A 5th-Century bce Greek Historian Discusses the Pelasgians and the Origins of the Greek Language - Herodotus, Histories

The historian speculates on the Pelasgians’ ethnic origin by dealing first and foremost with their language: this is a remarkable example of ethnographic inquiry that focuses on language as a distinctive feature in order to establish proximities between different populations. The importance of this step in the use of language as a tool in the Greek construction of ethnicity, and in the reconstruction of a remote past (note the focus on the permanence of fossilized linguistic features in marginal groups), has often been highlighted in modern scholarship.