The Mixed People of Etruscans Giampietro Fabbri+× +Eubios Study Centre, Bologna, Italy ×Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy
[email protected] ABSTRACT – In this work the Etruscan people is studied as a confederation of tribes having different origins. Ancient and modern geographical names and historical people names of Italy are analysed in order to distinguish the main Etruscan lienages. Some migration hypotheses are introduced. KEYWORDS – Etruscans, Confederations, Name analysis, Migrations. INTRODUCTION In a recent study1 introducing a new diffusion theory, Etruscans have been presented as a mixed people composed of tribes speaking different languages and descending from two disticnt lineages. The aim of this work is to develop and validate that theory by finding traces of the two lineages in ancient and modern geographical names of Italy. By observing the time and space distributions of ancient Euro-Asian ethnonyms, toponyms, and eponyms, it is possible to distinguish some migration waves departing from Central Asia. Among the migrating peoples, some tribes can be individuated, whose name can be derived from those of two distinct ancestors: *Thyrgwaunas and *Gwaulgwaunas (Fig. 1). According to the cited study, these two lineages were originally opposite and fighting each other, but successively interacted and joined into a confederation of peoples. In the west direction, these peoples started to move in the second half of the III millennium BC and settled around the Aegean area mainly during the period from the great migration of the XIX-XVIII century BC to that of the XIII-XII century. In course of the latter, they were pressed towards Central Europe and whence they spread to the peripheral areas of the continent.