Who were the pre-Greek Greeks?

Factual Questions
1

If I recall from my misspent school days, the civilization we think of as “Greece” arose from Mycenaean settlement of the Greek peninsula a few thousand years BC. It failed to occur to me that there must have been someone else there before them, however, because the term “invaded” was used as a precursor to “settled.”

Who got invaded? And were they decimated and eaten by the Mycenaeans? Were they herded onto reservations? Were they otherwise absorbed into the society of the recent immigrants? What were they like, and why did Greece happen instead of Pre-Greek Greece?

2

Good question, and I honestly don’t know, but you can try this link to find out more

3

I don’t think thats right. IIRC, the traditional view is that the Mycenean’s were pushed out/killed/conquered by the Doric Greeks during the Bronze Age Collapse. The Doric Greeks then gave rise to the Greeks from Socrates to John Stamos.

4

Generally, the Mycenaean culture held sway in mainland Greece until ~1200 BCE, and their decline was part of the general collapse of Braonze-Age culture around this time (speculation is that ironwork made weapons more widely available, leading to larger armies and hence more successful invasions). As Simplicio says, traditionally the invaders were the Doric Greeks.

The distribution of Ionic Greeks in historical times (Asia Minor, Cyprus, etc.) indicates that some of the mainland Greeks simply left after the Dorics invaded. The rise of independent city-states later strongly suggests that there was no unifying culture during the post-Mycenaean “dark age”, so there was no organized effort to assimilate (or decimate) one over the other.

5

Answers to OP discuss the Iron Age invasion after the Myceneans, while OP seems more interested in pre-Mycenean cultures. Of these, most advanced was the Minoan civilization which (despite that the “Thalassocracy of Minos” is widely called “mythical”) had been a dominant sea power for almost ten centuries before falling to Myceneans. AFAIK, it is generally agreed that Minoans did not speak an Indo-European language.

A site that offers easy access without mention of fee, then asks for credit card number after one wastes time typing email and password. Thanks much.
(ETA: tiny fee, but I don’t CC on web.)

6

I do not think anyone has any idea who preceded the Myceneans
in what is now mainland Greece. The people and events are so far
removed from recorded history that even an educated guess might
not ever be possible.

The Dorains bypassed Attica, cite of the Athenian homeland, and made
no initial contact with Ionia in what is now the Turkish Aegean coast.
It probably follows from that they did not take over any of the Aegean islands.

The Isthmus of Corinth and the Peloponnesian Peninsula were I think
the most solidly Dorian areas. I am not sure about Boeotia, Thrace
and other non-Attic areas of the mainland.

7

The Minoan Linear B script is a form of Greek. Per Wiki is appears to be
related to its still undeciphered precursor Linear A.

8

They’re called Pelasgians. The Greek language has lots of Pelasgian loanwords and placenames.

9

:confused: :confused: I think this is the first time I’ve heard of “Minoan Linear B.” It’s

Minoan Linear A
Mycenaean Linear B

10

A lot of pre-Greek substratum is non-Indo-European, and came from some language family/ies that went extinct before any of it was recorded.

But in Asia Minor the substratum was the Anatolian language group, Indo-European relatives of Greek. Some say “Indo-Hittite” instead, to put the Anatolian languages on the same taxonomic level as Indo-European. In other words, the first split of Indo-Hittite divided it into Indo-European and Anatolian. Anatolian languages include Hittite, Lydian, Luwian, Lycian, and Carian. The name Asia itself comes from the Anatolian name Assuwa, which was the northwest of Asia Minor and many centuries later became the Roman province of Asia. A number of Greek mythological names originated in Anatolian languages, including Apollo, Aphrodite, Artemis, Cybele, and Troy.

I am more persuaded by the theory that the Minoan language written in Linear A was of the Anatolian family, probably a form of Bronze-Age Luwian. It was also once proposed that it was a form of Semitic, from Syria. The scholarly consensus today is that Minoan and its descendant Eteocretan are still unclassified.

One other Pelasgian language has a known affiliation: the Lemnian language once spoken on the Aegean island of Lemnos (just northwest of Lesbos) was related to Etruscan. Together they make what’s known as the Tyrrhenian (some call it Tyrsenian) language family. The pre-Greek language of Cyprus, Eteocypriot, is also unclassified but it may be related to Tyrrhenian or maybe to Northwest Semitic via Syria. The Etruscans originated from Anatolia and were part of the migrations of a number of peoples in and around Asia Minor during the late Bronze Age, many of them westward to Italy.

The Elymians who settled in western Sicily likewise originated from Asia Minor. The Sicels, the pre-Greek nation in eastern Sicily, had immigrated there from Italy and spoke an Italic language related to Latin.

