The Pelasgians were the black traders who penetrated the Aegean and Mediterranean before the Greeks and Romans. They were known also as the builders, because they constructed stone forts and circular tombs called tholoi, tumuli.

The Pelasgians are mentioned by Herodotus (passim), Thucydides and other Greek historians, who locate them in various places in Greece, eg Larisa, Dodona and associate them with early religious practices. The Tyrrhenians, they tell us, were Pelasgians, and the Etruscans were "Tyrrhenians".

Ridgeway regarded the Pelasgians as the dolichocephalic race who occupied the Mediterranean basin in the prehistoric period. Substrate theorists posit a prehistoric people who spoke non-Indo-European languages, the agglutinative language isolates such as Etruscan and Basque.