The prayers. – The Hellenic peninsula and the nearby islands of the Aegean Sea were inhabited, before the Greeks (who did not separate from the other Arîs except in the Aeneolithic age: see Europe: Ethnography), by pre-Greek peoples.
According to shoefrantics.com, the Greeks themselves spoke of very ancient residents of their country (Pelasgi, Cauconi, Lelegi, Cari, etc.), but, millennia after the facts, they were not based on a genuine tradition, but on hypotheses mixed with fables. Greater probative value for the existence of pre-Greek peoples that have instead: the archaeological data of the pure lithic age which attest to the existence of residents before the air diaspora; the many toponyms of non-Greek aspect, in the root and in the endings, often similar to those of Asia Minor or non-Greek South-European countries; some names used by the classical Greeks, which, while characterizing animals and plants typical of the peninsula, are inexplicable with Hellenic etymes; not a few traces of local cults, especially chthonic, with a very archaic aspect and a non-Greek name; the change in anthropological features denoted by the skeletons discovered in the most ancient archaeological strata; and finally the presence, in full historical age, of non-Hellenic speaking people, eg. in the far east of the island of Crete, the so-called Eteocretesi; in Carpato (Scarpanto) the Eteocarpazî, etc.
The Greeks in the peninsula. – The Hellenic peninsula was occupied by the Greeks about a millennium before the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor.
From the linguistic data it appears that the first Greeks who came to the peninsula were those of the Ionian language, settled in Attica, in which area we find a civilization that evolved regularly, without jolts and without gaps, from the Aeneolithic age to the historical age, as if the population had not changed there from the Aeneolithic onwards.
From the linguistic data, due to the affinity of the Thessalian, Boeotic and Arcadian dialects, it appears that originally the people of these tales – the latter descended into Greece – were in direct contact with each other (northern Aeolians and southern Aeolians), not groups of different dialects still standing between them. Likewise, from the existence of Arcadian-speaking settlers in Cyprus and Pamphylia, it appears that the people of the southern Aeolian language originally were not yet confined to the central mountainous nucleus of the Peloponnese, but that they reached the sea: therefore, at a certain age, the whole North-eastern Greece (excluding Attica) from Thessaly to the Gulf of Corinth was of the northern Aeolians, and all of the Peloponnese of the southern Aeolians. In all those areas, during the Eneolithic age and the early Bronze Age,
From the linguistic data it still appears that the last to penetrate Greece were the Doric speaking groups, which wedged themselves between the Thessalians and the Boeotians, breaking the initial northern wind unit, and in the Peloponnese where they gradually removed the lands on the sea to the southern Aeolians or Arcadi; and the archaeological data allow us to fix the various stages of that conquest. Thus the wedging of the Doric-speaking peoples between the Thessalians and the Boeotians is recognized by the sudden appearance, in the middle of the Bronze Age, in the Spercheo valley, of a new civilization, different from the one that previously dominated in the whole area from Thessaly to Boeotia, including the aforementioned valley: the result is a fairly remote dating of the Doric migration in central Greece. Which, by analogy, leads to suppose something similar for the parallel penetration into the north-eastern Peloponnese; therefore before it started there, around 1550 BC. C., the Mycenaean civilization, which then lasted, without hiatus, until the century. X, with such a regular and continuous development of types and tendencies, that it is not justified to suppose that such continuity hides the arrival of a new people. The descent from Argolis into Laconia of the Doric-speaking people seems to be characterized by the new orientation towards Argolic models, rather than Cretans, of Laconian art from about 1400 to 1350 BC. C. And finally the conquest of northern Messenia by the Dorians coincides with the first traditional Messenic war, around 700 BC. C.
The Greeks in the Aegean. – But before these last Doric stages in the Peloponnese, the colonization of the Aegean islands and the coasts of Asia Minor had begun by the Greeks.
For Crete (see Mycenaean Cretan, civilization) the arrival of the Greeks is characterized by evident modifications of life and culture. The minor palaces of Tilisso, Gourniá and Hagía Triáda were destroyed at the end of Late Minoan I or early II; the major ones of Knossos at the end of the II and of Festus during the III. Some, the minor ones, were not rebuilt, others were resurrected, but very different in size, architectural types and orientation: a mégaron was built in Hagía Triádacontinental type; the palace of Knossos corresponded only to a corner of the previous palace; everywhere a pottery spread that responds precisely to the Mycenaean one of the continent; and even the style of women’s clothing changed profoundly. The destruction of the Cretan palaces eloquently speaks of the arrival of the first wave of the Greeks; the last reconstructions of the Argolic type attest to the first colonies of the Doric peoples on the island around 1400. Likewise, the third city of Fylakōpḗ on the island of Melo was due to the Golden settlers, which arose, with a new style and new technique, in the second half of the century. XV a. C .; as well as the pottery of Ialysus, Camiro and Lindo on the island of Rhodes, which corresponds to the third and fourth type of the recent Mycenaean pottery of Argolis. A ḫḫ ivav ā (= Achaeans) on the coasts of Asia Minor since King Mursilish II (about 1350-1325); and the Egyptian documents on the participation of the Aqeiwe š(= Achaeans) in the expedition of the “peoples of the sea” against Egypt, starting from the time of the pharaoh Merneptah (about 1225 and later).
