Etruscan origins

There are two main hypotheses as to the origins of the Etruscan civilization in the Early Iron Age: development in situ out of the Villanovan culture, or colonization of Italy from the Near East. An autochthonous population that diverged genetically was suggested as a possibility by Cavalli-Sforza.

Helmut Rix's classification of the Etruscan language in a proposed Tyrsenian language family reflects this ambiguity. He finds Etruscan on one hand genetically related to the Rhaetic language spoken in the Alps north of Etruria, suggesting autochthonous connections, but on the other hand the Lemnian language found on the "Lemnos stele" is closely related to Etruscan, entailing either Etruscan presence in "Tyrsenian" Lemnos, or "Tyrsenian" expansion westward to Etruria. 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.

The Etruscan language was of a different family from that of neighbouring Italic and Celtic peoples, who spoke Indo-European languages.

The latest mtDNA study (2013) suggests that the Etruscans appear to fall very close to a Neolithic population from Central Europe and to other Tuscan populations. This coincides with the Rhaetic language which was spoken north of the Alps in the area of the Urnfield culture of Central Europe. The Villanovan culture branched from the Urnfield culture around 1100 BC and thus Villanovan culture is ancestral to the Etruscan civilization.

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