7.3 Europe: 1000 to 700 b.c.  (Page 2/4)

At the same time, the Greeks were bringing civilization back into the area of Thrace with various colonies along the Aegean coast. Iron working was well established along the Thracian and Illyrian areas. Colin Renfrew (Ref. 179 ) believes that the Thracian gold- smiths, working in Bulgaria, were the descendants of the Copper Age mound-makers described in earlier chapters.

Italy

The Terramare peoples had already spread through eastern Italy and part of Sicily by the era under discussion and probably became the Samnite, Sabine and Latin tribes, as mentioned in the last chapter. In Etruria, between the Arno and the Tiber, in the 1 0th and 9th centuries, B.C. there were groups of Iron Age villages and by the next century special bronzes began to be imported from Sardinia. Between 750 and 700 B.C. various hill top villages in this Etruscan area began to be consolidated into city-states, with true urbanization. The first was Tarquinii, some miles north of the Tiber mouth on the west coast; then Caere to the south, reaching the Tiber; then Vulci to the north of Tarquinii; and finally Clusium and Veii, as inland city-states. All were fundamentally Etruscan people, speaking a non-lndo-European language which was known later to educated Romans, but which remains essentially untranslated today. The first three city-states mentioned above became independently strong sea powers, with large trade potentials based on enormous copper, iron and tin mines in the mountains of their respective regions. They traded these much wanted metals for gold, first through the Phoenicians from Sidon and Tyre, then after 800 B.C. with Carthaginians who established commercial outposts in Italy, Sardinia and Sicily,(as well as in France and Spain). In the 8th century it was the Greeks from the island of Euboea who established their large trading centers on the island of Pithecusae and on the mainland nearby at Cumae, to get the metals from the various Etruscan city-states and the Etruscan held island of Elba. The Euboean connections with Syria and Asia Minor also allowed the distribution of Oriental objects in Etruria. Another product from the region of Campigliese was alum, used particularly as a binder in the dyeing of fabrics and shoe-leather, both of which were Etruscan specialties.

About 1,000 B.C. Villanovan migrants from the Danube, using iron, crossed the Tiber and settled in Latium, exterminating or marrying the existing population. There was undoubtedly a great deal of shifting of populations and many of the Villanovans may have become assimilated into the Etruscan city-states and certainly many Greeks became permanent residents there, bringing much of their culture with them. The Etruscans of Tarquinii spread southward across the Tiber to Capua as early as 800 B.C. probably to facilitate trade with Cumae. It is a mistake to consider the Etruscans as a single, homogenous group, as they lived in their separate city-states, sometimes trading with each other, sometimes fighting and usually failing in every attempt at any coordinated efforts. Grant (Ref. 75 ) says that they were much like the modern Japanese in that they were great imitators and they copied all Greek works of art, adding some of their own improvements and unique variations.