(Bronze Age) Civ: Etruscans

[Atenmeses52]

[post info and sources here]

[Not a Spartan]

I always thought the Etruscans would be better off as a main program miniciv, seeing that they immediately preceded the Roman Republic. I'll see what I can find, anyway!

(edit: saw your post in the main thread...let's get that design document up!)

Edited January 24, 2013 by Not a Spartan

[Burzum]

The Etruscans are essentially a division of Phoenicians that settled in Umbria in north east Italia.

Much of their literature got destroyed and even just blended into Roman society. This dilution has erased nearly all accounts of these great peoples.

The Etruscans, what we do know evident of several artifacts and from various Greek historians, were a great sea ferring people. They won many battles in the Terrhyian sea and controlled a great trade rout.

Sadly, the Greek descriptions and literature about the Etruscans are one sided, biased and not really accurate. This is because the Greeks saw these people as pirates and barbaric. Same like Rome saw Gaul.

Religion was also an important factor in this destruction of Etruscan literature and form of cultural evidence that existed. The common conception of the time was the Etruscans were "evil" and "sons of the devil".

Their influence in art, language, and architecture however prevailed, and was implemented into Roman society which lasted well into the middle ages in Italy.

Most of Latin is a composition of Etruscan.

Etruscan units for 0.A.D. would like these.

Edited March 2, 2013 by Burzum

[Lion.Kanzen]

we do etruscans too?

[Pedro Falcão]

IMO? No. First Etruscan records date back to 800 BC, and the iron age, in Italy, began 300 years before.

[Lion.Kanzen]

IMO? No. First Etruscan records date back to 800 BC, and the iron age, in Italy, began 300 years before.

800 that is 300 year early than 0A.D timeline, for me, works.

I want include other Latin States or Italic tribes.

[Not a Spartan]

I've been working on an Etruscan document- see the 'Some Suggestions for 0AD' thread in the General forum.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I've been working on an Etruscan document- see the 'Some Suggestions for 0AD' thread in the General forum.

its possibly if you can share a copy in google drive/docs will be nice. Edited March 8, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[Mega Mania]

Etruscan army mobilization from Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia.

Galley showing deck and superstructure. About 600 b.c. From an Etruscan imitation of a Greek vase.

Archaic bronze statuette from Todi in the British Museum.

Etruscan warriors carrying the body of a fallen comrade from Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia.

Edited October 3, 2013 by Mega Mania

[Mega Mania]

Here's a website: http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/

[Lion.Kanzen]

Thank you.

[Mega Mania]

Here's another source: http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/ItalyEtruscans.htm

[Mega Mania]

Etruscan soldier with rectangular shield

Etruscan weapon

[Lion.Kanzen]

Nice information, thanks.

[Mega Mania]

More Picture on the way.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Mega Mania

[Lion.Kanzen]

this onemust be our symbol, I will try to work in this.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

[Lion.Kanzen]

Edited January 7, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

[Rodmar]

The Etruscans are essentially a division of Phoenicians that settled in Umbria in north east Italia.

Much of their literature got destroyed and even just blended into Roman society. This dilution has erased nearly all accounts of these great peoples.

The Etruscans, what we do know evident of several artifacts and from various Greek historians, were a great sea ferring people. They won many battles in the Terrhyian sea and controlled a great trade rout.

Sadly, the Greek descriptions and literature about the Etruscans are one sided, biased and not really accurate. This is because the Greeks saw these people as pirates and barbaric. Same like Rome saw Gaul.

Religion was also an important factor in this destruction of Etruscan literature and form of cultural evidence that existed. The common conception of the time was the Etruscans were "evil" and "sons of the devil".

Their influence in art, language, and architecture however prevailed, and was implemented into Roman society which lasted well into the middle ages in Italy.

Most of Latin is a composition of Etruscan.

It seems that the current theory has widened the scheme.

1°) It's true that Greek and Etruscan saw each other as "cousin" (the Greek didn't call them "barbaroi"). This was because they were thought as originating from Lydia (and the Anatolian were not barbarian to the Greeks (cf. Troian, etc)). But this theory is now obsolete and only the aristocratic caste is thought to be of oriental ascend.

