The Proto-Ionians are the hypothetical earliest speakers of the Ionic dialects of Ancient Greek, chiefly in the works of Jean Faucounau. The relation of Ionic to the other Greek dialects has been subject to some debate. It is mostly grouped with Arcadocypriot as opposed to Doric, reflecting two waves of migration into Greece following the Proto-Greek period, but sometimes also as separate from Arcadocypriot on equal footing with Doric, suggesting three distinct waves of migration.
Mainstream Greek linguistics separates the Greek dialects into two large genetic groups, one including Doric Greek and the other including both Arcadocypriot and Ionic Greek. But alternative approaches proposing three groups are not uncommon; Thumb and Kieckers (1932) propose three groups, classifying Ionic as genetically just as separate from Arcadocypriot as from Doric. Like a few other linguists (Vladimir Georgiev, C. Rhuijgh, P. Léveque, etc.), the bipartite classification is known as the "Risch–Chadwick theory", named after its two famous proponents, Ernst Risch and John Chadwick.
The "Proto-Ionians" first appear in the work of Ernst Curtius (1887), who believed that the Attic-Ionic dialect group was due to an "Ionicization" of Attica by immigration from Ionia in historical times. Curtius hypothesized that there had been a "Proto-Ionian" migration from the Balkans to western Anatolia in the same period that brought the Arcadic dialect (the successor of the Mycenean Greek stage yet undiscovered in the time of Curtius) to mainland Greece. Curtius' hypothesis was endorsed by George Hempl in 1920. Hempl preferred to call these hypothetical, early Anatolian Greeks "Javonians". Hempl attempted to defend a reading of Hittite cuneiform as Greek, in spite of the establishment of the Hittite language as a separate branch of Indo-European by Hrozný in 1917.
The tripartite theory was revived by amateur linguist Jean Faucounau. In his view, the first Greek settlers in their historical territory were the (Pelasgic) "proto-Ionians", who were separated around 3000 BC from both the proto-Dorians and the proto-Mycenaeans. Faucounau traces this three-wave model to similar views put forward by Paul Kretschmer in the 1890s and the 1900s (i.e., before the decipherment of Linear B), with a modification: the (proto-Ionic) First wave came by sea, the "Proto-Ionians" settling first in the Cycladic Islands, then in Euboea and Attica. The last two waves are the generally accepted arrival of the Mycenaean Greeks (the linguistic predecessors of the Arcadocypriot speakers) in around 1700 BC and the Dorian invasion around 1100 BC.
Following Georgiev, Faucounau makes three arguments for the proto-Ionic language. The first is the explanation of certain Mycenaean forms as loan-words from the proto-Ionians already present in Greece: he asserts that digamma is unexpectedly absent from some Mycenaean words, the occasional resolution of Indo-European vocalic r to -or/ro- instead of -ar/ra-; to-pe-za for τράπεζα, and the explanation of Mycenaean pa-da-yeu as Greek παδάω/πηδάω, "spring leap, bound", which he interprets as both cognate with, and having the same meaning as, English paddle.
The second argument is a refinement of a long-established argument in archaeoastronomy, developed most recently by Michael Ovenden, which considers the motion of the North Pole with respect to the fixed stars, because of the precession of the equinoxes. Ovenden concluded, from the slant of the constellations in the present sky and the hypothesis that Aratus and Hipparchus (insofar as his work survives) correctly and completely represent immemorial tradition, that the constellations we now use had been devised when the Pole was in Draco, about 2800 BC. He also concluded that the inventors probably lived between 34°30' and 37°30' N., north of most ancient civilizations, and so were likely to be the Minoans.
Dr. Crommelin, FRAS, has disputed this latitude, arguing that the constellation makers could only see to 54° S, but that this was compatible with latitudes as low as the 31°N of Alexandria; stars which only skirt the southern horizon by a few degrees are not effectively visible. Assuming a Greek latitude would render Canopus and Fomalhaut invisible. Crommelin estimates the constellators at 2460 BC; R. A. Proctor has estimated 2170 BC. E. W. Maunder 2700 BC.
Faucounau's addition to this is the argument that Crete is also too far south, that the names of the constellations are (Ionic) Greek, not Minoan, and therefore that the constellation makers must be the proto-Ionians in the Cyclades. The south coast of Crete follows 35°N latitude; Syros, which he identifies as a center of proto-Ionian civilization, is at 37°20'. On this basis, he identifies the proto-Ionians with the archaeological Early Cycladic II culture: after all, they made round "frying pans," and one of them with an incised spiral, and the Phaistos Disc is round with an incised spiral.
His third argument depends on Herodotus's somewhat obscure use of the word Pelasgian for various peoples, Greek-speaking and otherwise, around the Aegean basin. Faucounau claims that the word, which he derives idiosyncratically from πελαγος, "sea", means the descendants of the proto-Ionians. Some of them lost their language because they settled among foreigners; others, such as the Athenians, preserved their language - Attic, apparently, arises from a mixture of proto-Ionian and other dialects. He does not explain why Homer speaks of Dodona, inland in north-western Greece, as Pelasgian (Il, 16,233); nor why no place in historic Ionia is called Pelasgian.
He adds to the above arguments with archaeological facts. For example, the Treaty of Alaksandu between Wilusa and the Hittite empire bore a Greek name at a time when there was no Mycenaean pottery at Troy. Faucounau considers that all these arguments are an indirect confirmation of his own decipherment claim of the Phaistos Disk as proto-Ionic.
