Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

If accurate, this would suggest a split of Italo-Celtic in central Europe and tons of R1b moving into the Italian peninsula in the late Bronze, early Iron Age. Imperial Rome can be explained as diverse for many reasons. One being that the further south in the peninsula, you have a variety of different ethnic groups who arrived at various points in time, whereas in the north, it would appear that it was a singular, monolithic movement of similar people, like we see with Bell Beaker ethnicities. Rome was also the capital at the height of the empire's power it would have attracted many people from around the Mediterranean, especially sophisticated traders from the east. Who knows what this sample actually represents. The Etruscan result is somewhat bizarre. If they were also from the north, which seems to be the case from the male haplogroups at least, how did they create such a sophisticated civilization? I am not aware of any parallel in Bell Beaker related groups, but I might be mistaken.

Also as Razib Khan stated, Etruscan-Lemnian connection is still there. Were Lemnians really just traders? Or they ran away to Aegean when the steppe population invaded Italy?

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Originally Posted by Aaron1981

If accurate, this would suggest a split of Italo-Celtic in central Europe and tons of R1b moving into the Italian peninsula in the late Bronze, early Iron Age. Imperial Rome can be explained as diverse for many reasons. One being that the further south in the peninsula, you have a variety of different ethnic groups who arrived at various points in time, whereas in the north, it would appear that it was a singular, monolithic movement of similar people, like we see with Bell Beaker ethnicities. Rome was also the capital at the height of the empire's power it would have attracted many people from around the Mediterranean, especially sophisticated traders from the east. Who knows what this sample actually represents. The Etruscan result is somewhat bizarre. If they were also from the north, which seems to be the case from the male haplogroups at least, how did they create such a sophisticated civilization? I am not aware of any parallel in Bell Beaker related groups, but I might be mistaken.

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Idk, but I think my explanation seems pretty viable in regards to the Romans of the late Republic. Moreover, I believe your presentation is invalid. Certainly, the Greeks, and Greek-like populations in the south were a monolithic genetic entity too. The Italics mixing with these populations makes sense for the lion's share of the genetic composition of the Late Republican Romans of Italia. Moreover as Razib said the biggest contributing factor was EEF. We don't even know how similar the Italics were from Celts by the time they got to Italy. Moreover, some of that SBA in the modern populations in the North came much after the Romans.

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Originally Posted by Jovialis

https://i.imgur.com/wy1D99N.png

By the Late Republic, if the Italics from the steppe did mix with the Aegean-like populations in Southern Italy; figures C and F sort of look like Italia during that time.

https://i.imgur.com/OfNKOe3.jpg

Moreover, my K36 heat map sort of looks like a silhouette of the Roman empire.

https://i.imgur.com/550now6.png

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Originally Posted by Jovialis

Here is Razib Khan's take on the paper.

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That's what an honest and objective take on the published data looks like. I have no quarrel with any of it.

Too bad so many people in the amateur popgen world are incapable of this kind of analysis.

As to the paper itself, it's been discussed before, but the only North African found is in Sicily, so we can put paid to all the frenzied attempts to find anything but traces of it in the mainland. It all makes sense, of course, because the Saracens were in Sicily, as they were in Iberia, which has similar levels of North African, for two centuries, and barely settled in the mainland.

History matters.

Their designation of Sicily Bell Beaker as essentially already Anatolian Bronze Age type people is also interesting. As some of us have been saying forever, it didn't need the Empire to bring that ancestry to Southern Italy.

The strange thing is their finding of "Iran Neolithic" in the south.If they are correct, we need ancient dna to understand it. The farmers of Iran didn't fly over all the territory in between to land in Southern Italy at some late date. Nor, I would suggest, did undiluted Iranian farmer ancestry still exist in the Roman Era. Everything indicates to me that it started to spread during the Copper Age, mixing with, in West Asia, earlier farmer ancestry. Likewise, Anatolian type farmer ancestry moved to the lands of the Iranian farmers.

I don't see how it could have arrived in Italy undiluted.

Nor, to forestall the usual suspects, can we attribute it to "Levantine" ancestry, as it would be a minority element in them, following, as it does, a north south cline in Western Asia.

Interestingly enough, they don't find "Levantine" ancestry anywhere but Sicily if I'm reading the charts correctly.

