 Thank you very much. So I want to talk about the linguistic landscape of middle and Leibbrandt's age Western Anatolia We all know that Anatolia is a bridge between Europe and the Near East and that makes it's a fascinating place Because it has been through time home to many population groups and languages that spread from the one area to the other At the same time Anatolia is a place that has a written history that started in about 2,000 BCE so for 4,000 years we can map what's going on in Anatolia linguistically There's however one gap in our knowledge. That's the northwestern part Because there are no written sources from this area until Roman times But this is of course the region that's really the bottleneck For the transition from Europe to the Near East and that's why I find it an interesting region So my question today is what was the language situation in this region in pre-Roman times? I will first look at second-line BCE sources and then move on to other types of evidence that we can use In the second-line BCE Especially in the second half we all know of course that on the one hand We had the Hittite Empire in central Anatolia in the Greek mainland in the islands That was the city of the land of Agiawa and in between in Western Anatolia There was a bunch of states some of which sometimes formed a unity which were called the Artsawa lands and The region that we are interested in at that point in time was taken up by the lands of Walucia and the land of Masha and Walucia is interesting because that's also the place where the city of Troy was situated So the whole area is also important for that reason If we look at the linguistic landscape in the second-line BCE and we look at the sources that we have there's not much to go on Because all sources from Gattuscia for instance We know the Hittite was spoken in central Palaeic, Hattic, Hurrian and some Luian texts we have found as well, but it's all really focused on the central part of Anatolia That's the only view that we have if we take the text from Gattuscia into account If we take Linea B sources they show that Greek was spoken in in the Aegean on the islands and on Greek mainland So that doesn't give much information on Northwestern Anatolia either and a third type of Scripts that we have is hieroglyphic inscriptions, which were probably Written down in Luian that already penetrates us much into Western Anatolia, but still the Northwest is not Taking care of with these sources. So still Northwest is sort of blank gap if we look at second millennium sources So now the question is what should we do? I want to look Because the second source are not decisive at first millennium sources Then we have to take into account of course that the Bronze Age collapse around 1180 BC took place So Troy falls the Hittite Empire falls as well. So the question is Well, we have these 150 years of dark age Can we really project back the linguistic situation from the first millennium BCE to the second millennium BCE? We have to be careful with that, but we'll see what we can do So if we look at the first millennium BCE Then Luian is language that is still spoken It's the only language from the second millennium BCE that we have sources from in the first millennium BCE as well But then it's confined really to the southeastern part of Anatolia Then there are many languages in alphabetical scripts for instance Phrygian Which takes up a large part of central Anatolia and also Northwest. So that's interesting But we know Phrygian it's closely related to Greek and according to Herodotus Herodotus They came from the Balkans where they were called Bruges and that's quite likely to be true Almost everyone assumes that the Phrygians were newcomers into Anatolia after 1200 BCE and therefore Phrygian probably was not spoken in Anatolia in the second millennium BCE So Phrygian came in at a certain point. So it's not an original second millennium BCE language in Anatolia Then there's a bunch of languages also written in all kinds of different alphabetical scripts all their own versions Lydian Charyon, Lycian, Pisidian and Scythic and the interesting things is that these are all Anatolian language That is linguistically Anatolian languages in the sense that they are related to Hittite and Louisian And that means that they were probably present in Anatolia in the second millennium BCE as well So these are interesting Then we have on the coast Aeolic and Ionic Attic Greek But these are very likely Intruders as well in the sense that they came there after the Bronze Age collapse So if we look at first millennium BCE material and what this could be the potentially all the situation There are left with these languages Louisian in the Southeast and then Lydian, Charyon, Pisidian and Scythic in the South and of these languages Lydian is clearly the closest to the Northwest So could this have been the language of Troy and the surrounding areas if you want to frame it like like that Well, this was Proposed by Neumann He says that it's quite probable that Lydian was spoken to the north of Lydian originally both in Misia and in the Troat And that is confirmed by new finds from Daskelion