ABSTRACT
As place-names with places of Bronze Age Thera were lost in the cataclysmic destruction of around 1500, this indicates that non-Greek elements elsewhere are genuinely early, rather than coming from late influences and contacts. An unknown language, as yet undeciphered, was used in inscriptions of Crete as late as the third century BC. This language, written in the Greek alphabet, is conventionally given the name Eteokretan from the Homeric passage detailing the population of Crete. Population movement from the Greek mainland to the islands and the Asiatic coast, in waves and in sporadic migration, formed three distinct Aegean zones. Thera, Melos and Anaphe had traditions of Phoenician settlement, seeming to reflect Bronze Age contacts rather than influence of the archaic period, for which there is no archaeological evidence. The Doric of the islands incorporated forms used by their Ionic speaking neighbours. Already in the fifth century, coins from Rhodian lalysos bear I, Ionic as an alternative legend to I, Doric.
