IntroductionBronze Age Greece, on the chance that something there will
illuminate the darkness that still surrounds almost everything
about the early Indo-Europeans.
Vice versa, those scholars whose main concern is Bronze Age
Greece continue to hope that some of the intractable problems
about their subject may yet be solved by discoveries about
other early Indo-Europeans. Archaeological parallels from out-
side Greece readily generate excitement, as do the more intel-
ligible conclusions reached by linguists. On balance, however,
it seems that the Bronze Age Greeks shed more light on their
fellow Indo-Europeans of the second millennium than the
other way round.
A third group of scholars, those whose bailiwick is the an-
cient Near East, tend to consider themselves marginal to the
Indo-European question, and it to them. In fact, however, ori-
entalists have provided some of the most valuable evidence thus
far discovered on the subject. In return, they seem to have re-
ceived less help than they have given. In the middle centuries
of the second millennium, the Near East was widely and deeply
affected by Indo-Europeans, and the nature both of this dis-
turbance and of the slightly earlier Hittite Old Kingdom has
apparently been distorted by questionable assumptions about
"the Indo-European migrations" and especially about "the
coming of the Greeks" to Greece.
In order to discuss this subject efficiently, some termino-
logical clarification is essential. Strictly speaking, there is to-
day no such thing as "an Indo-European," and there never has
been. Nor is there or has there ever been an "Indo-European
people." Instead, there are and have been communities and in-
dividuals who speak one or another of the languages that lin-
guists find it convenient to call "Indo-European." It is gener-
ally assumed that these languages are ultimately descended
from a single language, for which the term "Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean" is appropriate. More loosely, however, "Proto-Indo-Eu-
ropean" may also be used for either the language or the lan-
that were spoken in the homeland from which the
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