Evidence for Caucasian origins of Etruscans

[vettor]

https://www.univie.ac.at/raetica/wiki/Script

The Raeti (find places in green on the map) appear to have learned the art of writing from the Veneti rather than the Etruscans (Schumacher 2004: 312–316). While Raetic inscriptions are only known from the 5th century onward, at a time when Etruscan inscriptions have appeared in the very North (see above), some features of the Raetic script strongly suggest a Venetic source.

[R.Rocca]

Too bad that the important finds of this study have turned into yet another Etruscan discussion.

Copper Age Remedello and Otzi were almost entirely EEF but had some minor CHG. Based on their I2a1-M26, I think their only logical linguistic assignment is Paleo-Sardinian. Bell Beaker likely introduced Italo-Celtic into Northern Italy from Central Europe (upper Danube). If Reich found both EHG and CHG in Early Bronze Age Sicily, it means Bell Beaker reached that far. This is not surprising given that flat occiput brachycephalic-shaped skulls are found in some Sicilian Bell Beaker skeletons.

Sardinia seems to have been the last holdout as CHG did not reach there until the Middle Bronze Age, but they did not have a linguistic impact as the Sardinian language and I2a1-M26 both survived until the Roman period. What little EHG there is in Sardinia likely didn't start trickling in until the Roman period.

[R.Rocca]

Too bad that the important finds of this study have turned into yet another Etruscan discussion.

Copper Age Remedello and Otzi were almost entirely EEF but had some minor CHG. Based on their I2a1-M26, I think their only logical linguistic assignment is Paleo-Sardinian. Bell Beaker likely introduced Italo-Celtic into Northern Italy from Central Europe (upper Danube). If Reich found both EHG and CHG in Early Bronze Age Sicily, it means Bell Beaker reached that far. This is not surprising given that flat occiput brachycephalic-shaped skulls are found in some Sicilian Bell Beaker skeletons.

Sardinia seems to have been the last holdout as CHG did not reach there until the Middle Bronze Age, but they did not have a linguistic impact as the Sardinian language and I2a1-M26 both survived until the Roman period. What little EHG there is in Sardinia likely didn't start trickling in until the Roman period.

This line in the abstract is rather curious:

In Sicily, during the Early Bronze Age, and possibly earlier, we found
evidence for admixture with groups carrying both these ancestries.

I assume that they are considering Bell Beaker a Copper Age culture and Castelluccio an Early Bronze Age culture?

[IronHorse]

CHG in Sardinia is mediated from the Aegean, the Sherden, one of the sea peoples, have connections to the Aegean:

English archaeologist Margaret Guido (1912–1994)[22] concludes the evidence for the Sherden, Shekelesh or Teresh coming from the western Mediterranean is flimsy. Guido in 1963 suggests that the Sherden may ultimately derive from Ionia, in the central west coast of Anatolia, in the region of Hermos, east of the island of Chios. It is suggested that Sardis, and the Sardinian plain nearby, may preserve a cultural memory of their name.

Until recently[dubious – discuss] it was assumed that Sardis was only settled in the period after the Anatolian and Aegean Dark Age, but American excavations have shown the place was settled in the Bronze Age and was a site of a significant population.[citation needed] If this is so, the Sherden, pushed by Hittite expansionism of the Late Bronze Age and prompted by the famine that affected this region at the same time, may have been pushed to the Aegean Islands, where shortage of space led them to seek adventure and expansion overseas. It is suggested that from here they may have later migrated to Sardinia. Guido suggests that

[if a] few dominating leaders arrived as heroes only a few centuries before Phoenician trading posts were established, several features of Sardinian prehistory might be explained as innovations introduced by them: Oriental types of armour, and fighting perpetuated in the bronze representation of warriors several centuries later; the arrival of the Cypriot copper ingots of the Serra Ilixi type; the sudden advance in and inventiveness of design of the Sardinian nuraghes themselves at about the turn of the first millennium; the introduction of certain religious practices such as the worship of water in sacred wells – if this fact was not introduced [later] by the Phoenician settlers.[23]

It has been stated that the only weapons and armour similar to those of the Sherden found in Sardinia, have been dated to several centuries after the period of the Sea Peoples, which mainly covered the 13th–12th centuries BCE. If the theory that the Sherden moved to Sardinia only after their defeat around 1178–1175 BCE by Ramesses III is true, then it could be inferred from this that the finds in Sardinia are survivals of earlier types of weapons and armour.[dubious – discuss] On the other hand, if the Sherden only moved into the Western Mediterranean in the ninth century, associated perhaps with the movement of early Etruscans and even Phoenician seafaring peoples into the Western Mediterranean at that time, this would solve the problem of the late appearance of their military gear in Sardinia; but it would remain unknown where they were located between the period of the Sea Peoples and their eventual appearance in Sardinia.

[alexfritz]

thats because they raided it not because they derived from it
holy-wells and oxhide-ingots are all set in the late bronze-age aka within the sea peoples time yet we now know that the CHG rich geneflow/migration is set earlier into the middle bronze-age nullifying aegaen contact within a sea people context; also by all details known today(post m.guido) the oxhide-ingots were not contact but very much loot from the east med area, underscoring the sherden/srdn from sardinia rather than opposite and above all identified as such srdn by the phoenicians on the nora stone; the latest info def turns it around it was a much earleir period than the sea-peoples time;

[R.Rocca]

CHG in Sardinia is mediated from the Aegean, the Sherden, one of the sea peoples, have connections to the Aegean:

Given the high surviving I2a1-M26 and EEF plus the survival or their language until the Roman period, I doubt there were many that bested the ancient Sardinians.

[talljimmy0]

Brand new data from Italy. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/13/494898

Expected farmer and steppe ancestry but with detection of later waves originating from the general Transcaucasia area. This is in line with the “Iran related” signal found in Bronze Age Sardinia, and best preserved in the Mediterranean, and central to southern Italy.

Linguistically and culturally, who can we identify in this CHG related group as they entered Italy circa the Bronze Age? Steppe (IE) was coming from the north. It’s not Mycaneans and later Greeks, because the Etruscans were already. The CHG wave, before setting further west, landed in Crete and Sardinia.