Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

Came across an interesting little tid-bit in the book I'm currently reading:

"Analyses of haplotype distributions and strontium isotope studies of La Tene cemeteries across Europe-including the necropolis at Monte Bibele-show small groups of men moving long distances, a pattern that suggests raiding or mercenary activity."
Arnold,2012,91; see Sheeres et al 2013 on the mobility of Monte Bibele's population.

The author claims there is no evidence of population "replacement" in Northern Italy by the Gauls (La Tene or Hallstatt). In fact, she posits small movements of men who may have taken positions of power, but adjusted to and were absorbed by the "local" people.

So, I would think the archaeology puts paid to the idea that all North Italians were like the La Tene or Hallstatt Celts before the arrival of the Romans. They might have had more steppe than at certain other periods, but I see no evidence as of yet for the comments made at anthrogenica. Of course, some people don't pay much attention to archaeology, or only to the archaeology which fits their hypothesis.

"As to the "Etruscans", I'm not aware of "commoner" Etruscan graves. I could go back and check my books, but I thought they were all "elite" graves.

If the "elites" came from the Aegean or Asia Minor, how come they wind up looking so very North Italian, Spanish and French?

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Originally Posted by Angela

Came across an interesting little tid-bit in the book I'm currently reading:

"Analyses of haplotype distributions and strontium isotope studies of La Tene cemeteries across Europe-including the necropolis at Monte Bibele-show small groups of men moving long distances, a pattern that suggests raiding or mercenary activity."
Arnold,2012,91; see Sheeres et al 2013 on the mobility of Monte Bibele's population.

The author claims there is no evidence of population "replacement" in Northern Italy by the Gauls (La Tene or Hallstatt). In fact, she posits small movements of men who may have taken positions of power, but adjusted to and were absorbed by the "local" people.

So, I would think the archaeology puts paid to the idea that all North Italians were like the La Tene or Hallstatt Celts before the arrival of the Romans. They might have had more steppe than at certain other periods, but I see no evidence as of yet for the comments made at anthrogenica. Of course, some people don't pay much attention to archaeology, or only to the archaeology which fits their hypothesis.

"As to the "Etruscans", I'm not aware of "commoner" Etruscan graves. I could go back and check my books, but I thought they were all "elite" graves.

If the "elites" came from the Aegean or Asia Minor, how come they wind up looking so very North Italian, Spanish and French?

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It's a bit surprising.

Golasecca seems already distinctly Celtic, or, at the very least, Celto-Ligurian.

Plus, Livy doesn't seem to suggest the Celts who moved into Italy arrived in small numbers. This would have happened prior to La Tène, by the way, except maybe for the Senones. Anyway, they were numerous enough to defeat the Etruscans and the Umbrians.

Too bad it's in French, but that's all I have :

« À l’époque où Tarquin l'Ancien règne à Rome [vers 600 av. J.-C. ...] à Bellovèse [des Bituriges], les dieux montrent un plus beau chemin, celui de l’Italie. Il appelle à lui, du milieu de ses surabondantes populations, des Bituriges, des Arvernes, des Éduens, des Ambarres, des Carnutes, des Aulerques ; et, partant avec de nombreuses troupes de gens à pied et à cheval, il arrive chez les Tricastins. Là, devant lui, s’élèvent les Alpes ; et, ce dont je ne suis pas surpris, il les regarde sans doute comme des barrières insurmontables [...]

Arrêtés, et pour ainsi dire enfermés au milieu de ces hautes montagnes, les Gaulois cherchent de tous côtés, à travers ces roches perdues dans les cieux, un passage par où s’élancer vers un autre univers, quand un scrupule religieux vient encore les arrêter ; ils apprennent que des étrangers, qui cherchent comme eux une patrie, ont été attaqués par les Salyens. Ceux-là sont les Massaliotes qui sont venus par mer de Phocée. Les Gaulois voient là un présage de leur destinée : ils aident ces étrangers à s’établir sur le rivage où ils ont abordé et qui est couvert de vastes forêts.

Pour eux, ils franchissent les Alpes par des gorges inaccessibles, traversent le pays des Taurins, et, après avoir vaincu les Étrusques, près de la rivière Tessin, ils se fixent dans un canton qu’on nomme la terre des Insubres. Ce nom, qui rappelle aux Éduens les Insubres de leur pays, leur paraît d’un heureux augure, et ils fondent là une ville qu’ils appellent Mediolanum.

