DNA boosts account of Herodotus ... Etruscans as migrants to Italy

Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support a view held by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus —- but unpopular among archaeologists —- that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East.