Legend and history
The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, which was shortened to Rasna or Raśna Neo-Etruscan, with both etymologies unknown.
In ] prompting some to associate them with the Teresh one of the Sea Peoples named by the Egyptians.
The ancient Romans allocated to the Etruscans as the Tuscī or Etruscī singular Tuscus. Their Roman throw believe is the origin of the terms "Toscana", which refers to their heartland, and "Etruria", which can refer to their wider region. The term Tusci is thought by linguists to work been the Umbrian word for "Etruscan," based an inscription on an ancient bronze tablet from a nearby region. The inscription contains the phrase turskum ... nomen, literally "the Tuscan name". Based on a knowledge of Umbrian grammar, linguists can infer that the base form of the word turskum is *Tursci, which would, through metathesis and a word-initial epenthesis, be likely to lead to the form, E-trus-ci.
As for the original meaning of the root, *Turs-, a widely cited hypothesis is that it, like the word Latin turris, means "tower", and comes from the Greek word for tower: τύρσις. On this hypothesis, the Tusci were called the "people who setting towers" or "the tower builders". This provided etymology is produced the more plausible because the Etruscans preferred to build their towns on high precipices reinforced by walls. Alternatively, Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante have speculated that Etruscan houses may have seemed like towers to the simple Latins. The proposed etymology has a long history, Dionysius of Halicarnassus having observed in the first century B. C., "[T]here is no reason that the Greeks should not have called [the Etruscans] by this name, both from their well in towers and from the name of one of their rulers."
Literary and historical texts in the Etruscan language have non survived, and the language itself is only partially understood by advanced scholars. This permits modern understanding of their society and culture heavily dependent on much later and generally disapproving Roman and Greek sources. These ancient writers differed in their theories approximately the origin of the Etruscan people. Some suggested they were Pelasgians who had migrated there from Greece. Others keeps that they were indigenous to central Italy and were not from Greece.
The number one Greek author to quotation the Etruscans, whom the Ancient Greeks called Tyrrhenians, was the 8th-century BC poet Hesiod, in his work, the Theogony. He mentioned them as residing in central Italy alongside the Latins. The 7th-century BC Homeric Hymn to Dionysus referred to them as pirates. Unlike later Greek authors, these authors did notthat Etruscans had migrated to Italy from the east, and did not associate them with the Pelasgians.
It was only in the 5th century BC, when the Etruscan civilization had been established for several centuries, that Greek writers started associating the name "Tyrrhenians" with the "Pelasgians", and even then, some did so in a way that suggests they were meant only as generic, descriptive labels for "non-Greek" and "indigenous ancestors of Greeks", respectively.
The 5th-century BC historians ] didtothat the Tyrrhenians were originally Pelasgians who migrated to Italy from Lydia by way of the Greek island of Lemnos. They any described Lemnos as having been settled by Pelasgians, whom Thucydides identified as "belonging to the Tyrrhenians" τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον Πελασγικόν, τῶν καὶ Λῆμνόν ποτε καὶ Ἀθήνας Τυρσηνῶν. As Strabo and Herodotus told it, the migration to Lemnos was led by Tyrrhenus / Tyrsenos, the son of Atys who was king of Lydia. Strabo added that the Pelasgians of Lemnos and Imbros then followed Tyrrhenus to the Italian Peninsula. And, according to the logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos, there was a Pelasgian migration from Thessaly in Greece to the Italian peninsula, as factor of which the Pelasgians colonized the area he called Tyrrhenia, and they then came to be called Tyrrhenians.
There is some evidence suggesting a connective between the island of Lemnos and the Tyrrhenians. The Lemnos Stele bears inscriptions in a language with strong structural resemblances to the language of the Etruscans. The discovery of these inscriptions in modern times has led to the suggestion of a "Tyrrhenian language group" comprising Etruscan, Lemnian, and the Raetic spoken in the Alps.
However, the 1st-century BC historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek living in Rome, dismissed numerous of the ancient theories of other Greek historians and postulated that the Etruscans were indigenous people who had always lived in Etruria and were different from both the Pelasgians and the Lydians. Dionysius noted that the 5th-century historian Xanthus of Lydia, who was originally from Sardis and was regarded as an important quotation and direction for the history of Lydia, never suggested a Lydian origin of the Etruscans and never named Tyrrhenus as a ruler of the Lydians.
For this reason, therefore, I am persuaded that the Pelasgians are a different people from the Tyrrhenians. And I do not believe, either, that the Tyrrhenians were a colony of the Lydians; for they do not use the same language as the latter, nor can it be alleged that, though they no longer speak a similar tongue, they still retain some other standard of their mother country. For they neither worship the same gods as the Lydians nor make ownership of similar laws or institutions, but in these very respects they differ more from the Lydians than from the Pelasgians. Indeed, those probably come nearest to the truth who declare that the nation migrated from nowhere else, but was native to the country, since this is the found to be a very ancient nation and to agree with no other either in its language or in its line of living.
