A detail from the sarcophagus known as the "Sarcophagus of the Married", one of the masterpieces of Etruscan art now in the Louvre Museum. New DNA evidence shows that this people was not from Anatolia, but from the steppes, where most Europeans also come from.
Herodotus recounted their origin from Anatolia, but apparently the Etruscans are from somewhere further away from Mediterranean Europe: from the steppe.
A population of outstanding civilization on the Apennine peninsula, teachers of the Romans in many ways, the Etruscans have haunted to some extent with their very demanding historical mystery. Among which their indecipherable language. A language written on the Euboean Greek model originating from the island of Evia, but a non-Indo-European language.
Their language is related to the Tyrsenian (Tyrenian) languages spoken in the Alps, but also to the Lemnian language, originating in the Aegean Sea.
According to the latest DNA data , it turns out that the Etruscans came from the steppes, and such a conclusion emerges from the study and analysis of 12 sites in Italy from the skeletons of people buried in them. They share genetic commonalities with populations that resided south of Rome and originated as pastoralists who arrived in the region from the steppes in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages. Hungary, Ukraine, the region where their origin is identified creates confusion with the fact that they used a non-Indo-European language in an area where part of the so-called Indo-European stream originates.
"This linguistic persistence combined with the genetic twist challenges simple assumptions that genes equate to language," says David Caramelli of the University of Florence.
According to him, the new data implicate more complicated scenarios involving assimilation by the Italic population, or even the evolution of the Etruscans as an autochthonous civilization of an indigenous population.