Iapygians

[Jovialis]

I was going to post this in the Mycenaean and Minoan DNA thread. But I don’t want to derail the conversation with Italian history and genetics. I’m interested to know what you think the orgin and the fate of the Iapyges were.

I think the Iapygians were probably near totally absorbed by the Greek colonists, who were in larger number. Maybe after the defeat by the Romans, this especially became the case.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapian_language

The language was spoken by 3 tribes:

Messapii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapians

The origin of the Messapii is debated. The most credited theory is that they came from Illyria as one of the Illyrian tribes who settled in Apulia and that they emerged as a sub-tribe distinct from the rest of the Iapyges. It seems that the Iapyges spread northwards from the Salento.^[8][9]
The pre-Italic settlement of Gnapia, was founded in the fifteenth century BC during the Bronze Age. It was captured and settled by the Iapyges, as they occupied large tracts of territory in Apulia. The Messapii developed a distinct identity from the Iapyges. Rudiae was first settled from the late ninth or early eighth centuries BC. In the late sixth century BC it developed into a much more important settlement. It flourished under the Messapii, but after their defeat by Rome it dwindled and became a small village. The nearby Lupiae(Lecce) flourished at its expense. The Messapi did not have a centralised form of government. Their towns were independent city-states. They had trade relationships with the Greek cities of Magna Graecia.

Peucetii

They had three important towns: Canosa, Silvium and Bitonto; the present capital of Apulia, Bari, had not much importance.
With increasing Hellenization their eponymous ancestor, given the name Peucetis, was said by Dionysius of Halicarnassus^[2] to have been the son of the Arcadian Lycaon and brother of Oenotrus. Lycaon having divided Arcadia among his twenty-two sons, Peucetios was inspired to seek better fortune abroad. This etiological myth is considered by modern writers to suggest strongly that, as far as the Greeks were concerned, the Peucetii were culturally part, though an unimportant part, of Magna Graecia.
Strabo places them to the north of the Calabri.^[3] Strabo adds (VI.8) "...the terms Peucetii and Daunii are not at all used by the native inhabitants except in the early times"In the time of Strabo the territory occupied by the former Peuceti lay on the mule-track that was the only connection between Brindisi and Benevento.^[4] Pre-Roman ceramic evidence justifies Strabo's classification of Daunii, Peucetii and Messapii, who were all speakers of the Messapian language. There were twelve tribal proto-statelets among the Peucetii, one of which is represented by modern Altamura.
The Encyclopédie under "Peuceti", distinguishes them from another ancient people, the Peucetioe who were living in Liburnia at the head of the Adriatic, with a reference to Callimachus, as quoted in Pliny (H.N. III.21) placing their country in Pliny's day as part of Illyria^[5] but modern ethnography treats them as synonyms.^[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peucetians

Danunii

Towards the late Bronze Age (11th-10th centuries BC), Illyrian populations from the eastern Adriatic arrived in Apulia.^[2] The Illyrians in Italy, united with the pre-existing people and groups from the Aegean, probably from Crete, created the Iapygian civilization which consisted of three tribes: Peucetia, Messapi and the Dauni.^[3] The region was previously inhabited by Italic peoples of Southern Italy; among them are the Ausones/Oscans, Sabines, Lucani, Paeligni, Bruttii, Campanians, Aequi, Samnitesand Frentani.
The Dauni were similar to but also different from the Peucetii and Messapii, who settled in central and southern Puglia.^[3] Having been also less influenced by the Campanian civilization, it had thus a more peculiar culture, featuring in particular the Daunian steles, a series of funerary monuments sculpted in the 7th-6th centuries BC in the plain south of Siponto, and now mostly housed in the National Archeological Museum of Manfredonia. Particularly striking is the Daunian pottery (as yet little studied) which begins with geometric patterns but which eventually includes crude human, bird and plant figures.
The main Daunian centers were Teanum Apulum (within the modern San Paolo di Civitate), Uria Garganica, the location of which though is not known with certainty, Casone, Lucera, Merinum (Vieste), Monte Saraceno (near Mattinata), Siponto, Coppa Navigata, Cupola, Salapia (near Cerignola and Manfredonia), Arpi (near Foggia), Aecae (near Troia), Vibinum (Bovino), Castelluccio dei Sauri, Herdonia (Ordona), Ausculum (Ascoli Satriano), Ripalta (near Cerignola), Canosa di Puglia, Melfi, Lavelloand Venosa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daunians