2°) One of the People of the Sea has landed in now Toscany (the Tyrrhenoi/Tursennoi/Tršw);

3°) They somehow merged with the local Villanova culture, as archaeological evidences show;

4°) In fact, Villanova is the correct name for Bronze Age Etruscans.

5°) Culturally wise, the Etruscan have been influenced by both the Phoenician and Greek cultures, the oriental period coinciding with the arrival of the Tyrrhenoi.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terramare

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_de_Villanova

6°) If you go for Etruscans in Aristeia, so should you for early Romans and Dorian Greeks too (no more Mycenians).

For those who want a translation (all the sources of this wiki page are Italian books):

The Villanovian culture is defined at first by the space where Etruria is already shaped at the beginning of the 1st millenium B.C. (a larger Toscany). This culture, neolithic at first, will eventually correspond to an unique ethnicity that will acquire metallurgy knowledge, iron metallurgy included.

• Characteristics:

Their main archaeological characteristic is the incineration of the death, stored in biconic urns: the similarity with the ritual of the "Urns fields" culture (Danubian plain) lead some historians to link the Villanovian with these peoples.

The Villanovians knew iron metallurgy: the ore came from the nearby Elba island. The Greek too knew these deposites and called the island Αἰθαλία / Aithalia.

The Villanovians lived in oval, sometimes rectangular, hut villages. They used iron weapons and bronze helmets, cuirasses and quality domestic items. The motives in art were geometrical and the manly face/shape was extremely stylized. Pottery was turned by hand, then by a turn, and was quite original, though influenced by the Greek forms. They appear as sedentary, farmers, herders and warriors (spears, swords, shields, daggers from the rich graves). Women seem to not have been excluded from high social rank or great riches.

In spite of a several centuries discontinuity, the Terramare culture may have contributed to the Villanovian culture. Indeed, the remarkable drainage, dikes, canals, and sewerage technologies used by the Villanovian then Etruscan strongly suggest an origin from those Padavian riverside villages.

• Origins:

Villanovians' ancestors may have emigrated from the Black Sea area during the last three centuries of the second millenium B.C. in several waves. As such they are part of the Proto-Celts ("before the Celts"), not unlike other Mediterranean peoples such as Ligurian, Iberian, and Italian.

But they were not the first to settle in the area. For instance, we know that Sardinia is inhabited since the 7th millenium B.C. by non Indo-Europeans, a long time before the Shardans (a Sea People) came. Another exemple is the Terramarecoli or People of the Terramare in northern and central Italia.

• Italian Bronze Age:

During Bronze Age, the Italian peninsula was culturally remarkably homogeneous (same pottery, same funerary rituals).

However, tumuli are found in southern Italia, likely showing much influence with the Mycenian and Sardinians worlds. The general cypro-mycenian area extended at that time westward to Sardinia and southern Italia.

In the north, the Terramare culture may have diffused southward to influence/form the Villanova culture.

• Early Iron Age:

At the beginning of Iron Age, the Villanovian culture expands in all the peninsula. However, evidences are particularly dense on a territory a bit larger that modern Toscany. In this region, the density and remnance of human population are remarkable. Archeological sites are not far away to each other for more than 5 to 15 km. The land shows evidences of a rational and systematic exploitation, as if a vast colonization had been in the process from the 9th century on, and achieved in merely two or three generations.

By the end of this process, the landscape is made of many villages of equal size: they house small agrarian communities, and they are the surest hints of a relatively egalitarian society.

• Beginning of the Etruscan civilization:

Then, aristocracy emerged because of a new socio-cultural organization, starting with the new "nuclear family" which replaced the older agrarian community, and with it: the pater familias and the heredium. This is a common evolution in the proto-historic societies, and when you start saying heritage, you can say large heritage and then aristo (plouto)-cracy. This new order would replace the archaic Villanovian society.

Roman authors described well this system.

