TURIN, Italy, June 19 (UPI) -- Italian scientists have discovered what they believe is the origin of the Etruscan people, thereby ending a long-running controversy.
Professor Alberto Piazza and colleagues at the University of Turin have found "overwhelming evidence" the Etruscans, whose civilization flourished 3,000 years ago in what is now Tuscany, were settlers from old Anatolia, which is now southern Turkey.
Three main theories emerged in the controversy: the Etruscans came from Anatolia, as propounded by the Greek historian Herotodus; they were indigenous to the region and developed from the Iron Age Villanovan society, as suggested by another Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus; or they originated from Northern Europe.
Piazza and colleagues reached their conclusion supporting the Herotodus theory by comparing DNA from males living in Tuscany, Northern Italy, the Southern Balkans, the island of Lemnos in Greece and the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
The study was presented this week in Nice, France, during the 2007 meeting of the European Society of Human Genetics.