As to the high levels of sophistication of the Etruscan civilization, it certainly didn't come from Bell Beaker people or Central Europe. The metallurgy of Bell Beaker, for one thing, and their pottery, for another, was initially inferior to that of MN people in the Balkans, for example. Most of it had to come about from adoption of more sophisticated metallurgy, art, and on and on from the east, perhaps via their contacts with Sardinia. Also, less disruption from the steppe admixed people meant less disruption to the prior culture. The same thing happened to Italy in what became the Early Renaissance. More of the ancient culture survived, so it re-ignited there. I'm not saying that some highly advanced people from the east didn't go there. It's possible. We'll see. I'm more inclined, however, to see it as a slow spread up the peninsula.

I do, as always, have a problem with their admixture dates. I just don't think these programs are accurate. They pick up only the latest signal. That was the case for the Egyptians, if I remember correctly.

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Originally Posted by Angela

That's what an honest and objective take on the published data looks like. I have no quarrel with any of it.

Too bad so many people in the amateur popgen world are incapable of this kind of analysis.

As to the paper itself, it's been discussed before, but the only North African found is in Sicily, so we can put paid to all the frenzied attempts to find anything but traces of it in the mainland. It all makes sense, of course, because the Saracens were in Sicily, as they were in Iberia, which has similar levels of North African, for two centuries, and barely settled in the mainland.

History matters.

Their designation of Sicily Bell Beaker as essentially already Anatolian Bronze Age type people is also interesting. As some of us have been saying forever, it didn't need the Empire to bring that ancestry to Southern Italy.

The strange thing is their finding of "Iran Neolithic" in the south.If they are correct, we need ancient dna to understand it. The farmers of Iran didn't fly over all the territory in between to land in Southern Italy at some late date. Nor, I would suggest, did undiluted Iranian farmer ancestry still exist in the Roman Era. Everything indicates to me that it started to spread during the Copper Age, mixing with, in West Asia, earlier farmer ancestry. Likewise, Anatolian type farmer ancestry moved to the lands of the Iranian farmers.

I don't see how it could have arrived in Italy undiluted.

Nor, to forestall the usual suspects, can we attribute it to "Levantine" ancestry, as it would be a minority element in them, following, as it does, a north south cline in Western Asia.

Interestingly enough, they don't find "Levantine" ancestry anywhere but Sicily if I'm reading the charts correctly.

As to the high levels of sophistication of the Etruscan civilization, it certainly didn't come from Bell Beaker people or Central Europe. The metallurgy of Bell Beaker, for one thing, and their pottery, for another, was initially inferior to that of MN people in the Balkans, for example. Most of it had to come about from adoption of more sophisticated metallurgy, art, and on and on from the east, perhaps via their contacts with Sardinia. Also, less disruption from the steppe admixed people meant less disruption to the prior culture. The same thing happened to Italy in what became the Early Renaissance. More of the ancient culture survived, so it re-ignited there. I'm not saying that some highly advanced people from the east didn't go there. It's possible. We'll see. I'm more inclined, however, to see it as a slow spread up the peninsula.

I do, as always, have a problem with their admixture dates. I just don't think these programs are accurate. They pick up only the latest signal. That was the case for the Egyptians, if I remember correctly.

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I did find something which I think is new, and should be investigated:

""Contrary to previous reports (4), the occurrence of CHG as detected by our CP/NNLS analysis did not mirror the presence of SBA, with several populations testing positive for the latter but not for the former (Fig. 2 and fig. S5, A and B). When we compared this analysis and the one using a different CHG sample (SATP) (5), the two were highly correlated (Spearman ρ = 0.972, P < 0.05; fig. S5F). We therefore speculate that our approach might, in general, underestimate the presence of CHG across the continent; however, we note that even considering this scenario, the excess of Caucasus-related ancestry detected in the south of the European continent, and in Southern Italy in particular, is notable and unexplained by currently proposed models for the peopling of the continent."

Just as an aside, looking at the amounts of AN in Europe, except for the low population extreme northeast, Europeans are close to or over 50% AN.

Contrary to the way people think about Europe, that's the single most important component.

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Originally Posted by Angela

Just as an aside, looking at the amounts of AN in Europe, except for the low population extreme northeast, Europeans are close to or over 50% AN.

Contrary to the way people think about Europe, that's the single most important component.

