The Dardanoi in classical writings were either the same people as, or a people closely related to, the Trojans, an ancient people of the Troad, located in northwestern Anatolia. The Dardanoi derived their name from Dardanus, the mythical founder of Dardania, an ancient city in the Troad. Rule of the Troad was divided between Dardania and Troy. Homer makes a clear distinction between the Trojans and the Dardanoi.
Dardanoi and Trojans
The RoyalHouse of Troy was also divided into two branches, that of the Dardanoi, and that of the Trojans. The House of the Dardanoi was older than the House of Troy, but Troy later became more powerful. Aeneas is referred to in Virgil's Aeneid interchangeably as a Dardanian or as a Trojan, but strictly speaking, Aeneas was of the branch of the Dardanoi. Many rulers of Rome claimed descent from Aeneas and the Houses of Troy and Dardania. Homer adds the epithetDardanid to Priam and to other prominent characters denoting that they are members of the house of the Dardanoi. Homer writes;
The Dardanians were led by brave Aeneas, whom the fair Aphrodite, a goddess bedded with a mortal man, bore to Anchises in the mountains of Ida. He was not alone, for with him were the two sons of Antenor, Archilochus and Acamas, both skilled in all the arts of war.
The strait of the Dardanelles was named after the Dardanoi, who lived in the region.
Origins
The ethnic affinities of the Dardanoi, and of the Trojans, and the nature of their language remain a mystery. The remains of their material culture reveal close ties with Luwian, other Anatolian groups, Thracians. The Dardanoi were linked by ancient Greek and Roman writers with a people of the same name who lived in the Balkans, a notion supported by a number of parallel ethnic names found both in the Balkans and Anatolia that are considered too great to be a mere coincidence. Archaeological finds from the Troad dating back to the Chalcolithic period show striking affinity to archaeological finds known from the same era in Muntenia and Moldavia, and there are other traces which suggest close ties between the Troad and the Carpatho-Balkan region of Europe. Archaeologists in fact have stated that the styles of certain ceramic objects and bone figurines show that these objects were brought into the Troad by Carpatho-Danubian colonists; for example, certain ceramic objects have been shown to have Cucuteni origins.
