Sleep and Death Carrying off Slain Sarpedon (cista handle), 400-380 BC Etruscan bronze - Cleveland Museum of Art. Credit: Daderot (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons
Scholars have been fascinated for millennia by the Etruscan civilization. It flourished in central Italy's Iron Age. The Etruscans were distinguished by their extraordinary metallurgical skills, and their non-Indo European language. This led to heated debate among historians Herodotus about their geographic origins.
A new study by scholars from Germany, Italy and the U.S., along with DNA-wide data from 82 individuals from central and south Italy, spans 800 BCE to 1,000 CE, sheds light on the origins and legacy of the mysterious Etruscans. The results reveal that Etruscans were, despite having unique cultural expressions and major genetic mutations linked to historical events.
A fascinating phenomenon
An extinct language makes it difficult to understand much of what we know about Etruscan civilization. Much of what we do know is derived from later Greek and Roman writers. Herodotus's preferred hypothesis regarding their origins points to the influence ancient Greek cultural elements. This suggests that the Etruscans are descendants of migrating Anatolian and Aegean groups. Dionysius from Halicarnassus supports another hypothesis that the Etruscans were born and developed in the Bronze Age Villanovan culture, and are therefore an autochthonous people.
While archaeologists are unanimously in favor of a local Etruscan origin, there is not enough ancient DNA to support this conclusion. This study, which includes a time transect containing ancient genomic information that spans almost 2000 years, was done at 12 archaeological sites. It resolves any lingering questions regarding Etruscan origins and shows no evidence of a recent migration from Anatolia. The Etruscans shared the same genetic profile as the Latins who lived nearby Rome. A large portion of their genetic profiles came from steppe-related ancestry, which arrived in the region during Bronze Age.
Given that Indo-European languages were spread by steppe-related groups, it is not surprising that a non-Indo European Etruscan language has remained. This intriguing phenomenon will need further archaeological, historical, and genetic research.
"This linguistic persistence combined with a gene turnover challenges the simple assumption that genes equal languages. It suggests a more complicated scenario that may have involved early Italic speakers being assimiled by the Etruscan Speech Community," said David Caramelli of the University of Florence.
Map of the Italian peninsula, right with zoom-in (left), showing the maximum extent of Etruscan territories as well as the location and number for each archeological sites newly analyzed in this research. Credit: Michelle OReilly, MPI SHH
Periods of Change
The Etruscan-related gene pool was stable over at least 800 years, even though there were a few people of northern African, eastern Mediterranean and central European heritage. This spans the Iron Age period and the Roman Republic period. However, the study shows that central Italy suffered a significant genetic shift during the Roman Imperial period. This was likely due to admixture with populations from the eastern Mediterranean, which most likely included soldiers and slaves who were relocated throughout the Roman Empire.
Johannes Krause, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, says that "this genetic shift clearly depicts how the Roman Empire impacted large-scale displacement of people during a period of increased upward or downward socioeconomic mobility"
The researchers looked at the Early Middle Ages and found that northern European ancestors were spread across the Italian peninsula after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. These results indicate that Germanic migrants, such as those associated with the newly founded Longobard Kingdom might have had a significant impact on central Italy's genetic landscape.
The ancestry of the people in the Tuscany, Lazio and Basilicata regions remained relatively constant between the Early Medieval and present times, which suggests that central and southern Italy's main gene pool was formed at least 1000 years ago.
While more ancient DNA is required from Italy to support these conclusions, ancestry shifts reported in Tuscany and northern Lazio that are similar to those reported for Rome and its environs suggest that the genetic transformations of much of the Italian peninsula were influenced by historical events.
"The Roman Empire seems to have made a lasting contribution to the genetic profile of south Europeans," said Cosimo Posth of the University of Tbingen's Senckenberg Centre of Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment.
Continue reading to learn more about Bronze Age migrations that changed the societal organization and genomic landscape of Italy
More information: Science Advances (2021): The Etruscans' origin and legacy through a 2000 year archeogenomic time transect. Information from Science Advances: The origin and legacy the Etruscans through an archeogenomic 2000-year time transect (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi7673
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
