Basil Chulev •∘⊕∘• Pelasgi/Balasgi, Belasgians (Pelasgians/Pelasgi/Pelasti/Pelišti) – the Archaic Mythical Pelasgo/Stork-people from Macedonian Peninsula 2013 Contents: Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 5 Macedonians from Pella and Pelasgians from Macedon – origin of the Pelasgians ...... 18 Religion of the Pelasgians …………………….……………………………….……… 39 Pelasgian language and script ........................................................................................ 50 Archaeological, Etymological, Mythological, and Genetic evidence of Pelasgic origin of Macedonians ................................................................................................................... 66 References ...................................................................................................................... 80 Introduction All the Macedonians are familiar with the ancient folktale of 'Silyan the Stork' (Mkd.Latin: Silyan Štrkot, Mkd.Cyrillic: Сиљан Штркот). It is one of the longest (25 pages) and unique Macedonian folktales. It was recorded in the 19th century, in vicinity of Prilep, Central Macedonia, a territory inhabited by the most direct Macedonian descendents of the ancient Bryges and Paionians. The notion of Bryges appear as from Erodot (Lat. Herodotus), who noted that the Bryges lived originally in Macedonia, and when they moved to Asia Minor they were called 'Phryges' (i.e. Phrygians). Who was Silyan? The story goes: Silyan was banished to a faraway island and migrates from there like a stork to his homeland. He has a bottle of magic water around his neck that should turn him from a stork into a human, but the first time he breaks it… nevertheless, later he transforms successfully. Silyan‟s parents are called 'Boţin' and 'Boţinitsa' (God's and Goddess's), and so on… A proposed ancient etymology links 'Pelasgo/Belasgo' – white, to 'pelargo/belargo' – stork1, and postulates that the Pelasgians were actually the 'stork-people' (and/or tall). In the Macedonian 1 Composite word, from Macedonic “Bel [pronounced Beal ]” - „white, and Latin “argent”- „silvery white‟, related to “greggio” - 'gray'. languages 'Pelasgian' also flexes between Macedonic “Pelikan” (i.e. Pelican) and “Velikan” - 'the great' (and/or „tall, big‟ in plain Macedonian2), and due to the convergence of V to B and vice versa „Pelasgian‟ also interchanges into Belasg(ian) – white, pale 3 (same as the storks and pelicans). But, this ancient etymology also suggests the “Storks” as the metaphor for the “Tall- ones”, alluding to the elongated constitution of the storks, which further also finds a reflection in the ethnonym “Makednos”. As firmly claimed by the Western politically-delimited conventional linguists, and so dear to them “Interpretatio Graeca” – Makedon and Makednós are again morphologically derived from the (Ancient Koine) adjective “makednós” meaning „tall, slim‟. And even today modern word for „stork‟ (“Štrk” in plain Macedonian) descends from the verb “Štrči/Strči ” - „sprouts, jut, рrotrudeѕ/sticks out‟4; as a noun: “strak” - a „straw, stalk‟5, аѕ an adjective: “Štrklest” - „tall, leggy‟, i.e.„storklike‟.6 This is not a case in the artificial "Greek". The same above mentioned naming of the Ρeliganes/Velikanes as „elders‟ is found in a testimony brought to us by the geographer Strabo.7 He explicitly mentions the Ρeliganes as „elders‟, and their 2 http://www.makedonski.info/search/velikan 3 Bel, bela [bell] – 'white' in all Macedonic languages; Belarussia – "White Russia", Belgrad – "White-city", Belaya Reka – "The White River" (in the Bashkir Republic, eastern Russia), Biała Struga – “White Stream” (in Poland), "Orobelos" (ancient name of today "Belasitsa”) – „Mt.White‟, etc. 4 http://www.makedonski.info/search/%D1%88tr%D1%87i 5 http://www.makedonski.info/search/strak 6 http://www.makedonski.info/search/%D1%88trklest 7 Historian and geographer (63BCE-23AD). His only extant work, Geographica, in 17 volumes, provides a detailed physical and historical geography of the ancient world during the reign of Augustus. council as a “(honorary) council of elders”, a testimony which is of crucial importance for the further understanding of the term Pelasgians: “Among the Thesprotians and the Molossians, old women are called Peliai and old men Pelioi, as is also the case among the Macedonians; at any rate, those people call their dignitaries Peligones (compare the gerontes among the Laconians and the Massaliotes). And this, it is said, is the origin of the myth about the pigeons in the Dodonaean oak tree.” 8 Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy 'The Birds'. One of the laws of "the storks" in this satirical cloud-cuckoo-land (punning on the ancient belief that they were originally Pelasgians) is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting the warfare. This ancient etymology based on interchangeability of the meanings links Pelasgos to Pelargo ("stork") and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, probably from north, where they nest, which by the way is the only plausible localization. However, on the basis of these examples from different ancient sources it is possible to sum out a clear-cut connection: Pelioi = Peligones = Peliganes = 'Velikanes', i.e. „elders‟ or „the great ones‟. Above: Pelicans from the Lake Doyran, Macedonia 8 Strabo, Geogr.VII One fake ethnonym under which they are misrepresented by the various tale-tellers and historical transliterators throughout the ages is the exonym “Thracians”. On difference from “Brygian”, “Macedonian”, “Paionian” or “Pelasgian”, the “Thracian” isn‟t a proper ethnonym. The term 'Thracia' used by ancient authors as well as their modern followers, traced the territory of 'Thracia' totally differently, depending on whether they referred to ethnic or political boundaries. They differ from source to source. As a geographical name its etymological meaning is “the tract of land” or “the tract of coast”. This can be seen from Hecataeus (Hec., ap. Stephan the Byzantine, s.v. Darsioi): ethnon Thrakion („Daorsoi‟ were living on the left bank of the river Neretva to the Adriatic cost in Dalmatia). Apollodorus also used the term „Thrakes‟ for „Histri‟ on the Histrian Peninsula (today Istra in today‟s Croatia) in northern Adriatic. These two examples evidenced that this designation has no ethnic connotations whatsoever, and should be translated as “co-landers” or “fellow-landers”, “Mainland tribe” or “Coastal tribe”, i.e. a tribe living on the specific mainland or coastal tract of land. This interpretation can be emphasized by data from Erodot (Herodotus VII, 185) who describes the Thessalian tribes as “those Thracians living on the Thessalian Coast along the sea”. It was very well known to Erodot audience that the Thessalians are not “Thracians” in ethnical sense.9 This term is actually misused corrupt form of the word „tract‟; thus, the adjective “Thracian” describes a „population of (some) land tract‟.10 In the „Iliad‟ Homer called Thessaly justly „Pelasgic Argos‟. It further appears, from the Odyssey, that the Pelasgoi were one of the five nations of Crete. And we learn from the Trojan Catalogue in the Second Iliad, that the Pelasgoi of Larissa served in the war among the allies of Troy. Homer, in the three passages where he mentions the Pelasgians, “On the Names of Thracia and Eastern Macedonia”, ΚΡΑΣΙ΢ΣΟ΢, Сборник в чест на 9 професор Петър Делев, София, 2017, рp. 75-82 N. Proeva 2017. 10 an area of indefinite extent, typically a large one : large tracts of natural forest. names them each time with a laudatory epithet Dioi (Divoi - „Giants/Titans‟ in vernacular Macedonian); a circumstance deserving some notice, when we observe to how small a proportion of his national or tribal names epithets are attached. Once he calls them εγχεζιμωποι (eghesimoroi) – „addicted to the spear‟; this epithet is of high rank as describing valor. On the other two occasions he calls them „Dioi‟. This epithet implies always a special and peculiar excellence. Erechtheus appears in the Catalogue to be described as an autochthon and therefore probably a Pelasgian. The Pelasgian origin of the Trojans is also unquestionable. Beside the above mentioned notion of Erodot, he gives us another crucial hint regarding the Pelasgian ethnicity – “The Pelasgoi spoke a Barbarian language.” This is reconfirmed and précised by both Justin and Polybius in the 2nd century BCE: “Macedonia, cognomen Emathia, is famous by Pelasgian people”11 and “The Illyrian language12 is Macedonian dialect, and a Thracian too,” respectively. There is, however, very powerful evidence outside the text of Homer to show the strongly Pelasgian character of Attica in pre-Hellenic times. Erodot declares the Athenians to have been Ionian, and the Ionians to be Pelasgian. Having been Pelasgians, he says, the Attican people became Hellenoi (i.e. Selenoi, elsewhere noted as Prosellenoi too), apparently by the reception of Semitic-Danaan immigrants, and by a gradual amalgamation. Evidently, according to this historian, the change did not take place by an arrival of Ionians, for he declares that which Homer only suggests, that the Ionians were Pelasgian too. The Hesiodic tradition of Hellen and his sons does not mention Ion either. It is remarkable that Euripides too does not represent Ion as „Hellenic‟, but as the adopted son of Xouthos. Archaeological findings also confirmed beyond any doubt the particularity of the Pelasgian strata. Since the first diggings in the 19th century, and beginning of the 20th century, their specific pottery and other artifacts were all being grouped together as pre-Mycenaean. It was found that the ceramic pottery periods in Chalcidice agreed closely with those of Central Macedonia, with the important difference that the Middle Bronze period, which in Central Macedonia was characterized by incised ware with Cycladic affinities, was characterized in Chalcidice by Minyan, southern in character, but adapted to local Early Bronze forms as well.13 In the uppermost levels and mixed with the black-polished ware was late Early Bronze pottery (Macedonian) in fair quantity, another instance in which Late Neolithic and Early Bronze were found to overlap. This gave the idea for shaping, of the now confirmed, and uninterrupted relation between Epirus, Macedonia and Thessaly in the Late Neolithic. This is also the case for the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze confirmed tight relations of the Macedonian Peninsula as a whole with Asia Minor and Italy. The writers of the „Attis‟ relate that the “Pelasgians were owing to their being wanderers, and roaming about like birds to whatever places they chanced to come, they were called Pelargi (Storks) by the people of Attica.” All the exhibited facts, though few and simple, indicate the wide extension of the Pelasgians. As we‟ll see further in this paper, as far as Italy, Spain and British isles. This overall pattern of migrating could be traced easily in the mythological deeds of gods or demigod legendary Macedonic figures like Dionis (Lat. Dionysus), Erakle (Lat. Hercules), Kadmo, and Alexander III of Macedon, and their campaigns in faraway lands. Similar migrating 11 In Latin: “Macedonia … Emathia cognominata est … populus Pelasgi.” See also “Skladnja Ilirskoga Jezika” (“Structure of the Illyrian language”) by Adolfo Weber. 12 13 “Prehistoric Macedonia. An archaeological reconnaissance of Greek Macedonia (West of the Struma) in the Neolithic, Bronze, and Early Iron Ages” by V. A. Heurtley. connotation is to be found in the etymology of the name of Engelines or Enhelei, namely "Jagulari"14 (i.e. "Eelers") - autochthonous Macedonian tribe that lived in the basin of the river Drim, from Struga to Boka Kotorska, spaning along the migration road of the eels from Lake Ohrid. Genetically Pelasgians belonged to an admixture of I and G2a. I haplogroup was autochthonous in Macedonian Peninsula, found already in the early Neolithic, 10,000-8,500 years ago. G2a group entered from the Caucasus approximately 6,000 years ago, as herders of sheep and goats (and/or early miners?). The ruins of the cyclopean walls of their city Engelina at the shores of Lake Ohrid can be seen even today. The Engelines/Enhelei, under the leadership of mythological Kadmo (the Phoenician) and his consort Harmonia, migrated toward the Matia and Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast through warfare against their northwestern Gaul-Illyrian enemies, i.e. the enemy tribes of Taulanti, Ardiaei, and Deuri from Panonia. All ancient writers concur in ascribing a Pelasgic origin to many of the most ancient tribes of Italy too, and there seems no reason to doubt that a large part of the population of the Apenninic Peninsula was really of Pelasgic race, that is to say, that it belonged to the same great nation or family which formed the original population of Peloponnesus, as well as that of Epirus and Macedonia, and of a part at least of Thrace and Asia Minor. 14 Macedonian: 'Jaguli ' [iagoullee] – eels. http://www.makedonski.info/search/jaguli The very term “Angel(s)” descended from their name and the Macedonic name for the eels; in Latin Anguila, i.e Yagula in modern Macedonian, arrived from the fact that newborn eels are almost transparent, and they appear like little spirits in the water. 15 https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-Archaeology-DNA-prove- Palestinians-not-native-to-Land-of-Israel-594872  There‟s no definite clue of how far these Pelasgo-Proto-Macedonic tribes have reached with their migrations. However, it is evident from the wide diffusion of their remains and artifacts that the people who produced these megalithic works were ones who must have possessed in their time great political power around the basin of the eastern Mediterranean. Wave after wave they made their way into Europe and Asia Minor peninsula, and with time they multiplied and divided into numerous tribes. Pelasgians, Brygians/Phrygians and Macedonians, in turn were the predominant tribes, and after each one in turn came other tribes perhaps of different origins, who called by new names those who preceded them. A new study of DNA recovered from an ancient Philistine site in the Israeli city of Ashkelon confirms what we already know from the Bible and other ancient sources – that the origin of the Philistines is in southern Europe.15 In Homer‟s „Odyssey‟ we get a 15 https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-Archaeology-DNA-prove- Palestinians-not-native-to-Land-of-Israel-594872 very explicit account of Crete and its inhabitants: “…And all have not the same speech, but there is confusion of tongues: there dwell Achaeans and there too Cretans of Crete, high of heart, and Cydonians there and Dorians of waving plumes and – goodly Pelasgians.” However, there was apparently some conflict between the urban and the rural population. The Pelasgians complained, said Hecataeus, that the new Athenian settlers drove them from the soil, which they had improved in such a degree as to excite envy. These newcomer (Semitic) Athenians alleged that their children, when they went forth to draw water, were insulted by the Pelasgians. If Amphion and Zethos (founders of the city of Thebes) were, as it appears probable, displaced from Boeotia by Kadmos and the Phoenicians, they were almost certainly of a Pelasgian family; and indeed it would be very difficult to give evidence of any „Hellenic race‟ or group at their epoch, which is between four and five generations before the Trojan war. Who were this people? The ancient authors give us abundant notices of a people who dwelt in Peloponnesus long before the Semitic Achaean/Danaan (Latin exonym “Greex”)16 conquest, and those who hold that in the statements of the ancients there is at least a solid kernel of historical truth will readily admit that a race of great power once reigned in the chief cities of Argolis and Laconia before the Semitic Achaean/Danaan invasion. There‟s no clue whatsoever that this „Pelasgic‟ name of theirs was really an ethnonym either. According to Macedonic traditional etymology they were rather a „higher class‟ or maybe some kind of Macedonian „elite‟ than anything else. But that aspect of the story will bе investigated further below in this study. The earliest mention of the Pelasgians is in Homer (Iliad II. 681), who enumerates several Thessalian tribes as furnishing a contingent under the command of Ahil (Lat. Achilles), and among them “those who dwelt in Pelasgian Argos”. Homer also speaks of Epirus as a chief abode of the Pelasgoi; for Achilles addresses Dze(us) as “Dodonai Pelasgike” (i.e. „Dodonan Pelasgic‟).17 And this agrees with Hesiod's description of Dodona as the "seat of the Pelasgi." So in the „Supplices‟ of Aeschylus, the king declares himself to be ruler of the country through which the Axios and the Strymon flow, and also of the whole of the land of the Perhabei, near the Paionians, and the Dodonean mountains, as far as the (Ionian) sea. (Supplices 250, ff.). Erodot (Lat. Herodotus) tells us he found traces of the Pelasgians at Dodona, where he says they worshipped all the gods, without giving a name to any (II. 52).18 Compare his mythic account of the two priestesses at Dodona, (II. 56) with Homer's description of the Selli.19 However, their Macedonian Peninsula origin reemerges everywhere, again and again. We also hear of the Pelasgоi in Boeotia, where they dwelt for a time, after having, in conjunction with the Macedonians, driven out the Aones, Temmices, Leleges and Hyantes. Afterwards they were, in their turn, driven out by the former inhabitants, and took refuge at Athens under Mt. Hymettus, part of the city being called 16 The name of “Greex”, as the modern equivalent of the several appellatives by which Homer describes the army engaged in the siege of Troy, is misleading demeanor. The “Greek” equivalent of the word is „Graikoi‟. The name „Graia‟ is found in the Iliad, but it is only a local name of a settlement of Boiotoi or Boeotians. The name applied to themselves by the “Greek” people throughout the historic times, as at the present day, wasn‟t „Graikoi‟ either, but „Sellenes‟ (which passed into „Hellenes‟ due to the S > H mutation) or „Prosellenoi‟. And even this name, as Thucydides observes, was unknown in the time of Homer. 17 Iliad XVI. 233. 18 Established primordial tradition among the all ancient populations across the Macedonian Peninsula – the names of the gods were most forbidden secret. See “Ancient Macedonia – The Gods of Macedon”. 