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Pelasgians

April 12, 2023

For followers of the religious doctrine condemned as heresy by the Chalcedonian Churches, see Pelagianism.

The name Pelasgians (Ancient Greek: Πελασγοί, Pelasgoí, singular: Πελασγός, Pelasgós) was used by classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks,[1][2] or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all the indigenous inhabitants of the Aegean Sea region and their cultures, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world".[3]

During the classical period, enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean. Populations identified as "Pelasgian" spoke a language or languages that at the time Greeks identified as "barbarian", though some ancient writers nonetheless described the Pelasgians as Greeks. A tradition also survived that large parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. These parts fell largely, though far from exclusively, within the territory which by the 5th century BC was inhabited by those speakers of ancient Greek who were identified as Ionians and Aeolians.[4]

Etymology

Much like all other aspects of the "Pelasgians", their ethnonym (Pelasgoi) is of extremely uncertain provenance and etymology. Michael Sakellariou collects fifteen different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last 200 years, though he admits that "most [...] are fanciful".[5]

An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelargos ("stork")[6] and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Arcadia, where they nest.[7] Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy The Birds. One of the laws of "the storks" in the satirical cloud-cuckoo-land, playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians, is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare.[8]

Gilbert Murray summarized the derivation from pelas gē ("neighboring land"), current at his time: "If Pelasgoi is connected with πέλας, 'near', the word would mean 'neighbor' and would denote the nearest strange people to the invading Greeks".[9]

Julius Pokorny derived Pelasgoi from *pelag-skoi ("flatland-inhabitants"); specifically "inhabitants of the Thessalian plain".[10] He details a previous derivation, which appears in English at least as early as William Gladstone's Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age.[11] If the Pelasgians were not Indo-Europeans, the name in this derivation must have been assigned by the Hellenes. Ernest Klein argued that the ancient Greek word for "sea", pelagos and the Doric word plagos, "side" (which is flat) shared the same root, *plāk-, and that *pelag-skoi therefore meant "the sea men", where the sea is flat.[12] This could be connected to the maritime marauders referred to as the Sea People in Egyptian records.

Ancient literary evidence

 
Map of Pelasgians and Pelasgus.

Literary analysis has been ongoing since classical Greece, when the writers of those times read previous works on the subject. No definitive answers were ever forthcoming by this method; it rather served to better define the problems. The method perhaps reached a peak in the Victorian era when new methods of systematic comparison began to be applied in philology. Typical of the era is the study by William Ewart Gladstone, who was a trained classicist.[13] Unless further ancient texts come to light, advances on the subject cannot be made. Therefore the most likely source of progress regarding the Pelasgians continues to be archaeology and related sciences.

The term "Pelasgians" in ancient sources

The definition of the term 'Pelasgians in ancient sources was fluid. The Pelasgians were variously described by ancient authors as Greek, semi-Greek, non-Greek and pre-Greek.[14] There are no emic perspectives of Pelasgian identity.[15] According to an analysis by historian Tristn Lambright of Jacksonville State University:

While defining Greek identity in terms of collectivity or superiority, moreover, Greek writers always had the option to resort to traditions about Pelasgian ancestors to emphasize the shared legacy of all Greeks as descendants of the autochthonous Pelasgians. By contrast, if the definition of Greek identity was parsed in terms of opposition, Greek writers could employ discourses about the alterity and barbarity of the Pelasgians to underline the distinction between Greek and non-Greek peoples. Consistently, however, Pelasgians appear in Greek literature as links to the Greeks' distant past. In this way, the Pelasgians enabled Greek writers to trace the historical roots of Greek identity, to explain the development of contemporary cultural conditions, and to promote Greek political projects in various political contexts.[16]

Poets

Homer

 
Plain of Thessaly, to the west of classical Pelasgiotis, but in the original range of the Pelasgians. The Pindus Mountains are visible in the background. The river is the Peneus.

In the Iliad, there were Pelasgians on both sides of the Trojan War.[17] In the section known as the Catalogue of Trojans, they are mentioned between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of Southeastern Europe (i.e., on the Hellespontine border of Thrace).[18] Homer calls their town or district "Larisa"[19] and characterises it as fertile, and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship. He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus, son of Teutamides.[20] The Iliad also refers to the camp at Greece, specifically at "Argos Pelasgikon",[21][17] which is most likely to be the plain of Thessaly,[22] and to "Pelasgic Zeus", living in and ruling over Dodona.[23] Additionally, according to the Iliad, Pelasgians were camping out on the shore together with the following tribes:

Towards the sea lie the Carians and the Paeonians, with curved bows, and the Leleges and Caucones, and the goodly Pelasgi.[24]

In the Odyssey, they appear among the inhabitants of Crete.[17] Odysseus, affecting to be Cretan himself, instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete, "language mixing with language side by side".[25] Last on his list, Homer distinguishes them from other ethnicities on the island: "Cretans proper", Achaeans, Cydonians (of the city of Cydonia/modern Chania), Dorians, and "noble Pelasgians".[26]

Hesiod

Hesiod, in a fragment known from Strabo, calls Dodona, identified by reference to "the oak", the "seat of Pelasgians",[27] thus explaining why Homer, in referring to Zeus as he ruled over Dodona, did not style him "Dodonic" but Pelasgic Zeus. He mentions also that Pelasgus (Greek: Πελασγός, the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians) was the father of King Lycaon of Arcadia.[28]

Asius of Samos

Asius of Samos (Ancient Greek: Ἄσιος ὁ Σάμιος) describes Pelasgus as the first man, born of the earth.[29] This account features centrally in the construction of an enduring autochthonous Arcadian identity into the Classical period.[30] In a fragment quoted by Pausanais, Asius describes the foundational hero of the Greek ethnic groups as "godlike Pelasgus [whom the] black earth gave up".[31]

Aeschylus

Aeschylus incorporates all the territories that the Archaic tradition identifies as Pelasgian, including Thessaly (the region of Homer’s Pelasgian Argos), Dodona (the seat of Homer's Pelasgian Zeus), and Arcadia (the region ruled by autochthonous Pelasgus' son Lycaon) into an Argive-Pelasgian kingdom ruled by Pelasgus. This affirms the ancient Greek origins of the Pelasgians as well as their widespread settlements throughout central Greece and the Peloponnese.[32]

In Aeschylus's play, The Suppliants, the Danaids fleeing from Egypt seek asylum from King Pelasgus of Argos, which he says is on the Strymon, including Perrhaebia in the north, the Thessalian Dodona and the slopes of the Pindus mountains on the west and the shores of the sea on the east;[33] that is, a territory including but somewhat larger than classical Pelasgiotis. The southern boundary is not mentioned; however, Apis is said to have come to Argos from Naupactus "across" (peras),[34] implying that Argos includes all of east Greece from the north of Thessaly to the Peloponnesian Argos, where the Danaids are probably to be conceived as having landed. He claims to rule the Pelasgians and to be the "child of Palaichthon (or 'ancient earth') whom the earth brought forth".

The Danaids call the country the "Apian hills" and claim that it understands the karbana audan[35] (accusative case, and in the Dorian dialect), which many translate as "barbarian speech" but Karba (where the Karbanoi live) is in fact a non-Greek word. They claim to descend from ancestors in ancient Argos even though they are of a "dark race" (melanthes ... genos).[36] Pelasgus admits that the land was once called Apia but compares them to the women of Libya and Egypt and wants to know how they can be from Argos on which they cite descent from Io.[37]

According to Strabo, Aeschylus' Suppliants defines the original homeland of the Pelasgians as the region around Mycenae.[7]

Sophocles and Euripides

Sophocles and Euripides affirm the Greek origins of the Pelasgians while highlighting their relationship to the Danaids, a relationship introduced and explored in depth in Aeschylus' Suppliants.[32]

Sophocles presents Inachus, in a fragment of a missing play entitled Inachus,[38] as the elder in the lands of Argos, the Heran hills and among the Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi, an unusual hyphenated noun construction, "Tyrsenians-Pelasgians". Interpretation is open, even though translators typically make a decision, but Tyrsenians may well be the ethnonym Tyrrhenoi.

Euripides uses the term for the inhabitants of Argos in his Orestes[39] and The Phoenician Women.[40] In a lost play entitled Archelaus, he says that Danaus, on coming to reside in the city of Inachus (Argos), formulated a law whereby the Pelasgians were now to be called Danaans.[7]

Ovid

The Roman poet Ovid describes the Greeks of the Trojan War as Pelasgians in his Metamorphoses:[41]

Sadly his father, Priam, mourned for him, not knowing that young Aesacus had assumed wings on his shoulders, and was yet alive. Then also Hector with his brothers made complete but unavailing sacrifice, upon a tomb which bore his carved name. Paris was absent. But soon afterwards, he brought into that land a ravished wife, Helen, the cause of a disastrous war, together with a thousand ships, and all the great Pelasgian nation. [...] Here, when a sacrifice had been prepared to Jove, according to the custom of their land, and when the ancient altar glowed with fire, the Greeks observed an azure colored snake crawling up in a plane tree near the place where they had just begun their sacrifice. Among the highest branches was a nest, with twice four birds—and those the serpent seized together with the mother-bird as she was fluttering round her loss. And every bird the serpent buried in his greedy maw. All stood amazed: but Calchas, who perceived the truth, exclaimed, "Rejoice Pelasgian men, for we shall conquer; Troy will fall; although the toil of war must long continue—so the nine birds equal nine long years of war." And while he prophesied, the serpent, coiled about the tree, was transformed to a stone, curled crooked as a snake.

Historians

Hecataeus of Miletus

Hecataeus of Miletus in a fragment from Genealogiai states that the genos ("clan") descending from Deucalion ruled Thessaly and that it was called "Pelasgia" from king Pelasgus.[42] A second fragment states that Pelasgus was the son of Zeus and Niobe and that his son Lycaon founded a dynasty of kings of Arcadia.[43]

Acusilaus

A fragment from the writings of Acusilaus asserts that the Peloponnesians were called "Pelasgians" after Pelasgus, a son of Zeus and Niobe.[44]

Hellanicus

 
Larisa of Argos.

Hellanicus of Lesbos concerns himself with one word in one line of the Iliad, "pasture-land of horses", applied to Argos in the Peloponnesus.[45] According to Hellanicus, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings: Phrastōr, Amyntōr, Teutamides and Nanas (kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly).[46] During Nanas's reign, the Pelasgians were driven out by the Greeks and departed for Italy. They landed at the mouth of the Po River, near the Etruscan city of Spina, then took the inland city "Crotona" (Κρότωνα), and from there colonized Tyrrhenia. The inference is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly (and indirectly of the Peloponnese) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans.[47]

Herodotus

In the Histories, the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus made many references to the Pelasgians. In Book 1, the Pelasgians are mentioned within the context of Croesus seeking to learn who the strongest Greeks were to befriend them.[48] Afterwards, Herodotus ambivalently classified the Pelasgian language as "barbarian" though he thought of the Pelasgians to have been essentially Greek. Herodotus also discussed various areas inhabited (or previously inhabited) by Pelasgians/Pelasgian-speakers along with their different neighbors/co-residents:[49][50]

I am unable to state with certainty what language the Pelasgians spoke, but we could consider the speech of the Pelasgians who still exist in settlements above Tyrrhenia in the city of Kreston, formerly neighbors to the Dorians who at that time lived in the land now called Thessaliotis; also the Pelasgians who once lived with the Athenians and then settled Plakia and Skylake in the Hellespont; and along with those who lived with all the other communities and were once Pelasgian but changed their names. If one can judge by this evidence, the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language. And so, if the Pelasgian language was spoken in all these places, the people of Attica being originally Pelasgian, must have learned a new language when they became Hellenes. As a matter of fact, the people of Krestonia and Plakia no longer speak the same language, which shows that they continue to use the dialect they brought with them when they migrated to those lands.

