Thanks Rex, Mark, Glen and Sylvia for your contributions here.
Silvia wrote
> His main point is his following Kretschmer (1925) who saw three
different
> layers of languages in the Mediterranean area: "a) pre-Indoeuropean
> (Mediterranean), b) Proto-IE, c) Indo-European strictu sensu. He
assigned
> the -ss- and -nth- suffixes to the >Proto-IE Stratum< (also called by
some:
> >Pelasgic<)."
the -ss- and -nd-, -nt- inserts are interesting ones that have been
commented on since Leonard Palmers' work in the 1970s. He too saw it
as a cultural influence coming out of Anatolia. It is interesting that
the contributors of the Times Atlas of World History also saw an
Anatolian movement across the Aegean into Greece, associated with a
pre-Greek stratum, but as a displacement of Western Anatolians circa
22-2500BCE following the wave of burnings extending down from Troy II,
Yortan and Beycultestan etc, and equated by some as the coming of the
Hittites/Luwians. Given that Hittite(Neshite) was a supertratum
language over the earlier Khattic (and that this occurred during the
reign of Hattusilis I (The first Hittite king to rule from Hatussas
(andother -ss- word Sylvia), this suggests a fairly late date for
Anatolian languages arriving in Anatolia. There may have been linkages
between Usanova culture south from Moldavia over the Danube and the
wave of burnings through Western Anatolia. There was certainly
linkages at this time with the movement of the Phillia culture out of
Anatolia and Cilicia into Cyprus, so the arrival of -nd-, -ss- refuges
into the Aegean at this time is certainly possible.
The question remains - were these people those who spoke a completely
new language, or did they speak a language similar (though possibly not
identical to) that already spoken by people in the Aegean.
Glen's thesis (and the work you have sited above Sylvia) would suggest
new languages were involved (Eg. Indo-Etruscan). I personally would
suggest that it was a cognate language with indigenous Nostratic
languages already spoken in the Aegean. Thus for examplke, there is no
trace of Anatolian refugees in Crete and yet we find that Kn-ss-
(Knossos) was already a major site 22-2500 BCE and that they too seemed
to speak a -ss-, -nd- language.
Another piece of evidence. I have seen evidence that suggests that
between 25-33% of early Greek vocabulary is non I-E in origin. The
word thalassa (sea) has been quoted as an example. It is interesting
that this has a -ss- suffix, as suggested for the autochthones of the
Aegean.
Now for some fairly long hypothesising. The Greeks held that the
Olympians took over from the Titans, which they held as being the
previous Gods of the area. Is this a memory of the coming of I-E
invadors with different divinities superimposing over earlier ones.
The titans were confined by Zeus to Tartarus, except for Epimetheus and
Prometheus (who were supposed to help the Olympians (another case of
twin divinities so widely found in the I-E mythos, but here transparent
as forethought and afterthought). The exception was the Titan Atlas,
who is supposed to have held the heavens and the earth apart, and whose
(titan) daughters, lived in the mythical Garden of the Hesperides.
Atlas is interesting for many reasons. Here we find an "-tl-s" similar
to the later Greek "Thalassa", suggesting that Atlas may have
originally been the name of a pre-Poseidonic god of the sea. Atlas's
daughters, the Atlantidae, are clearly linked to the Platonic story of
Atlantis, which has a form "-tl-nt-" again suggesting a pre-greek
language. If the etymology "Atlantis" proposed here is correct - one
possible translation of this name could well have been "Peoples of the
Sea!" Thus the linkage with "plst" found in Egyptian records, the
Egyptian story told to Solon about Atlantis (found in the Critias and
Timaeus), and the collapse of the Bronze Age civilisations in the
Aegean can all be explained!
An interesting side line. The Bible puts the plst (Phillistines) as
coming out of Kaftor (Krete). Known to the Egyptians as keftiu - it
has been suggested that an early etymology of keftiu might have been
"pillar". A smoking volcano at Thera would certainly resemble a
Pillar, and some have suggested that this part of the Atlantis tale
(that Atlantis was beyond the Pillar) led to Platos confusion that
Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar).
If Atlantis was beyond Keftiu, it places it firmly in the Aegean -
again the homeland surely of "the Peoples of the Sea" (eg.
Lemnian-Palesgi). Interestingly we know then as Phillistines, but
their name seems pl-st-, which some have seen as another linked to the
-ss- and -nd-. With Atlas, -ss-, -nd-, -st-, are we here talking about
a substratum language different from the CVC of IE, which has a
structure, VCCV instead. Are there any other examples of substratum
words in Greek that have such a structure.
Like you Rex- with your Macro-Pelasgian, I am just flying kites.
Thanks all for entertaining hypotheses
Hope this helps to stir the pot
John