Tyrrhenian language family tree as proposed by de Simone and Marchesini (2013)[6]
In 1998 the German linguistHelmut Rix proposed that three then unclassified ancient languages belonged to a common linguistic family he calledTyrrhenian: theEtruscan language spoken in Etruria, theRaetic language of the Eastern Alps, and theLemnian language, only attested by a small number of inscriptions from the Greek island ofLemnos in the Aegean Sea.[7]
Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,[8][9]Carlo De Simone,[10] Norbert Oettinger,[11] Simona Marchesini,[6] andRex E. Wallace.[12] Common features among Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian have been found inmorphology,phonology, andsyntax.[13] On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts and possibly also to the early date at which the languages split.[1][13]
In 2004,Van der Meer proposed that Raetic could have split from Etruscan from around 900 BC or even earlier, at any rate no later than 700 BC since divergences are already present in the oldest Etruscan and Raetic inscriptions, like in thegrammatical voices of past tenses and in the endings of malegentilicia. From around 400 BC, the Rhaeti became isolated from the Etruscan area by theCisalpine Celts, thus limiting contact between the two languages.[17] Such a late date has garnered little consensus as the split would still be too recent to match the archaeological data, the Rhaeti in the second Iron Age being characterized by theFritzens-Sanzeno culture, in continuity with late Bronze Age culture and early Iron AgeLaugen-Melaun culture. The Raeti are not believed, archeologically, to descend from the Etruscans, as well as it is not believed plausible that the Etruscans are descended from the Rhaeti,[18] while the relationship between the Etruscan and Raetic languages is thought to date back to a remote stage of prehistory.[18]
After more than 90 years of archaeological excavations at Lemnos, nothing has been found that would support a migration fromLemnos toEtruria or to theAlps where Raetic was spoken. The indigenous inhabitants of Lemnos, also called in ancient timesSinteis, were theSintians, a Thracian population.[19] While the results of the previous excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of aMycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is theMycenaean Greekra-mi-ni-ja, "Lemnian woman", written inLinear B syllabic script.[20][21] Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to theSea Peoples.[22][10][23] Alternatively, the Lemnian language could have arrived in theAegean Sea during theLate Bronze Age, whenMycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries fromSicily,Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.[24]
A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals, who lived between 800 BC and 1 BC, concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous, and genetically similar to the Iron AgeLatins, and that the Etruscan language, and therefore the other languages of the Tyrrhenian family, may be a surviving language of the ones that were widespread in Europe from at least the Neolithic period before the arrival of the Indo-European languages,[25] as already argued by German geneticistJohannes Krause who concluded that it is likely that the Etruscan language (as well asBasque,Paleo-Sardinian andMinoan) "developed on the continent in the course of theNeolithic Revolution".[26] The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who are genetically related to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula".[25]
Strabo's (Geography V, 2) citation fromAnticlides attributes a share in the foundation of Etruria to thePelasgians ofLemnos andImbros.[27][28] The Pelasgians are also referred to byHerodotus as settlers in Lemnos, after they were expelled fromAttica by theAthenians.[29]Apollonius of Rhodes mentioned an ancient settlement of Tyrrhenians on Lemnos in hisArgonautica (IV.1760), written in the third century BC, in an elaborate inventedaition ofKalliste orThera: in passing, he attributes the flight ofSintian Lemnians to the island Kalliste to "Tyrrhenian warriors" from the island of Lemnos.
Etruscan: 13,000 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in Italy; the oldest Etruscan inscription dates back to the 8th century BC, and the most recent one is dated to the 1st century AD.[30]
Raetic: 300 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in the Central Alps; the oldest Raetic inscription dates back to the 6th century BC.[30][1]
Lemnian: 2 inscriptions plus a small number of extremely fragmentary inscriptions; the oldest Lemnian inscription dates back to the late 6th century BC.[30]
Camunic: may be related to Raetic; about 170 inscriptions found in the Central Alps; the oldest Camunic inscriptions dates back to the 5th century BC.[30]
A largerAegean family includingEteocretan,Minoan andEteocypriot has been proposed by G. M. Facchetti referring to some alleged similarities between on the one handEtruscan andLemnian, and on the other hand languages likeMinoan andEteocretan. If these languages could be shown to be related to Etruscan and Raetic, they would constitute apre-Indo-European language family stretching from (at the very least) theAegean Islands andCrete across mainlandGreece and theItalian Peninsula to theAlps. A proposed relation between these languages has also been made previously by Raymond A. Brown.[31]Michael Ventris, who successfully decipheredLinear B withJohn Chadwick, also thought there to be a relation between Etruscan and Minoan.[32] Facchetti proposes a hypothetical language family derived fromMinoan in two branches. FromMinoan he proposes a Proto-Tyrrhenian from which would have come theEtruscan,Lemnian andRaetic languages.James Mellaart has proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages ofAnatolia, based upon place name analysis.[3] From anotherMinoan branch would have come theEteocretan language.[33][34] T. B. Jones proposed in 1950 reading ofEteocypriot texts in Etruscan, which was refuted by most scholars but gained popularity in the former Soviet Union. In any case, a relationship between the Etruscan language and Minoan (including Eteocretan and Eteocypriot), and a larger Aegean family, is considered unfounded.[2]
A number of mainly Soviet or post-Soviet linguists, includingSergei Starostin,[43] suggested a link between the Tyrrhenian languages and theNortheast Caucasian languages in anAlarodian language family, based on claimed sound correspondences between Etruscan,Hurrian, and Northeast Caucasian languages, numerals, grammatical structures and phonologies. Most linguists, however, either doubt that the language families are related, or believe that the evidence is far from conclusive.
