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The "Proto-Ionians" are a Bronze Age people, of which the existence in the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age has been postulated by Jean Faucounau. The arguments which have been developped in support of this hypothesis constitute he Proto-Ionian Theory, which is essentially of linguistical nature. This theory is, in fact, a modern version of the old Three Vawes Theory enunciated by the German linguist Paul Kretschmer in his Einleitung in der Geschichte des griechischen Sprache (Göttingen 1896)

Mainstream Greek linguistics separates the Greek dialects into two large genetic groups, one including Doric Greek and the other including both Arcadocypriot and Ionic Greek. But alternative approaches proposing three groups are not uncommon. Following Paul Kretschmer's ideas, Thumb and Kieckers (1932), for instance, have proposed three groups, classifying Ionic as genetically just as separate from Arcadocypriot as from Doric.

Like those linguists, J. Faucounau rejects the bipartite classification, known as "Risch-Chadwick theory", after two famous proponents of it, Ernst Risch and John Chadwick (See ) and advocates to come back to the tripartite classification, and to three consecutive "waves" of Hellenic immigration into Greece. This is a return to the views forwarded first by Paul Kretschmer before the decipherment of Linear B, but with a noteworthy difference : unlike the other ones, the First Greek Vawe would have come by sea, through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. This vawe would have settled at Troy c.2900 BC, then later in the Cycladic islands, Euboea and Attica. In Faucounau's view, the first Greek settlers in a large part of their historical territory were therefore the (Pelasgic) "Proto-Ionians", which were separated around 3000 BC from both the proto-Dorians and the proto-Mycenaeans. The following two waves are generally accepted as arriving in the Mainland in around 1800 BC for the Mycenaean Greeks (the linguistic predecessors of the Arcadocypriot speakers), and around 1200 BC for the Dorians (See Dorian invasion).

Faucounau's main arguments in favour of this model set out in his 2001 and 2005 books are:

1. on the linguistical side : a)-the proto-ionisms that one may find in the Linear B tablets b)-the repartition at the beginning of the Classical times of the Greek dialects c)-the Greek names of most Troyans in the Greek Epic.
2. on the archaeological side, strange facts like the Sword from Dorak, and diverse other unexplained archaeological facts, as the disproportionate importance of Troy in the Greek Legend and the mentions by the Ancient authors of possible Greek Pelasgic peoples.
3. also arguments of archaeoastronomy, showing that the Inventors of the Constellations lived c.2500 BC in one of the Cycladic Islands and spoke a Ionic dialect.

Insisting on the fact that his researches on the Proto-Ionians were started up by his preliminary decipherment of the Phaistos Disk by statistical methods, he considers the Proto-Ionian Theory as a confirmation of his claim that the Disk has been written in a Proto-Ionic dialect and belongs to a Cycladic Proto-Ionian Maritime Culture, which has been in contact with the Minoan Civilisation, but was different from it.

Faucounau's "Proto-Ionic" concerning the Phaistos Disk, considered as the sole written known item of the Proto-Ionian Culture, has most properties of Homeric Greek, including loss of labiovelars and even of digamma (both are preserved intact in 14th century BC Mycenaean). Digamma in Faucounau's reading of the Phaistos Disk has in some instances passed to y, a sound shift not known from any other Greek dialect, but that one may suspect to have existed in Ionic from words like <païs> v./ <paus>.

For Faucounau, the Pelasgians, the Trojans, the Carians and the Philistines are all later descendents from the Proto-Ionians, after the Proto-Ionian Culture of the Early Bronze Age practically disappeared in the Aegean between 2200 and 1800 BC at the late, except in some areas like Attica, which kept a Ionic dialect.

For the time being, this theory has not be endorsed by any known scholar, but it has attracted the attention of many of them, as shown by the great number of books and papers that J.Faucounau has been able to publish in several peer-reviewed journals, and the encouragements he has received from several archaeologists.

Literature

• Jean Faucounau, Le déchiffrement du Disque de Phaistos, Paris 1999
• -"- , Les Proto-Ioniens : histoire d'un peuple oublié, Paris 2001.
  • review: Paul Faure, Revue des études grecques Vol. 15 (2002), p. 424f.
• Jean Faucounau, Les Peuples de la Mer et leur Histoire, Paris 2003
• -"- , Les Origines Grecques à l'Age de Bronze, Paris 2005
• Vladimir Georgiev, in Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquiumon Mycenaean Studies, Cambridge 1966, p. 104-124
• -"- , Acta Mycenaea, Salamanca 1972, p.361-379
• Paul Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (1896)
• A. Thumb, E. Kieckers, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (1932)

See also

• Proto-Greek
• Greek dialects
• Ionic Greek

• Hellenic languages and dialects
• Archaeoastronomy
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Hypotheses