 The runic alphabets used in northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.The Old Italic alphabets clearly derive from the Greek alphabet, specifically from the Euboean variant (also known in this case as Cumaean variant) used in the Euboean Greek colonies of Ischia and Cumae in the Bay of Naples in the 8th century BC.The Etruscans were the leading civilization of Italy in that period, and it is assumed that the other Old Italic scripts were derived from theirs – although some of them, including the Latin alphabet, retained certain Greek letters that the Etruscans themselves dropped at a rather early stage.