 

[Salento]

Chances are that there were not enough Greek to assimilate the Locals.
The Messapi Killed most of the Greek (Spartans), genocide style.
Erodoto Stated:
« fu questa la più grande strage di Greci e Reggini che noi conosciamo, che dei Reggini morirono 3000 soldati e dei Tarantini non si poté nemmeno contare il numero. »
After that the Greek come back with Vendetta, but were able only to take Taranto, and they hold it, eventually losing in it to the Romans couple of Century Later.


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[Salento]

In the Middle Ages Refugees from Greece settle in Specific Towns likes Calimera.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Chances are that there were not enough Greek to assimilate the Locals.
The Messapi Killed most of the Greek (Spartans), genocide style.
Erodoto Stated:
« fu questa la più grande strage di Greci e Reggini che noi conosciamo, che dei Reggini morirono 3000 soldati e dei Tarantini non si poté nemmeno contare il numero. »
After that the Greek come back with Vendetta, but were able only to take Taranto, and they hold it, eventually losing in it to the Romans couple of Century Later.


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Herodotus before that quote had said that Messapians were from Crete.

 

[Salento]

Obviously he was misinformed about that.


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[Ygorbr]

I'd like to know what the archaeological, linguistic and/or genetic evidences are to back up the assumption that tribes like the Messapians and the Ligurians came from elsewhere (Illyrian Balkans in the former case, Gaul in the latter) instead of being pre-Italic Indo-Europeanized peoples. The Italic proto-language is generally assumed to have been spoken quite late in history, around 1,200 BC (by the late Urnfield culture), and they seem to have spread only in the 1st millenium BC.

Was Italy devoid of Indo-European peoples that late, considering that even Iberia probably received Proto-Celts (or Para-Celts) like Lusitanians around the same time? I think that the links of Messapian with Illyrian languages could've possibly derive from ancient common roots, not from a more recent Balkanic immigration. If the Illyrians were related with Central/Southeastern cultures relatively near to Northern Italy, like Vucedol and Baden, then some of them could've gone west and south through the Italian Adriatic coast.

Ligurians are also still regarded by some linguists as Para-Celtic language speakers, possibly reaching Southern France and Italy before the Central European Proto-Celts who remained around present-day Switzerland, all of them possibly deriving from the language of Central European Bell Beakers who expanded north, east and south (would that explain the various and sometimes contradictory connections between Lusitanian, Ligurian, Celtic and Italic?).

Of course, this is all speculation, but I don't know why it couldn't be truer than the assumption that those peoples, clearly pressed by encroaching peoples like Etruscans and Italics, were incomers, and not remnants of a previous linguistic situation.

 

[Jovialis]

They had three important towns: Canosa, Silvium and Bitonto; the present capital of Apulia, Bari, had not much importance.
With increasing Hellenization their eponymous ancestor, given the name Peucetis, was said by Dionysius of Halicarnassus^[2] to have been the son of the Arcadian Lycaon and brother of Oenotrus. Lycaon having divided Arcadia among his twenty-two sons, Peucetios was inspired to seek better fortune abroad. This etiological myth is considered by modern writers to suggest strongly that, as far as the Greeks were concerned, the Peucetii were culturally part, though an unimportant part, of Magna Graecia.
Strabo places them to the north of the Calabri.^[3] Strabo adds (VI.8) "...the terms Peucetii and Daunii are not at all used by the native inhabitants except in the early times"In the time of Strabo the territory occupied by the former Peuceti lay on the mule-track that was the only connection between Brindisi and Benevento.^[4] Pre-Roman ceramic evidence justifies Strabo's classification of Daunii, Peucetii and Messapii, who were all speakers of the Messapian language. There were twelve tribal proto-statelets among the Peucetii, one of which is represented by modern Altamura.
The Encyclopédie under "Peuceti", distinguishes them from another ancient people, the Peucetioe who were living in Liburnia at the head of the Adriatic, with a reference to Callimachus, as quoted in Pliny (H.N. III.21) placing their country in Pliny's day as part of Illyria^[5] but modern ethnography treats them as synonyms.^[6]