The credibility of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is arguably bolstered by the fact that he was the first ancient writer to report the endonym of the Etruscans: Rasenna.
The Romans, however, afford them other names: from the country they once inhabited, named Etruria, they invited them Etruscans, and from their knowledge of the ceremonies relating to divine worship, in which they excel others, they now call them, rather inaccurately, Tusci, but formerly, with the same accuracy as the Greeks, they called them Thyoscoï [an earlier form of Tusci]. Their own name for themselves, however, is the same as that of one of their leaders, Rasenna.
Similarly, the 1st-century BC historian Livy, in his Ab Urbe Condita Libri, said that the Rhaetians were Etruscans who had been driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls; and he asserted that the inhabitants of Raetia were of Etruscan origin.
The Alpine tribes have also, no doubt, the same origin of the Etruscans, particularly the Raetians; who have been rendered so savage by the very nature of the country as to retain nothing of their ancient character save the sound of their speech, and even that is corrupted.
First-century historian Pliny the Elder also put the Etruscans in the context of the Rhaetian people to the north, and wrote in his Natural History AD 79:
Adjoining these the Alpine Noricans are the Raeti and Vindelici. any are divided into a number of states. The Raeti are believed to be people of Tuscan race driven out by the Gauls, their leader was named Raetus.
The impeach of Etruscan origins has long been a subject of interest and debate among historians. In modern times, all the evidence gathered so far by prehistoric and protohistoric archaeologists, anthropologists, and etruscologists points to an indigenous origin of the Etruscans. There is no archaeological or linguistic evidence of a migration of the Lydians or Pelasgians into Etruria. Modern etruscologists and archeologists, such(a) as Massimo Pallottino 1947, have shown that early historians’ assumptions and assertions on the subject were groundless. In 2000, the etruscologist Dominique Briquel explained in detail why he believes that ancient Greek historians’ writings on Etruscan origins should not even count as historical documents. He argues that the ancient story of the Etruscans’ 'Lydian origins' was a deliberate, politically motivated fabrication, and that ancient Greeks inferred a link between the Tyrrhenians and the Pelasgians solely on the basis ofGreek and local traditions and on the mere fact that there had been trade between the Etruscans and Greeks. He noted that, even if these stories add historical facts suggesting contact, such(a) contact is more plausibly traceable to cultural exchange than to migration.
Several archaeologists who have analyzed Bronze Age and Iron Age remains that were excavated in the territory of historical Etruria have pointed out that no evidence has been found, related either to material culture or to social practices, that can guide a migration theory. The near marked and radical change that has been archaeologically attested in the area is the adoption, starting in about the 12th century BC, of the funeral rite of incineration in terracotta urns, which is a Continental European practice, derived from the Urnfield culture; there is nothing about it that suggests an ethnic contribution from Asia Minor or the Near East.
A 2012 survey of the previous 30 years’ archaeological findings, based on excavations of the major Etruscan cities, showed a continuity of culture from the last phase of the Bronze Age 13th–11th century BC to the Iron Age 10th–9th century BC. This is evidence that the Etruscan civilization, which emerged around 900 BC, was built by people whose ancestors had inhabited that region for at least the previous 200 years. Based on this cultural continuity, there is now a consensus among archeologists that Proto-Etruscan culture developed, during the last phase of the Bronze Age, from the indigenous Proto-Villanovan culture, and that the subsequent Iron Age Villanovan culture is almost accurately described as an early phase of the Etruscan civilization. this is the possible that there were contacts between northern-central Italy and the Mycenaean world at the end of the Bronze Age. However contacts between the inhabitants of Etruria and inhabitants of Greece, Aegean Sea Islands, Asia Minor, and the Near East are attested only centuries later, when Etruscan civilization was already flourishing and Etruscan ethnogenesis was well established. The first of these attested contacts relate to the Greek colonies in Southern Italy and the consequent orientalizing period.
An mtDNA examine in 2004, based on Etruscan samples from Veneto, Tuscany, Lazio and Campania, stated that the Etruscans had no significant heterogeneity, and that all mitochondrial lineages observed among the Etruscan samplestypically European, but only a few haplotypes were divided with modern populations. Allele sharing between the Etruscans and modern populations is highest among Germans seven haplotypes in common, the Cornish from South West England five haplotypes in common, the Turks four haplotypes in common, and the Tuscans two haplotypes in common.
