Historical Speculation - the Etruscans

[Suraknar]

Hello Ladies and Gents,

Been Intersted particularly in the Etruscans as of late.

We know of them throught the Greeks and of Cource through the Romans.

We know that they worshiped many Gods from the Greek pantheon.

Latest findings also make them to be the founders of Rome actually, they ruled Rome as Kings and Nobility while the population was mainly made up of Latins, and it appeears that many of the Patrician Famillies are descendant of the Etruscan Kings that rule Rome prior to its revolt, having taken part themselves in overthrowing the Kings they themselves established the Senate.

But their origins is what is very sketchy here...a big controversy exists in that regard.

They appear in the northern peninsula around 998 BCE by accounts from Censorinus in libri fatales, roughly at the same time as the Latins came to Latium from Danube, at around 1100 BCE.

However, while the Latins came from land, the Etruscans are rumored to have come by boats from Anatolia. Many maintain they were Lydians originally, yet its also been suggested that they were Pelasgians, or Sea Peoples of Lemnos.

Well, the speculation here taking under account the above new findings, but also the period in question is the possibility of the etruscans actually being groops of people that were once part of Troy.

The Legends of the founding of Rome, as we know have two versions, one is about Remus and Romulus, this is the Latin version, however there is also the Legend of Aeneas, who was a heroic survivor of the sacking of Troy that came to Latium...We know today that most legends have some Historical Roots. And the speculation here consists in taking under acount the fact that Rome was founded by Etruscans and linking it with that second Legend of Aeneas.

Without proper evidence this is all speculative from a scientific point of view of cource, however, I am posting here to see if any may see this a plausible possibility aswell. Or maybe someone has more knowledge on the subject and could shed some light.

Thoughts?

[Watchman]

I've read that the Etruscans weren't an Indo-European people (and there weren't too many of *those* around in Europe even by that point of time), but dunno if that's up to date.

That aside, I wouldn't find it very surprising if the early Latin tribes inhabiting the spot where Rome would one day develop at one point or another just plain went and asked their (presumably somewhat better organized) Etruscan neighbors for some sort of headman to act as a neutral-party intermediary in their internal disputes, and that position eventually turned into kingship. Or went and just plain asked to get a king, for that matter. These things did happen.

Or maybe some Etruscan bigwig at some point got himself involved with the internal politics of their Latin neighbors on his own initiative, and eventually maneuvered himself to become their head honcho; that sort of thing happened too, and not all that rarely.

[Geoffrey S]

The Legends of the founding of Rome, as we know have two versions, one is about Remus and Romulus, this is the Latin version, however there is also the Legend of Aeneas, who was a heroic survivor of the sacking of Troy that came to Latium...We know today that most legends have some Historical Roots. And the speculation here consists in taking under acount the fact that Rome was founded by Etruscans and linking it with that second Legend of Aeneas.
The two legends aren't mutually exclusive; Aeneas' son Ascanius supposedly founded Alba Longa, from whose royal line Romulus and Remus were said to have been born.

[Kraxis]

Also the Aeneid was written by Virgil as a sort of background for Rome which is lacked compared to Greece. Mind you this was done at teh time of Augustus, almost by decree from him. I wouldn't give much crecedence to the Aeneid, as it blatantly copies Homer in style (when that style had long been abandoned in favour of more scholastic writing).

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I've read that the Etruscans weren't an Indo-European people...
Their language wasn't Indo-European. JP Mallory points out some distant resemblances with the Minoan language, which was also not an Indo-European one.

I don't have the book (had borrowed it) but it's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans", available on bookstores and ebay.

:book2:
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[SIGNIFER,LEGIOVIICLAUDIA]

There is also a theory that the Etruscans were linked with the Pelasgians or the Leleges,the first inhabitants of Greece.According to this theory some of them emigrated to Italy,10 or more generations before the Trojan War.
It is also recorded by Dionysius of Alicarnassus that Pelasgians from Arcadia(Peloponese) emigrated also to Italy.
The language of the Etruscans and the Pelasgians is not known.Maybe it was the same language.

