by Marios Dimopoulos

1. The Pelasgian Hypothesis: Could Pelasgian Represent an Early Proto-Indo-European Language? — The Palaeolithic Origins of the Indo-European Languages, Greco-Albanian Linguistic Affinity, and a Hypothesis of a Balkan-Aegean Homeland (photo 3).
2. The Minoan Language: Could Minoan Have Been Pelasgian, a Proto-Albanian Language? — Linear A, the Eteocretan Inscriptions, Greco-Albanian Linguistic Affinity, and the Indo-European Origins of Minoan Crete (photo 2).

When I wrote my undergraduate thesis on The Origins and Dating of the Greek Alphabet (photo 4), I used approximately 100 bibliographic sources.

One of the books I consulted was Constantine Siamakis’s three-volume, 1,000-page work entitled The Alphabet (photo 1).

I am providing the table of contents of this book so that you can understand what works on historical linguistics and archaeology actually involve, what it means to study these subjects seriously and graduate with top marks, as I did, and stop talking nonsense as though you know anything about these topics simply because you have read an article online, watched a YouTube video, and obtained an answer from free AI.

I also use three paid AI systems in my research, spending €100 per month, and I know how to direct them toward proper research rather than allowing them to direct me—and potentially mislead me with errors, as happens when you use them without the necessary expertise.

Contents of Constantine Siamakis’s The Alphabet

Part I: Pre-Alphabetic Scripts

1. Pre-Alphabetic Scripts

• Human speech and its mnemonic devices; writing as one of the ten greatest inventions in human history.
• Other mnemonic devices, including song and dance.
• Animal and human tracks as natural forms of inscription and possible stimuli for the invention of writing.
• The principal geographical zones in which writing developed: the river civilizations of the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris, Indus, and Yellow River, as well as the circum-Mediterranean regions of the Old World and the Americas.

2. The Evolution of Writing

• The development of scripts in the eastern Mediterranean basin, culminating, according to the author, in the world’s unique alphabet.
• Pictorial, scenographic, ideographic, logographic, linear, syllabic, and phonetic writing systems.
• Alternative developments in writing, including Mesopotamian cuneiform, Chinese scripts, and American writing systems.
• Pseudo-alphabetic and pre-alphabetic scripts influenced by the alphabet.

3–8. Writing Systems of the Ancient World

• Mesopotamia and Persia.
• Egypt and its writing systems.
• Scripts of the circum-Mediterranean region, including those of Ethiopia, Arabia, Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Anatolia, the Balkans, Italy, the western Mediterranean, and the northern Black Sea coast.
• The Indus Valley and the development of writing in India.
• The writing systems of China, Korea, and Japan.
• The scripts of the Maya and Aztecs.

9. Greece and the Formation of the Greek Nation

• The Pelasgians and the Graikoi.
• Greek history up to the final Dorian migration.
• The seven pre-alphabetic writing systems attributed to Greece.

10. Pelasgian Scripts of Greece and Cretan-Minoan Linear Writing

• Early and later pictorial and ideographic scripts attributed to Pelasgian Greece.
• The Phaistos Disc and its pictographic writing.
• Cretan-Minoan Linear A and alleged remnants of the Pelasgian language in Greek.

11. Achaean Linear Writing

• The discovery of Linear B, also known as Mycenaean writing.
• Earlier attempts at decipherment and what the author characterizes as false readings.
• Michael Ventris’s decipherment.
• Analysis of the syllabary, its phonetic values, and the interpretation of Mycenaean texts.
• The phonology of Greek before the Dorian period as reflected in the surviving inscriptions.

12–15. Other Ancient Scripts and the Interpretation of Pre-Alphabetic Writing

• Phoenician and so-called Cadmean writing.
• The scripts of Cyprus, including the Arcado-Cypriot syllabary.
• Ancient Greek accounts of pre-alphabetic scripts and traditions concerning the invention of writing.
• The methodological difficulties involved in interpreting undeciphered scripts and languages that have left no continuous written record.

Part II: The Alphabet in Its Principal Use

The second major section examines the origins, development, and spread of alphabetic writing.

Topics include:

1. Mythological traditions concerning the invention of writing and the alphabet.
2. Historical evidence for the origins of the alphabet and the Phoenician contribution.
3. The original forms, phonetic values, and names of the letters.
4. The alphabet as a system of sounds, letters, and symbols.
5. The development of the ancestral alphabet.
6. The Phoenician alphabet.
7. The Greek alphabet, its introduction, adaptation, and subsequent reforms, including the development of vowels and the standard 24-letter Ionic alphabet.
8. The transmission of alphabetic writing to the Etruscans and Romans.
9. The Aramaic alphabet and its development.
10. The spread of alphabetic writing and the formation of daughter alphabets around the world.
11. Punctuation, accents, breathing marks, and other written signs.
12. The evolution of Greek and Latin handwriting, from early forms to minuscule and printed scripts.
13. Methods for studying the historical and phonetic development of writing systems.

Part III: Other Uses of the Alphabet

The final section covers the use of letters and written symbols beyond ordinary writing:

• Numerical systems and alphabetic numerals.
• Musical notation in ancient Greece and other civilizations.
• Abbreviations and shorthand.
• Cryptography in ancient and modern contexts.
• Ideographic writing.
• Specialized alphabets, including those used in communication for people with visual or hearing impairments and in telecommunications.

