Etruscan origins

There are three main hypotheses as to the origins of the Etruscan civilization. Autochthonous development in situ out of the Villanovan culture, as claimed by the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus who described the Etruscans as indigenous people who had always lived in Etruria.Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Book I Chapters 30 1.  A migration from the Aegean sea, as claimed by a couple of Greek historians: Herodotus, who described them as a group of immigrants from Lydia in Anatolia, and Hellanicus of Lesbos who claimed that the Tyrrhenians were the Pelasgians originally from Thessaly, GreeceDionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.17–19  The third hypotheses is reported by Livy and Pliny the Elder, the  Etruscans as related to Rhaetian people to the north and other populations living in the Alps.Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita), Book 5

German linguist Helmut Rix proposed the Tyrsenian language family, with Etruscan related to the Rhaetic language spoken in the Alps north of Etruria, and to the Lemnian language spoken in Lemons.Rix 1998. Rätisch und Etruskisch (Innsbruck). In particular the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.

A 2013 mtDNA study concluded that the Etruscans appear to fall very close to a Neolithic population from Central Europe and to other Tuscan populations.

A 2019 genetic study published in the journal Science analyzed the autosomal DNA of 11 Iron Age samples from the areas around Rome, concluding that Etruscans (900-600 BC) and the Latins (900-200 BC) from Latium vetus were genetically similar, and Etruscans also had Steppe-related ancestry despite speaking a pre-Indo-European language.

A 2021 genetic study published in the journal Science Advances analyzed the autosomal DNA of 48 Iron Age individuals from Tuscany and Lazio and confirmed that the Etruscan individuals displayed the ancestral component Steppe in the same percentages as found in the previously analyzed Iron Age Latins, and that the Etruscans' DNA completely lacks a signal of recent admixture with Anatolia or the Eastern Mediterranean, concluding that the Etruscans were autochthonous and they had a genetic profile similar to their Latin neighbors. Both Etruscans and Latins joined firmly the European cluster, 75% of the Etruscan male individuals were found to belong to haplogroup R1b-M269 and its subclades, especially R1b-P312 and its derivative R1b-L2 whose direct ancestor is R1b-U152, while the most common mitochondrial DNA haplogroup among the Etruscans was H.

According to prehistoric and protohistoric archaeologists, anthropologists, etruscologists, geneticists, linguists, all the evidence gathered so far points to an autochthonous origin of the Etruscans.
 Moreover, there is no archeological evidence for a migration of the Lydians or the Pelasgians into Etruria.

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Category:Etruscan civilization