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Optimus
06-24-2012, 02:07 PM
Silvia Ghirotto 1 , Francesca Tassi 1 , Erica Fumagalli 2,1 , Vincenza Colonna 3,1 , Anna Sandionigi 4 , Martina Lari 4 , Stefania Vai 4 , Emmanuele Petiti 4 , Giorgio Corti 5 , Ermanno Rizzi 5 , Gianluca De Bellis 5 , David Caramelli 4 , Guido Barbujani 1 1 Department of Biology and Evolution, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy, 2 Department of Biotechnologies and BiosciencesUniversity of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy, 3 Institute of Genetics e Biophysics "Adriano Buzzati-Traverso", National Research Council, Napoli, Italy, 4 Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Firenze, Firenze, Italy, 5 Institute for Biomedical Technologies (ITB), National Research Council (CNR), Milano, Italy


The Etruscan culture is documented in Etruria, Central Italy, from the 7 th to the 1 st century BC. For more than 2,000 years there has been disagreement on the Etruscans’ biological origins, whether local or in Anatolia. Genetic affinities with both Tuscan and Anatolian populations have been reported, but so far all attempts have failed to fit the Etruscans’ and modern populations in the same genealogy. We extracted and typed mitochondrial DNA of 14 individuals buried in two Etruscan necropoleis, analyzing them along with other Etruscan and Medieval samples, and 4,910 contemporary individuals. Comparing ancient and modern diversity with the results of millions of computer simulations, we show that the Etruscans can be considered ancestral, with a high degree of confidence, to the modern inhabitants of two communities, Casentino and Volterra, but not to most contemporary populations dwelling in the former Etruscan homeland. We also estimate that the genetic links between Tuscany and Anatolia date back to at least 5,000 years ago, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan culture developed locally, without a significant contribution of recent Anatolian immigrants.


Source (http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/06/smbe-2012-abstracts-part-i.html)


It seems that Etruscans were not recent Anatolian invaders as was firstly proposed by Herodotus.

Onur
06-24-2012, 02:34 PM
It seems that Etruscans were not recent Anatolian invaders as was firstly proposed by Herodotus.
But there are many more articles and genetic researches which supports Herodotus`s claims. A quick google search gave me these;


Genetic tests: Italians were from Turkey
DNA of men whose forebears probably were Etruscans show they weren't local, but migrated, study says.
Genetic studies of Italians in Tuscany show that their forefathers, the ancient Etruscans, moved to Italy from what is now Turkey -- an origin that many archeologists have dismissed as unlikely.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/18/science/sci-etruscans18

Ancient Etruscans were immigrants from Anatolia, or what is now Turkey
The scientists compared DNA samples taken from healthy males living in Tuscany, Northern Italy, the Southern Balkans, the island of Lemnos in Greece, and the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The Tuscan samples were taken from individuals who had lived in the area for at least three generations, and were selected on the basis of their surnames, which were required to have a geographical distribution not extending beyond the linguistic area of sampling. The samples were compared with data from modern Turkish, South Italian, European and Middle-Eastern populations.

“We found that the DNA samples from individuals from Murlo and Volterra were more closely related those from near Eastern people than those of the other Italian samples”, says Professor Piazza. “In Murlo particularly, one genetic variant is shared only by people from Turkey, and, of the samples we obtained, the Tuscan ones also show the closest affinity with those from Lemnos.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070616191637.htm

The Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study
The shortest genetic distances between the Etruscan and modern populations are with Tuscans (FST=0.036; P=.0017) and Turks (FST=0.037; P=.0001); values of FST<0.050 were also observed for other populations of the Mediterranean shores and for the Cornish

The likely contributions of each parental population, or admixture coefficients, are similar for the three modern Italian populations, but Etruscans differ in two aspects: they show closer relationships both to North Africans and to Turks than any contemporary population. In particular, the Turkish component in their gene pool appears three times as large as in the other populations.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1181945/

Optimus
06-24-2012, 02:38 PM
But there are many more articles and genetic researches which supports Herodotus`s claims. A quick google search gave me these;

Many of European males came via Anatolia.The question is the timeline.Herodotus believed Etruscans were offshot of Lydians who migrated into the Italian Peninsula at the end of Bronze Age.This paper is a recent one in 2012 and puts an end to that speculation.Etruscans were Anatolians but they migrated in Italian Peninsula much earlier than it was suggested by Herodotus.

And the close genetic connection with Turks is because shared Anatolian origin,it has nothing to do with Turkics from Central Asia.