Linguistics and Archaeology
literature, that every ethnic group must be identifiable by its
own peculiar pottery. If such a requirement is waived, the pos-
sibility that "the coming of the Greeks" occurred ca. 1600
B.C., at the beginning of the Late Helladic period, becomes far
more serious. The principal argument against the later date has
been that no pottery that could conceivably be regarded as spe-
cifically Greek was introduced into Greece at that time 43 (the
Minoanizing pottery of the shaft graves is another matter, to
which we shall return).
In conclusion, the arguments for dating "the coming of the
Greeks" either to 2100 B.C. or to 1900 B.C. are deeply flawed.
The archaeological evidence does not indicate an immigration
into the Greek mainland at the beginning of the EH in period,
and linguistic considerations virtually exclude the possibility
that the Greeks could have come to Greece at so early a date. 44
A date at the beginning of the MH period, while not quite so
vulnerable to the linguistic arguments, has now lost entirely
the archaeological basis on which alone it depends. The third
possibility—that the Greeks arrived in Greece ca. 1600 B.C.,
at the beginning of the Late Helladic period—becomes attrac-
tive by default, and we shall come back to it after examining
in some detail related matters in the Near East.
- For example, in his otherwise excellent book, Mycenaean Greece
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), J. T. Hooker devotes only half
a page to the possibility that the Greeks arrived in Greece ca. 1600 B.C.,
and states (p. 16) that "it can be discounted on purely archaeological
grounds... because no archaeological break is discernible at the end of
Middle Helladic: at least, no break so serious or so widespread as to give
any indication of the arrival of a new people. The facts were set out by My-
lonas... and they constitute an insuperable obstacle to the class of theory
under discussion here."
- They do not, however, exclude the possibility of someone pro-
posing a date ca. 2100 B.C. , or indeed much earlier. See, for example, Gim-
butas, "Primary and Secondary Homeland of the Indo-Europeans," 200:
"The very latest arrival for Indo-Europeans in Greece can be set in Early
Helladic n times, sometime between 2900 and 2600 B.C."
