Languages survived for thousands of years before there was any writing system in use anywhere. Probably the last speakers of Etruscan were peasants in some out-of-the-way village. The extension of Roman citizenship to the Italian allies after the Social War (90-88 BC) is thought to have caused the demise of the various non-Latin languages of Italy (other than Greek).
Only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Varro, could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54), the author of a treatise in twenty volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà (now lost), who compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.3Source: Etruscan languageLivy and Cicero were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under the generic Latin title Etrusca Disciplina. The Libri Haruspicini dealt with divination from the entrails of the sacrificed animal, while the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, might have provided a key to Etruscan civilization: its wider scope embraced Etruscan standards of social and political life as well as ritual practices. According to the 4th century Latin writer Servius, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in the 4th century could have read Etruscan. The single extant Etruscan book, Liber Linteus, which was written on linen, survived only because it was used as mummy wrappings.