Mediterranean’s second island still speaks pre-Latin names
Sardinia, Italy’s autonomous second-largest Mediterranean island after Sicily, lies about 200 kilometres west of the peninsula. Its name appears as ŠRDN on the Phoenician Nora Stone, and classical writers also floated Ichnusa, Sandaliotis, and Argyrophleps beside Greek Sardṓ.
Mountains, woods, plains, streams, rocky shores and long sandy beaches have earned the island the nickname micro-continent, and modern travellers have praised landscapes that still hold traces of the Nuragic past. Geologically it is among Europe’s oldest landmasses. Remains from Corbeddu Cave may show people present about 20,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, though some researchers see no firm evidence of settlement before the early Mesolithic, roughly 10,000 years ago.
The Nuragic culture flourished from the eighteenth century BCE, leaving the stone towers that define the island. An alliance of Nuragic Sardinians and Phoenicians gave way to partial conquest by Carthage in the late sixth century BC and by Rome in 238 BC, beginning seven centuries of Roman rule. Vandals and Byzantines followed, but distance from Constantinople let Sardinians run their own affairs through four kingdoms called judicates.
Pisa and Genoa tried to dominate those kingdoms, yet it was the Crown of Aragon that took control in 1324 and forged the Kingdom of Sardinia. That Iberian realm lasted until 1713 and, briefly again, until 1718, when the island went to the House of Savoy. The Savoyards merged it with their mainland lands, expanded during unification into the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, which became the Italian Republic in 1946.
A pre-Roman root *s(a)rd- became Latin sardus long before Italian Sardegna; classical writers also used Ichnusa and Sandaliotis. Sardinian and Algherese Catalan are among Italy’s twelve officially recognised linguistic minorities, though both are endangered. The Tyrrhenian tree frog lives here as well as on Corsica and the Tuscan islands.
Source: Sardinia
