List of ancient peoples of Italy explained

This list of ancient peoples living in Italy summarises the many different Italian populations that existed in antiquity. Among them, the Romans succeeded in Romanizing the entire Italian peninsula following the Roman expansion in Italy, which provides the time-window in which the names of the remaining ancient Italian peoples first appear in documentation. Many names are exonyms assigned by the ancient writers of works in ancient Greek and Latin, while others are scholarly inventions.

Nearly all of these peoples and tribes spoke Indo-European languages: Italics, Celts, Ancient Greeks, and tribes likely occupying various intermediate positions between these language groups. On the other hand, some Italian peoples (such as the Rhaetians, Camuni, Etruscans) likely spoke non- or pre-Indo-European languages. In addition, peoples speaking languages of the Afro-Asiatic family, specifically the largely Semitic Phoenicians and Carthaginians, settled and colonized parts of western and southern Sardinia and western Sicily.[1]

Speakers of non-Indo-European languages

Scholars believe - though sometimes on the basis of scanty evidence - that the following peoples spoke non-Indo-European languages. Some of them were Pre-Indo-Europeans or Paleo-Europeans while, with regard to some others, Giacomo Devoto proposed the definition of Peri-Indo-European (i.e. everything that has hybrid characters between Indo-European and non-Indo-European).[2]

Sardinians

See also: History of Sardinia, Pre-Nuragic Sardinia, List of ancient Corsican and Sardinian tribes, Nuragic civilization, Sherden, Sea Peoples and Prehistory of Corsica.

Tyrrhenians

See also: Etruscan society and Etruscan cities. The Tyrrhenians were the Etruscans and their linguistic relatives.

Others (classification uncertain)

Speakers of Indo-European languages

Italo-Celtic

See main article: Italo-Celtic. Italic and Celtic languages are commonly grouped together on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. This could imply that they are descended from a common ancestor and/or Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic developed in close proximity over a long period of time.

Italic

Speakers of Italic languages included:

Celts

The Celts of the Italian peninsula included,

Ligures

The Ligures, who may have spoken Pre-Indo-European[35] or an Indo-European language,[36] were:

Greeks

Sometimes referred in ancient sources as Pelasgi,[37] the Ancient Greeks of the Italian peninsula included,

Others (classification uncertain)

Prehistoric archeological cultures

See main article: article and Prehistoric Italy. The specific identities or names of the tribes or groups of peoples that practiced these pre-Roman archeological cultures are mostly unknown. The posited existence of these archeological cultures is based on archeological assemblages of artifacts that share common traits and are found within a certain region and originate within a certain prehistoric period. Therefore, many of these archeological cultures may not necessarily correspond to a specific group of ancient people and, in fact, may have been shared among various groups of ancient peoples. The extent to which an archeological culture is representative of a particular cohesive ancient group of people is open for debate; many of these cultures may be the product of a single ancient Italian tribe or civilization (e.g. Latial culture), while others may have been spread among different groups of ancient Italian peoples and even outside of Italy. For example, Latial culture is believed to be the product specifically of the Ancient Latin tribe; the Canegrate culture and Golasecca culture have been associated with various ancient proto-Celtic, Celtic and Ligure tribes including the Lepontii, Orobii, and Insubres, while other archeological cultures may have been present among multiple groups throughout and beyond the Italian peninsula.

Neolithic

Copper Age

Bronze Age

Iron Age

Genetics

A genetic study published in Science in November 2019 examined the remains of six Latin males buried near Rome between 900 BC and 200 BC. They carried the paternal haplogroups R-M269, T-L208, R-311, R-PF7589 and R-P312 (two samples), and the maternal haplogroups H1aj1a, T2c1f, H2a, U4a1a, H11a and H10. A female from the preceding Proto-Villanovan culture carried the maternal haplogroups U5a2b. These examined individuals were distinguished from preceding populations of Italy by the presence of ca. 25-35% steppe ancestry. Overall, the genetic differentiation between the Latins, Etruscans and the preceding proto-villanovan population of Italy was found to be insignificant.

