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. The
progress of studies on the Tyrrhenian substratum in the Mediterranean
and the recent decipherment of the Kaminia stele and other epygraphical
monuments from the Aegean area, all written in `tyrrhenic', that is a
language which appears to be a very archaic form of Etruscan, seems to
lead to the conclusion that Herodotus' theory of an oriental origin of
the Etruscans has an undoubtedly sound basis in historical facts. Such
facts come now to light chiefly due to the information we get from the
texts of the Lemnos documents, of which the writer has offered
translations in his recent publications, during the last years. The
historical consequences may be summarized as follows: a)
the island was inhabited by Tyrrhenians in the 8th, 7th and 6th
centuries, but probably already long before that, judging from the
archaeological evidence; b)
a protyrrhenian substratum was present in the Anatolian-Aegean area already
before the arrival of the first Indoeuropean tribes. Depending
upon the acceptance of one or the other theory maintained by scholars in
the field, this may mean anywhere between the 13th and the 3rd
millennium .Another relevant hypothesis is maintained by the eminent
Spanish linguist, F. R. Adrados. On purely linguistic basis he judges
tyrrhenic to "be a very primitive anatolian indoeuropean language.
Its formation is attributed to such a remote antiquity, much older than
the first nesic texts, to justify its many discrepancies respect to
these texts. The
second part of this work is dedicated to the ethnic of the Pelasgians,
with the conclusion that they were a people distinct from the
Tyrrhenians, probably belonging to the indo-european family of languages,
but in the course of time largely amalgamated with them, to a point to
form a koiné which appeared
to strangers as expression of a unique population. |