The Origins of the Etruscans

During the Humanist period there was a development of the historical studies as well as epigraphic and archaeological investigations. It was then that the first hypotheses about the origins of the Etruscans appeared. Yet, the more or less scientific approaches to the question of the origins made their appearance in the eighteenth century and they took three different directions. The one theory assumes an oriental origin, the second one a northern origin and the third one presupposes that the Etruscans are an autochthonous people. The first theory is based on the tradition handed down to us by Herodotus, who narrates the migration of a group of Lydians under the guidance of Tyrrhenos, son of king Atys, and this one would be the reason why the Greeks called the Etruscans “Tyrrhenians”. Although having been rejected by modern criticism, this idea found some support in the discovery of epigraphic material in the Isle of Lemnos, in front of the Lydian seaside. The writing and some linguistic elements of the Lemnian epigraphs are very similar to the language spoken by the Etruscans. Other historians, setting out from the great number of objects of oriental origin and, generally speaking, on the culture of the VII and VI century BC which was strongly influenced by eastern elements, spoke emphatically in favour of an oriental origin. According to the latter historians, such an abundance of eastern cultural elements could only be explained by a mass immigration in Etruria of a people coming from the East. Another theory, based on the archaeological studies of the paleo-ethnologist Luigi Pigorini, hypothesizes a southward migration of Etruscan and Italic peoples coming from the north. These peoples are assumed to have introduced in Italy the ritual of incineration or cremation, which partly ousted inhumation. This theory, which did not enjoy much favour, assumes that the Etruscan element is connected with the Villanovan. The third theory, going back to the autochthony thesis maintained by Denys of Halicarnassus, seemed to become consistent after the publication of some linguistic studies which aimed to show the existence of a prae-Indo-European linguistic layer. Linguists called “Tyrrhenian” the linguistic layer, which is assumedly much older than other Italic dialects of the Indo-European family. According to the latter theory, the Etruscan people originate from the union of cultural and ethnic elements of a pre-existing layer with other superposed layers of the Bronze Age. Massimo Pallottino opposed to such theses the need to avoid schematic simplifications for a complex problem. In his view, the process of formation of the Etruscan people took place in Etruria. During such process, the cultural and commercial exchanges with travellers from the Aegean Sea – attracted by the metal resources of the Isle of Elba, Colline Metallifere and Monti della Tolfa – played a very important role. The oriental characteristics, according to Pallottino, were rather due to a cultural influx, which imbued and permeated the Etruscan culture. In our view, though, the complex cultural and linguistic characteristic of the Etruscans cannot be explained but by a sum of factors, as in Pallottino’s opinion, to which we should add the probable amalgamation of a number of peoples or groups of peoples who spoke different languages and left evident traces in both the Etruscan customs and the epigraphic corpus