[Rosacrux redux]

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Their language wasn't Indo-European. JP Mallory points out some distant resemblances with the Minoan language, which was also not an Indo-European one.

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[sarcasm on]
If Mr. Mallory has deciphered the Minoan language, and can positively say "it was not an Indo-European one", then he should come out of the closet and say the scientific community, everybody is anticipating the miracle of Linear A deciphering ~:rolleyes:
[sarcasm off]

Not directed to you, neighbou (the sarcasm) but to dear Mr. Mallory and all the IE-ists who are pointing out that Minoan language was not IE when they don't know anything about the Minoan language besides a number of surviving toponyms and a couple others words of the Greek language they picked as "Minoan".

One should remember that before 1952 the Mycenean were also considered a "non-IE" culture and their language a "pre-Greek" language, which would put the first "Greeks" in the 11th century BC (Dorian "invasion" ~;p ). Mr. Mallory's colleagues talked about the non-Greek Myceneans and their non-Greek tongue just the way Mr. Mallory speaks about Minoan.

When the Linear B was deciphered, we found out that the Mycenean spoke Greek and that pushed the whole IE designation for "Greek" a whole milenia back (seeing as the Greek alphabet in it's classical form appeared in the 8th century, and the earliest Linear B scripts date from the 17th century BC).

On the subject of the Etruscans, now. Their language has two connections. The one is the Lemnian inscriptions and the other the Central-European (the names escapes me now...) language connection. The Lemnian langauge is an extremely vague connection - we have only ONE sample of that language and connecting anything to it needs not only heaps of imagination, but a leap of faith of enormous magnitude. In linguistics, ONE sample (that could very well be imported) does not constitute a solid basis to apply a language pattern to a culture, lest alone to start finding connections here and there. Yet, that is precisely what some linguists are doing today. I am really puzzled....

The central european connection seems much more solid, but still the data is very incomplete and we can't draw any conclusions. Etruscan language resembles to some extent the Latin in many points, but the two are extremely different as well. The similarities can be traced in their joint existence in the Italian peninsula. It shares many things with Greek as well, but that too can be attributed to their early contact with the Greeks.

Although, if we talk about an Aegean connection and since it is now proved that Greek speakers lived in the Aegean area (maybe even both coasts and definitely the islands) from the mid 3rd millenia at least, things become even more confusing. The Pelasgian connection doesn't hold any water, as those are just another one of the forefathers of the Greeks - all ancient Greek writers state so and I am very puzzled as to why IE linguists choose conveniently to ignore all ancient sources.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Rosa, I have nothing to defend for JP Mallory but I suggest reading the book before ranting about it anyway. The guy is one of the handful authors I've read that pays maximum attention to being "scientific" and retreating from baseless claims.

I understand that making Minoans Greek is a matter of national pride. Don't worry, it's no different here. Even though everybody knows that Scythians are an Iranian folk, people are writing books over here stating that they were the first Turks. In the early years of republic Sumerians were taught at schools as being Turk. However, all that stuff is something else and we should be talking about pure facts at this board.

That all said, being no expert, I have no claim about Minoand or Etruscan being of one stock or another. I'm merely transmitting an info from a source, which is credible in its area and methodology.
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[Rosacrux redux]

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Rosa, I have nothing to defend for JP Mallory but I suggest reading the book before ranting about it anyway. The guy is one of the handful authors I've read that pays maximum attention to being "scientific" and retreating from baseless claims.

I've read the book and I've ranted about it in a dozen fora :charge: He starts from a very wrong premise - that the IE theory is correct, when in reality it has more holes than substance and is in dire need of a vast revamp - and goes the same erroneous way of all IEists: he tries to apply a linguistic construct in an effort to describe past events. Linguistics is not archeology, the former should just aid the latter, not vice versa - as things are now.


