Yes, it seemed quite empty to me.
For a bit of review: index.php seems to have gotten mostly erased when I did my first tiny attempts at editing a few words when i found it deep inside my dreamweaver cs4. As soon as I clicked upload and it was over in a flash. I am far too new at this to even have sorted out backup. And it was all loaded through softaculous in my cPanel.
So....any idea where one can find a "that index.php file with a default install version of one"....or why I can't seem to get the new template I loaded to just replace the injured index.php?