Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

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Originally Posted by Angela

You're all missing the point here. The ancestors of the Albanians were the ancestors of the Etruscans, just like the Albanians are the true descendants of the Mycenaeans.

You cannot argue with such self-evident truths.

Or, if you don't like that, they must all have been Serbs.

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A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.

It depends on how well you know your opponent by evaluating the Posting History, so it’s “Implied” = suggested but not directly expressed; implicit :)

Well then I will state my opinion explicitly so that it isn't suggested for me.

I don't know who the Etruscans were nor do I claim to, what I shared were some rational enough points about the archaeology that made a case for Etruscans coming to Umbria, and not having been there.

There was a tradition among ancients that they did migrate there, and its obviously possible they were wrong and just spreading a myth, but many authors state variations of a migration, be they pelasgians, lydians, tyrrhenians, etc. Some variations consider pelasgians and tyrrhenians the same thing, some consider them different, some consider them lydians proper, but in common is a migration.

"The Pelasgians left Greece and came and settled in the Italian areas among the Aborigines. The Pelasgians were also called Tyrrheni [Etruscans] and the entire land was called Tyrrhenia, after one of their rulers, who was called Tyrrhenus."
Eusebius, Chronography, 102 - ca. 325 CE

"At an early period the Umbri were expelled from it by the Pelasgi; and these again by the Lydians, who from a king of theirs were named Tyrrheni, but afterwards, from the rites observed in their sacrifices, were called, in the Greek language, Tusci"
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 1-11, 3.8.1 - ca. 77 CE

"The Lydians, who had taken the name of Tyrrheni, having engaged in war against the Agyllaei, one of them, approaching the wall, inquired the name of the city; when one of the Thessalians from the wall, instead of answering the question, saluted him with χαῖρε"
Strabo, Geography, 5.2.3 - ca. 24 CE

"But if one must pronounce judging by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwelt in the city of Creston (Ancient Macedonia) above the Tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now called Dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called Thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the Pelasgians who settled at Plakia and Skylake in the region of the Hellespont, who before that had been settlers with the Athenians, and of the natives of the various other towns which are really Pelasgian, though they have lost the name,"
Herodotus, Histories, 1.57 - ca. 430 BCE

"There is also a small Chalcidian element; but the greater number are Tyrrheno-Pelasgians once settled in Lemnos and Athens, and Bisaltians, Crestonians, and Edonians; the towns being all small ones"
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 4.109 - ca. 395 BCE

"After Liguria are Pelasgians who settled here coming from Hellas, occupying the country in common with the Tyrrhenians"
Pseudo Scymnus or Pausanias of Damascus, Circuit of the Earth, 196 - ca. 100 BCE

"However, one may well marvel that, although the Crotoniats had a speech similar to that of the Placians, who lived near the Hellespont, since both were originally Pelasgians, it was not at all similar to that of the Tyrrhenians, their nearest neighbours"
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.29.1 - ca. 7 BCE



As you can see, many ancients either considered them the same or two different ethnos, and I don't know better than them as I am even further removed, but the motif of migration is pretty common.

And with the migration scenario, its still entirely possible they were non-IE speaking people not related to anybody.

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

Demetrios, thanks for this. Are Phoenician language loans frequent in Greek?

I need to ask you other things about the Greek world, too. I'll do it soon.

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Not really. There are a few words recorded but not many. If anything Phoenician is more heavily influenced by Greek (especially in later periods). There was also a book written by a Hebrew scholar, namely Joseph Yahuda, who published very extreme conclusions in relation to this question. His book was called "Hebrew is Greek", you can find it for free here, https://archive.org/details/Hebrew.is.Greek, although it is very long (686 pages) and very technical. He touched upon other Semitic languages as well, not just Hebrew, although again, his conclusions appear very extreme.

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Originally Posted by Johane Derite

Well then I will state my opinion explicitly so that it isn't suggested for me.

I don't know who the Etruscans were nor do I claim to, what I shared were some rational enough points about the archaeology that made a case for Etruscans coming to Umbria, and not having been there.

There was a tradition among ancients that they did migrate there, and its obviously possible they were wrong and just spreading a myth, but many authors state variations of a migration, be they pelasgians, lydians, tyrrhenians, etc. Some variations consider pelasgians and tyrrhenians the same thing, some consider them different, some consider them lydians proper, but in common is a migration.

