A general topic concerning Italian history from Pre-Historix times to the end of the Samnite Wars. I myself have a few questions regarding Italy before Roman domanance.
Where exactly did the Etruscans come from and why did they die out during imperial times?
What relationship did the Etruscans have with the neighboring Celts?
Lastly, aside from Magna Graecia, what role did Italy have, if any, in importance to events in the near east prior to the rise of the Romans?
>>1002328
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrsenian_languagesii
interestingly some linguists connect it with tyrsenian from the east in the aegean
it may be a pre-indo-european neolithic farmer language that survived the indo-european invasions
>>1002328
Is Sardinia welcome?
>>1002340
Eja
>>1002353
WE
>>1002328
>Where exactly did the Etruscans come from and why did they die out during imperial times?
People will try to tell you where they came from with certainty but the reality is no one can know for sure and every theory has serious holes in it. All we can say is that they weren't Indo-European and they were there before the Romans. They died out because of Rome. The Etruscans ruled early Rome, they dominated much of Rome, and when Rome finally beat them and subjugated them, Rome had a hate boner and tried to write them out of history. Like Carthage, we would know a lot more about the Etruscans if the Romans weren't so mad about being ruled/beaten by them in the past.
Etruscans seemed to have had pretty good relations with the Celts, much of their equipment is shared and shows evidence of a lot of trading, they used many Celtic helmets and weaponry, but we can't ignore the huge Greek influence on the Etruscans either.
>>1002362
One of Augustus' closet friends was Etruscan.
>>1002328
> Where exactly did the Etruscans come from
No one knows for sure. There is a possibility they were the original, pre-IE Italian population.
> why did they die out during imperial times?
They didn't, they just get assimilated, like everyone else in Italy.
> What relationship did the Etruscans have with the neighboring Celts?
You mean "Celt invaders", because Celts invaded Italy in historical times, in 5th century BC, IIRC. They mostly fought with each other for control over Po valley.
> Lastly, aside from Magna Graecia, what role did Italy have, if any, in importance to events in the near east prior to the rise of the Romans?
None? Etruscans had some sort of alliance with Carthage, I don't think others have any foreign policy outside Italy.
>>1002410
Well by then it had been several centuries and they stopped caring, the same way there was eventually a Carthaginian emperor.
>>1002328
>Etruscans
Dirty pre-Slavs do not talk about them.
>>1002362
> Rome had a hate boner and tried to write them out of history.
This is bullshit, considering Roman Emperor Claudius wrote History Of Etruria:
>Besides the history of Augustus' reign that caused him so much grief, his major works included an Etruscan history and eight volumes on Carthaginian history, as well as an Etruscan dictionary and a book on dice playing. (Claudius is actually the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan.)
Too bad it didn't survive.
>>1002328
The Etruscans evolved from the native Villonvian culture, genetically they were native, I don't think ancient historians' theories are worth anything since the Greeks had already forgotten about the Hitties with whom they had so many contacts and even went to war with, the Romans and Greeks constanly made up myth to explain the origins of ancient civilizations and ethnicities, half of the Mediterranean populations and more descend from Trojans according to them.
According to Herodotus the Georgians (people from Colchis at the time) were Egyptians and the Phoenicians came from the red sea.
I would take everything a Greek or Roman historians says about anything that happened before 500 bc with a grain of salt.
>>1002515
Also the famous Lemnian stele, the only archeological "argument" from an Anatolian origins of the Tyrrenians, is dated to 500-400 bc from what i remember, while the earliest Etruscan documents are a couple centuries older, so if anything it only suggests Etruscans visited the island, as merchants or maybe pirates (they had a reputation for that).
Furthermore all the Anatolian civilizations and populations that we know of were Indo European since the Bronze age, even the western ones such as the Luwians.
Also what about Etruscan culture in Lydia?
There is nothing that lets us think of a civilization that could have generated the Etruscan one there.
The western coast of Anatolia was interested by Myceneans colonization during the bronze age and by some native city states like Troy.
Again, the only documents in ancient pre-greek Anatolian are indo-european.
>>1002541
Picking up this theme, Bonfante (2002) states:[9]
...the history of the Etruscan people extends ... from c. 1200 to c. 100 BC. Many sites of the chief Etruscan cities of historical times were continuously occupied from the Iron Age Villanovan period on. Much confusion would have been avoided if archaeologists had used the name 'Proto-Etruscan' .... For in fact the people ... did not appear suddenly. Nor did they suddenly start to speak Etruscan.
>>1002328
>that celt block
Venetians, Rhaetians and Ligurians (genetically anyway, they were culturally influenced only) weren't celts tho.
Also Northern Italy in the Alps was Germanic until Charlemagne ruined it
>>1002415
>None? Etruscans had some sort of alliance with Carthage, I don't think others have any foreign policy outside Italy.
Yeah depending on your perspective, Italy was the same backwater that the rest of the central/western Med was at the time. They had a bunch of colonies popping up from the Phoenicians and later Greeks, but Italy itself was more of a branch off of the major east-west trade routes than a major hub.
>>1002577
We're talking about pre-Roman Italy, fuck off.
>>1002580
> Italy was the same backwater that the rest of the central/western Med was at the time.
