The Roman assimilation of west Asia starts only at the end of II century BC. Before that, we have six centuries of Greek colonization (without considering bronze age contacts with the mycenean world) in Southern Italy during the Archaic, classical and hellenistic period.
Well said. To ihype's point I think there's little doubt west that west Asia had a genetic influence on Italy but the context of arrival of this type of ancestry appears through the Greek context much earlier than Rome's widespread conquests. That's what the data of himera and ischia are telling us at least.
I believe that too, after all the interaction between Greece and the west anatolian coast was intensively going on since the VIII century B.C., well before the hellenistic age or the roman annexationoof the West Asia province in 133 B.C.
Yes, that's precisely correct and many people seem to be unaware of this. Many are aware of Rome's highly visible and well documented conquests. Some are aware of the large scale Greek immigration to S. Italy in the Greek archaic era much prior to Alexander's conquests. Less so seem to understand that the bronze age collapse and the Greek dark ages included widespread population exchanges and cultural homogenization with Asia minor. For this reason Greeks that go on to colonize Magna Graecia are not only coming from Greece proper but west Anatolia as well.
How do you explain late antiquity Romans from Marche, Lazio and Tuscany plotting like Southern Italians. Were Etruscans and Latins almost completely replaced by Southern Italian migrants?
We have very few samples from late antiquity / early middle age central Italy, so It's quite difficult to draw conclusions yet. But I believe a genetic influence (not at a replacement level, of course) from Magna Grecia could be a strong possibility, far more plausible than an abrupt invasion of people from West Asia in 133 B.C. Maybe the set of samples we have from early middle age Turin (broadly tuscan-like) are somewhat representative of the italic-magnogreek milieu one could have found in many roman colonies of that time.
How do you think the genetic ethnogenesis of Lazio and Abruzzo Italians happened? Can you use G25 in your claims?
G25 seems to inflate quite a bit the distal and more exotic components, expecially in comparison with other calculators (I'm not an expert of calculators though)
In the most simple of terms they were shifted to a modern southern Italian type of profile at the end of the republic by the assimilation of Oscan speakers with Magna Graecian origins. During late antiquity and the middle ages they were shifted northwards by a steady flow of northern Italian migration. As a result modern Italians from Lazio and Abruzzo today are evenly intermediate between that of the ancient Aegean and Padanian Italic profiles, but not quite the same as the iron age Etruscan and Latin predecessors which founded Rome. It seems to me that Italians today with the exception of Sardinians derive their ancestors from northern and southern Italian iron age populations rather than central.
| Distance to: | Italian_Lazio |
|---|---|
| 0.02305837 | Italian_Campania |
| 0.02872994 | Italian_Calabria |
| 0.05333614 | Greek_Dodecanese_Rhodes |
| 0.06543909 | ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA |
Proto-italic has its origins in Central Europe. This central European genetic component gets dramatically reduced over time but it leaves significant Y-dna in Italy through founder effects, largely through bands of fighting males sent away from their communities due to the rite of Ver Sacrum or similar practices. This occured throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages as the Italic languages were spread mainly through males who took local women in Italy. Central European dna was heavily diluted throughout the centuries because of this continuous process of male migrants/invaders being absorbed into the local genepool of a relatively high population already in Italy via Neolithic farmers.
Considering during the Classical period the Greeks of Magna Graecia were Mycenaean-like and that the East Med profile requires heavy West Admixture would that imply more ( Hellenized West Asian) Greeks came during the Roman occupation of Magna Graecia than during the Greek colonization (the Classic ones) itself?
I agree with the bulk on what you stated...................but I do not recall Latin-Faliscan being a part of Etruscan, it only was used to refer to Romans and Venetic populace ( something to do with the Northern Balkans )The idea that the Etruscans are an elite class who's language and cultural practices predominated over a genetically Latin-Faliscan population is considered a pseudoscientific concept that has been disavowed for years by archaeology, anthropology, archaeogenetics, and now even by some linguists. This concept is nothing more than a legacy of Herodotus' fable written around 400 B.C that the Lydians arrived in Italy and imposed themselves on the Umbrians, and who once arrived in Italy called themselves Tyrrhenians, which is the Greek name for the Etruscans. The interpretation that now enjoys the greatest consensus among scholars is that Herodotus' account does not contain actual events because it is the result of the Greek mentality; for the Greeks to claim that the Etruscans were of Lydian or Pelasgian origin was to say that the Etruscans were akin to the Greeks, because of the cultural and commercial relations that the Etruscans undoubtedly had for some centuries with the Greek world, including the eastern Greek world (i.e., Anatolia) and some Anatolian peoples. According to archaeologists there is now a consensus that the northern Italian area of Bologna and Verucchio should be considered fully Etruscan from the beginning and not as the result of colonization from Etruria (as is the case with the southernmost outposts of the Etruscans in Campania where the consensus remains that they were the result of colonization from Latium). If the Etruscans were in the Po Valley from the beginning and we consider them an elite that imposed itself on a Latin-Faliscan population, it means that the Latin-Faliscans were in a territory much farther north than their Iron Age settlement. This does not enjoy consensus either. The consensus among archaeologists is that as far as the Etruscans are concerned, there has been archaeological continuity since the end of the Bronze Age, when the Protovillanovan culture is attested, but the Late Bronze Age Protovillanovan culture is not considered to be the material expression of a single ethnic group (unlike the Villanovan culture of the Iron Age, which is identified only with the Etruscans).
For the rest, we have to wait for the studies to be published to see if the Osco-Umbrian speaking peoples and other populations really have a Paleo-Balkan shift or not. But as I have already written, there is a sample problem, which is probably why the studies have not yet been published.
What is noticeable is not only modern Italians compared to Iron Age populations but also other populations, including Albanians, have undergone a shift. But G25 remains an imperfect tool, there are not all academic samples published, and there is still a shortage of samples in academic studies for some periods and areas.
Yes. It seems apparent so far that the IA Latin profile in C. Italy did not survive the republican era. We see this in Etruria and Latium so far, albeit Etruria seems slightly less impacted by this Aegean shift.
Himera will likely not be representative of Greece proper nor many other Poleis of Magna Graecia due to its heavy Sicanian admixture. Like Pontecagnano, it is demonstrative of a cline of increasing aegean ancestry rather than being fully Greek like in my opinion. Ischia, for example, showed a much more Sicilian like average than Himera both around the same time period and 400 years prior. The late bronze age samples I mentioned prior already confirmed a high number of individuals with a modern S. Italian type of profile and several leaked iron age PCAs of greeks again confirm significant sums of Sicilian like individuals.
1. This is very difficult to answer because it depends entirely on what the makeup was of the Aegean profiles that caused the shift. We need much better sampling of Magna Graecia to determine this. The more Anatolian these magna graecian profiles were, the higher of a percentage of latin/etruscan makeup would've survived. If Magna Graecians were simply modern Sicilian and Dodecanese like and less so Anatolian then I would estimate very little survived as a modern Sicilian profile seems to have become standard to C. Italy in the years 31bc to 500ad.
This thread has been viewed 15224 times.