The language group seems to have died out in Lemnos around the 6th century BC (by assimilation of the speakers toGreek), and as regards Etruscan around the 1st century AD in Italy (by assimilation toLatin).[44] The latest Raetic inscriptions are dated to the 1st century BC (by assimilation toLatin).[1]
^Harding 2014, p. 1912: Italy was home to a number of languages in the Iron Age, some of them clearly Indo-European (Latin being the most obvious, although this was merely the language spoken in the Roman heartland, that is, Latium, and other languages such as Italic, Venetic or Ligurian were also present), while the centre-west and northwest were occupied by the people we call Etruscans, who spoke a language which was non-Indo-European and presumed to represent an ethnic and linguistic stratum which goes far back in time, perhaps even to the occupants of Italy prior to the spread of farming.
^abKluge, Sindy; Salomon, Corinna; Schumacher, Stefan (2013–2018)."Raetica".Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Department of Linguistics,University of Vienna. Retrieved26 July 2018.
^abMarzatico 2019: Se resta il fatto che la documentazione archeologica smentisce in tutta evidenza un rapporto filogenetico fra Etruschi e Reti, visti anche fenomeni di continuità come nell’ambito della produzione vascolare di boccali di tradizione Luco/Laugen (fig. 8), non è escluso che la percezione di prossimità esistenti fra la lingua e la scrittura delle due entità etniche possano avere indotto eruditi del tempo a costruite “a tavolino” un rapporto di parentela.(...) [If the fact remains that the archaeological documentation clearly denies a phylogenetic relationship between the Etruscans and the Reti, also considering phenomena of continuity as in the sphere of the vascular production of traditional Luco / Laugen mugs (fig. 8), it is not excluded that the perception of proximity existing between the language and the writing of the two ethnic entities may have induced scholars of the time to build a kinship relationship "at the table". (...)]
^Wallace 2010, pp. 97–102: Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kamania on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.
^Krause & Trappe 2021, p. 217: It’s likely that Basque, Paleo-Sardinian, Minoan, and Etruscan developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution. Sadly, the true diversity of the languages that once existed in Europe will never be known.
^Strabo,Lacus Curtius (public domain translation), translated by Jones, H.L.,University of Chicago,And again, Anticleides says that they (the Pelasgians) were the first to settle the regions round about Lemnos and Imbros, and indeed that some of these sailed away to Italy with Tyrrhenus the son of Atys.
^Chadwick 1967, p. 34: "The basic idea was to find a language which might be related to Minoan. Ventris' candidate was Etruscan; not a bad guess, because the Etruscans, according to ancient tradition, came from the Aegean to Italy.".
^Penney, John H. W. (2009). "The Etruscan language and its Italic context".Etruscan by definition: the cultural, regional and personal identity of the Etruscans. Papers in honour of Sybille Haynes. London: British Museum Press. pp. 88–94.These further Anatolian connections are not very convincing, though the relationship between Etruscan and Lemnian remains secure. Before concluding that this still makes an eastern origin for Etruscan most likely, a further language with Etruscan affinities must be noted. This is Raetic, a language attested in some 200 very short inscriptions from the Alpine region to the north of Verona. Despite their brevity, a number of linguistic patterns can be recognised which point to a relationship with Etruscan."(....) The correspondences (of Etruscan) with Raetic seem entirely convincing, but it is important to note that there are differences between the languages too (for instance, the patronymic suffixes are similar but not identical), so that Raetic cannot just be seen as a form of Etruscan. As in the case of Lemnian, we have related languages belonging to the same family, so should we suppose that Proto-Tyrrhenian may have extended rather widely in prehistoric times? Certainly the introduction of Raetic into the argument, with the ensuing geographical complications, makes the notion of a straightforward migration of Etruscans from Asia Minor seem a little too simple. And it is not in the end clear that we can be sure that the Etruscans did come from outside Italy, at least in any period of which we can hope to give a historical account, whatever the romantic attractions of scenarios such as displacement in the wake of the Trojan War.
^Starostin, Sergei; Orel, Vladimir (1989). "Etruscan and North Caucasian". In Shevoroshkin, Vitaliy (ed.).Explorations in Language Macrofamilies. Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics. Bochum.
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