Peuceti were culturally Greek, and had trade relations with the Greek Colonists. I assume there was a lot of cultural exchange between them. In regards to Altamura though, it was abandoned for 300 years in the middle ages, and resettled in 1200s. So they wouldn't have a connection to the previous inhabitants.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Obviously he was misinformed about that.


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What you do is using one source selectively then, because if he can be misinformed about one thing he can be misinformed about everything, and especially in that case his source could have been one and the same.

 

[Salento]

What you do is using one source selectively then, because if he can be misinformed about one thing he can be misinformed about everything, and especially in that case his source could have been one and the same.

Herodotus/Erodoto is consider the Father of History, but also the Father of Lies. He made mistake too.
M. A. wrote "Everything we hear is an Opinion, not a Fact, Everything we see is Perspective not the Truth."

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Herodotus/Erodoto is consider the Father of History, but also the Father of Lies. He made mistake too.
M. A. wrote "Everything we hear is an Opinion, not a Fact, Everything we see is Perspective not the Truth."

Maybe, but you used him as an authority. You are dishonest.

 

[Salento]

Maybe, but you used him as an authority. You are dishonest.

Take a Chill Pill, and APOLOGIZE!

 

[Pax Augusta]

Of course, this is all speculation, but I don't know why it couldn't be truer than the assumption that those peoples, clearly pressed by encroaching peoples like Etruscans and Italics, were incomers, and not remnants of a previous linguistic situation.

Also "encroaching peoples like Etruscans" is just a speculation, especially when it comes to Late Bronze age. And there is no consensus among linguists about Etruscan language as not remnant of a previous linguistic situation.

Even Italic in this context is deceiving as a term but Italics are clearly part of a IE Late Bronze age migration.

 

[Diomedes]

Using capital letters will not make any difference. Actually it will make people irate.

Take a Chill Pill, and APOLOGIZE!

 

[Salento]

Using capital letters will not make any difference. Actually it will make people irate.

That's a contradiction.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Take a Chill Pill, and APOLOGIZE!

If 'Herodotus/Erodoto' is the 'father of lies' don't cite him.

Either way, that's what he says. He talks about Crete before & after that quote you used.

7.
169.But the Cretans, when the Hellenes appointed to deal with them were trying to gain their aid, acted as I will show. They sent messengers to Delphi, inquiring if it would be to their advantage to help the Hellenes. The Pythia answered them, “Foolish men, was not the grief enough which Minos sent upon your people for the help given to Menelaus, out of anger that those others would not help to avenge his death at Camicus, while you helped them to avenge the stealing of that woman from Sparta by a barbarian?” When this was brought to the ears of the Cretans, they would have nothing to do with aiding the Hellenes

170.
Now Minos, it is said, went to Sicania, which is now called Sicily, in search for Daedalus, and perished there by a violent death. Presently all the Cretans except the men of Polichne and Praesus were bidden by a god to go with a great host to Sicania. Here they besieged the town of Camicus, where in my day the men of Acragas dwelt, for five years. Presently, since they could neither take it nor remain there because of the famine which afflicted them, they departed. However, when they were at sea off Iapygia, a great storm caught and drove them ashore. Because their ships had been wrecked and there was no way left of returning to Crete, they founded there the town of Hyria, and made this their dwelling place, accordingly changing from Cretans to Messapians of Iapygia, and from islanders to dwellers on the mainland. From Hyria they made settlements in those other towns which a very long time afterwards the Tarentines attempted to destroy, thereby suffering great disaster. The result was that no one has ever heard of so great a slaughter of Hellenes as that of the Tarentines and Rhegians; three thousand townsmen of the latter, men who had been coerced by Micythus son of Choerus to come and help the Tarentines, were killed, and no count was kept of the Tarentine slain. Micythus was a servant of Anaxilaus and had been left in charge of Rhegium; it was he who was banished from Rhegium and settled in Tegea of Arcadia, and who set up those many statues at Olympia.