The pre-Indo-European substrate in Anatolia, before the Hittites appeared, was Hattic, which may be related to the Northwest Caucasian languages.

11

I’ve always heard it as “Minoan Linear B”. I mean, it’s not like they went extinct – there had to be enough of the predecessor community left to make writing the new language in the old alphabet a worthwhile endeavor. I doubt the Mycenaeans came in and said, “these people we conquered – they had a pretty sweet syllabary, so let’s use it for our language”.

12

Thanks for the amazing post!

How do Ionian and Aeolian roots of people contribute to the pre-historic Greek social establishment?

13

What a great website – thanks, Johanna! Its creator, Ray (Ignatius) Armar Brown takes you through the process of partial decipherment of a few fragmentary inscriptions, so you feel like YOU’RE making the discoveries. Also, Armar Brown is cautious and skeptical, which is rare in the “decipherment of mysterious ancient texts” world.

Anyway, spending half an hour at that website should give the OP as good a feel as anything for pre-Greek substrate language(s) in the Aegean area. (Might want to check out those awesome inscribed Etruscan mirrors, next.)

14

:smiley:

You asked about prehistoric, but one thing came to mind from protohistoric Greek times. When Greek culture emerged from its dark age and began developing toward classical civilization, a lot of their cultural inspiration and input came from the already old Anatolian civilizations in the regions of Ionia and Aeolia. For example, the high culture described in the poets of Lesbos 600 BC, Sappho and Alcaeus, is something they got from Anatolia. BTW, the name Anatolia is Greek for Land of the Rising Sun.

Ancient Greek poetry was modeled on Anatolian poetry. Homer, Sappho, and Alcaeus drew on the older, more advanced civilizations of Asia Minor for their artistic heritage. It was Anatolian civilization that lifted the Greeks out of their Dark Age.

Sappho and Alcaeus “enjoyed a highly civilized and pleasure-filled life, which may have been influenced by that of nearby Lydia.” (cite: Jacqueline de Romilly, Précis de Littérature grècque)

15

The traditional view is that the Dorians invaded Greece from somewhere else, overthrowing the established civilization (or at least filling in the cultural gap after its collapse), right? But where is it supposed they invaded from?

You know how you can be possessed of an idea without knowing its origin? For some reason, I’ve heard or read that the Dorians were not invaders or migrants, but may have occupied Greece and the Aegean islands all along as an ethnically distinct tribe or group of tribes. They only become noticeable in history after the Mycenaean civilization fades. Basically, the population centers were certainly inundated by barbarians, but just local barbarians.

From what I’ve read, I’m convinced the Israelite tribes’ “invasion” of Canaan was essentially the rise of one Canaanite group to minor regional dominance, and the “Dorian Invasion” don’t sound all that dissimilar.

If I’m off-base, please set me straight.

16

First, thank you so much for your historical knowledge.

Second,

I sincerely doubt that even if the Greeks drew from any Anatolia sources, the sources they drew from were as sophisticated as the Greek cultural creations.

It does not make sense to witness such an amazing cultural development in the ancient Greek reality, and assume the same reality existed anywhere else before them.

Some individual subjects may have existed as objects for worship. But the Greeks developed a philosophy of worship or reason, that did not exist before they did.

:slight_smile:

17

It is true that there is no archaeological evidence of “Doric invasions”. The Greek tradition is really the only source supporting it. But there’s no archaeological evidence of Scots taking over Scotland, either, so lack of evidence does not prove a negative.

18

I meant “doesn’t”. :smack: That sentence went through a few edits (and subpar proofreading) before posting. I usually wouldn’t bother correcting this, but it’s the kind of mistake that really gets under my skin.

19

While you have a point, I think Johanna was referring to some aspects of “sophistication”, while you are thinking about different ones.

To give a very closely related example, the Romans drew a lot of inspiration for some important, sophisticated cultural things (writing, literature*, how to predict the future) from the non-I-E-“substrate” Etruscans…yet the Romans obviously went much, much further in many other marks of “sophistication”, from government to military technology to civil engineering.

*probably an Etruscan word, I’ve been told

20

I don’t matter much. I mean, it’s not as if there’s any real attention focused on language in this here thread no how. :smiley:

I’m getting the sense the info I really want (who was there before the Greek-talkers, what were they like, and what happened to them) is going to be frustratingly lacking in detail because, as was mentioned upthread, it’s prehistorical. What we think we know is going to be based on sleuthing into a mosaic of scarce physical evidence of traces of ancient cultures, peculiar language family anomalies, and comparison of myths/one-sided oral accounts of what happened thousands of years before any of that “history” was written down. That about it?

Nevertheless, fascinating info so far and I’ll willingly take in what the Dope has to offer.