--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "C. Darwin Goranson"
<cdog_squirrel@...> wrote:
>
> I've been reading Fred Woudhuizen's books on Luwian hieroglyphs, and
> he includes a list of words that are very very similar in form and
> meaning between Lydian and Etruscan.
>
> Either Etruscan is a very wayward Anatolian language, or it's
> borrowings of terms from Lydian means that the Tyrhhenians came from
> somewhere in the Eastern Agaean.
>
> Now, is this idea to be believed? Are his writings to be trusted?
>
My belief has been that ancient Greeks developed the hypothesis that
the Etruscans originated in Lydia because they saw analogies between
Lydian and Etruscan culture.
So far as I know, the nearest thing to evidence is the Etruscan
inscription on the northeastern Aegean island of Lemnos. But that's
what it is -- pure Etruscan, not an ancestral or related language, and
in normal Etruscan script -- so the more obvious conclusion from it on
its own would be that the Etruscans, when their culture was
flourishing, established a base on Lemnos. The inscription does not
show that, long ago, the Etruscans had migrated from that region.
Andrew
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/