DNA Boosts Herodotus’ Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy

NY Times ^ | April 3, 2007 | NICHOLAS WADE

[neverdem]

Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support a view held by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus — but unpopular among archaeologists — that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East.

Though Roman historians played down their debt to the Etruscans, Etruscan culture permeated Roman art, architecture and religion. The Etruscans were master metallurgists and skillful seafarers who for a time dominated much of the Mediterranean. They enjoyed unusually free social relations, much remarked on by ancient historians of other cultures.

“Sharing wives is an established Etruscan custom,” wrote the Greek historian Theopompos of Chios in the fourth century B.C. “Etruscan women take particular care of their bodies and exercise often. It is not a disgrace for them to be seen naked. Further, they dine not with their own husbands, but with any men who happen to be present.”

He added that Etruscan women “are also expert drinkers and are very good looking.”

Etruscan culture was very advanced and very different from other Italian cultures of the time. But most archaeologists have seen a thorough continuity between a local Italian culture known as the Villanovan that emerged around 900 B.C. and the Etruscan culture, which began in 800 B.C.

“The overwhelming proportion of archaeologists would regard the evidence for eastern origins of the Etruscans as negligible,” said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts Center for Etruscan Studies.

Because Italians take pride in the Roman empire and the Etruscan state that preceded it, asserting a foreign origin for the Etruscans has long been politically controversial in Italy. Massimo Pallottino, the dean of...

[SunkenCiv]

the Etruscans, like most Ancient sailors, would probably have followed the coastlines wherever possible, which would have made the journy even longer.

Had they, it's a sure bet that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes would have also, because there was no technological change in the interim. The back-and-forth to the Tyrhennian coast (and Rome, eventually) involved use of the Straits of Messina because it was shorter; coastal sailing wasn't generally preferred, although there's a longstanding idea that it was, despite all the surviving ancient texts to the contrary. Sicily wasn't picked because it was already occupied by the local population. Even in Mycenaean times the Greeks had some kind of trading or colonial presence in Sicily, and of course later the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

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-inthos place names, from, hmm, Settegast?

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[SunkenCiv]

Au contraire. Herodotus discusses the Nile flood, giving the three tales he heard of it, including the correct one -- which he thinks is the least likely -- then proposes a howler of his own to explain it. He's shown that the real reason was known in his time, and preserves it, despite the fact that he doesn't believe it himself. He really is the Father of History.

The Histories
by Herodotus
tr by George Rawlinson
Book II -- Euterpe

I was particularly anxious to learn from them why the Nile, at the commencement of the summer solstice, begins to rise, and continues to increase for a hundred days -- and why, as soon as that number is past, it forthwith retires and contracts its stream, continuing low during the whole of the winter until the summer solstice comes round again... Some of the Greeks, however, wishing to get a reputation for cleverness, have offered explanations of the phenomena of the river, for which they have accounted in three different ways... One pretends that the Etesian winds cause the rise of the river by preventing the Nile-water from running off into the sea... The second opinion is even more unscientific... that the Nile acts so strangely, because it flows from the ocean, and that the ocean flows all round the earth. The third explanation, which is very much more plausible than either of the others, is positively the furthest from the truth... that the inundation of the Nile is caused by the melting of snows. Now, as the Nile flows out of Libya, through Ethiopia, into Egypt, how is it possible that it can be formed of melted snow, running, as it does, from the hottest regions of the world into cooler countries? ...I will therefore proceed to explain what I think to be the reason of the Nile's swelling in the summer time. During the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible words; for it stands to reason that the country to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that there the streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most.

[ZULU]

Then the Anglo-Saxons would have to have sailed down the coast to opposite Dover I guess where could visiually see Britain and then across initally.

I did read a book that indicated the Romans may have settled the Anglo-Saxons along the east coast of Britain as foederati to help protect it against attacks by other Anglo-Saxons. Later, after the Roman legions were withdrawn the Saxons turned on the native Britons.

But then there is that story about Port and Hengist and Horsa. Interesting stuff.

