Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic), named after the

Tyrrhenians Tyrrhenians (Attic Greek: ''Turrhēnoi'') or Tyrsenians ( Ionic: ''Tursēnoi''; Doric: ''Tursānoi'') was the name used by the ancient Greeks authors to refer, in a generic sense, to non-Greek people, in particular pirates. While ancient so ...

(

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, Ionic: ''Tyrsenoi''), is an extinct

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

of closely related ancient languages put forward by linguist

Helmut Rix Helmut Rix (4 July 1926, in Amberg – 3 December 2004, in Colmar) was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany. He is best known for his research into Indo-Euro ...

in 1998, which consists of the

Etruscan language Etruscan ( ) was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria, in Etruria Padana and Etruria Campana in what is now Italy. Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually superseded by it. Around 13,000 Etruscan epigraph ...

of northern, central and south-western Italy, and eastern Corsica (

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

); the

Raetic language Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a Tyrsenian languages, Tyrsenian language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th throug ...

of the

Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...

, in northern Italy and Austria, named after the Rhaetian people; and the Lemnian language attested in

Lemnos Lemnos ( ) or Limnos ( ) is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Lemnos (regional unit), Lemnos regional unit, which is part of the North Aegean modern regions of Greece ...

in the northern

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

. Camunic in northern

Lombardy The Lombardy Region (; ) is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in northern Italy and has a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of Italy's population. Lombardy is ...

, between Etruscan and Raetic, may belong to the family as well, but evidence of such is limited. The Tyrsenian languages are generally considered Pre-Indo-European, and more specifically Paleo-European.

Classification

In 1998 the German linguist

proposed that three then unclassified ancient languages belonged to a common linguistic family he called ''Tyrrhenian'': the

spoken in Etruria, the

of the Eastern Alps, and the Lemnian language, only attested by a small number of inscriptions from the Greek island of

in the Aegean Sea. Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher, Carlo De Simone, Norbert Oettinger, Simona Marchesini, and Rex E. Wallace. Common features among Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian have been found in

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

, and

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

. On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts and possibly also to the early date at which the languages split.

History

Tyrsenian was probably a Paleo-European language family predating the arrival of

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

in Europe.

dated the end of the Proto-Tyrsenian period to the last quarter of the

2nd millennium BC File:2nd millennium BC montage.jpg, 400x400px, From top left clockwise: Hammurabi, Babylonian king, best known for his Code of Hammurabi, code of laws; The gold Mask of Tutankhamun, funerary mask of Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt ...

. Carlo De Simone and Simona Marchesini have proposed a much earlier date, placing the Tyrsenian language split before the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

. This would provide one explanation for the low number of lexical correspondences. In 2004, Van der Meer proposed that Raetic could have split from Etruscan from around 900 BC or even earlier, at any rate no later than 700 BC since divergences are already present in the oldest Etruscan and Raetic inscriptions, like in the grammatical voices of past tenses and in the endings of male ''gentilicia''. From around 400 BC, the Rhaeti became isolated from the Etruscan area by the Cisalpine Celts, thus limiting contact between the two languages. Such a late date has garnered little consensus as the split would still be too recent to match the archaeological data, the Rhaeti in the second Iron Age being characterized by the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture, in continuity with late Bronze Age culture and early Iron Age

Laugen-Melaun culture The Laugen-Melaun culture (from German language, German ''Laugen-Melaun-Kultur'') or Luco culture (in Italian) was a late Bronze Age Europe, Bronze Age and early Iron Age Europe, Iron Age archaeological culture in the Alps, between Trentino, South ...

. The Raeti are not believed, archeologically, to descend from the Etruscans, as well as it is not believed plausible that the Etruscans are descended from the Rhaeti,: Se resta il fatto che la documentazione archeologica smentisce in tutta evidenza un rapporto filogenetico fra Etruschi e Reti, visti anche fenomeni di continuità come nell’ambito della produzione vascolare di boccali di tradizione Luco/Laugen (fig. 8), non è escluso che la percezione di prossimità esistenti fra la lingua e la scrittura delle due entità etniche possano avere indotto eruditi del tempo a costruite “a tavolino” un rapporto di parentela.(...) [If the fact remains that the archaeological documentation clearly denies a phylogenetic relationship between the Etruscans and the Reti, also considering phenomena of continuity as in the sphere of the vascular production of traditional Luco / Laugen mugs (fig. 8), it is not excluded that the perception of proximity existing between the language and the writing of the two ethnic entities may have induced scholars of the time to build a kinship relationship "at the table". (...)] while the relationship between the Etruscan and Raetic languages is thought to date back to a remote stage of prehistory. After more than 90 years of archaeological excavations at Lemnos, nothing has been found that would support a migration from