19 Iliad XVI. 233. after their name. (Strab. IX.1 p. 401.) The former name of the Strymon River (eastern part of Ancient Macedonia) was Palaistinos - „the most ancient‟. It might be the homeland of Pelasgians/Pelastians/Philistines; the Bible ascribed to the latter a Cretan origin while Homer described Cretan Pelasgians. If Linear A was found in Syria and Israel and Goliat had Mycenaean weapon, then Pelasgians might be initially users of Macedonian-like Linear A language and then „Mycenaeanized‟. It appears, however, to be a fact established, that the Semitic „Hellenoi‟ were not at all the first who occupied so-called “Greece”. They were preceded by a number of autochthonous tribes, all apparently of Pelasgian or generally Aegean origin. Thucydides (I. 3) explicitly speaks of the name “Hellas” being of comparatively recent date, and of the older Pelasgic name being the most prevalent among the tribes of Macedonian Peninsula; but this does not account for the Pelasgoi being found in Asia (Homer Iliad X. 429), and for their having introduced Macedonic rites into Asia Minor (Erodot III. 51.). But who and what the Pelasgians were, how and whence they appear around the Aegean, and by what gradations and influences they were ripened into Hittites, Brygians/Phrygians, Mycenaeans and Macedonians, are questions to which no satisfactory answers have ever been given, but must still be discussed whatever the result of the investigation may be. There‟s only one information dissenting as to the form of the name. The scholiast to Homer 11.16.233 has Pelastic instead of Pelasgic. This is a difficult reading, but M. Budimir suggests it has to be given full attention. If we connect it with Palaiste (a toponym in Epirus), the deae Palaestinae which belong there, with Palaestinus (the older name of the Strymon), with Penestai (the name of the enslaved population in ancient Thessaly), and with Pelastai/Pelaistai (the term for the labouring population of Attica according to the lexicographers Ammonius and Pollex) it becomes possible that Pelastai/Palastai/Palaistai is the original form of the ethnic name that, as Budimir believes, denoted the speakers of Pre-“Greek” Indo-European wherever they spread. But, this is far too manifold approach based on just one dubious transcription, and thus it cannot be considered further. Pelasgians has produced the 'Mycenaean' remains found in the island of Crete as in the Mycenae itself. “In the Peloponnesus (too) there lived a race antecedent to the Acheans and Dorians, whom the ancients knew under the name Pelasgi. To venture to write about this race is enough to bring down on the writer grave suspicions that he is one of those who deal with Druids, and who see in the Great Pyramid the key to mystic systems of chronology and astrology. Accordingly, with a view to showing that a man may believe in the historical reality of the Pelasgi, and may with safety still be allowed to mix with his neighbors, let me say that I can quote the opinions of four historians, whose scepticism or sober mindedness no one has yet called in question.” (Niebuhr, Thirlwall, Grote and E. Curtius). Acusilaus (6th century BCE) included under the name of Pelasgia all Aegean as far as Larisa and Pharsalia, that Erodot states that whole southern Macedonian Peninsula was anciently called Pelasgia, and that he included under the common name of Pelasgians the Athenians, the Arcadians, the Ionians of Asia Minor, the Lemnians, the Lesbians, the Samothracians and the people of Imbros and Creston. Homer calls the Pelasgians „neighbors of the Cilicians in the Troad‟. Again, Ephorus (4th century BCE), quoted by Strabo, states too that Peloponnesus had been called Pelasgia in ancient times, a statement supported and confirmed by Aeschylus not only in the extant play of the „Supplices‟, in several passages (referring especially to Argolis), but also in the lost play of the „Danaides‟, referred to by Strabo: "Aeschylus states in his „Suppliants‟ and „Danaides‟ that their race (Pelasgian) is sprung from Argos that lies around Mycenae." The still older testimony of Hesiod, quoted likewise by Strabo in the same passage, makes the Pelasgians Arcadian in origin. Strabo (XIII. p. 621) mentions a legend that the inhabitants of Mt. Phricion near Thermopylae made a descent upon the place where Cyme afterwards stood, and found it in the possession of Pelasgians, who had suffered from the Trojan War, but were nevertheless in possession of Larissa, which was about 70 stadias from Cyme. Strabo (VII. p. 321) further speaks of Pelasgians taking possession of part of the Peloponnese, along with other barbarous tribes, and (V. p. 221) says that Ephorus, on Hesiod's authority, traces the origin of the Pelasgoi to Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, and that he declares his own opinion to be that they were originally Arcadians, who chose a military life, and, by inducing many others to join them, spread the name far and wide, both among the Semitic “Greex”, and wherever they happened to come: "The Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree," says Mr. Grote, "it begins with Pelasgus, whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous (and mythological 1st) man." Consequently, as distinct echo of all ancient history authors that these same peoples, whom we found in Crete, Epirus and Macedon, once occupied positions of primary importance in Peloponnesus too, and the conclusion is inescapable – they are the ones who produced the cyclopic Mycenaean remains on Peloponnesus too. The race which lived in royal splendor must certainly be preferred as claimants to that under whose domination Mycenae was only the dwelling-place of the owl and the bat, or at most the stall of shepherds or the fastness of revolted serfs. Recent archaeological and genetic discoveries in the last decades enlightened us with more and more undeniable conclusions, and modern politically-biased conventional historiographers cannot deny them anymore. Thus, among the other things they write: "Gaul/Celtic culture emerged in central Europe around modern Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland (ex-Macedonic Bohemia, Great Moravia, and Carrantania). The earliest major Gaul/“Celtic” settlement, dating from 1200 BCE, was found in Hallstatt, Upper Austria. Proto-“Celtic” i.e. Gaul, (both exonyms) people arrived from the Balkans to Central Europe around 2500 BCE. Equipped with oxen, horses and superior bronze weapons, the “Celts” quickly conquered Western Europe, from Iberia to the British Isles."20 In his book “The Etruscans – where they Celts?” John Fraser makes a case too: “The (Gaul)Celts, on their first irruption into Europe, dwelt for a time in Thrace, Macedonia, and in Thessaly and Peloponnesus they were called Pelasgi. The Etruscans were one of these tribes, and were probably of the Gadhelic stock. The concurrent testimony of ancient authors, who state that the Etruscan cities were Pelasgic, is to be taken to mean that the Etruscans were of the same (Gaul-)Celtic stock as the Pelasgians.” Gaul/Celts began to diverge in central Europe; and since it also seems possible that Tungri (Germans) and Balto-Slavic tribes evolved by passing on the northern slopes of the Carpathian mountains, and further contacts between both those groups with some autochthonous western groups might have been possible for some centuries. Of this Gaul/“Celtic” population we get some scanty accounts from the ancient writers, such as Caesar, Diodorus, Strabo, and Tacitus. Even this literary evidence has not escaped the suspicions of the sceptic. For instance, the „Annals of Tacitus‟ have been regarded by some as the forgery of Poggio, the finder of the manuscript at Fulda. But even those who do not dispute the authenticity of the „Annals‟ raise grave suspicions as regards the veracity of Tacitus in certain matters, just as Caesar's „truthfulness‟ in respect to his invasions of Britain has been doubted by others. The attitude of “Greek” archaeologists in dealing with the Mycenean age is not more rational. Later modern countries, new religions, and 19-20 centuries political nations, have all claimed what isn‟t theirs. While it is now accepted that the territory of Central Europe was “clearly dominated” in a political sense by “Germanic”-speaking groups, it has emerged that the population 20 https://www.eupedia.com/europe/celtic_trivia.shtml of this vast territory was far from being Tungrian (lat. Germanic). In the great era of nationalisms, anywhere that threw up plausibly ancient Germanic remains was claimed as part of an ancient and Above: a map that shows the factual ethnic recomposition of Europe in AD 814 greater Tungri (Lat. German) homeland. However, analysis of river names and other toponyms show that they are not “Germanic” at all, but Macedonic, and there was once in northern Europe a large Macedonic population group with its own Aryan language, located between the Gaul and the so called “Germani”. They are still there, but disguised under these new, unrecognizable Latin labels and exonyms like “Slavonic”, “Hellenic”, etc. Macedonian Peninsula was and still is that long lost cradle of the European civilization, with the river Vardar (Lat. Bardarios, Axios) to enrich its lowlands, the mountains, the lakes, great rivers (Danube, Sava) and seas to divide it from plundering hordes, and a climate admirably suited to race of the Barb-Aryan type. Insulated water-courses flowing through buttressed mountains and countries with boundless pasturage for bovines, horses, and sheep; or protected plateaus like that of Galičnik and Lazaropole – such have been the favored spots of Macedonian Peninsula, in point of environment, for the production of organized society and the arts of peace. They lived in houses and constructed stone buildings, of which the very first ones were unearthed in today Republic of Macedonia, ascending to the 7th millennium BCE. They domesticated the first flocks and herds, horses and goats, and wore clothes fashioned of skins and cloth made from wool, and they had the sword and the bow. Тhis Proto-Macedoniс-Barb-Aryans (politically renamed into "Proto-Indo- Europeans" by the 19th century conventional historiography) migrated on a regular bases. The classical Hallstatt culture, and its successor the La Tène culture, originated from the Balkans and spread across the Alps to most of Western and Central Europe between 600 and 400 BCE. People in those areas spoke a similar language, shared a same religion, similar traditions and beliefs, the same arts and techniques... However, whenever they migrated their links with their central Macedonian homeland and their closest kin in the east continued as before. Lets not forget the historic records and relations between the powerful Asia Minor Barb-Aryan empire of Hittites, that emerged in the 2nd millennium BCE, and its neighbors back across the Aegean, which never ceased. The Proto-Macedonic-Hittite king referred to his Ahhiyawa counterpart (now known as „Mycenae‟ by the conventional modern historiography) as “brother” in the Piamaradu letters. And in the international hierarchy of kings these first-documented Eastern Mediterranean rulers received tribute from their Pelasgo-Proto-Macedonic brothers with lower positions. As confirmation to this avail is the historical testimony of the later close relations between the Iron Age oligarchs from the Pelasgian city of Larisa with their relatives, the kings of Macedon. Ancient sources brought to our knowledge this episode from the 4th century BCE, when they invoked an appeal to their old blood-related traditions. Macedonians responded promptly to honor this ages- old pact, and in the autumn of 358 BCE they entered in Thessaly on the request of their Pelasgic relatives and close kin from the city of Larisa, who asked urgent military assistance against the warlords of Fere.21 21 After helping them, during this short stay in Thessaly, king Filip II of Macedon also married Filina of Larisa, and with her he got the son Arhidei.  Macedonians from Pella and Pelasgians from Macedonia – Origin of the Pelasgians Before we speak of ancient author‟s testimonies lets first mention the hard evidence. In 1925 an archaeological excavation was started at the site of “Vardarovtsi” in the Vardar Valley, some 60 kilometers northwest from Salonica. The archaeological evidence supplied by the excavation showed that the Macedonians were descendants of the original inhabitants who settled in Macedonia in the 3rd millennium BCE, and who were of the same stock as early people of Troy.22 However, the term 'Pelasgian' (or Pelasgoi) was used in the classical sources to denote first wider prehistoric peoples in Macedonian Peninsula, Aegean islands, Crete, and beyond. Today we know that they spread by sea and across European mainland until Spain 23, British isles, Scotland, Scandinavia, etc. Latest linguistic and genetic breakthroughs matched perfectly the archaeological findings and ancient legends. Pelasg(us) in ancient mythology was considered (according to Asius) to be the very 1st man, the son of Great Mother Earth. “Pelasgos, the son sometimes of Amon, sometimes of Poseidon, sometimes of Triops or Inachos or Lycaon or Palachthon, or of the earth itself,” 24 derived the name of the Pelasgi. Pindar (Carminia, Fragmenta Selecta, I, 240) tells: “Bringing a beautifull gift, the earth made the first human being, the divine Pelasgus.” He was the mythical eponymous ancestor of the first people too, Pelasgians or Pelasgioti, the ancestral prehistoric inhabitants of the Macedonian Peninsula. According to Fragment 76 of Hellanicus's Phoronis, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings: Phrastōr, Amyntōr, Teutamides and Nasas (kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly). According to the national legend, they were Teucrian colonists from Troy. The Caucons of Paphlagonia stretching along the banks of the Parthenios, and 22 Evening Star, issue 19303, 16 July 1926: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19260716.2.21?items_per_page=10&page=35 &query=macedonians++&snippet=true&fbclid=IwAR0XIw8n2GoTuyon8- C908mo4PUdxZIdkvOVwoFwhggatiaN2PTI-RW0Ez0 “Report on Excavations at the Toumba and Tables of Vardaróftsa, Macedonia, 1925,1926: Part I. The Toumba” by W. A. Heurtley and R. W. Hutchinson The Annual of the British School at Athens Vol. 27 (1925/1926), pp. 1-66: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30096568 23 According to the interdisciplinary reconstruction of Bosch-Gimpera, there have been two Pelasgo-Gaul/Celtic “waves” in Spain, one indicated to the region of the mouth of river Ebro in Catalonia, dated ca. 1200-900 BCE (chronologically corresponding to the Troyan War and the Great Aegean reshuffle provoked by the “Sea People”), and yet another reflected in the archaeological material by a later variant of the European „urnfield‟ culture taking possession of the Spanish heartland, an event dated ca. 800-650 BCE (Bosch-Gimpera 1939, Maps I-II), at the height of the Etruscan civilization. Of these two Pelasgic migrations, Bosch-Gimpera convincingly argued that the 1st may well be held responsible for the typical Pelasgian names in -dunum attested for the region of Catalonia, like Vinodunum, Beseldunum and Salardunum (Bosch-Gimpera 1939: 242). In line with this inference, the 2nd Pelasgian migration wave is likely to be linked with the spread of originally Pelasgian tribes of Brygians/Phrygians, attested by the toponym-names with -briga, like Nemetobriga, Nertobriga and Segobriga, which are concentrated in the Spanish heartland, but extend allover the western part of the Iberian peninsula. 24 Pausanius VIII. 1. 6. between the Maryandinians and the sea, as a nation of Scythian origin. Now the Caucons were undoubtedly Pelasgians, as were the Phrygians, the Carians, and the Leleges, who, united by the ties of blood, flocked to the defense of Troy.25 In a much remoter age, the heroes of the traditional Argo were, it is said, confounded by night at Cyzicos, in Mysia, with the warlike Pelasgi, even then masters of the sea, and accustomed with their galleys to vex the coast and plunder the settled inhabitants. Homer mentions also the swift Paionians from the river Axios (i.e. Vardar) fighting on the side of the Trojans, and he mentions the Paionian leader Pyraechmes (parentage unknown). Later on in the Iliad (book 21), Homer mentions a second Paionian leader, Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon. Which bring us to the conclusion that Pelagonians (and Pelagonia, the plain and homonymous city) was Paionian/Pelasgian too. Pelasgo-Macedonian tribes inhabited both sides of the Bosporus as well; traces of Pelasgian settlements and Pelasgian names are likewise found on both sides. They were in Ipeiros (i.e. Epirus) too, a land abounding with water brooks, with lovely mountains, and lovelier valleys, and at length settled, and erected themselves lasting habitations in the sacred neighborhood of Dodona, where the first oracle known to history flourished under the protection of the Pelasgian Zeus.26 In nearly every part of Macedonian Peninsula the footsteps of the Pelasgians are clearly discernible; at Crestona, on the Echidoros in Paionia; in Emathia, and Bottioea, Thracia, and looking at the language of the country, we find it at all times to have been identical with that of Macedon. Thamyris and Orpheus traversed the whole Macedonian Peninsula, and sang their wisdom to its inhabitants; while Olen coming from Lycia, a Pelasgian settlement, likewise brought his kindred songs to the same tolerant and hospitable land and its people. These were the same Neolithic people who worshiped the Great Mother Goddess Mō (i.e. Mom/Mother), the Sun God Dze (or Il/Ile, hence the word Illyrian - worshipers of El, Il or Ile, Ilij), Leivino Dionis (i.e. Serapis/Osiris/Amon-Ra), Silenos, and other prehistoric divinities of which the names were secret; and the same Neolithic people who built the cyclopic walls and ancient sanctuaries at Aegeai, Delphi, Dion, Dodona, and Samothrace. 25 Strabo VIII. 3. p.127. 