Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

I comment on this first and then when I have time comment on the rest. To all these statements you would have been able to find an answer on your own if you had also read at leat the most important texts of etruscology. The whole text of Woudhuizen is his personal interpretation that also goes against the general consensus.

For example there is no consensus at all that Villanova is Italic. Villanovan culture (c. 900 BC – 700 BC) is Etruscan and only Etruscan and is considered the most archaic phase of Etruscan civilization. We have to go back to the Proto-Villanovan (c. 1200 BC — circa 901 BC), which is ancestral not only to the Villanovan culture, but also to the Latial culture (Latins) and Atestine culture (Veneti) and so on. It's an an old thesis that the Proto-Villanovan culture brought the Italics to Italy, but it's still not proven.

The idea that Proto-Villanova trifurcated into Etruscan, Venetic and Italic is largely an idea based in the old 'pots not people' paradigm of archaeology still prevalent in classical studies. Someone will need to come up with something better.
 
The idea that Proto-Villanova trifurcated into Etruscan, Venetic and Italic is largely an idea based in the old 'pots not people' paradigm of archaeology still prevalent in classical studies. Someone will need to come up with something better.

I know you don't like it.


It's an idea that has great consensus. Proto-Villanovan is a national phenomenon, the following ones are phenomena of regionalization (it's not a trifurcation, not only Villanovan, Atestine and Latial cultures but also other cultures of Italy).


To dismiss it, you need more than just a post on a forum.
 
I know you don't like it.


It's an idea that has great consensus. Proto-Villanovan is a national phenomenon, the following ones are phenomena of regionalization (not only Villanovan, Atestine and Latial cultures).

To dismiss it, you need more than just a post on a forum.

I have zero stakes in it, why wouldn't I like it? It's just outdated now that we know migration and conquest are the primary reasons for linguistic/cultural shift. It's not 1960 anymore.
 
And pelasgians are balkan people, so we shouldn't expect any dramatic west-asian shift from people with pelasgian origins.

I think Italians have less problems recognizing the Balkan origin of Daunians or Iapiges, stablished IIRC when Sea People were marauding here and there, also they don't have problems to assign to proto-Villanovians an Italic or Celtic character coming from outside, maybe from the Balkans even if we include in it Hungary. But when there is something about Etruscans coming from elsewere I believe sometimes it is Anthrogenica web when bulling antisteppists.
 
I have zero stakes in it, why wouldn't I like it? It's just outdated now that we know migration and conquest are the primary reasons for linguistic/cultural shift. It's not 1960 anymore.

It's an idea that's still being accepted today. There's nothing wrong with not knowing it. Since you speak clearly Italian, the first are the notes of Civiltà dell'Italia Preromana (LE07101474), 2013-2014 university course at the University of Padua. Those notes are the first ones I found. The second from a book published in 2006.


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It's an idea that's still being accepted today. There's nothing wrong with not knowing it. Since you speak clearly Italian, the first are the notes of Civiltà dell'Italia Preromana (LE07101474), 2013-2014 university course at the University of Padua. Those notes are the first ones I found. The second from a book published in 2006.

Many ideas are wrong and still accepted. Urnfield material cultures are found in the regions where later we see the Etruscans, Rhaetians, Veneti and the Latins. That doesn't mean that all those languages actually spread with Urnfield. There were other peoples around the Alps and in Italy at the time. This is especially obvious in Latium which was barely occupied in the MBA-LBA transition - one of the populations that migrated there in the LB spoke Latino-Faliscan. Languages don't tend to spring from the ground.
 
Many ideas are wrong and still accepted. Urnfield material cultures are found in the regions where later we see the Etruscans, Rhaetians, Veneti and the Latins. That doesn't mean that all those languages actually spread with Urnfield. There were other peoples around the Alps and in Italy at the time. This is especially obvious in Latium which was barely occupied in the MBA-LBA transition - one of the populations that migrated there in the LB spoke Latino-Faliscan. Languages don't tend to spring from the ground.

I'm having the hardest time following you. Nowhere is it written that all those languages actually spread with Urnfield.
 
The literal meaning of Samothrace/Samothraki is "tall Thrace". This is a synthetic word. Samothrace happens to have the tallest mountain in all of the Aegean, excluding Euboea and Crete. The same is true with the island of Samos, which also translates as "tall" which happens to have the second tallest mountain in all of the Aegean, excluding Euboea and Crete. Supposedly the word "samos" is a Phoenician loanword, originating from Phoenician "sama" meaning "high", although it could also be a Greek original.


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.
 
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.
 
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.

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.
 
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.
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.
 
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.



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.
 
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.


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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