Etruria Etruria ( ) was a region of Central Italy delimited by the rivers Arno and Tiber, an area that covered what is now most of Tuscany, northern Lazio, and north-western Umbria. It was inhabited by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization that f ...

or to the

where Raetic was spoken. The indigenous inhabitants of Lemnos, also called in ancient times ''Sinteis'', were the Sintians, a Thracian population. While the results of the previous excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the

Mycenaean Greek Mycenaean Greek is the earliest attested form of the Greek language. It was spoken on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC). The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first atteste ...

''ra-mi-ni-ja'', "Lemnian woman", written in

Linear B Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...

syllabic script.
Word study tool of ancient languages Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the

Sea Peoples The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Ancient Egypt, Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptology, Egyptologis ...

. Alternatively, the Lemnian language could have arrived in the

during the

Late Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

and various parts of the Italian peninsula. A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals, who lived between 800 BC and 1 BC, concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous, and genetically similar to the Iron Age

Latins The term Latins has been used throughout history to refer to various peoples, ethnicities and religious groups using Latin or the Latin-derived Romance languages, as part of the legacy of the Roman Empire. In the Ancient World, it referred to th ...

, and that the Etruscan language, and therefore the other languages of the Tyrrhenian family, may be a surviving language of the ones that were widespread in Europe from at least the Neolithic period before the arrival of the Indo-European languages, as already argued by German geneticist Johannes Krause who concluded that it is likely that the Etruscan language (as well as

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, Paleo-Sardinian and

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age culture which was centered on the island of Crete. Known for its monumental architecture and Minoan art, energetic art, it is often regarded as the first civilization in Europe. The ruins of the Minoan pa ...

) "developed on the continent in the course of the

Neolithic Revolution The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunter-gatherer, hunting and gathering to one of a ...

". The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who are genetically related to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula".

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

's (''Geography'' V, 2) citation from

Anticlides Anticlides of Athens (or Anticleides) () lived after the time of Alexander the Great, and is frequently referred to by later writers. At least four works may be attributed to him; whether these works were all written by Anticlides of Athens cannot b ...

attributes a share in the foundation of Etruria to the

Pelasgians The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all ...

and Imbros. The Pelasgians are also referred to by

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

as settlers in Lemnos, after they were expelled from

Attica Attica (, ''Attikḗ'' (Ancient Greek) or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area, which consists of the city of Athens, the capital city, capital of Greece and the core cit ...

by the

Athenians Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

Apollonius of Rhodes Apollonius of Rhodes ( ''Apollṓnios Rhódios''; ; fl. first half of 3rd century BC) was an ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek author, best known for the ''Argonautica'', an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Go ...

mentioned an ancient settlement of Tyrrhenians on Lemnos in his ''

Argonautica The ''Argonautica'' () is a Greek literature, Greek epic poem written by Apollonius of Rhodes, Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The only entirely surviving Hellenistic civilization, Hellenistic epic (though Aetia (Callimachus), Callim ...

'' (IV.1760), written in the third century BC, in an elaborate invented ''

aition An origin myth is a type of myth that explains the beginnings of a natural or social aspect of the world. Creation myths are a type of origin myth narrating the formation of the universe. However, numerous cultures have stories that take place a ...

'' of Kalliste or

Thera Santorini (, ), officially Thira (, ) or Thera, is a Greek island in the southern Aegean Sea, about southeast from the mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago formed by the Santorini caldera. It is the southernmos ...

: in passing, he attributes the flight of Sintian Lemnians to the island Kalliste to "Tyrrhenian warriors" from the island of Lemnos.

Languages

* Etruscan: 13,000 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in Italy; the oldest Etruscan inscription dates back to the 8th century BC, and the most recent one is dated to the 1st century AD. * Raetic: 300 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in the Central Alps; the oldest Raetic inscription dates back to the 6th century BC. * Lemnian: 2 inscriptions plus a small number of extremely fragmentary inscriptions; the oldest Lemnian inscription dates back to the late 6th century BC. * Camunic: may be related to Raetic; about 170 inscriptions found in the Central Alps; the oldest Camunic inscriptions dates back to the 5th century BC.

