Larissa

This is apparently the only menhir ever discovered in Greece. Two metres tall, it depicts a female figure, and dates to the Early Bronze Age (3300-2200 BC). Discovered in Central Greece at Soufli Magoula, Prefecture of Larisa, currently in the Diachronic Museum of Larisa...

I always loved the name Larissa. I always loved the name Larissa. In mythology, the nymph Larissa was a daughter of the primordial man Pelasgus. The man who taught people how to eat acorns... 

 

Peleus, the hero beloved by the gods, father of Achilles lived in Larissa...Homer says in the Iliad that: 'Hippothous led the tribes of Pelasgian spearsmen, who dwelt in fertile Larissa"...

Officially: "The name Larissa (Λάρισα Lárīsa) is in origin a Pelasgian word for 'fortress'. There were many ancient Greek cities with this name"...

The Larissa of Peleus and Achilles, where the above Bronze Age menhir was found, lies in the plain of Larissa in Thessaly. A fertile flat pan like plain surrounded by high mountains. Pic: Mount Olympus from Larissa, Thessaly, Greece, 1850–85 by Edward Lear

This plain was the centre of the ancient Thessaly, one of the traditional regions of Ancient Greece. During the Mycenaean period, Thessaly was known as Aeolia... 

The fertile plains of Thessaly were continuously inhabited at least since the 8th millennium BC, when we find the first traces of the Neolithic farmers of the so called Sesklo culture...

But around the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC something very important happens. Yamna descendants start moving into the Balkans...Now guess who was making the first anthropomorphic stelae in the world? Yamna people...Here is one from Odessa... 

Now these Yamna guys were metalworking warriors...And were associated with the introduction of the warrior cult into Europe and the R1b haplogroup...Which language did they speak? It is accepted that it was an Indoeuropean language. I would further suggest that it was Gaelic...

What? I can hear you say. Based on what? Well based on the Irish oral histories, which were first written down in the early medieval time...And they say that the forefather of the Irish, Partholon, came to Ireland from Scythia, via Anatolia, Greece, Sicily and Spain...

Interestingly, according to the Irish Annals, Partholon's migration happened during the 3rd millennium BC, at the same time Yamna descendants moved west out of the Pontic steppe... 

Like for instance, that Partholon brought metalwork to Ireland, which were confirmed by the arc archaeological evidence which showed that around 2500 BC a completely new genetic population, R1b metalworkers, arrived to Ireland from oversees...I wrote about this in my post "Or, Ireland's gold"...

Or that during the first 300 years after Partholon arrived, lakes kept erupting... There is dendrochronological evidence  that right around the time when the Irish Annals say the Partholon arrived to Ireland, climate suddenly changed, resulting in years of rain and catastrophic flooding...I wrote about it in my post "Partholon and the great flood"...

These R1b people, the first metalworkers to reach Ireland were probably the first Irish, Gaelic speakers to reach reach Ireland...So it is possible that Irish was spoken in the Balkans before it was spoken in Ireland...

And it seems that these first Gaelic speaking (???) Irish came from the Balkans skipping the rest of continental Europe. At least based on archaeological evidence in both Balkans and Ireland. 

I wrote about this in the series of posts about the "Montenegrian Tumuluses"...

Did they arrive via Sicily and Spain, like the Irish Annals say? Well, most likely as there was a maritime trading network connecting Balkans, Sicily, Spain since Neolithic. I wrote about this in my post "Neolithic seafarers"...

Now, finally here is the interesting bit 😁 What is the root of the name Larissa? Apparently this is Pelasgian word. "Pelasgian language" just means pre Greek, not of any specific Pelasgian language...Pre Greek could be anything from any age. Could it be Gaelic? From Bronze Age?

Did you know that in Gaelic, the word "lár" (pronounced lor but also laer) means "earth, ground, flat surface, floor, plain, centre, middle"... 

This is plain of Thessaly...Flat plain surrounded by mountains...The centre of Thessaly... 

The name certainly matches the landscape...And there was enough time and enough further mixing of people in Thessaly to end up with Larissa from "lár" by the time the name was first recorded...Who knows...I am curious what those other Larissa's look like landscape wise???

But maybe this is just a complete coincidence...As I said, I always liked the name...