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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Spiro N. Konda
Pelasgians
Pelasgians or Pelasgi is the term applied to early populations of the Aegean, prior to the Flood of Deucalion and the subsequent arrival of the Hellenic peoples to the region. Pelasgian Greeks are recognised as having occupied Crete at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. It is unclear from classical sources(b) exactly what regions the Pelasgians occupied, not to mention when or where they originated.
Some writers such as Densusianu have postulated a Pelasgian Empire extending over a large stretch of central Europe.
Euripides stated that the Pelasgians were later called Danaans.
Spiro N. Konda believes that today’s Albanians are descendants of the Pelasgians and has written The Albanians and the Pelasgian Problem in support of this idea, unfortunately, it is in Albanian, but some of his arguments can be read, in English, online(a).
Oliver D. Smith in his book Atlantis in Greece identified “the Pelasgians with both the Atlanteans and prehistoric Athenians – as two regional tribes at war with each other”.
A more radical, highly speculative and quite incredible, alternative definition is offered by Marin, Minella and Schievenin[0972.471], which is that Pelasgians were refugees from their homeland in Antarctica after its catastrophic destruction. They claim that these refugees were also known as Titans, Tyrrhenians and Atlanteans, among other names! They also propose that the Pelasgians arrived in Egypt in 10,500 BCE “led by Osiris/Menes, and joined the local people, who were indigenous Negroid such as the image engraved in the Sphinx.” They further claim that anthropology calls them Cro-Magnon!
James Bailey noted in The God-Kings & the Titans [149.158] that the Pelasgians were equated with the Peoples of the Sea in the Cambridge Ancient History(c).
>Lars Karlsson is Professor in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University and in a 2023 paper(e) he offered the theory “that the Pelasgians were ‘proto-Etruscans’, since the Pelasgian island of Lemnos has inscriptions in Etruscan.”
The degree of confusion surrounding the identity of the Pelasgians is clearly demonstrated in the Wikipedia article on the subject(d).<
(a) https://at001.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/the-etymology-of-the-names-of-pelasgian-gods-2/
(b) https://stoa.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/the-pelasgians-in-the-ancient-historians-texts/
(c) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283059/page/n33/mode/2up (2nd. Edition, Vol. II, p.8)
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelasgians *
(e) https://isvroma.org/en/2023/01/13/research-seminar-the-early-history-of-the-etruscans-2/ *