Mediterranean Civilisations — Phoenicians, Carthage, Ancient Greece, Etruscans, Rome

The chapter introduces the Etruscans as an ancient people who lived in Italy from the 10th to the 3rd century BC and opens with interesting facts: calling themselves «Rasenna», believing they were children of a she-wolf, and known to the Greeks as «Tyrrhenians», they formed a federation of twelve city-states, drained marshes, built irrigation systems and excelled at metalworking. It notes that many objects in the Louvre and the British Museum come from Etruscan tombs and that Rome owed much to the Etruscans, from the alphabet to architecture.

The section on origins starts well: because their language has not been fully deciphered, the Etruscans are called a «mysterious people», and their origins have been debated since the 18th century. Three main hypotheses are listed: local origin (the «orthodox» theory of Massimo Pallottino, linking them to the Villanovan culture), migration from Anatolia, and others. The most valuable part is Herodotus's Lydian story: during years of famine the Lydians played games one day and ate the next, until King Atys divided his people in two and sent half by ship from Smyrna under his son Tyrrhenus, who reached Umbria and founded cities. That ancient authors such as Tacitus, Virgil and Strabo accepted this account, and a stele found on Lemnos written in a language close to Etruscan, are presented as interesting evidence.

The trouble starts after this. The book calls «valuable» the claim of Kazım Mirşan — not regarded as reliable by scholars — that the Etruscans were «descendants of two Turkic tribes who migrated from Anatolia and from north of the Black Sea», presenting it as «a sign that the Turkic presence in Anatolia goes back to very ancient times». More seriously, it cites outdated racial typology — «the round-skulled (Homo Alpinus) race to which the Turks also belong» — as evidence, and says Etruscan statues «match the Asiatic human type».

The genetic claims are exaggerated too: the book writes that a study showed Etruscan DNA to bear «great similarity to the Turks», that this was hailed as «a victory for ancient historians», and that the «proto-Turkic Etruscans» were declared heirs of the Trojans. Yet most recent palaeogenetic research — including a large study published in 2021 — shows the Etruscans to have been genetically very close to their Latin neighbours and essentially a local population. The book finally describes the Etruscans as «a hybrid people of Turkic and Coptic-Phoenician mixture» — a conclusion supported by no serious source that combines contradictory claims in a single sentence.

The political history section returns to firmer ground: it correctly explains that little is known of Etruscan political history, that none of their own historical or literary texts survive, that information comes mainly from Greek and Latin authors, especially Livy's «Ab Urbe Condita», and that only 35 of that work's 142 books have come down to us. This is the most reliable part of the chapter and differs sharply in tone from the previous section — again betraying that the book was compiled from different sources.

In the end, this chapter teaches readers two things: the Etruscans are a genuinely fascinating and mysterious people, and pocket encyclopaedias can present national-romantic myths as scientific fact. Interested readers can find Herodotus's story and the Lemnos stele here, but for conclusions about Etruscan origins they should turn to current academic literature. We especially do not recommend this book to students as a sole source.

• A separate chapter for each civilisation
• Long quotations from Herodotus and other ancient authors
• Colour illustrations and short marginal notes
• Bibliography and the translator's sources at the end