It really wasn't, the Etruscan civilization flourishing in the centre and part of the North.
Sardinia had the Nuragic civilization which built the first statues in Europe and thousands of monuments that the Greeks admired, it was very active trade-wise before the Carthaginians took over half of the island and even then it kept flourishing.
>>1002429
>This is bullshit, considering Roman Emperor Claudius wrote History Of Etruria:
Rome lasted for a long time, the period when Rome was anti Etruscan was the middle republic. They sought to deny the heavy influence the Etruscans actually had on their society.
>>1002609
That's why I added the "depending on your perspective" qualifier. From the perspective of the "bigger" civilizations to the east, the Tyrhennian Sea region was just a fairly large loop branching off from the trader routes that were primarily focused on places further west like Tartessos.
>>1002662
>Tartessos
Do you realize that no city of Tartessos was ever found, even found a shit ton of archeologists looked for it in the "designated" region, right?
Italy and Sardinia were considerably more advanced with bigger and way older settlements than anything in the area of Tartessos.
Most modern archeologists suggest that "Tartessos" came from the word Tarshish, which probably indicated a generally area where phoenicians took their copper and silver from, namely Iberia and Sardinia.
This is why ancient Greek authors located it sometimes in iberia, sometimes elsewhere like in Sardinia (they said they asked the king of Tartesses permission to settle in Corsica for instance).
Also ironically the only document with the name Tarshish on it was found in Sardinia and is much older than any document ever found in the Iberian Peninsula (The Nora stone).
It was only Romans who located it in Iberia after Tartessos was completely gone for centuries, another myth created by ancient historians such as the Lydian origins of Etruscans of the phoenicians coming from Eritrea.
Can anyone tell me why Corsica isn't controlled by anyone on that map?
>>1002707
Probably because it's not counted as Italy. The eastern Adriatic coast ain't colored either.
>>1002694
sarhaddon, Aššur Babylon E (AsBbE) (=K18096 and EŞ6262 in the British Museum and Istanbul Archaeological Museum, respectively) preserves "All the kings from the lands surrounded by sea- from the country Iadanana (Cyprus) and Iaman, as far as Tarshish, bowed to my feet." Here, Tarshish is certainly a large island, and cannot be confused with Tarsus (Thompson and Skaggs 2013).
>>1002745
[a. He fought (?)]
[b. with the Sardinians (?)]
1. at Tarshish
2. and he drove them out.
3. Among the Sardinians
4. he is [now] at peace,
5. (and) his army is at peace:
6. Milkaton son of
7. Shubna (Shebna), general
8. of (king) Pummay.
Tell me about the Ligures, there's seems to be a veil of mystery/fascination around them.
>>1002694
Really? I'd read that there was Punic colonies in Iberia, including places like Gades/Gadir/Cadiz. The idea of a great civilization in the area's probably an exaggeration, but from what I understand there were major trade colonies in the region.
>celts in north-east italy
>>1002838
They were kings
>>1002842
> I'd read that there was Punic colonies in Iberia, including places like Gades/Gadir/Cadiz.
Yes, punic colonies were present in Iberia, but that area in particular had no big settlements, Gadir is not in the area where Tartessos should have been according to the historians.
Also it's not correct to call Gadir a punic colony, I'd rather call it a phoenician colony, since it's at least as old as Carthage (Just like Sulky in Sardinia is older than Carthage itself).
>>1002838
proto jews
>>1002848
>>1002887
what did they mean by this?
>>1002866
>no big settlements
then why do modern moortugese and spaniards look north african?
>>1003909
I'm talking about the area around where Tartessos should have been, not the entirety of Iberia, eitherway Spaniards probably already looked like that before the phoenicians came, also the phoenicians aren't North African but Levantine people.
>>1002429
That merely proves his point. Claudius was disliked by virtually every senator because of his eccentricity, club foot and general lack of Virtus. He was the outlier amongst all the Julio-Claudians.
>>1002866
What exactly is the story behind Tartessos, then? The book I first read about it in only makes passing references to it and generally talks as if Gadir/Gades is Tartessos.
And sorry for the mixup with punic/phoenician - I assumed those were interchangeable.
>>1004026
>What exactly is the story behind Tartessos, then?
It's a semi mythical city, the word Tartessos came fro, Tharshish that according to Cross (expert on phoenician) and some other scholars meant "refinery" town.
It might have been a precise location too, the Assyrians mention it as an island as I've reported here:
>>1002745
The bible mentioned Tharish too several times, furthermore a stele found in Nora, Sardinia, dated to 850 bc, one of the earliest documents in the Western med mentiones Tharshish.
Later Greeks sailors around 600-500 bc noticed it and located it in different places in the Western med, some in Iberia, some elsewhere (possibly around Sardinia).
Later, after tartessos had "disappeared" from the sources for several centuries the Roman writers located it in iberia mostly, while some other writers laters located it in Anatolia (Tarsus)
Also they've found some documents dating to the 6-5th century bc in South western Spain but Tharshish predates them by a couple century.
didn't Latin eat all its kinsman Italic languages, and leave none left but itself?
Sulla did nothing wrong by eliminating the Samnites
Plutarch said the Etruscan came from sardinia
>>1005530
But the last Samnite war was in 270 bc