Furthermore, Herodotus discussed the relationship between the Pelasgians and the (other) Greeks,[51][52] which, according to Pericles Georges, reflected the "rivalry within Greece itself between [...] Dorian Sparta and Ionian Athens."[53] Specifically, Herodotus stated that the Hellenes separated from the Pelasgians with the former group surpassing the latter group numerically:[54]

As for the Hellenes, it seems obvious to me that ever since they came into existence they have always used the same language. They were weak at first, when they were separated from the Pelasgians, but they grew from a small group into a multitude, especially when many peoples, including other barbarians in great numbers, had joined them. Moreover, I do not think the Pelasgian, who remained barbarians, ever grew appreciably in number or power.

In Book 2, Herodotus alluded to the Pelasgians as inhabitants of Samothrace, an island located just north of Troy, before coming to Attica.[55] Moreover, Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians simply called their gods theoi prior to naming them on the grounds that the gods established all affairs in their order (thentes); the author also stated that the gods of the Pelasgians were the Cabeiri.[56] Later, Herodotus stated that the entire territory of Greece (i.e., Hellas) was initially called "Pelasgia".[57]

In Book 5, Herodotus mentioned the Pelasgians as inhabitants of the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.[58]

In Book 6, the Pelasgians of Lemnos were originally Hellespontine Pelasgians who had been living in Athens but whom the Athenians resettled on Lemnos and then found it necessary to reconquer the island.[59] This expulsion of (non-Athenian) Pelasgians from Athens may reflect, according to the historian Robert Buck, "a dim memory of forwarding of refugees, closely akin to the Athenians in speech and custom, to the Ionian colonies".[60] Also, Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians on the island of Lemnos opposite Troy once kidnapped the Hellenic women of Athens for wives, but the Athenian wives created a crisis by teaching their children "the language of Attica" instead of the Pelasgian.[61]

In Book 7, Herodotus mentioned "the Pelasgian city of Antandrus"[62] and wrote about the Ionian inhabitants of "the land now called Achaea" (i.e., northwestern Peloponnese) being "called, according to the Greek account, Aegialean Pelasgi, or Pelasgi of the Sea Shore"; afterwards, they were called Ionians.[63] Moreover, Herodotus mentioned that the Aegean islanders "were a Pelasgian race, who in later times took the name Ionians" and that the Aeolians, according to the Hellenes, were known anciently as "Pelasgians."[64]

In Book 8, Herodotus mentioned that the Pelasgians of Athens were previously called Cranai.[65]

Thucydides

In the History of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek historian Thucydides wrote about the Pelasgians stating that:[66]

Before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion [...] the country went by the names of the different tribes, in particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all.

The author regards the Athenians as having lived in scattered independent settlements in Attica; but at some time after Theseus, they changed residence to Athens, which was already populated. A plot of land below the Acropolis was called "Pelasgian" and was regarded as cursed, but the Athenians settled there anyway.[67]

In connection with the campaign against Amphipolis, Thucydides mentions that several settlements on the promontory of Actē were home to:[68]

[...] mixed barbarian races speaking the two languages. There is also a small Chalcidian element; but the greater number are Tyrrheno-Pelasgians once settled in Lemnos and Athens, and Bisaltians, Crestonians and Eonians; the towns all being small ones.

Ephorus

The historian Ephorus, building on a fragment from Hesiod that attests to a tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian people in Arcadia, developed a theory of the Pelasgians as a people living a "military way of life" (stratiōtikon bion) "and that, in converting many peoples to the same mode of life, they imparted their name to all", meaning "all of Hellas". They colonized Crete and extended their rule over Epirus, Thessaly and by implication over wherever else the ancient authors said they were, beginning with Homer. The Peloponnese was called "Pelasgia".[7]

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

In the Roman Antiquities, Dionysius of Halicarnassus in several pages gives a synoptic interpretation of the Pelasgians based on the sources available to him then, concluding that Pelasgians were Greek:[69]

Afterwards some of the Pelasgians who inhabited Thessaly, as it is now called, being obliged to leave their country, settled among the Aborigines and jointly with them made war upon the Sicels. It is possible that the Aborigines received them partly in the hope of gaining their assistance, but I believe it was chiefly on account of their kinship; for the Pelasgians, too, were a Greek nation originally from the Peloponnesus [...]

He goes on to add that the nation wandered a great deal.[69] They were originally natives of "Achaean Argos" descended from Pelasgus, the son of Zeus and Niobe.[69] They migrated from there to Haemonia (later called Thessaly), where they "drove out the barbarian inhabitants" and divided the country into Phthiotis, Achaia, and Pelasgiotis, named after Achaeus, Phthius and Pelasgus, "the sons of Larissa and Poseidon."[69] Subsequently, "about the sixth generation they were driven out by the Curetes and Leleges, who are now called Aetolians and Locrians".[69]

From there, the Pelasgians dispersed to Crete, the Cyclades, Histaeotis, Boeotia, Phocis, Euboea, the coast along the Hellespont and the islands, especially Lesbos, which had been colonized by Macar son of Crinacus.[70] Most went to Dodona and eventually being driven from there to Italy (then called Saturnia), they landed at Spina at the mouth of the Po River.[70] Still others crossed the Apennine Mountains to Umbria and being driven from there went to the country of the Aborigines where they consented to a treaty and settled at Velia.[71] They and the Aborigenes took over Umbria but were dispossessed by the Tyrrhenians.[71] The author then continues to detail the tribulations of the Pelasgians and then goes on to the Tyrrhenians, whom he is careful to distinguish from the Pelasgians.[72]

Geographers

Pausanias

In his Description of Greece, Pausanias mentions the Arcadians who state that Pelasgus (along with his followers) was the first inhabitant of their land.[73] Upon becoming king, Pelasgus invented huts, sheep-skin coats, and a diet consisting of acorns while governing the land named after him, "Pelasgia".[74] When Arcas became king, Pelasgia was renamed "Arcadia" and its inhabitants (the Pelasgians) were renamed "Arcadians".[75] Pausanias also mentions the Pelasgians as responsible for creating a wooden image of Orpheus in a sanctuary of Demeter at Therae,[76] as well as expelling the Minyans and Lacedaemonians from Lemnos.[77]

Strabo

Strabo dedicates a section of his Geography to the Pelasgians, relating both his own opinions and those of prior writers. He begins by stating:[7]

Almost every one is agreed that the Pelasgi were an ancient race spread throughout the whole of Greece, but especially in the country of the Æolians near to Thessaly.

He defines Pelasgian Argos as being "between the outlets of the Peneus River and Thermopylae as far as the mountainous country of Pindus" and states that it took its name from Pelasgian rule. He includes also the tribes of Epirus as Pelasgians (based on the opinions of "many"). Lesbos is named Pelasgian. Caere was settled by Pelasgians from Thessaly, who called it by its former name, "Agylla". Pelasgians also settled around the mouth of the Tiber River in Italy at Pyrgi and a few other settlements under a king, Maleos.[78]

Language

In the absence of certain knowledge about the identity (or identities) of the Pelasgians, various theories have been proposed. Some of the more prevalent theories supported by scholarship are presented below. Since Greek is classified as an Indo-European language, the major question of concern is whether Pelasgian was an Indo-European language.

Reception

The theory that Pelasgian was an Indo-European language, which "fascinated scholars" and concentrated research during the second part of the 20th century, has since been critiqued; an emerging consensus among modern linguists is that the substrate language spoken in the southern Balkans was non-Indo-European.[79] García-Ramón remarked that "the attempt to determine phonological rules for an Indo-European pre-Greek language ('Pelasgian') [...] is considered a complete failure today",[80] while Beekes (2018) notes that "one of the demerits of Georgiev's Pelasgian theory was that it drew attention away from the Pre-Greek material itself", concluding that "the search for Pelasgian was an expensive and useless distraction."[81] However, Biliana Mihaylova finds no contradiction between "the idea of [an] Indo-European Pre-Greek substratum" and "the possibility of the existence of an earlier non-Indo-European layer in Greece" given certain Pre-Greek words possessing Indo-European "pattern[s] of word formation."[82]

Pelasgian as Indo-European

Greek

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, an English writer and intellectual, argued that the Pelasgians spoke Greek based on the fact that areas traditionally inhabited by the "Pelasgi" (i.e. Arcadia and Attica) only spoke Greek and the few surviving Pelasgian words and inscriptions (i.e., Lamina Borgiana,[83] Herodotus 2.52.1) betray Greek linguistic features despite the classical identification of Pelasgian as a barbarian language.[84] According to Thomas Harrison of Saint Andrews University, the Greek etymology of Pelasgian terms mentioned in Herodotus such as θεοί (derived from θέντες) indicates that the "Pelasgians spoke a language at least 'akin to' Greek".[85] According to French classical scholar Pierre Henri Larcher, if this linguistic affiliation is true, then it proves that the Pelasgians and the Greeks were the same people.[86]

Anatolian

In western Anatolia, many toponyms with the "-ss-" infix derive from the adjectival suffix also seen in cuneiform Luwian and some Palaic; the classic example is Bronze Age Tarhuntassa (loosely meaning "City of the Storm God Tarhunta"), and later Parnassus possibly related to the Luwian word parna- or "house". These elements have led to a second theory that Pelasgian was to some degree an Anatolian language, or that it had areal influences from Anatolian languages.[87]

Thracian

Vladimir I. Georgiev, a Bulgarian linguist, asserted that the Pelasgians spoke an Indo-European language and were, more specifically, related to the Thracians.[88][page needed][89][page needed] Georgiev also proposed, relying on a sound-shift model, that pelasgoi was a cognate of a Proto-Indo-European root and Greek Πέλαγος pelagos "sea".[citation needed]

Georgiev also suggested that the Pelasgians were a sub-group of the Bronze Age Sea Peoples and identifiable in Egyptian inscriptions as the exonym PRŚT or PLŚT. However, this Egyptian name has more often been read as a cognate of a Hebrew exonym, פלשת Peleshet (Pəlešeth) – that is, the Biblical Philistines.[citation needed]

Albanian

See also: Origins of the Albanians § Obsolete theories, and Albanian nationalism

In 1854, an Austrian diplomat and Albanian language specialist, Johann Georg von Hahn, identified the Pelasgian language with Proto-Albanian.[90] This theory is not supported by any scientific evidence, and is seen as a myth by modern scholars.[91][92]

Undiscovered Indo-European

Albert Joris Van Windekens (1915—1989) offered rules for an unattested hypothetical Indo-European Pelasgian language, selecting vocabulary for which there was no Greek etymology among the names of places, heroes, animals, plants, garments, artifacts and social organization.[93][94] His 1952 essay Le Pélasgique was skeptically received.[95]

Pelasgian as pre-Indo-European

Unknown origin

Main article: Dorian invasion § Kretschmer's external Greeks

One theory uses the name "Pelasgian" to describe the inhabitants of the lands around the Aegean Sea before the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers, as well as traditionally identified enclaves of descendants that still existed in classical Greece. The theory derives from the original concepts of the philologist Paul Kretschmer, whose views prevailed throughout the first half of the 20th century and are still given some credibility today.