From now on, there would be:

a king and the people, a base of citizen to recruit infantry, a cast of cavalrymen, elder councils, persons of note and citizen owing them service, nuclear family and larger groups bound by consanguinity and other kinds of relationships.

rex / king; populus /people; curiæ / men society, where infantry are recruited from; tribus / tribes, where cavalry are recruited from; patres / elder councils; clientes / citizen owing service to patroni; familiæ / nuclear family; gentes / groups bound by consanguinity and other kinds of relationship.

At the same time, in the 9th century B.C., but maybe as early as two or three centuries before (the Sea People are circa 12th century B.C.), small groups of Tyrrhenoi kept coming from the sea in the Villanovian space.

These newcomers, small in number (compared to the high density population) merged in the societies they found, without much violence (no evidence of burned villages nor stopping in the on-course colonization Villanovian process).

The coming of the Tyrrhenoi marked what the archaeologists call the "oriental period" of the Etruscan civilization. They were indeed not irrelevant to a newborn aristocracy which was at first the only people to use the writing (so far unknown in Etruria).

The genetic analysis of remnants in aristocratic graves (7th-2nd centuries B.C.) shows a homogeneous and "Anatolian" origin, that is infirmed by analysis on modern day old Toscanian families, maybe an evidence of a partly exogenous (and not yet mixed) aristocratic caste. Note that the Greek called the Etruscans: Tyrrhenoi and that they traced them either from Lydia (Anatolia) (Herodote) or the island of Lemnos (another island called Aithalia) in the Ægean Sea.

Another noticeable foreign influence, at the same time, was the coming of the Phoenician in Western Mediterranean. Those merchants settled in Nora (SW Sardinia) as early as the 9th century and the Etruscan engaged close trading relationship with them.

• The oriental period: c. 720 B.C. - 580 B.C.

The "oriental period" is dated through archaeological material. During this period, the Etruscan were artistically influenced by the Greek (beginning of figurative art). At the same time, the fight against Rome started.

• The archaic period: c. 600 B.C. - 480 B.C.

The Etruscan society became more structured and commercial and cultural exchanges were important. In particular, the painting developed dramatically. Greek pottery were imported. Rome became a republic. In 535 B.C., the Carthagino-Etruscan alliance defeated the Phocean for the control of Western Mediterranean. At the end of the 6th century B.C., the Etruscan expansion was at its greatest, from the Padavian valley north to Campania south. But already, Rome and then the Latin had liberated from the Etrurian subjugation (509 - 506 B.C.), isolating the southern lands from Etruria proper, and soon in the beginning of the 5th century, the Gauls destroyed all the Padavian cities.

• The classical period: c. 470 B.C. - 350 B.C.

In the 5th century B.C., the Etruscan society endured important political and military crisis and the art (archaeological) production decreased. Greek pottery were imported. During this period, the Etruscan allied the Carthaginian against the Greek. Véies was destroyed by Rome which dominated meridional Etruria, and Rome was sacked by the Gaul.

• The hellenistic period: c. 340 B.C. - 100 B.C.

The romanization began progressively. In 295 B.C., they knew their last great defeat in the Social War and in 264 B.C., their religious center, Velzna, was captured. In the 1st century B.C., the acculturated Etruscan had lost political power but their cultural traits had been assimilated by the Roman. They helped the Roman against Hannibal.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Rodmar

[Lion.Kanzen]

My last one Etruscan Symbol emblem Faction.

It seems that the current theory has widened the scheme.

1°) It's true that Greek and Etruscan saw each other as "cousin" (the Greek didn't call them "barbaroi"). This was because they were thought as originating from Lydia (and the Anatolian were not barbarian to the Greeks (cf. Troian, etc)). But this theory is now obsolete and only the aristocratic caste is thought to be of oriental ascend.

2°) One of the People of the Sea has landed in now Toscany (the Tyrrhenoi/Tursennoi/Tršw);

3°) They somehow merged with the local Villanova culture, as archaeological evidences show;

4°) In fact, Villanova is the correct name for Bronze Age Etruscans.

5°) Culturally wise, the Etruscan have been influenced by both the Phoenician and Greek cultures, the oriental period coinciding with the arrival of the Tyrrhenoi.

Yeah I saw horse symbols like punic one.

