The Coming of the Greeks. Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

Conclusion

over by PIE speakers. For Italy, it must be noted, there seems
to be no evidence for chariotry at so early a date. Antler bits
once associated with Terramara settlements of the Middle
Bronze period seem in fact to be no earlier than the Late Bronze
period, which in Italy is conventionally assigned a commence-
ment in the thirteenth century B.C. 1 It is possible that the first
PIE speakers to settle in Italy came by sea in the last quarter of
the second millennium. 2 In the Carpathian Basin, as we have
seen, the chariot is attested as early as 1500 B.C., but whether
it was anything other than a prestige vehicle is not known. In
general, it is a corollary of the thesis here presented that Europe
was Indo-Europeanized much later than has usually been sup-
posed.
The thesis of this book has been occasioned by a few rela-
tively solid conclusions and one provocative hypothesis. The
first of the conclusions pertains to "the coming of the Greeks."
This event, usually imagined as a massive ethnic transforma-
tion of the Greek mainland, has conventionally been dated ca.
1900 B.C. The archaeological support for this date has now
disappeared, and linguistic considerations suggest a consider-
ably later date for the dissemination of Proto-Greek in Greece.
Furthermore, circumstantial evidence (including evidence on
the end of the Aegean Bronze Age) and sixteenth-century par-
allels indicate that "the coming of the Greeks" did not ethni-
cally transform the land; instead, it seems to have superim-
posed upon the indigenous population of Greece a small

1. Heavy disk wheels of the Middle Bronze period have been found,
   but the antler bits, which may be evidence for draft horses, are apparently
   no earlier than the last quarter of the second millennium. See, for example,
   G. Saflund, Le Temmare delle provincie di Modena, Reggio Emilia, Parma, Pi-
   acenza (Lund: Gleerup, 1939), 223: "quanto al cavallo non credo che sia
   stato allevato nella zona terramaricola prima della fase II B." Saflund's II B
   covers the years from 1250107508.0.


2. The Urnfielders are obvious suspects. Like other warrior societies
   late in the second millennium, the Urnfielders may have relied primarily on
   spear-throwing infantry.