Evidence

Cognates common to Raetic and Etruscan are: Cognates common to Etruscan and Lemnian are: * shared dative-case suffixes ''*-si,'' and ''*-ale'' ** attested as Etruscan 'to Aule' on the

Cippus Perusinus The Cippus Perusinus is a stone tablet (cippus) discovered on the hill of San Marco, in Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of incised Etruscan language, Etruscan text, about 130 words. The cippus, which seems to have been a bord ...

inscriptions ** attested as Lemnian 'for Hulaie', 'for the Phocaean' on the Lemnos Stele * a past tense suffix ''*-a-i'' ** - as in 'was' ( ← ''*amai'') in Etruscan ** - as in 'lived' in Lemnian * two cognate words describing ages ** Etruscan 'and aged sixty-five' ** Lemnian 'aged sixty'

Fringe scholarship and superseded theories

Aegean language family

A larger ''Aegean'' family including Eteocretan,

and Eteocypriot has been proposed by G. M. Facchetti referring to some alleged similarities between on the one hand Etruscan and Lemnian, and on the other hand languages like

and Eteocretan. If these languages could be shown to be related to Etruscan and Raetic, they would constitute a

pre-Indo-European language The pre-Indo-European languages are any of several ancient languages, not necessarily related to one another, that existed in Prehistoric Europe, Asia Minor, Ancient Iran and Southern Asia before the arrival of speakers of Indo-European langua ...

family stretching from (at the very least) the Aegean Islands and

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

across mainland

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

and the Italian Peninsula to the

. A proposed relation between these languages has also been made previously by Raymond A. Brown.

Michael Ventris Michael George Francis Ventris, (; 12 July 1922 – 6 September 1956) was an English architect, classics, classicist and philology, philologist who deciphered Linear B, the ancient Mycenaean Greek script. A student of languages, Ventris had ...

, who successfully deciphered

with

John Chadwick John Chadwick, (21 May 1920 – 24 November 1998) was an English linguist and classical scholar who was most notable for the decipherment, with Michael Ventris, of Linear B. Early life, education and wartime service John Chadwick was born at ...

, also thought there to be a relation between Etruscan and Minoan. Facchetti proposes a hypothetical language family derived from

in two branches. From

he proposes a Proto- Tyrrhenian from which would have come the Etruscan, Lemnian and Raetic languages. James Mellaart has proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages of

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

, based upon place name analysis. From another

branch would have come the Eteocretan language. T. B. Jones proposed in 1950 reading of Eteocypriot texts in Etruscan, which was refuted by most scholars but gained popularity in the former Soviet Union. In any case, a relationship between the Etruscan language and Minoan (including Eteocretan and Eteocypriot), and a larger Aegean family, is considered unfounded.

Anatolian languages

A relation with the

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late ...

within

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

has been proposed, but is not accepted for historical, archaeological, genetic, and linguistic reasons. If these languages are an early Indo-European stratum rather than pre-Indo-European, they would be associated with Krahe's

Old European hydronymy Old European () is the term used by Hans Krahe (1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy (river names) in Central and Western Europe.Hans Krahe, ''Unsere ältesten Flussnamen'', Wiesbaden Edition Otto Harr ...

and would date back to a '' Kurganization'' during the early

Northeast Caucasian languages

A number of mainly Soviet or post-Soviet linguists, including

Sergei Starostin Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguistics, historical linguist and philology, philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothetical proto-languages, including hi ...

, suggested a link between the Tyrrhenian languages and the

Northeast Caucasian languages The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to ''Pontic languages'' for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a langu ...

in an Alarodian language family, based on claimed sound correspondences between Etruscan,

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

, and Northeast Caucasian languages, numerals, grammatical structures and phonologies. Most linguists, however, either doubt that the language families are related, or believe that the evidence is far from conclusive.

Extinction

The language group seems to have died out in Lemnos around the 6th century BC (by assimilation of the speakers to

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

), and as regards Etruscan around the 1st century AD in Italy (by assimilation to

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

).Freeman, Philip
The Survival of Etruscan
p. 82 The latest Raetic inscriptions are dated to the 1st century BC (by assimilation to

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tyrsenian Languages Pre-Indo-European languages Proposed language families