Etruscan Engineering and Agricultural Achievements: The Ancient City of Spina

The Mysterious Etruscans ^ | Last modified on Tue, 17-Aug-2004 15:36:27 GMT | editors

[SunkenCiv]

Over the centuries the belief lingered on that here had been a great, wealthy, powerful commercial city that dominated the mouth of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic, a city of luxury and splendor, a kind of ancestor and predecessor of Venice, founded more than a thousand years later. Classical scholars also knew about Spina, for ancient literary sources indicated that there must once have existed a thriving maritime trading settlement of great economic importance, until the Celtic invasion of the Po valley destroyed it... The final key to its ultimate discovery came from aerial photography. Some The photographs taken for the purposes of land cultivation schemes solved the centuries-old puzzle. This bird's-eye view of the northeastern edge of the Valli di Comacchio showed something unusual. Underneath the white lines of the modern drainage channels of the reclaimed area appeared a ghostly network of dark lines and light rectangles. Alfieri realized at a glance that the spectral dark lines indicated vegetation growing taller on the site of ancient canals and thus revealed the layout of the buried city. Not only the precise topographical situation was clear; even before the soil was touched by a spade, the town plan could be studied. The Insulae, the blocks of the individual houses could be resolved in the aerial photograph. And thus was discovered the ancient city of Spina, but it was no longer on the Adriatic coast... Etruscan hydraulic experts contrived to do what seemed impossible, namely, to confine the wide river at Spina to its continually rising bed. They did this by means of the artificially constructed branches of the river and the canals.

[SunkenCiv]

Spina was located south of modern Venice, but the practice of building a town of canals in place of streets probably originated in Spina, or earlier. It was destroyed by those vanguards of civilization, the Gauls. ;')

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[SunkenCiv]

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[RightWhale]

The practice of building up pads and enhancing drainages seems like a natural thing to do. If you are in a flood plain it seem like the only way to build. The hugh, ancient agricultural plots in South America were built up. Right here the gov't has recommended people build on raised pads on the flood plain. Some don't want to go to the trouble of building up before building, but it is well worth while.

[SunkenCiv]

50 Ancient Tombs Uncovered (1400BC, Crete) ^
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	Posted by blam On News/Activism ^ 04/15/2003 10:36:32 AM PDT · 4 replies · 5+ views New York Times ^ | 4-15-2003 | John Noble Wilford Lost No More: An Etruscan Rebirth By JOHN NOBLE WILFORDNY Times, 4-15-2003 HILADELPHIA ó The Romans relished their founding myths. Aeneas, a fugitive from fallen Troy, anchored in the mouth of the Tiber River and there in the hills of Latium rekindled the flame of Trojan greatness. Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars and a sleeping beauty, were suckled by a she-wolf and grew up to establish the city destined for grandeur. In reality, though, the Romans owed more than they ever admitted to their accomplished predecessors and former enemies on the Italian peninsula, the Etruscans. They were known...

[NYer]

In case you missed it ... from Discovery.com

June 16, 2004 — A plain in Tuscany destined to become a dump has turned out to be an archaeologist's dream, revealing the biggest Etruscan road ever found.

Digging in Capannori, near Lucca, archaeologist Michelangelo Zecchini has uncovered startling evidence of an Etruscan "highway" which presumably linked Etruscan Pisa, on the Tyrrhenian coast, to the Adriatic port of Spina.

Huge Etruscan Road Brought to Light

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! There's an old FR thread on that, linked in the msg above. Also, related to this topic:

• From Hand-drag to Jumbo: A Millennium of Dredging

[SunkenCiv]

This may be what I remember, and have just scrambled some of the details, including which thread this post is in reply to (':

The Etruscans
by Michael Grant

Clusium's sixth-century King Lars Porsenna was regarded as the most powerful Etruscan of all time. His grandeur was illustrated by traditions of his enormous tomb beside the city. Varro, the Roman antiquarian of the first century BC, has left us what purports to be an account of the monument. He described it as a stone construction three hundred feet square, towerring above a fifty-foot-high pedestal containing a tangled labyrinth of chambers. On the pedestal, he added, stood five pyramids, four at the corners and one at the centre, each seventy-five feet broad at the base and a hundred and fifty feet high; they supported a bronze disk which formed the base of a conical cupola hung with bells fastened with chains. Around the cupola were five further pyramids, and these in their turn supported another platform above which four additional pyramids towered... Pliny... who quoted the passage, rightly dismissed much of its contents... Lars Porsenna was buried in a mighty tomb... although it still remains to be discovered. [pp 205-206]

this is the same ISBN/edition I have here, from over 20 years ago.

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[neb52]

The Etruscans by Werner Keller is another good source. He talks about how Roma was founded and gained much of their technology from the Etruscans. But only kept what they felt was needed and forgot the rest. I like going over today maps and looking for today cities that replaced or still carry a resemblance of the original names. Most of the Roman/Greek names in Africa and Middle East have been renamed by the Mohammedans.

[SunkenCiv]

A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian
by Carl Darling Buck
1904
introduction online

The grammar is called a Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, not of the Oscan-Umbrian dialects, for it does not pretend to treat systematically the minor dialects included under the name Oscan-Umbrian. Most of the characteristics of these dialects (so far as they are clear) are mentioned incidentally, mainly in the Introduction. But to discuss or even mention all the questions arising in the attempt to generalize from material consisting of only a few lines, would require an amount of space not justified by the results. Unless the material from these minor dialects is notably increased, our knowledge of the Oscan-Umbrian group will be almost coincident with what we know of its two principal dialects. And in that approximate sense a grammar of Oscan and Umbrian is also a grammar of Oscan-Umbrian.

[SunkenCiv]

Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

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[SunkenCiv]

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