[MUDDOG]

So did the Etruscans come the western Anatolia region, or did the Etruscans and the Lemnosians share an earlier origin from somewhere else?

[SunkenCiv]

The ancient sources have it that the Etruscans came from the Aegean, and given that their cultural and trade contacts were all with the eastern Med, and the DNA evidence points to the eastern Med, and there's this related language in inscription (both the examples shown, and fragments of the script from ostraca on the island), AND that there were non-Etruscan language precursors in Italy, the wonder is that there was any doubt about it. Not only doubt, but outright denial that it was true. :')

The Mycenaean Greeks planted some colonies in the western Med, it's likely (to me, anyway) that the Etruscans preceded them. The Etruscans were also on the mainland, to the north of Greece.

Unique book goes on display BBC Monday, 26 May, 2003 The world's oldest multiple-page book - in the lost Etruscan language - has gone on display in Bulgaria's National History Museum in Sofia. It contains six bound sheets of 24 carat gold, with illustrations of a horse-rider, a mermaid, a harp and soldiers. The small manuscript, which is more than two-and-a-half millennia old, was discovered 60 years ago in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the Strouma river in south-western Bulgaria... There are around 30 similar pages known in the world, Ms Penkova said, "but they are not linked together in a book".