The Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study

The term Indo-European is essentially a linguistic term denoting a language family with a large number of branches: Indic, Iranian, Tocharian, Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic. A small group of unaffiliated languages (Phyrgian, Thracian, Macedonian, Illyrian, Venetic, Messapic and Lusitanian) is also considered... [continue reading]

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci. The origins of the Etruscans are lost in prehistory. The main hypotheses are that they are indigenous, probably stemming from the Villanovan culture, or that they are the result of invasion... [continue reading]

Europe is the second smallest of the seven continents covering roughly 2% of the earth’s surface. The name 'Europe’ has long been thought to have been derived from the ancient myth of Zeus and Europa. According to this tale, the great god Zeus, seeing the lovely Phoenician princess Europa bathing (or, according to other versions, playing with her handmaidens... [continue reading]

The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe (the other two being the Iberian Peninsula and Balkan Peninsula), spanning 1,000 km from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula is bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west, the Ionian Sea on the south, and the Adriatic... [continue reading]