Teo

Long, long ago, the people who lived in the land called Macedonia (the ones with King Philip and Alexander the Great) were Greeks. They spoke a form of Greek. They went to the same festivals and games as other Greeks. They called themselves part of the Greek world Hellenes. That is the straight line of continuity: those ancient people → the people who stayed Greek-speaking → modern Greeks (Hellenes). Next door to them lived other groups, including the Thracians. The Thracians were a different people. They had their own language (not Greek) and their own ways. They lived mainly to the east and northeast of the core Macedonian lands. A long time later, new groups of people who spoke a completely different language (Slavic) moved into the Balkans. They settled in the area that is now North Macedonia. Over many years they mixed with with the people who were already there Greeks in some places, Thracians in others, and other local groups who was already there, but the language that won out was the Slavic one. That is why people in North Macedonia today speak a Slavic language, not Greek, and why their modern national identity is a Slavic one that formed much later. So the straight continuous line from the ancient Greek speaking Macedonians runs to the modern Greeks (Hellenes). The Thracians were neighbors, not the same people, and both they and the later Slavic settlers shaped different parts of the region. Modern North Macedonians come from that later mix in which the Slavic language won out ,they do not have a direct unbroken line back to either the ancient Greek Macedonians or the Thracians.