26 Again this is a theonym of later redaction, as the real names of gods in the archaic times were well hidden mystery. Above: the stone throne remnants of the chthonic Great Mother Goddess in her sanctuary and astrological observatory on the hilltop of Kokino in Republic of Macedonia, 3rd millennium BCE The first ever found mentioning of the Pelasgians is in the inscription of Ramses III‟s year 8 (1185 BCE), where they are noted as Pelišti (i.e. Pelasti/Belasti; transcribed erroneously even as “Philistines” by modern historiography). Their homeland was the Gimbutas “Old Europe” and they were apparently a north Aegean people, scattered around by the migrations of the Bronze Age and preserving a common, Macedonic language. Their name was used by scholars to describe all the original prehistoric inhabitants of the Aegean area, term that sometimes included the Tyrhenians (i.e. Etruscans), Hyperboreians, etc. The Pelasgi were mentioned as a specific people by several ancient authors, including Homer, Erodot (Lat. Herodotus), and Tukidid (lat. Thucydides). The name of the Pelasgians, like that of the Egyptians or Persians, was a general appellation applied to the whole race, while the several tribes bore separate denominations, as the Chaones, Paiones, the Dryopes, the Leleges, the Caucons, the Cranaans, etc. Pelasgian tribe which first made its appearance, and became powerful in Ipeiros (Epirus), a country not to be separated from the Macedonian urheimat, was that of the Chaones, whose chief seat was Cheimera(„Himara‟), at the foot of the Ceraunian (Horned) mountains. An obscure scholiast, indeed, denominates them barbarians; but as from the best authority we know them to have been Pelasgians, this shows not only the value of the term in the mouth of the later writers, but their direct lineage with Barb-Aryan Macedonians. Other tribes renowned of old in Ipeiros, all Pelasgian, were the Thesprotians, Molossians, Perrhaebians, and the Dolopians, the last rough mountaineers inhabiting both the eastern and western slopes of Mt. Pindus. Again, Molossians were known as the closest kin and fierce allies of the Aegead (Lat. „Argead‟) Macedonians, especially of the 4th century BCE Filip‟s kingdom. Pelasgian tribes of Ipeiros (i.e Epirus), beginning to be straitened for living space, poured over the heights of Mt. Pindus into the valleys of Histiaeotis, and moved eastward along the foot of the Cambunian mountains, settling everywhere as they advanced. The tribe which took this direction bore the name of Perrhaebians, and left traces of their movements in the great Perrhaebian forest, stretching to the foot of Olymp, and in the name of the whole district extending from the Peneius to the northern limits of Thessaly. On the other side of the Adriatic Sea they were also known by the Romans as Samnites and Sabini, and the name Samnium is generally recognized to be a form of the name of the Sabines, who were Umbrians. The eponymous god of the Sabines: Sabus i.e. Savus – a Latin-corrupted form of Ze(us), seems to support this view, it also points to the more probable real name of Latinized “Dzeus” – SaVo(s). The archaeological artifacts and decorations from their tombs also confirm beyond any doubt the oneness with their ancestors back in their Macedonian Peninsula homeland.  Above: Samnite soldiers from a tomb frieze in Nola, 4th century BCE Next page: the very same decorative pattern on the floor mosaics from Macedonian capital in Pella, 3rd century BCE. Exactly like the design above, it has the border made of Macedonic national symbol, the squared cross (found on the obverse of Macedonian coins too), embroidered between the swastikas (symbol of the sun), thus telling the embroidered story of our homeland under the holy sun In the poems of Homer they appear as Macedonic tribe - those who are stated to be Pelasgians in the Iliad are among the (Macedonic) allies of city of Ilion (Lat. Troy). Before recorded history, but during an active migration era of prehistoric Macedonia (circa 1000 BCE), a people came, from the central (Upper Macedonia) highlands of Macedonian Peninsula, and settled around the Aegean and Adriatic sea, and the rest of Mediterranean coast and its islands, Sicily, Lampedusa, etc. Great part of Epirus had in early times been inhabited by Pelasgians, the ancient buildings, institutions, and religious worship of the Epirots, are also manifestly of Pelasgic origin. Macedonic Brygians (i.e. Phrygians) and Thracians were also bounded to the Pelasgians. They dwelt at the foot of the snowy Mt. Scardus, and Mt. Bermius, where the fabulous rose-gardens of king Midas were situated, while walking in which the wise Silenus was said to have been taken prisoner. The plains of Emathia (most ancient name of southern Paionia) too, the most beautiful district of the country, were occupied by the Pelasgians, who, according to Erodot, “under the reign of Deucalion inhabited the country of Pthiotis and possessed that region called Istiaeotis, at the foot of Mt. Ossa and Olymp; Pelasgians held also the Macednum on Mt. Pyndus, they also possessed Crestonia above Chalcidice, to which place they had come from Thessaliotis. The people of Attica, who descended from them must have unlearnt their own Mother Tongue after they took the name of “Grecians”. For the language of Crotonians and of the Placians is the same.” (Erodot, I.32,33) Erodot called them “the eldest inhabitants of the world.” He, who knows the Cult of Samothrace, attributes its foundation to the Pelasgian people, thus connecting the Dionisiac mysteries back to archaic times, and to a people who preceded the so called “Greex”: “...To do the statues of Hermes with the right member, the “Greex”27 have not learned from the Egyptians, but from the 27 Why parenthesis? Because of the fabricated ethnogenesis of the so-called “ancient Greex” which is misleadingly based on the composition of the participants in the Trojan War (1180 BCE), such as the Dannans, Achaeans, Argaeads etc., who were mentioned by Homer in his “Iliad”. The politically biased modern historiography misrepresents them as “Greex” or “Hellenic people”, but this is a blatant forgery – according to all the ancient sources “Hellenes” did not colonize the Peloponnesus until 80 years after the Trojan War. The “Greeks” were (and still are) ignorant of their origin. They neither knew whence their Pelasgians; it was the Athenians to adopt this use, and the other from them. The Athenians, in fact, had already numbered when the Pelasgians came to live together in their new territory, and since then also the Pelasgians began to be considered “Greex”. Anyone who is initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri, that the inhabitants of Samothrace celebrate and that they have adopted from the Pelasgians, he knows what I say. Those Pelasgians, who came to live with the Athenians, lived previously in Samothrace, and it is from them that the inhabitants have learned the mysteries of Samothrace. So the Athenians made the statues of Hermes with the member straight, of which they learned from the Pelasgians. The Pelasgians about it handed down a sacred story that is revealed during the Mysteries of Samothrace.” (Erodot, II.51) Yet another passage by Erodot tells us that, long before, Athens have been inhabited by Pelasgians. According to his view, the Athenians of his own day were a Pelasgian race, which had been settled ancestors had come nor when they had established themselves in “Grease”, nor what they had done there. To preserve the exact memory of things as they occur, there is need of some means of fixing them; but the “Greeks” did not know how to write; they did not employ writing until about the 8th century BCE. They had no way of calculating the number of years. Later they adopted the usage of counting the years according to the great feast which was celebrated every four years at Olympia; a period of four years was called an olympiad. But the 1st olympiad was placed in 776 BCE, and the chronology of the “Greeks” does not rise beyond this date.” – „History of Ancient Civilization‟ (1912) by Charles Seignobos, Doctor of Letters of the University of Paris, p.102. in Attica from the earliest times, and had undergone no change, except by successively receiving new names, and by developing/adopting a new language. “The Athenians,” he says, “when the Pelasgians were in possession of the country now called “Hellas,” were Pelasgians28, named „Cranai‟; but under the reign of Cecrops they were called Cecropids: when Erechtheus succeeded to the kingdom, they changed this name for that of „Athenians‟…” As in Thessaly there were Pelasgians who were called Perrhebians, and perhaps likewise Dolopes, and Athamanes, as in Epirus they were called Selli, Chaones, etc. Aeschylus, who, in one of his tragedies, introduces Pelasgus, king of Argos, claiming for the people named after him a vast territory, extending 28 “Whatever the Pelasgi were, THEY WERE NOT, at one and the same time, the earliest occupants of (invented) “Hellass”, and (THEY WERE NOT ) a population belonging to the same class with the “Hellenes”. The reasons which lie against making the “Hellenes” aboriginal to “Grease” lie also against any other “Hellenoid” population. The magnitude of the earliest historical “Hellenic” area is of importance. Let (suppose) “Grease” under the leadership of Agamemnon be as truly “Hellenic” as Kent and Essex were Anglo-Saxon in the reign of Alfred. What does it prove in the way of the occupants being aboriginal? As little as the English character of the counties in question at the time referred to. Four centuries - or even less - of migration may easily have given us all the phenomena that occur; for the area is smaller than the kingdom of Wessex, or Northumberland, and the country but little more impracticable. Hence, if we sufficiently recognise the smallness of the “Hellenic” area, no difficulties against the doctrine of an original non-“Hellenic” population will arise on the score of its magnitude. It was as easily convertible from non-“Hellenic” to “Hellenic” as Cumberland and Northumberland have been from British to English (both a complete post-factum constructions). And that that (imagined “Hellenic”) area was actually very small indeed is evident to any inquirer who will take up the measure of it without any prepossessions in favor of its magnitude, and limit his “Hellass” to those parts. Only which can be shown to been “Greek”; in order to do which he must draw no undue inferences in favor of the identity of the “Hellenic” and Phrygian languages from the negative fact of Homer saying nothing about interpreters;* build no thing on the ubiquity of the Pelasgi, every one of whose migrations is as unsupported by historical evidence, as the migration of Eneas to Italy, or that of Antenor to Venice; and, lastly, satisfy himself with the “Catalogue of the Ships ” as the earliest geographical notice of ancient “Grease”. This list is more likely to contain populations which were not “Hellenic” than to omit any that were; and, with the single exception of the Acarnanians, this is the current opinion. The Acarnanians alone of all the “Hellenes” are said to have taken no part in the Trojan war; and on the strength of their non-intervenetion we hear of them some 900 years afterwards, putting in a claim for the good offices of the Romans, the supposed descendants of those Trojans whom the other “Hellenes” so cruelly conquered, and the Acarnanians so generously left alone. Yet it by no means follows that because the Acarnanians were “Greex” during the Peloponnesian war - they were “Greex” in the 9th century BCE, any more than it follows that because the men of Monmouth are English at the present moment they were so in the 1st millennium AD. (which is of course untrue)” – from “The Ethnology of Europe” by R.G.Latham, pp.128-138. * Where the Phrygian is factually inclusive and the Semitic “Hellenic” ostensibly intrusive and completely inexistent at the time being. In fact, up to a certain time the southern Mediterranean Semitic-“Hellenic” influence has a northern direction, and acts upon certain indigenous populations originally barbarous, so as imperfectly to “Hellenize” them. Such is the case with Aetolia and Macedon. But soon afterwards, however, the direction of these influences changes, and Aetolia and Macedon contribute to dis-Hellenize again the most southern parts of Macedonian Peninsula. northward as far as the river Strumon. He represents the whole Macedonian Peninsula as having been originally subject to one and the same sway under Pelasgus. Euripides says that Danaos changed the name of the Peloponnesians from Pelasgiotai to Danaoi. These reports are in no way at variance with the Homeric text. To the Pelasgians have been assigned the masonry of cyclopean ancient ruins made of large and massive stones across the Macedonian Peninsula, Asia Minor, Chaldea, and as far as India. The oldest ruins of this civilization are several ancient citadels and the walls of Tirynth, the immense stones used in the construction of which puzzled the archaeologists. They were believed to be the masonry of a race of giants, the „Pelagos‟ or „Cyclops‟, and the work was thence called “Cyclopean”. They are now legitimately ascribed to the Pelasgians, who are mythologically considered to be the first people of Macedonian Peninsula and wider Mediterranean region. Thucydides and Aristophanes justifiably called the oldest constructions in the city of Athens, that cyclopean wall – the "Pelargikon", i.e. "Stork wall (or place)". They testify that the "Pelargikon" was built by Pelasgians, and by this he refers to the first line of walls ever built, at the western foot of the later complex, later known as the “Acropolis”. The Parian Chronicle also mentions that the Athenians expelled the Peisistratids from the "Pelasgikon teichos". Erodot (Lat. Herodotus) relates that before the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Attica by the Danaan immigrants, the land under Hymettus had been assigned to them as a dwelling-place, in reward for the wall that had once been built by them around the hill. Said to have been built by the Pelasgians, there are some remains of this Cyclopean wall still evident in modern Athens. According to archaeological remains of the site, this Pelasgian wall is 6 meters thick. The storks themselves are there to remind us that the old name of the citadel was Pelargikon, and that Pelargikon meant 'Stork fort'; by an easy shift it became Pelasgikon, and had henceforth an etymologically association with the Pelasgians. This shift may look suspicious, but in fact is true, for happily the dating analogy between the Pelargic walls and those of Mycenae is beyond dispute, and if the 'Mycenaeans' were Pelasgian, the walls are, after all, Pelasgic too. Thus Pelargikon/Pelasgikon was a Pelasgian fortification without doubt, showing a constant tradition that Athens was inhabited by Pelasgians looong before the Danaan (“Greex” in Latin) invasion that parted from the shores of Lybia 80 years after the Civil Troyan War29 (1194-1184 BCE). Other numerous toponyms undoubtedly discover Macedonia as their homeland. These prehistoric names survived countless centuries, and arrived to our days: Pella, Pelagonia, Paeonia, Pelister; and also Bellasica, Belazora, Bela Voda, Belitsa - both of which resemble once again the Pela/Bela switch30, as well as other regions of the Aegean (Mt. Pelion, Peloponnese - Pelasgian pontus31). And this appellation of many places managed to resist the passing of the millennia. Modern scholars however, maintain their status quo claim that like all other aspects of the "Pelasgians", their ethnonym (Pelasgoi) is of extremely “uncertain provenance and etymology”. Вut, in the later historiography the original meaning of the term 'Pelasgian' was altogether ignored, and was simply enlarged on all those new genealogic constructions that were added to the whole. Michel Sakellariou collects 15 different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last 200 years, though he admits that "most ... are fanciful". Strabo, in his book 9 (2.4) when he writes about the Thracian pretense, he clearly identifies this “second world-largest race of the time” with the Pelasgians. His claim firmly underlines that Pelasgians never ceased to exist nor were exterminated, but falling into transcriptional partitions had lost their common original name, and were called either by their ancient endonym names: Hittites, Etruscans, Macedonians, Paionians, or by other exonym names: “Greex”, Illyrians, Thracians, Tribalians, etc. Gilbert Murray summarizes the derivation from pelas-gē ("neighboring land"), current at his time: "If Pelasgoi is connected with πέλας, 'near', the word would mean 'neighbor' and would denote the nearest estrange people to the invading “Greex”." According to ancient sources in the 5th and in the 4th century BCE Pelasgians still lived in many regions of Macedonian Peninsula, on several islands, and spoke a language that "Greex" could not understand. In the epic poems of Homer (8th century BCE), they are mentioned as the inhabitants of several locations in Macedonian Peninsula including the ancient city of Dodona in eastern Epirus, southeastern Thrace, Argos, the Peloponnisos (Peloponnesus), and Crete. Erodot (Latinized Herodotus) explicitly tells us that Pelasgians were the autochthonous population long before the invasion of the Semitic “Sea people” or Danaans (erroneously called “Greex” by 29 „Civil‟ because both the warring sides (Myceaneans and Troyans) were Pelasgian by default, a known fact that is intentionally omitted as a fact by the modern politically-biased historiographers. 30 Voicing Assimilation. The /b/ and /p/ are identical in pronunciation (both are bilabial stops), differing only in their Voice-parameter; /b/ is Voiced, while /p/ is Voiceless (describe/description). In Russian, for example, it's Regressive assimilation - the Voice parameter of the final consonant in a cluster becomes the parameter of the whole cluster. So the Russian preposition в (v), meaning 'in', is pronounced /f/ when its object starts with a voiceless consonant. 31 Origin: Latin, from pons, pont - bridge. modern politically biased historiography) from Africa. And he also notes that Pelasgians were Barbarians and spoke a barbarous language or languages, thus were identifiably non-Greek. Traditionally they were thought of as peoples who pre-dated both the Mycenaeans and later Danaans throughout a large part of Macedonian Peninsula and Aegean. They were already identifiable by the time of the Trojan War, when several Pelasgian contingents fought in support of Ilion. Thus, the only plausible identification of these first Indo-Europeans from the Macedonian Peninsula cannot be explained in no other way but as Pelasgo-Proto-Macedonic population. Their sculptured rock-tombs covered with inscriptions, wild and stirring music, and their frantic, extatic worship of Cybele (Macedonian Kibela, Hittite Kubaba, Roman Cybebe, etc.)32, were all the traces they left behind them of a civilization that could not have been very advanced by today standards. But, their unearthed gold, cyclopean walls, and their culture of wine, cannot but indulge us in calling them civilized. Macedonic-Hittites of Kartchemiš (their capital city) used just such metal work as Schliemann found in the ancient ruins at Hissarlik, confirming their cultural oneness. “Hippothoiia led the tribes of the spear-practised Pelasgians, who dwelt on the fertile soil of Larissa - these were led by Hippothoiis and Pylaeus, the offspring of Area, both sons of the Pelasgian Lethus, the son of Teutamus.” – Here Schliemann underlines a considerable multitude of Pelasgians, because he speaks, not of 'a tribe', but 'of tribes,' and puts their seat in Larissa.33 The Proto-Macedonic-Pelasgian civilization was contemporary with Mesopotamian, “Ma, desemna cult ti magna Mater Deum, Cibela,” Strabo „Grography‟ XII.2.3. 