Faucounau's "Proto-Ionic Disk Language" has most of the properties of Homeric Greek, including loss of labiovelars and even of digamma (both are preserved intact in the Mycenaean of the 14th century BC). Digamma, in Faucounau's reading of the Phaistos Disk, has in some instances passed to y, a sound shift not known from any other Greek dialect, but suspected in Ionic (e.g. Ion. païs v/etym. paus). For Faucounau, the Pelasgians, the Trojans, the Carians and the Philistines are all descended from the Proto-Ionians.
Faucounau's work on this subject has received two scholarly notices. Paul Faure, as below, writes warmly of many parts of the Proto-Ionian theory. He declines to address the decipherment, and omits the Celts; he also dates the Middle Cycladic culture only from 2700 BC, not 2900. Yves Duhoux expresses his disbelief in the decipherment, but does not mention the wider theory, except to deny that the Disc came from Syros. Faucounau's paper on the statistical problem of how many glyphs are likely to be omitted from a short text has never been cited. Most of it addresses the long-solved case in which the glyphs are equally likely.
The Dorians were one of the four major ethnic groups among which the Hellenes of Classical Greece considered themselves divided. They are almost always referred to as just "the Dorians", as they are called in the earliest literary mention of them in the Odyssey, where they already can be found inhabiting the island of Crete.
Ionia was an ancient region on the central part of the western coast of Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionian tribe who, in the Archaic Period, settled mainly the shores and islands of the Aegean Sea. Ionian states were identified by tradition and by their use of Eastern Greek.
Attic Greek is the Greek dialect of the ancient city-state of Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek and is the standard form of the language that is studied in ancient Greek language courses. Attic Greek is sometimes included in the Ionic dialect. Together, Attic and Ionic are the primary influences on Modern Greek.
Doric, or Dorian was an Ancient Greek dialect. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese as well as in Sicily, Epirus, Southern Italy, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea and some cities on the south east coast of Anatolia. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the "Western group" of classical Greek dialects. By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League, an Achaean-Doric koiné language appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC.
Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of Ancient Greek.
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often roughly divided into the Archaic period, Classical period, and Hellenistic period.
The Ionians were one of the four major tribes that the Greeks considered themselves to be divided into during the ancient period; the other three being the Dorians, Aeolians, and Achaeans. The Ionian dialect was one of the three major linguistic divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Dorian and Aeolian dialects.
In linguistics, Aeolic Greek, also known as Aeolian, Lesbian or Lesbic dialect, is the set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia; in Thessaly; in the Aegean island of Lesbos; and in the Greek colonies of Aeolis in Anatolia and adjoining islands.
The Dorian invasion is a concept devised by historians of Ancient Greece to explain the replacement of pre-classical dialects and traditions in southern Greece by the ones that prevailed in Classical Greece. The latter were named Dorian by the ancient Greek writers, after the Dorians, the historical population that spoke them.
Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion, often cited as the terminus ad quem for the introduction of the Greek language to Greece. The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first attested on Crete before the 14th century. Most inscriptions are on clay tablets found in Knossos, in central Crete, as well as in Pylos, in the southwest of the Peloponnese. Other tablets have been found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania, in Western Crete. The language is named after Mycenae, one of the major centres of Mycenaean Greece.
This article is an overview of the history of the Greek language.
The Proto-Greek language is an Indo-European language. It is assumed to be the last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects and, ultimately, Koine, Byzantine and Modern Greek together with its variants. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants, who spoke the predecessor of Mycenaean Greek, entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Bronze Age.
Ancient Greek in classical antiquity, before the development of the common Koine Greek of the Hellenistic period, was divided into several varieties.
Pamphylian is a little-attested and isolated dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Pamphylia, on the southern coast of Asia Minor. Its origins and relation to other Greek dialects are uncertain. A number of scholars have distinguished in Pamphylian dialect important isoglosses with Arcadocypriot which allow them to be studied together. Pamphylia means "land of all phyles (tribes)". The Achaeans may have settled the region under the leadership of Amphilochus, Calchas, and Mopsus. However, other cities in Pamphylia were established by different Greek tribes: Aspendos was a colony of Argos, Side was a colony of Aeolian Cyme, Sillyon was a colony of an unknown Greek mother city, and Perga was a colony established by a wave of Greeks from northern Anatolia. The isolation of the dialect took place even before the appearance of the Greek article. Pamphylian is the only dialect that does not use articles other than Mycenean Greek and poetic language.
Ancient Greek phonology is the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of Ancient Greek. This article mostly deals with the pronunciation of the standard Attic dialect of the fifth century BC, used by Plato and other Classical Greek writers, and touches on other dialects spoken at the same time or earlier. The pronunciation of Ancient Greek is not known from direct observation, but determined from other types of evidence. Some details regarding the pronunciation of Attic Greek and other Ancient Greek dialects are unknown, but it is generally agreed that Attic Greek had certain features not present in English or Modern Greek, such as a three-way distinction between voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; a distinction between single and double consonants and short and long vowels in most positions in a word; and a word accent that involved pitch.
Many people have claimed to have deciphered the Phaistos Disc.
Achaean Doric Greek may refer to:
The Achaeans were one of the four major tribes into which the people of Classical Greece divided themselves. According to the foundation myth formalized by Hesiod, their name comes from Achaeus, the mythical founder of the Achaean tribe, who was supposedly one of the sons of Xuthus, and brother of Ion, the founder of the Ionian tribe. Xuthus was in turn the son of Hellen, the mythical patriarch of the Greek (Hellenic) nation.
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today, around 400 BC. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (Ξ) was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon (Υ) for the vowel. The local, so-called epichoric, alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols Χ, Φ and Ψ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters, in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function ; in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ; and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally the regional variant of the Ionian cities in Asia Minor. It was officially adopted in Athens in 403 BC and in most of the rest of the Greek world by the middle of the 4th century BC.