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New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome

science.org

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Re: New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome

#21

Post by Eric_WVGG »

notorandit wrote: post #5

That doesn't sound to me as any news. Etruscans settled a lot of colonies in the southern part of the peninsula, down to Pompeii (which was founded by Etruscans and taken over by Samnites) and Melfi. And they were ahead of all other local cultures by far, especially in the metallurgic technologies and writing. They were not a single kingdom but a group of city-kingdoms. So I can think of Rome more like a colony that…

When I was a kid, there was a traveling museum thing about the Etruscans. I will never forget the slogan: “Rome wasn’t built in a day. And it wasn’t built by the Romans.” Genius.

Re: New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome

#26

Post by danjac »

ithkuil wrote: post #15
est31 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The romance languages formed due to the legacy of the Roman empire, so their success is largely due to the Roman success. People say that the roman empire ended, and while indeed Rome lost its central role in many ways, the roman empire's legacy is still felt. Before the Romans though, there have been the greeks as well as the hittites, both speaking indo european languages. Romans pretty much copied a lot of greek c…

I think a similar argument can be made for the legacy of the indo europeans. You just have to go a bit further back, before greek and hittite and celt and iranian/aryan and vedic cultures where a distinct thing, there was one single culture speaking a single language: the proto indo european people and culture. They had a lot of success (horse drawn carts with wheels, bronze working). They slowly spread east and west…

> Vascon and Etruscan survived (and possibly others)

How about Finno-Ugric? While the Hungarians only arrived about 1000 years ago, the ancestors of the Finns, Sami and related groups have lived in North-East Europe possibly since the last Ice Age (although this is much disputed, and it could be they adopted Proto-Finnic from some later migration).

Re: New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome

#28

Post by kragen »

An interesting thing the article somehow doesn't mention is that the Roman alphabet in which I'm more or less typing this (IN VVHICH I'M MORE OR LESS TYPING THIS) descends from the very scarce Etruscan letters, which descend from Greek. This is why the Roman alphabet revives letters like digamma and qoppa that had been obsolete in Greek for centuries.

Re: New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome

#29

Post by kragen »

OneTimePetes wrote: post #24
Lucasoato wrote: post #10

History is written by the victor; it's definitely curious that among the famous seven kings of Rome the last three have Etruscan origin.

Its better to be a mad emperor, then to be a unknown emperor.. ;)

Not the emperors, the kings. Before the Republic, not after it.
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