Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Etruscans

Today we are going to examine this website

The Etruscans had an enduring impact on the development of Rome and its institutions.

We will be looking at this map

where did the Etruscans come from?

Etruscan language cannot be translated

Find pictures of sarcophagi, and funerary artifacts, such as personal items, mirrors, jewellery how do these show how they lived and reflect their society?

Design an
Etruscan tomb


Around 700 BC, the _______ Age people we call the Villanovans began to be influenced by the __________ and Phoenicians who were sailing around the Mediterranean. They began to do things the way the Greeks and the Phoenicians did them. Historians call these people the Etruscans. People used to think that the Etruscans came from someplace in West Asia, because the ________ historian Herodotus tells a story about some people from West Asia, the Lydians, who might have been the Etruscans. He says that these people fell on hard times, and didn't have enough to eat. Now these people loved to gamble with dice. So they decided to only eat on even days, and on the odd days they would gamble, to take their minds off how hungry they were! But the famine went on for years, and Herodotus says that after a while these people decided that half of them should go look for a better place to live. So historians thought maybe these were the Etruscans. But now we think that the Etruscans always lived in Italy.

The Etruscans lived mainly in northern _______. Because they were learning from the Greeks and the Phoenicians, they learned how to do a lot of things that the Latins living around Rome didn't know how to do yet. The Etruscans built cities with_______ walls. They built big stone __________ and they put big statues in them. They dug canals and ditches to irrigate (bring water to) their fields. They had organized governments with kings. Soon some of the other people in Italy began to copy the Etruscan ways of doing things.

About the same time as the Etruscans, a lot of Greeks also came to make Greek colonies. At first they were probably mainly trading posts, but later Greek people settled down there and began farming. The Greeks settled in southern Italy, where they took over most of the Etruscan land there. The Greeks founded the city of ________, which became an important port (and it still is today).

The Etruscans traded a great deal with the Greeks and with the Phoenicians. The Etruscans sent lumber, furs, and probably slaves to the East. They bought jewelry, spices, perfume, and Greek vases from the East. Most of the Greek vases we have in museums today were found in Italy, in the tombs of the Etruscans!

The city of ______ lay between the northern and southern parts of Italy where the Etruscans lived. Because it was a good place to cross the Tiber river, the Etruscans wanted to control it. For a while, ______ may have been under the rule of Etruscan kings. These kings, like other Etruscan kings, made people build strong stone walls and stone ________ and canals for water.

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