From: Mark Odegard
Message: 1509
Date: 2000-02-15
Herodotus, The Histories.
[1.57.1] What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say definitely. But if one may judge by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who live above the Tyrrheni in the city of Creston--who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians, and at that time inhabited the country which now is called Thessalian--
[1.57.2] and of the Pelasgians who inhabited Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who came to live among the Athenians, and by other towns too which were once Pelasgian and afterwards took a different name: if, as I said, one may judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek.
[1.57.3] If, then, all the Pelasgian stock spoke so, then the Attic nation, being of Pelasgian blood, must have changed its language too at the time when it became part of the Hellenes. For the people of Creston and Placia have a language of their own in common, which is not the language of their neighbors; and it is plain that they still preserve the manner of speech which they brought with them in their migration into the places where they live.
[1.58.1] But the Hellenic stock, it seems clear to me, has always had the same language since its beginning; yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, few in number, they have grown from a small beginning to comprise a multitude of nations, chiefly because the Pelasgians and many other foreign peoples united themselves with them. Before that, I think, the Pelasgic stock nowhere increased much in number while it was of foreign speech.
Rex, for the sake of debate, proposesA "Greater Pelasgia" existed and dominated the north eastern Med Rim as a pre-Hittite intrusive culture, composed of IE speaking Northerners.
I've yet to read an authority of repute who will unequivocally state the Pelasgian language was Indo-European. To the contrary, all you read are explicit denials for such a possibility.Using mentions made by Herodotus et al. of Pelasgians on Lemnos, the Lemnian inscriptions are sometimes identified as being in the Pelasgian language, and as these inscriptions are closely related to Etruscan, the Pelasgian language is sometimes placed in the Tyrrhenian group.
Herodotus uses the term Pelasgian to mean the non-Greek-speaking autochthons of Greece. Whatever language[s] they spoke cannot be directly related to the Lemnian inscriptions, but only indirectly, by proximity. Lemnos was probably as linguistically mixed as was Crete, in that it was a major trading center. Finding Greek and Tyrhennian inscriptions on Lemnos should probably be no more suprising than finding Greek and Hebrew inscriptions on Manhattan Island.
Having said that, relating the Pelasgian language to the Tyrrhenian group is a common enough guess. Ascription of the non-IE substratum in Greek to this group is also a reasonable guess. Nor is it unreasonable to find an etymological connection between the words Pelasgian and Philistine. But to say Pelasgian (and Tyrhhenian) are IE is not reasonable.
Now. I have read learned speculations (and this is exactly what they are labelled as) that Tyhrrenian might be IE's closest relative (as the Indo-Tyrrhenian family), with Uralic being slightly more distant.
As for Greece, my own view is it was fundamentally non-IE in character until the advent of chariot warfare (after 2000 BCE).
Mark.