171.In relating the matter of the Rhegians and Tarentines, however, I digress from the main thread of my history. The Praesians say that when Crete was left desolate, it was populated especially by Hellenes, among other peoples. Then, in the third generation after Minos, the events surrounding the Trojan War, in which the Cretans bore themselves as bravely as any in the cause of Menelaus, took place. After this, when they returned from Troy, they and their flocks and herds were afflicted by famine and pestilence, until Crete was once more left desolate. Then came a third influx of Cretans, and it is they who, with those that were left, now dwell there. It was this that the priestess bade them remember, and so prevented them from aiding the Hellenes as they were previously inclined.

*I used the English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920., but changed 'Greeks' to 'Hellenes', because there are no 'Greeks' in the text.

 

[Salento]

If 'Herodotus/Erodoto' is the 'father of lies' don't cite him.

Either way, that's what he says. He talks about Crete before & after that quote you used.


*I used the English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920., but changed 'Greeks' to 'Hellenes', because there are no 'Greeks' in the text.

Some historians add their own spin to accounts. The main events are usually factual, but the details are romanticized to match a personal bios. I accept.

 

[Sile]

Peuceti were culturally Greek, and had trade relations with the Greek Colonists. I assume there was a lot of cultural exchange between them. In regards to Altamura though, it was abandoned for 300 years in the middle ages, and resettled in 1200s. So they wouldn't have a connection to the previous inhabitants.

The Peuceti where linked with the illyrian-liburnians ............the liburbians where in control of all of the adriatic sea up to Corfu, they owned Corfu until ~700BC when the corintians took it from them ,
IFthe messapic are said to be Iapygians, then the liburnians took them to southern Italy, because the Iapygians are from modern northern croatia and this tribe where eastern neighbours of the liburnians

 

[Ygorbr]

Also "encroaching peoples like Etruscans" is just a speculation, especially when it comes to Late Bronze age. And there is no consensus among linguists about Etruscan language as not remnant of a previous linguistic situation..

Yes, I know it, but to state that the Etruscans and Latins were encroaching on other Italian tribes by the Iron Age (I didn't mean the Late Bronze Age) is not mutually exclusive with the fact that they could've been indigenous pre-IE peoples. What I asserted is that Etruscans and Italics were expanding from their original lands and by the early Roman Republic era we can see that there are large chunks of Italy occupied by Italic tribes or by Etruscans and Greeks, i.e. expanding peoples, and little "islands" of territory occupied by other peoples like Messapians, Sicels and Ligurians. I meant that rather than incomers, those could be remnants of the linguistic situation of Italy before the latter wave of IE speakers, the Italics, came by ~1,000 BC, and before the Etruscans started expanding their territory even in historic documented period (the Etruscan conquest over Latium, for instance). Iron Age Etruscan seems to be too homogeneous to be just the remnant of pre-IE Italy, rather than the later expansion of a pre-IE people from somewhere in Italy or elsewhere.

 

[Sile]

Also "encroaching peoples like Etruscans" is just a speculation, especially when it comes to Late Bronze age. And there is no consensus among linguists about Etruscan language as not remnant of a previous linguistic situation.
Even Italic in this context is deceiving as a term but Italics are clearly part of a IE Late Bronze age migration.

link a site where it says etruscans where in italy in the late bronze-age

 

[Jovialis]

The Peuceti where linked with the illyrian-liburnians ............the liburbians where in control of all of the adriatic sea up to Corfu, they owned Corfu until ~700BC when the corintians took it from them ,
IFthe messapic are said to be Iapygians, then the liburnians took them to southern Italy, because the Iapygians are from modern northern croatia and this tribe where eastern neighbours of the liburnians

That's very interesting, I know H6a1b is found in Croatia at a relatively higher percent than most other places.