Who were the first settlers on the Balkans?

I don't find any contradiction. In Herodotus' view the Ionians were Pelasgians (in ancient time, ancient to Herodotus, not to us!), and then became Hellenes. The next two passages (1.57-58) speak about the assimilation of Pelasgians in the Hellenic population. They also mention the shift of language from non-Greek to Greek, so that Ionians spoke Greek it is no actual counter-evidence.

Edited by Chilbudios - 13-Sep-2007 at 12:29

I have yet to see any of your so-called evidence.

Originally posted by Chilbudios I don't find any contradiction. In Herodotus' view the Ionians were Pelasgians (in ancient time, ancient to Herodotus, not to us!), and then became Hellenes. The next two passages (1.57-58) speak about the assimilation of Pelasgians in the Hellenic population. They also mention the shift of language from non-Greek to Greek, so that Ionians spoke Greek it is no actual counter-evidence.

Other ancient authors do offer contradictions, and they do tie Greeks (or mythological Greek heroes) to the Pelasgians. So it seems that Pelasgians may either have been an Indo European tribe that was first to migrate in the Balkans, and thus closely related to the Hellenic tribes, or simply the Pre Indo European tribes who were absorbed by the Hellenic tribes.



Dionysus of Halikarnassos "Roman Antiquities" 1.17.2.1

for the Pelasgians too, were a Hellenic race originally from the Peloponnesus

Strabo quotes Hesiod as expanding on the Homeric phrase, calling Dodona "seat of Pelasgians" (fragment 225); he speaks also of the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians, Pelasgus(: Πελασγός), the father of the culture-hero of Arcadia, Lycaon. After Hesiod, a number of early authors flesh out his brief statement. An early genealogist, Asios of Samos, describes Pelasgus as the first man, literally born of the earth to create a race of men. An early poet, Hecataues, makes Pelasgus king of Thessaly (expounding Iliad, 2.681-684); Acusilaus applies this Homeric passage to the Peloponnesian Argos, the Argolid, and engrafts the Hesiodic Pelasgus, father of Lycaon, into a Peloponnesian genealogy.

Hellanicus repeats this identification a generation later, and identifies this Argive or Arcadian Pelasgus with the Thessalian Pelasgus of Hecataeus. Aeschylus regards Pelasgus as earthborn (Supplices I, sqq.), as in Asius, and ruler of a kingdom stretching from Argos to Dodona and the Strymon; but in Prometheus 879, the "Pelasgian" land simply means Argos. Sophocles takes the same view (Inachus, fragment. 256) and for the first time introduces the ethnonym Tyrrhenoi, apparently as synonymous with "Pelasgians". Euripedes calls the inhabitants of Argos Pelasgian Orestes.

So to summarize, the Ionians where Pelasgians according to Herodotus that became Greek, but then so were the Thessalians where Aeolians dwelt, and Argos and Arcadia where the Mycenaeans lived.

So my question is this? Where the Dorians the only non Pelasgians? Or where they Pelasgians as well since they originally lived in the Pindos (Epiros) where Pelasgian Dodona was?

Originally posted by Chilbudios I'm not talking about Illyrians.

Others on this forum are though


Edited by chicagogeorge - 13-Sep-2007 at 13:31

Originally posted by Chilbudios Of course, contradictions can occur any time between any two testimonies (or even within the same testimony), however until a contradiction is shown, there's no reason to postulate an account is (self-)contradictory and suggest it is unreliable. Moreover previously you have used the same account to prove your point.

I use Herodotus because of this passage.

Herodotus 1.58


Τὸ δὲ Ἑλληνικὸν γλώσσῃ μέν, ἐπείτε ἐγένετο, αἰεί κοτε τῇ
αὐτῇ διαχρᾶται, ὡς ἐμοὶ καταφαίνεται εἶναι. Ἀποσχισθὲν
μέντοι ἀπὸ τοῦ Πελασγικοῦ

translation:

"But the Hellenic stock, it seems clear to me, has always
had the same language since its beginning; yet being, when
separated from the Pelasgians"


Why speak of separation, if they were not part of the same people ???

Originally posted by Chilbudios Celts, Slavs or Iranians were also Indo-European-speaking groups, I don't think "closely related" makes much sense in the perspective of Greeks and their "neighbours".

