A definitive answer to the Macro-Pelasgian?

Hi folks

One of the best analyses of the peopling of the Early Aegean that I
have found is that of Professor George Thomsen's book "The Prehistoric
Aegean: Studies in Ancient Greek Society" (1961). Although a little
too coloured by his out of date Marxism and Social Darwinism, in his
chapter on "Matrilineal Peoples of the Aegean" he has much fantastic
useful information.

For instance he states (p.163) "The Aegean Basin was never completely
Hellenised. In the north it remained explosed to fresh erruptions -
Thracians, Phrygians and later Macedonians, Gauls and Slavs. In
Anatolia it was only after the conquests of Alexander that Greek speach
penetrated the interior. Behind Aiolis lay the Phrygians, behind Ionia
the Lydians, behind the Dorian settlements further south the Carians
and the Lycians. A non Greek language was still spoken in parts of
Crete as late as the fourth century BC.

The Lycians were so called because their national god, Appollon Lykeios
was worshipped as a wolf (lykos). His mother Leto was said to have
been changed into a wolf before his birth, or led by wolves to the spot
where he was born. Their own name for themselves was Trmmli, vocalised
in Greek as Termilai." In Egyptian annals they are known under the
Mycenaean-Hittite name as Lukka. They were matriarchal as Plutarch
mentions that the Loxidai or Loxides clan - implying that the feminine
form was the propper one. Inscriptions all show that the men are known
as the sons of their mothers (father's names unknown).

South the Carians and Leleges seem to have been related peoples,
although the Leleges may have been a destinct people reduced by the
Carians to serfdom. In historical times the Leleges had disappeared,
although the Carians were well known. Their king Mausolos (who built
the Mausoleum) married his sister Artemesia, and another Carian Queen
Artemesia led her people at the battle of Salamis (prompting Xerxes to
respond that she fought like a man and his men fought like women). The
Ionian conquerors of Miletus took Carian wives. Lists of magistracies
show that the Carian clan structure survived. Thomson showed how Caria
extended originally right across the Aegean. The old name of Kos was
Karis, and the townland of Chios was Karides. Carians were also
mentioned as the early inhabitants of Naxos, and were found in Laria,
southern Thessaly. Troizen and Epidaurus were said to be Carian
settlements, and the acropolis of Argos was called the Karia (after its
King Kar, the Carian). The cult of Zeus Karios, found in Mylassa,
capital of Caria was also found in Boetia and Attica.

Thomson shows that these Carian sites are found in the south. The
north the prehistoric inhabitants were (you guessed it) Pelasgoi.
Pelasgoi survived speaking their language at Akte on the Macedonian
coast, Kreston, Lemnos and Imbros, and Plakia and Skylake in the
territory of Kyzikos on the Propontis. They were also recorded at
Sammothrace, the Troad, Lydia, Lesbos and Chios.

In Greece proper they left their name at the temple of Zeus Pelasgios
at Dodona, and on the Tessalian plain known as Pelasgikon Argos, or
Pelasgiotis. They are mentioned as the early inhabitants of Boeotia
and the Peloponnessian Achaea, and more especially the aboriginal
populations of Attica, Argolis and Arcadia. Near Olympia there were
remnants of a tribe of Kaukones, who had ranged over Ellis and who had
been allies of the Trojans. Their name appeared also further north in
the Kaukones, or Kaukoniatai of Paphlagonia on the Black Sea Coast
(remnants of the Hittite Kaska perhaps? JC).

Their name is reputed to come from Pelagos, a flat plain, applied by
the early Greeks to the sea. Thomson says the "current Greek for 'sea'
was thalassa, which is non Indo-European. Was this borrowed by the
Greek invaders of the Aegean from the 'people of the sea' they found
there - the Pelasgoi?"

Larissa was one of their place names prepeated over Thessaly, Argos,
Attica, Elis, Crete, the Troad, Aolis and Lydia. The Pelasgoi cult of
the Kabeiroi Haephestus - a fire god - survived in Samothrace, Lemnos
and Imbros. Hermes too may have been Pelasgian.

