Do any Greek myths or histories shed light on their ancestors before they came to Greece in the Dorian Invasion?

by spontaneouslypiqued
KiwiHellenist

Basically, no. The chronology of Greek myth has a kind of gradual shading, from pure myth, to somewhat historical, to basically historical. That shift is a lot later than many people think. The Dorian invasion is still well before 'pure myth' transitions into 'somewhat historical'.

We only get to 'somewhat historical' with legends about events of the 7th century: things like the Messenian Wars (not historical), the Lelantine War (potentially historical), and the founding of Cyrene (partially historical). The migration myths are all several centuries earlier than that, and they're essentially pure myth. Some scholars of the period think that actual population movements (like the movement of Greeks to SW Turkey in the late Bronze Age) are echoed very distantly in the migration myths, but even they would admit that the majority of the mythical material is totally inconsistent with material evidence.

I'm not sure what you're thinking of when you refer to 'their ancestors before they came to Greece'. Greece had been inhabited by Greek speakers for many centuries before the supposed migration myths were supposed to have happened. There were no ancestors from elsewhere.

Is it maybe that you've heard that the 'Dorian invasion' was a population movement from somewhere north of Greece? I've seen that misconception before, but it's a modern fabrication: I don't know where the notion came from. The myth of the Dorian invasion that we see in classical sources is about Heracles' sons leading a population movement from central Greece -- west of the Malian Gulf, in modern Phthiotis -- to the southern Peloponnesos. It certainly isn't about invaders from outside the Greek world, and no such idea is suggested by any ancient mythical source.

(Incidentally, the myths also depict Dorians and sons of Heracles living in Crete and the Dodecanesa at the time of the Trojan War, supposedly two generations before the Dorian invasion. So much for internal consistency in the myths! There's no canon: different places had different myths.)