Sotos wrote: those people do not say that they are a sub-group of any greater group ... they say they are a totally separate group that grew from the soil of Cyprus
You mean Pelasgians - the aboriginal peoples of Greece and Cyprus?
Before recorded Time, (c. 900 BCE) but during an active migration era of prehistoric Greece (c. 10,000 BCE), a people came into the Pelaponnesus, presumably from the north, and settled around the eastern Mediterranian coast and its islands. They were called "Pelasgians,"...
The word pelasgian means from the sea. It also means hairy. And to top it all, it means springing from the earth... sticks embedded in the earth that spring up in human form to populate their surroundings. From this we can conjure up a race of people that came from the sea, wore beards, and were "indigenous." Hence, they were the aborigines who settled the Pelaponnesus, coming before the Dorians. One might say they were the aboriginal ancestors of what we now call "Hellenes" -- today's Greeks as they have come down through the ages.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/pelasgians.html