"The Pelasgians left Greece and came and settled in the Italian areas among the Aborigines. The Pelasgians were also called Tyrrheni [Etruscans] and the entire land was called Tyrrhenia, after one of their rulers, who was called Tyrrhenus."
Eusebius, Chronography, 102 - ca. 325 CE

"At an early period the Umbri were expelled from it by the Pelasgi; and these again by the Lydians, who from a king of theirs were named Tyrrheni, but afterwards, from the rites observed in their sacrifices, were called, in the Greek language, Tusci"
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 1-11, 3.8.1 - ca. 77 CE

"The Lydians, who had taken the name of Tyrrheni, having engaged in war against the Agyllaei, one of them, approaching the wall, inquired the name of the city; when one of the Thessalians from the wall, instead of answering the question, saluted him with χαῖρε"
Strabo, Geography, 5.2.3 - ca. 24 CE

"But if one must pronounce judging by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwelt in the city of Creston (Ancient Macedonia) above the Tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now called Dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called Thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the Pelasgians who settled at Plakia and Skylake in the region of the Hellespont, who before that had been settlers with the Athenians, and of the natives of the various other towns which are really Pelasgian, though they have lost the name,"
Herodotus, Histories, 1.57 - ca. 430 BCE

"There is also a small Chalcidian element; but the greater number are Tyrrheno-Pelasgians once settled in Lemnos and Athens, and Bisaltians, Crestonians, and Edonians; the towns being all small ones"
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 4.109 - ca. 395 BCE

"After Liguria are Pelasgians who settled here coming from Hellas, occupying the country in common with the Tyrrhenians"
Pseudo Scymnus or Pausanias of Damascus, Circuit of the Earth, 196 - ca. 100 BCE

"However, one may well marvel that, although the Crotoniats had a speech similar to that of the Placians, who lived near the Hellespont, since both were originally Pelasgians, it was not at all similar to that of the Tyrrhenians, their nearest neighbours"
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.29.1 - ca. 7 BCE



As you can see, many ancients either considered them the same or two different ethnos, and I don't know better than them as I am even further removed, but the motif of migration is pretty common.

And with the migration scenario, its still entirely possible they were non-IE speaking people not related to anybody.

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None today believes anymore that objective truth is contained in the texts of ancient authors. Many of these ancient texts are contradictory to each other.

The humanistic disciplines have evolved. At that time legends and myths wanted to mean something else, and do not always contain historical facts.

One should not insist on what was written 2500 years ago, when archaeology, linguistics and genetics say something different.

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Originally Posted by Angela

You're all missing the point here. The Etruscans were people who, if they didn't move directly from West Asia, were descended from the ancestors of the Albanians. Obviously, that's true of the more "northern" Romans too, just like the Albanians are the true descendants of the Mycenaeans.

You cannot argue with such self-evident truths.

Or, according to Eurogenes, both the Etruscans and the early Romans were clearly heavily steppe people, you know, like the Mycenaeans.

We've just got to get with the program.

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I think that the question of the origins of the Etruscans or Romans attracts many people or ethnic groups with identity problems.

Who has the English text of Dionysius of Halicarnassus?

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Originally Posted by binx

Who has the English text of Dionysius of Halicarnassus?

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Which work are you looking for? If you mean "Roman Antiquities" you may find it here https://archive.org/details/romanantiquities01dionuoft and here http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...ssus/home.html, from a quick search that i did.

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Originally Posted by Demetrios

Which work are you looking for? If you mean "Roman Antiquities" you may find it here https://archive.org/details/romanantiquities01dionuoft and here http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...ssus/home.html, from a quick search that i did.

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When he says the Etruscans are neither Pelasgian nor Lydian.

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Originally Posted by binx

When he says the Etruscans are neither Pelasgian nor Lydian.

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It is in Chapter/Paragraph 30 of Book 1, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...assus/1B*.html.

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Originally Posted by Demetrios

It is in Chapter/Paragraph 30 of Book 1, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...assus/1B*.html.

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thx

"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 indications of their mother country. For they neither worship the same gods as the Lydians nor make use 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 it is found to be a very ancient nation and to agree with no other either in its language or in its manner of living. And there is no reason why the Greeks should not have called them by this name, both from their living in towers and from the name of one of their rulers. The Romans, however, give them other names: from the country they once inhabited, named Etruria, they call 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. Their own name for themselves, however, is the same as that of one of their leaders, Rasenna. In another book I shall show what cities the Tyrrhenians founded, what forms of government they established, how great power they acquired, what memorable achievements they performed, and what fortunes attended them."