Well we would be speaking of Indo European tribes that migrated along side with the Hellenic tribes. Not tribes that separated much later or went off into a different direction. Phrygian and Armenian tribes are said to be of the same branch with the Hellenic tribes which splintered out of the Proto Indo European family. Why not Pelasgians. We know they were living in the same region. Possibly having an Indo European father deity Zeus Pelasgos.

According to Homer; "Zeus Archon, Dodonean, Pelasgian, who dwells afar, ruling on rough wintered Dodona, surrounded by the Selloi, the interpreters of your divine will, whose feet are unwashed and sleep on the ground".

Homer, Iliad 16:127 (Achilles prayer)

In other words, even during the Trojan war era, Greek (Zeus) and Pelasgians where somehow related at least in a religious aspect.

Like I said, the Pelasgians may be the pre Indo Europeans people of the region, who were quite different in speech and religion to the Greeks, but were absorbed by the Greeks.

Originally posted by Chilbudios I have already answered to that. The full passage is: "But the Hellenic stock, it seems clear to me, has always had the same language since its beginning; yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, few in number, they have grown from a small beginning to comprise a multitude of nations, chiefly because the Pelasgians and many other foreign peoples united themselves with them. Before that, I think, the Pelasgic stock nowhere increased much in number while it was of foreign speech. "   Herodotus says about Hellenic stock the following: "yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, few in number". The logic of this text is "yet being few in number" <- "when separated from the Pelasgians" (or for clarity read it as "when taken/regarded/considered separatedly from the Pelasgians"). So the text doesn't actually say the Hellenic stock was separated from Pelasgians, only that their number is small if one doesn't count the Pelasgians too. The previous paragraph 1.57 enlightens about the Hellenization of Pelasgians.

Here is my problem with the Ionians(Athenians) once being Pelasgian or speaking a completely foreign language, than changing speech and becoming Greek. We have ample knowledge of the Ionian dialect spoken in ancient times. There is NO evidence that the speakers of the Ionian dialect once spoke a foreign language. Wouldn't you think they would have let evidence of Pelasgian gloss and possibly intermixed their original tongue with their adopted Greek language? Unless, the Pelasgian gloss was not that different the Proto Greek?

Originally posted by Chilbudios I do not think Phrygian and Armenian were that close (some scholars even reject it is a satem language and correlate it with Anatolian languages like Hittite or perhaps Luwian - see Cambridge Ancient History II.2, 2000, p. 435) and in any way, to keep the analogy, I still think it's rather inapropriate to call the Phrygian and Armenian populations "closely related".

According to Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov:

The first to branch off was the Greek-Armenian-Indo-lranian language community. It must have begun to do so in the fourth millennium B.C. because by the middle of the third millennium B.C. the community was already dividing into two groups, namely, the Indo-lranian and the Greek-Armenian. Tablets in the Hattusas archives show that by the middle of the second millennium B.C. the Indo-lranian group had given rise to a language spoken in the Mitanni kingdom on the southeast frontier of Anatolia that was already different from ancient Indian (commonly called Sanskrit) and ancient Iranian. Cretan Mycenaean texts from the same eras as Mitanni, deciphered in the early 1950's by the British scholars Michael G. F. Ventris and John Chadwick, fumed out to be in a previously unknown dialect of Greek. All these languages had gone their separate ways from Armenian.
Speakers of the Hittite, Luwian and other Anatolian languages made relatively small migrations within the homeland, and their languages died there with them. The more extensive migrations of speakers of the Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranian dialects began with the breakup of the main Indo-European language community in the third millennium B.C. Two groups of Indo-Iranian speakers made their way East during the second millennium B.C. One of them, speakers of the Kafiri languages, survives to this day in Nuristan, on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush in northeast Afghanistan. In Five Continents, a posthumous book recounting his many botanical expeditions between 1916 and 1933, Vavilov speculated that the Kafirs might perpetuate some "original relics" of Indo-lranian.


Also there are legends...........