Daskelion is a city that was located over there It used to be the capital of the entropy of Hellespontain Frigia It's being excavated by the University of Moula by Professor Kaan Iren and they find potchart with graffiti on it And already a few years ago I went on a field trip together with my professor Sasha Lubotsky And we find many Greek graffiti on these potcharts Also some Frigian ones, but also Lydian ones and these are interesting Well, this specific fragment had already been published in the 1990s by Bakar and Guzmani Where they said well that they think that it's probably from Sardis this fragment the capital of classical Lydia So they say it could be just Coincidentally that it's gotten there in Daskelion and they say that as long as this living example from Daskelion remains isolated Defined can also be explained due to trading connections So they don't find this as telling for the linguistic situation in Daskelion However, Professor Iren says that the clay from this shard is clearly local from Daskelion So the shard is from a pot that is locally made It can also be securely dated to 625 to 575 BC Which makes it a relatively old specimen of a Lydian language object Which seems to be local from Daskelion so that's interesting and we also found two other Lydian graffiti This is one and this is one they're very small, but we can tell that they're Lydian So that confirms that at least some people spoke Lydian in Daskelion Which would mean that the Lydian area can be Broadened more to the north and this is interesting because this confirms an idea by Professor Bakers Who says that in Homer the Lydians are called Mayones with a stem ma Which he wants to relate to the stem ma that we find in this land named Marsha And if you remember this is the second millennium BCE land, which is there to the north of Classical Lydia so according to Bakers It could have been that in the second millennium the Lydians actually lived in Marsha and he assumes even that they from there Moved into classical Lydia at a certain point Which would be interesting because that could mean that in second millennium BCE the classical Lydian area Actually was Lydian speaking for the largest part, so we have a potential little language movement going on here Well, this also fits what Neumann says that are both in Missia and in the Troats Lydian was spoken So this could be then the language of Northwestern Anatolia in the second millennium BCE But we have also one other language in the neighborhood It's actually Lemnian on the island of Lemnus across the sea from the Troat It's a tested in four inscriptions and several graffiti This is the best known inscription also the last largest one and already very early on it was clear that this language is Closely related to Etruscan you could say Etruscan that's really all over the place in Italy That's far away. How can we have two very closely related languages so far apart from each other? Well, you can only explain this situation if you assume that either People that were speaking a sort of free version of Etruscan went on a boat and ended up in Lemnus and started Writing there a few centuries later which when was then changed into the language of Lemnus or The other possibility is that people from Lemnian a pre-version Spoke that language and it went on the boat ended up in Tuscany and started living there and their language developed into Etruscan So these are two Scenarios to explain this really bizarre situation to have these two closely related languages so far apart from each other Well, this is already something that have been thought about by many people and a lot of people assume that it was a west to east Movement and that's a traditional viewpoint of many Italian scholars namely that Lemnian derives in the end from Tuscany Also, Ertinger a German linguist says that that must be this case that Tuscany is the original area from this language and the Lemnian derives in it's based on Retic, Retic is a sister language of Etruscan who's spoken in the Alps and Ertinger says it's a rückzug Gebiets so this is not an area in which you would assume that people entered but it should have been original Area where language stays Well, but if you look at the location of the rating inscriptions, it's clear that they're located in the etch style which Still is and back then also was the major route through the Alps nowadays the big highway from Innsbruck to Italy Runs through this valley And I think that this is actually a place where you would want to be if you are a newcomer This is where the trade happens from the north of the Alps to the south of the Alps I think you can become very rich if you go live in this valley. So I don't think that this is a rückzug Gebiets, I don't think that that argument holds If you look at the other option the east-west option saying that actually Lemnus or the area around Lemnus in the original Place from where these languages originate and they moved into the area of Tuscany There's actually many arguments in favor of that view Bakers in his article list 24 of them The most important ones to my mind are the fact that already in antiquity that Truscans have