The history of Greece encompasses the history of the territory of the modern nation-state of Greece as well as that of the Greek people and the areas they inhabited and ruled historically. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied throughout the ages and as a result, the history of Greece is similarly elastic in what it includes.
The pre-Greek substrate (or substratum) consists of the unknown pre-Greek language or languages (either Pre-Indo-European or other Indo-European languages) spoken in prehistoric Greece prior to the emergence of the Proto-Greek language in the region c. 3200–2200 BC, during the Early Helladic period. About 1,000 words of Greek vocabulary cannot be adequately explained as derivatives from Proto-Greek or Proto-Indo-European, leading to the substratum hypothesis. According to scholars, Ancient Greek was likely influenced by two types of substrates: one Indo-European, probably an unknown Anatolian language that has been called "Parnassian", and one or several non-Indo-European languages that pre-date the coming of Greeks to the region.