The Etruscans were a powerful clan with an alien tongue and strange customs. They emerged in what is now central Italy sometime around the 6th century BC. And no one is more obsessed with the Etruscans than the Italians themselves.

"I think that 90 percent of [Italian] taxi drivers can tell you something about the Etruscans," quips Francesco Cini, a resident of Florence who recently directed a major excavation of an Etruscan well.

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Source: http://www.pri.org/