This is CBS Island the World. I'm John Baxter with Daisy Dunn. The book is The Missing Thread, a women's history of the ancient world. The Etruscans. The Etruscans are a people of the Italian peninsula before Rome.

And the question is always, where did Rome come from?

There's a version from the Inneid, written by Virchal.

But there's also evidence that the Etruscans contributed to the building of Rome,

people leaving the Etruscan cities and coming to the Tiber.

However, where did the Etruscans come from?

Daisy, you introduce us to DNA and modern archaeology. What have they discovered about the Etruscan background? It's quite controversial. People have been wanting to know where the

Etruscans actually came from for a very, very long time.

And there are stories in some of these early Greek sources, which some DNA analysis seems to support.

And one of those stories is that people came originally to central Italy from what is now Turkey at a time of great difficulty and plague. People came off in boats and people

looked at scientists today, have looked at the analysis of people's DNA and also cow cattle

DNA as well. And they found there are some similarities between people from Turkey and the

certain area of Italy as well. Other people dispute that and say that

DNA analysis is quite difficult to sort of verify and they're more inclined to see the Etruscans

as being the native peoples of Italy. So we don't know exactly where they came from, but we know

that they were very, very

prominent, they were very skilled, and they were the people who were dominating Italy way before

the Romans became prominent. The women were of great note. I believe they wear cosmetics like the

Minoans. I believe that they have, they have dentistry, false teeth, using gold, like the

Minoans. Were they in commerce with the Minowans? They don't overlap, I don't think. This is the

fifth, what is this? The fifth century BC. They have a lot of the same aspects of the Minoans.

You're right. There's a big gap between. Some Minowans were looking back to the Bronze Age.

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