Bientôt, suivant les traces de ces premiers Gaulois, une troupe de Cénomans, sous la conduite d'Etitovios, passe les Alpes par le même défilé, avec l’aide de Bellovèse, et vient s’établir aux lieux alors occupés par les Libuens, et où sont maintenant les villes de Brescia et de Vérone. Après eux, les Salluviens se répandent le long du Tessin, près de l’antique peuplade des Lèves Ligures. Ensuite, par les Alpes pennines, arrivent les Boïens et les Lingons, qui, trouvant tout le pays occupé entre le Pô et les Alpes, traversent le Pô sur des radeaux, et chassent de leur territoire les Étrusques et les Ombriens : toutefois, ils ne passent point les Apennins. Enfin, les Sénons, qui viennent en dernier, prennent possession de la contrée qui est située entre le fleuve Utens et l’Aesis. »

— Tite-Live, Histoire romaine, VI, 34-35 - Traduction Charles Nisard, 1864

There is a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding the upcoming Roman studies at the moment because the preliminary information that we have from the two of them does not completely match. The larger study from Stanford stems the last 12,000 years and has 134 ancient samples, which is great, but the overwhelming majority of the samples are from the Imperial and Late Roman periods. They are also almost exclusively collected from the necropolis of Isola Sacra. This is quite problematic for a few reasons with the most obvious one being how cosmopolitan and susceptible to merchants and other migrants a port town that close to Rome would be during the height of the Roman Empire.

That said, the information that we have from the preliminary presentation paints an interesting picture that allows us to disregard certain scenarios. We know that from the Iron Age towards the end of the Republic there existed two relatively distinct groups in Latium; one clustered with Northern Italians and the other with Southern Italians, with no samples clustering between the two groups. In the Imperial period the majority of the samples cluster around Southern Italians but there exists samples who are also near Tuscans, Greeks, Northern Italians and Iberians as well as some that are drifting towards Cyprus (as well as obvious migrants who cluster with Near Easterners). The majority of Imperial Romans from this necropolis seem to cluster somewhere around Southern Italians and Greeks. The important thing to note here is that the person who took the notes from the official presentation explicitly stated that Levant Neolithic ancestry was only sporadic and inhomogeneous throughout both the Republican and Imperial periods with those who have it showing large quantities and clustering differently. In other words, we need to look at other factors outside of the mass migration of Near Easterners to explain the clustering of most of these Romans.

We were told that the Iran Neolithic component increased from the Bronze Age to Iron Age, as well as homogeneously from the Republic to Imperial period in the Roman samples. This strongly points towards a moderate and widespread genetic impact of colonizing Greeks once Magna Graecia was absorbed into the Roman Republic. We already know that Rome had strong influences from both Etruscan and Hellenic cultures, and it looks like they absorbed both groups in equal measure. It would also explain why we see a distinct population clustering with Southern Italians (as the Mycenaean and Empuries samples do) in the Iron Age/Republic that is different from the population that clusters with the Northern Italians (we now know that Etruscans and early Romans/Italic speakers clustered like this from the other leak). The varied cline that we see in the Imperial period would mostly be the natural result of Romans (Northern Italian like), Romanized Greeks (Southern Italian to Cypriot like) and those of Greco-Roman descent (Tuscan/Greek like). Magna Graecia would have still been largely Mycenaean in it's genetic profile at the time of it being conquered but it's highly likely that there would also be Greeks there who originated from the colonies in Anatolia, or had partial ancestry from areas in the Near East, which would explain why a minority pull towards Jews/Cypriots on the PCA. People of mixed Roman and migrant ancestry would also cluster in this fashion which would not be unheard of in a port town but I doubt it occurred on a large scale outside of cosmopolitan centers.

This does not mean that migrants were not Romanized and absorbed eventually but rather that there exists more logical and historically accurate ways to describe the clustering of the Imperial Roman samples outside of strange fantasies regarding slaves and mass migrations that meet the ideological needs of both Nordicists and as Pax Augusta put it, "Orientalists", alike. I know a few of these types myself and their goals overlap significantly with one another. We are already being told that the majority of Romans are much more southern shifted and outside of modern Italian variation because of migrants from Persia, Egypt, Palestine and every other place under the sun. The end goal of both groups is to undermine, degrade and eventually partition off Italian history between them just like they were planning to do with the Mycenaeans and Etruscans until that blew up in their face. I tried to post the "leaked" PCA with my own annotations alongside a near identical West Eurasian one which does a good job of showing the natural Roman cline and how it is mainly related to Etruscan, Latin and Greek ancestries. Needless to say, roughly 85% of them cluster between Iberians and Southern Italians, with many of those being clearly shifted towards the "archaic Europe" cline alongside Mycenaeans and Sardinians. This leaves around 15% of the samples pulling towards Cypriots but clustering with Sephardic Jews in actuality.

