Once the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited by peoples who were gradually supplanted by the Greeks, who built one of the most famous ancient civilizations. Those who lived in these lands before were called by the Greeks by a common name - Pelasgi. History has preserved not much information about them.
It is best to start looking for the disappeared Pelasgians with the works of the great ancient Greek poet Homer - "Iliad" and "Odyssey". He lived at a time when the distant past of Hellas had not yet had time to completely "cool down". And he knew something about the Pelasgians. They, as the poet knew, were allies of the Trojans during the famous war that broke out over the beautiful Elena. The capital of the Pelasgians was a city called Larissa.
Barbarians or sages?
There are several cities with this name in Greece. Larissa, a native of the Pelasgian military leader Hippophoi, was most likely somewhere in Thessaly. That is, in the northeast of Greece, on the shores of the Aegean Sea. As well as the Pelasgian city of Argos mentioned by Homer. Not far from Thessaly, in nearby Epirus, was the famous sanctuary of Zeus, known as Zeus of Pelasgius. It is Epirus that many consider the ancestral home of the Pelasgians. From there they settled throughout the Balkan Peninsula, and then were expelled and assimilated by the Achaeans, the ancient Greeks.
According to another version, the ancient homeland of the Pelasgians was Arcadia, located in the center of the Peloponnese. It was there that King Pelasgus was born, whose descendants ruled Arcadia. Some Greek poets generally considered Pelasgus to be the first person born by the Earth itself. All eastern Greece was under the rule of Pelasgus. At first, his country was called Pelasgia, and then received the name of Thessaly.
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Then the origin of the ancestor of the Pelasgians from Mother Earth was replaced by a new myth. Pelasgus became the son of Zeus by Niobe, a mere mortal (albeit a royal daughter). Pelasgus chose the daughter of Ocean as his wife, and so a family of kings arose who conquered the entire Peloponnese.
But then the Balkans were conquered by the Greek tribes, and the Pelasgians had to move. Homer showed an echo of such a migration, naming Pelasgians among the inhabitants of Crete. Another wave of resettlement settled on the lands of the future Italy. There they captured the city of Crotona, then moved inland and concentrated the main forces in Tyrrenia, whose second name was Etruria. From the new homeland, the Pelasgians received a new name - the Etruscans.
Herodotus believed that the Pelasgians were barbarians, just as all the ancient peoples of Greece were barbarians. They fought with each other, exterminated, put to flight, won and suffered defeats … until they merged into a single people who spoke the same language. The Pelasgians also lost their national identity and turned into Greeks.
Before the Greeks, the Balkans and islands were inhabited by the Lydians, Carians, Cavnians, Lycians, Leleges, Tyrsenes, Bisalts, Crestonians, Edons - not only Pelasgians. When the peninsula became Greek, the most significant peoples were the Dorians, who founded Sparta and received the name of the Lacedaemonians, and the Ionians, who built Athens.
It is known that the inhabitants of many islands tried to settle in Greece. Many historians, contrary to Herodotus, admit that the cultural level of the Pelasgians was significantly higher than that of the future Greeks. However, the barbarians won. Obviously, they were not very attracted to the neighborhood with advanced aliens.
Ethereal shadow
Ancient Athens originated on the site of the Pelasgian city. Once there were unkempt lands, on which the Pelasgians erected a city with a protective wall. The Ionians really liked the city, especially the wall. They agreed with the Pelasgians to exchange lands. The Greeks received Athens, the Pelasgians settled to Mount Hymettus. But envy is the worst of vices. Seeing how quickly the barren wasteland turned into a beautiful garden, the Athenians drove the Pelasgians out of the Balkans - to the island of Lemnos. They stayed on the island for a long time, but were then driven out by the Greek fleet. The Athenians never came out with peaceful neighbors. The Pelasgians were constantly driven from their homes. Only the powerful walls that surrounded their settlements, such as in Athens, Argos, Mycenae, remained of them. The Greeks called these walls with huge stone blocks - pelasgic.
Some ancient historians believed that the very name of the Pelasgians came from the word "pelarg", which translates as "stork". They called the impregnable walls "pelargicon", that is, "stork's nest". Much later, the letter "r" turned into "s" - and instead of the Pelargians, the builders of the impregnable "stork nests", the Pelasgians appeared - the peoples who inhabited Greece before the Greeks. Historians had little to say about their language - it was barbaric. In other words, it was different from the Greek so that a translator was required.
As for the places of settlement of the Pelargs, or Pelasgians, this is even worse. Historians even mentioned that they were the people of the diaspora, that is, the Pelasgians founded their cities everywhere and then left them. Allegedly, there is not a single place in the Mediterranean, where they have not visited: Crete, Peloponnese, Attica, Boeotia, Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, Mediterranean islands, Asia Minor, Italy. Each historian defended his own version of the resettlement of the missing people.
The version of the origin of the Pelasgians can be chosen for absolutely every taste. The Pelasgians came from the south. The Pelasgians came from the north. The Pelasgians came from the east. The Pelasgians came from the west. The Pelasgians did not come from anywhere, but originated on Greek soil. The past centuries have not given an unequivocal answer to the question of who the Pelasgians are and where they came from (or did not come from anywhere at all). Back in the 19th century, one of the leading seekers of the Pelasgians compared them to a shadow that has no historical authenticity.
A language that is silent
Today - alas! - the shadow remains a shadow. Some believe that the Pelasgians did not exist at all, others think that they were the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans, and others that they were generally the ancestors of the Berbers, that is, Africans. But the most revered hypothesis is that the Pelasgians belonged to one of the "peoples of the sea" and in other historical epochs were called the Philistines. A hypothesis that has every right to exist, since it combines several features characteristic of the Pelasgians at once.
The very name "Philistines" is a corrupted Hebrew word "pelishtim", that is, "immigrant." The ancient texts, listing the "peoples of the sea", indicate both the Pelasgians, and their allied Danaans, Tirsen, Trojans … The kinship can be traced not only in the names, but also in the peculiarities of construction. It is for the "peoples of the sea" that the construction of cyclopean structures of this type is characteristic. But the strangest thing is in the language structure.
From the Pelasgians, several short stone inscriptions and a more solid Lemnos stele have come down to us. So far, no one has been able to read this inscription, although many have tried. Linguists made only one conclusion: the Pelasgian language is very close to the languages of the Etruscans and Cypriots. Such similarities can only exist between related languages. Perhaps, if we can decipher the language of the Etruscans, we will be able to read the little that remains of the Pelasgians. However, the reading of Etruscan inscriptions, of which a great many have survived, is bad. To read them, they probably used all known languages, including Russian. Everyone, of course, understands that the latter is extraordinary stupidity, but the decoders even managed to get coherent, albeit completely wild in content, texts.
The picture is about the same with the Eteocyprian languages. So until scientists come across some analogue of the Rosetta stone, from which Egyptology began, the Pelasgian language will remain completely dead, a dumb language. And, consequently, the history of the Pelasgians will remain the history of an unknown people, who came from nowhere and who left without knowing where.
Even about the Etruscans, whose language we do not know, there is a lot to tell from archaeological data. It is much worse with the Pelasgians - their artifacts can hardly be separated from the artifacts left by the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the confusion of artifacts points to the very confusion of cultures that gave birth to Ancient Greece? Visual proof of the transformation of the Pelasgian barbarians into refined Greeks? Or, on the contrary, proof of the borrowing of the great culture of their predecessors by the Dorians and Ionians? Another unanswered question.
Mikhail ROMASHKO