For well over a century (cf. Kretschmer 1896) it has been recognised that a significant proportion of the Ancient Greek lexicon contains loanwords without a clearly identifiable source, but certainly attributed to the languages spoken in the Aegean spoken by the first settlers in the region. Various attempts have been made to identify the nature of these languages – the most prominent being the ‘Vorgriechisch’ or ‘Pre-Greek’ hypotheses of Furnée (1972) and Beekes (2009; 2010; 2014), although by no means have these been the only hypotheses advanced (cf. Palmer 1963: 39; Finkelberg 1997; 2005). In this paper I will discuss some of the problems with how past hypotheses have interpreted this material and tentatively propose some possible solutions on how we may move forward with the interpretation of this material in a methodologically more rigorous way.