32 33 “Ilios” by dr. Henry Schliemann with maps, plans, and about 1800 illustrations; New York edition Harter & Brothers, Franklin square 1881, р.138. Babylonian, Egyptian, and Assyrian greatness, and probably even with the later years of Chaldaean greatness. Pelasgians, with Sidonians to aid them in artistic culture, were all-powerful in that region before the year 1500 BCE. They have reigned in Europe even before that date. It was the cradle of European civilization too, as we know it today, and the only Proto-Barb-Aryan culture that has confirmed a recognizable continuity in the last 4-5 millennia. But, the Proto- Macedonic-Pelasgians of the Asian Peninsula do not seem to be aware of their kinship with the Macedonians of the Macedonian Peninsula. By the time they come to meet each other in a hostile array under the walls of Troy. At all events, Homer does not reveal the fact of race identity, though there is no apparent difficulty in the Macedonians and Trojans understanding each-others. And the possession of a common language is, in fact, the basis of a nationality. “They live,” says Erodot (Lat. Herodotus) of the Pelasgians of Lake Prespa, “upon the lake in dwellings contrived after this manner: planks fitted on lofty piles are placed in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the main land by a single bridge. These piles that support the planks all the citizens anciently placed there at the common charge; but afterward they established a law to the following effect: whenever a man marries, he sinks three piles, bringing wood from a mountain called Orbelos... They live in the following manner: every man has a hut on the planks, in which he dwells, with a trap-door closely fitted in the planks, and leading down to the lake. They tie the young children with a cord round the foot, fearing lest they should fall into the lake beneath. To their horses and beasts of burden they give fish for fodder, of which there is such abundance that, when a man has opened his trap-door, he lets down an empty basket by a cord into the lake, and after waiting a short time, draws it up full of fish. Of the fish there are two kinds, and they call them paprakes (pastrmki) and tillones (tsironi).” These Lake-Dwellers are perhaps the same ancestors of the Etruscans and Veneti in the north of Italy. We find these prehistoric isolated communities pervading all the habitable parts of Europe even before the great Barb-Aryan migration. Strabo mentions the Dryopes, the Cauconians, the Pelasgians, and the Lelegians, all in the Peloponnesus, and the Aonians the Temmikes and the Hyantes in Boeotia. No other ancient source contains such a rich enumeration of Proto-Macedonic peoples. Of all these groups, the Pelasgians are most important in ancient literature. However, the only historically confirmed Pelasgians of which we know were those in Thessaly, whose country in the epics is called “Πελαζγικον Απγοζ” (Pelasgikon Argos) and in more recent times Πελαζγιοηιδ (Pelasgiotis), with Larisa as its town. These Proto-Macedonic Pelasgians were, according to Meyer (1892), the oldest masters of the Thessalian plain, and the memory of their mighty kings at Larisa remained vivid long after they disappeared from the historical scene under this name. By the Classical period various enclaves of Pelasgians could be found across the whole Macedonian Peninsula, the Aegean islands and western Asia Minor. In the time of Thukydides (IV,109) the Krestonians, Bisaltians, and Edonians bordered on the Halkidic colonies, and are all termed Pelasgian(s); the primitive Arkadians were said to be Pelasgians, the mountains of Arkadia being naturally the last refuge of these aboriginal inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, whom the Danaan (i.e. “Greex”) settlers displaced. According to Fragment 76 of Hellanicus's “Phoronis”, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings: Phrastōr, Amyntōr, Teutamides and Nasas (kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly). The Pelasgians under Nasas rose up (anestēsan) against the immigrant Hellenes (who presumably had acquired Thessaly) and departed for Italy where they first took Cortona and then founded Tyrrhenia. The conclusion is that Hellanicus believed, with just reason, that the Pelasgians of Thessaly (and Peloponnesus) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans. It was not by a mere coincidence that even the Macedonian capital was named Pella. Contrary to what is thought, the genetic researches from the last years have confirmed that the Pelasgian lineage remained uninterrupted and was preserved by the blood-lineage in Macedonians, Etruscans, Gaul, and Veneti (direct descendants of the Enetoi from Macedonia described by Homer and other ancient authors). In these literary traditions Pelasgians remained distinctively the oldest dwellers of the northern plain, mythical sons of the Black Earth and closest ancestor-kin of Macedon. As foes of the sea invaders (the Danaans) from northern Africa, they could not be introduced in the lay of the Trojan War as their allies, but were present there among the peoples fighting on the side of the Trojans' – Brygians (later Phrygians), Macedonians, Paionians, Maionians, Thyrseni, etc. They practically fought a civil war (as the Semitic “Greex” in reality still hadn‟t arrived from northern Africa) against the Mycenaeans, who were nothing else but other Pelasgians from Peloponnesus. Mycenaean Pelasgians controlled the Aegean after the fall of the Minoan civilization c. 1400 BCE, and built fortified Pelasgic (i.e. Cyclopean) citadels and impressive palaces. In the epic poems of Homer, the Pelasgians are mentioned as the inhabitants of several locations in Macedonian Peninsula, including the ancient city of Dodona in eastern Epirus, the southeastern Thrace, the Peloponnesus, and Crete (i.e. “Kríti”- „hidden‟ in plain Macedonian). However, now it is known, e.g. that the Cretans were not Pelasgians. Homer knows that at his time (or at the time of the Trojan war) the inhabitants of Crete were Danaans, but the modern flap- doodle politically biased historiography put this north African tribe in the same basket with European Aryans. Homer characterizes the Pelasgians as brave fighters and also refers to “Pelasgic Argos”, where the Mirmidons with fast-legged Achil came from. Atina (lat. Athena) was a Pelasgian goddess. According to Thompson (1954,179), Mpampinioti (1996,62) and other scholars, the goddess Atina does not have the so-called "Hellenic" origins. The word Atina, which means „father‟s“ („of her father“), from Ata[archaic] - „father‟34, and female-belonging suffix - ina. The (Italian) linguist Mpampinioti (actually Bambinioti in plain Italian) confirms Atina‟s non- Hellenic onomastics. The mention of Dodonaean mountains as part of the territory of Pelasgus, together in relation with the Perhaebians and Paionians, in the poet's description, seems to imply that, according to his view, which is expressed far too accurately to be ascribed to poetical license, the name of Pelasgians might be properly applied to the most ancient inhabitants of Peloponnesus, Epirus, and Macedonia. Yet he undoubtedly knew that many races of other names existed in those countries during the same period to which he refers as the dominion of the Pelasgians. In Achaia, as in Attica, according to a tradition which Erodot says was current throughout Macedonia, the first settlers were Pelasgians, and before they had been called simply Aegeialeans - coastmen, as the most ancient name of the country was Aegialuš, or the „Coast‟. Among the barbarians mentioned as the most ancient inhabitants of Macedonian peninsula, there are several tribes, as the Boeotian Hectenes, Temmices, Aonee, and Hyantes, of whom our knowledge goes no farther than their supposed names; and it would be idle to build a conjecture about them on the tradition that two of them had migrated from Sunium in Attica, and that a third finally settled in Phočis and Aetolia. But there seems to be good reason for believing that the Caucones, who once occupied a great part of the western side of Peloponnesus, where a remnant of them long continued to bear that name, were a Pelasgian race, as some ancient authors held them to be.35 Later writers placed them in Asia Minor. Some modern scholars regard them as the Pre-Indo- European inhabitants of Macedonian Peninsula, originally from eastern Thessaly (Thessalia) and Ata or Tata [archaic] – father. Examples: lat.: Atavus – forefather; Ataman – elder leader; Atatürk 34 (Mustafa Kemal, 1881-1938) – the Father of the Turks, etc. 35 „A history of Greece“ by the Rev. Connor Thirlwall, Vol.1, 1835. in the northern part of the country; others regard them as the common ancestors of the Macedonians, Thracians and the Italic peoples. According to the more commonly received opinion, the Argive Pelasgians were the eldest of the race. Pelasgians were also the original autochthonous inhabitants and founders of the city of Athens (Atina) in Boeotia. The first king of Athens, Erihton, was a native Pelasgian. Goddess Atina was imported by Pelasgians to Boeotia from the north, where she was honored as „Atina of Itonia“. Whatever the Pelasgi were, they were not belonging to the same stock with the “Hellenes” (factually “Sellenes36”, due to the S>H mutation). The reasons which lie against making the “Hellenes” aboriginal to Macedonian Peninsula lie also against any other “Hellenoid” population. The Pelasgians are considered by the ancient legends to be the straight heirs of the mythical Hyperborean giants. The Aeolian Pelasgians who lived there had the common ancestry with the Barb-Aryan (Borean/Hyperborean) Macedonic Culture, the Minian Culture from the lower Danube and Morava valey region, and Hittite-Maionians and Phrygians in Asia Minor. The common link is woven between the Pelasgians and Hyperboreans, the people of Ram, one of the gods of Hyperborea. Hyperborean Ram, „Rama the emperor of the world‟, who managed the feat of pacifying and harmonizing the two thirds of this beautiful planet – and not only India, as the Indians believed. The mythical character of Rama was not a prince of India, he is doomed to a global unifying task. A pattern repeated by all Macedonians, from Dionis (lat. Dionysus), through Irakle (Lat. Hercules), to Alexander the Great. Hyperborea, the enchanted island in the northern sky, is also called Nibiru, the wandering planet. Ram came from Hyperborea, because he was the son of god and god himself, as Jesus will say that much later. According to ancient sources the Hyperboreans37 were “a race worshiping the Sun-god and living in a land of sunshine and plenty beyond the north wind”. But, in normal circumstances a wind isn‟t something upon which you can hold on for orientation in space. “North wind” can be any wind anywhere north from the Equator till the North Pole, and definitely it is not something to rely on as an orientation point. Off course, the ancient authors weren‟t so ignorant to dissipate a tangible location of some particular place by blowing it to the wind. Nonetheless, the particular wind Bora, by which supposedly the Hyperboreans got their exonym name, is still blowing from north in the Thermaic and Strumaic gulfs of northern Aegean Sea. So, the place from where this quite regular and local wind blows it cannot be far from there, and that‟s not “far north” by any means. Actually, the location, as probably originally given by the ancient authors, as expected, wasn‟t a wind in the first place, but a mountain from where its name originates. It is the Mt. Bora in Almopia (in Aegean or Lower Macedonia) from where the wind Bora blows and from where gets its name. And in those ancient times, having in mind the velocity of the means for transport and communication, this was considered very far-far north from, lets say, Peloponnesus. Thus, the “far north” fable of Hyperboreans wasn‟t so far north after all, instead it is simple hyperbolical exaggeration by a long shot, and “beyond the north wind” is obvious, rather poetic animation than a solid reference for a real place, which, on contrary, was and still is there – Mt. Bora (a mountain, not wind!).7 36 The Arcadians called themselves Πποζελενοι („Proselenoi‟, i.e. “Raseleni” - „migrated‟ in today plain Macedonian: http://www.makedonski.info/search/raseleni ), which is commonly rendered as „anteriorly resettled‟. 37 From “huper” -„beyond,‟ + “bora” (lat. “boreas”) -„north wind.‟  Above: Mt. Bora (today Mt. Payak) in Almopia, a mountain in the middle between Lower Macedonia and Upper Macedonia. North from there was actually the Hyperborea, which is in Upper Macedonia, today Republic of Macedonia As the Pelasgians are considered to have built all the Cyclopean monuments in the Mediterranean area, some scholars summed two and two and concluded that the Pelasgians are responsible for the development of the Mycenaean civilization as well, a fact that cannot be more obvious. But, due to the common political bias of the conventional historiography, this theory, however, has not won the general acceptance. Within it still prevails the old Roman “Divide et imperat”. Pelasgians founded Rome too. According to the legend Arcadian nymph Nicostrate persuaded her son Evander to murder his father; and, when the Arcadians banished them both, they escaped across the Adriatic to Italy, accompanied by a body of Pelasgians. There, some 60 years before the Trojan War, they founded the small city of Pallantium, on the hill beside the river Tiber, later called Mount Palatine (today‟s center of the city of Rome); the site having been Nicostrate‟s choice; and soon there was no more powerful king than Evander in all Italy. According to the Romans, Iracles (Lat. Hercules) freed King Evander from the tribute owed to the Etruscans; killed King Faunus, whose custom was to sacrifice strangers at the altar of his father Hermes; and begot Latinus, the ancestor of the Latins, on Faunus‟s widow, or daughter. Others hold that Latinus was a son of Circe by Odysseus, etc. The Pelasgians fought on the side of king Priam against the Pelasgian tribes of Mycenaeans (or Achaeans) in the War of Ilion (i.e. Trojan War) in the 13th century BCE.38 To fight this Civil War, they migrated from Macedonia. Homer accordingly noted that Achil prayed the "Pelasgian Zevs Ammon of Dodona",39 and also mentioned them as “People of Crete”.40 During the classical period, enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Macedonia, Epirus, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean. And, same like the much later Civil War that exploded between the Etruscans (Trojans i.e. Pelasgians by origin too) and Latins, this early Aegean Civil War happened because of the adultery over someone‟s woman. The conclusion 38 Iliad, II, 840-843. 39 Iliad, XVI, 223. 40 Odyssey, XIX, 177. which can be drawn is that the Macedonic-Pelasgian sexual promiscuity had regularly caused an unprecedented dire price and deep consequences on the human history. Above: the factions in the Trojan civil war (12th or 11th century BCE, often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes, 1194–1184 BCE) according to the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly “all the autochthonous inhabitants and culture of Macedonian Peninsula and Aegean lands and islands”, before the advent of the ancient city-states, or nation-states, of which Macedonia is the first ever known. This is not an exclusive meaning, but other senses require identification when meant. Populations identified as “Pelasgian” spoke a language or languages that at the classical period were identified as “barbaric”, which is the very same identifier given for the Macedonians by later authors from the Danaan-Achaean city states. This is the opposite of the Semitic “Greex”, the ancient immigrants from northern Africa. Last but not least, there‟s also the Theo Vennemann‟s theory of “Europa Vasconica”, a linguistic theory based on surviving hydronyms across Europe, which from the linguistic point of view proposes new solution of the prehistoric development of Indo-European languages and populations. As summarized from the introduction of his book: “After the last iceage, which ended about 11,000 years ago, Indo-European agriculturists, possibly originating in the Pannonian Basin of Central Europe, migrated further north and west into Europe in the 6th millennium BCE, arriving in Scandinavia beginning around the 4th millennium BCE. The migrating Indo-Europeans encountered other, non-IE people, who had started to settle there already in the 8th millennium BCE, i.e. several millennia after the last Ice Age, and had already named the European rivers, lakes, mountains and settlements.” These languages are held by Vennemann to have influenced the Indo-European languages of the northwest littoral from the 5th millennium BCE onward. Despite the ridiculous politically-biased and childish Eurocentric “English through Latin” explanations, given for the Vasconic language 5-7000 years old, however, this theory once again proposes the same continuity path – from the Macedonian Peninsula. In convergence of the Vasconic theory, John Morris Jones, a specialist in Welsh language and literary studies who is best known for “A Welsh Grammar, historical and comparative” (1913), wrote a chapter which appeared as an appendix to a book edited by John Rhys (who had made similar suggestions about Pictish earlier) and D. Brynmor-Jones entitled “The Welsh People”. In this chapter Morris Jones proposed the following scenario, which is rooted in 19th century Eurocentric anthropological theory (1900:617 et seq.): “The Neo-Celtic (?) languages, then, which are Aryan in vocabulary, and largely non Aryan in idiom, appear to be the acquired Aryan speech of a population originally speaking a non-Aryan language. [...] These non-Celtic inhabitants of Britain are believed by anthropologists to be of the same race as the ancient Iberians and to have migrated through France and Spain from North Africa, where the race is represented by the Berbers and ancient Egyptians. [...] If the Iberians of Britain are related to the speakers of these [Hamitic] languages, it is natural to expect that their language also belonged to the Hamitic family – in other words, that the pre-Aryan idioms which still live in Welsh and Irish were derived from a language allied to Egyptian and the Berber tongues. And if there is evidence that this is so – if we find, on comparison, that neo-Celtic syntax agrees with Hamitic on almost every point where it differs from Aryan, we have the linguistic complement of the anthropological evidence, and the strongest corroboration of the theory of the kinship of the early inhabitants of Britain to the North African white race.” Here Morris Jones is arguing for a Hamitic-speaking substratum which is imposed upon by a Celtic (Aryan)-speaking superstratum. Vasconic develops this position by arguing that Semitidic languages influenced (substratally) the arriving Indo-European languages of the Atlantic seaboard of northwest Europe from the 5th millennium BCE onward. Vasconic theory identifies the Phoenicians among the likely Semitic-speaking travelers who have introduced their language and culture along the Atlantic coast, it might be useful to point out a few of the known characteristics of these people, since little is known about possible earlier Atlantic settlers. Thus, every little bit from the 19th century Eurocentric policy is based on hard evidence of “little known”, “it appear that”, “is believed”, “if”, etc. The only important criteria for this policy is to look everywhere for the origins of everything, but not in the Macedonian Peninsula (i.e. “Balkans” as they call it). And although the Vasconic theory admits its origin from the Macedonian Peninsula, it calculates with various supposed incongruousness. Luckily there‟s more and more conscious and decent scientist who don‟t close blind eye on the rest of the (eastern) European continent when it came to origins. “General opinion, therefore, traces the earliest historical Celts back to the continent and the La Te`ne culture, or to its immediate predecessor, the Hallstatt culture, at least in Western Europe. Since it is with little difficulty that archaeologists can trace the Hallstatt back to the Urnfield culture (1200–800 BCE) or yet earlier periods, some prehistorians have glibly asserted that a „Proto-Celtic‟ culture can be discerned all the way back to the Early Bronze Age. This can be done, however, only if one maintains a blissful ignorance...”