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Proto-Greek language

Common ancestor of all varieties of Greek

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Origins

Context

The evolution of Proto-Greek could be considered within the context of an early Paleo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared, for one, by the Armenian language, which also seems to share some other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek; this has led some linguists to propose a hypothetically closer relationship between Greek and Armenian, although evidence remains scant.

Estimates

Estimates for the introduction of the Proto-Greek language into prehistoric Greece have changed over the course of the 20th century. Since the decipherment of Linear B, searches were made "for earlier breaks in the continuity of the material record that might represent the 'coming of the Greeks'". A Middle Bronze Age estimate, originally presented by C. Haley and J. Blegen in 1928, was altered to an estimate spanning the transition from Early Helladic II to Early Helladic III (c. 2400 – c. 2200/2100 BCE). However, the latter estimate, accepted by the majority of scholars, was criticized by John E. Coleman as being based on stratigraphic discontinuities at Lerna that other archaeological excavations in Greece demonstrated were the product of chronological gaps or separate deposit-sequencing instead of cultural changes.

Models

In modern scholarship, different settlement models have been proposed regarding the development of Proto-Greek speakers in the Greek peninsula.

  • Paul Heggarty et al. (2023), advancing a mixed steppe-farmer model of Indo-European origins via Bayesian statistics, places Greek south of the Caucasus as an already diverged branch of Indo-European at around 7000 years before present (c. 5000 BCE). Heggarty's hybrid model was critiqued by Kassian and Starostin (2025).
  • Panayiotis Filos (2014) states that the term Proto-Greek "does not necessarily refer to a fully homogeneous Indo-European language of the (late) Early/Middle Bronze periods (ca. 2200/2000-1700 BCE, but estimates vary)". He argues that Proto-Greek developed "during a long, continuous linguistic process [...], as a migrating population of (soon-to-become) Greek speakers were en route to/on the outskirts of Greece, i.e., somewhere to the north(-west) of the Greek peninsula proper" and amalgamating with Pre-Greek speakers."
  • Radoslav Katičić (2012|1976) states that the lack of any traces of pre-Greek toponymy in Epirus and western Thessaly makes the region the most probable concentration site of Greek-speakers at around c. 1950 BC before their descent southwards.
  • Nancy Demand (2012) argues that speakers of what would become Proto-Greek migrated from their homeland (which could have been northeast of the Black Sea) throughout Europe and reached Greece in a date set around the transition of the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age.
  • David Anthony (2010) argues that Proto-Greek emerged from the diversification of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), the last phase of which gave rise to the later language families having occurred in c. 2500 BCE; its formation in Greece occurred during the beginning and end of the Early Helladic III period (~2200–2000 BC). Specifically, Pre-Proto-Greek, the Indo-European dialect from which Proto-Greek originated, emerged c. 2400 – c. 2200 BCE in an area which bordered pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian to the east and pre-Proto-Armenian and pre-Proto-Phrygian to the west, at the eastern borders of southeastern Europe.
  • Asko Parpola and Christian Carpelan (2005) date the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers from the Eurasian steppe into the Greek peninsula to 2200 BCE.
  • John E. Coleman (2000) estimates that the entry of Proto-Greek speakers into the Greek peninsula occurred during the late 4th millennium BC (c. 3200 BC) with pre-Greek spoken by the inhabitants of the Late Neolithic II period.
  • A. L. Katona (2000) places the beginning of the migration of the Proto-Greek speakers from Ukraine towards the south c. 2400 – c. 2300 BCE. Their proposed route of migration passed through Romania and the eastern Balkans to the Evros river valley from where their main body moved west. As such, Katona, agreeing with M. V. Sakellariou, argues that the main body of Greek-speakers settled in a region that included southwestern Illyria, Epirus, northwestern Thessaly and western Macedonia."
  • Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vjaceslav V. Ivanov (1995) date the separation of Greek from the Greek-Armenian-Aryan clade of Proto-Indo-European to around the 3rd millennium BCE. The Greek clade afterwards split into independently developed dialects (i.e., eastern: Arcado-Cyprian, Aeolic, Ionic; western: Doric) during the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.
  • Robert Drews (1994) dates the coming of chariot-riding Greeks into the Aegean in c. 1600 BC viewing earlier estimates as "deeply flawed". Drews' model, however, is rejected by modern Mycenologists on the grounds that it is both historically and linguistically inaccurate.
  • An older model by Bulgarian linguist Vladimir I. Georgiev (1981) placed Proto-Greek in northwestern Greece and adjacent areas (approximately up to Aulon river to the north including Parauaea, Tymphaia, Athamania, Dolopia, Amphilochia, and Acarnania as well as west and north Thessaly (Histiaeotis, Perrhaibia, Tripolis) and Pieria in Macedonia during the Late Neolithic period. The boundaries are based on the high concentration of archaic Greek place-names in the region, in contrast to southern Greece which preserves many pre-Greek place-names. However, the dating of Proto-Greek in Bronze Age Greece is compatible with the inherited lexicon from the common Proto-Indo-European language which excludes any possibility of it being present in Neolithic Greece.

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