Fast Facts
- Named for: Macedonia means “tall people” according to ancient Greeks
- Capital: Skopje
- Long/Lat: 42.0 N/21.2 E, 6500 mi & 13 hrs East of CV
- Population: 1.8 million or 27 CVs, big for a “small” country
- Size: 9800 sq mi, 540 CVs
- Avg temp in April: 64 F/16 F, similar
- Median household income: $7,000
- Ethnicity: 55% Macedonian, 24% Albanian, 4% Turks
- Main industries: Chemicals, Manufacturing. Embargoes and trade conflicts are common.
Sadly, there is no South Macedonia. Neither is there an East or West Macedonia, and when Macedonia gained independence in 1991 and tried to be the whole Macedonia, the Greeks blpcked them. It’s pretty ironic, since the Macedonians once conquered Greece, and the Greeks have never conquered Macedonia.
Those Greeks do act as if they run the show. They think they invented everything, and slap labels on things like the Pythagorean theorem (Pythagoras was great, but the Babylonians knew about the right-triangle relationships way before that) or the Metonic cycle (Babylonians again) and so on. Alexander the Great, the Macedonian emperor who spread “Greek” culture into the east, was tutored by a Greek, but he wasn’t Greek. Such a long time ago, who pays attention?
The dispute over naming the country is true. North Macedonia today is basically where Macedonia was, just north of Greece. You can always spot Greece on a map to the right of Italy, with all these broken fingers, looking so spindly that you can’t believe they’d have the chutzpah to claim they invented everything.
Back in the B.C.E.s, there was also Thrace to the east of Macedonia, a land extending across into Byzantium and Persia; thus, Macedonia straddles Europe and Asia Minor, aka Persia, Turkey, the Achmaenids, the Fertile Crescent, etc. The Achmaenids were the empire of Cyrus the Great, who had great armies and great gardens, but by the time Xerxes came along–and Artaxerxes–they were exhausted from all the Xs, and they just said Alexander, go ahead, enjoy all the sand!
Alexander was the son of a great Macedonian King, Philip II who gave the Greeks dyspepsia (which IS a Greek word). Macedonians meant the “tall people,” though Alexander was only about 5’6″ and called other people he met giants. Again, Greek exaggeration… Alexander was tutored by Aristotle, so he learned about rhetoric, geometry, and vacuums, tidbits he also took with him all the way across Persia to India. He would have kept going if he hadn’t had a massive drinking bout and fallen ill of some mystery disease (Guillame-Barr? malaria? pancreatitis?) in 323 B.C.E.
Macedonia just remained chill, hanging out north of Greece as different armies marched across its face, neither particularly strategic or resistant. The Ottomans called this area the Balkans, meaning either “honey lands” or “mud lands” or maybe it’s Turkish for “mountain”–that parchment was blurry. The Balkans became that crossroad between east and west, north and south. They remained forever a hotbed of border antagonism, not just between the Greeks and Macedonians, but also among the multiple variations of Slavic people. Most of the empire builders, from Alexander to Suleiman to Napoleon to Hitler, threw these territories together, willy nilly.
However, as World War I demonstrated, they didn’t all like being viewed as the same people. Yugoslavia after the first war consolidated under Tito, whose armies called him President for Life. But he did die, and the center could not hold especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the regions broke apart. The Republic of Macedonia kept a low profile as larger ethnic disputes consumed other parts of the Balkans–Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo–names that are familiar to adults from the ’90s.
The Republic of Macedonia’s separation was through a peaceful ballot affair in 1991, although Greece blocked their choice of name. Finally, in 2018, the smaller country agreed to be the Republic of North Macedonian, although they refer to themselves as Macedonia. As long as there aren’t any Greeks around.
Lake Orhid is its national jewel, nearly 4 million years old is the oldest in Europe. It resembles Tahoe, a rectangular oval, though Tahoe is twice as deep. Macedonians say their lack of “history” makes them less well known than Greece or Croatia as tourist spots, and they like it that way. There are 200 unique endemic species in the Lake, making it one of the most biodiverse on the planet.
Macedonia also has its own ancient land-based time keeping Kokino. It was only discovered in 2001 because you do have to hang around it a lot and squint. That is, you have to show up in Kokino at just the right spot on just the right day to watch the sun rise in between rocks, originally carved in the Bronze Age. I’m sure Aristotle would like to start Greek-splaining how astronomy works, but the Macedonian probably said, Thanks, we know.