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Indeed, and the pre-print that's been pinned on Lazaridis' tweeter for nearly a year has been under-discussed IMO

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/423079v1

As the Anatolian_N-like population from the Paleolithic Caucasus, is suggested to be the core of all West Eurasian ancestry.

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Originally Posted by Angela

As to the high levels of sophistication of the Etruscan civilization, it certainly didn't come from Bell Beaker people or Central Europe. The metallurgy of Bell Beaker, for one thing, and their pottery, for another, was initially inferior to that of MN people in the Balkans, for example. Most of it had to come about from adoption of more sophisticated metallurgy, art, and on and on from the east, perhaps via their contacts with Sardinia. Also, less disruption from the steppe admixed people meant less disruption to the prior culture. The same thing happened to Italy in what became the Early Renaissance. More of the ancient culture survived, so it re-ignited there. I'm not saying that some highly advanced people from the east didn't go there. It's possible. We'll see. I'm more inclined, however, to see it as a slow spread up the peninsula.

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According to many etruscologists and archaeologists, the high levels of sophistication of Etruscan civilization have nothing to do with their origins and are mostly due to the orientalizing period. The question of the origins of the Etruscans was solved long ago by archaeologists. The thesis of the eastern origin has been proposed again by indo-europeanists, orientalists, non-etruscologists and mostly by amateur scholars. While the majority of etruscologists, of any nationality (it is a lie written by the indo-europeanist Beekes that the autochthony of the Etruscans was only supported by Italian etruscologists), have never changed their minds.

The Etruscans certainly had many contacts and not only with the Greeks, being connected to all the main cultural and commercial routes of the time. From central Europe, to south-western and south-eastern Europe and the Aegean, of course. The Greeks called the Tyrrhenians "pirates". But the first contacts with the East Mediterranean with archaeological evidence date back to Frattesina in the south of Veneto, which is a site of the proto-Villanovan era. While today there are testimonies of previous contacts with movements not only from east to west, but also from west to east.

The Etruscans are the cultural synthesis of all this. Then, of course, small groups of foreigners may have arrived in Etruria, but they were foreigners assimilated by the Etruscans, not the ancestors of the Etruscans.

Of course the question of the language remains open, but it is difficult to believe and very unlikely that the Rhaetian language spoken in the Eastern Alps also came from a recent migration and that the Rhaetians were "Etruscans" driven out by the Gauls. The Rhaetian language is attested before the Gallic invasions of northern Italy, the Rhaetians are identified with a material culture called Fritzens-Sanzeno which is not Etruscan and the relations between Rhaetians and Etruscans seem very ancient both on an archaeological and linguistic level. Then, if it is definitively proved that also the Camunic language spoken in the Central Alps was also related to the Rhaetian language and therefore part of the same family, at this point it becomes really clear that it is a pre-Indo-European language that has been present for a long time. Moreover, the few inscriptions of Lemnos, written in an alphabet more common in Italy and Greece than in Asia Minor, are more recent than the oldest Etruscan inscriptions in Italy.

Without a doubt, the Etruscans owe much of their growth to their contacts with the Aegean Sea and the ancient Near East, but this is also true for the Greeks and, to a lesser extent, for the Romans.

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Originally Posted by Aaron1981

South Asians, and you can probably include East Asians are very wealthy in USA because that country has attracted the brightest and richest people to immigrate.

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you mean the exception confirms the rule? would republicans dislike south asians if there wasn't such a bias in your opinion?

How the hell does Davidski have all the Raveane genomes already and plugged into G25? Anyone know if they were published anywhere and when?

I guess he doesn't like people from Emilia Romagna. They're not included. :)

Anyone remember how much Iran Neo was in the Greek Neolithic? How much was in the Minoans?

I'm sorry to say it, but ONE Liguria sample and no samples from Emilia Romagna is NOT helpful.

We've known for ages that there's a difference between western and eastern Liguria, as we know that Emilia Romagna is a bridge between areas further north and Toscana.

Without these samples it's going to look like there's a break between the far north and Toscana, which is not true. The break starts with Central South/Italy, i.e. Marche, Umbria, and especially Lazio and the Abruzzi. Only someone completely clueless about Italian genetics would exclude them. Makes no sense, unless there's some purpose to this madness?

This is the kind of stuff that makes me distrust the Global 25 results in general. Everything depends on the samples chosen.

