User:Est. 2021/sandbox/Etruscan

Timeline

 * Únětice culture (c. 2300–1600 BC)
 * Nordic Bronze Age (c. 2000/1750–500 BC)
 * Tumulus culture (c. 1600–1200 BC)
 * Urnfield culture (c. 1300–750 BC)
 * Proto-Villanovan culture (c. 1200–901 BC)
 * Villanovan culture (c. 900–700 BC)
 * Etruscan civilization

Archeologic evidence

 * The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900 BC: this is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture, considered to be the earliest phase of,    which itself  the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in the same region, part of.


 * Helmut Rix's classification of the Etruscan language in the Tyrsenian language family reflects the ambiguity of the stories about their origins..


 * 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 (12th–10th century BC) to the Iron Age (9th–8th century BC). This is evidence that as has also been .  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 most accurately described as an early phase of the Etruscan civilization.


 * Similarly, the Meldorf inscription of 50 may qualify as "proto-runic" use of the Latin alphabet by Germanic speakers. The Raetic "alphabet of Bolzano" in particular seems to fit the letter shapes well. Rhaetic is largely accepted as being closely related to Etruscan. Perhaps an "eclectic" approach can yield the best results for the explanation of the origin of the runes: most shapes of the letters can be accounted for when deriving them from several distinct North Italic writing systems: The p rune has a parallel in the Camunic alphabet, while it has been argued that d derives from the shape of the letter san (= ś) in Lepontic where it seems to represent the sound /d/.

Writing
The following table shows the ancient Italic scripts that are presumed to be related to the Etruscan alphabet. Symbols that are assumed to be correspondent are placed on the same column. Many symbols occur with two or more variant forms in the same script; only one variant is shown here. The notations [←] and [→] indicate that the shapes shown were used when writing right-to-left and left-to-right, respectively.

'''Warning: For the languages marked [?] the appearance of the "Letters" in the table is whatever one's browser's Unicode font shows for the corresponding code points in the Old Italic Unicode block. The same code point represents different symbol shapes in different languages; therefore, to display those glyph images properly one needs to use a Unicode font specific to that language.'''



Missing from the above table:
 * Venetic
 * Faliscan
 * Umbrian
 * North Picene
 * Rhaetic (Raetic)
 * Camunic

Wording

 * Note
 * › Voltumna
 * ð = d+t = θ (as in Pyrgi Tablets)


 * Bibliography

Genetic evidence
There have been a number of genetic studies of Etruscans and modern Tuscans compared with other populations, some of which indicate the local, European origin of Etruscans and others supportive of an allochthonous origin. In general, the direct testing of ancient Etruscan DNA has supported a deep, local origin, while the testing of modern samples as a proxy for Etruscans is rather inconclusive and inconsistent.

2013 (2004, 2007)

 * An mtDNA study published in 2013 concluded that the and to other Tuscan populations.

The very large mtDNA study from 2013 extracted and typed the hypervariable region of mitochondrial DNA of 14 individuals buried in two Etruscan necropoleis, analyzing them along with previously analyzed Etruscan mtDNA, other ancient European mtDNA, modern and Medieval samples from Tuscany, and 4,910 modern individuals from the Mediterranean basin. The ancient (30 Etruscans, 27 Medieval Tuscans) and modern DNA sequences (370 Tuscans) were subjected to several million computer simulation runs, showing that the Etruscans can be considered ancestral to Medieval and, especially in the subpopulations from Casentino and Volterra, of modern Tuscans; modern populations from Murlo and Florence, by contrast, were shown not to continue the Medieval population. By further considering two Anatolian samples (35 and 123 individuals), it was estimated that the genetic links between Tuscany and Anatolia date back to at least 5,000 years ago, and the "most likely separation time between Tuscany and Western Anatolia falls around 7,600 years ago", strongly suggesting that the Etruscan culture developed locally, and not as an immediate consequence of immigration from the Eastern Mediterranean shores. According to the study, ancient Etruscan mtDNA is closest among modern European populations and is not particularly close to Anatolian or other Eastern Mediterranean populations.

