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The "Proto-Ionians" are a hypothetical Early Bronze Age Hellenic people, whose existence has been postulated by Jean Faucounau. The arguments in favour of this existence are known as the Proto-IonianTheory, which is a slightly modified version of the old Paul Kretschmer linguistic Three Waves model of immigration of Greek language speakers into Greece.

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. Thumb and Kieckers (1932) propose three groups, classifying Ionic as genetically just as separate from Arcadocypriot as from Doric.

Like a few other linguists (Vl. Georgiev, C. Rhuijgh, P.Léveque, etc.) , J.Faucounau considers as wrong the bipartite classification as "Risch-Chadwick theory", so called after two famous proponents of it, Ernst Risch and John Chadwick (see ). Faucounau favours the tripartite classification, and attributes the latter to three consecutive "waves" of Hellenic immigration into Greece. In Faucounau's view, then, the first Greek settlers in their historical territory were the (Pelasgic) "Proto-Ionians", which were separated around 3000 BC from both the proto-Dorians and the proto-Mycenaeans. Therefore, Faucounau traces this three-waves model to similar views forwarded by Paul Kretschmer in the 1890s and the 1900s (viz., before the decipherment of Linear B), the difference being that in Faucounau's view, the Proto-Ionians came by sea through the Dardanelles. The last two waves are the generally accepted arrival of the Mycenaean Greeks (the linguistic predecessors of the Arcadocypriot speakers) in around 1700 BC and the Dorian invasion around 1100 BC.

Faucounau makes three arguments for the proto-Ionians in Les proto-Ioniens(2001). The first is the explanation of certain Mycenaean forms as loan-words from the proto-Ionians already present in Greece: he asserts that digamma is unexpectedly absent from some Mycenaean words, the occasional resolution of Indo-European vocalic r to -or/ro- instead of -ar/ra-; torpeza for τραπεζα , and the explanation of Mycenaean pa-da-yeu as Greek παδαω/πηδαω, "spring leap, bound", which he interprets as both cognate and having the same meaning as modern English paddle. He does not explain that in recorded Greek, πηδαω is the Ionian form ; nor that the OED regards the original sense of paddle as having been "spade" ; it is also unexpected for English -dd- to be cognate with δ, considering Grimm's law.

The second argument is a refinement of a long-established argument in archaeoastronomy, (developed in particular by Michael Ovenden, who considered the motion the North Pole with respect to the fixed stars, because of the procession of the equinoxes. Ovenden concluded, from the slant of the constellations in the present sky and the hypothesis that Aratus and Hipparchus correctly and completely represent immemorial tradition, that the constellations had been devised when the Pole was in Draco, about 2800 BC. He also concluded that the inventors lived between 34°30' and 37°30' N., north of most ancient civilizations, and so were likely to be the Minoans.

Faucounau refines this by arguing that Crete is also too far south, and the Constellation makers must be the proto-Ionians in the Cyclades. The south coast of Crete follows 35°N latitude; Syros, which he identifies as a center of proto-Ionian civilization, is at 37°20'.

His third argument combines ancient traditions concerning "Pelasgic Ionians" with some unexplained archaeological and legendary facts, for instance why the Alexandros/Alexandus of the Treaty between Troy and the Hittite kingdom wore a Greek name at a time when there was no Mycenaean pottery at Troy ?

Faucounau considers that those arguments are an indirect confirmation of his own decipherment claim of the Phaistos Disk as Proto-Ionic, although this attempt has not been endorsed in the academic mainstream.

Faucounau's "Proto-Ionic" 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 suspected in Ionic. (e.g. Ion. païs v/etym. paus)

For Faucounau, the Pelasgians, the Trojans, the Carians and the Philistines are all descended from the Proto-Ionians.

Literature

• Jean Faucounau, Le déchiffrement du Disque de Phaistos, Paris 1999
• Jean Faucounau, Les Proto-Ioniens : histoire d'un peuple oublié, Paris 2001. Esp. pp. {(note|digamma}}33ff, 35ff, 37f,
  • review: Paul Faure, Revue des études grecques Vol. 15 (2002), p. 424f.
• Jean Faucounau, Les Peuples de la Mer et leur Histoire, Paris 2003
• Jean Faucounau, Les Origines Grecques à l'Age de Bronze, Paris 2005
• Vladimir Georgiev, in Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium on Mycenaean Studies, Cambridge 1966, p. 104-124
• Vladimir Georgiev, Acta Mycenaea, Salamanca 1972, p.361-379
• Paul Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (1896)
• Pierre Lévêque, L'aventure grecque, p.16-29
• Michael W. Ovenden, The Origin of the Constellations inThe Philosophical Journal 3 (1966), p. 1-18
• Cornelis J. Ruijgh, in Les Civilisations égéennes, René Treuil et all edit, (Paris 1989), p. 401-423.
• Cornelis J. Ruijgh, Sur la position dialectale du Mycénien in Atti e Memorie del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Micenologia (Roma 1996) p. 115-124.
• A. Thumb, E. Kieckers, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (1932)
• Liddell, Scott, Jones, Greek Lexicon, s.v. πηδαω.
• New English dictionary on historical principles online edition s.v. paddle. Accessed 3 March 2006.

See also

• Proto-Greek
• Greek dialects
• Ionic Greek

• Hellenic languages and dialects
• Archaeoastronomy
• Hypotheses