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Despite the landing of people in possession of casting techniques
and manufacture of iron weapons the beginning of the new Iron Age in
the Italian peninsula and its islands is canonically fixed on 900
BC; that is delayed by about three hundred years compared to Near East.
A
substantial replacement of the material of manufacture of weapons,
anyway, it'is not visible before the seventh century. In
Sardinia, however, the delay is even less significant, and
essentially ends only with the arrival and the seizure of power of
the Phoenician-Punic, in the middle of the sixth century.
This
is largely due to the lack of raw materials and, probably, it
confirm that the arrival of the Sea Peoples, especially in Sardinia
, preceded the Dorian invasion of Greec, made by people already in
full possession of weapons of iron .
The
situation evolved with the discovery of iron substantial deposits on
the Island of Elba and the Tuscan hills.
This
fact can not had left indifferent the community of the Mediterranean
peoples (including Greeks and Phoenicians), but, most importantly,
it aroused the interest of the Sardinian civilisation.
Starting from the first half of the ninth century, they appear and
numerous zoomorphic bowed Sardinian bronze ships in Tuscan burials,
and this attests the arrival of Sardinian sailors and traders on the
Tuscan coast, attracted by the exploitation of iron deposits in
Elba.
In this context , the action of the descendants of Teresh
seems to have been predominant. Otherwise
it would explain the change in Tyrrhenian Sea of the name of the sea
between Sardinia and the Italian peninsula, formerly referred as Okeanos
(Ocean) by Homer and then "Sardinian Sea". Nor
would explain the Greek name "Tyrrhenia", taken by the area between Arno
and Tiber and "Tyrrhenians" by the local population (later turned into "
Tusci " and, therefore , "Etruscans ", by Romans)
.
Tharros may have been the departing port of these migratory flows;
its etymology reflects that of Teresh and their possible place of
origin, ie the Anatolian Tarsus .
The
peninsula of Tharros was inhabited by Sardinian people well before
the Sea Peoples, as evidenced by the presence of a nuragic tower on
its Acropolis and another nuragic village on its peninsular
isthmus.
Tharros
is one of the most obvious natural harbor of Sardinia and could not
fail to arouse the interest of the Sea Peoples for their strategic
purposes, since the arrival on the island. Nearby,
also, the mouth of river Tirso, which, in the ancient times , it
might have meant "the river of Teresh" or "the river of Tyrrhenians".
It's
significant the agricultural and handicraft products depiction of
some Sardinian ships that were found inside Iron Age tombs of
Tuscany and Latium.
However, the
rare anthropomorphic bronze figurines, mostly representing priests
or priestesses with a tall wide brimmed hat, already identified on
the island, which will find evidence in the archaic Etruscan
frescoes.
Even the type of the hair of these priests and priestesses, grouped
in long braids, is found in the Etruscan ceramic, such as, for
example, in Apollo of Veii .
All suggests that the penetration of Sardinian-Tyrrhenian
people into Etruria, had a character of élite: an
entrepreneurial class interested in mining, trading in agricultural
products and crafts and a priestly male and female class;
an élite
dedicated to the economic intermediation and cultural cooperation
between local populations (Villanovan culture) and the great
maritime Iron Age civilizations (Phoenicians and Greeks),
which were attracted in the "Tyrrhenian Sea" to swap their handmade products
with the Elbans and Tuscan
hills mine ones.
The
Indo-Aryan language of origin that the Sardinian-Tyrrhenians had kept
in their wanderings became a "lingua franca" of the commercial
transactions and a courtly language for the religious ceremonies,
without overlap the native Villanovan one.
According
to the linguist Piero Bernardini Marzolla, in fact, Etruria was
a bilingual country, where next to a still undeciphered language (Villanovan) there was a learned language,
closer to the Sanskrit,
with whom it probably shared an
Indo-Aryan origin. |
