246 Outlines of European History Sardinians. We call them Etruscans. They were a people whose origin is still uncertain ; they probably had an earlier home in western Asia Minor/ and the Egyptian monuments tell us of their sea raids on the coast of the Delta as far back as the thirteenth century B.C., at a time when they were perhaps leav- ing Asia Minor in search of a new home in Italy. Here the Etruscans fast developed into the most civilized and powerful people north of the Greek colonies of Sicily and southern Italy (p. 147). Greek religion and arts found easy entrance among them ; they mined copper and became masters in metal work (Fig. 107). Their utensils of bronze found a ready market even in Greece (p. 1 49). They learned to write with Greek letters, and they have left behind thousands of inscriptions, which unfortu- nately we cannot yet read. The west coast of Italy from the Bay of Naples almost to Genoa, including the inland country as far as the Apennines, was finally held by the Etruscans. They seemed destined to become the final lords of Italy, and they con- tinued as an important people of the West far down into Roman history. But the Etruscans were not the only immigrants who sought an early home in Italy. The tribes forming the western end of the Indo-European migration (pp. 86-91) early felt the attrac- tiveness of this warm, sunny, and fertile peninsula.^ Probably not long after the Greeks pushed into the Greek peninsula (p. 124), the western tribes of Indo-European blood had threaded the Alpine passes from the north and entered the beautiful Medi- terranean world into which the Italian peninsula extends. They took possession of the main portion of the peninsula, where we call them " Italic " peoples. In Italy their dialects so differed among themselves that hardly a tribe of the Italic peoples was able to understand its kindred of the next group of tribes. '^ They do not belong to the Indo-European line (Fig. 49). 2 Whether the lake-dwellers represent a western migration of the Indo- European peoples or not we do not know.