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, "Roman Antiquities" , Book I, Section 30

The problem with autochthony is the lack of an indigenous element that could be responsible for a hypothetical language shift:

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New discoveries suggest that the Terramare’s cycle of settlement and history may haveenjoyed a prelude during the advanced phase of the Early Bronze Age, even though the firstclear evidence dates back to the MB1. However, the Terramare in the true sense and the socialmodel they represent do not seem to emerge fully until the MB2. The substantial populationincrease, now supported by archaeological evidence from about 200 settlements, is difficultto explain in terms of natural demographic growth alone, and would seem to suggest that itderives from the «colonisation» of the Po Plain. This hypothesis is supported by the intensedeforestation that took place at the time in concomitance with the spread of pasture and arableland. At the end of the Recent Bronze Age, after over four centuries of life, the world of the Terramare collapsed within an apparently brief space of time, leaving the territory uninhabited for at least three or four centuries.

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https://www.academia.edu/5808394/The...e_Age_in_Italy

So again, in the LBA we are left with little more than the Apennine culture and the encroaching Urnfield-Villanova intruders from the north. Any hypothesis must account for this.

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Originally Posted by Johane Derite

Well then I will state my opinion explicitly so that it isn't suggested for me.

I don't know who the Etruscans were nor do I claim to, what I shared were some rational enough points about the archaeology that made a case for Etruscans coming to Umbria, and not having been there.

There was a tradition among ancients that they did migrate there, and its obviously possible they were wrong and just spreading a myth, but many authors state variations of a migration, be they pelasgians, lydians, tyrrhenians, etc. Some variations consider pelasgians and tyrrhenians the same thing, some consider them different, some consider them lydians proper, but in common is a migration.

"The Pelasgians left Greece and came and settled in the Italian areas among the Aborigines. The Pelasgians were also called Tyrrheni [Etruscans] and the entire land was called Tyrrhenia, after one of their rulers, who was called Tyrrhenus."
Eusebius, Chronography, 102 - ca. 325 CE

"At an early period the Umbri were expelled from it by the Pelasgi; and these again by the Lydians, who from a king of theirs were named Tyrrheni, but afterwards, from the rites observed in their sacrifices, were called, in the Greek language, Tusci"
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 1-11, 3.8.1 - ca. 77 CE

"The Lydians, who had taken the name of Tyrrheni, having engaged in war against the Agyllaei, one of them, approaching the wall, inquired the name of the city; when one of the Thessalians from the wall, instead of answering the question, saluted him with χαῖρε"
Strabo, Geography, 5.2.3 - ca. 24 CE

"But if one must pronounce judging by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwelt in the city of Creston (Ancient Macedonia) above the Tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now called Dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called Thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the Pelasgians who settled at Plakia and Skylake in the region of the Hellespont, who before that had been settlers with the Athenians, and of the natives of the various other towns which are really Pelasgian, though they have lost the name,"
Herodotus, Histories, 1.57 - ca. 430 BCE

"There is also a small Chalcidian element; but the greater number are Tyrrheno-Pelasgians once settled in Lemnos and Athens, and Bisaltians, Crestonians, and Edonians; the towns being all small ones"
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 4.109 - ca. 395 BCE

"After Liguria are Pelasgians who settled here coming from Hellas, occupying the country in common with the Tyrrhenians"
Pseudo Scymnus or Pausanias of Damascus, Circuit of the Earth, 196 - ca. 100 BCE

"However, one may well marvel that, although the Crotoniats had a speech similar to that of the Placians, who lived near the Hellespont, since both were originally Pelasgians, it was not at all similar to that of the Tyrrhenians, their nearest neighbours"
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.29.1 - ca. 7 BCE



As you can see, many ancients either considered them the same or two different ethnos, and I don't know better than them as I am even further removed, but the motif of migration is pretty common.

And with the migration scenario, its still entirely possible they were non-IE speaking people not related to anybody.

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You do realise that the lydians where still in anatolia fighting the phygians circa 500BC ...................any reference to tribes going from one place to another place does not indicate a full migration and neither a full replacement of the people they replaced wherever they went.
It is not like some type of north american indian tribe packing up their tents and moving to different lands system

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Originally Posted by Demetrios

Crete also had Pelasgians, but we also know that Crete used to have many other peoples as well.

For example Homer writes:
"There is a land called Crete, in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair, rich land, begirt with water, and therein are many men, past counting, and ninety cities. They have not all the same speech, but their tongues are mixed. There dwell Achaeans, there great-hearted native Cretans (eteo-Cretans), there Cydonians, and Dorians of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians.".

The same can be true with Lemnos. Homer wrote that the Sintians were the first inhabitants of the island, and they were a Thracian tribe. Other authors also wrote of the Greek tribe of Minyans living on the island, before being expelled by Pelasgians coming from Attica. Others also presented Pelasgians as Tyrrhenians. So you see, nothing is certain and probably Lemnos had a number of different people just like with the case of Crete above. After all, don't take as a fact that Greek authors were always accurate with their designations. They could in fact be generalizing when they wrote Pelasgians.

