Posted on 06/17/2007 4:55:52 PM PDT by blam
“There is always more truth to ancient legend and myth than most people give it credit for.”
I’ll say. For example, I have dated Medusa a number of times.
One of the other two links shows that.
I’m no historianologist but hasn’t Herotodos turned out to be right more than those who contradict him?
...but both civilizations were from pre-iron age Anatolia and so probably had contact.
Herodotus has been disliked by some down the centuries, and there are things in his book for some to criticize, but he gives four different ideas (three he heard about in Egypt, one that he made up) about the out-of-season flood phase of the Nile, and the correct one is in there; he tells us all that the circumnavigators of Africa saw the Sun to the north, even though he states he doesn’t believe this; he tells us that the Atlantic is connected to the Erythraean Sea, in which he includes the Gulf of Aqaba, Gulf of Suez, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean; and records plenty of other stuff which is true. Often he tells what he’s seen with his own eyes, and differentiates it from what he was told. And of course, he’s 2500 years closer than we are. :’)
Agreed.
The language of the Etruscan is a mystery to this day. Nobody knows what it is related to, like Ainu, Basque, and Sumerian.
Old news. Heard about this from my tour guide when I was 15.
Ping...
Interesting! I’d like to check out this study.
On the other side of Greek historians was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who was the first to suggest that the Etruscans were indigenous...mostly because (and not a bad reason either), they didn’t agree in language or customs with any people they were said to be related to in Anatolia.
Massimo Pallottino, the famed Etruscologist, has pointed out that whatever the origins of the Etruscan people, their civilization as we know it developed in Italy, and there I think he’s quite right.
Good point about the Etruscan vases with the Aeneas legend...it’s definitely a VERY old story in Italy.
Etruscan, on the other hand, was a non-Indo-European language, which had no surviving relatives in Asia Minor in the era of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, at least none that we know of. Its only close relative is the language which was spoken on Lemnos before the Greek conquest--how the Lemnian language was so similar to Etruscan is a difficult thing to explain for those who think Etruscan was indigenous to Italy. In Greek tradition the earlier inhabitants of Lemnos were "Pelasgians." Who the Pelasgians were is not clearly understood--there have been lots of theories, including that they were the same as the Philistines (who seem to have come from the Aegean before settling in historic Philistia).
Etruscan is not related to the other langauges of Italy. Usually when you have a situation like that (e.g. the case of Basque) it's because a language happened to survive in a mountainous or inaccessible area--but the Etruscan language is found in one of the most desirable areas of Italy, the kind of place an invading group might have conquered.
Italian scholars have tended to favor the theory that Etruscan was indigenous to Italy rather than brought in from the east.
Right. Etruscan may have a connection with Rhaetic in the Alps, but that’s not quite established, and the only sure connection is Lemnian, as you mention. I did a little amateur’s analysis on the Lemnian stele years ago, with Bonfante’s Etruscan grammar in hand.
There is really not that much difference at all between the two idioms...they look to me like two slightly different dialects. From what I could see, they didn’t look like languages that had been separated for thousands of years—which sort of puts a crimp in the idea that they represent a pre-Indo-European substrate. Impressionistically, I’d say that the separation between them looks to be only on the order of 500 years or so.
And your point about the languages retreating to the hills and inaccessible areas is certainly well-taken. That’s exactly what happened to Oscan, as the Samnites were deprived of the coasts by Greeks and later Romans.
If the Etruscan parent population had died out by the time of Dionysius, that would explain why he didn’t see any connection. I’m pretty sure Lemnos already lost their language several hundred years prior to his time.
Herodotus in 6.136-140 tells how Miltiades (later hero of the battle of Marathon) conquered Lemnos for Athens. His account implies that some of the Lemnians were forced to leave the island, but maybe not all of them.
Interesting! And whoever remained would have been progressively hellenized I guess.
Immigrants, huh? Are we going to see this term used everywhere now to try to desensitize us to it?
Can the migration patterns of civiliations from thousands of years ago fit today's definition of "immigrants?"
-PJ
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