An archaeological scenario for the "coming of the Greeks" ca3200 BC

I here argue that the Indo-European language that eventually became Greek c ame to Greece with a group of people who arrived from the north at the begi nning of the Early Bronze Age in the later fourth millennium B.C. These "pr oto-Greeks" entered a landscape that had been largely depopulated for centu ries before their arrival and they soon came to dominate most of the mainla nd of Greece (but not the Cycladic islands or Crete). Influenced by the Cyc ladic islanders, they eventually created the Early Helladic civilization of the third millennium B.C. The later Bronze Age population of mainland Gree ce was largely descended from that of the EBA and the Greek language of the Linear B texts of the Late Bronze Age gradually developed from the languag e or languages spoken then. The pre-Greek linguistic substrate in Greek (e. g., words with endings in -ssos and -nthos) may have entered Greek from the language spoken by the previous LN II inhabitants of the Aegean area and p robably also by their EBA descendants in the Cyclades and Crete. The essay begins with a critique of the current theory that the "proto-Gree ks" entered Greece at the end of the second phase of the Early Helladic per iod ca. 2400/2200 B.C. and concludes that it is less likely than it formerl y seemed to be. This is followed by details of the the scenario here advoca ted, which is supported by the differences in character between the EBA cul ture of the Greek mainland and that of the latest Neolithic culture and by the probable existence of a hiatus of occupation between the end of the Neo lithic era and the beginning of the EBA. Correlations with the evidence for immigrations of Indo-European speakers to the Balkan countries to the nort h of Greece are then sketched and arguments briefly presented for an associ ation of the pre-Greek linguistic substrate with the LN II inhabitants. The conclusions deal with some general questions related to the new scenario.