Empty Greece.

The Greeks themselves testify the Pelasgians were in Greece first. When the Greeks themselves got to Greece is hotly debated, and nothing about this is to be resolved yet, but there are some things to think about.

If Greece and Thrace were essentially empty until 3200, where did the Pelasgians come from? From the Islands, perhaps, and certainly, Aegean Islanders must have immigrated in some degree, but this would be a coastal phenomenon, a people adapted to living by the sea, and not mountainous inland Greece. Certainly, my source says the earliest pottery for EHI tends towards links to the Cyclades.

This is Coleman's article in the current JIES, "An Archaeological Scenario for the 'Coming of the Greeks'". Without denying Cycladic influence, he suggests the main body of immigration was from the north, perhaps in two streams. Expanding on his careful scholarly comments, these would have been from Moldova via Dacia and Thrace, more interestingly, via the Vardar (= Classical Axios), coming from Skopje and from there, from the Middle Danube via the Morava of the South.

The climate had changed ca 3300-3200. Europe had gotten colder; the glacier that entombed Otzi the IceMan started its advance then, not to retreat to its previous state and thus exposing him until a few years ago. Warmer, depopulated lands to the south were open for settlement. The logic is irresistible. Peoples of the Balkan-Danubian complex moved south.

I get speculative here. My command of the archaeological literature is more than perilously inadequate, but here goes.

The Baden Culture ran from Belgrade north to encompass most of the central Danube catchment, to include the Vienna Basin,  as well as areas north, into Silesia and the headwaters of the Vistula. At least this is what my map in EIEC shows. The dates are 3600-2800, with overlaps with Lengyel and Corded Ware.

The usual discussions deny IE-ness to the Baden Culture. And this just might be the case. I'm thinking they were the ancestors of the Pelasgians who migrated south, in response to the change in climate and -- perhaps more importantly -- in response to pressures from peoples to the north and west of them (especially the west -- the Lengyal Culture that had its southwest end up against the Alps) also migrating south or to lower elevations. I don't know how much better the climate in Hungary would have been compared to that in southern Poland and southeastern Germany; a little better, I think. There would have been comparable movements coming down thru Moldova.

The conclusion this leads to is the suggestion that Lengyel is indeed Indo-European speaking, a successor to the LBK/Linear Band Pottery Culture. The idea is that the Lengyel Culture -- or elements within it -- moved to a lower elevation orfurther south, escaping increasingly severe winters, pushing themselves into the center of the Danube basin. This would not be so much an invasion as a displacement/replacement.

The idea that the Greeks came down the Vardar/Axios is also tempting, with Indo-Iranians and Armenians exiting Central Europe via the East. The last scenario would suggest that it was Indo-Europeans who got kurganized, and not Kurgan-folk who Indo-Europeanized Central Europe.

A depopulated Greece and Thrace at the end of the European Neolithic/Chalcolithic opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Mark.