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April 4, 2007
Genetics and the Etruscans
Did the Etruscans really immigrate to Italy from Anatolia, just like Herodotus says?
Read this New York Times article and see what geneticists are saying. Here's an excerpt:
“The overwhelming proportion of archaeologists would regard the evidence for eastern origins of the Etruscans as negligible,” said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts Center for Etruscan Studies.Because Italians take pride in the Roman empire and the Etruscan state that preceded it, asserting a foreign origin for the Etruscans has long been politically controversial in Italy. Massimo Pallottino, the dean of modern Etruscan studies in Italy who died in 1995, held that because no one questioned that the French, say, developed in France, the same assumption should be made about the Etruscans. “Someone who had a different position didn’t get a job in archaeology,” said Antonio Torroni, a geneticist at the University of Pavia.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at April 4, 2007 6:24 AM