The Coming of the Greeks
Armenia. Most of the historical and chronological arguments
seem fragile at best, and of those that I am able to judge, some
are evidently wrong. 17
On the other hand, on the questions of how the Indo-Euro-
pean languages are related to each other, and how the Indo-
European family is related to other language families, Gamkre-
lidze and Ivanov may have made a substantial contribution. In
its broad lines, their thesis may very well prove attractive to
linguists. Not only does it offer a detailed explanation for the
influence of Proto-Indo-European upon the southern Caucasian
languages (the Kartvelian family), but it also accounts, in a
systematic way, for the substantial number of Semitic loan-
words in Proto-Indo-European (the English words "horn,"
"goat," and "wine," for example, are of Semitic origin). In the
opinion of one Indo-Europeanist who has reviewed their work,
the hypotheses of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov are "the most com-
- Occasionally it is a matter of bad information. For example, at
"Migrations," p. 53, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov still tie "the coming of the
Greeks" to the appearance of Minyan Ware, and then worsen matters by
deriving Minyan Ware from Asia Minor (here following James Mellaart into
the ditch). The argument culminates ("Migrations," 54) with the follow-
ing: "The hypothesis that the Greeks came to mainland Greece from the
east across Asia Minor also puts the question of the Greek 'colonies' in Asia
Minor, and especially the problem of Miletus, in a new light. In the light
of the eastern hypothesis, these 'colonies' may be regarded as very early
Greek settlements established along the path of migration of the Greek
tribes to their historical habitat on the Aegean Islands and mainland
Greece." This proposal that the Ionian cities were settled ca. 2000 B.C. (a
wild guess, inspired by the fact of a Late Bronze Age horse burial in Mile-
tus) flies in the face of literary, archaeological, and linguistic evidence on
the origins of the Ionian settlements. Unfortunately, it is not unusual for
Gamkrelidze and Ivanov to leap from a small and simple fact to a far-reach-
ing and outrageous conclusion. Of a host of instances one may cite the
statement ("Problem," 179) that we have "data which prove the presence of
ethnic Indo-Europeans in the ancient Near East earlier than the Indo-Ar-
yans, for example, the remains of domesticated horses in Central and East
Anatolia (Demirci-Huyiik, Yarikaya, Norsuntepe), dating from the end of
ivth millennium B.C."