Though Wilamowitz-Moellendorff wrote them off as mythical, the results of archaeological excavations at Çatalhöyük by James Mellaart and Fritz Schachermeyr led them to conclude that the Pelasgians had migrated from Asia Minor to the Aegean basin in the 4th millennium BC.[96] In this theory, a number of possible non-Indo-European linguistic and cultural features are attributed to the Pelasgians:

The historian George Grote summarizes the theory as follows:[98]

There are, indeed, various names affirmed to designate the ante-Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece – the Pelasgi, the Leleges, the Curetes, the Kaukones, the Aones, the Temmikes, the Hyantes, the Telchines, the Boeotian Thracians, the Teleboae, the Ephyri, the Phlegyae, &c. These are names belonging to legendary, not to historical Greece – extracted out of a variety of conflicting legends by the logographers and subsequent historians, who strung together out of them a supposed history of the past, at a time when the conditions of historical evidence were very little understood. That these names designated real nations may be true but here our knowledge ends.

The poet and mythologist Robert Graves asserts that certain elements of that mythology originate with the native Pelasgian people (namely the parts related to his concept of the White Goddess, an archetypical Earth Goddess) drawing additional support for his conclusion from his interpretations of other ancient literature: Irish, Welsh, Greek, Biblical, Gnostic, and medieval writings.[99]

Minoan

According to the Russian historian and linguist Igor M. Diakonoff, the Pelasgians may have been related to the Minoans.[100] A number of scholars consider Minoan to be essentially the same language as Pelasgian.[101][102]

Ibero-Caucasian

Some Georgian scholars (including R. V. Gordeziani, M. G. Abdushelishvili and Z. Gamsakhurdia) connect the Pelasgians with the Ibero-Caucasian peoples of the prehistoric Caucasus, known to the Greeks as Colchians and Iberians.[103][104] These scholars portray Georgia as a source of spirituality in the Greek world by manipulating Greek and Roman sources in a highly dubious manner.[105]

Archaeology

Attica

See also: Pelasgic wall

During the early 20th century, archaeological excavations conducted by the Italian Archaeological School and by the American Classical School on the Athenian Acropolis and on other sites within Attica revealed Neolithic dwellings, tools, pottery and skeletons from domesticated animals (such as sheep and fish). All of these discoveries showed significant resemblances to the Neolithic discoveries made on the Thessalian acropolises of Sesklo and Dimini. These discoveries help provide physical confirmation of the literary tradition that describes the Athenians as the descendants of the Pelasgians, who appear to descend continuously from the Neolithic inhabitants in Thessaly. Overall, the archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the Acropolis was inhabited by farmers as early as the 6th millennium BC.[106][Note 1]

The results on the prehistoric material of the American excavations near the Clepsydra have also been analyzed by Immerwahr, arguing (in contrast to Prokopiou) that no Dimini-type pottery was unearthed.[107]

Lemnos

In August and September 1926, members of the Italian School of Archaeology conducted trial excavations on the island of Lemnos. A short account of their excavations appeared in the Messager d'Athènes for 3 January 1927. The overall purpose of the excavations was to shed light on the island's "Etrusco-Pelasgian" civilization. The excavations were conducted on the site of the city of Hephaisteia (i.e., Palaiopolis) where the Pelasgians, according to Herodotus, surrendered to Miltiades of Athens. There, a necropolis (c. 9th–8th centuries BC) was discovered revealing bronze objects, pots, and more than 130 ossuaries. The ossuaries contained distinctly male and female funeral ornaments. Male ossuaries contained knives and axes whereas female ossuaries contained earrings, bronze pins, necklaces, gold diadems, and bracelets. The decorations on some of the gold objects contained spirals of Mycenean origin, but had no Geometric forms. According to their ornamentation, the pots discovered at the site were from the Geometric period. However, the pots also preserved spirals indicative of Mycenean art. The results of the excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the Mycenaean Greek ra-mi-ni-ja, "Lemnian woman", written in Linear B syllabic script.[108][109][Note 2]

Boeotia

During the 1980s, the Skourta Plain Project identified Middle Helladic and Late Helladic sites on mountain summits near the plains of Skourta in Boeotia. These fortified mountain settlements were, according to tradition, inhabited by Pelasgians up until the end of the Bronze Age. Moreover, the location of the sites is an indication that the Pelasgian inhabitants sought to distinguish themselves "ethnically" (a fluid term[110]) and economically from the Mycenaean Greeks who controlled the Skourta Plain.[111][Note 3]

See also

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pelasgians.

Notes

  1. ^ According to Prokopiou: "Some forty years ago excavations on the Athenian Acropolis and on other sites in Attica brought to light many indications of neolithic life – dwellings, vases, tools, skeletons of sheep – which confirmed the traditions recorded by Herodotus that the Athenians were descended from the Pelasgians, the neolithic inhabitants of Thessaly. Indeed the neolithic vases of Attica date from the earliest neolithic age (5520–4900) like the ceramics from the Thessalian acropolis of Sesclos, as well as from the later neolithic age (4900–3200) like those from the other Thessalian acropolis of Dimini...The search for traces of the neolithic age on the Acropolis began in 1922 with the excavations of the Italian Archaeological School near the Aesclepium. Another settlement was discovered in the vicinity of the Odeion of Pericles where many sherds of pottery and a stone axe, both of Sesklo type, were unearthed. Excavations carried out by the American Classical School near the Clepshydra uncovered twenty-one wells and countless pieces of handmade pottery, sherds of Dimini type, implements of later Stone Age and bones of domestic animals and fish. The discoveries reinforced the theory that permanent settlement by farmers with their flocks, their stone and bone tools and ceramic utensils had taken place on the rock of the Acropolis as early as the sixth millennium."
  2. ^ Professor Della Seta reports: "The lack of weapons of bronze, the abundance of weapons of iron, and the type of the pots and the pins gives the impression that the necropolis belongs to the ninth or eighth century BC. That it did not belong to a Greek population, but to a population which, in the eyes of the Hellenes, appeared barbarous, is shown by the weapons. The Greek weapon, dagger or spear, is lacking: the weapons of the barbarians, the axe and the knife, are common. Since, however, this population...preserves so many elements of Mycenaean art, the Tyrrhenians or Pelasgians of Lemnos may be recognized as a remnant of a Mycenaean population."
  3. ^ French reports: "The fourth and final season of the survey of the Skourta plain was conducted in 1989 by M. and M.L.Z. Munn (ASCS). Explorations begun in 1985 and 1987 were extended into new parts of the plain and surrounding valleys, so that by now a representative portion (approximately 25%) of most of the inhabitable areas of the three koinotites of Pyli, Skourta, and Stefani have been examined intensively. 66 sites were discovered or studied for the first time in the course of this highly productive season, yielding a total of 120 premodern sites studied by our survey since 1985. The survey should have identified all major settlement sites (over 5 ha) and a representative sample of smaller sites in the study area. A summary of the chief conclusions to be drawn from the four seasons can be made...MH settlement is established on two summits overlooking the plain...one of which, Panakton...becomes the most substantial LH site in the area. A fortified MH settlement is also established on a peak in rugged country beyond the NE edge of the plain...between the Mazareika and Vountima valleys, in which other settlements are established in the LH era...The remoteness of this NE sector, and the great natural strength of the MH site and a nearby LH IIIC citadel...suggest that the inhabitants of these glens and crags sought to protect and separate themselves from peoples beyond the peaks that surrounded them, perhaps because they were ethnically distinct and economically more or less independent of the Myc Greeks who dominated the plains. Traditions of Pelasgians in these mountains at the end of the BA raise the possibility that these may have been Pelasgian sites. Once abandoned, in the LH IIIC or PG eras, most of these sites in the NE sector are not again inhabited for well over a millennium. Elsewhere, within the more accessible expanse of the Skourta plain itself, LH settlements are established on many sites which are later again important in the C era..."

