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Etruscan Origins by Morris Weiss, M.D. Clinical Professor of Medicine

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Etruscan Origins by Morris Weiss, M.D. Clinical Professor of Medicine Etruscan Origins By Morris Weiss, M.D. Clinical Professor of Medicine Department of Medicine University of Louisville School of Medicine Fellow – American College of Physicians Fellow – American College of Cardiology Fellow – American Heart Association The Etruscans, an ancient people, inhabited the Italian peninsula from early in the 9th century B.C. down to just before the Christian era. They have long occupied a special place in the eyes of Western man. They evoked descriptions from the great writers of Rome, heirs of their legacy. Livy, Virgil and Cicero among others describe the exploits, ritual and magic of the Etruscans. For almost two thousand years the secret of their existence was virtually lost. In the past one hundred ad fifty years historians and archaeologists have verified the truth as noted in the writings of Virgil and Livy. The power of the Roman Empire in its pervasive history obscured this advanced civilization hidden in the Etruscan hills. In the past few decades, archaeology has exposed a prosperous and advanced civilization well established in a loose federation of city-states by the 6th century B.C. when Rome was an insignificant village of mud and waddle huts on the hills overlooking the banks of the Tiber River. This century of discovery has revealed an immense number of artifacts in every form of the plastic arts, and they fill museums and private collections around the world. Patient scholarship has yet to unveil the exact origin of the Tuscan inhabitants and what language they spoke. 1,2,22,23,36,41,42,43,44,46,47,48,49,58,59,73,75. Our knowledge of the medicine of these early Italian peninsula inhabitants is as shrouded in mystery as their origins, but certain facts are known. These must be interpreted in the light of Greek influence on the Etruscans. 3,81,93,95,100. This is clearly seen in their art and mythology. The routes are difficult to discern, but clearly have an Oriental character. The mythology is founded on a divine and infernal trinity with parallels in the Cretan and Mycenaean myths and different from the Greco-Sicily civilization. Greek influence in Etruscan art and the adoption of the Greek alphabet between 600 B.C. and 500 B.C. is evident. Greek mythology is commonly portrayed on Etruscan Vessels and other art objects. We can safely assume Greek medical Concepts made their way to Etruria at the same time.4 The Etruscan dynasty of Tarquin kings who controlled the Roman hills overlooking the Tiber recognized this as a strategic stronghold. They took these small villages and developed them with a program of civic and religious buildings and created the city of Rome during the years 616 to 510 B.C. the Romans in the centuries that followed continued to use and import Etruscan architects and engineers. There knowledge of agriculture, metal working and many of her social and religious institutions formed the foundation of the Roman Empire and we shall see that Etruscan science; namely, dentistry, medicine, and astronomy, profoundly influenced Rome. By the 1st century B.C. the Etruscans were thoroughly defeated and widespread confiscation of their property by the Romans. They disappeared as an ethnic group and their language is no longer understood. ETRUSCAN ORIGINS The Etruscans to the ancients and moderns seemed to have little in common with their neighbors and the question of origin is raised. The ancients accepted the account of the great Greek historian, Herodotus. The Greeks called the Etruscans the Tyrrhenians and Herodotus tells us of the saga of migration from the land of Lydia in the East on the plain of Asia Minor. In the reign of Atys a great famine occurred in Lydia. After eighteen years of living in privation the king divided his people in two groups. King Atys remained home, but he put his son, Tyrrhenos, at the head of the group forced to leave. They sailed for Smyrna and following the coastland they reached the land of the Umbrians. Here they founded towns and took the name of their leader calling themselves Tyrrhenians. The Romans called them Tusci or Etruscii (hence the modern words Tuscany, the region in Italy, and Etruscans, the people.) 