Thomas asks "Where did the Pelasgoi come from? Not from the south.
In Crete they are expressly distinguished from the Etocretians or True
Cretans. They appear no where else in the south Aegean. All signs
point to the north.

Thucidides, who had ancestral connections with the north coast of the
Aegean, describes the Pelasgoi of Akte, Lemnos, and Attica as Tyrrhenoi
(Tyrsenoi). A cognate between Tyrsenoi and the Troad is possible,
suggesting that Palasgian was the aboriginal language betfore the
arrival of the Phrygian Myrsi. Sophokles applies the same designation
to the Pelasgoi of Argolis. According to Greek tradition the Etruscans
had migrated to Italy from the Aegean - Herodotus says Lydia, other
writers describe them as Pelasgoi from Thessaly, or from Lemnos and
Imbros (Strabo). Conversely the Etruscans of Caere claimed descent
from the Thessalian Pelasgoi.

It is interesting that the Greek word Tyrant also has the same
tyrrhenoi element. The anti-aristocratic revolts of early historic
Greece can thus be seen as revolts of the common folk, under their own
leaders, against the interests of the "upper class" landholders.

Tyrrhenos is an ethnical derivative of Tyrrha, a town in Lydia. The
name was born by a browther of Tarchon - the Greek form of Tarquinus
(identical to the Hittite Khattic God Tarkhun). Their father Telephos
appears in Italy as the progenator of the Tarquini, in Lydia as king of
Teuthrania. Thomson also shows that in the Greek geneologies preserved
these people seem to have been matrilinial. Lemnos was ruled by Queen
Hypsipyle at the time of the Argonauts, and by Jason she was the
originator of the clan of the matriarchal Euneidai. The Attican
Pelasgoi were a branch of the Lemnian, and worshipped Athana Potnia -
the later Pallas Athene. They had been employed by the Hellenic
Athenians to build a wall around the acropolis, and freeborn Athenians
drawing water from the nine springs were assaulted by the Pelasgoi, who
were subsequently driven out and went to settle in Lemnos (Herodotus).

Democratic Athens were proud of their Pelasgian origins as "sons of the
soil". Thomson continues "Throughout the Aegean basin, and the
Anatolian hinterland as far as Cilicia in the south and the Caucasas in
the North we encounter placenames based on certain non-Hellenic
elements (-nth-, -nd-, -ss-, -tt-) eg. Korinthos, Kelederis, Myndos,
Parnassos, Knossos, Hymettos, Adramyttion. The word thalassa (Attic
thalatta( belongs to the same type. They are naturally most common in
Caria and Lydia, where the pre-Hellenic languages lasted the longest,
but their wider range shows that the Aegean basin must have once
constituted a uniform linguistic domain extended from Anatolia. Lastly
the speach of the Etruscans was related to languages still spoken in
the Caucasas. The discovery was made fifty years ago by Thomsen and
confirmed by Marr.

This is as far as I can go. The problem raised by the Caucasian
affinities of Etruscan and other Asianic languages have been
complicated and extended by the discovery of a common linguistic
substratum covering the whole region from the Black Sea to Syria and
from the Aegean to Sumer. Further, if these languages came from South
Russia, where the Indo-European Diaspora is believed to have taken
place, some of the non-Indo-Eropean elements in Greek, which are very
deep seated, must be older than Greek itself."

Where does this leave us? Parts of Glen's thesis seem to hold (i.e. a
Pontic origin to Etruscan). Parts of Alexander's suggestion (moving
south of the Caucasas) also seem to hold. And a Macro-Pelasgia
stretching as a substratum language much further than any of us
suggested.

Thomson then goes on to show that the Minoans were yet another ethnic
group, with still another Anatolian language (albeit possibly more
distant). Thus in addition to the complex patterns of Greek Dialects
(Achaean/Arcadian, Ionic/Attic, Aeolian/Thessalian, Doric and North
West Greek), the late prehistoric Aegean also had strong Pelasian,
Lelege, Carian, Tracian, Macedonian and Etocretian languages spoken
throughout the area.

To those seeking "Semitish" in the area, I can only say, sorry, no
evidence.

I have quoted him at length because as a classic scholar George Thomson
is pretty sound.

Regards

John