References

Citations

  1. ^ Abel 1966, p. 13: "Common fifth century tradition claimed not only that the Pelasgians were the oldest inhabitants of Greece and among the ancestors of the Greek heroes."; p. 49: "Fifth century opinion assumed that the Pelasgians were the ancestors of the heroic Greeks, e.g. the ancestors of the Danaans, Arcadians and Athenians.".
  2. ^ Brug 1985, p. 41: "The Greek sources identify the Pelasgians as forerunners of the Greeks in the Peloponnesus and Attica.".
  3. ^ Rhodios & Green 2007, p. 223 (Commentary on I.987).
  4. ^ "Ionian". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
  5. ^ Sakellariou 1977, pp. 101–104.
  6. ^ Beekes 2009, p. 1165.
  7. ^ a b c d e Strabo. Geography, 5.2.4.
  8. ^ Aristophanes. The Birds, 1355ff.
  9. ^ Murray 1960, p. 43.
  10. ^ Pokorny 1969, pp. 831–832.
  11. ^ Gladstone 1858, Chapter 2, Section 3, "Derivation of the Pelasgian Name", pp. 211–215.
  12. ^ Klein 1966, "Pelasgian and Pelagic".
  13. ^ Gladstone 1858. The Pelasgians are covered especially in Volume I.
  14. ^ Lambright 2022, p. 2, 31, 106-110.
  15. ^ Lambright 2022, p. 106.
  16. ^ Lambright 2022, p. 109.
  17. ^ a b c Gruen 2011, p. 241.
  18. ^ Homer. Iliad, 2.840–2.843. The camp at Troy is mentioned in Iliad, 10.428–10.429.
  19. ^ Not the same as the Larissa in Thessaly, Greece. Many towns bearing the same (or similar) name existed. This specific "Larisa" seems to have been located in Asia. See: Gruen 2011, p. 241
  20. ^ Homer. Iliad 2.806–12, 17.320–57 (transl. Robert Fitzgerald). See: Gruen 2011, p. 241
  21. ^ Homer. Iliad, 2.681–2.684.
  22. ^ The location is never explicitly given. Gladstone shows, by process of elimination, that it must be in the north of Thessaly. (Gladstone 1858, pp. 100–105.)
  23. ^ Homer. Iliad, 16.233–16.235.
  24. ^ Homer. Iliad, 10.428.
  25. ^ Homer. Odyssey, 19.175–19.177 (Robert Fagles's translation).
  26. ^ Homer. Odyssey, Book 19 (T.E. Lawrence's translation).
  27. ^ Hesiod, fr. 319 M–W = Strabo. Geography, 7.7.10.
  28. ^ Hesiod. Catalogue of Women, fr. 161 = Strabo. Geography, 5.2.4
  29. ^ Prichard 1841, p. 489.
  30. ^ Lambright 2022, p. 39.
  31. ^ Lambright 2022, p. 33.
  32. ^ a b Lambright 2022, pp. 80–81.
  33. ^ Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 249–259.
  34. ^ Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 262–263.
  35. ^ Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 128–129.
  36. ^ Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 154–155.
  37. ^ Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 279–281.
  38. ^ Sophocles & Dindorf 1849, Fragment 256 (p. 352).
  39. ^ Euripides. Orestes, Lines 857 and 933.
  40. ^ Euripides. The Phoenician Women, Line 107.
  41. ^ Ovid. Metamorphoses, 12.1.
  42. ^ Hecataeus of Miletus & Klausen 1831, Fragment 224 (p. 140).
  43. ^ Hecataeus of Miletus & Klausen 1831, Fragment 375 (p. 157).
  44. ^ Mentioned in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.1.
  45. ^ Hellanicus fr. 36, Fowler, p. 173 (apud Scholia (T+) Iliad 3.75b); cf. Hellanicus fr. 7, Sturtz, pp. 49–51; Homer. Iliad, 3.75.
  46. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.28.3 (citing Hellanicus, Phoronis) = Hellanicus fr. 4, Fowler, pp. 156–157; cf. Hellanicus fr. 76, Sturtz, pp. 108–109.
  47. ^ Briquel 2013, p. 47.
  48. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 1.56.
  49. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 1.57. (Herodotus & Strassler 2009, p. 32.)
  50. ^ Georges 1994, p. 134: "Herodotus, like other Greeks, instinctively imagined the non-Dorian inhabitants of 'ancient' Greece—Achaeans, Argives, Danaans, Ionians, Pelasgians, Cadmeans, Lapiths, and all the rest of the races of myth and epic—to be essentially "Greek" and ancestral to themselves, as Aeschylus imagined the Pelasgian Argives in the Supplices [...]".
  51. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 1.56–1.58. (Herodotus & Strassler 2009, pp. 32–33.)
  52. ^ Georges 1994, p. 131: "Herodotus argues near the very beginning of his work that most of the people who later became Hellenes were Pelasgians, and that these Pelasgians were barbarians and spoke a barbarian language. From these Pelasgians Herodotus derives the descent of the Ionians, as well as that of all the other Greeks of the present day who are not Dorians (1.56.3–58) [...]".
  53. ^ Georges 1994, pp. 129–130.
  54. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 1.58. (Herodotus & Strassler 2009, p. 33.)
  55. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 2.51. The text allows two interpretations, that Pelasgians were indigenous there or that they had been resettled by Athens.
  56. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 2.51.
  57. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 2.56.
  58. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 5.26.
  59. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 6.137–6.140.
  60. ^ Buck 1979, p. 79.
  61. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 6.138.
  62. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 7.42.
  63. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 7.94.
  64. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 7.95. (Herodotus & Strassler 2009, p. 533.)
  65. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 8.44.
  66. ^ Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.3.2.
  67. ^ Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.16–2.17.1.
  68. ^ Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 4.109.4.
  69. ^ a b c d e Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, 1.17.
  70. ^ a b Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, 1.18.
  71. ^ a b Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, 1.19.
  72. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, 1.19–1.20.
  73. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece, 8.1.4.
  74. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece, 8.1.5 and 8.1.6.
  75. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece, 8.4.1.
  76. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece, 3.20.5.
  77. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece, 7.2.2.
  78. ^ Strabo. Geography, 5.2.8.
  79. ^ Beekes 2014, p. 1.
  80. ^ García-Ramón 2004, pp. 999–1000.
  81. ^ Beekes 2018, "109. Pelasgian", pp. 1873–1874.
  82. ^ Mihaylova 2012, pp. 80–81.
  83. ^ An inscription discovered in Calabria in 1785 and preserved in Cardinal Borgia's collection at Velletri, discussed in Luigi Lanza, ‘’,Saggio di lingua Latina e altri antichi d’Italia'’, vol. I, 2nd ed. Florence 1824.
  84. ^ Lytton 1837, pp. 5–8.
  85. ^ Harrison 1998, pp. 25–26: "Herodotus' account, for example, of the adoption by the Pelasgians of the names of the gods (2.52.1) suggests a much closer relationship between the Pelasgian and Greek languages. Before they heard the names of the gods, the Pelasgians (assuming, interestingly, the existence of a number of gods) called them simply θεοί, on the grounds that they had 'established (θέντες) all affairs in their order'. This etymology, advanced apparently in all seriousness, seems to suggest that the Pelasgians spoke a language at least 'akin to' Greek."
  86. ^ Larcher, Pierre-Henri (1844). Notes on Herodotus: Historical and Critical Comments on the History of Herodotus, with a Chronological Table. Whittaker. p. 54. If this affiliation of language be admitted, then the Pelasgians and Greeks were of the same race.
  87. ^ Finkelberg 2006.
  88. ^ Georgiev 1961.
  89. ^ Georgiev 1977.
  90. ^ Hahn 1854, IV. Sind Die Albanesen Autochthonen?, pp. 211–279.
  91. ^ Mackridge, Peter (2007–2008). "Aspects of language and identity in the Greek peninsula since the eighteenth century". The Newsletter of the Society Farsarotul. Vol. XXI & XXII, no. 1 & 2. Society Farsarotul. pp. 16–17. Soon after this the "Pelasgian theory" was formulated, according to which the Greek and Albanian languages were claimed to have a common origin in Pelasgian, while the Albanians themselves are Pelasgians and hence come from the same ethnological stock as the Greeks. The "Pelasgian theory" began to take shape in the 1850s and 1860s and became widespread in the 1870s. ... Needless to say, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support any of these theories.
  92. ^ Schwandner-Sievers & Fischer 2002; Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd Jürgen Fischer, editors of Albanian Identities: Myth and History, present papers resulting from the London Conference held in 1999 entitled "The Role of Myth in the History and Development of Albania." The "Pelasgian" myth of Albanians as the most ancient community in southeastern Europe is among those explored in Noel Malcolm's essay, "Myths of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements, As Expressed in the Works of Albanian Writers in America in the Early Twentieth Century". The introductory essay by Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers establishes the context of the "Pelasgian Albanian" mythos, applicable to Eastern Europe generally, in terms of the longing for a stable identity in a rapidly opening society.
  93. ^ Van Windekens 1952.
  94. ^ Van Windekens 1960.
  95. ^ As, for example, in Gordon Messing's extended review, criticizing point-by-point, in Language 30.1 (January–March 1954), pp. 104–108.
  96. ^ Schachermeyr 1976; Mellaart 1965–1966; Mellaart 1975, "Southeastern Europe: The Aegean and the Southern Balkans".
  97. ^ Beekes 2009.
  98. ^ Grote 1862, pp. 43–44.
  99. ^ Graves 1990, Volume 1. Graves also imaginatively reconstructs a "Pelasgian creation myth", which involves a creatrix "Eurynome" and a serpent "Ophion".
  100. ^ Diakonoff, I. M. (28 June 2013). Early Antiquity. University of Chicago Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-226-14467-2.
  101. ^ Millar, R. (21 July 2010). Authority and Identity: A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age. Springer. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-230-28203-2. In the Greek islands and possibly also the Peloponnese were speakers of a language scholars sometimes call Minoan, after the great civilization associated with Crete in the second millennium BCE, or Eteo-Cretan. It is probably the language of the Minoan A script, which has largely escaped deciphering. A number of scholars consider this to be essentially the same language as Pelasgian.
  102. ^ Budin, Stephanie Lynn (2009). The Ancient Greeks: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 404. ISBN 978-0-19-537984-6.
  103. ^ Gordeziani 1985.
  104. ^ Kaigi 1969, M. G. Abdushelishvili, "The Genesis of the Aboriginal Population of the Caucasus in the Light of Anthropological Data".
  105. ^ Watson, Rubie S. (1999). Memory, History and Opposition: Under State Socialism. Boydell & Brewer, Limited. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-85255-902-4.
  106. ^ Prokopiou & Smith 1964, pp. 21–22.
  107. ^ Immerwahr 1971, p. 19: "It is the Late Neolithic period that provides most of our parallels, yet, curiously, the striking Dimini-type painted wares of Thessaly are completely lacking, and there is only one small recognisable sherd of the related Mattpainted ware of Central and Southern Greece."
  108. ^ Palaeolexicon: The Linear B word ra-mi-ni-ja
  109. ^ Heffner 1927, pp. 123–124.
  110. ^ The American Forum for Global Education 2000.
  111. ^ French 1989–1990, "Skourta Plain project", p. 35.

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Further reading

  • Sakellariou, Michael B. (1974) [1970]. "Pelasgians". In Christopoulos, George A.; Bastias, John C.; Phylactopoulos, George (eds.). History of the Hellenic World. Volume 1: Prehistory and Protohistory. Translated by Sherrard, Philip. Athens: Ekdotike Hellados S.A. pp. 368–370. ISBN 0-271-01199-8.
  • Mackenzie, Donald Alexander (1917). Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe. London, United Kingdom: Gresham Publishing Company.
  • Munro, J. A. R. (1934). "Pelasgians and Ionians". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 54 (2): 109–128. doi:10.2307/626855. JSTOR 626855. S2CID 164120593.
  • Myres, J. L. (1907). "A History of the Pelasgian Theory". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 27: 170–225. doi:10.2307/624440. JSTOR 624440. S2CID 162335262.

