From: Rex H. McTyeire
Message: 6304
Date: 2001-03-03
Ed (erobert52@...) says in part: > There is
evidence of Etruscoid adstrate/substrate influence on Lydian > (or rather,
its ancestor). So they must have been in the vicinity for a > while. There
is evidence of IE Anatolian areal influence on Etruscan, > so they must
have been there for a while. Most classical sources keep > saying they
came from Lydia, (including Vergil, who came from an > Etruscan speaking
area) ...
>...but one should not take
their geographical accuracy for granted.
Agree on the last, but the sheer predominance of the
indicators by the chroniclers, AND the linguistic indicators you mention..can't
be ignored either. Your thoughts are interesting: we covered some of this ground
last year, but you provide a new slant on it. > After all, I
keep meeting Eastern Europeans who > think Scotland is in England, and
this is after they have visited the > place. Even Western Europeans used
to think this until recently.
But no Scots make this mistake (check the last name
:-). > Yes, there is obviously a problem with Etruscan
surviving the second > millennium BC in Anatolia with all that was going
on. Because, > clearly, it didn't.
Why would there be a conflict with larger elements branched
into Italy, surviving longer than the parent?
> The whole Pelasgian thing is problematic, so I
would not take it for > granted that they and the Tyrrhenians are
identical or even related > or that the Etruscans stayed long in the
Aegean.
I think they did, perhaps were defined there, and we are just
limited to late western evidence after (just) portions migrated/colonized
westward. The issue you make however with differentiating Pelasgian from
Tyrrhenian...seems to bear directly with the flow of the chronicler's
implications, (Even Herodotus, referencing surviving small pockets of Tyrrhenian
speakers in the North of Greece, identifiable solely because they are
linguistically distinct from neighbors supports the separation, I think.) I also
think by the time the Proto-Etruscans got to Italy, it was already known as
Tyrrhenia..which Is why I have a problem with Glen's name for the group, even as
he seems to support the link to Anatolia strongly. (No, Glen ..I will
offer no alternative..I'll let linguists name linguistic groups..I'll just
scream when they don't seem to fit. I have suggested that what we see in
Etruscan contains late surviving Aegean Pelasgian..but if so, however you
define it..it was not limited to Western Anatolia.
:-) > Raetic is problematic too. I think a genetic
relationship between Etruscan and Raetic is far from being
proved.
Livy
compresses historically (in my view) to call the latter a barbarized and
corrupted form of the former..but I believe he is missing an
element. > It is not even clear that the inscriptions
ascribed > to Raetic are all in the same language. I for one am sure there
are a > couple of Celtic ones in there.
If I am right, the two: (Celt and intrusive
Anatolian/Aegean) would already have been well mixed when the folks who
would define Etruscan; arrived.
>The idea that Etruscan influences in Raetic are due to nothing more
than a late northern >military excursion has not been
disproved.
This
assumes (as Livy did) that the only possible dispersion to Raetic had to
come from the Etruscan areas after Etruscan arrival. Why limit to that
speculation? Raetic may be well be remnants of pre-Etruscan but
Aegean colonial efforts into Italy, with a related earlier form of a
regional language.
Cu Stima;
Rex H. McTyeire
Bucharest,
Romania