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THE ENIGMA OF ETRURIA
Observations
Critiques Sur L'Archeologie Dite Prehistorique'
FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION
(Paperback - 14 Dec 2010)
Robert D. Morritt
Availability
The external history of the Etruscans is limited to scattered
notices of Greek and Roman writers. and in inscriptions discovered on
arcophagi, cinerary urns, vases and iscellaneous items. found within tombs
At one point  the geographical boundaries of Etruria ( at
its greatest extent) was comprised of the greater part of Italy. The people
known to the Romans as Etruscans were not the original inhabitants of the
land, but a mixed race, composed partly of the earlier occupants, partly of a
people of foreign origin
Various theories suggested that
the Etruscans were a tribe from the Rhaetian Alps,
another
opinion stressed that the later
element in the Etruscan nation was from Lydia, yet composed not of natives,
but of Tyrrhene-Pelasgi who had settled on the coasts of Asia Minor; and that
the earlier lords of the land were the Rasena, from the mountains of Rhaetia,
who driving back the Umbrians, and uniting with the Tyrrheni on the
Tarquinian coast, formed the Etruscan race
Lepsius, declared that there
was no occupation of the land by any foreign race after its conquest by the
Pelasgi, but that the Umbrians, whom they had subdued, in time recovering
strength, rebelled with success, and that this reaction of the early
inhabitants against their conquerors produced what is known as the Etruscan
people.The Etruscans claimed for themselves a Lydian origin. Tacitus tells us
that in the time of Tiberius, deputies from Sardis recited before the Roman
senate a decree of the Etruscans, declaring their consanguinity, on the
ground of the early colonization of Etruria by the Lydians
There are connections with Indo-European languages,
particularly the Italic languages,
and also with more the non-Indo-European languages of western Asia , the
Caucasus, the Aegean, Italy, and the Alpine zone as well as with the relics
of the Mediterranean linguistic substrata revealed by place-names. This means
that Etruscan was not isolated; its roots were intertwined with other
recognizable linguistic formations within a geographic area extending from
western Asia to east-central Europe and the central Mediterranean.
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