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Etruscans (History)
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Leon



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Wait a second. This thread was supposed to be about the Etruscans, but the last two pages have been all about Moscow-burning and Carthage-salting. Even got caught up in it myself. Any objections if I go back to the original intent?

In 1961 a French investigator named Zacharie Mayani published a study of the Etruscan language, Les Etrusques commencent à parler, which appeared in an English translation by Patrick Evans, titled 'The Etruscans Begin to Speak', in 1962 (Souvenir Press). 'Etruscan language' means mostly inscriptions in murals or paintings on shields, the backs of mirrors and so forth, on sculptures, pots and other objects, and 'The Book of the Mummy', which Mayani describes as 'a sort of calendar in which ritual prescriptions (the sacrifice of an animal...prayer; the pouring of libations, and so on) are interspersed with expressions of encouragement to the dead'. Not an extensive literature.

His method is to systematically compare Etruscan vocabulary with Albanian - that is, the Illyrian nucleus of the present-day language, which has quite a few loan words from Greek, Italian, Slavic languages and others. He notes that this approach had been tried half-heartedly by others before him, then abandoned. So it is not surprising that later authors on the subject either dismiss the notion of this link, or are ignorant of it and simply say that the Etruscan language remains a mystery apart from the decipherment of a few isolated words.

In any case, what makes Mayani's case convincing is that the Albanian-based interpretations are confirmed by the connection with pictures and objects: the inscriptions in a mural depicting the kitchen of a banquet talk about the guests' demands for certain kinds of food and are the words of the figures represented, two serving-maids and a cook; a wine-vessel is inscribed with an apostrophe about the virtues of drinking wine, etc. Colloquial stuff for the most part. In addition, the Etruscan-Albanian correspondences are very close, not the usual stretching and bending over backwards to make the conjecture work, and his understanding of Albanian declensions, conjugations and grammatical structures is apparently quite exact, and from that he is able to make educated guesses about Etruscan case-forms, verbal modes, word order and other grammatical matters.
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Leon



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So what does this mean regarding the speculation about their origins? Were they Turks, Basques, Indonesians who sneaked up through the Red Sea when nobody was looking, Egyptians who mixed with Umbrians, lost Celts, I mean Goidelics, I mean 'Celts' who got side-tracked from their meanderings from the eastern Mediterranean up to the Old Sod and back to Central Megalithica and on across to Polish Galicia about the time the ice was just starting to retreat from southern Norway? or none of the above, or all of the above??

The Greeks said or better said, some Greek or other said the Etruscans came from Asia Minor and were an offshoot of the Lydians. A relation is not difficult to find in the names: Lydians - Lyrians - Illyrians (see previous post). Mayani thinks this is correct. However, what makes more sense to me, and this accords fully with the AE supposition that people live - in this case lived - where they 'always' did, or fairly near ('always' is a very long time, but anyway...), is that they came down from the Appenines, and that the other Illyrians, who turn up in the Balkans and probably include, says Mayani, the Macedonians and the Pelasgians, came from the Alps, which form a continuity with the Appenines. The Rhaetians, also from the Alps, were certainly, on linguistic evidence, also Illyrians. This would mean that some Illyrians continued on to Asia Minor to become the Lydians.

And when I assert that all these people originated in mountainous areas, I mean after the Great Flood, around 3100 BC., which destroyed all of humanity living below roughly 2000 metres on the western side of European mountains, somewhat lower on the eastern side, and somewhat further down in areas of the earth farther removed from the Atlantic, and of course left survivors higher up. More on this later.
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Mick Harper
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From what you say, and from general THOBR principles, one would have to say that Etruscan is simply "alphabetised Albanian". The general point about them being from "around there" certainly points to this and, one might add, Albanian is one of the (only?) remaining major modern Mediterranean languages that does not have an alphabetised form. An anomalous gap that would thus be neatly filled.

There is a strong AE aspect to all this. Albanian (and Albanians) are utterly despised by both Greeks and Italians so for Etruscan to be Albanian is for them literally unthinkable.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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One of the major dialects of Albanian is "Tosk", which isn't a million miles away (etymologically speaking) from "Etruscan".

On the subject of Albanian; it is said to be a unique branch of Indo-European, but does anybody know whether the syntax is typically Indo-European.... or is it somewhat atypical like Latin?
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Leon



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Mick Harper wrote:
Albanian is one of the (only?) remaining major modern Mediterranean languages that does not have an alphabetised form.


Albanian has been written with the Latin alphabet since 1918. Before that, if I'm not mistaken, it used some version of the Arabic alphabet introduced by the Turks. My "El Pais" encyclopaedia, not the best in the world but not totally unreliable on matters like this, tells me that the first literary documents are 15th-century liturgical texts. Some noted 20th-century Albanian writers, noted there at least, are Lasgush Poradeci, Gjergj Fishta, Anton �ako, Ernest Koliqi and Fogion Postoli, still the encyclopaedia's version. Also of course, Ismail Kadare, who is nowadays something of an international hit, occasional Nobel Prize candidate and all that.
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Mick Harper
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that the first literary documents are 15th-century

This is of course the usual sort of age for the first demotic writing for most European languages and has nothing to do with earlier alphabetised ventures. Italian, for instance, is not much earlier and Greek a good deal later. The Albanians can be proud they antedated the Germans and (probably, just about) the Scotch.
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Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Mick wrote:
But even so I've never heard of writing dying out 'within a generation' just because the new mob didn't rate it. Why, it's almost as if you are grasping at straws.

