New Myloi Archive Puts 8,000 Years of History Online

by · Greek City Times

A new Myloi archive brings 8,000 years of history from one small corner of the Argolid together online, from prehistoric Lerna to the present day.

Called The Memory of Myloi, the free online collection covers the villages of Myloi, Lerna and Kalamaki. It lists 380 events, 126 people and 31 places, and every entry comes with its source.

VisitMyloi, an independent non-profit initiative from the village, launched the Myloi archive on its website on 8 November. According to the team, it keeps growing, with new finds from newspapers, archives and residents’ memories.

How the Myloi archive works

Readers can explore the Myloi archive in four languages: Greek, English, Dutch and Polish. Its sources include contemporary newspapers, archives, memoirs and scholarly studies.

Read more: 26 Schools To Be Suspended In The Peloponnese

There are three ways in. Visitors can follow the timeline period by period or browse what happened at each place. They can also look up the generals, kings, engineers, archaeologists, mayors and emigrants who shaped the area.

In addition, VisitMyloi’s “threads” follow one theme through the centuries. These include water and mills, the harbour and pier, the railway, industry and trade, the 1821 Revolution and the wartime occupation.

Each fact also carries a label showing how certain it is: proven, probable, tradition or disputed. When sources disagree, the Myloi archive shows both versions.

A spring, a mill and a railway

Ancient Lerna sits at the heart of the story. Long before the village existed, its springs drew people to a prehistoric settlement on the spot.

Myth also placed the Hydra there, the serpent from Heracles’ twelve labours. As a result, the archive gives Ancient Lerna its own thread, covering the Hydra, the settlement and the excavations.

Later, the springs of Lerna gave Myloi both its mills and its name, since myloi means mills in Greek. According to the Myloi archive, they powered Venetian watermills and, in 1960, a pumping station with Heracles on its wall.

Its makers describe how closely the area’s past is bound to its landscape.

“The history of Myloi is the history of a place: a spring, a mill, a landing stage, a station, an olive grove. Almost everything happened somewhere between Pontinos hill and the sea, and almost everything is connected. The spring drove the mills, the mills drew the harbour, the harbour drew the railway.”Makers of The Memory of Myloi, VisitMyloi

When Greece was governed from Myloi

Among the stories in the Myloi archive is a surprising one from 1824. That spring, for more than two months, the Executive of Georgios Kountouriotis governed Greece from the village.

In fact, the archive of Ioannis Kolettis alone holds more than a hundred documents dated from Myloi.

A year later came the Battle of the Mills on 13 June 1825. There, a few hundred defenders held the mills against Ibrahim Pasha, who suffered his first defeat in the Peloponnese.

That is the same commander whose forces later besieged Messolonghi. Today, the Myloi archive tells the battle through the words of General Makriyannis and foreign eyewitnesses, including two American volunteers.

Then, on 6 July 1891, King George I landed at Myloi to open the railway to Tripoli. Newspapers of the day reported 34 degrees in the shade and villagers climbing onto the royal train.

One old woman even offered the King a flask of wine.

From Kalamaki to Chicago and Australia

Just as importantly, The Memory of Myloi follows the families who left. Its emigration thread traces villagers who moved to America, Canada and Australia, and sometimes came back.

One story follows emigrants from Kalamaki who reached Chicago in 1911. Using Ellis Island passenger lists, it traces two families and their two routes to America.

Another links the village with Greek America. In 1959, the council made John Caskey, the American archaeologist who excavated Lerna, an honorary citizen of Myloi.

New York’s Ethnikos Kirix then carried that news to Greek Americans.

For that reason, the team hopes descendants abroad will add their own chapters to the Myloi archive. Anyone with old photographs, documents or family stories from Myloi, Lerna or Kalamaki can write to info@visitmyloi.gr.

Before anything goes online, the team checks every contribution and records the name of the person who gave it.

Source: VisitMyloi

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