113 The Tyrrhenian Sea whose shores held some of the Etruscan towns retains the Greek word. According to the Greek legend this was late in the 13th century B.C. and Herodotus was writing in the mid-5th century B.C. Thus at the time of Augustus the Greek theoretician, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived in Rome argued the Etruscans were indigenous to the Italian peninsula and not natives of Lydia. His argument hinged on the fact the Lydian language, gods and laws were different form t he Etruscans. Thus the two opposing views argued ever since by scholars and various disciplines. In the 18th century Nicolas Freret and other scholars argued the Etruscans arrived in Italy as part of the Indo-European invaders that came in waves from the north after 2000 B.C. In 1885 a 7th century B.C. stele was found on the island of Lemnos inscribed in the Etruscan language. Other inscriptions have been found on the island. This island is on the route from Lydia to Etruria and is used as evidence to enhance the eastern theory of Etruscan origin. All butt focuses on the origin of the Etruscans in an attempt to explain the roots of Roman medicine. He stresses the amalgamation of three distinct peoples making up the population of central Italy at the time of the emerging Roman Empire. These were the Lydian immigrants, the indigenous population and the Northern invaders into the Italian peninsula. The omens and auguries of the Etruscans who came to dominant this area before the Romans persisted into the roman civilization. He feels Roman affinity for superstition and rituals are entrenched as it were in folklore and fold medicine with the worship of Chthonic deities who came from the amalgamation of the indigenous small, dark skinned inhabitants of the peninsula with the lighter skinned, blonder Northern invaders and the Oriental Lydian. The CIBA Foundation, a division of the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company, organized a scientific symposium to try to answer from medico biological view Etruscan origins. Barnicot and Brothwell examined the physical measurements of skulls of Etruscan origin and other ancient peoples. They compiled several charts using data from many publications. Population sample differed very little from the Etruscan measurements. Theses included Roman, Sicilian, Greek, Cretan, and Egyptian among others. Brothwell noted 4 percent carious teeth in Etruscan skulls similar to the figure reported for ancient Roman and Egyptian material.104 Resorption of the tooth sockets indicative of periodontal disease was seen in 50 percent of the skulls and 33 percent showed hypoplasia of the dental enamel. They also found no difference of Etruscan skulls with modern Italians from Tuscany. 61 no difference of Etruscan skulls with modern Italians from Tuscany. 61 Morganti in the same symposium discusses blood samples in Tuscany. There is not enough data on blood group distribution to draw any conclusion either positive or negative to throw light on the genetic influence by Etruscans on the mode4rn population. 62 Siniscalco et al showed how thalassemia, the genetic disorder of the hemoglobin molecule, could affect standard anthropologic measurements. Since tahlassemia is present in the Mediterranean Basin interpretation of the standard anthropometric measurements must be cautiously interpreted.64 Paris et al studied the serum haptoglobin types in Italian populations and was unable to arrive at any distinct population types in Tuscany. 63 all attempts to study blood groups including ABO, Rh factor, fetal hemoglobin and sickle cell hemoglobin in an attempt to genetically identify the Etruscans as a separate group came to no avail. It was noted by all that to harvest blood for ABO, Rh, fetal and sickle cell studies bones from the pelvis and femur were needed. Few of these bones are left for analysis, and fewer yet can carefully be identified as truly Etruscan. However, laboratory studies are possible on the marrow of these bones and an occasional mandible is suitable. A plea was made for the careful analysis and preservation of the long bones including the pelvis. Etruscan Language The deciphering of the Etruscan language has occupied linguists and philologists for centuries. 55,105 Long before the end of the Roman Empire the ability to read the Etruscan language was lost. About 13000 inscriptions hav3e been found and catalogued, but nine tenths are funerary and contain only the name of the deceased, his parentage and the age at death. Reading these words is easy since the Greek alphabet is used. Only ten inscriptions of any length have been found. An engraved tile discovered at Capua and another on a cippus found near Perugia consists of a hundred words.9 A mummy found in Alexandria dating from the 2nd century B.C. has handwritten on the mummy’s lined shroud 1500 words, but only 500 are different from one another. A few Etruscan words are found borrowed from other known languages, but what are needed are longer bilingual inscriptions similar to the gold tablets found in 1964 at Pyrgia the harbor for Caera. Thirty Latin-Etruscan bilingual inscriptions have been found but, unfortunately, are not as helpful as the Rosetta Stone was in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics since the translations of the Latin and the Etruscan are not word for word. The Etruscans simply adopted the Greek alphabet to their spoken language. The Greeks were close by just south of Latium in the colonies of Cumae and Pithekoussai (Ischia) near modern day Naples.
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