(Malory 1989) On the other side the Geographical names with Pelasgian origin survived until today in the toponyms of numerous locations across the mainland Macedonia: Pelagonia (plain), Pella (city of), Pelekas (mountain in Mysia), Pelinna (town in Thessaly), Pelion (city of), Pelister (mountain in Macedonia), Pelenitsa; and also Bellasica (mountain), Belazora (city of), Bela Voda, Belitsa, etc. (both of which resemble once again the Pela/Bela switch)41; as well as in the other regions of the Aegean (Mt. Pelion, Peloponese – i.e. Pelasgian pontus42). There‟s not even closely another similar region to be found elsewhere, with such an obvious and omnipresent Pelasgian toponymy like the numerous names in Macedonian Peninsula. 41 Voicing Assimilation. The /b/ and /p/ are identical in pronunciation (both are bilabial stops), differing only in their Voice-parameter; /b/ is Voiced, while /p/ is Voiceless (describe/description). In Russian, for example, it's Regressive assimilation - the Voice parameter of the final consonant in a cluster becomes the parameter of the whole cluster. So the Russian preposition в (v), meaning 'in', is pronounced /f/ when its object starts with a voiceless consonant. 42 Origin: Latin, from pons, pont - bridge.  Religion of the Pelasgians In different parts of the Macedonian Peninsula once, thenafter, and now occupied by Pelasgians there existed different mythological traditions to the origin and eponymous connection with Pelasgus. Its theonym became an all-inclusive term for any archaic and presumably autochthonous (thus pre-„Hellenic‟) people in the ancient Macedonic urheimat around Aegean Sea. This theonym- name of “Pelasgians” (Pelasgoi, Pelasgioti, Pelargoi) was unanimously used by ancient writers to generally describe “the first people”, i.e. “the oldest populations on Macedonian Peninsula that preceded the Troyan War”. To the Pelasgians are alleged the emergence of Brygians/Phrygians, Paionians/Maionians, Pelagonians, and finally the birth of the Macedonian nation under the king Karan (Lat. Caranus) around the 9th century BCE. As the oldest people, Pelasgians were surely responsible for the oldest myths and traditions too, and consequently for the oldest forms of religion. The Pelasgian spiritual substratum of the early Bronze Age preceded by a long shot the later “Classical” pantheons of the Aegean and wider Mediterranean, and its traces are present everywhere. As already mentioned above, one of the main features was the late Neolithic Matriarchy, which is found as the characteristic omnipresent and key figure of Pelasgian religion. Eleusis, in Attica, was the chief seat of the worship of Demeter (i.e. Dea Mater, the primordial Great Mother Goddess Ma or Mo, the Mo-Dea of the Pelasgo-Macedonians and Kubaba/Kibela/Cybele of the Hittites and Phrygians, syncretized further as Rhea/Hera, Aphrodite, Diana, etc.) – a deity, as we shall find, of eminently Pelasgian character and prehistoric associations. The attachment of Demeter/Cybele to Crete and Afrodite/Diana to Ephesus was plainly connected with the archaic Pelasgian matrilineal period too.  The Kaviroi/Cabeiri and Eleusinian Mysteries were just another prehistoric aspect of the Pelasgian beliefs, transmitted and adopted by the later religions. The very word for „holy‟ – “SVTIL” in plain Pelasgian, “SVETI” in plain Macedonian, remained exactly the same and survived unaltered all these countless millennia until today.43 “The mysteries of Cabeiri-rites which the men of Samothrace learned from the Pelasgians who lived in that island before they moved to Attica and communicated the mysteries to the Athenians. This will show that the Athenians were the first to make statues of Hermes with the erect phallus, and they learned the practice from the Pelasgians...” (Erodot II.51) Transmitted mythology preserved the Pelasgian creation myth: “Earlier Eurinome (Macedonic Evrinome/Eirenne), Goddess of All Things, emerged naked from Chaos and found nothing solid to put her feet: then divided the sea from the sky and wove a single dance on the waves. Always dancing headed south and the North Wind swirled behind her seemed something new and distinct; So she thought to start with the work of creation. She turned suddenly, grabbed coldest North Wind and rubbed her hands, and behold, the great serpent Ophion. Eurinome danced to keep warm, dancing with the rhythm more and more wild until Ophion, on desire, wrapped her in its coils the 43 “O Яэике Пелаэговь населивших Италию и сравненiе его с древле-цловенскимь” (“About the Pelasgian language in Italy and its comparison with ancient-Slavic”) by Aleksandr Dimitrievich Chertkov, Vol.1, p.48.1857. limbs of the goddess and they mated. Now the North Wind, also called Borea (Mkd. „Bura‟, with „u‟ pronounced as in English „put‟)44, is a wind fertilizer; in fact, often the mares, caressed by his breath, conceive foals without the help of a stallion. And so Eurinome became pregnant. Now she, flying over the sea, took the form of a dove and, time debit, laid the Universal Egg. By order of the goddess, Ophion rolled seven times around the egg, until it hatched and brought forth all things that exist, daughters of Eurinome: the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, the Stars, the Earth with its mountains, with its rivers, with its trees and herbs and living creatures. Eurinome and Ophion settled on Mount Olymp, but soon Ophion angered the goddess because he boasted of being the Creator of the Universe. Eurinome then hit him in the mouth with a kick, broke all his teeth and banished him into the dark underground caverns. The goddess then created the seven planetary powers and placed at the head of each of them a Titan and a Titaness: Tia and Hyperion of the Sun; Phoebe and Atlas to the Moon; Crio and Dion on the planet Mars; Meti and Theo to the planet Mercury; Themes and Eurymedon to the planet Jupiter; Tethys and Ocean on Venus; Rhea and Cronus to the planet Saturn. The first man was Pelasgus, ancestor of the Pelasgians; he emerged from the soil of Arcadia, immediately followed by other men to whom Pelasgus taught how to make huts and how to feed on acorns and sew garments of pigskin, similar to those who still wears the people of the county and in Euboia and Phočis.” This oldest Pelasgian creation myth finds its exact paragon in ancient Babylon, where we see the same primordial deity personified as Tiamat, the goddess of the salt water (sea) and chaos of primordial creation. Later she also appears under yet another Macedonic name: Talassa - „waves‟ in plain Macedonian.45 According to different scholars Tiamat is usually described as a sea serpent or dragon, and concluded that "there is reason to believe that Tiamat was sometimes, not necessarily always, conceived as a dragoness," thus reconfirming the chthonic serpent-dimension from the Pelasgian creation myth. This first god/man Pelasgus, was also known as Uranus46, the primordial Sky-father god. The size of his body, his mythical strength and beauty surpassed that of all the other mortals, together with the gifts of his soul. He was also the Celestial Bull (Taurus) that fecundates the earth (i.e. Gaia/Ge); hence his second name “Uran-us” (thus Ta-Ur-us), - „bull‟. He was the first to teach humans to build houses, to make clothes, and he forbade them to continue eating green leaves, weeds and roots, some of which were inedible, and others dangerous to their health, allowing them only the use of the acorn of the oak for eating (Pausanias, VIII.1). According to Aeschylus (Suppliant Women, 842-901), Pelasgus was the son of Gaia (the Earth), but according to others Gaia was his wife with whom he had a daughter Rhea. According to the grammarian Apollodorus (III.8.1), Pelasgus was the forefather of the Titans. Other ancient authors (Scholiast of Pindar, Olympian III. 28 in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum II. 387) mention that Pelasgos was the first ancestor of the Hyperboreans, near the Atlas Mountain (Apollodorus, II. 5.11). According to Diodorus (I.III. 56), Ouranos‟ reign extended especially over the western and northern parts of the ancient world. Especially at sanctuary of Dodona (in Epirus), one of the sacred Pelasgian cities, where later Ouranus/Uranus was also venerated under the more conventional name Dzeus Anaxi 44 “Borei” in Macedonic Pelasgian was the northern wind that fertilizes and brings the storms to the sea. 45 http://www.makedonski.info/search/talas 46 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Name Pelasgichos (Lat. Jupiter Imperator Pelasgus). In Homer‟s Iliad (XVI. 232), Achilles apparently invokes him under this later Koine name, but this is an obvious corrupted later transcription of the original Homer‟s Uranus. In plain Pelasgian he was the “Lord over the mountains (i.e. Oro-An- us)47 of Dodona” (Aeschylus, Suppliant Women 327-258). According to the ancient traditions, the reign of Uranus (i.e. Pelasgus) and its pastoral tribes had extended from Northern Europe to Southern areas, and beyond the Mediterranean, to the plains of the Nile. It is worth mentioning that the Pelasgians had been the only people of the ancient world to which was attributed a divine origin48, probably due to their extraordinary 47 Of or relating to mountains; see Orogeny (a process in which a section of the earth's crust is folded and deformed by lateral compression to form a mountain range), Orography (branch of physical geography dealing with mountains), etc. 48 Homer, Iliad X.429; Odyssey XIX.177: “dioi Pelasgoi”. intelligence, their moral and physical qualities, and their amazing deeds and works. They were thus the divine heirs of Pelasgus/Uranus. From ancient sources we аlso know that the Pelasgians had a Sacred King that ruled in the eight-year reign. The Horse was Pelasgian sacred animal par excellence, long before the cult of the Sun-chariot. Accordingly, the Great Mother Goddes Ma worshiped by the Macedonians, still in the time of Alexander and long after him it had the horses beside her on the votive images made of Above: a stone slab and bronze plate with the image of the goddess Mō or Ma (12x7x0,5-0,7 cm, before and after the restauration) acompained by two dogs and above her head are two horse heads; found in the village of Pretor on the Lake Prespa, R. of Macedonia49 bronze and stone. Irakle (lat. Hercules) was known as “the horse-binder”, underlining his pre- “Greek” origin too. Pan, Silen (lat. Silenus) were just some of the original Pelasgic old-fashioned gods. The next Pelasgian theonym of the central Macedonian Peninsula and the Macedonic- Pelasgians was “Bora” or “Borea”, meaning “North Country”, and “Boreadi” meaning “northerners”. In mythology, the “Boreadi” were children of Borei (i.e. Voreas)50 who was a god of the north wind, 49 “The Cappadocian goddess Mâ and her worship in Macedonia after a bronze plaque of the Pretor, at the Museum of Resen”, Ţiva Antika 33/2,1983, pp. 165-183. 50 From Macedonic verb “Vrie” - „boils‟; hence the Latin-anglicized “Vortex, whirl” - a mass of whirling wind or air. the strongest of all the winds. His Macedonic name discovers his real syllabic epithet-name - "Bo- Orei" - 'God (of) Mountain', from "Bog" (Avestan 'Baga', Persian 'Bhaga' - god, lord)51, and "Oroas/Oreas" - 'Gora' (Mountain) in plain Macedonian.52 He was the son of the goddess Eoia and of Astraei (Lat. Astraeus).53 Astraei was the son of the primordial Titan “Krai/Krios” (cold), while Left: Astraei the Titan, father of Borei (Lat. Boreias) 51 The name of the city of “Baghdad” derived from the Middle Persian Baga-data, "Lord- given"; also “Bogdan” - „god-given‟ in plain Macedonian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdan ; see the village of Bogdanci in R. of Macedonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanci 52 http://www.makedonski.info/search/gora 53 Lat. Astraeus, a mythological character, second-generation Titan according to Hesiod's "Theogony" and Pseudo-Apollodorus, son of Krios/Crios and Euribia. Higgins considers him a giant, the son of Geya and Tartarus. Astraei is the husband of the goddess Eos, the father of four wind gods: Evr (south-east wind), Zephyr (west wind), Not (south wind), and Borey (north wind). Hesiod, Fragmenta & Theogonia, p. 378. Eoia (Lat. Eos) was the goddess of the morning blush and dawn. Borei lived in the Strumon (today river Struma) valley northwest from Thrace and served Adonei/Poseidon and by his orders created storms. He also created the storm in 492 BCE, the one which sank the Persian fleet near Mt. Athos. In Roman antiquity his cult was observed in Pula (in Istria). The famous Borean children twins Kalei and Zeta and daughters Cleopatra and Hiona were Argonauts. The twins were extremely fast and thus managed to save Finei from the grasp of the Harpies. Finei was a Thracian king of Salmid and husband of their sister Cleopatra. As the wife of king Finei, Cleopatra gave birth to two sons, Pandeon and Pleksip. When Finei married his second wife Ideia, the daughter of the Scythian king Dardan, he threw Cleopatra together with her children into the dungeon. At the calls from the boys for help, the Boreas came to their rescue and saved their sister and her children. Ideia was then returned to her father in Scythia where Dardan alone judged her crimes. Hiona bore Adonai/Poseidon a son named Eumolp. Fearing her father Borei would harm her, Hiona threw her newborn child into the depths of the sea, but the baby was saved by Adonai/Poseidon who then took his son to Ethiopia and gave him to his daughter to look after. When Eumolp grew up, he married one of the daughters belonging to the woman who took care of him and with whom he had a child named Ismar. After Eumolp left Ethiopia with his son Ismar he went to Thrace, where, instead of being grateful for the hospitality offered to him by king Tegri, Eumolp began to conspire against him. When the conspirators were discovered, he fled and went to the city Eleusina where the city‟s friendly inhabitants accepted him. After a while, Eumolp returned to Thrace54 and made peace with the king and after that he inherited his throne. The common background beyond the Pelasgians for various cults and legends related to Sirius, Atlantis, the Garden of the Hesperides (the lore about the eternal spring and paradise on Earth), Poseidon, Pleiades, Athena, Persei, the Amazons and Atlas. Other gods which remained recorded by ancient sources (Homer, Erodot, etc.) and are known as pure Pelasgian divinities are: Esmun („Osmion‟ in plain Macedonian)55 – the „eight-one‟ i.e. Leivino Dionis (Bachus/Zagreus/Sabazius), later refurbished as “Thracian” Dionis; he is the presumed son of the supreme Sky-father and Supreme creator, the Horned god of thunder; 54 On difference from “Brygian”, “Macedonian”, “Paionian” or “Pelasgian”, the “Thracian” isn‟t a proper ethnonym. The (multiuse) term 'Thracia' used by ancient authors as well as their modern counterparts, traced the territory of 'Thracia' totally differently, depending on whether they referred to ethnic or political boundaries. They differ from source to source. As a geographical name its etymological meaning was “the land” or “the coast”. This can be seen from Hecataeus (Hec., ap. Steph. Byz., s.v. Darsioi: ethnon Thrakion („Daorsoi‟ were living on the left bank of the river Neretva to the Adriatic cost in Dalmatia). Apollodorus also used the term „Thrakes‟ for „Histri‟ on the Histrian Peninsula (Istra in today‟s Croatia). These two examples evidenced that this designation had no obvious ethnic connotations, and should be translated as “Landers”, “Mainland tribe” or “Coastal tribe”, i.e. a tribe living on the mainland or on the coast. This interpretation can be emphasised by data from Herodotus (Her., VII, 185) who describes the Thessalian tribes as “those Thracians living on the Thessalian Coast along the sea”. It was very well known to Herodotus‟ audience that the Thessalians are not „Thracians‟ in ethnical sense. - “On the Names of Thracia and Eastern Macedonia”, ΚΡΑΣΙ΢ΣΟ΢, Сборник в чест на професор Петър Делев, София, 2017, рp. 75-82 N. Proeva 2017. 55 http://www.makedonski.info/search/osmi Grom Daž-bog or Grom Div i.e. Hromi Daba56 in the so-called “Slavic” mythology, thus syncretized as 'Chrom Dabh' in Gaul/"Celtic"57 (an obvious corrupted form of the primordial „Horned god‟, celestial Sky-father and god of thunder) – i.e. the Supreme thunderer (from “Grom” - „thunder‟ in plain Macedonian58, corrupted as “Hrom” in Czecho-Slovakian59, Serbo-Croatian, Latin “Uranus”, etc.) and creator of all the other gods. So is it possible that Crom Dubh is really 5000+ years old deity? Most probably yes. We find additional proof of the antiquity and the importance of the “Slavic” and/or Gaul/"Celtic" Crom Dubh in the Balkans tradition where Crom Dubh is known as Hromi Daba or “Grom Div” - the „Thunder Giant‟. This is what Balkan people‟s tradition tells us about Hromi Daba: According to the “Slavic” folk tradition, Hromi Daba was another name for the old god Dabog/Daţbog/Daţdbog - the „Giving-god‟, the ancestral deity of the most ancient people. This identifies the Grom Dažbog/Hromi Daba/Crom Dubh as the ancestor of all the other pagan gods. If he is really 5000-6000 years old, that would make him at least a contemporary with the oldest prehistoric deities in Eurasia and north Africa, if not their origin. The fact that this god is directly linked with the Bull cult makes it possible that it descends from much earlier bull cults, which originated in the eastern Mediterranean area around 10-12,000 years ago. Lahe – goddess; Libussa – literacy goddess; Lugh/Lugus/Luku-bo(g) – The divine name Lukubo(s) (Lokooboo, niiraboo, koobeeliboo, rinoeboo, where the syllable „boo‟ stands for „god‟ in plain Macedonian), occurs on the Iberian peninsula, in Gaul-“Celtic” Helvetia, where in the nominative form it is “Lugoves”; and “Lug” was also an Irish god who was said to possess all the superior qualities of the tribe. The Milky Way was known as “Lug's Chain”. Pan – „Upper (Lord)‟, supreme deity in general; Sais/Savos – „Skyfather‟, the supreme creator god; Etruscan “Ais”; Sibila (obvious Latin alteration of Sivila/Sevila/Šemvila) – „Samovila‟ in today modern Macedonian60 - „a fairy‟, female semideity; probably another name of Cibele/Kibela (Hittite Kubaba). Silen (Lat. Silenus) – legendary satyr-companion of Dionis; Sita – goddess of the earth abundance and fertility; from the adjective “Sit” -„sate, satiated‟ in plain Macedonian; Touros (Toy-Uros -„he-wreck‟) – was allegedly the Pelasgian name of Macedonic „Ares‟ (Egyptian Orus, Lat. „Mars‟), the god of war; Persian „Marduk‟, also noted as Etruscan „Turan‟ and/or Hittite „Tarun‟(i.e. the „Thunderer‟), later „Perun‟; 56 https://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabog 57 http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2015/04/how-old-is-crom-dubh.html 58 http://www.makedonski.info/search/grom#%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC/%D0%BC 59 “Kdekoľvek je hrom, tam je aj blesk.” – „Where‟s thunder there‟s lightning.