View Message

A Turkic origin is fanciful, as Turkic-speaking people didn't enter the area until Attila (and then only as raiders, not settlers). Pelasgian is a catch-all for any and all non-Greek, pre-Greek or proto-Greek people in the Aegean and Peloponnese. There are probably two Pre-Greek language strata - various aboriginal languages which influence toponyms such as Thessaly - and a later agricultural culture usually identified as Afro-Asiatic (related to Egyptian and Semitic), based on early scripts and agricultural terms.