always been Regarded as very strange and very strange habits. Nothing compared to the surrounding People's herality says the Etruscans which he calls trusanoid That's a Greek version of the Etruscans that they came from Lydia So that's clearly is a Something that would support an east to west hypothesis But also the position of Etruscan between the surrounding languages Etruscan is not in the European But to its east it has in the European languages to its west it has in the European languages These languages are related to each other and Etruscan is the one none in the European language in between I also like the argument of the river umbro, which is clearly in the middle of Etruscan speaking area But it's the same name as the Umbrians So the Umbrians must have been names after umbro So that means that it's quite likely that originally the area around the Umbro was Umbrian speaking But Etruscans evaded into that area But also an archaeological argument Etruscan culture stems from what we call the proto-villanova culture which according to archaeologists is popping up Auftaugend in Italy around 1200 BCE with a break with preceding cultures And if you look at the original the oldest sites that belong to proto-villanova So this is a situation around 1150 BCE It's very confined to specific areas and if you then see the later expansions you see from from the coast They expand into inland so to my mind, but I'm not a real archaeologist Of course, this seems as if this culture originates from the sea and then later on this proto-villanova Develops into the Villanova culture, which in the end becomes the Etruscan culture Well the date of this popping up of the proto-villanova culture around 1150 BCE Oh, yeah, so this will mean that perhaps the speakers of pre-etruscan came from the sea around 1200 BCE Well this date matches the date that's given by Riks one of the linguistic experts on Etruscan for the mother language of the Etruscan Retic and Lemnian which he calls proto-Torchanic Which he dates to have been spoken around 1250 to a thousand BCE and then splitting up in these three languages It also matches the date that has been given in a recent DNA paper on the time in which the modern Tuscans Have undergone some admixture of Middle Eastern DNA. They date that Event to around 1100 to 600 BCE So altogether it seems as if we could assume a sort of population movement from Lemnos or its surrounding areas To Italy in the end and also to Tuscany from 1200 to 900 BCE What about this Lemnus area? Well Bacus also points out that classical authors Greek and Roman authors mentioned the presence of people that are called Tarsanoi Etruscans in northwestern Anatolia And he plots them on a map so the green spots are places where according to classical authors Tarsanoi were living or have been living for instance on Lemnos, but also on Lesbos In the Troat also around Cusicos and if you map these places together then you get a sort of linguistic area where it could have been the case that Etruscan was spoken and Bacus then uses this as an argument to say look the Etruscans did indeed come from Lydia Because you have this area where Etruscans and Lydians could have lived together I also think it would be a very interesting indication that Troy could have been originally Etruscan speaking and I like That idea very much because in a digital argument in favor of this view would then be that the myth of Aeneas could have had an historical basis You could say well isn't that myth of Aeneas had the Trojan prince that goes on the boat and all around The Mediterranean ends up in Italy It's just totally made up on the basis of a wish to To have some kind of connection to the to the epic stories of Homer Well, we have already in the 7th century BCE in a Truscan phase with the depiction of Aeneas on it So that's very early and in the the tales of Homer Aeneas only a minor figure So I think that just a wish to belong to the Homer epics is not a good explanation of this situation So my tentative reconstruction of the linguistic landscape of Western Anatolia Would be that we use the second millennium sources that we have we add there this southern first millennium Languages of pre-carry and pre-lition pre-pacidian pre-sodatic there was spoken there We can assume that pre-Lydian then would have been confined to the area of Marsha and I would say that there was a pre-frigian on the other side of the of the sea of Marmara in Thrace and I would say that this proto-Turcanic was spoken around Troy and in the northern Eegean So this is my second millennium reconstruction Then we have our Bronze Age collapse around 1180 BCE the fall of the Hittite Empire We get a power vacuum there the Frigians are very eager to Go into into Anatolia so the Lydians they have to move southwards the Turcanic people they go on the boats and they Go away and then when later on the situation is more or less settled again then we get this Landscape with Frigian having entered all the way into central Anatolia northwest and the law only language from the Turcanic family Has that has been remained is Lemnia. So that's my reconstruction. Thank you very much for your attention