THE GODD&')S AND THE HORSEMEN A discussion of the origins of the Greek Language (original) (raw)

In Classical times, it was believed by many that the Hellenes had originated with ,.. Hellen. That meant that the Greeks had been around longer than anyone else, for ,..-Hellen was the firstborn son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the parents of all man r kind... to ancient scholars the story symbolized the larger truth that the Greeks had lived in Greece since earliest times (Drews, 1988: 3) In the discussion to follow, two basic questions concerning the origins of the Greek language will be addressed: (1) who were the original speakers of the language which is now referred to as r Greek, and (2) how did their language come to dominate and/or characterize a particular region ,..-and people. An examination of some of the issues surrounding the origins and movements of the (Proto) Indo-Europeans, emphasizing the coming of the Greeks to Greece-will address the first ,.. question. Other issues to be considered will include the re-evaluation of traditional theories which , have envisioned the spread of the Indo-European (and Greek) languages as an essentially histori ,.. cally unprecedented "Volkswanderung", or mass migration-an idea which will be seen to rest on ,.. questionable scholarly presuppositions concerning the Aryan race (Drews, 1988, Eisler, 1987). , It will be argued that a more plausible explanation for the development of the Indo-European , languages from a (hypothetical) proto-language (i.e. Proto-Indo-European, or PIE) may be derived , from processes both attested to in records of the period, and having analogues throughout history. , These processes will be seen to include small scale immigration and/or military takeovers. The lin r guistic and archaeological evidence presented will demonstrate that the coming of the Greeks to ,..-Greece may best be characterized in terms of military conquest (or "takeover" in the terms of ,.. Drews, 1988) by a relatively small number of warrior kings, who by virtue of their superiority in chariot warfare were able to impose their language and/or culture on the pre-Greek Minoan civili ,..