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Are Etruscans Vampires

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Are Etruscans Really Vampires? Pop culture and Hollywood has long entertained us for decades with vampires like Dracula in literature, movies, and television shows. Vampires are normally portrayed as blood-sucking creatures with fangs that lived in a coffin and only came out at night since the sun would burn their fair skin. And let us not forget their romantic quest to seduce a human to satisfy their thirst for human blood. A fascinating characteristic has been their ability to live forever unless a stake is driven through the heart. Today you may see vampires portrayed as a beautiful person such as Edward Cullen in New Moon, The Twilight Saga movie where he is trying to fit into the high school scene by being strong and sensitive, nevertheless, …show more content…

During the sixth century, the Greek peoples were burying their loved ones in earth graves while the Etruscans were laid to rest in underground tombs. The underground Tomb of the Augurs is an example of an Etruscan grave, one of many that cover the countryside of the Etruscan city of Tarquinia. Colorful fresco paintings cover all four walls with an opening or large door in the center rear wall that may signify where one passes on to the Underworld or afterlife. Two men guard the door in the painting around the door, one on either side, saluting and mourning the loved one that has passed. The right wall displays a man dressed in a purple robe that marks his achievements with depictions of funerary games in his honor. The left wall portrays a masked man with a dog that has bitten a man holding a club which historians feel may be a foreshadow of Roman gladiator games (Kleiner 164). This is very similar to the underground tomb with a decorated entrance with two men guarding the door with the opening in Dr. Uni’s photo evidence (p. 7, Fig. 1), which refutes the fact that Etruscans are vampires that live underground. Elite Etruscans built even more massive tombs, which housed generations of their families. A mound of earth, some measuring 130 feet in diameter and 50 feet tall, covered one or more underground …show more content…

Scientists have found 2500-year-old charred remains of honeycombs along with other artifacts in Milan, Italy at the town trade center. The honeycombs were made from a distinct grapevine that grew by the rivers only to be created by traveling beekeepers. This is a very telling statement that discredits the idea that the Etruscans were vampires and lived underground. The room had been destroyed by fire; however, the honeycombs were preserved in their original deposition so that samples of the melted honey were determined to be of an early-cultivated variation of grapevine. The samples revealed that the honeybees had been feasting on plants like grapevines and water lilies, some which were not native to the Etruria region. This would have suggested that the honeycomb hives and bees were collected via floating down the riverbanks and brought back to the trade center. When the beehives became full of honey and heavy enough to lower their boats into the water, they would return home to extract the honey. This knowledge leads us to believe the Etruscans possessed a particular type of beekeeping known only to them. Again, this suggests that the Etruscans never spent life underground or never exposed to sunlight (Lorenzi,

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