In 1998 the German linguist Helmut Rix proposed the Tyrrhenian linguistic family, which includes the Etruscan language spoken in Etruria, the Rhaetian language spoken in the Alps, together with the Lemnian language attested by a small number of inscriptions on the Greek island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea, languages that Rix identifies in close relation. Rix assumes a date for Proto-Tyrsenian in the last quarter of the 2nd millennium BC. Rix's Tyrsenian family has been confirmed by Stefan Schumacher, Norbert Oettinger, Carlo De Simone and Simona Marchesini. Common features between Etruscan, Rhaetian, Lemnian have been found in morphology, phonology, and syntax. On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scanty number of Rhaetian and Lemnian texts. Carlo De Simone and Simona Marchesini have proposed a very ancient date at which these languages split, before the Bronze Age, much earlier than was suggested by Rix. This would provide an additional explanation for the low number of lexical correspondences. The Tyrsenian family, or Common Tyrrhenic, in this case is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe. Strabo's citation from Anticlides attributes a share in the foundation of Etruria to the Pelasgians of Lemnos and Imbros. The Pelasgians are also referred to by Herodotus as settlers in Lemnos, after they were expelled from Attica by the Athenians. Apollonius of Rhodes mentioned an ancient settlement of Tyrrhenians on Lemnos in his Argonautica, written in the third century BC, in an elaborate invented aition of Kalliste or Thera : in passing, he attributes the flight of "Sintian" Lemnians to the island Kalliste to "Tyrrhenian warriors" from the island of Lemnos. Alternatively, the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.
Languages
Etruscan: 13,000 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in Italy; the oldest Etruscan inscription dates back to the 8th century BC, the most recent one is dated to the 1st century AD.
Rhaetic: 300 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have found in the Central Alps; the oldest Rhaetic inscription dates back to the 6th century BC.
Lemnian: 2 inscriptions plus a small number of extremely fragmentary inscriptions; the oldest Lemnian inscription dates back to the late 6th century BC.
Camunic: probably related to Rhaetic, about 170 inscriptions found in the Central Alps; the oldest Camunic inscriptions dates back to the 5th century BC.
A larger Aegean family including Eteocretan, Minoan and Eteocypriot has been proposed by G. M. Facchetti, and is supported by S. Yatsemirsky, referring to some alleged similarities between on the one hand Etruscan and Lemnian, and on the other hand some languages such as Minoan and Eteocretan. If these languages could be shown to be related to Etruscan and Rhaetic, they would constitute a pre-Indo-European language family stretching from the Aegean islands and Crete across mainland Greece and the Italian peninsula to the Alps. Facchetti proposes a hypothetical language family derived from Minoan in two branches. From Minoan he proposes a Proto-Tyrrhenian from which would have come the Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic languages. James Mellaart has proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, based upon place name analysis. From another Minoan branch would have come the Eteocretan language. T. B. Jones proposed in 1950 reading of Eteocypriot texts in Etruscan, which was refuted by most scholars but gained popularity in the former Soviet Union.
A relation with the Anatolian languages within Indo-European has been proposed, but is not accepted. If these languages are an early Indo-European stratum rather than pre-Indo-European, they would be associated with Krahe's Old European hydronymy and would date back to a Kurganization during the early Bronze Age.
A number of mainly Soviet or post-Soviet linguists, including Sergei Starostin, suggested a link between the Tyrrhenian languages and the Northeast Caucasian languages in an Alarodian language family, based on claimed sound correspondences between Etruscan, Hurrian and Northeast Caucasian languages, numerals, grammatical structures and phonologies. Most linguists, however, doubt that the language families are related, or believe that the evidence is far from conclusive.
