Thanks to archaeology, experts have painted a vivid portrait of the Etruscan civilization.
For several centuries, from the Iron Age to the Roman conquest, the Etruscans dominated parts of present-day Italy. It was in Veii—one of their most powerful cities—where the legendary terracotta ship of Apollo was erected by the inhabitants around the 6th century BC.
The Etruscans were one of the most successful groups in ancient Mediterranean. (Photo: Sciences et avenir).
The Etruscan civilization was a major cultural force in the pre-Roman Mediterranean. Emerging during the Iron Age, around the 9th to 8th centuries BC, this culture was famous for its rich mineral resources and was a significant trading power in the Mediterranean.
Much of its culture and even its history was erased or assimilated by Rome during their conquests.
However, the remaining Etruscan tombs, the content of wall paintings, and the adoption by the Romans of certain Etruscan clothing, religious practices, and architecture serve as compelling evidence of the great prosperity and significant contributions the Etruscan civilization made to Mediterranean culture.
Despite this, this ancient historical civilization has been largely forgotten. The origins of Etruscan culture remain a topic of ongoing debate. Since ancient times, some have suggested that this people originated from outside the peninsula.
Accordingly, the Greek historian Hellanicus of Lesbos, in the 5th century BC, claimed to have seen the Etruscans in the East. Meanwhile, Herodotus—the “father of history”—estimated at the same time that they were likely settlers from Lydia, in what is now southwestern Turkey.
Only Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian in the 1st century BC, regarded the Etruscans as a locally evolved population. This hypothesis appears to have been confirmed by the latest genetic analyses.
In 2021, a genetic analysis encompassing 2000 years of history in Italy related to Tuscany, Basilicata, and Lazio was conducted on 82 individuals collected from 12 archaeological sites.
The “Etruscan Sarcophagus” depicting a couple from the late 6th century BC made of terracotta (Photo: World History Encyclopedia).
It was determined that during the Iron Age (from 900 BC), the Etruscan populations in central Italy were self-originating and formed a genetically uniform group.
These results indicate that the Etruscans indeed share a common genetic profile with other contemporary neighboring populations, such as the Latins in Rome.
Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Jena, Germany, concluded about the origins of the research: “Contrary to some hypotheses, the Etruscan gene pool does not appear to have originated from the migration of populations from the Near East.”
This indicates that the genetic legacy of the Etruscans remained stable for at least 800 years, from the Iron Age to the Roman Republic. Thus, the Etruscans were a population that simply evolved locally, being the descendants of the Villanovians, a people of the preceding Bronze Age. To date, there has not been conclusive research on the origins of the Etruscan civilization.
