Etruscan / Pelasgian

[philjennings at juno.com]

Readers on this topic might be interested in an essay by Ardian
Vehbiu.  I doubt I could exaggerate the wisdom here.  I blush to admit
I once spent money to buy one of the Mayani books!

The Internet address is:

http://members.aol.com/plaku/origins.htm

It turns out that the force of the ideas we use to politely probe each
other, can ingratiate con-artists to tyrants, and goad ethnic groups
to hooliganism.  The only innocents among us are those who speak
exclusively of velar fricatives and laryngeals.

I wish it were not so.   If only because I haven't the background to
say a thing about velar fricatives and laryngeals.

I have investigated what "Pelasgian" means to the greater world
beyond linguistics.  It appears that Greeks are quite willing to
accept the Pelasgians as their earliest genos, using the word in a
sense to mean, the earliest element in our compound substance.

The Pelasgian creation myth is fundamental.  If the Pelasgians of
the Mediterranean linguistic substratum cannot be linked to the
idea of a dancing goddess who whirls up a wind and turns him into
a phallic snake and by him bears an egg and so forth, ending up
in the creation of humans from the serpent's teeth, then the true
ownership of the term "Pelasgian" is clouded.

But it began for us by being clouded anyway.  We might as well
go forward as back.

Regarding the Lesghianism of the Pelasgians and the Leleges,
there does seem to be a "le" at the root of these Aegean
ethnonyms, and a "Le" at the root of Lemnos and Lesbos as well.
I can almost hear it happening in English, that if a culture
straddled two islands beginning with "la", we'd call them the
"la-la-people."  It would be a clever name.  I wonder if "Leleges" is
a clever name.

There are also the Laz, if we have to go as far as the Caucasus.
They speak a Kartvellian language, one step closer to the Aegean.
What's the advantage of one over the other?