Comment by binarray2000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by binarray2000 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

(1) Even according to Wikipedia: "The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, which was syncopated to Rasna or Raśna(...)"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization

(2) Again, even according to Wikipedia: "Rascians (Latin: Rasciani, Natio Rasciana; Serbian: Рашани / Rašani) was a common exonym for Serbs during the late medieval and the early modern period. It was used most frequently in the Kingdom of Hungary, and also in the Habsburg Monarchy. The term was derived from the Latinized name for the central Serbian region of Raška (Latin: Rascia; Serbian Cyrillic: Рашка). In medieval and early modern Western sources, exonym Rascia was often used as a designation for Serbian lands in general, and consequently the term Rasciani became one of the most common designations for Serbs.(...)"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascians

(3) During WWII, Svetislav Bilbija was a secretary to an episkop of the Serbian Orthodox Church (equivalent to a bishop in RCC) in Italy where he has cracked the code of Etruscan because he had noticed the similarity of Etruscan letters and modern serbian cyrillic.

Ofcouse, connecting a culture that is precursor to the Roman culture (to which the modern West sees itself as a successor) with some (now) small peoples from the Balkans, peoples that have been put on a shame pole for the last 30 years, the Serbs - that is a big no, no. Which is why you'll find people who smear the work of Bilbija. But, some have a different opinion. For example, people at the Rand Corporation (yes, that US military contractor), or at least those on their mailing list:

“In a brillant piece of work rivalling that of Michael Ventris, Bilbija has deciphered the Etruscan Mummy Book.”

http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/etruscan.txt

They refer to this book (which has a direct connection to The Mummy of Zagreb):

https://books.google.ba/books/about/The_Mummy_of_Zagreb_and_...

As an actual linguist, I can attest that the "Serbian and Etruscan are related!" theory that the poster above describes, is the purest pseudoscience, along the lines of "Aliens built the pyramids!" or "Aryan supermen come from Atlantis!"

The Serbian language is, as no reasonable person disputes, part of the Slavic language family, which in turn is descended from the same parent language as the other Indo-European languages, and therefore has nothing to do with Etruscan.

The history of the Cyrillic alphabet is pretty well understood – it was invented in the late 9th century, probably in Preslav, as a compromise that would resemble the Greek alphabet more closely than Glagolitic, the first alphabet that had been created for writing Old Church Slavonic. Consequently, Cyrillic and Etruscan script have nothing to do with each other.

He noticed the similarity between the Etruscan script and Serbian Cyrillic? As in, the Cyrillic developed in the 9th century AD? What a long bow to draw...

Also, just because Rascian sounds like Rasna doesn't mean anything - that's like saying that Jesus was clearly a sun god, because he was claimed to be the son of god, I mean come on, son/sun, it's right there man!

Look mate, as a fellow Slav from Slovenia I can assure you all our common ancestors stumbled here way too late to have anything to do with Etruscans.

And then there are also excellent arguments made in other comments.

You are right, but just to nitpick, linguistic ancestors don't always overlap with genetic ancestors. It could well be that your linguistic ones stumbled there late, whereas your genetic ones lived there for thousands and thousands of years longer. A handful of people can convince many to change language, genetic change is much slower. This is one reason why people in the region are genetically relatively similar, whether they speak slavic, germanic, finno-ugric, or latin languages.

For all these reasons, if etruscans once lived where you live now, it would actually be rather surprising if you had no connection whatsoever to them.

> if etruscans once lived where you live now

There is no evidence that Etruscans ever lived where the OP does now. All evidence we have about Etruscans points to a people living in the Mediterranean region, not further north in the Balkans. Note that although the article here is about a linen book in Zagreb, the Zagreb Museum was only the final resting place of an artifact created elsewhere; it does not mean that Etruscans had anything to do with the Balkans.

I see, you are right, but I was answering to a more general point made by OP, that if those who speak your language arrived late, you could still have a connection with those who lived there before.

Culture and genetics are not necessarily related. Unless they still happen to speak Etruscan, sharing a little DNA with ancient Etruscans doesn't make them "Etruscan".

Toponyms often survive after a new language fully replaces the language of a people.

BTW Serbia is not really "north" in the Balkans. But still, it's pretty far away: on the opposite side of the Adriatic see and of the entire Italian peninsula (etruria is on the tyrrhenian coast)

the Veneti (ancestors to modern Slavs) lived around Veneto while the Etruscans lived in Tuscany. Not that there was not a lot more mixing and migrating over the years, but still.

> the Veneti (ancestors to modern Slavs) lived around Veneto

This is inaccurate. The ancestors of the Slavs spring, according to the consensus view, from around where Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus meet. So, very far from Venice, let alone central Italy. We have attestations of the language that was actually spoken around the Venetic region[0], it is not Slavic. Why the early Slavs were often labeled with an ethnonym resembling Veneti is a complex affair[1], but it does not mean that the Slavs had any meaningful contact with central Italy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetic_language

[1] Michael Weiss, “Veneti or Venetes? Observations on a widespread Indo-European tribal name”, in: Farnah: Indo-Iranian and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Sasha Lubotsky. Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press, 2018.

The digression linked above:

http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/etruscan.txt

is really fun to read. It's about Voynich Manuscript, written by somebody in 1997.

Observing that as a work of fiction, of course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com