Pelasgians Classical Greek Uses Of "Pelasgian" Modern Theories

The name "Pelasgians" first appears in the poems of Homer: the Pelasgians appear in the Iliad among the allies of Troy. In the section known to scholars as The Catalogue of Ships, which otherwise preserves a strict geographical order, they stand between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of south-east Europe, i.e. on the Hellespontine border of Thrace (2.840-843). Homer calls their town or district " Larissa" 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 Teutamus. Iliad, 10.428-429, describes their camping ground between the town of Troy and the sea; but this obviously proves nothing about their habitat in time of peace.

Odyssey, 17.175-177, places the Pelasgians in Crete, together with two apparently indigenous and two immigrant peoples ( Achaeans and Dorians), but gives no indication to which class the Pelasgians belong. LemnosLemnos (mod. Limnos), an island in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. The island, part of the Greek prefecture of Lesbos, is of considerable size: the area has been estimated at 150 sq. A great part is mountainous, but some very fertile valleys exist. (Iliad, 7.467; 14. 230) has no Pelasgians, but a MinyanSee Minyan (disambiguation) for other meanings of the term. In Greek mythology and legendary prehistory of the Aegean region, the Minyans were a group among the original autochthonous inhabitants. Modern archaeologists sometimes apply the term "Minyans" d dynasty. Two other passages (Iliad, 2.681-684; 16.233-235) apply the epithet "Pelasgic" to a district called Argos about Mount OthrysIn Greek mythology Mount Othrys was the base of the Titans during the ten year war with the Olympian Gods known as the Titanomachy. in southern ThessalyThessaly (Θεσσαλια; modern Greek Thessalia is one of the 13 peripheries of Greece, and is further sub-divided into 4 prefectures. The capital of the periphery is Larissa. The prefecture lies in central Gre, and to the temple of ZeusZeus Kronios (descendant of Cronus), or simply Zeus or Zdeus ( Greek ) or Dias (Greek ) ("divine king") is the leader of the gods and god of the sky and thunder in Greek mythology. Etymology Zeus is the continuation of Dyeus, the supreme god in Indo-Europ at DodonaAt Dodona (ancient Greek: modern Dodoni in Epirus, northwestern Greece, was a prehistoric oracle devoted to the Greek god, Zeus and the Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione. The shrine of Dodona was the oldest. But neither passage mentions actual Pelasgians; Hellenes and Achaeans specifically people the Thessalian Argos, and Dodona hosts Perrhaebians and Aenianes (Iliad, 2.750) who are nowhere described as Pelasgian. It looks therefore as if "Pelasgian" were here used connotatively, to mean either "formerly occupied by Pelasgians" or simply "of immemorial age."

He alludes to other districts where Pelasgian peoples lived on under changed names; Samothrace and Antandrus in Troas probably provide instances of this. In discussing Lemnos and Imbros he describes a Pelasgian population whom the Athenians conquered only shortly before 500 BC, and in connection with this he tells a story of earlier raids of these Pelasgians on Attica, and of a temporary settlement there of Hellespontine Pelasgians, all dating from a time "when the Athenians were first beginning to count as Greeks."

Elsewhere "Pelasgian" in Herodotus connotes anything typical of, or surviving from, the state of things in Greece before the coming of the Greeks. (In this sense one could regard all Greece as formerly "Pelasgic".) The clearest instances of Pelasgian survivals in ritual and customs and antiquities occur in Arcadia, the "Ionian" districts of the north-west Peloponnese, and Attica, which have suffered least from hellenization. In Athens itself the prehistoric wall of the Acropolis and a plot of ground close below it received veneration in the 5th century as "Pelasgian"; so too Thucydides (2.17).

We may note that all Herodotus' examples of actual Pelasgi lie round, or near, the actual Pelasgi of Homeric Thrace; that the testimony of Thucydides (4.106) confirms the most distant of these as to the Pelasgian and Tyrrhenian population of the adjacent seaboard: also that Thucydides adopts the same general Pelasgian theory of early Greece, with the refinement that he regards the Pelasgian name as originally specific, and as having come gradually into this generic use.

The historian Ephorus preserves a passage from Hesiod that attests to a tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian people in Arcadia, and developed a theory of the Pelasgians as a warrior-people spreading from a "Pelasgian home", and annexing and colonizing all the parts of Greece where earlier writers had found allusions to them, from Dodona to Crete and the Troad, and even as far as Italy, where again their settlements had been recognized as early as the time of Hellanicus, in close connection once more with "Tyrrhenians."

The copious additional information given by later writers all either interprets local legends in the light of Ephorus's theory, or explains the name "Pelasgoi"; as when Philochorus expands a popular etymology "stork-folk" into a theory of their seasonal migrations; or Apollodorus says that Homer calls Zeus 'Pelasgian' "because he is not far from every one of us".

The connection with Tyrrhenians which began with Hellanicus, Herodotus and Sophocles becomes confusion with them in the 3rd century, when the Lemnian pirates and their Attic kinsmen become plainly styled as Tyrrhenians, and early fortress-walls in Italy (like those on the Palatine Hill in Rome) appear as "Arcadian" colonies. The character of the ancient citadel wall at Athens has given the name "Pelasgic masonry" to all constructions of large, unhewn blocks fitted together with mortar, from Asia Minor to Spain, the massive character one might similarly call " cyclopean".