Edit:
Like I said, it leads to an incorrect PCA.
https://postimg.cc/z33FbLvm

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

According to many etruscologists and archaeologists, the high levels of sophistication of Etruscan civilization have nothing to do with their origins and are mostly due to the orientalizing period. The question of the origins of the Etruscans was solved long ago by archaeologists. The thesis of the eastern origin has been proposed again by indo-europeanists, orientalists, non-etruscologists and mostly by amateur scholars. While the majority of etruscologists, of any nationality (it is a lie written by the indo-europeanist Beekes that the autochthony of the Etruscans was only supported by Italian etruscologists), have never changed their minds.

The Etruscans certainly had many contacts and not only with the Greeks, being connected to all the main cultural and commercial routes of the time. From central Europe, to south-western and south-eastern Europe and the Aegean, of course. The Greeks called the Tyrrhenians "pirates". But the first contacts with the East Mediterranean with archaeological evidence date back to Frattesina in the south of Veneto, which is a site of the proto-Villanovan era. While today there are testimonies of previous contacts with movements not only from east to west, but also from west to east.

The Etruscans are the cultural synthesis of all this. Then, of course, small groups of foreigners may have arrived in Etruria, but they were foreigners assimilated by the Etruscans, not the ancestors of the Etruscans.

Of course the question of the language remains open, but it is difficult to believe and very unlikely that the Rhaetian language spoken in the Eastern Alps also came from a recent migration and that the Rhaetians were "Etruscans" driven out by the Gauls. The Rhaetian language is attested before the Gallic invasions of northern Italy, the Rhaetians are identified with a material culture called Fritzens-Sanzeno which is not Etruscan and the relations between Rhaetians and Etruscans seem very ancient both on an archaeological and linguistic level. Then, if it is definitively proved that also the Camunic language spoken in the Central Alps was also related to the Rhaetian language and therefore part of the same family, at this point it becomes really clear that it is a pre-Indo-European language that has been present for a long time. Moreover, the few inscriptions of Lemnos, written in an alphabet more common in Italy and Greece than in Asia Minor, are more recent than the oldest Etruscan inscriptions in Italy.

Without a doubt, the Etruscans owe much of their growth to their contacts with the Aegean Sea and the ancient Near East, but this is also true for the Greeks and, to a lesser extent, for the Romans.

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The cumunic language is from the camuni people, a major group of the indigenous people called Euganei.....the euganei are the first venetic people.... they should also be connected with polada and este cultures

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Originally Posted by torzio

The cumunic language is from the camuni people, a major group of the indigenous people called Euganei.....the euganei are the first venetic people.... they should also be connected with polada and este cultures

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Camunic language is considered a pre–Indo-European language and some scholars think is related to the Rhaetian language. Others think Camunic language might be related to that of the Euganei, but we have not Euganei inscriptions as I know. Euganei were very unlikely the first Venetic people.

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

Camunic language is considered a pre–Indo-European language and some scholars think is related to the Rhaetian language. Others think Camunic language might be related to that of the Euganei, but we have not Euganei inscriptions as I know. Euganei were very unlikely the first Venetic people.

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Eth. EUGA´NEI a people of Northern Italy, who play but an unimportant part in historical times, but appear at an earlier period to have been more powerful and widely spread. Livy expressly tells us (1.1) that they occupied the whole tract from the Alps to the head of the Adriatic, from which they were expelled by the Veneti. And it is quite in accordance with this statement that Pliny describes Verona as inhabited partly by Rhaetians, partly by Euganeans, and that Cato enumerated 34 towns belonging to them. (Plin. Nat. 3.19. s. 23, 20. s. 24.) They appear to have been driven by the Veneti into the valleys of the Alps on the Italian side of the chain, where they continued to subsist in the time of Pliny as a separate people, and had received the Latin franchise. But they must also have occupied the detached group of volcanic hills between Patavium and Verona, which are still known as the Euganean Hills (Colli Euganei), a name evidently transmitted by uninterrupted tradition, though not found in any ancient geographer.