I understand that making Minoans Greek is a matter of national pride. Don't worry, it's no different here. Even though everybody knows that Scythians are an Iranian folk, people are writing books over here stating that they were the first Turks. In the early years of republic Sumerians were taught at schools as being Turk. However, all that stuff is something else and we should be talking about pure facts at this board.

I find it of rather bad taste to compare absurdities like the Turko-Sumerian (or Turko-Etruscan, for that matter) connection, with the Minoan and Greek connection. After all, Mycenean and Minoan coexisted for 5 centuries at least on the island of Crete, while the time the Sumerians created the first "empire" of the world, precedes the appearance of the Turks by 3500 years.

Besides I am not trying to prove that Minoans are Greek and certainly this has absolutely nothing to do with national pride. It has everything to do with the Mycenean fiasco (for more than 100 years IEists stood adamantly by their assertion that the Mycenean were pre-Greeks and their language non-IE, and only in 1952 it was proved that Mycenean was a Greek tongue) and with the invalidity of the whole IE construct. I sound somewhat polemic :knight: and I apologize for that :bow: but it gets me all worked up when Mallory or anyone else does the same mistake with the Minoan tongue, that they did with the Mycenean. At least, they should wait until someone deciphers the bloody Linear A and then draw conclusions - not that they'd loose sleep over it, they'd just push the Greek history another millenia back and still attribute everything to the imaginary Kurgans and their mighty horses and weapons of IRon ~:rolleyes:


That all said, being no expert, I have no claim about Minoand or Etruscan being of one stock or another. I'm merely transmitting an info from a source, which is credible in its area and methodology.
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Frankly, I believe the whole Aegean basin cultures come from the same stock. Some outside elements came in here and there and caused a gradual change. I strongly favor the early Neolithic continuity theory. The Etruscans are one of those nice little mysteries and, frankly, though they are not the missing Trojans. The latter most probably spoke a Luwian tongue (if we are to believe the Hittites and I think we should - those people were notorious for their record keeping, damn bureaucrats) and Etruscan (for what we know, since we can read their inscriptions - they write in the Greek alphabet - but we don't know what they say) is not Luwian. Neither (appears to be - as I said, one single sample is too little to make a full construct about a tongue) the Lemnian tongue, despite Lemnos being to such a proximity to Troy.

Ah, there is another connection of the Etruscan we haven't mentioned by now: the Dalmatian "Veneti" (not to be confused with the - most probably Slavic - "Veneti" or "Venedi" Vegetius describes many centuries after the time we are talking about). Their tongue is not deciphered yet either, but they too write in a Greek alphabet and the structure seems similar to that of the Etruscan. The first traces of those Veneti are in the Dalmatic coast and later they moved north-northwest and settled in the area that later took their name (Venezia). They are not Illyrian, at least according to most linguists and archeologists. Some suggest they are Phrygian, but the same people claim they are proto-Slavs (the Veneti) so one should take their suggestions with a pint of salt and then some more.~D

[conon394]

I worth pointing that aside from the language oddity there is not any particular signs of a migration in the Etruscan areas of Italy (that is no sudden changes in material record). Not conclusive, but it looks like the Etruscans likely just developed out of the preceding Villanovan culture.

[Rosacrux redux]

I worth pointing that aside from the language oddity there is not any particular signs of a migration in the Etruscan areas of Italy (that is no sudden changes in material record). Not conclusive, but it looks like the Etruscans likely just developed out of the preceding Villanovan culture.

Yes, that is a rather strong chance. At least from 1500 BC on there seems to be an extremely strong case for cultural continuity in Etruria. That is why I am saying that there is a very, very likely cultural continuity in Europe from the early neolithic and on.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Rosa,

I've read the book...
I rest my case then.

:medievalcheers:
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[ICantSpellDawg]

Although I disagree with rosa consistently regarding philosophy and truth, his knowledge and passion for history is a source of inspiration. I have always been confused by the study of historical linguistics just as I am confused by modern psychology. It boggles the mind how some come up with speculations based on minor evidence and come to dogmatically defended conclusions in the face of reason.