The Sarcophagus of the Spouses (530-510 BC), National Etruscan Museum, Rome
The Etruscan territories
The Etruscans are one of the oldest civilizations that lived in Italy between the 8th century BC. and the beginning of the 3rd century BC, in the areas geographically attributable today to Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria, known as proper Etruria, and in the territory between the rivers Tiber and Arno. The apogee of Etruscan expansion was reached in the middle of the 6th century BC when they expanded into two new territories, the Po Valley Etruria (coinciding with much of the Po Valley) the Campanian Etruria.
A brief history of their origins and their diffusion
Etruscans are always considered mysterious people because of the incertitude of their origin and the root of their language. Since antiquity, various hypotheses about their arrival in Italy and their heritage were discussed. According to Herodotus, a Greek historian of the 5th century BC, they migrated from Lydia, a region of Asia Minor (now Turkey). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
For Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a historian who lived between 60 BC and 7 AC, they originated in the Italian peninsula. In the 1800s, a new hypothesis was proposed: that the Etruscans would move from the Alpine regions to the central part of Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_of_Halicarnassus
After the birth of modern archeology and the beginning of a systematic study of finds, it was believed that the Etruscans descended from the Alpine regions to central Italy. Finally, in the 20th century, eminent Etruscans concluded that to argue about a single origin of the Etruscans was to ask a wrong question, since many processes must have been those that had led to the formation of the Etruscan people , such as different ethnic and cultural origins, numerous commercial-cultural contacts, the presence of an autochthonous culture called Villanoviana and the fusion of groups of migratory populations of various origins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscology
Many scientists have therefore hypothesized that at the beginning of the first millennium BC melting among sedentary people on the Italian peninsula and men and women from the eastern Mediterranean basin, bearers of more advanced cultures and technological knowledge, were happening. At this point, it could have started the formation processes that led to the beginning of a new civilization.
Recently, with the expansion of scientific disciplines, genetic studies applied to Etruscology have produced new elements to re-discuss the origin of the Etruscan people. This is thanks to the choice of genealogical profiles of individuals present in Umbria and Tuscany and o the DNA extracted from individuals having lived at different periods in the same geographical area. Among these studies, “The Origin and Legacy of the Etruscan” by Johannes Krause, geneticist, and director of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, is particularly relevant. https://www.shh.mpg.de/2051535/etruscan-genomes
Indeed, from the DNA extracted from bone finds and examination of blood samples from living populations, it can be concluded that the Etruscans were not of Asian origin and did not come from the eastern Mediterranean. Indeed, the DNA extracted from bone finds and the examination of blood samples from living populations, it can be concluded that the Etruscans were not of Asian origin and did not come from the eastern Mediterranean. Quoting the conclusions of the work: “The current study, with a time transect of ancient genomic information spanning almost 2000 years collected from 12 archaeological sites, resolves lingering questions about Etruscan origins, showing no evidence for a recent population movement from Anatolia. In fact, the Etruscans shared the genetic profile of the Latins living in nearby Rome, with a large proportion of their genetic profiles coming from steppe-related ancestry that arrived in the region during the Bronze Age”. Therefore, contrary to some hypotheses, the Etruscan genetic heritage does not appear to derive from movements of populations originating in the Near East as the Etruscan genetic heritage would appear to have remained stable for at least 800 years, from the Iron Age to the period of the Roman Republic.
However, the root of the Etruscan language remains unresolved and even more mysterious, a language not yet well deciphered and isolated from the linguistic context of Indo-European origin and in which it was geographically immersed. As stated by David Caramelli, a Professor at the University of Florence: “because genes follow spoken language, that suggests a more complex scenario, as the assimilation of early Italic speakers by the Etruscan speech community, possibly during a prolonged period of admixture over the second millennium BCE”.It demonstrates that there is still much to be studied to arrive at a definitive and verifiable historical-evolutionary conclusion about the origins of the Etruscan people. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Caramelli