The
Etruscans were a people with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean
Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium B.C. They ranged over the
Po Valley and some of its alpine slopes, southward along the west coast of
Italy, most intensely in
Etruria with enclaves as far south as
Campania, and inland into the
Appennine mountains. Their prehistory can be traced with certainty to about 1000 BC. At their
height about 500 BC, they were a significant maritime power with a presence in
Sardinia and the
Aegean Sea.