Clearly Ateste is a euganei town in origin

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Originally Posted by torzio

Eth. EUGA´NEI a people of Northern Italy, who play but an unimportant part in historical times, but appear at an earlier period to have been more powerful and widely spread. Livy expressly tells us (1.1) that they occupied the whole tract from the Alps to the head of the Adriatic, from which they were expelled by the Veneti. And it is quite in accordance with this statement that Pliny describes Verona as inhabited partly by Rhaetians, partly by Euganeans, and that Cato enumerated 34 towns belonging to them. (Plin. Nat. 3.19. s. 23, 20. s. 24.) They appear to have been driven by the Veneti into the valleys of the Alps on the Italian side of the chain, where they continued to subsist in the time of Pliny as a separate people, and had received the Latin franchise. But they must also have occupied the detached group of volcanic hills between Patavium and Verona, which are still known as the Euganean Hills (Colli Euganei), a name evidently transmitted by uninterrupted tradition, though not found in any ancient geographer. Clearly Ateste is a euganei town in origin

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If Euganei were expelled from the Veneti, how can they be the first Venetic people? The Euganei were certainly one of the first Venetic people, if not the first, in a broad sense. But they were more similar to Camuni and Rhaetians than to the Veneti in my opinion. Euganei probably represented the pre-indo-European layer. Of course, this does not imply that in the late Bronze Age or early Iron age Euganei were genetically completely pre-Indo-European or EEF. I don't know if it's clear what I mean.

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

If Euganei were expelled from the Veneti, how can they be the first Venetic people? The Euganei were certainly one of the first Venetic people, if not the first, in a broad sense. But they were more similar to Camuni and Rhaetians than to the Veneti in my opinion. Euganei probably represented the pre-indo-European layer. Of course, this does not imply that in the late Bronze Age or early Iron age Euganei were genetically completely pre-Indo-European or EEF. I don't know if it's clear what I mean.

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If the venetic and rhaetic are similar in languages, then clearly they did not come via any anatolian migration, but from the indigenous Euganei
With oxford uni. papers claiming venetic appeared not before 1150bc, then the Euganei must be the source.

Also roman historian Cato stating the euganei where numerous , 34 towns , and wide spread, ......we need to only investigate how long they where there

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Originally Posted by torzio

If the venetic and rhaetic are similar in languages

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I think you're confusing the language with the alphabet/script again.


If the Venetic and the Rhaetic/Rhaetian are similar in languages, it means that the Venetic is also a Tyrrhenian language.

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Originally Posted by Jovialis

https://i.imgur.com/wy1D99N.png

By the Late Republic, if the Italics from the steppe did mix with the Aegean-like populations in Southern Italy; figures C and F sort of look like Italia during that time.

https://i.imgur.com/OfNKOe3.jpg

Moreover, my K36 heat map sort of looks like a silhouette of the Roman empire.

https://i.imgur.com/550now6.png

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From 340 BCE, Rome started expanding its territory by waging war with its neighbours, first the other Latin tribes, then the Samnites and Umbrians (other Italic peoples), the Etruscans and the Greeks of southern Italy, who were all conquered by 270 BCE. All these people became assimilated by the Romans and acquired Roman citizenship in 88 BCE at the end of the Social War. During the Late Republican period, the Roman ethnicity was no longer purely Italic, but increasingly a meger of Italic, Greek and Etruscan people.

https://www.eupedia.com/history/roman_trivia.shtml

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Maciamo is spot on with his trivia of the Ancient Romans.

I think that after this point, that merger which created the Late Republican Romans of Italia, then permeated throughout Europe, within the boarders of the empire.

Great post on Twitter by Razib Khan:

https://i.imgur.com/c4LniJM.png

How peculiar that these authors are still running up the flag for a significantly Near Eastern arrival in Toscana, i.e. the Herodotus theory. I guess they're not very plugged in. If the rumours are correct they're going to have eggs all over their faces, along with Carlos Quilles.

Maybe that's why they were looking for an "Iranian farmer" component. Unfortunately for them, it's only in the south.

The more I think about that component, the more bizarre it seems. Iran Neo is really a lot of Iran herder plus a lot of Anatolian Neo. It probably could be split up into Anatolian Neo and CHG like.

They themselves think there are differences in the results depending upon which CHG sample they use.

No, this paper is definitely NOT the one.

Not to mention that PCAs are being generated all over the place which are incorrect because there's only ONE Ligurian sample, and NO Emilia Romagna samples.

Shoemakers, my dad would have said. :)

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

I think you're confusing the language with the alphabet/script again.