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Originally Posted by hrvclv

It's a bit surprising.

Golasecca seems already distinctly Celtic, or, at the very least, Celto-Ligurian.

Plus, Livy doesn't seem to suggest the Celts who moved into Italy arrived in small numbers. This would have happened prior to La Tène, by the way, except maybe for the Senones. Anyway, they were numerous enough to defeat the Etruscans and the Umbrians.

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The text posted by Angela refers specifically to the Gauls who invaded northern Italy from about 400 BC, Golasecca that is already considered Celtic (Lepontic) is much older as a migration and among other things people from Golasecca were commercial partners of the Etruscans. The Celts, at one point in northern Italy, were of various different types. I should reread it, but I think Livy's text about Belloveso backtracked many events.


The Etruscans were busy on other fronts when the Gauls pushed for control the area, and not having a national organization Etruscans struggled to defend the settlements in the Po Valley. For example Spina, always there in the Po valley, remained in the hands of the Etruscans for longer than Bologna.


It also considers that Bologna, called Felsina/Felzna by the Etruscans, was the capital of the Etruscans in northern Italy and a city with a very important strategic role in connecting the Etruscans, the Alps, the people of Golasecca and the ancient Veneti. When the Romans renamed Bologna (Bononia) after the Boii Gauls, they deliberately wronged the Etruscans. The Etruscan toponym was preserved until the Roman conquest, and therefore also during the Celtic occupation according to some Italian sources that should be controlled. So it is possible that Livy has exaggerated in his stories about the Gauls.


Everything is more complicated and blurry. For example, in Monte Bibele (Tuscan-Emilian Apennines) tombs of both Etruscans (especially women and children) and Gauls (especially men) who lived together have been found. If I remember correctly, and I could remember wrongly, in Monte Bibele there are also tombs of children who have both Etruscan and Gaulish objects, if they had been the children of mixed marriages.

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Originally Posted by Angela

Came across an interesting little tid-bit in the book I'm currently reading:

"Analyses of haplotype distributions and strontium isotope studies of La Tene cemeteries across Europe-including the necropolis at Monte Bibele-show small groups of men moving long distances, a pattern that suggests raiding or mercenary activity."
Arnold,2012,91; see Sheeres et al 2013 on the mobility of Monte Bibele's population.

The author claims there is no evidence of population "replacement" in Northern Italy by the Gauls (La Tene or Hallstatt). In fact, she posits small movements of men who may have taken positions of power, but adjusted to and were absorbed by the "local" people.

So, I would think the archaeology puts paid to the idea that all North Italians were like the La Tene or Hallstatt Celts before the arrival of the Romans. They might have had more steppe than at certain other periods, but I see no evidence as of yet for the comments made at anthrogenica. Of course, some people don't pay much attention to archaeology, or only to the archaeology which fits their hypothesis.

"As to the "Etruscans", I'm not aware of "commoner" Etruscan graves. I could go back and check my books, but I thought they were all "elite" graves.

If the "elites" came from the Aegean or Asia Minor, how come they wind up looking so very North Italian, Spanish and French?

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We'll see, I don't really believe in coincidences though and a lot of things (mostly to do with names) point towards a Sea Peoples origin of the Etruscans.

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

The text posted by Angela refers specifically to the Gauls who invaded northern Italy from about 400 BC, Golasecca that is already considered Celtic (Lepontic) is much older as a migration and among other things people from Golasecca were commercial partners of the Etruscans. The Celts, at one point in northern Italy, were of various different types. I should reread it, but I think Livy's text about Belloveso backtracked many events.
The Etruscans were busy on other fronts when the Gauls pushed for control the area, and not having a national organization Etruscans struggled to defend the settlements in the Po Valley. For example Spina, always there in the Po valley, remained in the hands of the Etruscans for longer than Bologna.
It also considers that Bologna, called Felsina/Felzna by the Etruscans, was the capital of the Etruscans in northern Italy and a city with a very important strategic role in connecting the Etruscans, the Alps, the people of Golasecca and the ancient Veneti. When the Romans renamed Bologna (Bononia) after the Boii Gauls, they deliberately wronged the Etruscans. The Etruscan toponym was preserved until the Roman conquest, and therefore also during the Celtic occupation according to some Italian sources that should be controlled. So it is possible that Livy has exaggerated in his stories about the Gauls.
Everything is more complicated and blurry. For example, in Monte Bibele (Tuscan-Emilian Apennines) tombs of both Etruscans (especially women and children) and Gauls (especially men) who lived together have been found. If I remember correctly, and I could remember wrongly, in Monte Bibele there are also tombs of children who have both Etruscan and Gaulish objects, if they had been the children of mixed marriages.

