "Persia"

Is it necessarily that much (to an extent it is of course) more absurd than to call the Bronze Age Mycenaeans/Achaeans Greek though? Yes they were a lot more concentrated geographically and the link between them and classical Greeks/Hellenes is strong but still seems like an anachronism.

> If you want to consider the geographical extent of the Achaemenid Empire

Not sure why would anyone want to considering the 700 year gap.

> But it's completely absurd to call that "Persia"

Certainly, that why I wasn't sure why did they mention Persia in the first place.

> none of them including the ones on the Iranian plateau would have thought of themselves as "Persian"

Considering that the word is derived from Farsi/Farsi wouldn't the people living in the territory that became heartland of the Achaemenid empire have called themselves that?




> Is it necessarily that much (to an extent it is of course) more absurd than to call the Bronze Age Mycenaeans/Achaeans Greek though?

If you want to refer to an Iranic group in the Bronze Age as "Persian", that's not what I meant to label as completely absurd.

Referring to Anatolia as "Persia" because Persia conquered it many centuries later, and then failed to maintain control, is completely absurd.

> Not sure why would anyone want to considering the 700 year gap.

Yes, agreed, but that was the only reason I could think of for the original claim about contact between Bronze Age Greeks and "Persia".

> Considering that the word ["Persia"] is derived from Farsi/Farsi wouldn't the people living in the territory that became heartland of the Achaemenid empire have called themselves that?

To the best of my knowledge, the ancient form is Parsa and "Persia" derives from that, not from the much later form "Fars". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%90%8E%B1%F0%90%8E%A0%F0%9...

I don't know when that term originates. It's possible that people living in the region would have used a related term for themselves in the Bronze Age. It would have had nearly no political significance. It's also possible, as far as I know, that the term is more recent than that.

I also don't know whether Achaemenid Persians would have referred to themselves by a term of that nature. There's a huge ongoing fight on Wikipedia over what terms are appropriate as Persian endonyms. What appears to be beyond dispute is that the people tended to refer to themselves by a term cognate with Aryan or Iranian. (Though when the Parsees leave for India, a thousand years later, they end up being called Parsees.) If you know more about this, I'd like to hear it.


> Referring to Anatolia as "Persia" because Persia conquered

Yeah, that was the entire point of my initial comment. To be fair I don't think I was able to contribute much besides that and of course I agree overall with what you're saying.




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