Pottery finds suggest that Kolonai was inhabited in prehistoric times, but it is unknown whether there was any continuity between these period of its settlement and the Greek period. Greek ceramic material appears on the site from the 7th century BC, marking its foundation as a Greek settlement. At the period in which Daës of Kolonai was writing (probably the 4th century BC), the inhabitants of Kolonai thought they had been founded by Aeolian Greeks. Given that Lesbos was also ethnically Aeolian and Kolonai was one of the so-called Actaean cities which Athens took from Mytilene following the end of the Mytilenean revolt in 427 BC, it is likely that Mytilene founded Kolonai and subsequently controlled it. A corrupt passage of the geographer Strabo suggests instead that Kolonai belonged to the peraia of Tenedos, but there is now a consensus among consensus that the manuscripts should refer to it belonging to the peraia of Lesbos.