<story><title>New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/they-may-have-founded-rome-then-vanished-work-sheds-light-mysterious-etruscans</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kragen</author><text>An interesting thing the article somehow doesn&amp;#x27;t mention is that the Roman alphabet in which I&amp;#x27;m more or less typing this (IN VVHICH I&amp;#x27;M MORE OR LESS TYPING THIS) descends from the very scarce Etruscan letters, which descend from Greek.  This is why the Roman alphabet revives letters like digamma and qoppa that had been obsolete in Greek for centuries.</text></comment>
<story><title>New work sheds light on the Etruscans, who may have founded Rome</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/they-may-have-founded-rome-then-vanished-work-sheds-light-mysterious-etruscans</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>notorandit</author><text>That doesn&amp;#x27;t sound to me as any news.
Etruscans settled a lot of colonies in the southern part of the peninsula, down to Pompeii (which was founded by Etruscans and taken over by Samnites) and Melfi.
And they were ahead of all other local cultures by far, especially in the metallurgic technologies and writing.
They were not a single kingdom but a group of city-kingdoms.&lt;p&gt;So I can think of Rome more like a colony that took over the mother city-kingdom first, then the whole peninsula.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the names of the first traditional kings of Rome are Etruscans too.</text></comment>