This result is largely in line with previous mtDNA results from 2004 (in a smaller study also based on ancient DNA), and contradictory to results from 2007 (based on modern DNA). The 2004 study was based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 80 bone samples, reduced to 28 bone samples in the analysis phase, taken from tombs dating from the seventh century to the third century BC from Veneto, Tuscany, Lazio and Campania. . In addition the Etruscan samples possibly revealed more genetic inheritance from the eastern and southern Mediterranean than modern Italian samples contain. The study was marred by concerns that mtDNA sequences from the archeological samples represented severely damaged or contaminated DNA; however, subsequent investigation showed that the samples passed the most stringent tests of DNA degradation available.

2018
A mtDNA study, published in 2018 in the journal American Journal of Physical Anthropology, compared both ancient and modern samples from Tuscany, from the Prehistory, Etruscan age, Roman age, Renaissance, and Present-day, and concluded that the Etruscans appear as a local population, intermediate between the prehistoric and the other samples, placing in the temporal network between the Eneolithic Age and the Roman Age.

2019

 * A 2019 genetic study by Stanford, published in the journal Science, which analyzed the autosomal DNA of 11 Iron Age samples from the areas around Rome, concluded that Etruscans (900-600 BC) and the Latins (900-200 BC) from Latium vetus were genetically similar, and Etruscans also had Steppe-related ancestry despite speaking a pre-Indo-European language. A 2021 genetic study by Max Planck Institute, Universities of Tübingen, Florence, and Harvard, published in the journal Science Advances, analyzed the autosomal DNA of 48 Iron Age individuals from Tuscany and Lazio and confirmed that the Etruscan individuals displayed the ancestral component Steppe in the same percentages as found in the previously analyzed Iron Age Latins, and that the, concluding that the Etruscans had a genetic profile similar to their Latin neighbors. Both Etruscans and Latins joined firmly the European cluster, 75% of the Etruscan male individuals were found to belong to haplogroup R1b, especially 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.

A 2019 genetic study published in the journal Science analyzed the remains of eleven Iron Age individuals from the areas around Rome, of which four were Etruscan individuals, one buried in Veio Grotta Gramiccia from the Villanovan period (900-800 BC) and three buried in La Mattonara Necropolis near Civitavecchia from the Orientalizing period (700-600 BC). The study concluded that Etruscans (900–600 BC) and the Latins (900–500 BC) from Latium vetus were genetically similar; genetic differences between the examined Etruscans and Latins were found to be insignificant. Their DNA was a mixture of two-thirds Copper Age ancestry (EEF + WHG; Etruscans ~66–72%, Latins ~62–75%) and one-third Steppe-related ancestry (Etruscans ~27–33%, Latins ~24–37%) (with the EEF component mainly deriving from Neolithic-era migrants to Europe from Anatolia and the WHG being local Western European hunter-gatherers, with both components, along with that from the steppe, being found in virtually all European populations). The only sample of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup J-M12 (J2b-L283), found in an individual dated 700-600 BC, and carried exactly the M314 derived allele also found in a Middle Bronze Age individual from Croatia (1631-1531 calBCE). While the four samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups U5a1, H, T2b32, K1a4. Therefore, Etruscans had also Steppe-related ancestry despite speaking a pre-Indo-European language.