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In late bronze italy, the only people spoken about where
NW Italy the ligures
NE Italy the euganei
Central italy the Umbri
There was no gauls or celts ........can you link your info for this late bronze age period
I will leave out south italy for this discussion

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Originally Posted by LTG

There is a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding the upcoming Roman studies at the moment because the preliminary information that we have from the two of them does not completely match.(...) The varied cline that we see in the Imperial period would mostly be the natural result of Romans (Northern Italian like), Romanized Greeks (Southern Italian to Cypriot like) and those of Greco-Roman descent (Tuscan/Greek like).

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I agree with you that there is a lot of confusion on the upcoming Roman studies, but there is not a Tuscan-Greek cluster that implies a Greek-Roman descent, because when you go to see the PCA with all the Italian populations, the Tuscans are to the west in direction of Corsica and WEurope (the pink and reddish ones are the Tuscans, while the green ones are Ligurians, Emilians and a part of the Venetians, the blue ones are Lombards and a part of Trentini, the purple ones are the central Italians who speak "italiano mediano") and well distinct from the Greeks who are always to the east (SEEurope1 and SEEurope2). It is clear that confusion over Roman samples increases with inadequate PCA and poor sampling, typical of all discussions in amateur blogs and forums.

https://i.imgur.com/ghRo4Uv.jpg

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Originally Posted by LTG

They are also almost exclusively collected from the necropolis of Isola Sacra. This is quite problematic for a few reasons with the most obvious one being how cosmopolitan and susceptible to merchants and other migrants a port town that close to Rome would be during the height of the Roman Empire.

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Yes, the fact the samples come from the ports of ancient Rome is extremely problematic. In fact, some archaeologists I know have already said that they have made a very targeted choice.

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Originally Posted by LTG

I tried to post the "leaked" PCA with my own annotations alongside a near identical West Eurasian one which does a good job of showing the natural Roman cline and how it is mainly related to Etruscan, Latin and Greek ancestries. Needless to say, roughly 85% of them cluster between Iberians and Southern Italians, with many of those being clearly shifted towards the "archaic Europe" cline alongside Mycenaeans and Sardinians. This leaves around 15% of the samples pulling towards Cypriots but clustering with Sephardic Jews in actuality.

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We have to be patient and wait for the studies to be published.

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Originally Posted by torzio

In late bronze italy, the only people spoken about where

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Originally Posted by torzio

NW Italy the ligures
NE Italy the euganei
Central italy the Umbri
There was no gauls or celts ........can you link your info for this late bronze age period
I will leave out south italy for this discussion

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In the late Bronze Age in Italy, the known ethnos of the Iron Age have not yet been formed, and this also applies to your examples.

Yes, I know they already spoke a form of Celtic in Golasecca.

The statement to which I was responding was specifically talking about Hallstatt and La Tene.

From the text, actually from right before the section that I quoted:
"Polybius and Livy both present a narrative in which waves of Celts cross the Alps and settle in Northern Italy, displacing the Etruscans. The reality was more complicated...

"In Lombardy the Protogolasecca evolved almost seamlessly into the Golasecca culture of the Early Iron Age. Inscriptions there show an early presence for Celtic language. A late seventh-century inscription from Sesto Callende indicates that the Golasecca peoples spoke a Celtic language...

...for most of Northern Italy, the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE were marked by general continuity, growh and urbanization...

There were abrupt changes in the fourth century, as the number and distribution of La Tene objects characteristic of central and western Europe increased...Sites throughout Northern Italy were abandoned or saw contraction, and in the southern Po Plain there was an increasing presence for fortified hill settlements...

