Limestone Head from Cyprus
© Art Institute of Chicago
Did the Romans nostrify the history of the Etruscans to prolong their own chronology?

Tim Cullen collected many observations to support such an assumption.

The two maps below also show indisputable similarities between the political constellations in the Phoenician period of the Etruscans (9th-6th c.), and in the Punic period of the Romans (6th-3rd c.).
Ancient Rome_1
© Malaga Bay

Ancient Rome_2
© Malaga Bay
Indeed, nowhere can one find Punic (centered on Carthage) or Roman cities (in Italy) with building layers from the 6th-3rd century BC that are super-imposed upon building layers of Phoenician (centered on Tyre) or Etruscan cities from the 9th-6th century BC.

The strata found in the ground are - roughly speaking - dated either 9th-6th or 6th-3rdcentury.

There is, per individual site, always only a single package of strata to fill one but never two consecutive periods.

Archaeologists don't deny it.

They explain it by saying:
"Etruscan cities have generally been built over from the Romans onwards, and houses have left little trace"
(Etruscan Architecture 2018).
Their firm belief in our textbook chronology forbids them to imagine the simultaneity of both histories.

Two different narratives about one and the same history were, indeed, transformed into two consecutive histories.

This did not disturb anyone until archaeology began and hard evidence could only be found for one of the two periods.

The similarity of the, e.g., portrait styles (eyes, hair, beards etc.) in the 9th/8th century and in the 5th/4th century were then interpreted as a consciously planned renaissance.

However, such an interpretation cannot replace the missing strata and residential quarters in the ground.

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