Herodotus was right

last updated 8 January 2015

Izmir, Turkey

Italians in Tuscany originally came from Turkey, genetic evidence shows. Ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Etruscans, who dominated much of the Mediterranean before the Roman era, came from Lydia, now called Turkey. Modern scholars, though, have long scoffed at that claim, saying the ancestors of today’s Tuscans evolved locally. But two new Italian studies support the Turkish connection. Both Tuscan men’s DNA sequences and Tuscan women’s mitochondria resemble their counterparts in modern Turkey far more closely than in other parts of Italy. In Herodotus’ fifth century B.C. account, a famine in the 13th century B.C. forced the Lydian king to send half his people west to seek a new life.