Via Toscana

We got a transect of Italian remains. Nothing new to my readers!

From earlier studies, Cosimo Posth's crew notes that "Steppe" (=IndoEuropean) ancestry hits Italy over the 1600s BC; so, the Etruscans' ancestors weren't so different from the other north(ish) Italians'. However, from when they first appear in this study which is 800 BC, to the Roman era - they're a homogenous genetic cluster. Meaning, they didn't accept many incomers (although some incomers are found). Almost as if... there was a cultural barrier, like language.

So again: we are looking at a "Villanova" / "Urnfield" (=Gaulish) invasion from the earliest Iron Age which then assimilated into the cisalpine population, which was Raetic. All was assimilated into an Etruscan language, living under a Gaulish culture, upon an Italian population. A "Sprachbund" effect likely accounts for classical Etruscan's structure as an inflected language - and for several features of Latin (and maybe Faliscan) not shared with, say, Greek.