There were important limits to the transformation. Even in the southern Po Plain, newer Celtic-speaking inhabitants did not totally displace the earlier inhabitants or their customs. Most famously, at the necropolis of Monte Bibele, near Bologna, fourth-and-third century tombs contain mixtures of La Tene ornaments and Etruscan ceramic goods, indicating a cosmopolitan population, and a cultural middle ground similar to that seen at Greco-Etruscan Spina. Nor did the La Tene practice of inhumation entirely displace the older Golaseccan style of cremation in Lombardy. In Piedmont and Liguria there seems to have been less disruption...

The changes of the fourth century are not necessarily the result of a large scale Celtic invasion, as suggested by later Greek and Roman authors. In the southeastern and central Po Plain, the invasion model may be appropriate...however, some of northern Italy's new inhabitants likely migrated in military bands or worked as mercenaries. Rather than as a series of invasions, northern Italy's fourth-century transformation is perhaps more accurately described as a combination of large scale migrations, raiding parties, and changes to transalpine trade networks and economic systems."

In other words, there was a lot of substructure in northern Italy even then.

In later chapters which I'm reading now, the author explains that many of those Celtic warriors were killed or enslaved by the Romans, although winners always exaggerate the losses of their opponents, and many enslaved. The Boii in particular come to mind.

Just in case it's forgotten, I'll repeat my mantra that we need Polada samples and Terramare samples, and yes, some Golasecca and Boii and most importantly, the mixed communities in these larger settlements. Oh, and the Veneti as well. Then we can compare them to moderns and to their contemporaneous Etruscans and Roman Republic era Romans and the later Romans as well. Then we'll be getting somewhere. Just how steppe admixed were the Golasecca? Remedello was supposed to be heavily steppe too, and weren't. Parma Beaker were a very mixed bunch, with some having almost no steppe. So, we'll have to wait for the samples to see when it arrived with any significance. After all, you don't need a massive genetic change to change the language. Look at the coming of the Greeks.

I'm actually just getting to the part about "Roman" settlements in the north.

More later.


The author casts quite a bit of shade on Livy's accounts, which I think is warranted. He had his own ax to grind.

Her footnotes and citations are extensive. I haven't checked each and every one, but the one's I've checked seem to indeed support her conclusions, for ex., that after Terramare Northern Italy was not a blank slate.

I'll be sure to send the author of the book and the editors at Johns Hopkins University your opinion of the PHD thesis and the book, Messier. :)

Why don't you cut out the passive aggressive nonsense and present experts of your own if you disagree with the conclusions of this scholar. She backs up every single conclusion with archaeological papers. Make sure you do the same.

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

I agree with you that there is a lot of confusion on the upcoming Roman studies, but there is not a Tuscan-Greek cluster that implies a Greek-Roman descent, because when you go to see the PCA with all the Italian populations, the Tuscans are to the west in direction of Corsica and WEurope (the pink and reddish ones are the Tuscans, while the green ones are Ligurians, Emilians and a part of the Venetians, the blue ones are Lombards and a part of Trentini, the purple ones are the central Italians who speak "italiano mediano") and well distinct from the Greeks who are always to the east (SEEurope1 and SEEurope2). It is clear that confusion over Roman samples increases with inadequate PCA and poor sampling, typical of all discussions in amateur blogs and forums.

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I do not disagree with you.

Greeks and Tuscans are obviously different populations from an intra-European perspective due to their own unique population histories. Greeks are part of the Southeastern European cline that bridges the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe and Tuscans are part of the Southwestern European cline that bridges the Mediterranean to Western Europe. The point that I was making was that on many academic PCA charts of Western Eurasia we can observe a grouping that comprises of Tuscans, Albanians and mainland Greeks who cluster together as a result of their similar ancient ancestry proportions (EEF, WHG, Yamnaya). This group appears (again, on certain PCA charts and the Roman one in question) as being between Northern Italians and Southern Italians. This is why I said those people who are saying that the Imperial Romans are mostly south of modern Italians are plain wrong because most of the samples cline between Northern Italy and Southern Italy. Of course, this is not exactly the most nuanced approach because the PCA includes all of Western Eurasia so it's pretty oversimplified and hard to distinguish one group from the next. Once we get the official paper we will be able to observe the genetic variation on a micro level.

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Originally Posted by Pax Augusta

Yes, the fact the samples come from the ports of ancient Rome is extremely problematic. In fact, some archaeologists I know have already said that they have made a very targeted choice.

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That would not surprise me at all to be honest. It's a great shame that they spent all of this time and effort without sampling more regions from across Italy, especially the more inland rural areas where you wouldn't expect much (if any) migrants or peoples.

