Book of my thesis to be published in French soon: Pelasgians ancestors of Greco-Roman civilization
Mathieu Aref
This thesis concerns to pre-Hellenic period and archaic Greece and aims to study the tradition in ancient authors about the origins of Greek civilization through the reference to Pelasgi. Sheds new light on our historical, cultural achievements and highlights the beginnings of Greek civilization emerged after the eighth century before the death of Christ.
JC. Hecataeus, Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides and the tragedians are widely mentioned as having Pelasgi populated regions that would become Greece and highlighted their autochthony. Predecessors of the Greeks, they bequeathed them the essential elements of their civilization.
It is a multidisciplinary approach that confronts the data of ancient tradition with historical, ethno-linguistic, archeological and mythological. It clarifies and convincing arguments as to the chronology of ancient Greece is overvalued by modern authors; the "Trojan War" supposed to have existed in the twelfth century, but in reality is a war of the early seventh century that led the first Greek conquerors against Asia Minor and the region that would later become Greece; four "dark ages" (-1200-800) remained silent on the existence of the Greeks at that time; Zeus (Iliad, XVI, 232-236) is formally designated as "Pelasgian" and not Greek; a hypothetical Mycenaean civilization (invention of pseudo-archaeologist Schliemann) ignored by all the Greek authors; Linear B, which is nothing than the pre-Hellenic Pelasgian language adopted in part by the Hellenic conquerors; the Iliad and the Odyssey epic poems come from a pre-Hellenic oral tradition and not Greek, etc. Modern writers have obscured the essential role played by the Pelasgians in the constitution of the Greek civilization. However, upon contact with the Greek scholar Jacqueline de Romilly she made him this terse comment: "... theses that seem to me very revolutionary, but based on interesting facts." Unfortunately we have not had the opportunity to go further because she died soon after. This study, outside the box, gives this exceptional book reference.
