There are certain words, Gorbachov says, that could only have been borrowed from the Lydians, and their neighbors the Louvians. Similarities between the Etruscan language and certain languages of Bronze-Age western Turkey are uncanny. Sebastià Giralt via FlickrOver the past 15 years, linguists have uncovered tantalizing clues.

But many of Herodotus' stories don't add up, says Gorbachov. So this Etruscan story tended to be dismissed too.īut Gorbachov says Etruscan scholars have taken a second look at it - to the extent that some have become “semi-convinced that it might be true.” It’s unclear which group this scenario actually favored, but according to Herodotus, the castaways eventually ended up in Italy. Eventually the king, “divided the people into two groups, and made them draw lots, so that the one group should remain and the other leave the country.”

Their language may be dead, but people are still using Etruscan words today - words like “people.” And linguistics is just one tool scholars are using to figure out whether the ancient historian Herodotus may have been right about how the Etruscans first reached Italy.Īccording to Herodotus, the story goes something like this: Around 800 BC, there was a famine in Lydia (in what is now western Turkey). “So they are the teachers of our teachers.” “A lot of what the Romans did, a lot of their beliefs, came from the Etruscans,” says Gorbachov. They passed along elements of Greek civilization - like the invention of alphabetic writing - and essentially helped plant the seeds of Western culture. The answer, according to Yaroslav Gorbachov, a linguistics professor at the University of Chicago: “The Etruscans are basically the teachers of the Romans.” Gorbachov explains that the Etruscans were the first kings of Rome and were hugely influential on the Romans. Cini describes the Etruscans as “a very charming ancient population.”īut there were hundreds of groups migrating around Europe at the same time, and the Etruscan language has been dead for more than a millennium.

Etruscan Explorers by Warren Dexter