GREEK PREHISTORY AND LANGUAGE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/15/99 1:18:35 AM, rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu wrote:

<<The arrival of the Greeks may not have disrupted the local culture
in any great way e.g. ... or.... a continuous arrival of technologically less
advanced people whose language was adopted by the elite>>

Good point.  One archaeologist who was active in the area has described to me
what he would dig for to test what he calls the Greeks as "migrant workers"
hypothesis.  He's mentioned it on a list and got a consensus answer that a
truly transient population probably would leave no material remains that
could be correctly identified as separate from the culture that was "hosting"
them.

A separate issue is really whether our latest picture is now "favoring" a
different theory altogether of how Greek (the language) got to Greece.  The
evidence points only to a signficant "migration" from Anatolia, but does that
tell us anything about the language question?

With regard to your peaceful influx scenario - like the Lefkandi I migration
starting about 2500BC that seems to be the only clearly identifiable one of
the EH/early MH period - Herodotus says that the inhabitants of Attica were
all originally "Pelagasians" who voluntarily adopted the Greek language
because it was to their mercantile advantage (which is consistent with one of
Mallory's formulas for the spread of IE.)

Someone else brought up however that the situation might be analogous to the
Slavic invasions of the Balkans.  For a long time, it was commonly said that
the Balkans had been depopulated and the Slavs had merely moved in.  It was
only after the events were synced up properly with the Byzantine records that
it started becoming plain that the old towns and manufacturing facilities of
the Balkans were not abandoned, they were attacked and rather thoroughly
destroyed.  But apparently the invading "southern" Slavs used only
degradeable wooden utensils and imported or looted metal tools and
weapons,etc., - and very little ceramics or uniquely native metalwork - so
that a gap appears in the stratigraphy.

Prehistory would be stuck in such situations, because archaeology can only
recover what is recoverable.  So it's correct to say that "the absence of
evidence" - an important issue - is not always enough to preclude the fact
that an event like the Greek "northern" migration happened.  All we can say
is that the material evidence of it can't be identified.

Regards,
Steve Long