Etruscans

[David L. White]

> David L. White (10 Apr 2001) wrote:

>> Yes.  I believe both descriptions might be applied to the civilization of
>> Troy, and I see nothing inherently contradictory or comical about this.
>> More to the point, any bearers of Eastern Mediterranean civilization,
>> however generic, would have been impressive to the people of Italy before
>> these began (with the Etruscans) to ascend to the same level.

> Fine. I don't claim that an areally modest civilization can't colonize and
> exert political control over a much larger region. But I'm afraid we may
> be losing track of the linguistic issues. What started this whole thread was
> my objection to the theory that the Etruscan _language_ came by sea from the
> East,

        Obviously colonizers, or exerters of control, will bring their
language along with them, having little choice in the matter.

> and the startlingly widespread willingness to misinterpret the Lemnian
> inscriptions as evidence for this theory.

        I agree that the Lemnian inscriptions are too late to have much to
do with anything, one way or another.  But we should be wary of falling into
the logical fallacy whereby the negation of a propostion is regarded as
proven if the original positive is unproven.  Unproven is not disproven, and
the burden of proof cannot be arbitrarily placed on one side or the other.

> If you think the Etruscan language came from Troy or its North Aegean allies,
> you should present more than hand-waving arguments about what High Culture
> can do.

        I fail to perceive any "hand-waving", beyond what is unavoidable
given that the material culture of Troy was not (somebody out there please
correct me if I am wrong) distinctive, and thus would leave no easily
discernable trace anywhere.  I can see how this might seem very convenient
(I would say "unfalsifiable", but that would be invoking a square wheel, now
wouldn't it?) to those having a prior committment to the nativist view, but
it is also, simply put, true.

>> There is evidence that the Trojans were a small bunch, in the fact that
>> their armies are described as being multi-lingual, whereas the Greeks were
>> pretty clearly multilingual.  (Now just where in the Iliad is that?)
>> Clearly they were not able to match the Greeks in putting fellow-speakers
>> (so to speak) in the field, and their forces were composed largely of the
>> tributary forces of other states, of other languages.  This does not suggest
>> that the native Trojans were ever a large group.  (Nor are they very
>> distinctive archeologically, as far as I know.)

> I'm not sure what you're getting at here. If the native Trojans constituted a
> small elite dominating a polyglot assortment of other peoples (which is
> perfectly plausible per se, given the opportunity for acquiring great wealth
> by controlling traffic on the Hellespont, and between Europe and Anatolia),
> and they or their descendants set up shop in Etruria, one would expect the
> linguistic result to be a Trojan superstrate in the native language, like the
> Norman element in English or the Doric in Latin (poena, machina, etc.).

        There is no firm expectation when an elite is of one language and
the mass of the population is not.   The case of the Turks in Anatolia seems
fairly well established by modern genetics:  they were a fairly small elite,
and the pre-Turkic population simply converted to Turkish over time.  (A lot
of time in this case, but Greek was a very "proud" language, as "Villanovan"
would not have been.)   I may note as well (again) the case of Latin
America, which has largely been Iberianized in language despite the
population being (with a few exceptions) largely Amerindian by genetic
descent.

> OTOH the claim that Etruscan originated as a creole between Trojan and the
> native speech, or as a Mischsprache based on tributary languages, can't be
> taken seriously.

        Which has something to do with why I have not made it.

> The bottom line is that whatever happened _politically_ in Etruria during
> 1200-700 BCE, the _linguistic_ community of Etruscan-speakers remained
> intact. Claims that the entire community immigrated en masse from the East
> run afoul of archaeology _and_ linguistics.

        En petite masse.  (My French is for reading knowledge only, so
please forgive me if I did not get that right.)   A large migration would
probably be logistically implausible, among other things.  I agree that the
native population was not expelled or exterminated, and that there is indeed
substantial archeoligical continuity.  But I thought we had agreed that such
a population, as it went over to Etruscan over a period of perhaps several
centuries (or perhaps less; stranger things have happened), would quite
probably leave no inscriptional trace.  Place names are another question,
but recent assertions that conquerors re-name places only when they have
bureaucrats along for the ride are clearly falsified by the case of
Anglo-Saxon England (among others, no doubt), where they conquerors surely
renamed a great many water-courses (whatever we think had happened to the
natives), despite not being notably well-supplied with bureaucrats.

>> I am not exactly the only person to say that Etruscan civilization did not
>> arise semi-miraculously in Tuscany as a result of Greek and Phonecian
>> contacts that can only be shown to have been significant in Campania.  Since
>> a date of 1200 is too early for real Etruscans in Italy, I would imagine
>> that most migrationists must posit an interlude somewhere in the northern
>> Aegean, or not far from it.

> By "real Etruscans" I presume you mean "bearers of Etruscan culture such
> as one finds in a coffee-table book". I don't deny the migration of
> substantial cultural elements from the NE Mediterranean to Etruria, without
> which the coffee-table books would be vastly different. But again we're
> losing sight of the linguistics.

        The linguistics does more harm than good to the nativist cause, as
/turs^/ (as in the "turshas", reputedly from Anatolias) is surely closer to
/turs-/ (as in "Tursenoi") than most of the Pelasgian phytonyms recently
noted are to each other.  And at least we can explain the small variation
seen, as Greek did not have /s^/.   No such luck (for the most part) with
Pelasgian phytonyms.
        While on the subject I may note that the existence of "coffee" vs.
"cafe", and "chocolate" vs. "cocoa" is not generally taken to "prove" the
existence of a vastly-spread sub-strate language wherever these words are
found.  Phytonyms can easily be wander-words, though I must admit I know
nothing about the uses (if any) of the various "Pelasgian" plants in
question.

> To a limited extent we can peel back the cultural superstrate by looking at
> the Etruscan pantheon, minus the obvious Hellenic figures (Aplu, Artumes,
> etc.) and Etruscanized Olympians (Tin, Turan, etc.). We are left with such
> deities as Aisu, Calu, Cautha, Cel, Leinth, Manth, Vanth, and Veltha.  Their
> names are evidently native Etruscan, and they were not (to any of our
> knowledge) imported from the Aegean, the Troad, or greater Anatolia.

        That is a good point, but not, I think, given the scanty nature of
the evidence, necesarily decisive.  What do we really know about Trojan, or
Turshan religion?   I would expect it to be a mix of native, Aegean, and
Anatolian elements.

> Having dismissed (correctly I hope) the Eastern sea-route,

        So now "one" is not only attorney but judge and jury too?  How nice,
to triumph so convincingly through simple fiat.  Maybe it works for you, but
when I, in my real job as house-husband, simply declare the dishes clean, my
wife tends to doubt that very much has truly been accomplished.

> one can still ask when and by which route the Etruscan-speaking community
> came to Etruria.

        Why bother?  Why can't they have arisen from the original
post-agricultural population of the area?  And what is gained by dismissing
one route as supportable only by "hand-waving", when all other possible
routes are even more mysterious?  Ignotium per ignotius indeed.  Such an
approach cries out for the creation of a term more vigorous than
"hand-waving". I do hereby officially suggest "hand-flapping."

Dr. David L. White