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If samothrace island had thracian Sintians , it would make sense that Lemnos had the same thracians as the 2 islands are close to each other .............or would lemnos have a "trojan" colony as some speculate due to the iliad

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Originally Posted by markod

The problem with autochthony is the lack of an indigenous element that could be responsible for a hypothetical language shift:

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I think it's more the opposite. Pre-Indo-European languages arrived in southern Europe long before middle Bronze Age Indo-European languages.

The indigenous element was all pre-Indo-European before the arrival of the Indo-European languages.

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Originally Posted by Ygorcs

I don't think we can already rule out the possibility(not likelihood) that Etruscan/Tyrsenian languages came from Anatolia or more broadly from the East Mediterranean... but onlyat least 2,000 years before some people had thought. In all of Italy, even North Italy, some of the best models that I can reach, using only Eneolithic & Bronze Age samples, include a good chunk (~20-30%) of Minoan-like ancestry. Of course that does not mean "from Minoans", but "similar to the genetic structure found in those few Minoan samples". There is also a lot of extra CHG/Iran_Chl-related admixtures. So some similarity with the BA East Mediterranean probably did exist, which might have brought the Tyrsenian language family (and what if the Minoan language belonged to a related group, even if it was not Tyrsenian itself?). In any case, that language shift would have happened even before Proto-Italic existed (let alone was spoken in much of Italy, or in Italy at all).

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There is no fixed rule saying that if one tribe invaded another lands that the loser was wiped out or its customs and language replaced

The viking danes took Normandy, ruled it for a very long time, but did not enforce it's viking customs or language on the people , but they ,the vikings gave way to the norman language and customs

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Originally Posted by torzio

If samothrace island had thracian Sintians , it would make sense that Lemnos had the same thracians as the 2 islands are close to each other .............or would lemnos have a "trojan" colony as some speculate due to the iliad

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In fact, also the first inhabitants of Lemnos were the same Thracian Sintians of Samothrace.

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Originally Posted by brick

I think it's more the opposite. Pre-Indo-European languages arrived in southern Europe long before middle Bronze Age Indo-European languages.

The indigenous element was all pre-Indo-European before the arrival of the Indo-European languages.

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The region was depopulated. There was no pre-Anything in North Italy when the Villanovans came.

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Originally Posted by markod

The region was depopulated. There was no pre-Anything in North Italy when the Villanovans came.

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I don't think it's true.

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Originally Posted by torzio

If samothrace island had thracian Sintians , it would make sense that Lamnos had the same thracians as the 2 islands are close to each other .............or would lemnos have a "trojan" colony as some speculate due to the iliad

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I didn't write that Samothrace had Sintians Thracians. Although we can assume it did. The traditional account from antiquity is that Samothrace was first inhabited by Pelasgians and Carians, and later by Thracians. At the end of the 8th century BCE the island was colonized by Greeks from Samos, hence the name Samothrace (Samos of Thrace), which again relates to an earlier answer i gave in regards to the etymology. We can assume Sintians Thracians to have settled on Samothrace, from the very simple fact that Samothrace was also a major center for the Cabeirian mysteries, which originated from Lemnos.

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Originally Posted by markod

The region was depopulated. There was no pre-Anything in North Italy when the Villanovans came.

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And how did you arrive at that conclusion?

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Originally Posted by bigsnake49

And how did you arrive at that conclusion?

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Anyone who talks about Etruscan archaeology should know about the Terramare collapse. I linked a comprehensive paper above, and I even highlighted the relevant parts.

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Originally Posted by markod

Anyone who talks about Etruscan archaeology should know about the Terramare collapse. I linked a comprehensive paper above, and I even highlighted the relevant parts.

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Every area of the Med collapsed at the same time. The Etruscan civilization came afterward. Plus these were very small settlements almost all in Emilia, North of Tuscany. They did not have the population density to develop an advanced civilization.

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Originally Posted by bigsnake49

And how did you arrive at that conclusion?

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The hypothesis of the dispersion/collapse of Terramare culture, I think.

Terramare culture wasn't the only culture in northern Italy.

Claiming that the whole North Italy after the collapse of Terramare was depopulated is inaccurate.

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Originally Posted by bigsnake49

Every area of the Med collapsed at the same time. The Etruscan civilization came afterward. Plus these were very small settlements almost all in Emilia, North of Tuscany. They did not have the population density to develop an advanced civilization.

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Seems pretty populated for the time:

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Using the demographic estimates proposed in 1997, it can be argued that between theend of the MB3 and the start of the RB the area occupied by the Terramare reached its peak indemographic pressure, which can be put at around 150,000 individuals, in other words 20 in-habitants per square kilometre.

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