‟ In the Polish, Czech and Slovak languages “G” passed into “H”: Grad→Hrad, Grom→Hrom, etc. https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=udrel%20hrom 60 http://www.makedonski.info/search/samovila Turs – „Mercury‟; Voltumna – goddess of the wisdom and advice; Zagrao (Lat. Zagreus), Sebesio (Lat. Sabazius) – other names of „Dionis‟; Kabiri, Kabeiri (Lat. Cabeiri, Καβειροι)61 mysteries, festivals, and orgies, solemnized in all places in which the Pelasgian Kabeiri (the Upper/Greatest Gods) were worshipped, but especially in Samothrace, Imbros, Lemnos, Thebes, Anthedon, Pergamus, and Berytos. Little is known respecting the rites observed in these mysteries, as no one was allowed to divulge them or pronounce the personal names of these Kabeiri. It is known that they numbered a total of 12 gods, but their names are still unknown and remain an ancient mystery. The most celebrated were those of the island of Samothrace, which, if we may judge from those of Lemnos, were solemnized every year, and the celebrations lasted for 9 days. Persons on their admission seem to have undergone a sort of examination respecting the life they had led hitherto, and were then purified of all their crimes, even if they had committed murder. However, some of these Great Gods were explicitly mentioned by Manasias (Mnaseas) of Patara with the following names: primordial mother Kabiro or Axieros – yet another appearance of the primordial Great Mother Goddess (associated with the 61 Originally “Ka-Ve-I-Ro-i” – „Life-energy-Masters-(of the)1st-kin‟; “Ka” -„life energy‟, “Ve” - „masters/craftsmen‟, “I” -„1st‟, “Ro(d)” -„kin‟. goddess Mo/Ma or Kibela/Kubela/Kubaba/Cybele/Demeter/Dea-Mater)62, in later tradition assigned as the wife of Vulcan, and her children twins - Axieroy and Axiokersa (later known as „Dioskuri‟), as well as the younger deity Kadmo (or Kadmilos/Kasmillos). His name means “the Eastern” or “the ancient god,” from the Phoenician Kedem („east‟ and/or “ancient”). He was worshipped as a god not only at Samothrace (Plutarch Pelopid. 19), but also at Sparta (Pausanias, III.15), whither the influence of the Phoenician colony on Kythera had extended, and, under the form of Kadmilos, corrupted into Kasmilos (“Kedem el” - „he who is before God‟), was one of the three Kabeiri of Samothrace. The great mother goddess was either Cabiro or Axieros, depending on the source, and with time the twins became syncretized with the Dioskouri, and in the later historiography they transformed as the twins Castor and Pollux, who were seen as protectors of sailors, thus underlining their watery attributes. How much were respected these old Pelasgic deities testifies the written record from the Alexander III of Macedon campaign in the far east, when he ordered a dedication to them to be built at the banks of the river Hydaspes. Their sacred names inevitably suggest strong etymological connection with the ancient name 62 Kibele or Cybele; according to the images on the ancient coins from the isle of Samothrace that show Axiokersa with the same attributes binding to Phrygian Kibela. of the main Macedonian inland artery and river-god Axios63, and once again point to their Belasgo- Macedonic origin. As known, all these places around Axios (today river Vardar) were originally inhabited by pre-Hellenic peoples, i.e. the indigenous Macedonic population, also known as Belasgians (lat. Pelasgians), Brygians, Paionians, Hyperboreans, etc. When ancient texts suggest an ethnicity for the Cabiri/Kabeiroi, they are Phrygian, Belasgian. Apolon and Artemida had spent their childhood among their kin in Hyperborea (Hesiod Teor.404; Herodotus IV.32.). Homer tells us that the kin of the Paionians was generated in the marriage of Axios and the nymph Periboia, etc. Another clear mark of the distinguishable Macedonic character of Samothrace is the very name of the isle. Namely, the only other existing word that contains the prefix „Samo-‟ is yet again Macedonian. That‟s the composite Macedonian word for fairy - „Samovila‟64, where the meaning of the prefix “Sa-Mo” (i.e. „With-Mo‟) clearly depicts the being(s) that appertain to (or “are with Mo”), thus „appertaining to the great Mo(ther)‟ - the Great Mother Goddess of Macedonia. The second part of the word - „vila‟ means just simple „fairy‟ in plain Macedonian, but it‟s almost never used alone. Samovila‟s were winged spiritual beings from the woods, with great powers, comparable to angels. Thus, the island of Samothrace name meaning is the “Great Mother Goddess‟s Land-across Ki(tim)”, in this case “across the sea”. The Sanctuary of the Great Gods on the tiny, windswept island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean Sea, was home to one of the most important mystery cults of antiquity. Initiation promised the initiated salvation as well as the opportunity to become a better and more pious person. The Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace rose to prominence in the later 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, with the construction of splendid marble buildings, connected by the special allegiance of the Macedonians, when the Sanctuary became an international center of the Macedonian royalty. Nonetheless, indications of religious activity in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace date back at least to the 7th century BCE, but construction of monumental buildings is dated in the 4th century BCE. This development is associated with the munificence and the political interests of the royal house of Macedon, as early as the reign of Filip II.65 Alexander‟s successors continued the tradition, and royal patronage of the sanctuary, which attained its greatest glory in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE.66 In subsequent centuries it became a pilgrimage place even for the Romans, who traced their legendary ancestry to the island and the kin of Tyrsenoi. This ancient cult lasted thousands of years, until the Roman emperor Theodosius II banned cult religions at the end of the 4th century AD. Since in the Latin there‟s no etymological sense linked to this name, the only plausible is 63 through the earlier Koine term Axos [Aξορ] - tree or timber, which explains perfectly the widely known status of the ancient Macedonian kingdom as the primary supplier of the Aegean coastal cities with the ship-building material, i.e. wood, or “daski ” – „wood beams or timber‟ in plain Macedonian, that was shipped to the Thermaic Gulf along the river Vardar. Hence the corrupted Koine-Latin name of Axiοs for this river (Vardar or „Bardarios‟) from “Daski ”. 64 There‟s also the Sanskrit term for goddess, “Samodeva”, but the obvious relation with the Macedonian “Samovila” still lacks the minimum of scientific review. 65 Filip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, met his future wife Olympia during their initiation on the isle of Samothrace. 66 “The sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace, Greece: an extended marble provenance study” by Y. Maniatis, D. Tambakopoulos, E. Dotsika, B. D. Wescoat and D. Matsas.  Pelasgian Language and Script Remains a notorious fact that the first written legends by Homer, his teacher Pronapid, Tamiris and Goropei (Lat. Orpheus), their teacher Lin, Olimp from Phrygia and Olint from Lycia, were all spoken and written down in barbaric Pelasgian language and script. However, the relationship of Pelasgian prehistoric people and the classification of the Pelasgian language are long-standing questions that have not received definitive answers. Albeit, even if we don‟t know with certainty what was alike the Pelasgian language, from Erodot we surely know what it wasn‟t like: “What the language of the Pelasgi was I cannot say with any certainty. If however we may form a conjecture from the tongue spoken by the Pelasgi of the present day, - those, for instance, who live at Creston above the Tyrrhenians who formerly dwelt in the district named Thessaliotis, and were neighbors of the people now called Dorians, - or those again who founded Placia and Scylace upon the Hellespont, who had previously dwelt for some time with the Athenians, - or those, in short, of any other of the cities which have dropped the name, but are in fact Pelasgian; if I say we are to form a conjecture from any of these, we must pronounce that the Pelasgi spoke a barbarous language.” The language of Pelasgians have been closely related to Brygian/Phrygian, or to the old Proto- Macedonic, and Erodot justifiably call it a “Barbarian language”. Their language it is sometimes called Aegean or even Minoan (or Maionian). Scholars are also concord that the Pelasgian language from the inscription on the Lemnos Stele is akin to that of Etruscan (Rasena) language. The Etruscan language is not known to be an Indo-European language and neither is the language of the inscription written on the Stele. According to G. S. Grinevich and most experts the mysterious Pelasgian language shows no direct ties with the so-called “Indo-European” languages and was unintelligible to later settlers, namely – the Minoans, Cadmeans, Danaans67, etc. To this avail here it must be cited the great Swiss linguist and scholar Ferdinand de Saussure: “Before Latin, there is a period which “Greek” and Slavic share in common. So this involves the history of language families, as and when relevant.”68 As later convenient insertion, the exonym term “Greek” must be discarded immediately (the fact is that this out-of-place word was introduced by the Romans), thus what remains is the “Slavic”, which is actually Macedonic, as the Latin term “Slavic” is yet another conventional bogus insertion of later date. Macedonic/Macedonian is not. German linguist Pasoff pays the attention again on the fact that the Homer‟s Iliad was originally written in Pelasgo-Brygian language (see the table 2 further below). Erodot‟ also suggested that the original language of Pelasgians was among the earliest languages through the story of Psametih‟s69 experiment to establish which language is the oldest in the world. Namely, the pharaon Psametih I organized the following test: two newborn children were given to a shepherd forbidding him to teach them to speak. When they uttered the first word they pronounced “vekos” (“vekna” – a „loaf‟ in plain Macedonian) what was found to be Phrygian, meaning 67 Aeschylus depicts the Danaians fleeing from Egypt seek asylum from King Pelasgus of Argos, which he says is on the river Strumon in Macedonia, including Perrhaebia in the north, Dodona and the slopes of the Pindus mountains on the west and the shores of the sea on the east. 68 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913) was one of the founders of modern linguistics, and his work was fundamental to the development of structuralism. 69 Latin Psammetichus (664–610 BCE), Egyptian pharaon. “bread”.70 And accordingly - Phrygians were originally the Macedonic Brygians from northern parts of the Macedonian plain of Pelagonia. Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BCE, wrote that the autochthonous inhabitants of the island of Samothrace used an ancient language which was peculiar to them, many words of which were preserved to his day in their rites. Archaeological evidence for this language has been found in the form of one 5th/4th century inscription on stone, and over 70 ceramic inscriptions from the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE. These inscriptions are all written in “Greek letters”, but incomprehensible as “Greek”; the ceramic graffiti are highly abbreviated, as are the ceramic inscriptions as well. The ceramics, Lehmann noted, are characteristically inscribed simply with the name of the god to whom the object is dedicated; the non-“Greek” inscriptions are believed to do the same. Five of the 62 found have the whole word, DINTOLE, or DEN TO LE. „Din‟ is known from proper and place-names in Macedonian and Thraco-Phrygian toponyms, such as „Dinaric Alps‟ or „Mt. Dindymene‟, where the Argonauts celebrated the rites of the Great Mother Goddess. But, it is not known if they spoke a language that was related to IE languages, an erratic Paleolithic language, or something else. We can only speculate. Above: the Lemnos syllabic inscription and (Table 1) one of the proposed decodings On the next page: the Milisin syllabic inscription from the remnants of a prehistoric obelisk, discovered and registered in year 2000; from the locality „Milisin‟ 24 km from the city of Gevgelia, Republic of Macedonia 70 See Herodotus, 1998 II.2. What is generally deduced of the Pelasgic script is that it is syllabic, it lacks word separation, and was written and readen from right to left, as did all the ancient scripts before the development of the proper Alphabets (Phoenician, Koine, etc.). Residing in the late Neolithic and Bronze Age, along with the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, it resembles the syllables of Mycenaean „Linear A‟ and „Linear B‟, Ancient Macedonic, Etruscan, Venetic, Runic "Futhark", and other archaic scripts. All these mentioned scripts are syllabic, read from left to right, and use the so-called ligatures71 by overposing different syllabic symbols in order to form words (simple examples: Њ, Ѩ, etc.). Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Pre-Homeric poets expressed themselves just with Pelasgic script, and from the same source we learn that, at least for 10 centuries (BCE) the same writing was used. Also Pliny the Elder confirms the information of Diodorus. The mythological supposition of the 13-consonat Pelasgian alphabet “which Cadmo had brought from Egypt” by far remains only mythological. The Dorian San, Erodot adds, was the Ionian (thus Pelasgian) Sigma: 6-ζ-c 71 Ligature - a character consisting of two or more joined symbols or letters, e.g.: Æ, Œ, etc. A corpus of genuine Pelasgo-Macedonic words was preserved by different ancient authors. Here are some example words (in original and/or corrupted Latin form): Atrpa – „ill fate‟; from the verb “Trpi” - „endures (pain, weight…)‟ in plain Macedonian72; also “Istrpi” - „be patient, endure‟. Bedu (pronounced „Vedu‟) – „Water‟ in plain Macedonic-Brygian/Phrygian; “Voda” in today modern Macedonian.73 Hence “Poseidon” - „Seeding-water-he‟, corrupted form of the words “Posee” - „seeding, sow‟74, “Voda” - „water‟, and “On” - „he‟75 in plain macedonian. Breges, Brygi, Brygians (Lat. Phrygians, i.e. Trojans) – „hillbillies, mountainers‟; from “Breg” - „hill‟ in plain Macedonian76; anglicized “Berg”. Kapis – small hawk [Lat. Falco Apivorus], “Kobets” in today modern Macedonian.77 Faraki – according to Dionysus of Halicarnasus this was Pelasgian word for „marriage‟, corrupted transcription from the vernacular Macedonic “V‟raki” i.e. “Vrači” - to „hand over‟ in today modern Macedonian.78 Hence also the Macedonic “Verenica” -„ fiance‟ and Koine corrupted Berenike. Fiber – wild boar, “Vepar” in today modern Macedonian.79 Ygra – „playing (dancing), “Igra” in plain Macedonian, Macedonic-Pelasgian word noted by Xenophon (435-254 BCE)80 Dodona – actually “Dedoina” - „Grandfather‟s‟ (inherited/natal place)81; a famous holy place founded by the Pelasgians, Sylva Dodones i.e. „Woods of the grandfathers‟ according to Roman poet Lucan (AD 39-65), which was originally nothing else but a sacred Oak grove. Koinon – „assembly‟, related to Macedonic-Pelasgian “konь” - „to bond with, toward‟82, factua; Latin: conduct - „to bring together‟ from the verb term „con-ducere‟ originally from “Koi”[plural] - „(those) who‟83, “Na” -„to/of‟84, “On” - „he/him‟85 – literally „Kin-of-him‟ which denoted some provision for safe behavior/act, such as bonding, guaranteed (by someone) an escort or pass, acting/doing in safe mode; later the verb sense [lead, guide] arose, hence „manage‟ and „management‟. 72 http://www.makedonski.info/search/trpi 73 http://www.makedonski.info/search/voda 74 http://www.makedonski.info/search/posee 75 http://www.makedonski.info/search/on#он/зам 76 http://www.makedonski.info/search/breg 77 http://www.makedonski.info/search/kobec 78 http://www.makedonski.info/search/vraчi 79 http://www.makedonski.info/search/vepar 80 http://www.makedonski.info/search/igra 81 http://www.makedonski.info/search/dedovina 82 http://www.makedonski.info/search/kon#кон/предл 83 http://koe.mk/citateli-koi-ne-citaat/ 84 http://www.makedonski.info/search/na#на/предл 85 http://www.makedonski.info/search/on#он/зам Levsina – „carcass‟; “Lešina/Leš ” in today modern Macedonian.86 Lib (hence „Libation‟) – „bread‟, “Leb” in today modern Macedonian.87 Ostia – „mouth‟ (of the river); “Ousta” - „mouth‟ in plain Macedonian.88 Pania – „Pannonia‟. Sibila/Sivila – „Samovila‟ in today modern Macedonian; a fairy, female semideity.89 Skomrahi – „scam, buffoonery‟. The Skomorochi (Russian: Скоморохи/Skomorochi), also Skomorachen, were medieval traveling folk entertainers, who among other things were actors, bear leaders, game men, tightrope walkers and fun makers and performed hand puppet shows with Petruschka. Their performances were accompanied musically by bagpipes, drums and stringed instruments (gusli, domra and hurdy gurdy). The oldest records of Skomrachi dates from 1068. In the 16th century, they were firmly established in the cities, in 1613 the Potjeschnaja Palata ("Amusement House") was built in Moscow. The Skomrachi were persecuted by the church and the state for blasphemy against God and rulers when they were called servants of Satan. In 1648, a performance was prohibited by a Tsar decree.90 Svtil – „holy‟, “Sveti-ill/Sv.Ill ” -„St. Elijah‟ in today modern Macedonian („Sveti Ilija‟).91 Svtina – „lightness (holy)‟, “Svetlina/Svetinja” in today modern Macedonian.92 Touros – „Ares‟ (Lat. „Mars‟)93, also “Yarets” - „he-goat‟ in plain Macedonian. 