Dennis Poulter contributes (>)
> Sorry, I can't buy into this Greater Pelasgia idea.
You are certainly welcome to your position...but to defeat mine..you are
going to have to get into the same chronology and period. I found most
of your input interesting, with the Hyksos ideas new to me in this context.
You are however, simply adding details of possible additional intrusive
influences of a latter period, while reinforcing the presence of the earlier
"Pelasgi" cultural layer (and focusing only on the Greek mainland to define
them.)
I am talking early bronze, c3000 BCE forward, and describing an influence
that most of your input supports. You try to redefine it from middle
bronze forward. In my position, I address Dannan and later redefinitions,
in fact all manner of localized power consolidations, and clearly allude to
only resilient pockets of these Pelasgi by c1200..and specifically address
losses to eastern influences, everything else incorporated into the new
power and market spheres.
I do not think the definition and travels of Danaus impact, beyond the
already summarized: Pelasgi>Argives>Achaeans>Danaans. The main groups of
later Hellenes that do not have a predominantly Pelasgi base are the Attics,
Dorians, Spartans,and Laecedomanians. The Attics seem to contribute an
older resilient autochthonous base (Oscan or/and Tyrrhenian) to a mix with
the Pelasgi insurgents. The main group(s) of intrusive Dorians, apparently
at or/after 1100BCE include the Spartans: clearly defined as a minority
intrusive controlling Dorian aristocracy in a small region, "owning" the
majority pastorals, who were Pelasgi. The Laecedomanians may have been
totally intrusive, and non-Pelasgi.
I am familiar with Hyksos in the context of many ongoing Middle East and
Egyptian controversies. In short, we are not at all sure who they were, and
what there regional impact was. Some argue they were only a very thin
princely layer for a period in Egypt. I have begun to favor a larger
Egyptian presence than a simple aristocracy, and tend to concur with your
regional placement of their origins. Specifically, I like N. Syria, but
that is simply a favoring of other folk's arguments on other lists, and far
from a researched position on my part. Essentially, even as your projection
of them into and over "Pelasgia" (in any definition) is interesting, it
would contribute to later linguistic realities, but has nothing to do with
early bronze age developments in my defined geographic area..you may be two
millennium out.
Argos is clearly Pelasgian founded, from early bronze, and we know the
renamings and most of the influences through Dannaans, and the Dorian
influence. Any additional post c1500 influences did not erase the c3000 to
c1200 developments in the area I describe. I think the horse was earlier
than you credit...In any, case you seem to be trying to redefine "my" early
bronze period speculations with "your" middle bronze speculations on events
and chronology.
You are addressing new bronze swords as significant c.middle bronze:
Hittites were already doing iron, and Minoans had been trading it for years.
>...called these conquerors "Hyksos". Then, taking to the sea, just as later
>land-based conquerors such as the Arabs and Mongols would do..
All of these (assuming Hyksos is a correct label ?) took to the sea..via
possession of older coastal cites and traditions.
>the "acorn-eating" Pelasgians.
My scenario includes these guys, but you can't define the whole with these
pockets trying to subsist marginally in agriculturally deprived
areas..outside the power spheres. I believe the intrusive Pelasgi were
agriculturists primarily, and those left out of the development of sea
trade, or circumstantially left out of the redistribution markets and
inland, did not fare well. All these folks, including all the later
intrusives, either left Greece or went back to eating acorns during the
turmoil years post-Troy. (certainly after c1100..only to see the rise of the
classical age later.)
>With the expulsion of the Hyksos (around 1570), in which there seems to
>have been some sort of alliance between Egypt and the Aegean.
The power base of this alliance on the Aegean side would be the peak of the
folks I'm trying to define..later influences and disruptions don't delete
the prior.
>So we come to the Sea Peoples, who included Etruscans (Tress),
No. Tryyhenians from Italy in coastal colonies allied in the sea trade
system? Villanovans? most probable. Etruscans: No. They simply did not
exist as currently defined.
Conclusion: Interesting, and equally thought provoking re: Hyksos. But
essentially you are providing details and speculative input to a late period
I covered in a couple of lines, as the end of the period defined. Doesn't
impact or dilute my argument re: an earlier period. Does, however provide
some possible explanations of later intrusive eastern linguistic and
cultural influences. (I have looked with interest at the dagger design that
became so popular in Crete, and think there are some arch parallels in
Etruria). All this, of course contributing to the identity of Classical
Greece, or Hellas (from earlier Micro-Pelasgia). Does nothing to weaken the
possibility of the existence of an earlier larger (Macro-Pelasgia) as a
cultural and linguistic base for a broader Aegean early bronze commonality,
elements of which went from agriculture to sea trade. The fact that you
don't agree noted. (New terminology: Macro/Micro Pelasgia stolen from John
Croft..deleting "Greater" :-)
La Revedere;
Rex H. McTyeire
Bucharest, Romania
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