Hello,
John wrote:
>The Lycians were so called because their national god, Appollon Lykeios
was worshipped as a wolf (lykos)<
I believe that is a later explanation. Before Lykia was called wolf-like,
the name was 'Lukka' (as you state further down), and the Greeks themselves
often seem to not have been sure if the origin of the Lycians was in 'luk-'
'light' or 'luk-' wolf (may it has to be seen also in the light of 'luk-'
for Hittite 'king'...)
>South the Carians and Leleges seem to have been related peoples,<
They were north of 'Lukka'-land, not south.
>The old name of Kos was Karis, and the townland of Chios was Karides.<
We have to be careful with that. If 'kar-' actually was, as sometimes said
to be, one of those 'Pelasgian' roots, meaning 'steep part of mountain' or
the like, all those names might be derived from that - just as the name of
the Carians (living in a very rocky, mountainous area). The central mountain
range of Caria was called 'Latmos', 'lat-' being another of those Pelasgian
'mountain'-words, possibly 'gorge' or 'valley'. As our neighbour-village,
situated in a beautiful green valley is called 'Latsida', I personally
prefer the latter...
And as for Karides - or was it karydes? (Good old Greek word for walnut -
Welsh nut - or is that a 'Pelasgian' nut, too? ;-))
One archaeological gaze into that: Ancient Miletus, one of the main towns
said to be Carian once, has (as I've probably said before) an unbroken
development - archaeologically (meaning: no extra Carians detectable) - from
Minoan layers to Mycenean to Greek. So if we are to take that seriously,
either the Carians go back to Minoan ancestors (the Minoan layers in Miletus
go back to the beginning of the 2nd. millenium B.C., including the local
(!!) use of Linear A writing), or the whole story is just that ...
As for Greek ancient history telling us about Pelasgoi and the like, I
suppose they would have been hard pressed to tell the difference between
Lycian and Carian - to them it all sounded 'barbarian' (and let's remember
it's not so long ago that Carian was understood to be IE). I often have the
impression ancient Greeks talking about that can't make such a big
difference between the several 'foreign' elements surrounding them.
I'd prefer to call them all 'Ancient Aegean' - related in some parts to
Greek, in others to Anatolian, but more often than not possibly IE. It
doesn't make much sense to try and tell them apart if we don't have more
epigraphical evidence, but from what we have we might get a glimpse now and
then at what 'they' were talking about around the Aegean (valleys,
mountains, hills, springs or the like). Why not decide afterwards which
actual language it really was and if Herodotus etc. really understood what
they were talking about (like us Northern Atlantic 'Europeans' talking about
ancient Celtic - a language mainly in use about 1000-1500 years ago - you
see the difficulty?)
So don't see ancient 'history' as 'report' (from that the Mycenaeans could
have been Pelasgoi) !! A lot of it must be conjecture, hear-say, wishful
thinking and the like.
For instance: >In Crete they are expressly distinguished from the
Etocretians or True Cretans.< But when was that? Eighth century. 400 years
after the destruction of the Mycenaeans. 400 years or more of 'dark ages' -
a lot of people could - must - have been moving in that time! Some
Eteocretan inscriptions are read by scholars as Semitic. Most modern Cretan
signposts are bilingual (at least, some even more): Greek/English. But I can
assure you: there was no English invasion !!! And if a modern Homer would
pass by in summer he'd certainly be taken aback by all the languages spoken
here!
I mean to say: let's be careful with guessing (if we don't have some kind of
proof).
>The Attican Pelasgoi were a branch of the Lemnian, and worshipped Athana
Potnia - the later Pallas Athene. <
She has been traced back to the Mycenaeans some years ago (a-ta-na
po-ti-ni-ja). Does that make them Pelasgoi?
And what is non-IE with 'thalassa'? Looks Greek to me (but I'm not a
linguist ...)
And I believe we had already mentioned the need for seperating '-nth/-nd'
and '-ss/-tt' names (too many of the latter are clearly Greek, it seems.)
And Etruscan also shares '-nd' names, by the way.
And by reading John's mail as a whole, I should say Renfrew's theory
(notwithstanding the high date Pjotr doesn't buy) of a north-western
Anatolian homeland sounds like the most probable (I don't know about
Etruscan-Asianic, Glen's 'number-theory' doesn't carry the whole Pontic
version for me...)
>some of the non-Indo-Eropean elements in Greek, which are very
deep seated, must be older than Greek itself<
And certainly some of the (P?)IE elements in Greek are older than Greek,
too!
>To those seeking "Semitish" in the area, I can only say, sorry, no
evidence<
The Semitic loan words (!) there are in (already Mycenaean) Greek (e.g.
chrysos-gold, sesamo-sesamy, linos-linen, if I remember correctly), are just
as much evidence as Asianic numbers ...
Best from KrHtH (where the kourHtes are said to have fostered Olympian Zeus)
Sabine