Previous surveys on the ancient genetic legacy of Southern Italy pointed to genetic contributions linking Southern Italy and Mediterranean Greek islands with Anatolia and the Caucasus tracing back to migratory events occurred during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, in which the Mediterranean served as a preferential crossroad3,13,27.
In particular, while the expansion of Anatolian Neolithic farmers significantly impacted all the Peninsula, differential Bronze-Age contributions were observed for Southern Italy with respect to Northern Italian populations. Bronze Age influences in the gene pool of Southern Italians have been in fact associated to a non-steppe Caucasian-related ancestry carried along the Mediterranean shores at the same time, but independently from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe migrations that occurred through Continental Europe. Consistently with this viewpoint, genetic analyses performed by comparing our modern populations with the main ancient ancestral sources have displayed the clustering of analysed Southern Italian groups with Neolithic and Bronze Age samples from Anatolian, Aegean Minoan and Mycenaean populations, as opposed to the affinity of Northern Italy with Late-Neolithic and Bronze-Age samples from continental Europe (Suppl. Figure S8). Accordingly, both f3-outgroup, qpGraph and qpAdmixture analyses (Fig. 4, Suppl. Figure S9, Suppl. Figure S10)
revealed influences related to a Steppe ancestry in the Northern Italian groups, instead paralleled in Southern Italy by an analogous Caucasian-related contribution from a non-Steppe CHG/Iran_N source. Importantly, the same ancestral sources are equally shared both by the present-day “open” (i.e. not-isolated) Southern Italian populations of Benevento, Castrovillari and Catanzaro, as well as by the geographically and linguistically-isolated communities of the Aspromonte mountain area (Fig. 4, Suppl. Table S8), thus signaling a common genetic background that possibly predates the linguistic hypotheses originally suggested about the times of formation of the Greco language in Southern Italy.
Accordingly, we hypothesize that the genetic continuity between Southern Italian populations and the other Mediterranean groups may date back to these Neolithic and post-Neolithic events and may have been subsequently maintained and in some cases reinforced by continuous and overlapping gene flows following similar paths of diffusion and interaction between populations, among which the migrations of Greek-speaking people during the classical era (Magna Graecia) and/or in Byzantine and subsequent times. Therefore, the observed patterns could be linked to a tendency to mobility that has always characterized these populations, resulting in continuous cultural and genetic exchanges over time. That being so, the Calabrian Greek ethno-linguistic minorities of Southern Italy may be interpreted as the remnants of a wider area of Greek influence, that by virtue of their geographic isolation have preserved and evolved a unique variety of Greek which has survived through centuries in the mountains of the Aspromonte area. At this respect, the communities showing higher signatures of genetic isolation (Roghudi, Gallicianò, Condofuri and Roccaforte del Greco; Suppl. Figure S4, Suppl. Figure S5) are also the ones located in the more impervious areas of the Aspromonte, at the same time still conserving a certain number of Greco speakers (Suppl. Table S1)40,41.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82591-9