From the New York Times: DNA Boosts Herodotus’ Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy.
Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support a view held by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus — but unpopular among archaeologists — that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East. [continue]
That is fascinating. It’s too bad that the Romans were so bent on eradicating any evidence of their social/cultural debt to the Eruscans. Blood (or in this case, DNA, will tell. It is beyond coincidence that the bovine and human traces agree, though it would be nice to narrow the time frame to something more specific than 6,400 to 1,600 years.