Pelasgians by Levan Urushadze

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This is a signed article by Dr. Levan Urushadze. It may be edited for spelling errors or typos, but not for substantive content except by its author. If you have created a user name and verified your identity provided you have set forth your credentials on your user page, you can add comments to the bottom of this article as Wikinfo:Peer review.

Pelasgians were ancient, non-Indo-European peoples of Greece (Aegean basin) and Asia Minor in the 4th-1st millennia BC.

The name Pelasgian first appears in the poems of Homer, where they are mentioned in the Iliad among the allies of Troy. In the section known to scholars as The Catalogue of Ships, which is otherwise in strict geographical order, they stand between the Hellespontine towns and the Thracians of south-east Europe, i.e. on the Hellespontine border of Thrace (2.840-843). Their town or district is called Larissa and is fertile, and they are celebrated for their spearmanship. Their chiefs are Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus son of Teutamus. Iliad, 10.428-429, describes their camping ground between the town of Troy and the sea; but this obviously proves nothing about their habitat in time of peace.

Hesiod is quoted by Strabo as expanding on the Homeric phrase, calling Dodona "seat of Pelasgians" (fr. 225); he speaks also of a person named Pelasgus, the father of the culture-hero of Arcadia, Lycaon. After Hesiod, a number of early authors flesh out this brief statement. An early genealogist, Asius, describes Pelasgus as the first man, literally born of the earth to create a race of men. An early poet, Hecataeus, makes Pelasgus king of Thessaly (expounding Iliad, 2.681-684); Acusilaus applies this Homeric passage to the Peloponnesian Argos, and engrafts the Hesiodic Pelasgus, father of Lycaon, into a Peloponnesian genealogy.

Herodotus, like Homer, has a denotative as well as a connotative use. He describes actual Pelasgians surviving and mutually intelligible (a) at Placie and Scylace on the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont, and (b) near Creston on the Strymon; in the latter area they have "Tyrrhenian" neighbors (Persian Wars 1.57). He alludes to other districts where Pelasgian peoples lived on under changed names; Samothrace and Antandrus in Troas are probably instances of this. In discussing Lemnos and Imbros, he describes a Pelasgian population who were only conquered by Athens shortly before 500 BC, and in connection with this he tells a story of earlier raids of these Pelasgians on Attica, and of a temporary settlement there of Hellespontine Pelasgians, all dating from a time "when the Athenians were first beginning to count as Greeks."

The results of archaeological excavations in Asia Minor by J. Mellaart (1975) and F. Schachermeyr (1979) led them to conclude that the Pelasgians had migrated from Asia Minor to the Aegean basin in the 4th millennium BC.

Perhaps the least unlikely theory connects at least some of the Pelasgians with the Iberian-Caucasian cultures of the ancient Caucasus, known to the Greeks as the Colchis. Dutch Professor E. J. Furnee and numerous Georgian scholars, who include M. G. Tseretheli, R. V. Gordeziani, M. Abdushelishvili, and Dr. Zviad Gamsakhurdia claim both linguistic and anthropological similarities between the Pelasgians and the early inhabitants of the Caucasus—as well as with almost every known non-Indo-European language in Europe. Homer knew about the existence of Aea-Colchis and Colchian (west-Georgian) tribes. In the Iliad (II, 856), Halyzones, a Pelasgo-Colchian tribe is mentioned for the first time: "Halyzones came from the eastern silver-making town of Halyb". Strabo identifies the tribe of Halyzones with the ancient Georgian (Colchian) tribe of Halybes (Georgian form: Khaldi), who were famous for iron making.

Links and References

  • Dr. Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The Spiritual Mission of Georgia
  • M. G. Abdushelishvili. The genesis of the aboriginal population of the Caucasus in the light of anthropological data (a monograph), Tokyo, 1968
  • J. Melaart. The Neolithic of the Near East, London, 1975
  • F. Schachermeyr. Die Agaische Fruezeit. Forschungsbericht uber die Ausgrabungen im letzten Jahrzehnt und uber ihre Ergebnisse fur unser Geschichtsbild. Bd. I. Die Vormikenischen Perioden des Griechischen Festlandes und der Kykladen, Wien, 1979
  • M. G. Tseretheli. Das Sumerische und das Georgische.- Revue de Kartvelologie, No 32-33, Paris, 1959
  • E. J. Furnee. Vorgriechisch-Kartvelisches: Studium zum ostmediterranen Subtrat nebst einem Versuch zu einer neuen pelasgischen Theorie, Leuven-Louvian, 1979
  • E. J. Furnee. Lexikalische Beziehungen zwischen Baskisch, Burusaski, Kartwelisch und Vorgriechisch.- Georgica, Jena-Tbilisi, B. 5, 1982
  • Rismag Gordeziani. Pre-Grecian and Georgian, Tbilisi, 1985 (in Georgian, German summary)
  • Akaki Urushadze. "The Country of the Enchantress Media", Tbilisi, 1984, 25 pp (in Russian and English)


References

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