April 12, 2023
pelasgians, followers, religious, doctrine, condemned, heresy, chalcedonian, churches, pelagianism, name, ancient, greek, Πελασγοί, pelasgoí, singular, Πελασγός, pelasgós, used, classical, greek, writers, refer, either, predecessors, greeks, inhabitants, greec. For followers of the religious doctrine condemned as heresy by the Chalcedonian Churches see Pelagianism The name Pelasgians Ancient Greek Pelasgoi Pelasgoi singular Pelasgos Pelasgos was used by classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks 1 2 or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks In general Pelasgian has come to mean more broadly all the indigenous inhabitants of the Aegean Sea region and their cultures a hold all term for any ancient primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world 3 During the classical period enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Greece Crete and other regions of the Aegean Populations identified as Pelasgian spoke a language or languages that at the time Greeks identified as barbarian though some ancient writers nonetheless described the Pelasgians as Greeks A tradition also survived that large parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized These parts fell largely though far from exclusively within the territory which by the 5th century BC was inhabited by those speakers of ancient Greek who were identified as Ionians and Aeolians 4 Contents 1 Etymology 2 Ancient literary evidence 2 1 The term Pelasgians in ancient sources 2 2 Poets 2 2 1 Homer 2 2 2 Hesiod 2 2 3 Asius of Samos 2 2 4 Aeschylus 2 2 5 Sophocles and Euripides 2 2 6 Ovid 2 3 Historians 2 3 1 Hecataeus of Miletus 2 3 2 Acusilaus 2 3 3 Hellanicus 2 3 4 Herodotus 2 3 5 Thucydides 2 3 6 Ephorus 2 3 7 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2 4 Geographers 2 4 1 Pausanias 2 4 2 Strabo 3 Language 3 1 Reception 3 2 Pelasgian as Indo European 3 2 1 Greek 3 2 2 Anatolian 3 2 3 Thracian 3 2 4 Albanian 3 2 5 Undiscovered Indo European 3 3 Pelasgian as pre Indo European 3 3 1 Unknown origin 3 3 2 Minoan 3 3 3 Ibero Caucasian 4 Archaeology 4 1 Attica 4 2 Lemnos 4 3 Boeotia 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Sources 8 Further readingEtymology EditMuch like all other aspects of the Pelasgians their ethnonym Pelasgoi is of extremely uncertain provenance and etymology Michael Sakellariou collects fifteen different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last 200 years though he admits that most are fanciful 5 An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelargos stork 6 and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks possibly from Arcadia where they nest 7 Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy The Birds One of the laws of the storks in the satirical cloud cuckoo land playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians is that grown up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare 8 Gilbert Murray summarized the derivation from pelas ge neighboring land current at his time If Pelasgoi is connected with pelas near the word would mean neighbor and would denote the nearest strange people to the invading Greeks 9 Julius Pokorny derived Pelasgoi from pelag skoi flatland inhabitants specifically inhabitants of the Thessalian plain 10 He details a previous derivation which appears in English at least as early as William Gladstone s Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age 11 If the Pelasgians were not Indo Europeans the name in this derivation must have been assigned by the Hellenes Ernest Klein argued that the ancient Greek word for sea pelagos and the Doric word plagos side which is flat shared the same root plak and that pelag skoi therefore meant the sea men where the sea is flat 12 This could be connected to the maritime marauders referred to as the Sea People in Egyptian records Ancient literary evidence Edit Map of Pelasgians and Pelasgus Literary analysis has been ongoing since classical Greece when the writers of those times read previous works on the subject No definitive answers were ever forthcoming by this method it rather served to better define the problems The method perhaps reached a peak in the Victorian era when new methods of systematic comparison began to be applied in philology Typical of the era is the study by William Ewart Gladstone who was a trained classicist 13 Unless further ancient texts come to light advances on the subject cannot be made Therefore the most likely source of progress regarding the Pelasgians continues to be archaeology and related sciences The term Pelasgians in ancient sources Edit The definition of the term Pelasgians in ancient sources was fluid The Pelasgians were variously described by ancient authors as Greek semi Greek non Greek and pre Greek 14 There are no emic perspectives of Pelasgian identity 15 According to an analysis by historian Tristn Lambright of Jacksonville State University While defining Greek identity in terms of collectivity or superiority moreover Greek writers always had the option to resort to traditions about Pelasgian ancestors to emphasize the shared legacy of all Greeks as descendants of the autochthonous Pelasgians By contrast if the definition of Greek identity was parsed in terms of opposition Greek writers could employ discourses about the alterity and barbarity of the Pelasgians to underline the distinction between Greek and non Greek peoples Consistently however Pelasgians appear in Greek literature as links to the Greeks distant past In this way the Pelasgians enabled Greek writers to trace the historical roots of Greek identity to explain the development of contemporary cultural conditions and to promote Greek political projects in various political contexts 16 Poets Edit Homer Edit Plain of Thessaly to the west of classical Pelasgiotis but in the original range of the Pelasgians The Pindus Mountains are visible in the background The river is the Peneus In the Iliad there were Pelasgians on both sides of the Trojan War 17 In the section known as the Catalogue of Trojans they are mentioned between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of Southeastern Europe i e on the Hellespontine border of Thrace 18 Homer calls their town or district Larisa 19 and characterises it as fertile and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus sons of Lethus son of Teutamides 20 The Iliad also refers to the camp at Greece specifically at Argos Pelasgikon 21 17 which is most likely to be the plain of Thessaly 22 and to Pelasgic Zeus living in and ruling over Dodona 23 Additionally according to the Iliad Pelasgians were camping out on the shore together with the following tribes Towards the sea lie the Carians and the Paeonians with curved bows and the Leleges and Caucones and the goodly Pelasgi 24 In the Odyssey they appear among the inhabitants of Crete 17 Odysseus affecting to be Cretan himself instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete language mixing with language side by side 25 Last on his list Homer distinguishes them from other ethnicities on the island Cretans proper Achaeans Cydonians of the city of Cydonia modern Chania Dorians and noble Pelasgians 26 Hesiod Edit Hesiod in a fragment known from Strabo calls Dodona identified by reference to the oak the seat of Pelasgians 27 thus explaining why Homer in referring to Zeus as he ruled over Dodona did not style him Dodonic but Pelasgic Zeus He mentions also that Pelasgus Greek Pelasgos the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians was the father of King Lycaon of Arcadia 28 Asius of Samos Edit Asius of Samos Ancient Greek Ἄsios ὁ Samios describes Pelasgus as the first man born of the earth 29 This account features centrally in the construction of an enduring autochthonous Arcadian identity into the Classical period 30 In a fragment quoted by Pausanais Asius describes the foundational hero of the Greek ethnic groups as godlike Pelasgus whom the black earth gave up 31 Aeschylus Edit Aeschylus incorporates all the territories that the Archaic tradition identifies as Pelasgian including Thessaly the region of Homer s Pelasgian Argos Dodona the seat of Homer s Pelasgian Zeus and Arcadia the region ruled by autochthonous Pelasgus son Lycaon into an Argive Pelasgian kingdom ruled by Pelasgus This affirms the ancient Greek origins of the Pelasgians as well as their widespread settlements throughout central Greece and the Peloponnese 32 In Aeschylus s play The Suppliants the Danaids fleeing from Egypt seek asylum from King Pelasgus of Argos which he says is on the Strymon including Perrhaebia in the north the Thessalian Dodona and the slopes of the Pindus mountains on the west and the shores of the sea on the east 33 that is a territory including but somewhat larger than classical Pelasgiotis The southern boundary is not mentioned however Apis is said to have come to Argos from Naupactus across peras 34 implying that Argos includes all of east Greece from the north of Thessaly to the Peloponnesian Argos where the Danaids are probably to be conceived as having landed He claims to rule the Pelasgians and to be the child of Palaichthon or ancient earth whom the earth brought forth The Danaids call the country the Apian hills and claim that it understands the karbana audan 35 accusative case and in the Dorian dialect which many translate as barbarian speech but Karba where the Karbanoi live is in fact a non Greek word They claim to descend from ancestors in ancient Argos even though they are of a dark race melanthes genos 36 Pelasgus admits that the land was once called Apia but compares them to the women of Libya and Egypt and wants to know how they can be from Argos on which they cite descent from Io 37 According to Strabo Aeschylus Suppliants defines the original homeland of the Pelasgians as the region around Mycenae 7 Sophocles and Euripides Edit Sophocles and Euripides affirm the Greek origins of the Pelasgians while highlighting their relationship to the Danaids a relationship introduced and explored in depth in Aeschylus Suppliants 32 Sophocles presents Inachus in a fragment of a missing play entitled Inachus 38 as the elder in the lands of Argos the Heran hills and among the Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi an unusual hyphenated noun construction Tyrsenians Pelasgians Interpretation is open even though translators typically make a decision but Tyrsenians may well be the ethnonym Tyrrhenoi Euripides uses the term for the inhabitants of Argos in his Orestes 39 and The Phoenician Women 40 In a lost play entitled Archelaus he says that Danaus on coming to reside in the city of Inachus Argos formulated a law whereby the Pelasgians were now to be called Danaans 7 Ovid Edit The Roman poet Ovid describes the Greeks of the Trojan War as Pelasgians in his Metamorphoses 41 Sadly his father Priam mourned for him not knowing that young Aesacus had assumed wings on his shoulders and was yet alive Then also Hector with his brothers made complete but unavailing sacrifice upon a tomb which bore his carved name Paris was absent But soon afterwards he brought into that land a ravished wife Helen the cause of a disastrous war together with a thousand ships and all the great Pelasgian nation Here when a sacrifice had been prepared to Jove according to the custom of their land and when the ancient altar glowed with fire the Greeks observed an azure colored snake crawling up in a plane tree near the place where they had just begun their sacrifice Among the highest branches was a nest with twice four birds and those the serpent seized together with the mother bird as she was fluttering round her loss And every bird the serpent buried in his greedy maw All stood amazed but Calchas who perceived the truth exclaimed Rejoice Pelasgian men for we shall conquer Troy will fall although the toil of war must long continue so the nine birds equal nine long years of war And while he prophesied the serpent coiled about the tree was transformed to a stone curled crooked as a snake Historians Edit Hecataeus of Miletus Edit Hecataeus of Miletus in a fragment from Genealogiai states that the genos clan descending from Deucalion ruled Thessaly and that it was called Pelasgia from king Pelasgus 42 A second fragment states that Pelasgus was the son of Zeus and Niobe and that his son Lycaon founded a dynasty of kings of Arcadia 43 Acusilaus Edit A fragment from the writings of Acusilaus asserts that the Peloponnesians were called Pelasgians after Pelasgus a son of Zeus and Niobe 44 Hellanicus Edit Larisa of Argos Hellanicus of Lesbos concerns himself with one word in one line of the Iliad pasture land of horses applied to Argos in the Peloponnesus 45 According to Hellanicus from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings Phrastōr Amyntōr Teutamides and Nanas kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly 46 During Nanas s reign the Pelasgians were driven out by the Greeks and departed for Italy They landed at the mouth of the Po River near the Etruscan city of Spina then took the inland city Crotona Krotwna and from there colonized Tyrrhenia The inference is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly and indirectly of the Peloponnese to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans 47 Herodotus Edit In the Histories the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus made many references to the Pelasgians In Book 1 the Pelasgians are mentioned within the context of Croesus seeking to learn who the strongest Greeks were to befriend them 48 Afterwards Herodotus ambivalently classified the Pelasgian language as barbarian though he thought of the Pelasgians to have been essentially Greek Herodotus also discussed various areas inhabited or previously inhabited by Pelasgians Pelasgian speakers along with their different neighbors co residents 49 50 I am unable to state with certainty what language the Pelasgians spoke