GREEK PREHISTORY AND LANGUAGE

[Stanley Friesen]

At 03:48 PM 10/6/99 -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>I'm not sure what sites or culture are being spoken of above.  But there is
>no special break in "cultural tradition" - except one - that occurs during
>this time.  More importantly, there is a continuity in many aspects of the
>early Greek material culture that remain consistent right from the end of the
>Neolithic (about 3500BC) through to the end of the Middle Helladic (about
>1500BC).

I sometimes think the critics of linguistic archaeology make too much of
this sort of continuity.  In a mixing of cultures in which one language
eventually displaces another, *naturally* many aspects of the culture of
the "losing" language will persist afterwards.

In the Pacific islands, the replacement of many of the Polynesian languages
by various European Creoles was *not* accompanied by a complete
"europeanization" of these islands.  Quite the contrary.  Even to this day
the peoples of these islands still retain many of the cultural practices
from before, and continue to make many of the same cultural artifacts (e.g.
stone heads).  A future archeologist is likely to argue that "there is a
continuity in many aspects of the Pacific island material culture ...".

>Based on the evidence above, there is nothing to preclude the conjecture that
>"Greeks were in Greece" during or even before the Neolithic.  If one connects
>PIE with the first appearance of agriculture (a la Renfrew), then that could
>move the date of "proto-Greek" or its ancestors being in mainland Greece back
>towards 7000BC.

Except that Renfrew can only reach this "conclusion" by ignoring many facts
about PIE that are quite secure (e.g. the universality of *ekwos, and the
original distinction between wlkwos and kuoon) and which are inconsistent
with what is known about early Neolithic culture (no domesticated equids
and no domesticated dog).

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com