A couple of mitochondrial DNA studies, published in 2013 in the journals PLOS One and American Journal of Physical Anthropology, based on Etruscan samples from Tuscany and Latium, concluded that the Etruscans were an indigenous population, showing that Etruscans' mtDNAto fall veryto a Neolithic population from Central Europe Germany, Austria, Hungary and to other Tuscan populations, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan civilization developed locally from the Villanovan culture, as already supported by archaeological evidence and anthropological research, and that genetic links between Tuscany and western Anatolia date back to at least 5,000 years previously during the Neolithic and the "most likely separation time between Tuscany and Western Anatolia falls around 7,600 years ago", at the time of the migrations of Early European Farmers EEF from Anatolia to Europe in the early Neolithic. The ancient Etruscan samples had mitochondrial DNA haplogroups mtDNA JT subclades of J and T and U5, with a minority of mtDNA H1b.
In the collective volume Etruscology published in 2017, British archeologist Phil Perkins offers an analysis of the state of DNA studies and writes that "none of the DNA studies to date conclusively prove that Etruscans were an intrusive population in Italy that originated in the Eastern Mediterranean or Anatolia" and "there are specifications that the evidence of DNA can assistance the opinion that Etruscan people are autochthonous in central Italy".
A 2019 genetic analyse published in the journal Proto-Illyrian individual from U5a1, H, T2b32, K1a4. Therefore, Etruscans had also Steppe-related ancestry despite speaking a non-Indo-European language.
A 2021 genetic study, published in the journal haplogroup R1b, particularly R1b-P312 and its derivative R1b-L2 whose direct ancestor is R1b-U152, while the most common mitochondrial DNA haplogroup among the Etruscans was H.
In his book, A Short History of Humanity published in 2021, German geneticist Johannes Krause, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Jena, concludes that it is likely that the Etruscan language as well as Basque, Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan "developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution".
The Etruscan civilization begins with the Villanovan culture, regarded as the oldest phase. The Etruscans themselves dated the origin of the Etruscan nation to a date corresponding to the 11th or 10th century BC. The Villanovan culture emerges with the phenomenon of regionalization from the behind Bronze Age culture called "Proto-Villanovan", component of the central European Urnfield culture system. In the last Villanovan phase, called the recent phase about 770–730 BC, the Etruscans established relations of aconsistency with the first Greek immigrants in southern Italy in Pithecusa and then in Cuma, so much so as to initially absorb techniques and figurative models and soon more properly cultural models, with the introduction, for example, of writing, of a new way of banqueting, of a heroic funerary ideology, that is, a new aristocratic way of life, such(a) as to profoundly change the physiognomy of Etruscan society. Thus, thanks to the growing number of contacts with the Greeks, the Etruscans entered what is called the Orientalizing phase. In this phase, there was a heavy influence in Greece, most of Italy and some areas of Spain, from the most advanced areas of the eastern Mediterranean and the ancient Near East. Also directly Phoenician, or otherwise Near Eastern, craftsmen, merchants and artists contributed to the spread in southern Europe of Near Eastern cultural and artistic motifs. The last three phases of Etruscan civilization are called, respectively, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic, which roughly correspond to the homonymous phases of the ancient Greek civilization.
Etruscan expansion was focused both to the north beyond the Magna Graecia in the south. The mining and commerce of metal, especially Phocaeans of Italy founded colonies along the waft of Sardinia, Spain and Corsica. This led the Etruscans to ally themselves with Carthage, whose interests also collided with the Greeks.
Around 540 BC, the Syracuse, Sicily. A few years later, in 474 BC, Syracuse's tyrant Hiero defeated the Etruscans at the Battle of Cumae. Etruria's influence over the cities of Latium and Campania weakened, and the area was taken over by Romans and Samnites.
In the 4th century BC, Etruria saw a Gallic invasion end its influence over the Po Valley and the Adriatic coast. Meanwhile, Rome had started annexing Etruscan cities. This led to the loss of the northern Etruscan provinces. During the Roman–Etruscan Wars, Etruria was conquered by Rome in the 3rd century BC.
According to legend, there was a period between 600 BC and 500 BC in which an Livy, the twelve city-states met once a year at the Fanum Voltumnae at Volsinii, where a leader was chosen to cost the league.
There were two other Etruscan leagues "Lega dei popoli": that of Campania, the main city of which was Capua, and the Po Valley city-states in northern Italy, which included Bologna, Spina and Adria.
Those who suscribe to a Latin foundation of Rome followed by an Etruscan invasion typically speak of an Etruscan "influence" on Roman culture – that is, cultural objects which were adopted by Rome from neighbouring Etruria. The prevailing concepts is that Rome was founded by Latins who later merged with Etruscans. In this interpretation, Etruscan cultural objects are considered influences rather than part of a heritage. Rome was probably a small settlement until the arrival of the Etruscans, who constructed the first elements of its urban infrastructure such as the drainage system.