Edited January 8, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[Rodmar]

However, they did not adopt the oriental religion. They kept with what could be called a pre-Hellene indo-european pantheon. Like other people in the area, their alphabet was derived from the Greek and not directly from the Phoenician.

Of note is also the fact that both the Roman and the Greek were scandalized by the the way upper class women could lay on the same dining bed than their mate, and worst, attend to the "Gymnasium" and other sport places. "Etrusca" was synonymous to @#$% in the Republic.

[Edit] I like it very much when the filter translates _who***!

Edited January 9, 2014 by Rodmar

[Radagast.]

In fact, Villanova is the correct name for Bronze Age Etruscans.

So do you think we shall rename the civ?

Do you know which factions already have xml/json files? <- I can see it in the repository

@CivDesignDocuments:

I would love to have it in a database (i.e. a webpage which we can edit, add units, ...). Then we could generate the XML and JSON files on the fly. This would imply we could edit the civs in almost realtime, always outputting the correct files for 0AD on Thamletts server (if he's finewith it).

(if we were to have our repositories on Thamletts site, we could even have it real realtime, i.e. without having to overwrite the civ xml and json files in the repository manually.)

Does this look helpful? If not, what kind of tool would help you?

What I need to know:

• Is using a website instead of a Offline-Document convient for you? (Export in DOCX/ODT is still doable if we have a webspace/server with admin rights.)
• Or do you prefer uploading your document somewhere. (this seems inpossible because everyone uses a different syntax!)

Yet the second is what we needed as we already have plenty of art design documents?

If we have a significant amount (how many?). Then we should go for point 2. Thus further knowledge is required:

• Which file formats are the files written in?
• Can anyone create a list of all files that we already have, so that I can have a look at each syntax the individual researcher used?

The goal is: Generate the civ files (including their units', buildings', ..) out of the design document.

@Lion: We must not lose track of your non-final 2D art, you produce many shield-emblems on the way to the final civ's logo. This colour variation for example: (or will the colour for the units be player colour?)

Edited April 15, 2014 by Hephaestion

[Lion.Kanzen]

I love upload to my Dropbox and then upload to scribd. More easy. And have application for iOS

I planed finish one by one, if somebody wants write the document design, I not oppose to that, even I want start to create my own models( without props) only I need know how many polygons per type.

For now I have enought time friend, I'm unemployed but I live with my aunt and I'm preparing to get a job so first I'm trying have good health , trying get a car, soon I have my first one, my aunt have one but is to big to me.

For me do a logo or emblem can be simple a work about two days or less. I have full experience in that.

May be if you guys request a video can be good for both sides I need train my other skills.

Actually I have two degrees and I live comfortably but I need occupational experience. Even freelancer is not enoght for the employer.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[Radagast.]

No problem. We could have it as a Document via export. I'll see what is possible.

Though the export requires me to hammer it out in Java server pages and I have not yet figured a way to a successful webspace-installation, without superuser-rights, of Apache Tomcat (a container, 'shepherd' one could also say, which is one possible requirement for Java server pages).

Without a server with admin rights I can't provide anything sophisticated like DOCX or Open Document Format.

So at first I would opt for the webpage. Noone has to use . Yet I believe this were a real speed up as I don't want to copy all those lines and parameters from the Civ Design Docs over into the correct XML- and JSON-files. No, thanks.

As 2D artist freelancer there should be enough possibilities out in the wide web. Your engangement for 0AD shows the gaming industry they should employ you.

I think, we can drive 0AD far. It's really a genious project. And this time all our efforts are joined (in contrary to the Blender Game Engine where everyone seems to cook an own soup. I know of our comrades there that they try to lay down a base work. But I guess without the help of giants like Haidnu (Krum) this will not be possible).

And blender is more like unity than 0AD.

So 0AD is worth the effort. Just like many other open source projects that make this planet a better place to live on. e.g. fighting hunger in poor countries.

At the polycounts, don't worry too much. It always depends on how often the building is used ingame. Enrique somewhere talked about it. Best search for all his posts and read them one by one.

---

I will wait a bit until I get some more feedback from our Chief historians, ähm, researchers I meant, Rodmar and Zophim as well as all others that plan to have a go on it.