2021
A 2021 study by the Max Planck Institute, the Universities of Tübingen, Florence, and Harvard, published in the journal Science Advances, analyzed the Y-chromosome, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA of 82 ancient samples from Etruria (Tuscany and Latium) and southern Italy (Basilicata) spanning from 800 BC to 1000 AD, including 48 Iron Age individuals. The study confirmed that in the samples of Etruscan individuals from Tuscany and Lazio was present the ancestral component Steppe in the same percentages found in the previously analyzed samples of Iron Age Latins, and added that, concluding that the Etruscans had a genetic profile similar to that of their early Iron Age Latin neighbors. Both Etruscans and Latins belonged firmly to the European cluster, 75% of the samples of Etruscan male individuals were found to belong to haplogroup R1b, especially R1b-P312 and its derivative R1b-L2 whose direct ancestor is R1b-U152. While regarding mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, the most prevalent was largely H, followed by J and T. Uniparental marker data and autosomal DNA data from samples of Iron Age Etruscan individuals suggest that Etruria received migrations rich of the ancestral Steppe component during the 2nd millennium BC, related to the spread of Indo-European languages, starting with the Bell Beaker culture, and that these migrations merged with populations of the oldest pre-Indo-European layer present since at least the Neolithic period, but it was the latter's language that survived, a situation similar to what happened in the Basque region of northern Spain. The study has also concluded that the samples analyzed show that the Etruscans kept their genetic profile unchanged for almost 1000 years, despite the sparse presence in Etruria of foreigners, and that a demographic change in Etruria occurred only from the Roman imperial period, in which there is the arrival in and intermixture into the local population of ancestral components from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Analysis of samples of individuals who lived in the Roman imperial period and those of the Medieval Age also suggest that the genetic landscape of present-day central Italy was formed largely around 1000 years ago after the Barbarian invasions, and that the arrival of the Germanic Lombards in Italy contributed to the formation of the gene pool of the modern population of Tuscany and northern Latium.

2007
An mtDNA study from 2007, by contrast, earlier suggested a Near Eastern origin. Achilli et al. (2007) found in a modern sample of 86 individuals from Murlo, a small town in southern Tuscany, an unusually high frequency (17.5%) of supposed Near Eastern mtDNA haplogroups, while other Tuscan populations do not show the same striking feature. Based on this result Achilli concluded that "their data support the scenario of a post-Neolithic genetic input from the Near East to the present-day population of Tuscany, a scenario in agreement with the Lydian origin of Etruscans". This research has been much criticized by archeologists, etruscologists and classicists. In the absence of any dating evidence, there is no direct link between this genetic input found in Murlo and the Etruscans. Furthermore, there is no evidence that these mtDNA haplogroups found in Murlo might be proof of an eastern origin of the Etruscans, as. All the mtDNA haplogroups found in the modern sample from Murlo and classified by Achilli et al. as of Near Eastern origin are actually widespread in modern samples from other areas of Italy and Europe with no link with the Etruscans.

2018
A recent Y-DNA study from 2018 on a modern sample of 113 individuals from Volterra, a town of Etruscan origin, Grugni at al. keeps all the possibilities open, and concludes that "the presence of J2a-M67* (2.7%) suggests contacts by sea with Anatolian people,, . In Italy Y-DNA J2a-M67*, not yet found in Etruscan samples, is more widespread on the Adriatic Sea coast between Marche and Abruzzo, and not in those where once lived the Etruscans, and in the study has its peak in the Ionian side of Calabria. In 2014, a late Bronze Age Kyjatice culture sample in Hungary was found to be J2a1-M67, , a J2a1a was found in a Middle Neolithic Sopot culture sample from Croatia, a J2a was found in a Late Neolithic Lengyel Culture sample from Hungary. In 2019, in a Stanford study published in Science, two ancient samples from the Neolithic settlement of Ripabianca di Monterado in the province of Ancona, in the Marche region of Italy, were found to be Y-DNA J-L26 and J-M304. In 2021, two more ancient samples from the Chalcolitich settlement of Grotta La Sassa, in the province of Latina in southern Lazio, were found to be Y-DNA J2a7-Z2397. Therefore, Y-DNA J2a-M67 is likely in Italy since the Neolithic and can't be the proof of recent contacts with Anatolia.

Recent
Recent studies on the population structure of modern-day Italians have shown that in Italy there is a north–south cline for Y-chromosome lineages and autosomal loci, with a clear differentiation of peninsular Italians from Sardinians, and that modern Tuscans are the population of central Italy closest genetically to the inhabitants of northern Italy. A 2019 study, based on autosomal DNA of 1616 individuals from all 20 Italian administrative regions, concludes that Tuscans join the northern Italian cluster, close to the inhabitants of Liguria and Emilia-Romagna.

In the collective volume Etruscology published in 2017, British archeologist Phil Perkins provides 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".

2021 theory
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".