The Macedonian Question ? 
From historical and archaeological evidence, that have been found in the region, prove that Greek speaking inhabitants lived at the North Pindus mountains in the period around 2200-2100 B.C. These Protohellenic tribes must have broken away from the main bulk of the family of Indo-Europeans somewhere in the 5th millennium B.C. and spread throughout the area that is now know as Northen Greece.
In the start of the around 2000 B.C. there are three basic groups of Greek speaking people:
a) The South-Eastern Group (in the NW part of Thessaly), whose principal representatives were the Ionians
b) The Eastern Group (W. Macedonia), which had two dialect subgroups, the Arcadian and the Aeolian, and
c) The Western Group of which the tribe of the Makednoi was the most populous.
At about this time, these Protohellenic tribes, led by the Ionians, began a slow advance southward. Here they came into contact with the Prehellenic populations of Crete and the islands, who had reached a high cultural level. The lonians were followed south by the Eastern group of peoples, those who used the Aeolian dialect. It was from these populations, which included the Achaeans, the Lapiths, the Minyans and others, that Mycenean civilisation was to spring.
The Western group, and the Makednoi first and foremost, split. One group pushed into Central Greece and the Peloponnese. Another established itself in Doris, where it mixed with the local populations and eventually acquired the name 'Dorians'. A third group made its way to Thessaly, while a fourth -the Macedonians- spread out through the regions which today are called Western, Southern and Central Macedonia. This group, Greek-speaking like the others, did not move south, and for some centuries remained outside the rapid cultural development of its related peoples, who had come into contact with the highly-developed Creto-insular populations of the south.
This brief description of the migrations of the Greek-speaking peoples from the north southward also explains the relationship between Macedonians and Dorians, which ancient sources often refer to. The Macedonians, that is, were not Dorians, since as we have seen the latter people acquired its name at a later date. However, the Dorians and the Macedonians belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Makednoi, from which the Dorians split away to seek their fortunes in the south.
In historical times -the 8th century B.C.- the Macedonians, hitherto aloof from the enormously important cultural developments taking place in the south, began gradually to occupy a place in the limelight of history. All the ancient writers classify the Macedonians among the Greek-speaking family of peoples.
In the 7th century B.C., Orestis (the area around what is today Kastoria) is mentioned as the birthplace of the Macedonian dynasty of the Argeads and the Temenids. The name 'Argeads' has created the impression that the Macedonian kings traced their descent back to Argos in the Peloponnese, but today most scholars believe that this impression is the result of confusion between Argos in the Peloponnese and Argos Orestikon just south of Kastoria. However, the fact that the same placename was used by both the Macedonians and the Greek peoples of the south does prove their common ethnolinguisitic ancestry. In both cases, 'Argos' is an indigenous placename, not a loan-word.
In the course of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. the Macedonians moved east from Orestis and settled, in succession in the areas of Pieria, Bottiaia (Mount Vermion), Eordaea (the modern city of Ptolemaida) and Almopia (today Aridaia). They then crossed the river Axios, and approached the borders of Chalkidiki. The tribes which had previously dwelt in these areas -Pelasgians and other- were driven out or, in some cases, assimilated.
By this time the Macedonians were beginning to break out of their isolation, as the influence of the developed south penetrated into Macedonia through the colonies founded in Chalkidiki and through increasing land and sea communication. Thus the Macedonian world was the scene of rapid cultural development, reaching its peak in the reigns of kings Amyn- tas, Philip II and Alexander the Great.
It would be difficult today to advance the claim that the Macedonians were not part of the ancient Greek world. Recent archaeological findings in conjunction with linguistic analysis and the discovery of large numbers of new inscriptions -all in Greek- with a vast range of Greek names prove that was never any break (either cultural or linguistic) in the unity of the Macedonians with the other Greeks. Indeed the dissemination of the Greek language and Greek culture throughout the known world by Alexander the Great and his Macedonians provides the most irrefutable confirmation of this. The unity of Macedonians and the rest of the Greeks is proved once more every year, with the finds brought to light at the major archaeological sites of Pella, Vergina, Dion and Sindos, and scores of less well-known sites (such as those in the Voio, Kozani, Kastoria, Florina, Edessa, Aridaia and Kilkis areas) and, of course, in Thessaloniki itself and in Chalkidiki.