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Summary of My Book on the Pelasgians

The Pelasgian Hypothesis

Could Pelasgian Represent an Early Proto-Indo-European Language? — The Palaeolithic Origins of the Indo-European Languages, Greco-Albanian Linguistic Affinity, and a Hypothesis of a Balkan-Aegean Homeland

This book proposes an alternative approach to the dominant models of Indo-European prehistory. Critically examining both the Steppe or Kurgan hypothesis and the Neolithic or Anatolian hypothesis, it explores whether the deeper history of the Indo-European languages might extend into Palaeolithic Europe. Particular attention is given to the Balkans and the Aegean as possible centres of long-term linguistic continuity.

At the heart of the study is the Pelasgian Hypothesis: the proposition that the poorly understood language—or linguistic complex—associated with the prehistoric Pelasgians may preserve an early Indo-European linguistic layer connected to the prehistoric ancestors of Greek and Albanian. The book asks whether Pelasgian could represent an early Indo-European proto-language or an archaic linguistic stage associated with the subsequent diversification of the Indo-European family.

The study revisits the pioneering work of Iakovos Thomopoulos, particularly his book The Pelasgians, and investigates proposed connections between Pelasgian, Albanian, pre-Greek vocabulary, ancient place names, and other obscure linguistic substrates.

It also explores more speculative questions concerning Etruscan, Basque, Sumerian, and agglutinative languages of the ancient Near East, asking whether certain features might preserve traces of deeper prehistoric linguistic relationships.

The book develops a model of Indo-European origins with a Palaeolithic orientation and a possible Balkan-Aegean homeland. It also considers evidence associated with Neolithic Anatolian and Caucasian alternatives. The Pelasgian Hypothesis is presented as a theoretical framework that could be tested through dialogue between historical linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, and population genetics.

Summary of My Book on Minoan Crete and the Decipherment of Linear A

The Minoan Language

Could Minoan Have Been Pelasgian, a Proto-Albanian Language? — Linear A, the Eteocretan Inscriptions, Greco-Albanian Linguistic Affinity, and the Indo-European Origins of Minoan Crete

This book proposes a reassessment of the linguistic identity of Minoan Crete. Questioning the widely held view that the language represented by Linear A belonged to an unknown non-Indo-European tradition, it investigates the possibility that Minoan formed part of an early Indo-European, Pelasgian linguistic continuity in the Aegean, closely connected to the prehistoric ancestors of Greek and Albanian.

Particular attention is given to the work of Iakovos Thomopoulos, the interpretation of Eteocretan inscriptions through Albanian, and a renewed examination of ancient Cretan vocabulary preserved by Hesychius and other sources.

The study asks whether lexical, onomastic, and structural parallels with Albanian can provide new evidence for the language of prehistoric Crete, and whether features commonly classified as pre-Greek or non-Indo-European warrant further examination.

It also reviews the principal theories concerning the origins and classification of Minoan, the linguistic significance of Linear A, and the relationship between Minoan, Eteocretan, and the wider prehistoric languages of the Aegean.

Within this framework, the book investigates the hypothesis that Minoan may have represented a Pelasgian language belonging to an early Greco-Albanian or Proto-Albanian linguistic horizon, preceding the later differentiation of Greek and Albanian into separate historical languages.

The linguistic argument is situated within the broader debate over Indo-European chronology and homeland theories. Neolithic Anatolian, Palaeolithic, and Steppe or Kurgan models are critically compared, with particular emphasis on the possibility of an early Indo-European presence in the Aegean.

The study ultimately proposes that Minoan civilization should not be regarded as linguistically isolated from later Indo-European populations in the region, but as potentially belonging to a deeper Balkan-Aegean continuity relevant to the linguistic prehistory of both Greeks and Albanians.

About the Founder of the Pelasgian Studies Website

I am a philologist, linguist, and ethnologist, as well as a naturopathic physician (Doctor of Naturopathy), orthomolecular therapist, and author. I was born in Piraeus, Greece, in 1975.

I initially studied philology, specializing in linguistics, at the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Later, driven by my interest in natural and alternative therapies, I studied clinical nutrition and naturopathy.

I have authored books on health, history, and ethnology, with 47 books published in Greek to date.

At the age of 18, I began studying the Indo-European question, the origins of peoples commonly described as pre-Greek, and the origins of the Balkan peoples. My particular focus has been the relationship between Greeks and Albanians, the theory of their common Pelasgian ancestry, and the origins of the Arvanites and their contribution to modern Greek society.

My research interests include historical-comparative linguistics, the decipherment and interpretation of ancient inscriptions, ancient Greek civilization and other ancient cultures, physical anthropology, and genetics.

I previously collaborated with Nikos Poulianos, president of the Anthropological Society of Greece and son of the prominent Greek anthropologist Aris Poulianos. With Nikos Poulianos’s assistance, I was invited to present at the 21st Congress of the European Anthropological Association, held in Denmark on 22–25 August. My presentation, entitled An Anthropological Overview of the Populations of the Balkans, argued that a substantial proportion of Slavic-speaking inhabitants of the Balkans were not of predominantly Slavic ancestry, but descended from pre-Slavic indigenous populations that underwent linguistic Slavicization.

In 2017, I wrote a study examining the origins of the human species and questioning whether the prevailing African-origin model adequately accounted for the evidence, in light of alternative theories proposed by Aris Poulianos concerning a possible human evolutionary homeland in the northern Balkans, particularly the wider region of Macedonia. The study was read by anthropologist Nikos Poulianos, who offered advice and suggested revisions.

Regarding the origins of Greeks and Albanians, I established a website on the subject in 2012. I subsequently collected articles from the website into a book published in 2014, entitled The Origins of the Albanians, as well as a separate work entitled Albanian Kosovo and Serbian Propaganda.

I am currently preparing a series of books in English, Greek, and Albanian on linguistic and ethnological subjects.

In addition to my scholarly interests, I have been politically active in Greece and have previously stood as a candidate for various political formations, most recently in the European Parliament elections.