Most likely. The ancient Greeks seem to have been incredibly xenophobic and negatively disposed towards other peoples. The word barbarian itself is from Greek and it essentially meant "person whose speech sounds like 'bar-bar', i.e. gibberish-speaker, i.e. non-Greek speaker". (Almost a mirror reflection of the English saying 'It's all Greek to me'.)
I always laugh that the (modern, correct) word for Germany in Polish is "Niemiec" which basically means "people who don't talk."
Like some Polish guys ran into some Germans, and the Germans just started speaking some gibberish non-slavic language. Polish guys were like "I really doubt this is a language. They must not be able to talk at all."
I also read that a lot of native American tribe names came about when early European explorers asked one tribe, "What is the name of the tribe that lives over there?". The local tribe would respond, "We call them the other people" So the Europeans would translate the tribe's vocalization of "Other People" into the name for that tribe.
Comanche (from a Ute word meaning "they fight with us.")
Apache (from a Zuni word for "enemy.")
"The term Maliseet is the exonym by which the Mi'kmaq people referred to this group when speaking to early Europeans. Maliseet was a Mi'kmaq word meaning "broken talkers", "lazy speakers" or "he speaks badly," or differently by which the Mi'kmaq contrasted the other tribe's language to their own.[3] The Wolastoqiyik and Mi'kmaq languages are closely related but distinctly different. The Europeans met the Mi'kmaq before the Wolastoqiyik, and adopted their term of Malesse'jik (transliterated as Malécite in French) for the people, not understanding that it was not their true name. The later English colonists anglicized this term as Maliseet, in another transliteration of sound."
> The ancient Greeks seem to have been incredibly xenophobic and negatively disposed towards other peoples.
Such a blanket claim cannot stand, especially considering that the “ancient Greeks” were not a single population but scattered into a number of political entities and with different economies. There were insular Greeks and there were culturally tolerant Greeks. As examples of the latter, Herodotus repeatedly depicts Egypt as the font of all civilization and knowledge. The Greek colonies in Anatolia readily mixed with local populations and adopted much from the Persian Empire.
Ironically I’m reading Herodotus right now, and just reached his description of the Scythians and how they drink milk.
“Now the Scythians blind all their slaves, because of the milk2 they drink; and this is how they get it: taking tubes of bone very much like flutes, they insert these into the genitalia of the mares and blow into them, some blowing while others milk. According to them, their reason for doing this is that blowing makes the mare's veins swell and her udder drop. [2] When done milking, they pour the milk into deep wooden buckets, and make their slaves stand around the buckets and shake the milk; they draw off what stands on the surface and value this most; what lies at the bottom is less valued.”
Obviously Herodotus repeats lots of tall tales so no idea if that one is true, but I can understand the disdain fir milk drinkers if so.
>> The ancient Greeks seem to have been incredibly xenophobic and negatively disposed towards other peoples.
I don't know that they were any more xenophobic than is inherent in all peoples. While Barbarian is a Greek word, it's also important to note that in the Greek context it didn't have the Roman implications of lack of civilization: it simply meant a non-Greek speaking people.
During the Bronze Age, the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations were highly imitative (and pale imitations at that) of the hydraulic civilizations that had taken hold in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Near East. These immediate predecessors of the Greeks were much poorer than, much less powerful than, and geographically at the periphery of what was then the heart of civilization. As a consequence, there's a certain sense of material inferiority in Ancient Greek culture from the beginning.
In much of Greek literature, the East is portrayed as being much wealthier and more powerful, with greater societal sophistication and stratification. In contrast, the Greeks view themselves as poorer, but scrappier, less sophisticated and urbane, but more egalitarian and self-determined, physically weaker, but morally stronger. The Greeks certainly viewed themselves as a "better" people overall, but that didn't prevent them from feeling a sort of awe towards their more ancient neighbors, particularly Egypt and Persia.
Likewise, the Greeks absolutely could feel empathy for the other civilizations they came in conflict with: Aeschylus's The Persians presented the glorious Athenian defensive naval victory at Salamis from the perspective of the death and suffering it inflicted on the Persian people. Aeschylus's The Persians was submitted for tragic competition less than 10 years after the events it depicted, events that would have led to the destruction of Greek civilization and the enslavement of its people had the battle gone the other way. It won first prize.
Finally, the Greeks, if Herodotus's Histories is any indication, had a deep curiosity in the cultures of other peoples. Herodotus wasn't afraid of making judgements about other cultures, but he wasn't afraid of learning from them or advocating some of their customs either. More than anything, Herodotus felt that there were things that Greeks could learn by traveling among and talking with non-Greeks. Herodotus was surely an outlier as compared to the typical Greek farmer, but the fact that Herodotus's work was instantly acclaimed and kept alive to the present tells you that it had a significant Ancient Greek audience, and wasn't just appreciated in posterity.
> While Barbarian is a Greek word, it's also important to note that in the Greek context it didn't have the Roman implications of lack of civilization: it simply meant a non-Greek speaking people.
That doesn't seem to be true, given the 'etymology' of the word. The Roman sense of 'barbarian' was simply 'not Roman or Greek' while the Greek one was 'not Greek'.
