E-V13 - Theories on its Origin and New Data

[Riverman]

This means the Iliad rather described people, especially warriors from Greece and the surroundings of the Aegean AFTER the LBA-EIA transition! Even the fighting style and weaponry looks rather LBA-EIA than Mycenaean paper. If those details don't fit, why should we trust in the same source when its about when exactly Thracians proper lived in the Aegean neighbourhood?

You need to read a companion to Iliad to be able to understand such differences. In any case, Homer might not mention Hittites because Anatolian speakers used different names, however, references to them do exist in the Iliad and the Odyssey. For example, Telephos is a likely reference to Hittite deity Telepinu. The fact that ancient Greeks didn't use a specific name is not equivalent to them not mentioning at all a specific culture.

In ancient Greek, Thracians are known either as Thrakes or Thriikes and these two names reflect different post-Proto-Greek dialects which means that the name was known to ancient Greeks before the Iron Age. If the argument is that a massive E-V13 migration replaced LBA Thracians which were most likely known to Greeks with such a name, then you need to explain how and why this massive migration didn't just replace the old name but adopted it or why ancient literature doesn't mention this massive event.

I have absolutely no doubt that the Greeks knew the Thracians, because even if my hypothesis is right and would be taken to the extreme, of all Proto-Thracians living at the Upper Tisza, which is nothing I even claim, we know that the Mycenaeans traded with those people and that they lived as traders, mercenaries and craftsmen in the Mycenaean cities. We have evidence for that at both ends, with goods coming from people which must have lived around the Aegean for some time at the Upper Tisza and artefacts which reflect an Upper Tisza-people presence in the Mycenaean sphere.
That's like Romans which knew about Germanic and Sarmatian people before conquering them or getting conquered.

The Upper Tisza region might look far away, but they were connected to the Aegean in some ways even before the Late Bronze Age collapse. So surely they knew each other, regardless of whether or not Thracian tribes lived in the Aegean sphere before 1.300 BC.

Another factor is whether or not the name was used by the Greeks for an older people before, which largely disappeared and were replaced by the actual Thracians. Like Scythians being replaced by Sarmatians and Huns, yet some authors still used "Scythian".