86 http://www.makedonski.info/search/leш 87 http://www.makedonski.info/search/leb 88 http://www.makedonski.info/search/usta 89 http://www.makedonski.info/search/samovila 90 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skomoroch 91 http://www.makedonski.info/search/sveti 92 http://www.makedonski.info/search/sveti%D1%9Aa 93 “Notizie sulle antichita de Ragusei” (“Notes on the antiquity of the Ragusans”) by Appendini. Tuba – „trumpet‟, actually pronounced Tuva (as the Koine letter β is actually „V‟); originally from Macedonian “Duva” -„blows‟94; Through the “V/B” alteration it became “Truba” in today modern Macedonian.95 Tutnu – „thunder‟, "Tatni " - „thunders‟ in today modern Macedonian.96 Vlk – „volk‟ (i.e. wolf) in plain Macedonian.97 Voltumna – goddess of the wisdom and advice; “Umna” – „wise‟ in plain Macedonian.98 Vrana – „crow‟; “Vrana” in plain Macedonian.99 Zefir (Lat. „Zephyr‟) – north wind; “Sever” -„north‟ in plain Macedonian.100 etc. 94 http://www.makedonski.info/search/duva 95 http://www.makedonski.info/search/truba 96 http://www.makedonski.info/search/tatni 97 http://www.makedonski.info/search/volk 98 http://www.makedonski.info/search/umna 99 http://www.makedonski.info/search/vrana 100 http://www.makedonski.info/search/sever Further, below is the comparative reconstruction of some examples of Pelasgian onomastics and gods names: 1. Da-ma-te (from da - earth < Phrygian gda-) – Demeter, i.e. Dea Mater; 2. Po-se-da-o-no – Poseidon, “Lord of the Earth”; 3. I-da-ma-te – “Idaian Mother”; 4. Mi-da – Midas; 5. Te-u-to – PIE *teutā- “people”; Tie u toa - „they in there‟ in today modern Macedonian. Pelasgians spoke two languages or dialects, and “belonged to the Tyrsenians, who once inhabited Lemnos and Athens,” - the prehistoric age town of Pelasgion/Pelasgikon (the modern Pnyx-hill) later created the city of Athens, etc. The Lemnos funeral inscriptions unmistakably confirmed these historical facts, as the script on this slab is exactly the same as the Etruscan, which utterly confirms that these prehistoric people had their own language and culture, totally different from the new settlers who came in the 12th century BCE and invaded Aegean area from the African side of Mediterranean sea. The evidence furnished by Philology indicates that the Pelasgians were Aryans. Next page: comparison parallels between the Homeric and modern Macedonian glosses (Table 2) Kirchhoff has demonstrated convincingly that the ancient alphabet of the Lemnian inscriptions is Brygian/Phrygian, thus Pelasgian-Proto-Macedonic. If then the inscriptions were proved to have belonged to the Pelasgo-Macedonians, it would follow that they had a Phrygian and Etruscan connection. The same was the Pauli's identification of the Tyrrheni and/or Etruscans with the Pelasgians. However, no one can as yet read the Etruscan language, though the alphabet has been long known. Furthermore, whilst Dr Montelius101 admits the reliability of the tradition which represents the Pelasgians as entering Italy from Macedonian Peninsula, he fails to recognize the equally reliable body of traditions which maintain that the movement of the Pelasgians was towards and not from Asia Minor. In order to visually expose the oneness of the ancient Pelasgo-Proto-Macedonic scripts and languages, below and on the next page is the comparison between some examples of “different” inscriptions, carved in stone, as defined by modern scholars: 1. 2. 3. 1. Phrygian (Asia Minor); 2. Pelazgian (a stele from the island of Lemnos); 3. Etruscan. Or lets see (below) again the shape and symbols/letters of other more northward European scripts: 4.Venetic scriptures; and 5. Runes (Gaul-“Celtic” dubbed Futarch): 101 “The Tyrrhenians in Greece and Italy,” 1897. 4. 5. What can be seen at glance, even by a non-expert eye, is the corresponding similarity and inextricably familiar form of the symbols (syllables and/or letters) of all these Mediterranean, Southeastern and Central European pre-latin scripts. And all of them use dots ( : , ∙ , ⋮) as separators between the words. Why are these “different” scripts so much alike? The undeniable fact is that they are written in more or less similar-fashion alphabet(s), as if they‟ve all originated from the same source-script at some distant antecedent point in time. This similarity can be compared to today usance of, for example, Latin in English, Italian, Turkish, etc., all of which are mutually unintelligible languages, but they still use the same script.102 And if so – why today linguists and scholars refuse or neglect to identify the obvious, and continue to diverge and disclassify these scripts with modern politically biased criteria? Another fact that connects them, comprised „Linear B‟, „Phoenician‟, and so called “Demotic”, is their decodification – none of these is successfully deciphered by the modern western-latinized linguists. This is due to the fact that they simply cannot understand what is written, as they stubbornly enough persist in using the modern Latin as medium in order to decipher them – something comparable to the use of the Morse Code for deciphering Computer binary languages. Needless to say that the Latin was purely administrative language, not directly related to, or spoken by any population in particular: „Latin always was and still is a dead language. Nowhere and never in the world there were a Latin-speaking people to be found. It was artificially created with the specific purpose, yet to be fully understood and clarified. The crowning proof of this is the following: there is very little (or none!) variation of the Latin language in time and space (introduced were only some terms and some changes, but it‟s a very small number of words, and it‟s practically unchanged to this day). The Latin records are all the same wherever we find them, in Dalmatia, Libya, Macedonia, Syria, Anatolia, Iberia, Anglia, etc. From this we could conclude that the whole Roman empire spoke a single language (?) that had no dialects and didn‟t change for a thousand years… This is not possible of course, because even today, regardless of mass education, linguistic standardization and mass media – there are still countless dialects. Language is therefore a living phenomenon and is constantly changing all the time. What the Roman Empire actually intent with introducing the Latin script was to forcibly prohibit and eradicate any other literacy (Old Macedonian Syllabic, Cuneiform, Ægyptian Hieroglyphic, Vincha Script, Phoenician, Etruscan\Venetic, Rovaš, Runic, etc.), and tried and largely failed to suppress autochthonous languages, mostly Macedonic. Since the writing capacitates knowledge, restricting the literacy had a very important role in ensuring the Roman rule and preservation of the overall control on uneducated masses. The same is true for the Septuagint Uncial script (or so-called „Greek“) imposed by later Eastern-Roman empire, which was also strictly cleric-technical language.“103 Regarding the use of Macedonic Koine/Septuagint script in Eastern Romeian Empire there's another striking testimony of the imperishable continuity of Macedonian Uncial script and language, situated in the Syrian desert. Namely, in the place called today „Qasr Ibn Wardan‟ (The Palace of Wardan), northeast from Hamma, there are splendid remains of 6th century basilica and fortress built by Justinian I the Great in AD 564. Above on the two of the portals on the Justinian‟s basilica, beside the year, is written СЕПТЕМBPI and NОЕМВРI (September and November) in perfect plain Macedonian. Thus, the names of these two months are written, not in Romeian, nor in any other language, but exclusively in perfect Macedonian. And nonetheless, but exactly same as the Macedonian written and pronounced today, 15 centuries after. In no other language except the Macedonian are September and November written and readen like this, in this style and these letters. The only „difference“ is the change of the letters N and I, which in today Macedonian Cyrillic script are 'H' and 'И' respectively, thus СЕПТЕМBPИ and HОЕМВРИ. So, the conclusion is inescapable – 15 centuries ago the Romeians spoke as the Macedonians speak today, or at least large portion of their language and script was Macedonic. 102 Example: English „sea‟, Italian „mare‟, Turkish „deniz‟. 103 Domagoj Nikolić, "O Vlajima i Vlasima" (About Flavians and Slavians). Above and on the next page: Scriptures on the 6th century basilica built in Syria by Justinian I the Great in AD 564 The conclusion is inescapable – if the Macedonian language 15 centuries ago was same or similar with the modern Macedonian language that Macedonians speak today – there‟s no reason not to believe that it was similar with the Macedonian language spoken in Ancient Macedonia some 10 or more centuries before that. Why are these archaeological linguistic testimonies so important? Because the possession of a common language is in fact the basis of a nationality, just as the possession of a common government is the basis of a nation. The claims of a nationality must be decided on linguistic grounds, those of a nation on political grounds, while racial unity is determined by kinship in blood and physiological traits. Although, even if the invention of the nations and nationalities is argued to be the 18-19 centuries event, this and many other testimonies of the Macedonic script and language show that the basis of the distinguished Macedonian nationality was already forged in the time of Filip II and Alexander III the Great, and even before them. And who else can decipher ancient Macedonian script better than the Macedonians? This fact was confirmed by the recent decoding of the so-called “Demotic” script from the Rosetta Stone by two Macedonian scholars, Tom Boševski and Aristotel Tentov.104 The assumption of their Macedonic transcription was very simple and therefore utterly successful – it was based on the fact that the rulers of Egypt in those times were from the Ptolemaic dynasty, descendants of Ptolem I Sotir, one of the generals of Alexander the Great, i.e. they were ancient Macedonians. And, according to the 104 “Tracing the Script and the Language of Ancient Macedonians” by Tome Boševski, Aristotel Tentov, 2005. perceptions of a part of the contemporary scholarship – the ancient Macedonians used to speak in a language different from the Hamitic Danaan settlers (or the so-called “Ancient Greex”) with origins in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is more than obvious that the Macedonians had to know how to read and write into their own language, if they were to rule any of their Macedonic empires and kingdoms across the ancient world. This assumption becomes perfectly true if the “Demotic” is taken into consideration either in its universal use on the part of the literate people of those time, as it was used in Persia and Egypt ruled by Macedonian dynasties, for writing state documents, documents for legal and property issues, scientific texts, prose and poetry, etc. It was concluded that a syllabic script of consonant-vowel type was used for the middle text of the Rosetta Stone. Symbols for 25 voiced consonants and 8 vowels were identified. The wiring with sound of the identified syllables, isolated consonants, vowels and ligatures it was achieved by using archaisms from the dialects of the contemporary Macedonian language. In the text, which was written from right to left, without space between the words and without separation of sentences in an infinite series, more then 160 words which have kept their meaning in different dialects of the contemporary Macedonian language were identified. A certain number of grammatical rules were also identified which are discerned in today Macedonian, such as the formation of superlative of the adjectives with the prefix /Naj-/, i.e. „Nai-‟ (equivalent to the English suffix /-est/ or adjective /the most/), the plural of nouns by adding /i/ (equivalent to English /-s/), as well as the frequent use of the original and typically Macedonian preposition /na/. The results of deciphering of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone points to the fact that there are many details and additional words which cannot be found in the other two texts. This conclusion proves the science awareness from the time of Thomas Young (1822) that the middle text was the original. Above: from the Boševski-Tentov appendix of the deciphered words and terms from the middle text of the Rosetta Stone (Note: the Ancient Macedonian was a strictly syllabic script with very few letter-symbols for single vocals, and was written and readen from right to left:  ) In fact, the two Macedonian scholars weren‟t the first who understood that the middle text from the Rosetta Stone was common Macedonic language. This honour goes to the renowned Egyptologist and linguist Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832), who correctly recognized and underlined the three scripts from the pharaonic decree on the Rosetta Stone as: Hyeroglyphic, Old Macedonic Script and New Macedonic Script „Koine‟. Next page: from the Champollion notes – ALT MAKEDONISCH (Old Macedonic) and NEUE MAKEDONISCHE SHRIFT KOINE (New Macedonic Script Koine). Translated from German: “The name Ptolomei, in the Macedonian text of the stone, also Ptolemaios, was the first word in the Hieroglyphics that was deciphered.” But, as we know Napoleon lost the war, Rosetta Stone as war-trophy went to the British Museum, and the winners rewrote the history once again…  Archaeological, Etymological, Mythological, and Genetic evidence of Pelasgo-Macedonic relations Archaeologists excavations have described Pelasgian material culture across the central Macedonia and its vicinity as Neolithic. The artifacts are distinguished by the Pelasgic "Polygonal masonry", of which there‟s a wide spread existence of remains in the ancient world, the equally wide diffusion of the Pelasgic population, and the remarkable correspondence of the lands it occupied or inhabited with those where these monuments most abound. Further indication of the Pelasgian origin of some of the monuments is found through the Pelasgian inscriptions, as for example the above mentioned funeral stele inscription from Lesbos, those found in the Grotta Regulini-Galassi, near Cerveteri in Italia, etc. Their capillary presence in the whole eastern Mediterranean region is unquestionable. Much like all other aspects of the "Pelasgians", their ethnonym (Pelasgoi) for the conventional historiography and political linguistics is “of extremely uncertain provenance and etymology”. On the whole we can partly appreciate Niebuhr's feelings when he wrote of the Pelasgi: “The name of this people is irksome to the historian, hating as he does that spurious philology which raises pretensions to knowledge concerning races so completely buried in silence.” Michel Sakellariou collected 15 different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last 200 years, though he admits that "most ... are fanciful". Julius Pokorny derives the term Pelasgoi from *pelag-skoi ("flatland-inhabitants"), specifically "Inhabitants of the Thessalian plain". He details a previous derivation, which appears in English at least as early as William Gladstone's Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. Ernest Klein argued that the ancient Koine word for "sea", pelagos and the Doric word plagos, "side" (which is flat) shared the same root, *plāk-, and that *pelag-skoi therefore meant "the sea men", where the sea is flat. This could be connected to the maritime marauders referred to as the “Sea People” in Egyptian records. However, subsequent studies showed that the connection between the two roots is "phonetically impossible", and the final sound etymological explanation is that Pelasgi originates from ancient Πελαζγόρ (Pelasgós)+ -ian, presumably based on a Pre-“Greek” ethnonym. Now, this Pre-“Greek” ethnonym can be reasonably explained only by Paleolinguistic and Comparative linguistics through Macedonian syllabic etymology, where that particular initial syllable /Pe/ („sing‟ in plain Macedonian) originates. Still largely present for myriad of words in modern Macedonian (Poe/Pe-e -„sings‟, Pesna -„song‟105, Peač -„singer‟, Pevliv -„ѕinging' adjective, Opean - 'sang' from the verb Opeva, Poema - 'poem', Poet -'poet', etc.). As borrowed item from Macedonian it is also largely present in Latin, in the following anglicized words: A-cappella – specific group or solo singing without instrumental accompaniment; Appeal – as explained by modern flap-doodle linguistics: early 14th century, originally "to call", from Anglo-French Apeler -„to call upon,‟ Old French Apeler -„make an appeal‟ (11th century, Modern French Appeler), from Latin Appellare -„to address, appeal to, summon‟; Calliope – originally Goddess of the full moon, the tripartite flax year, rhythm and song; ruler 105 Pesan in Sanskrit: http://sanskritdictionary.org/pesan of the women's Mysteries that turn flax into linen; arbitrator; She Who can play any musical instrument. 
