Sul sostrato tirrenico nell’area egeo-anatolica

Abstract

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 six 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 Tyrrhenian 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.