The Vikings had no problem crossing open waters not much later than the Anglo-Saxons, but their skills and ships were probably superior.

Check this out:

http://www.kami.demon.co.uk/gesithas/index.html

You have to download the Media player to hear the Angl-Saxon speech. It sounds Germanic and looks it also.

[wildbill]

Yeah, but they had to come from somewhere and be somebody.

What’s a mere couple of hundred years in three thousand among feuding historians and archeologists.

[ken21]

interesting.

[Vicomte13]

Sure, we have to tighten up Herodotus. But what would we know about great swathes of ancient history and practice but for Herodotus?

[RightWhale]

If Herodotus were as Algore wooden-dull a writer as Aristotle we still wouldn’t have a clue what went on. He was a fine storyteller even though not a poet. Anyway I assume he was not a poet since he was merely relating tales he had picked up in his barhopping travels.

[SuziQ]

Heroditus was a collector of myths and folktales. Entertaining, but not history.

In the absence of written history, sometimes myth, legend and folktales carry some of the truth of things. Besides, we see, even in recent times, how 'history' can be written to push an agenda or point of view.

[RightWhale]

Not one in ten has any idea what history is about. Vico has a handle on the purpose of myth. ‘New Science’ is fascinating, especially as he is a philologist and likes to trace origins of words just as well as do Hegel and Heidegger.

[Sam Ketcham]

Thank the gods, I thought I was blind.

[SunkenCiv]

They were, they just weren’t that long ago, or particularly mysterious. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

The western provinces of Rome were getting flooded with immigrants (no parallel with the present, unless one counts what’s going on in eastern Siberian Russia), and the most workable approach seems to have been to hire one against the other. The Romans had used bribery (for want of a better word) to keep the area east of the Rhine and n of the Danube (n of Dacia, while that was held) from causing trouble in the held areas.

There just wasn’t any way to prevent the egress from Central Asia when the Roman cooling period kicked in, and there were a series of (possibly weather related) plagues and famines on the Roman western provinces, possibly other than Britain. British Roman authority went independent a few times, even producing at least one would-be emperor. During the period of deterioration prior to Diocletian (one of the better emperors, other than his religious persecutions) Roman forces were reduced in Britain a few times, to fight either a border-crossing invasion, or to fight other Roman armies.

While Rome did move people around (the Sarmatians were great cavalry; after their defeat, which took a while, they were turned into auxiliaries and moved far away from their findspot, mostly to Britain), Roman Britain was invaded and nothing much could be done. Knowledge of Rome and its nice quiet settled provinces must have been pretty widespread. Barbarian invaders seemed to know exactly where to head to get to the richest pickings.

Regarding the ships, anything that floats will work, but the navigation tools hadn’t improved even in the time of the Vikings.

[SunkenCiv]

uh, one of *those* topics, it just sorta came up...

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[Ptarmigan]

Etruscan language is a language isolate like Ainu, Basque, and Sumerian. That Etruscan face looks like a mix of Caucasian and Mongoloid.

[Berosus]

Be sure to set your time machine so that it puts you in Fiesole, a town next to Florence. The Etruscans founded Fiesole, and I have been told that their descendants are still very attractive.

[Berosus]

wondering if Theopompos had his "4th Century BC Beer Goggles" on?

I don't know about Theopompos, but Pytheas did, and he lived around the same time. Ever hear about his exploration of northern Europe? When he sailed along the coast of Great Britain, Pytheas dropped anchor every time he saw a new tribe, and went ashore to meet them. Afterwards he reported that his two most important discoveries were the beverages from there: beer and mead. You know what you would call it if went to Britain and made a trip like that today? A pub crawl!

[SunkenCiv]

Tuscany’s Etruscan Claim Knocked
ANSA | 5-16-2006
Posted on 05/16/2006 11:30:01 AM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1633215/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[kabumpo]

One of the saddest things about the dark age we live in is the degree to which we are divorced from the extremely sophisticated and advanced knowledge of the ancients - and their history - because the modern world is too stupid to understand the wealth of information from that time, which is disparaged and diminished by calling it “myth”.

[SunkenCiv]