Later she became the last of, yet enjoying supremacy over, the Muses, as a Muse Goddess of eloquence, epic poetry and history, also called the Chief, the most distinguished of the Muses. But also a name of the musical instrument that produces sound by sending a gas, originally steam or, more recently, compressed air;106 Chapell – a (Christian) place of prayer (i.e. singing) and worship; Onomatopeia – imitation; the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g., jingle, cuckoo); Орus (see Macedonian Opea)107 – a separate music composition or set of compositions by a particular composer. Orp(h)eus (i.e. Orophei/Or-Pei) – the son of Oeagrus and Calliope - 'the one who sings in the mountains' (see Orography - the science of mountains)108. Ibycus, who flourished about the 106 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliope_(music) 107 http://www.makedonski.info/search/opea 108 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orography middle of the 6th century BCE, mentions "the renowned Orpheus". Sofokle speaks of him as related to the Muses and mentions the power of his song over rocks, trees, and wild beasts. Aristofan mentions Orpheus as the teacher of religious initiations and of abstinence from murder: “For Orpheus taught us rites and to refrain from killing.” Pean – (singing) a hymn of praise or triumph. Above: 4500 BCE ocharina from the „Mramor‟ site near Chashka,Veles,R. of Macedonia Pæan – „praised healer‟ (the „one who is heeling with singing‟) was the epithet of the medicine god Asklepius from the ancient town of Stybera in R. of Macedonia. This is the name originally given by the Paionians and worn also by the Asklepius father, Apollon, the Horned God.109 In Homer and Hesiod Paeon is an individual god by himself. *Paia/n, *Paih/wn or *Paiw/n, that is, the „healing with ritual singing‟, is according to Homer the designation of the physician of the Olympian gods, who heals, for example, the wounded Ares and Hades. Homer says of Egypt: "[T]here the earth, the giver of grain, bears greatest store of drugs, many that are healing when mixed, and many that are baneful; there every man is a physician, wise above human kind; for they are of the race of Paeon." ( Homer, „Odyssey‟, Book 4, line 219) 109 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paean  Below: the monument of Aesklepius Pæan made of best Macedonian white marble from Prilep, in 2nd c. AD by local artisans in Stybera (Stubera, the „Pillar‟ city) Pomp(e) – as explained by modern flap-doodle linguistics: c. 1300, from Old French Pompe -  „pomp, magnificence‟ (13th century) and directly from Latin Pompa - „procession, pomp,‟ from “Greek” Pompe -„procession‟; Trumpe(t) – c.1300, from Old French Trompe - „long, tube-like musical wind instrument‟ (12th century), comprised from “trunk” and “poe” etc. Above: Pelagon, forefather demigod of the Pelagonians – the closest kin to Pelasgians, and founder of the recently rediscovered ancient city of Pelagonia in Upper Macedonia The second part of the word "-lasgi", "laskos", from Hittite “Lu” -„human‟ (“Lumeš” -„men‟ “Lu- natar” - „manhood‟), i.e. "Lugye" in today Macedonian, means 'folks', people. Thus, etymologically the Pelasgians in plain Macedonian weren't some 'distinct ethnicity', but those most prominent individuals, the bravest elite and the most capable caste, champions of the community that were exalted and merited to be sang. And last but not the least – in Macedonic languages 'Pelasgian' also flexes between 'Pelikan' (i.e. Pelican) and 'Velikan' ('the great' in Macedonic languages), from the Macedonic verb “Veliča” – „to hymn, to lionize‟.110 It is a etymological explanation that perfectly fits the times for which it was meant, in the mythology known as the "Heroic Age". Demarcated as one of the „Five Ages of Man‟ by Hesiod and/or „Four Ages‟ described by Ovid, when the heroes and titans from this period are superhuman, though not divine, and are celebrated in the poems of Homer. It was the heroes of this Age who fought at Thebes and Troy. For the sake of the facts it must be once again repeated here, that this period does not comprise the Danaans (i.e. “Greex”), as they settled in the Peloponnesus some 80 years after the Trojan War.111 As Erodot candidly admits: “ἥνηινα δὲ γλῶζζαν ἵεζαν οἱ Πελαζγοί, οὐκ ἔχω ἀηπεκέωρ εἰπεῖν… ἦζαν οἱ Πελαζγοὶ βάπβαπον γλῶζζαν ἱένηερ” – „What language however the Pelasgians used to speak I am not able with certainty to say… the Pelasgians used to speak a Barbarian language”. – The adjective “Barbarian” which is applied to Macedonians, definitely and irrevocably places them out of the “Greek” fantasy world. The nowadays modern “Greex” try in vain to assert that the Macedonians were called “Barbarians” because they were at a lower cultural level. But this is a secondary meaning and abusive misrepresentation of the word in question. The term “Barbarian” comes from a linguistic sphere, not the cultural one. “Barbaroi” (i.e. „barbori‟ onomatopoeic of „br-br‟, anglicized „blabbering/babbling‟) has very clear meaning – “someone who speaks another, incomprehensible language”. Persians and Egyptians who were not at lower cultural level were called “Barbarians” too. 110 “Velik”[adjective] - „big, great, humungous‟; hence “Veličestvo” - „highness, grandest‟, “Velemajstor” - „grandmaster‟, “Veligden”(literary „Great-day‟ in plain Macedonian) - „Easter‟, and also as personal names “Velko”(maschuline) and/or “Velika”(feminine), etc. 111 “Danaus was said to have migrated from the Thebais in Upper Egypt to “Grease” (Erodot 2. 91). He became king of Argos, and so the Argives, and later all of them were called Danai.” (George W. Mooney “Commentary on Apollonius: Argonautica”, Ed. Book 4, p.262).  Above: Paionian (Upper Macedonia) bronze fibulas and „solar cross‟, 6-5 century BCE But, lets turn back to Macedonia and Silyan the Stork. The name Silyan if met in a country other than Macedonia it‟ll be instantly drooped as foreign and unknown. It is predominantly and without any doubt Macedonian, alien to non-Macedonian communities and other ethnical groups. As Macedonian personal name, according to the data and analysis of Macedonian surnames from the 1961 census, there were a total of 1542 persons with this surname in Republic of Macedonia.112 It does not have precisely established etymology, but it‟s undoubtedly plain Macedonic. Some scholars suggest a derivation from Macedonic sila – „force, might‟, which finds its endorsement in other Macedonic words, like Basileus/Vasileus – i.e. „almighty‟.113 Others suggest the derivation from lat. „Silvanus‟ – the supposed Roman forest-god, but the Latin etymology of “silva” – „a wood‟, as always, offers no plausible explanation. The last and most credible syllabic explanation was proposed by academic Tom Boshevski and prof. Aristotel Tentov in 2010. Their decodification by syllables “Si-Le-Yan” - „all (of) the youngsters” has the most plausible and logic sense. Macedonian scholar Ilija Čašule at his recent lecture at the Philology faculty of SS Cyril & Methodius university in Skopje, Macedonia, implied the Brygo/Phrygian substratum etymology of the name 'Silyan', thus he connected and explained the Macedonian name 'Silyan' through 112 Statistical Institute of the Republic of Macedonia. 113 “Sva,vsya” [archaic] - „all, everything‟, and “Sila” - power, might. See also “Vasiona” - „cosmos, space‟, derived from “Sva,vsya” - „all, everything‟, and “sia”- „shines‟ (see “Sialitsa” - „light buble‟; “Vasdan” - „all day, all the time‟, from “Sva,vsya” - „all, everything‟ and “dan” - „day‟ in plain Macedonian.. Phrygian 'Silenos' – the famous mythical companion of Leivino Dionis (Lat. Dionysus). Čašule elaborates: “Phrygian 'Silenos', is the famous mythical companion of Dionis, father of Satyrs‟, borrowed into Latin as 'Silenus' - an attendant and tutor of Bachus.” Lagercrantz (in Boisacq 1968: 865) saw it as borrowing from Thraco-Phrygian, and Chantraine (1974: 1003) considers the name of 'unknown origin' and notes Frisk‟s Thracian hypothesis for the origin of this word. He also notes the anthroponyms 'Silenos' and 'Silenion'. The lack of a known etymology is a clear indication that this name together with the deity (Dionis) was most probably borrowed from Brygian/Phrygian or (less likely) from Thracian.114 The Phrygian Silen (Lat. Silenus) is characterized as the forefather of the Satyrs, in fact he is an Asia Minor satyr and the constant companion and possibly foster-father of the originally Macedonic deity Leivino Dionis (Lat. Dionysus)115, the youthful and beautiful god of wine. He is a jovial old man, hairy with a big belly and is both a drunkard and a prophet. He rides a donkey, has a large wine skin slung over his shoulder, and the ears and tail of a donkey. In fact, Silen (lat. Silenus) came from Macedonic region of Phrygia, and may have been Dionis‟ actual father, or the father of Apollo, before the Dionis‟ inclusion into the Olympian pantheon as "son of Zeus". In 326 BCE, by the river Hiphes, Alexander III of Macedon dedicated one temple to these ancient Pelasgian deities, the Cabirs116 who were especially respected in Macedonia, Samothrace and Lemnos. Yet, the most important characteristic of this highly significant and prominent lesser deity which could underlie semantically the origin of his name is that he was a "waterman". He is believed originally to have been 'a water spirit' associated with sacred springs. Silen (Lat. Silenus) was an incarnation of fluid, a water-man who might change at any time again into fluid from which he sprang […] This aged woodland semi-god, one of the 'Sileni' has been abundantly identified with water. But the Phrygians did more than this, they frequently identified 'Sileni' with the watery element. Etymologically this dimension of his name can be deduced in Macedonian verb “Slini” and/or noun “Slinav” – „leak‟, „leaking‟ respectively. Silen (Lat. Silenus) is a wise, dignified and learned prophet, although usually found in some advanced state of intoxication. He was entrusted with the education of Dionis, and travels the world with him, as his constant companion. As Zemele (lat. Semele), Dionis‟ Phrygian mother, is an Earth goddess (Mkd. 'Zemlya' - earth), this would make Dionys‟ the child of Earth and Water. The usual art-type of a river is the bull, oftentimes a man-headed bull. The bull serves in many mythologies along with the cow to represent any sort of river and water in general.117 Ilija Čašule, “Who is Silyan the Stork and are we the Macedonians his descendants?”, lecture held 114 on 01.02.2012 at the Philological faculty “Blaže Koneski” of the SS "Cyril and Methodius" university, Macedonia. 115 According to Ljubomir Domazetović the land of origin of Leivino Dionis is to be found in the triangle (Tripole) between, St. Nikole, Katlanovo and Kriva Palanka („Curved Phalanx‟) in Upper Macedonia. Cabir, caber – usually wooden-made totem poles of Pagan/Pelasgian deities. 116 117 Louis Dyer "Studies of the Gods at Certain Sanctuaries Recently Excavated." NewYork,1891. MacMilan & Co.  Left: ancient coin showing naked Silen surrounded with Dionisiac attributes – ivy plant, wine krater, grapes and thyrsus Below: ancient coin with Silen on a donkey The Bull-horned Leivino Dionis‟ cult also fits perfectly with the attributes of the Bull Zodiacal Era, which was leading mythological cult in Egypt, Asia Minor, Babylon, Macedonian peninsula and whole Mediterranean. The Sacred Bull of the archaic times – Apis, reflected in Leivino Dionis, Tesei (lat. Theseus) and the Minotaur (if not one and the same personification of Leivino Dionis!) , ramified through the oral tradition and mythology, which existed and were venerated contemporaneously throughout the whole ancient world. Dionys was also the mythological vision and incarnation of the Sacred Bull Apis (lat. Osiris Apis or Serapis)118, and this deity was usually represented with the bull horns on his forehead. Dionis had a retinue of followers called the Diasi. These were a wild and ecstatic group, in keeping with the god's chief attribute, the release of inhibitions. The most significant of these were the Maenads, his female followers. These were dangerous creatures, a prototype of the later witches, said to sometimes hunt down animals or men and tear them to pieces in their frenzy. 118 The Bull was also a solar symbol, emblem of the Sun God, carrying the sun between its horns.  Left: Leivino Dionis with the bull horns on his front E. Petrova notes that: "The central Balkan region, especially its south-western section, is the territory of an Early Bronze Age population (i.e. Pelasgian) from which the Proto-Brygian ethnic community later developed […] This Proto-Brygian ethnic population who are mentioned in the works of the ancient period, later spread over the major part of southern and south-eastern Albania, north-western Greece, Belagonia and Lower Macedonia."119 From here they moved further across the Helespont and migrated to Asia Minor and further east. That explains their periodic campaigns toward far east (Dionis, Irakle, Alexander…) and also an ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelicans and pelargos ("stork"), and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, who have for homeland the Macedonian mainland. Barb-Aryan autochthonous nature of Macedonians is undoubtedly confirmed by genetic researches too. Geneticists studying human DNA noted that Y-Chromosome markers haplogroup named R1a1 (HG3 according to the Rosser nomenclature of 2000) is most frequent among Macedonic peoples in Europe and Indo-Arians in India, respectably 47% in the former and 30% for the latter. A rough calculation according to published statistics show that 61 million men in Europe, which are Macedonian speakers (of the so-called "Slavic languages"), have this genetic marker, and in the Indian subcontinent their number is almost 4 times higher - 240 million. One might argue and claim that this genetic and linguistic Aryans have possibly appeared with the subsequent arrival of Vedic Aryans in Central India, Southeast Europe and the Macedonian peninsula. But, in that case such a later migration from Southeast Asia would‟ve inevitably pick- up the Finno-Ugric marker of haplogroup N3 (HG16 according to the Rosser nomenclature of 2000), which is widespread in Russia and Ukraine between the Black Sea and the Baltic (Rosser research from 2000), and would inevitably have being brought to the Macedonian peninsula too. 119 Eleonora Petrova, "The Bryges in Central Balkans 2nd-1st millennium BCE", Museum of Macedonia. Above: The Aryan ancestral homeland in Macedonian Peninsula, 12,000 years ago, and the main routes of propagation of the Aryan R1a1 gene mutation through space and time, as determined by the DNA genealogy researches But that's not the case. The haplogroup N3 is not found anywhere south of the Carpathian Mountains, nor in Central Europe or the Macedonian peninsula. Instead it was found more than 20,000 years-old Paleolithic genetic marker of the haplogroup Hg I. Highest frequency of this ancient gene was discovered and confirmed precisely on the Macedonian peninsula, and it‟s the remnant of the Macedonian population that developed here after the Last Glacial Maximum (Marjanović et al. 2005, Peričić et al. 2005). This gene irrefutably proves that the Macedonian nation, as a carrier of haplogroup R1a1 marker, has been present on the Macedonian peninsula long before the Finno-Ugrian appeared in northeastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine about 10,000 years ago. Another firm approval of the above said came from the numerous DNA-genealogy researches conducted by the most renowned geneticists as Peričić (2005), F. Cruciani (2007), A. A. Klyosov (2008), and others. Even if these and other researchers still use relatively different or similar terminology in describing the oldest ancestors of European population (i.e. Pelasgians, Aryans, Proto-Indo-Europeans, Old Europe, etc.), their land of origin is always the same – Macedonian peninsula (i.e. Balkans), or more precisely – the strictest region of Macedonia.120 As their accurate 120 See "Old Europe", Gimbutas. genealogic studies demonstrate, members of the Aryan genus who lived there 12,000 years ago, from Macedonian peninsula, after two hundred and something generations erupted in the Eastern (and Western) European plains, where 4,500 years ago they appeared as Aryans, ancestors of the modern Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, and brought the same Aryan genus as far as India121 – the same destination of Dionis, Irakles and Alexander III of Macedon, who apparently from Macedonia went there to visit their relatives. For the sake of argument, it is important to note here that these were the first migrations of emerging agricultural population (or misleadingly so-called "Indo-Europeans") in Europe. Most recently, the eminent Russian archaeologist L. S. Klein (2007, 2010)122 has published two major studies on so-called "Indo-European" ancient migrations. He devotes an entire chapter (Klein 2007: 108-120) specifically to the migrations of the Bryges/Phrygians from the Balkans. On the basis of archaeological evidence, historical sources, some linguistic aspects, and mythical an religious comparisons he traces their movement from Macedonia and its north via Asia Minor, Central Asia, toward North-Western Pakistan, thus underlining the traced routes of Aryan migration to India once more. He argues for an early contact between Phrygian and Sanskrit. He notes that the Indian scholars (Kosambi,1968: 89-90) have long ago undoubtedly linked „Bhrigu‟, the carrier of fire and the son of the Indian god Varuna, with the Phrygians. In light of the new evidence, Klein concludes that these claims should be taken very seriously. To resume: The mythical Stork-people, i.e. Pelasgians, after trespassed countless millennia, through the Macedonian/Barb-Aryan genus and the Macedonian folktale of 'Silyan the Stork', 121 For the sake of argument, it is important to note here that these were the first migrations of emerging agricultural population (or misleadingly called "Indo-Europeans") in Europe. The term "Indo- European", as pure linguistic category, has nothing to do with the peoples from this remote past of human history. The Aryans were yet to arrive in India, from where they allegedly developed the so- called "Indo-European" languages, but much, much later, in the 2nd millennium B.C.E. 122 Lev Klein, "Drevnie migracii i proishoždenie indoevropejskih narodov". which is found to be the oral tradition testimony that recounts the story of the Macedonian ethnicity most basic substratum and the myriad of Macedonic subgroups or differently interpreted but related groups. As recorded by the older and more recent historiography: Pelasgians, Brygians/Phrygians, Barb-Aryans, Macedonians, Etruscans, Paionians, Veneti, etc. Their unbroken continuity is painstakingly traced and 'rediscovered' by the modern DNK-genealogy, comparative linguistics, and worldwide historical revision. The modern methodologies of different scientific disciplines finally are cleaning the messy confusion created by the bogus terms like “Slavic”, “Helenistic”, or unbelievable “Indo-European” (comparable to “Afro-Siberian”, which is unexplainably avoided!) - a linguistic term that become an interdisciplinary mixture comprising very wide variety of criteria meant to account for historic divisions of related people and their historical continuity. It strangely includes even those people who‟ve never been, nor they ever had any connection with India, like the so-called “Celts” or “Celtiberians”.123 Not so long ago western literature calculated that the academic sources proposed in total some 14 different homelands of the “Indo-Europeans” and “Proto-Indo-Europeans”. V.A. Safronov mentions even 25 of them in the fundamental book “Indo-European homeland” – seven in Asia and 18 in Europe. They have a point: “Although the origin of the Indo-European languages is studied far more intensively then the other languages, it is still a heaviest and most persistent problem of historical linguistics… Nevertheless, even if the history of this question lasts over 100 years, experts have not been able yet to determine the time and place of the Indo-European origin...” Nothing strange for a concept that was invented with only one precise purpose – to erase the traces of Barb-Aryan ancestral homeland in the Macedonian peninsula. 123 So-called "Celts" (i.e. Gaul), whoever might they‟ve been, certainly never collectively called themselves "Celts", and they never had any collective name for themselves whatsoever. It‟s just another invention of the misleading 19th-century imposed terminology, together with the similar bogus terms as: "Byzantine", "Slavic", "Helenic", "Indo-European", etc. References: 1. “History” of Erodot (Lat. Herodotus) 2. 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