See also

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Sicilian Peoples: The Carthaginians - Best of Sicily Magazine - Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Hanibal, Hamilcar, Punic Wars, Punic Language, Carthage, Palermo, Zis, Sis, Panormos, Solus, Motya, Motia, Mozia.. 2022-02-09. www.bestofsicily.com.
  2. [Giacomo Devoto]
  3. Web site: sardi in "Dizionario di Storia". www.treccani.it.
  4. Web site: SARDI in "Enciclopedia Italiana". www.treccani.it.
  5. Web site: ARCHIVIO. Nuovo studio dell'archeologo Ugas: "È certo, i nuragici erano gli Shardana". February 3, 2017. Sardiniapost.it.
  6. Web site: SP INTERVISTA>GIOVANNI UGAS: SHARDANA. www.sardiniapoint.it.
  7. Web site: LacusCurtius • Ptolemy's Geography — Book III, Chapter 3. penelope.uchicago.edu.
  8. Book: Ugas, Giovanni. L'alba dei nuraghi. 2006. Fabula Editore. 978-88-89661-00-0. it. 34.
  9. Book: Goring . Elizabeth. 2004 . Treasures from Tuscany: the Etruscan legacy . en . Edinburgh . National Museums Scotland Enterprises Limited . 13 . 978-1901663907 .
  10. Book: Leighton . Robert. 2004 . Tarquinia. An Etruscan City . Duckworth Archaeological Histories Series . en . London. Duckworth Press. 32 . 0-7156-3162-4 .
  11. Book: Hartmann . Thomas Michael . 2001 . Camporeale . Giovannangelo . Giovannangelo Camporeale . The Etruscans Outside Etruria . en . Los Angeles. Getty Trust Publications . 2004 .
  12. http://spazioinwind.libero.it/popoli_antichi/Etruschi/Etruria%20Campana.html Etruria campana
  13. [Strabo]
  14. Book: Francesco Belsito. Storia di Nocera. Monumenti, personaggi, leggende. Angri, Gaia. 2013.
  15. Book: A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean . Harald Haarmann. John Wiley & Sons, Inc . 2014. Ethnicity and Language in the Ancient Mediterranean. 17–33 . 9781444337341.
  16. Book: Markey. Thomas. Shared Symbolics, Genre Diffusion, Token Perception and Late Literacy in North-Western Europe. 2008. NOWELE.
  17. Piceni popolo d'Europa, Vv.Aa., Edizioni De Luca, Roma, 1999, p. 139
  18. Hazlitt, William. The Classical Gazetteer (1851), p. 297.
  19. Pietrina Anello. I Sicani nel IV secolo a.C.. Atti del convegno di studi su Diodoro Siculo e la Sicilia indigena. 2005. 150. it.
  20. News: Liguri . 2011 . Enciclopedie on line . Treccani.it . . Rome . it. Le documentazioni sulla lingua dei Liguri non ne permettono una classificazione linguistica certa (preindoeuropeo di tipo mediterraneo? Indoeuropeo di tipo celtico?)..
  21. Web site: Ligurian language . Britannica.com . 2014-12-16 . 2015-08-29.
  22. Villar, cit., pp. 447-482.
  23. Book: Hartmann, Markus . Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics . 2017 . Walter de Gruyter . Berlin . 978-3-11-054243-1 . Klein . Jared . 3 . Siculian. Joseph . Brian . Fritz . Matthias . 10.1515/9783110542431-026. 242076323. 1854.
  24. http://www.venetoimage.com/svc.htm Storia, vita, costumi, religiosità dei Veneti antichi
  25. Web site: L'alfabeto umbro su Omniglot.com. 16 January 2009.
  26. Book: Aristotle . Aristotle . Politics . vii.10. 1932 .
  27. Book: Pliny the Elder . Natural History . Book III, Chapter 12.
  28. [Livy]
  29. Book: Strabo

    . Strabo . Strabo . Geography . Book V, Chapter 4, Section 2. 1917 .

  30. G. Micali, Storia degli antichi popoli italiani, Tomo II, Firenze 1832, p. 24.
  31. Book: Kruta, Venceslas. The Celts. 1991. Thames and Hudson. 52–56.
  32. Book: Stifter, David. Old Celtic Languages. 2008. 24–37.
  33. Web site: LinguistList: Lepontic . 2010-06-06 . 2011-12-22 . https://web.archive.org/web/20111222225335/http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xlp . dead .
  34. John T. Koch (ed.) Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia ABC-CLIO (2005)
  35. News: Liguri . 2011 . Enciclopedie on line . Treccani.it . . Rome . it. Le documentazioni sulla lingua dei Liguri non ne permettono una classificazione linguistica certa (preindoeuropeo di tipo mediterraneo? Indoeuropeo di tipo celtico?)..
  36. Web site: Ligurian language . Britannica.com . 2014-12-16 . 2015-08-29.
  37. [Herodotus]
  38. Web site: IAPIGI. 3 July 2023. it.
  39. Web site: Gli Elimi: storia e archeologia di Segesta, Erice, Entella. 2021-12-26. www.arkeomania.com.
  40. Book: Aloni. Antonio. Tra panellenismo e tradizioni locali: nuovi contributi. Ornaghi. Massimiliano. 2011. Claudio Meliadò. 978-88-8268-029-9. it.

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