but we could consider the speech of the Pelasgians who still exist in settlements above Tyrrhenia in the city of Kreston formerly neighbors to the Dorians who at that time lived in the land now called Thessaliotis also the Pelasgians who once lived with the Athenians and then settled Plakia and Skylake in the Hellespont and along with those who lived with all the other communities and were once Pelasgian but changed their names If one can judge by this evidence the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language And so if the Pelasgian language was spoken in all these places the people of Attica being originally Pelasgian must have learned a new language when they became Hellenes As a matter of fact the people of Krestonia and Plakia no longer speak the same language which shows that they continue to use the dialect they brought with them when they migrated to those lands Furthermore Herodotus discussed the relationship between the Pelasgians and the other Greeks 51 52 which according to Pericles Georges reflected the rivalry within Greece itself between Dorian Sparta and Ionian Athens 53 Specifically Herodotus stated that the Hellenes separated from the Pelasgians with the former group surpassing the latter group numerically 54 As for the Hellenes it seems obvious to me that ever since they came into existence they have always used the same language They were weak at first when they were separated from the Pelasgians but they grew from a small group into a multitude especially when many peoples including other barbarians in great numbers had joined them Moreover I do not think the Pelasgian who remained barbarians ever grew appreciably in number or power In Book 2 Herodotus alluded to the Pelasgians as inhabitants of Samothrace an island located just north of Troy before coming to Attica 55 Moreover Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians simply called their gods theoi prior to naming them on the grounds that the gods established all affairs in their order thentes the author also stated that the gods of the Pelasgians were the Cabeiri 56 Later Herodotus stated that the entire territory of Greece i e Hellas was initially called Pelasgia 57 In Book 5 Herodotus mentioned the Pelasgians as inhabitants of the islands of Lemnos and Imbros 58 In Book 6 the Pelasgians of Lemnos were originally Hellespontine Pelasgians who had been living in Athens but whom the Athenians resettled on Lemnos and then found it necessary to reconquer the island 59 This expulsion of non Athenian Pelasgians from Athens may reflect according to the historian Robert Buck a dim memory of forwarding of refugees closely akin to the Athenians in speech and custom to the Ionian colonies 60 Also Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians on the island of Lemnos opposite Troy once kidnapped the Hellenic women of Athens for wives but the Athenian wives created a crisis by teaching their children the language of Attica instead of the Pelasgian 61 In Book 7 Herodotus mentioned the Pelasgian city of Antandrus 62 and wrote about the Ionian inhabitants of the land now called Achaea i e northwestern Peloponnese being called according to the Greek account Aegialean Pelasgi or Pelasgi of the Sea Shore afterwards they were called Ionians 63 Moreover Herodotus mentioned that the Aegean islanders were a Pelasgian race who in later times took the name Ionians and that the Aeolians according to the Hellenes were known anciently as Pelasgians 64 In Book 8 Herodotus mentioned that the Pelasgians of Athens were previously called Cranai 65 Thucydides Edit In the History of the Peloponnesian War the Greek historian Thucydides wrote about the Pelasgians stating that 66 Before the time of Hellen son of Deucalion the country went by the names of the different tribes in particular of the Pelasgian It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in Phthiotis and were invited as allies into the other cities that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of Hellenes though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all The author regards the Athenians as having lived in scattered independent settlements in Attica but at some time after Theseus they changed residence to Athens which was already populated A plot of land below the Acropolis was called Pelasgian and was regarded as cursed but the Athenians settled there anyway 67 In connection with the campaign against Amphipolis Thucydides mentions that several settlements on the promontory of Acte were home to 68 mixed barbarian races speaking the two languages There is also a small Chalcidian element but the greater number are Tyrrheno Pelasgians once settled in Lemnos and Athens and Bisaltians Crestonians and Eonians the towns all being small ones Ephorus Edit The historian Ephorus building on a fragment from Hesiod that attests to a tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian people in Arcadia developed a theory of the Pelasgians as a people living a military way of life stratiōtikon bion and that in converting many peoples to the same mode of life they imparted their name to all meaning all of Hellas They colonized Crete and extended their rule over Epirus Thessaly and by implication over wherever else the ancient authors said they were beginning with Homer The Peloponnese was called Pelasgia 7 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Edit In the Roman Antiquities Dionysius of Halicarnassus in several pages gives a synoptic interpretation of the Pelasgians based on the sources available to him then concluding that Pelasgians were Greek 69 Afterwards some of the Pelasgians who inhabited Thessaly as it is now called being obliged to leave their country settled among the Aborigines and jointly with them made war upon the Sicels It is possible that the Aborigines received them partly in the hope of gaining their assistance but I believe it was chiefly on account of their kinship for the Pelasgians too were a Greek nation originally from the Peloponnesus He goes on to add that the nation wandered a great deal 69 They were originally natives of Achaean Argos descended from Pelasgus the son of Zeus and Niobe 69 They migrated from there to Haemonia later called Thessaly where they drove out the barbarian inhabitants and divided the country into Phthiotis Achaia and Pelasgiotis named after Achaeus Phthius and Pelasgus the sons of Larissa and Poseidon 69 Subsequently about the sixth generation they were driven out by the Curetes and Leleges who are now called Aetolians and Locrians 69 From there the Pelasgians dispersed to Crete the Cyclades Histaeotis Boeotia Phocis Euboea the coast along the Hellespont and the islands especially Lesbos which had been colonized by Macar son of Crinacus 70 Most went to Dodona and eventually being driven from there to Italy then called Saturnia they landed at Spina at the mouth of the Po River 70 Still others crossed the Apennine Mountains to Umbria and being driven from there went to the country of the Aborigines where they consented to a treaty and settled at Velia 71 They and the Aborigenes took over Umbria but were dispossessed by the Tyrrhenians 71 The author then continues to detail the tribulations of the Pelasgians and then goes on to the Tyrrhenians whom he is careful to distinguish from the Pelasgians 72 Geographers Edit Pausanias Edit In his Description of Greece Pausanias mentions the Arcadians who state that Pelasgus along with his followers was the first inhabitant of their land 73 Upon becoming king Pelasgus invented huts sheep skin coats and a diet consisting of acorns while governing the land named after him Pelasgia 74 When Arcas became king Pelasgia was renamed Arcadia and its inhabitants the Pelasgians were renamed Arcadians 75 Pausanias also mentions the Pelasgians as responsible for creating a wooden image of Orpheus in a sanctuary of Demeter at Therae 76 as well as expelling the Minyans and Lacedaemonians from Lemnos 77 Strabo Edit Strabo dedicates a section of his Geography to the Pelasgians relating both his own opinions and those of prior writers He begins by stating 7 Almost every one is agreed that the Pelasgi were an ancient race spread throughout the whole of Greece but especially in the country of the AEolians near to Thessaly He defines Pelasgian Argos as being between the outlets of the Peneus River and Thermopylae as far as the mountainous country of Pindus and states that it took its name from Pelasgian rule He includes also the tribes of Epirus as Pelasgians based on the opinions of many Lesbos is named Pelasgian Caere was settled by Pelasgians from Thessaly who called it by its former name Agylla Pelasgians also settled around the mouth of the Tiber River in Italy at Pyrgi and a few other settlements under a king Maleos 78 Language EditIn the absence of certain knowledge about the identity or identities of the Pelasgians various theories have been proposed Some of the more prevalent theories supported by scholarship are presented below Since Greek is classified as an Indo European language the major question of concern is whether Pelasgian was an Indo European language Reception Edit The theory that Pelasgian was an Indo European language which fascinated scholars and concentrated research during the second part of the 20th century has since been critiqued an emerging consensus among modern linguists is that the substrate language spoken in the southern Balkans was non Indo European 79 Garcia Ramon remarked that the attempt to determine phonological rules for an Indo European pre Greek language Pelasgian is considered a complete failure today 80 while Beekes 2018 notes that one of the demerits of Georgiev s Pelasgian theory was that it drew attention away from the Pre Greek material itself concluding that the search for Pelasgian was an expensive and useless distraction 81 However Biliana Mihaylova finds no contradiction between the idea of an Indo European Pre Greek substratum and the possibility of the existence of an earlier non Indo European layer in Greece given certain Pre Greek words possessing Indo European pattern s of word formation 82 Pelasgian as Indo European Edit Greek Edit Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton an English writer and intellectual argued that the Pelasgians spoke Greek based on the fact that areas traditionally inhabited by the Pelasgi i e Arcadia and Attica only spoke Greek and the few surviving Pelasgian words and inscriptions i e Lamina Borgiana 83 Herodotus 2 52 1 betray Greek linguistic features despite the classical identification of Pelasgian as a barbarian language 84 According to Thomas Harrison of Saint Andrews University the Greek etymology of Pelasgian terms mentioned in Herodotus such as 8eoi derived from 8entes indicates that the Pelasgians spoke a language at least akin to Greek 85 According to French classical scholar Pierre Henri Larcher if this linguistic affiliation is true then it proves that the Pelasgians and the Greeks were the same people 86 Anatolian Edit In western Anatolia many toponyms with the ss infix derive from the adjectival suffix also seen in cuneiform Luwian and some Palaic the classic example is Bronze Age Tarhuntassa loosely meaning City of the Storm God Tarhunta and later Parnassus possibly related to the Luwian word parna or house These elements have led to a second theory that Pelasgian was to some degree an Anatolian language or that it had areal influences from Anatolian languages 87 Thracian Edit Vladimir I Georgiev a Bulgarian linguist asserted that the Pelasgians spoke an Indo European language and were more specifically related to the Thracians 88 page needed 89 page needed Georgiev also proposed relying on a sound shift model that pelasgoi was a cognate of a Proto Indo European root and Greek Pelagos pelagos sea citation needed Georgiev also suggested that the Pelasgians were a sub group of the Bronze Age Sea Peoples and identifiable in Egyptian inscriptions as the exonym PRST or PLST However this Egyptian name has more often been read as a cognate of a Hebrew exonym פלשת Peleshet Peleseth that is the Biblical Philistines citation needed Albanian Edit See also Origins of the Albanians Obsolete theories and Albanian nationalism In 1854 an Austrian diplomat and Albanian language specialist Johann Georg von Hahn identified the Pelasgian language with Proto Albanian 90 This theory is not supported by any scientific evidence and is seen as a myth by modern scholars 91 92 Undiscovered Indo European Edit Albert Joris Van Windekens 1915 1989 offered rules for an unattested hypothetical Indo European Pelasgian language selecting vocabulary for which there was no Greek etymology among the names of places heroes animals plants garments artifacts and social organization 93 94 His 1952 essay Le Pelasgique was skeptically received 95 Pelasgian as pre Indo European Edit Unknown origin Edit Main article Dorian invasion Kretschmer s external Greeks One theory uses the name Pelasgian to describe the inhabitants of the lands around the Aegean Sea before the arrival of Proto Greek speakers as well as traditionally identified enclaves of descendants that still existed in classical Greece The theory derives from the original concepts of the philologist Paul Kretschmer whose views prevailed throughout the first half of the 20th century and are still given some credibility today Though Wilamowitz Moellendorff wrote them off as mythical the results of archaeological excavations at Catalhoyuk by James Mellaart and Fritz Schachermeyr led them to conclude that the Pelasgians had migrated from Asia Minor to the Aegean basin in the 4th millennium BC 96 In this theory a number of possible non Indo European linguistic and cultural features are attributed to the Pelasgians Groups of apparently non Indo European loan words in the Greek language borrowed in its prehistoric development Non Greek and possibly non Indo European roots for many