2 Modern Theories

From a tribal name, both Classical historians and archeologists have come to use the name "Pelasgian" to describe the inhabitants in the lands around the Aegean Sea and their descendants before the arrival of the waves of Greek-speaking invaders during the 2nd millennium BC. The results of archaeological excavations at Çatalhöyük by James Mellaart (1955) and F. Schachermeyr (1979) led them to conclude that the Pelasgians had migrated from Asia Minor to the Aegean basin in the 4th millennium BC. Further, scholars have attributed a number of non- Indo-European linguistic and cultural features to the Pelasgians:

Groups of non-Indo-European loan words in the Greek language, borrowed in its prehistoric development
Non-Greek place names in the region containing the consonantal strings "-nth-" (e.g. Corinth) or "-tt-" in the peninsula of Attica, or with "-ss-" (e.g. Larissa)
Certain mythological stories or deities (usually goddesses) that have no parallel to the mythologies of other Indo-European peoples like the Germans, Celts or Indians.
A small number of non-Greek inscriptions, the best-known found on Lemnos. These inscriptions use a version of the western Greek alphabet similar to that used in Etruscan inscriptions.

Not all of these features belong to the same people. For example, some evidence suggests that the "-ss-" placenames may have come from a language related to Hittite (for example: Parnassus may be related to the Hittite word parna- or "house"). Because of insufficient evidence from the 2nd millennium BC, no consensus exists on the relationship of these "Pelasgian" elements to their neighbors -- although much speculation has taken place, sometimes fueled by a desire for association with some of the earliest known inhabitants of Europe.

The poet and mythologist Robert Graves, in his works on Greek mythology, 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. Mainstream scholarship considers Graves' thesis at best controversial, although certain literary circles and many neo-pagan groups have accepted it.

The French author Zacharia Mayani (1899 - ) put forth a thesis that the Etruscan language had links to the Albanian language. The Albanian régime of Enver Hoxha embraced this theory for propaganda reasons, and extended it to include the Pelasgians in this association. Mainstream scholars have paid Mayani's arguments little serious attention.

A Turkish scholar, Polat Kaya, has recently offered a translation of one of the inscriptions on Lemnos, based on his theory that it reflects a language related to Turkish. However, in the period of the putative date of the inscription the Turkish people lived several thousand miles away in southeastern Siberia. They began to migrate westward only about AD 300, a fact that has hindered acceptance of Kaya's translation.

Perhaps the least unlikely theory connects at least some of the Pelasgians with the Iberian-Caucasian cultures of the prehistoric Caucasus, known to the Greeks as Colchis. Numerous Georgian scholars -- including M.G. Tseretheli, R.V. Gordeziani, M. Abdushelishvili, and Dr. Zviad Gamsakhurdia -- claim both linguistic and anthropological similarities between the Pelasgians and the early inhabitants of the Caucasus -- as well as with almost every known non-Indo-European language in Europe.

The question awaits a definitive resolution, however. As Donald A. Mackenzie, writes (in Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, 1917, page 75):

"Before these [Hellenic] invaders entered into possession of the country [of Greece] it had been divided between various "barbarous tribes", including the Pelasgi and their congeners the Caucones and Leleges. Thirlwall, among others, expressed the view "that the name Pelasgians was a general one, like that of Saxons, Franks, or Alemanni, and that each of the Pelasgian tribes had also one peculiar to itself". The Hellenes did not exterminate the aborigines, but constituted a military aristocracy. Aristotle was quoted to show that their original seat was near Dodona, in Epirus, and that they first appeared in Thessaly about 1384 B.C. It was believed that the Hellenic conquerors laid the foundation of Greek civilization."

We moderns, less well grounded in the Classics, may also show less confidence in such authoritative and exact dates for the entry of the Indo-European speakers into peninsular Greece. Mackenzie continues, quoting George Grote:

"By what circumstances, or out of what pre-existing elements, the aggregate was brought together and modified, we find no evidence entitled to credit. There are, indeed, various names affirmed to designate the ante-Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece--the Pelasgi, the Leleges, the Kuretes, the Kaukones, the Aones , the Temmikes , the Hyantes, the Telchines, the Bœotian Thracians , the Teleboæ , the Ephyri , the Phlegyæ , &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."

3 Links and References

Donald A. Mackenzie, Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, 1917 reviewed
Dr. Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The Spiritual Mission of Georgia
M.G. Abdushelishvili. The genesis of the aboriginal population of the Caucasus in the light of anthropological data (a monograph), Tokyo, 1968
J. Melaart. The Neolithic of the Near East, London, 1975
F. Schachermeyr. Die Agaische Fruezeit. Forschungsbericht über die Ausgrabungen im letzten Jahrzehnt und über ihre Ergebnisse für unser Geschichtsbild. Bd. I. Die Vormikenischen Perioden des Griechischen Festlandes und der Kykladen, Vienna, 1979
M.G. Tseretheli. Das Sumerische und das Georgische.- Revue de Kartvelologie, No 32-33, Paris, 1959
E.J. Furnee. Vorgriechisch-Kartvelisches: Studium zum ostmediterranen Subtrat nebst einem Versuch zu einer neuen pelasgischen Theorie, Leuven-Louvian, 1979
E.J. Furnee. Lexikalische Beziehungen zwischen Baskisch, Burusaski, Kartwelisch und Vorgriechisch.- Georgica, Jena-Tbilisi, B. 5, 1982
Rismag Gordeziani. Pre-Grecian and Georgian, Tbilisi, 1985 (in Georgian, German summary)
Akaki Urushadze. The Country of the Enchantress Media, Tbilisi, 1984, 25 pp (in Russian and English)

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Home > Pelasgians

1 Classical Greek uses of "Pelasgian"

2 Modern Theories

3 Links and References

Topics: Pelasgians, Classical Greek Uses Of "Pelasgian", Modern Theories...