Let's suppose the invaders came from the North Atlantic coast and the British Isles. A warrior society with a Druidic hierarchy with a prohibition on writing that was the core of their society. They had recently been deposed by opponents who shared their social ethic but not their political ambitions. There was a massive conflict and their control of the prime resource of the day (Bronze) was usurped after a 10 year conflict that saw their prime city Ilium destroyed. They took to their boats as they were a mariner class first and foremost although horses were also part of their culture.

Their opponents now controlled the Atlantic coast from the Baltic to the Portugal so they were forced to flee from Britain into the Med. These Sea People, who knew the Med intimately as mariner/traders, for that is where most of their trade lay, were knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of the Med cultures as they had traded with them over centuries. Previously they came as traders but now the game had changed; now they came as homeless invaders. It would have been rich pickings sacking cities they had formerly traded with. They controlled the sea and who controlled the sea controlled trade.

Cretans, Peloponnesians, Berbers, Anatolians, Levantines even the great land of Kaftor felt their wrath. The lands we now know these places by -- Minos, Mycenae, Carthage, Troy, Biblos and Egypt were all given these names by the invaders -- placenames transferred from their former lives.

They tried to maintain their social ethic, their gods, their warrior culture and their prohibition on the written word. But it was increasingly difficult. Formerly they had been part of a single culture shared by different tribes. There had always been tribal conflicts but their underlying cultural similarities had always seen conflicts settled until the Bronze ran out. Here in their new world they were a single tribe that shared no cultural similarities with many different cultures. Eventually they were absorbed into the cultures they conquered as the Anglo-Saxons/Vikings/Normans were in Britain. After several hundred years their ban on writing was pointless; they had become so absorbed into a dozen different cultures that they no longer spoke their original language. Their culture, religion, their bards and Druids were no longer relevant. Their history and their gods were absorbed into the mainstream as the classic Greek gods we know today.
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Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
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The Dark Ages are called Dark Ages because there is no WRITTEN evidence.

If no one is allowed to write there is no written evidence.

The question no one seems to ask is just how many people could read and write in ancient times. The evidence suggests not too darn many.

How hard would it be to control those who did?

Not that hard if you really wanted to or your cultural beliefs prohibited it. In a Druid society writing was punishable by death.

Not a bad incentive to down pencils.

The same holds true for DA of the Middle Ages. After the plague of Justinian almost half of the world's population was dead. The lion's share of those lived in literate societies, monasteries, army barracks and other densely populated area. Again how many people in the Middle Ages could read and write. Not that many and those who did lived at Ground Zero of the plague central.

In Constantinople over 70% of the population died. There weren't enough able bodies to bury the dead ones so they were stacked on to rafts and ferried out into the Bosporus and dumped into the sea.

The Aksum Empire in Ethiopia fell, the Himyar Empire in Yeman fell, the Persian Empire fell, the Northern Empire in China fell.

Those who didn't die of the plague died of starvation and disease. Trade came to a standstill. Ships that were suspected of being carriers were refused entry to ports or sunk if they tried. Gildas and Bede write of ghost towns devoid of human life and cattle wandering amongst unharvested crops; cities and towns that were never rebuilt.

It's a bit hard to have a written history when almost all of the infinitesimally small clique of scribes and writers are dead.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Komorikid wrote:
The Dark Ages are called Dark Ages because there is no WRITTEN evidence.


Oh I am afraid the situation is far more dire than that. There is little more archeological evidence.

The question no one seems to ask is just how many people could read and write in ancient times. The evidence suggests not too darn many.


And yet Julius Caesar was kind enough to leave us his autobiography.

There's no shortage of published work in the ancient world. Then, according to the orthodoxy, things get worse. A lot worse.

Not that hard if you really wanted to or your cultural beliefs prohibited it. In a Druid society writing was punishable by death.


Fortunately, the "Druids" did not control the whole world. So they can't be used to explain a world-wide phenomenon.

It's a bit hard to have a written history when almost all of the infinitesimally small clique of scribes and writers are dead.

Plenty of art though. Painters were immune to disease I guess.

(Except for the truly talented ones who could paint with perspective.)
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Ishmael wrote:
Komorikid wrote:
The Dark Ages are called Dark Ages because there is no WRITTEN evidence.

Oh I am afraid the situation is far more dire than that. There is little more archeological evidence.

'Evidence' is around but gets unthinkingly labelled (for example, look how many 'Iron Age hillforts' we seem to have accumulated by now). "Dark Ages" is unenlightened, the wrong sort of Christianity, not RC but Celtic.

In a Druid society writing was punishable by death.

Fortunately, the "Druids" did not control the whole world. So they can't be used to explain a world-wide phenomenon.

The 'Druids' for want of a better term were illiterate weren't they? Not the same as uneducated I hasten to add before being flayed. The appearance of Celtic runes or Ogham is part and parcel of the spread of the Celtic monasticism I thought?
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