Thread by @hermahai

1/ The Etruscans showed a strong cultural influence from the early Greek civilization with more important loans the use of the Euboean alphabet and the adoption of many elements of Greek mythology (the presence of figures from the heroic circle makes a particular impression).

2/ Another interesting point of connection with the Aegean is the similarities between the Etruscan and Lemnian languages, both belonging to the Tyrrhenian language branch and concealing a common past. The Lemnian language was similarly recorded with the Euboean alphabet.

3/Parallelly, the ancient Greek tradition indicates a close relationship between the Etruscans and the Aegean, with the most interesting element being the various myths of the origin of the Etruscans from the wider Aegean region and indeed as carriers of the Pre-Greek substratum.

4/ Although the narrations of mythology could constitute a database from a linguistic point of view, genetic studies proved that the Etruscans were Indo-European and indeed with a high rate of genomic diffusion. ➡️

➡️ So how is it possible that the Etruscans, being an Indo-European population, spoke a non-Indo-European language and probably a language with primitive origins?

5/ Archaeologically and genetically, the Etruscans are direct descendants of the EIA Villanovan Culture, which they smoothly replaced, demonstrating a continuity. So what is it that led the Etruscans to adopt a non-Indo-European language? There could be two possible versions.

6/ The first version is that for some unknown reason the Etruscans adopted a primitive local language abandoning their own at some very early stage, e.g. a pre-Italic lingua franca. ➡️

➡️ The carriers of the Proto-Italic languages seem to have been related to the Terramare Culture and while initially inhabiting the Alpine regions during the second half of the 2nd millennium BC they began to move further south.

7/ But what language was spoken on the Italian peninsula before the spread of the Proto-Italic languages? Maybe did Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian belong to a common linguistic framework with Eteocretan and Pelasgian with clear Neolithic origins?

8/ Recent studies have argued that the Neolithicization of Italy may have originated via the Adriatic, where among others Neolithic populations from N. Greece - Ionian - Albania participated and is linked to the diffusion of the Impressed Ware Culture (=old Anatolian language).

9/ The second version is that the early Etruscan populations came into contact with some population that settled in their wider area, for example as a consequence of the intense movements of the LBA Collapse, and it affected them drastically perhaps through mixed marriages.

10/ In this scenario the Etruscans, receptive to foreign influences, gradually adopted an Aegean language and in fact over time began to use the Euboean alphabet, another Aegean loan, for the transcription of their new language. ➡️

➡️ This language could not be other than the Proto-Tyrsenic of the NE Aegean - Troad. According to an archaeological study many Bos Taurus breeds from EIA Tuscany have an Asia Minor origin.