Greek toponyms in the region containing the consonantal strings nth e g Corinth Probalinthos Zakynthos Amarynthos or its equivalent ns e g Tiryns tt e g in the peninsula of Attica Mounts Hymettus and Brilettus Brilessus Lycabettus Hill the deme of Gargettus etc or its equivalent ss Larissa Mount Parnassus the river names Kephissos and Ilissos the Cretan cities of Amnis s os and Tylissos etc These strings also appear in other non Greek presumably substratally inherited nouns such as asaminthos bathtub apsinthos absinth terebinthos terebinth etc Other placenames with no apparent Indo European etymology include Athenai Athens Mykenai Mycene Messene Kyllene Cyllene Cyrene Mytilene etc note the common enai ene ending also Thebes Delphi Lindos Rhamnus and others 97 Certain mythological stories or deities that seem to have no parallels in the mythologies of other Indo European peoples e g the Olympians Athena Dionysus Apollo Artemis and Aphrodite whose origins seem Anatolian or Levantine Non Greek inscriptions in the Mediterranean such as the Lemnos stele The historian George Grote summarizes the theory as follows 98 There are indeed various names affirmed to designate the ante Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece the Pelasgi the Leleges the Curetes the Kaukones the Aones the Temmikes the Hyantes the Telchines the Boeotian Thracians the Teleboae the Ephyri the Phlegyae amp c These are names belonging to legendary not to historical Greece extracted out of a variety of conflicting legends by the logographers and subsequent historians who strung together out of them a supposed history of the past at a time when the conditions of historical evidence were very little understood That these names designated real nations may be true but here our knowledge ends The poet and mythologist Robert Graves asserts that certain elements of that mythology originate with the native Pelasgian people namely the parts related to his concept of the White Goddess an archetypical Earth Goddess drawing additional support for his conclusion from his interpretations of other ancient literature Irish Welsh Greek Biblical Gnostic and medieval writings 99 Minoan Edit According to the Russian historian and linguist Igor M Diakonoff the Pelasgians may have been related to the Minoans 100 A number of scholars consider Minoan to be essentially the same language as Pelasgian 101 102 Ibero Caucasian Edit Some Georgian scholars including R V Gordeziani M G Abdushelishvili and Z Gamsakhurdia connect the Pelasgians with the Ibero Caucasian peoples of the prehistoric Caucasus known to the Greeks as Colchians and Iberians 103 104 These scholars portray Georgia as a source of spirituality in the Greek world by manipulating Greek and Roman sources in a highly dubious manner 105 Archaeology EditAttica Edit See also Pelasgic wall During the early 20th century archaeological excavations conducted by the Italian Archaeological School and by the American Classical School on the Athenian Acropolis and on other sites within Attica revealed Neolithic dwellings tools pottery and skeletons from domesticated animals such as sheep and fish All of these discoveries showed significant resemblances to the Neolithic discoveries made on the Thessalian acropolises of Sesklo and Dimini These discoveries help provide physical confirmation of the literary tradition that describes the Athenians as the descendants of the Pelasgians who appear to descend continuously from the Neolithic inhabitants in Thessaly Overall the archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the Acropolis was inhabited by farmers as early as the 6th millennium BC 106 Note 1 The results on the prehistoric material of the American excavations near the Clepsydra have also been analyzed by Immerwahr arguing in contrast to Prokopiou that no Dimini type pottery was unearthed 107 Lemnos Edit In August and September 1926 members of the Italian School of Archaeology conducted trial excavations on the island of Lemnos A short account of their excavations appeared in the Messager d Athenes for 3 January 1927 The overall purpose of the excavations was to shed light on the island s Etrusco Pelasgian civilization The excavations were conducted on the site of the city of Hephaisteia i e Palaiopolis where the Pelasgians according to Herodotus surrendered to Miltiades of Athens There a necropolis c 9th 8th centuries BC was discovered revealing bronze objects pots and more than 130 ossuaries The ossuaries contained distinctly male and female funeral ornaments Male ossuaries contained knives and axes whereas female ossuaries contained earrings bronze pins necklaces gold diadems and bracelets The decorations on some of the gold objects contained spirals of Mycenean origin but had no Geometric forms According to their ornamentation the pots discovered at the site were from the Geometric period However the pots also preserved spirals indicative of Mycenean art The results of the excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and in addition the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the Mycenaean Greek ra mi ni ja Lemnian woman written in Linear B syllabic script 108 109 Note 2 Boeotia Edit During the 1980s the Skourta Plain Project identified Middle Helladic and Late Helladic sites on mountain summits near the plains of Skourta in Boeotia These fortified mountain settlements were according to tradition inhabited by Pelasgians up until the end of the Bronze Age Moreover the location of the sites is an indication that the Pelasgian inhabitants sought to distinguish themselves ethnically a fluid term 110 and economically from the Mycenaean Greeks who controlled the Skourta Plain 111 Note 3 See also Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pelasgians Barbarian Dacians Etruscan civilization Falisci Illyrians Leleges Minyans Names of the Greeks Old European culture Paleo Balkan languages Pelasgian creation myth Pre Greek substrate Rum Sea peoples Thracians TyrrheniansNotes Edit According to Prokopiou Some forty years ago excavations on the Athenian Acropolis and on other sites in Attica brought to light many indications of neolithic life dwellings vases tools skeletons of sheep which confirmed the traditions recorded by Herodotus that the Athenians were descended from the Pelasgians the neolithic inhabitants of Thessaly Indeed the neolithic vases of Attica date from the earliest neolithic age 5520 4900 like the ceramics from the Thessalian acropolis of Sesclos as well as from the later neolithic age 4900 3200 like those from the other Thessalian acropolis of Dimini The search for traces of the neolithic age on the Acropolis began in 1922 with the excavations of the Italian Archaeological School near the Aesclepium Another settlement was discovered in the vicinity of the Odeion of Pericles where many sherds of pottery and a stone axe both of Sesklo type were unearthed Excavations carried out by the American Classical School near the Clepshydra uncovered twenty one wells and countless pieces of handmade pottery sherds of Dimini type implements of later Stone Age and bones of domestic animals and fish The discoveries reinforced the theory that permanent settlement by farmers with their flocks their stone and bone tools and ceramic utensils had taken place on the rock of the Acropolis as early as the sixth millennium Professor Della Seta reports The lack of weapons of bronze the abundance of weapons of iron and the type of the pots and the pins gives the impression that the necropolis belongs to the ninth or eighth century BC That it did not belong to a Greek population but to a population which in the eyes of the Hellenes appeared barbarous is shown by the weapons The Greek weapon dagger or spear is lacking the weapons of the barbarians the axe and the knife are common Since however this population preserves so many elements of Mycenaean art the Tyrrhenians or Pelasgians of Lemnos may be recognized as a remnant of a Mycenaean population French reports The fourth and final season of the survey of the Skourta plain was conducted in 1989 by M and M L Z Munn ASCS Explorations begun in 1985 and 1987 were extended into new parts of the plain and surrounding valleys so that by now a representative portion approximately 25 of most of the inhabitable areas of the three koinotites of Pyli Skourta and Stefani have been examined intensively 66 sites were discovered or studied for the first time in the course of this highly productive season yielding a total of 120 premodern sites studied by our survey since 1985 The survey should have identified all major settlement sites over 5 ha and a representative sample of smaller sites in the study area A summary of the chief conclusions to be drawn from the four seasons can be made MH settlement is established on two summits overlooking the plain one of which Panakton becomes the most substantial LH site in the area A fortified MH settlement is also established on a peak in rugged country beyond the NE edge of the plain between the Mazareika and Vountima valleys in which other settlements are established in the LH era The remoteness of this NE sector and the great natural strength of the MH site and a nearby LH IIIC citadel suggest that the inhabitants of these glens and crags sought to protect and separate themselves from peoples beyond the peaks that surrounded them perhaps because they were ethnically distinct and economically more or less independent of the Myc Greeks who dominated the plains Traditions of Pelasgians in these mountains at the end of the BA raise the possibility that these may have been Pelasgian sites Once abandoned in the LH IIIC or PG eras most of these sites in the NE sector are not again inhabited for well over a millennium Elsewhere within the more accessible expanse of the Skourta plain itself LH settlements are established on many sites which are later again important in the C era References EditCitations Edit Abel 1966 p 13 Common fifth century tradition claimed not only that the Pelasgians were the oldest inhabitants of Greece and among the ancestors of the Greek heroes p 49 Fifth century opinion assumed that the Pelasgians were the ancestors of the heroic Greeks e g the ancestors of the Danaans Arcadians and Athenians Brug 1985 p 41 The Greek sources identify the Pelasgians as forerunners of the Greeks in the Peloponnesus and Attica Rhodios amp Green 2007 p 223 Commentary on I 987 Ionian Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 5 April 2017 Sakellariou 1977 pp 101 104 Beekes 2009 p 1165 a b c d e Strabo Geography 5 2 4 Aristophanes The Birds 1355ff Murray 1960 p 43 Pokorny 1969 pp 831 832 Gladstone 1858 Chapter 2 Section 3 Derivation of the Pelasgian Name pp 211 215 Klein 1966 Pelasgian and Pelagic Gladstone 1858 The Pelasgians are covered especially in Volume I Lambright 2022 p 2 31 106 110 Lambright 2022 p 106 Lambright 2022 p 109 a b c Gruen 2011 p 241 Homer Iliad 2 840 2 843 The camp at Troy is mentioned in Iliad 10 428 10 429 Not the same as the Larissa in Thessaly Greece Many towns bearing the same or similar name existed This specific Larisa seems to have been located in Asia See Gruen 2011 p 241 Homer Iliad 2 806 12 17 320 57 transl Robert Fitzgerald See Gruen 2011 p 241 Homer Iliad 2 681 2 684 The location is never explicitly given Gladstone shows by process of elimination that it must be in the north of Thessaly Gladstone 1858 pp 100 105 Homer Iliad 16 233 16 235 Homer Iliad 10 428 Homer Odyssey 19 175 19 177 Robert Fagles s translation Homer Odyssey Book 19 T E Lawrence s translation Hesiod fr 319 M W Strabo Geography 7 7 10 Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr 161 Strabo Geography 5 2 4 Prichard 1841 p 489 Lambright 2022 p 39 Lambright 2022 p 33 a b Lambright 2022 pp 80 81 Aeschylus The Suppliants Lines 249 259 Aeschylus The Suppliants Lines 262 263 Aeschylus The Suppliants Lines 128 129 Aeschylus The Suppliants Lines 154 155 Aeschylus The Suppliants Lines 279 281 Sophocles amp Dindorf 1849 Fragment 256 p 352 Euripides Orestes Lines 857 and 933 Euripides The Phoenician Women Line 107 Ovid Metamorphoses 12 1 Hecataeus of Miletus amp Klausen 1831 Fragment 224 p 140 Hecataeus of Miletus amp Klausen 1831 Fragment 375 p 157 Mentioned in Pseudo Apollodorus Bibliotheca 2 1 Hellanicus fr 36 Fowler p 173 apud Scholia T Iliad 3 75b cf Hellanicus fr 7 Sturtz pp 49 51 Homer Iliad 3 75 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1 28 3 citing Hellanicus Phoronis Hellanicus fr 4 Fowler pp 156 157 cf Hellanicus fr 76 Sturtz pp 108 109 Briquel 2013 p 47 Herodotus Histories 1 56 Herodotus Histories 1 57 Herodotus amp Strassler 2009 p 32 Georges 1994 p 134 Herodotus like other Greeks instinctively imagined the non Dorian inhabitants of ancient Greece Achaeans Argives Danaans Ionians Pelasgians Cadmeans Lapiths and all the rest of the races of myth and epic to be essentially Greek and ancestral to themselves as Aeschylus imagined the Pelasgian Argives in the Supplices Herodotus Histories 1 56 1 58 Herodotus amp Strassler 2009 pp 32 33 Georges 1994 p 131 Herodotus argues near the very beginning of his work that most of the people who later became Hellenes were Pelasgians and that these Pelasgians were barbarians and spoke a barbarian language From these Pelasgians Herodotus derives the descent of the Ionians as well as that of all the other Greeks of the present day who are not Dorians 1 56 3 58 Georges 1994 pp 129 130 Herodotus Histories 1 58 Herodotus amp Strassler 2009 p 33 Herodotus Histories 2 51 The text allows two interpretations that Pelasgians were indigenous there or that they had been resettled by Athens Herodotus Histories 2 51 Herodotus Histories 2 56 Herodotus Histories 5 26 Herodotus Histories 6 137 6 140 Buck 1979 p 79 Herodotus Histories 6 138 Herodotus Histories 7 42 Herodotus Histories 7 94 Herodotus Histories 7 95 Herodotus amp Strassler 2009 p 533 Herodotus Histories 8 44 Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 1 3 2 Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 2 16 2 17 1 Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 4 109 4 a b c d e Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1 17 a b Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1 18 a b Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1 19 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1 19 1 20 Pausanias Description of Greece 8 1 4 Pausanias Description of Greece 8 1 5 and 8 1 6 Pausanias Description of Greece 8 4 1 Pausanias Description of Greece 3 20 5 Pausanias Description of Greece 7 2 2 Strabo Geography 5 2 8 Beekes 2014 p 1 Garcia Ramon 2004 pp 999 1000 Beekes 2018 109 Pelasgian pp 1873 1874 Mihaylova 2012 pp 80 81 An inscription discovered in Calabria in 1785 and preserved in Cardinal Borgia s collection at Velletri discussed in Luigi Lanza Saggio di lingua Latina e altri antichi d Italia vol I 2nd ed Florence 1824 Lytton 1837 pp 5 8 Harrison 1998 pp 25 26 Herodotus account for example of the adoption by the Pelasgians of the names of the gods 2 52 1 suggests a much closer relationship between the Pelasgian and Greek languages Before they heard the names of the gods the Pelasgians assuming interestingly the existence of a number of gods called them simply 8eoi on the grounds that they had established 8entes all affairs in their order This etymology advanced apparently in all seriousness seems to suggest that the Pelasgians spoke a language at least akin to Greek Larcher Pierre Henri 1844 Notes on Herodotus Historical and Critical Comments on the History of Herodotus with a Chronological Table Whittaker p 54 If this affiliation of language be admitted then the Pelasgians and Greeks were of the same race Finkelberg 2006 Georgiev 1961 Georgiev 1977 Hahn 1854 IV Sind Die Albanesen Autochthonen pp 211 279 Mackridge Peter 2007 2008 Aspects of language and identity in the Greek peninsula since the eighteenth century The Newsletter of the Society Farsarotul Vol XXI amp XXII no 1 amp 2 Society Farsarotul pp 16 17 Soon after this the Pelasgian theory was formulated according to which the Greek and Albanian languages were claimed to have a common origin in Pelasgian while the Albanians themselves are Pelasgians and hence come from the same ethnological stock as the Greeks The Pelasgian theory began to take shape in the 1850s and 1860s and became widespread in the 1870s Needless to say there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support any of these theories Schwandner Sievers amp Fischer 2002 Stephanie Schwandner Sievers and Bernd Jurgen Fischer editors of Albanian Identities Myth and History present papers resulting from the London Conference held in 1999 entitled The Role of Myth in the History and Development of Albania The Pelasgian myth of Albanians as the most ancient community in southeastern Europe is among those explored in Noel Malcolm s essay Myths of Albanian National Identity Some Key Elements As Expressed in the Works of Albanian Writers in America in the Early Twentieth Century The introductory essay by Stephanie Schwandner Sievers establishes the context of the Pelasgian Albanian mythos applicable to Eastern Europe generally in terms of the longing for a stable identity in a rapidly opening society Van Windekens 1952 Van Windekens 1960 As for example in Gordon Messing s extended review criticizing point by point in Language 30 1 January March 1954 pp 104 108 Schachermeyr 1976 Mellaart 1965 1966 Mellaart 1975 Southeastern Europe The Aegean and the Southern Balkans Beekes 2009 Grote 1862 pp 43 44 Graves 1990 Volume 1 Graves also imaginatively reconstructs a Pelasgian creation myth which involves a creatrix Eurynome and a serpent Ophion Diakonoff I M 28 June 2013 Early Antiquity University of Chicago Press p 317 ISBN 978 0 226 14467 2 Millar R 21 July 2010 Authority and Identity A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age Springer p 39 ISBN 978 0 230 28203 2 In the Greek islands and possibly also the Peloponnese were speakers of a language scholars sometimes call Minoan after the great civilization associated with Crete in the second millennium BCE or Eteo Cretan It is probably the language of the Minoan A script which has largely escaped deciphering A number of scholars consider this to be essentially the same language as Pelasgian Budin Stephanie Lynn 2009 The Ancient Greeks An Introduction Oxford University Press p 404 ISBN 978 0 19 537984 6 Gordeziani 1985 Kaigi 1969 M G Abdushelishvili The Genesis of the Aboriginal Population of the Caucasus in the Light of Anthropological Data Watson Rubie S 1999 Memory History and Opposition Under State Socialism Boydell amp Brewer Limited p 163 ISBN 978 0 85255 902 4 Prokopiou amp Smith 1964 pp 21 22 Immerwahr 1971 p 19 It is the Late Neolithic period that provides most of our parallels yet curiously the striking Dimini type painted wares of Thessaly are completely lacking and there is only one small recognisable sherd of the related Mattpainted ware of Central and Southern Greece Palaeolexicon The Linear B word ra mi ni ja Heffner 1927 pp 123 124 The American Forum for Global Education 2000 French 1989 1990 Skourta Plain project p 35 Sources Edit Abel V Lynn Snyder 1966 Fifth Century B C Concepts of the Pelasgians Stanford CA Stanford University Beekes Robert S P 2009 Etymological Dictionary of Greek Leiden Brill ISBN 978 90 04 17418 4 Beekes Robert S P 2014 Pre Greek Phonology Morphology Lexicon Brill ISBN 978 90 04 27944 5 Beekes Robert S P 2018 Klein Jared Joseph Brian Fritz Matthias eds Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo European Linguistics Berlin Walter de Gruyter doi 10 1515 9783110542431 ISBN 978 3110542431 S2CID 242040187 Briquel Dominique 2013 3 Etruscan origins and the ancient authors In Turfa Jean MacIntosh ed The Etruscan World New York NY Routledge Taylor amp Francis Group pp 36 55 ISBN 978 0 415 67308 2 Brug John Frederick 1985 A Literary and Archaeological Study of the Philistines Oxford British Archaeological Reports ISBN 9780860543374 Buck Robert J 1979 A History of Boeotia Alberta Canada University of Alberta ISBN 0 88864 051 X Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities Volume I Books 1 2 Translated by Earnest Cary Loeb Classical Library No 319 Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press 1937 Online version by Bill Thayer Online version at Harvard University Press Cadogan Gerald ed 1986 The End of the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean Leiden E J Brill ISBN 90 04 07309 4 Demiraj Shaban 2006 The Origin of the Albanians Linguistically Investigated Tirana Academy of Sciences of Albania ISBN 978 99943 817 1 5 Finkelberg Margalit 2006 Greeks and Pre Greeks Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 85216 6 Fowler R L 2000 Early Greek Mythography Volume 1 Text and Introduction Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0198147404 French E B 1989 1990 Archaeology in Greece 1989 90 Archaeological Reports 36 2 82 doi 10 2307 581027 JSTOR 581027 S2CID 128887293 Garcia Ramon Jose Luis 2004 Greece Languages In Cancik Hubert Schneider Helmut eds Brill s New Pauly Vol 5 Leiden Brill Georges Pericles 1994 Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience From the Archaic Period to the Age of Xenophon Baltimore and London The Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 0 8018 4734 6 Georgiev Vladimir Ivanov 1937 Urgriechen und Urillyrier Thrako Illyrier in German Sofia Imprimerie de la Cour Georgiev Vladimir Ivanov 1941 Vorgriechische Sprachwissenshaft in German Sofia Universitatsdruckerei Georgiev Vladimir Ivanov 1961 La toponymie ancienne de la peninsule balkanique et la these mediterannee Sixth International Onomastic Congress Florence Pisa April 1961 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences 1961 in French Sofia Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Georgiev Vladimir Ivanov 1977 Trakite i tehnijat ezik in Bulgarian Sofia Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Gladstone William Ewart 1858 Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age Vol I Oxford United Kingdom Oxford University Press Gordeziani Rismag 1985 Pre Grecian and Georgian Tbilisi Graves Robert 1990 1955 The Greek Myths Vol 1 London Penguin Books ISBN 978 0 14 001026 8 Grote George 1862 A History of Greece From the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great Vol II London John Murray Gruen Erich S 2011 Rethinking the Other in Antiquity Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 14852 6 Hahn Johann Georg von 1854 Albanesische Studien in German Jena F Mauko Harrison Thomas 1998 Herodotus Conception of Foreign Languages PDF Histos 2 1 45 Hecataeus of Miletus Klausen Rudolph Heinrich 1831 Hecataei Milesii Fragmenta Scylacis Caryandensis Periplus Berlin Impensis G Reimeri Hellanicus Sturz Fridericus Guilielmus Canteri Gulielmi 1826 Hellanici Lesbii Fragmenta Edition Altera Aucta et Emendata Lipsiae Sumtibus C H F Hartmanni Heffner Edward H January 1927 Archaeological News Notes on Recent Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries Other News July December 1926 American Journal of Archaeology 31 1 99 127 doi 10 2307 497618 JSTOR 497618 S2CID 245265394 Herodotus Strassler Robert B 2009 2007 The Landmark Herodotus The Histories New York NY Random House Incorporated ISBN 978 1 4000 3114 6 Immerwahr Sara Anderson 1971 The Athenian Agora The Neolithic and Bronze Ages Vol 13 Princeton NJ The American School of Classical Studies at Athens ISBN 0 87661 213 3 Kaigi Nihon Gakujutsu 1969 Proceedings VIIIth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 1968 Tokyo and Kyoto Tokyo Science Council of Japan Klein Ernest 1966 A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language Amsterdam Elsevier Publishing Company ISBN 0 444 40930 0 LC 65 13229 Lambright Tristn 2022 In Search of the Pelasgians Discursive Strategies and Greek Identities from the Archaic Period to the Roman Imperial Era Thesis Jacksonville State University Lytton Sir Edward Bulwer 1837 Athens Its Rise and Fall Vol I London Saunders and Oatley Mellaart James 1965 1966 Catal Huyuk A Neolithic City in Anatolia Proceedings of the British Academy 51 206 208 Mellaart James 1975 The Neolithic of the Near East New York City Charles Scribner s Sons ISBN 0 684 14483 2 Mihaylova Biliana 2012 The Pre Greek Substratum Revisited In Hejl Christina Loye Jacquet Janus Bahs Heide Marie Whitehead Benedicte Nielsen Olsen Birgit Anette eds Etymology and the European Lexicon PDF Copenhagen Roots of Europe University of Copenhagen pp 80 81 Murray Gilbert 1960 The Rise of the Greek Epic New York and Oxford Oxford University Press LC60 13910 Olcott William Tyler 1914 Sun Lore of All Ages Rain Tedd St Foreword by New York and London G P Putnam s Sons Retrieved 11 March 2013 Orel Vladimir E 1998 Albanian Etymological Dictionary Leiden and Boston Brill ISBN 978 90 04 11024 3 Pokorny Julius 1969 Indogermanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch in German New York NY French and European Publications Incorporated ISBN 0 8288 6602 3 Prichard James Cowles 1841 Researches into the Physical History of Mankind Containing Researches into the History of the European Nations Vol III 3rd ed London Sherwood Gilbert and Piper Prokopiou Angelos Smith Edwin 1964 Athens City of the Gods from Prehistory to 338 B C New York NY Stein and Day OCLC 1016679 Rhodios Apollonios Green Peter 2007 The Argonautika Berkeley and Los Angeles CA University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 25393 3 Sakellariou Michael B 1977 Peuples Prehelleniques d Origine Indo Europeennee in French Athens Ekdotike Athenon Schachermeyr Fritz 1976 Die Agaische Fruhzeit Forschungsbericht uber die Ausgrabungen im letzten Jahrzehnt und uber ihre Ergebnisse fur unser Geschichtsbild Bd I Die Vormykenischen Perioden des Griechischen Festlandes und der Kykladen in German Vienna Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften ISBN 9783700101482 Schwandner Sievers Stephanie Fischer Bernd Jurgen eds 2002 Albanian Identities Myth and History Bloomington IN Indiana University Press ISBN 0 253 21570 6 Sophocles Dindorf Wilhelm 1849 SOFOKLHS Sophoclis Tragoediae Superstites et Deperditarum Fragmenta Editio Secunda Emendatior Oxford Oxford University Press The American Forum for Global Education 2000 Foreigners and Barbarians Adapted from Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks The American Forum for Global Education Archived from the original on 16 December 2000 Retrieved 13 June 2016 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint unfit URL link Thucydides Jowett Benjamin trans 1881 Thucydides Translated into English with Introduction Marginal Analysis Notes and Indices Volume 1 Oxford Clarendon Press Van Windekens Albert Joris 1952 Le Pelasgique Essai sur une Langue Indo Europeenne Prehellenique in French Louvain la Neuve Universite de Louvain Institut Orientalistique Van Windekens Albert Joris 1960 Etudes Pelasgiques in French Louvain la Neuve Universite de Louvain Institut Orientalistique Further reading EditSakellariou Michael B 1974 1970 Pelasgians In Christopoulos George A Bastias John C Phylactopoulos George eds History of the Hellenic World Volume 1 Prehistory and Protohistory Translated by Sherrard Philip Athens Ekdotike Hellados S A pp 368 370 ISBN 0 271 01199 8 Mackenzie Donald Alexander 1917 Myths of Crete and Pre Hellenic Europe London United Kingdom Gresham Publishing Company Munro J A R 1934 Pelasgians and Ionians The Journal of Hellenic Studies 54 2 109 128 doi 10 2307 626855 JSTOR 626855 S2CID 164120593 Myres J L 1907 A History of the Pelasgian Theory The Journal of Hellenic Studies 27 170 225 doi 10 2307 624440 JSTOR 624440 S2CID 162335262 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Pelasgians amp oldid 1149334532, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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