Replies

Many, many thanks to all. This is without doubt the most replies ever sent in a topic I started. I guess there's a real need for Etruscan coverage, eh?

Prost1: The Trojans were Etruscans. The Etruscans were most likely Semites. imo...

RightWhale: That is radical. Has anyone else besides you ever put forth that hypothesis?

feinswinesuksass: Well, then Etruscans must be from Israel.

Cyclone Covey, if memory serves, claims that Linear A is Semitic. Barry Fell's view was that Linear A belongs in the Anatolian group of tongues, and showed a number of correspondences. My view is that Fell is correct, Covey isn't, and that the Etruscans were one part of a larger ethnic group which once used Linear A on Crete (and elsewhere), was seafaring, colonized around the Mediterranean prior to and during the Phoenician diaspora, and some other stuff.

Regarding feinswinesuksass' joke, it's delicious in context, because British Israelism (and variants) is related to something that happened during (if memory serves) the British Empire. A poetic work was written (possibly commissioned by the gov't) in which a Trojan named Brutus, like his countryman Aeneas, sailed away after the Fall of Troy, searching for a new home, and with his compatriots, found it in Britain.

martin_fierro: Etruscany.

You've cracked it! :')

Drammach: If I recall correctly, Etruscans also claim the earliest use of conrcrete/cement construction in Italy. Not sure if it was used earlier than that, but it was the Etruscans that introduced it to Roman architecture.

That could very well be, I'll see what I can find about it. They definitely taught the Romans a number of quintessentially Roman things, such as roadbuilding, tunnelling, and other civil engineering stuff, and of course, the very altered and modified "games".

neb52: Have you read "The Etruscan" by Werner Keller(1974). He theorized they were remnants of Lydia. I guess he wasn't to far off?

Uh-oh. I'm not sure that I don't have that book around here. This place will someday have a landslide of junk and bury me alive. Of course, apropos to your reply, I'll probably find the Werner book while waiting to be found. The view that the Etruscans came from the Aegean was current (heh) in classical times, and led to things like the Aeneid. Schliemann was correct about "prehistoric" pottery and such during his excavation of Hissarlik, and also figured that there must have been a Lydian level of occupation, which he felt free to ignore (and dig straight through). I'm not of the school that thinks Schliemann was Eichmann though.

NYer: Interesting. There are many small villages in southeastern Italy whose dialects retain certain Etruscan words and expressions. In the Province of Molise, for example, the capitol is Campobasso. The locals refer to it as 'Campo-ash' (sp?).

Yet another example.

In Italian, young boy = ragazzo. In dialect - 'oochitla' (sp?)
Young girl = ragazza. In dialect - 'achitla' (sp?)
Upstairs = sopra. In dialect - 'ingup' (sp?)
Downstairs = sotto. In dialect - 'bal' (sp?)

I've got nothing to add, just felt it bore repeating. Fell's work on Etruscan found (if one doesn't reject Fell out of hand) that the Petrarchian Sonnet actually was already a traditional form in classical times, in Etruria.

ValerieUSA: But did the Etruscans have red hair?

I can dream, can't I? Ooh, baby.

PoorMuttly: ".....unaspirated voiceless plosives and of aspirated voiceless plosives....."

Reminds me, I've not been to Taco Bell in years.

wildbill: "The second post about the Etruscans was much more informative and interesting to me than a explication of parts of speech such as glottal stops which are understandable only by linguistic professors."

Thanks, glad you liked it.

mikrofon: That looks very interesting, but unfortunately it's all Greek to me...

That reminds me, I speak every language but Greek, and...

FreedomFarmer: "Sippin' away again, in Etruscanitta-ville..."

[sigh] Jimmy should start a restaurant, maybe buffet-style.

tet68: Lipstick Lemnians are hot!

I Sappho so...

RightWhale: Livy pretty much had the Etruscans populating the whole of Italy when the future Romans arrived and linked up with the Latins. Of course, the past was kind of murky even by that time. The future Romans supposedly were some survivors of the Trojan fiasco.

Fascinating I think that the Romans wanted an origin story that was both borrowed from their notorious rivals and involved descent from people defeated by the Greeks. Seems like they had a masochistic streak in their collective psyche.