If the Venetic and the Rhaetic/Rhaetian are similar in languages, it means that the Venetic is also a Tyrrhenian language.

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your missing the point, it has nothing to do with alphabet or script , nothing to do with the venetic from the black sea area or the rhaetic people from central europe. it has to do with that it must belong to the indigenous people of the eastern alps and the plains of modern veneto and friuli ....the Euganei people ..........who are associated with Camunic, Magre or Atestine and these are all the same as is rhaetic , venetic...........the alphabet or script or anything could not have migrated to this area from anywhere with any other people. I cannot see this script or alphabet being from Black sea anatolia to the german lands of central europe, it makes no sense, it can only come from the Euganei.

Giancarlo Tomezzoli states the Rhaetic came from The ancient Rhaetians were a Central European people spread in a land comprising: Voralberg and Tirol in present Austria, Trentino and Western Veneto in present Italy, Eastern Switzerland Cantons, part of Bavaria and Baden-Würtenberg in present Germany. The Venetic from the Black sea Anatolia

I had to remove some samples because they were drifting too much. G25 miscalculations or because of the samples themselves? An individual from Italian_Trentino-Alto-Adige plots in the Hungarian cluster, an individual from Italian_Northeast plots between Slovenes and Croats. Why did the study use people from the Alps who are not completely Italian?

Yes, Liguria is represented by a single individual. There is a small hole between central Italy and northern Italy due to the lack of samples but the distance is small especially between Italian_Tuscany and the Ligurian sample in this PCA.

What I find interesting is that the PCA with these new samples shows that not all northern Italy is Iberian-like. The genetic structure of northern Italy seems to me more complex than that of the rest of the country and more samples for northern Italy are needed.



https://i.ibb.co/0JYr002/Europe-PCA-G25.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/YQmt8j9/Europe-PCA-G25.jpg

The "hole" is not between central and northern Italy but between Northern Italy and Toscana, and it doesn't exist in reality. Emilia Romagna would undoubtedly fill that space, as it does on PCAs based on complete sets of samples. Btw, Toscana is not Central Italy.

Western Liguria, from which the Ligurian sample probably comes given where it plots, is more "northern" than eastern Liguria, but you wouldn't know it by using one sample. There is also a lot of variation within Emilia Romagna, especially west versus east.

I have been saying for more than ten years that there is by far more variation within the Northern Italian group than there is within the part of Italy which was known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The only slight difference is the North African in Sicilians.

Amateurs have been sold a bill of goods about Southern Italy based on old calculator results of people of unknown actual provenance, although this paper's conclusions deserve no prize. It certainly isn't a good sign that they couldn't be trusted to make sure that all four grandparents were Italian, and not some descendants of German or Croatian families stranded when the borders changed. Where did they go to get some samples, in the most northern regions of the Alto Adige or Istria? For crying out loud. If they're using them to calculate fst distances from western Sicilians for example, they're exaggerating the overall variation. I don't know if they're just dumb or what.

Ed.
Geneticists have to be very careful with samples from Trentino Alto-Adige. A lot of the real "natives" are actually of Austrian/German stock. Then there are some much more recent Italian arrivals from further south. You have to decide what you're trying to see and then pick the samples carefully accordingly. Even after taking the obvious outliers out, I wouldn't necessarily trust the placement of that Trentino sample(s). The same is true for "northeast" Italy. You shouldn't use those highly drifted samples that were part of a medical study if I remember correctly. They're not representative. Neither, of course, should you use samples like those from, for example, a family like that of Lidia Bastianich.


If samples from, say, Provence, were available, you'd see other correspondences.

It always depends on the samples chosen. This is very true for every amateur tool, also true for academic studies.

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Originally Posted by brick

It always depends on the samples chosen. This is very true for every amateur tool, also true for academic studies.

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Very true, Brick. That's why not only should the samples be chosen honestly, they should also be chosen with professionalism and a knowledge of the "ethnic" context.

It's inexcusable to include Croatians and Germans, and to think you can capture the variation of any Italian province with one sample. What makes it worse is that these are Italians.

Why Davidski didn't include Emilia Romagna in what he released I have no idea. If the authors didn't want to release them then likewise I don't get it. Did they use substandard samples?

You can't test the work of another group unless you have access to all the samples. How is anyone supposed to try to replicate their analysis?