Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, had a line about the Pelasgians that sounds like a joke about a language nobody could understand. He said they spoke a language which was not Greek. Now, a newsletter issue is making the case that a thousand Ancient Greek words share that fate: they cannot be traced back to any Indo-European language or any other known tongue from the region. The question is simple. Where do they come from?
The answer, according to the issue of the Linguistic Discovery newsletter, is that these words come from the languages that were spoken before the Indo-Europeans arrived. Those languages, called Paleo-European or Old European, left almost nothing in writing except a few fragments. Only one survives today, and that is Basque. But their influence lived on in Greek itself.
The Words That Refuse To Trace Back
Start with the familiar names. Achilles, Odysseus, Athens, Athena, Ares — none of these can be tied to Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor language of all Indo-European tongues. Neither can words for common things like olive, labyrinth, or even the sea itself.
Take the word for sea. Thálassa is the primary Greek term, and it has no clear Indo-European etymology. The newsletter argues that Proto-Indo-European arose in a landlocked steppe, far from the coast. It had no need for a word for sea, and no securely reconstructable term for it. Each daughter language developed or borrowed its own word as it reached the coast: English sea, Latin mare, Greek thálassa.
The same pattern holds for olive. The Mycenaean form in Linear B is e-ra-wa, and the Proto-Hellenic form was elaíwā. Both lack a clear Indo-European origin. The word also shows up in Etruscan as eleiva, and from there the Romans took olīva, the source of English olive and oil.
The Case For Paleo-European Influence
The argument rests on a simple observation. Indo-European languages spread across Europe, but they were late arrivals. Before them, the continent was full of Neolithic farming societies who spoke any number of Paleo-European languages. These languages left almost no written record beyond Aquitanian, Etruscan, Iberian, and a handful of others. Only Basque survives today.
When Indo-European speakers moved into new territory, they often found words waiting for them. Why invent a new word for olive when the locals already had one? The newsletter says the Indo-Europeans simply adopted the local name. Hundreds of plant and animal terms show up in Greek with no Indo-European precedent.
| Word | Indo-European Etymology |
|---|---|
| Olive | None |
| Sea | None |
| Hyacinth | None |
| Fig | None |
The comparison is striking. Across the board, Greek adopted foreign words rather than inventing its own. The newsletter calls this the minority option — the strategy of coining new terms for novel experiences was rarely the one taken.
Hippopotamuses, Salt, And The Pontic–Caspian Steppe
The newsletter spends time on the history of the Indo-Europeans themselves. They were pastoralist newcomers to Europe, arriving after Neolithic farmers had settled the continent for millennia. The Greeks, in particular, migrated from the Pontic–Caspian Steppe into the eastern Mediterranean over generations.
Along the way, they encountered new foods, plants, and terrain. Olives, hyacinths, figs, and cypresses were all novel to them. So was the sea, since their ancestors had been landlocked. The Greeks handled this by adapting existing vocabulary. When they first described hippopotamuses in the mid-5th century BCE, they called them river horses, combining the words for horse and river. That later became the compound hip-pop-o-tamos.
They also applied the strategy to the sea itself. One poetic Greek word for sea was háls, whose primary meaning was salt. The sea was “the salt.” Another word, póntos, came from PIE *póntoh₁s, originally meaning path or road. Other branches kept that meaning — Latin pōns and pontis, source of English pontiff and pontificate. Greek extended it to mean sea, apparently in the sense of water-way or sea-crossing.
What The Newsletter Actually Does
The newsletter raises the question but does not fully answer it. It identifies the likely source of the words — Paleo-European languages — but admits that tracing them back is difficult. There is no written record of these languages beyond a few fragments. Only Basque survives, and it is not closely related to Greek.
The newsletter also notes that some words resist connection even to Basque. The word for sea, thálassa, has no firm Indo-European etymology. The newsletter calls this exactly what we would expect, given that Proto-Indo-European had no need for a sea word.
The issue closes with the same question it opens with. Where do these words come from? The newsletter has done the work of identifying the candidates and laying out the evidence. It has not solved the mystery, but it has made the case that the mystery is worth keeping open.
Key facts:
– About 1,000 Greek words cannot be traced to any Indo-European language or other known regional tongue
– The Proto-Hellenic form of olive was elaíwā
– The Mycenaean form of olive was e-ra-wa
– The Etruscan form was eleiva
– The Romans took olīva from Etruscan, source of English olive and oil
The newsletter’s final move is to leave the question hanging. Where do these words come from? The answer, as far as the newsletter can tell, is that they come from the languages of the people who were there first — the Paleo-Europeans.
Source material: “Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek,” linguisticdiscovery.com.
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