"the so-called Greek dialects were formed, based on an Indo-European vocabulary brought by invaders" (Ibidem, p. 29) and the native vocabulary, identified following in-depth research into the ancient Greek language, called the Pre-Greek or Pelasgian layer. This period of fusion and adaptation, with ethnic and linguistic changes, was called the Mycenaean (1900-1600 BC).
In the north, however, in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, the cultures of the Carpatho-Danubian space attest to strong influences from the Balkan and Aegean areas, and the bearers of these cultures were the Thracians. For example, Troy VI and VII proved certain correspondences with Thrace, and in the "dark centuries" of Greek history (1200-900), in the Carpatho-Pontic space, craftsmen still reproduced, by tradition, current models from the brilliant Mycenaean culture (the Hinova treasure, etc.) (Ibidem, p. 49). According to Romanian historians, "the creative tribes of the Bronze Age cultures on the territory of Romania (at least towards its end) belong to the Indo-European group of the Thracians" (Bărbulescu, Deletant, Hitchins, Papacostea, Teodor 2012, p. 23). The Thracians appear following the Indo-Europeanization of the bronze cultures from the geographical space between the Northern Carpathians, the Tisa, Vardar and Morava rivers, the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. In the early Iron Age, "the Thracians inhabited the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin" (IM 2010, p. 313). Also in the Iron Age, during the 7th-6th centuries BC, the division of the Thracians occurred: into the Northern Thracians or Geto-Dacians (the population of Thracian origin who lived in the Carpatho-Danubian and Pontic regions, up to the Balkan Mountains, known in ancient historical sources as Dacians and Getae) and the Thracians proper, the southern/south-Danubian Thracians. The individualization of the Geto-Dacians from the great mass of Thracians constituted "throughout their existence, an ethnic and linguistic unity, with a material and spiritual culture of their own" (Encyclopedia 1996, p. 178). “The South-Danubian Thracians ‘enter history’ with the Homeric epics”, while “the information about the North-Danubian Thracians is later (6th century BC)” (Bărbulescu
et al. 2012, p. 23). Respectively, the Northern Thracians and their Carpatho-Danubian or Geto-Dacian habitation area constitute the northern extremity of the Paleobalkan cultural and linguistic continuum, of which the Indo-European language family has preserved some relics.
The Thracian idiom, about which we know very little, “was certainly an Indo-European language from the Satam group”, states C. Tagliavini (1977, p. 112). The Indo-European character has been preserved in the entire structure of the Thracian idiom, as far as we know it, in vocabulary, phonetics, proper names, less in morphology, this representing the result of the evolution of the state inherited from Indo-European. The linguistic facts [10 inscriptions,
mostly fragmentary (+ 40 fragmentary texts from the island of Samothrace),
48 glosses, 39 Dacian names of plants (after Neroznak 1978, pp. 40-64)], considers
C. Poghirc, "oblige to delimit a Thracian linguistic territory (from northern Greece
and up to the northern slope of the Balkan Mountains) bordered to the west by the Illyrian territory
(from the northwestern Adriatic Sea) and, to the north, by the Daco-Moesian territory (comprising
the ancient Dacia, the two Moesias and, perhaps, Dardania)" (ILR, II 1969, p. 313).
page 75 and onwards.