There is an ancient story of the Armenian race to this effect: that Armenus of Armenium, a Thessalian city, which lies between Pherae and Larisa on Lake Boebe, as I have already said,26 accompanied Jason into Armenia; and Cyrsilus the Pharsalian and Medius the Larisaean, who accompanied Alexander, say that Armenia was named after him, and that, of the followers of Armenus, some took up their abode in Acilisene, which in earlier times was subject to the Sopheni, whereas others took up their abode in Syspiritis, as far as Calachene and Adiabene, outside the Armenian mountains. They also say that the clothing of the Armenians is Thessalian, for example, the long tunics, which in tragedies are called Thessalian and are girded round the breast; and also the cloaks that are fastened on with clasps, another way in which the tragedians imitated the Thessalians, for the tragedians had to have some alien decoration of this kind; and since the Thessalians in particular wore long robes, probably because they of all the Greeks lived in the most northerly and coldest region, they were the most suitable objects of imitation for actors in their theatrical make-ups. And they say that their style of horsemanship is Thessalian, both theirs and alike that of the Medes. To this the expedition of Jason and the Jasonian monuments bear witness, some of which were built by the sovereigns of the country, just as the temple of Jason at Abdera was built by Parmenion.

Strabo, Geography

Edited by chicagogeorge - 13-Sep-2007 at 17:48

If only early European tribal movements were as simple as the map shows! The dates given are way too late for original movements. Migrations always took place after some natural disaster or other. One group moves out, another group moves in, after generations the old group moves back in again and so on.

The "advanced cultures" to the south were definitely way ahead in building cities and material inventions but lacked a comprehensive common language network. I guess the problem of settling in one place for too long is the gain of a "Tower of Babel" syndrome.

Leonidas and others, i think the matter has been discussed briefly here: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20909 (Origins of Greek and Pelasgian)

Like in the Rennaisance, the Serbians believed to be the Illyrians and their language was believed to be the Illyrian one. The first Greek newspaper "Efimeris" from the late 16th century that was published for the Greek and Serbian community of Vienna attributed the serbian texts as Illyrian

Some similar romance has attracted certain Albanians lately. In the thread I reffered to Greek inscriptions were possed as Pelasgian and was supposed to have an Albanian translation even though the text was plain Greek in the archaic form of the Greek alphabet.

I suggest, in order to not have this chaos posted 12345732457230495 times we keep that post as a milestone and mention in the code of conduct. Otherwise it seems that everyone new that has something to say about the matter will open a new thread each time.

For any doubts of etymological references we have www.etymonline.com which is the richest source of etymologies online, having a great amount of respected dictionaries as a refference.

I wanted to post some pictures from cultures of the neolithic period in the Balcans but it would not have the value expected as in a clean thread.

Originally posted by Flipper Back to the original topic... I was checking the National Geographic Atlas of the human journey which is based on DNA tests. It is clear that the Greek territory was invaded from south and east not from the north like other migrations show. The atlas shows the following Halogroups: - G2 P15: 30000 years ago from Anatolia - M35: 20 000 years ago from Africa - M172: 15000 years ago from Anatolia

For the sake of clarity could you please explain what you mean by being invaded? Who attacked who and what how could there be any evidence if going by the dates you give - ie 15000 years ago?

Being "invaded" from the south and east? First we have this proposed attack and being attacked by what - fleets of Ice Age Anatolian canoes? Granted the sea level may have been much lower but if glancing at a modern map the only land migration route into Greece is from the north.

I am nowhere near a linguist and cannot assess theories of ancient Balkan languages. I have read that the Greek language origininated somewhere in the Balkans, north of Greece. Is it possible that the Neolithic haplotypes in modern Greeks are evidence of a pre-Greek population? If modern Croatians are largely descended from pre-Slavic peoples, why should the modern Greeks not be in part descended from pre-Greek peoples?  Were the most ancient Greek speakers a relatively small military elite, who linguistically influenced their neighbors? Were they like the modern Turks, who are in large part descended from indigenous peoples?

Flipper, it just a minor correction, but it can get confusing to use the word invasion instead of population movement, that makes it sound like  a tale out of an Atlantis legend!

Then the established dates given for Indo-European language only goes back five thousand years. If this dating for languages has changed then let's discuss that. So far as established history is concerned calling on the the Ice Age for who lived where is pushing the envelope too far.