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Originally Posted by Johane Derite

Eric Hamp's mature position was that the "North-West IE" (Italic-Celtic-Phrygian according to him) were the first inhabitants of the Hallstatt. He was a specialist of Celtic and one of the most renowned linguists of the 20th and 21st Century.
https://i.imgur.com/pBkGKNX.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/cB2JpnK.png

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I find this to be very sensible, and is in lock-step with what calculators like Mytrueancestry suggest for my results.

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Originally Posted by Jovialis

I find this to be very sensible, and is in lock-step with what calculators like Mytrueancestry suggest for my results.

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Accidentally downvoted, meant to upvote

No worries :)

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Originally Posted by Angela

I'd say how the hell could they possibly know or even reasonably "guess" without some more ancient samples?

That bunch have been absolutely sure, insisting for years (Agamemnon, Sikeliot, all the latter's socks, etc.) that the Etruscans were recent transplants from the Aegean, i.e. as in first millennium BC. I mean just look at all those dark Minoan looking people on the wall paintings! And the language! No Indo-European descended group would "ever" adopt a language from another group (ignoring, of course, the Basques). If the hints from the papers about ancient DNA are correct, they were completely and utterly WRONG.

So, why would they necessarily be correct about this?

First of all, we still don't have the ancient Etruscan and Roman samples so we can't compare them to the Hallstatt samples or the ancient Iberian samples or Beaker samples.

Plus, I don't know why any similarity to populations with steppe ancestry has to rely on Hallstatt, or specifically the Beakers for that matter. The Parma Beakers were very heterogeneous. One had steppe ancestry, one or two had almost none. How do we know how deeply that ancestry spread? That was a rhetorical question. We don't.

Then there is Polada to consider, and the Terramare. I'm currently reading a very recently published book called Northern Italy in the Roman World. After the collapse of the Terramare, the area south of the Po in Emilia was de-populated but not empty, and there's also archaeological evidence of movement into the hills of the Apennines. Trade routes through the Apennines with "Etruria" was long standing, so there could have been movement in that direction. As for the areas north of the Po, the author provides evidence that the settlements around the old Polada areas still existed.

Then, of course, we get to Frantesina. The "elite" burial, from the leaks, is someone "different" from the locals (although we don't know what either were really like yet), but we do know that this was a center with good links to the Baltics, and imported and then worked and traded lots of amber. Cremation also entered Italy through the northeast. When we get their samples, we'll know if this was a later migration of more steppe admixed people.

So, we have a lot of possibilities.

We also, by the way, don't really know what all the inhabitants of Northern Italy were like before the days of the Empire. There are the Celtic migrations to consider. One thing I've always emphasized and which this book emphasizes is that there not only is, but was, a lot of substructure in northern Italy, more than in southern Italy. Then there is Toscana, which is not northern, not southern, but not really "center" either.

As for this mass Levantine migration theory, are they really still peddling it? Even after seeing PCAs where people from the Greek Islands plot closer to the east than the Sicilians? If someone ever shows me archaeological and genetic proof of a mass migration from the Levant to Italy rather than the migration of Levant admixed Bronze Age populations, I would be happy to accept it. However, I tend to doubt that would happen. There would have had to have been an even larger "Levantine" mass migration to the Aegean, and the recent paper on Crete, as well as the prior one on the Peloponnese makes that unlikely.

Basically, I like and have always like to work by putting together the facts, all the facts, not just the ones I prefer, and then trying to deduce some logical speculations. It's both the way my mind works and the way I was trained.

Some people aren't very logically minded in the first place, and even if they are, tend to start with the hypothesis they prefer, for whatever personal or ideological reasons, and then selectively choose facts to support it.

It also amazes me how many times people happily say the same things thousands of times. It's like a compulsion.

Just saw the comment about Polako. He was saying precisely that for years. Now, with continued exposure of his agenda, he modifies his words so it's not quite so obvious.

How people can be so naive about him is beyond me given his documented history.

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Since there were very few Phoenicians who were in Italy and Sicily and going by what the Levantine slaves went through in Ancient Rome, i don't see how the gene pool of southern Italy and Sicily could've changed due to a substantial inflow from the Levant. These people would have to travel across miles of harsh mountainous terrain to find people to mate with but that would be a huge effort. the Phoenicians were very intelligent and I'm certain they would never have risked their lives over mating with a certain group of people. So if we discard the phoenicians and Levantine slaves, that leaves what other Levantine group responsible for impacting the southern Italian gene pool?

disclaimer: I have nothing against levantines, it's the t-rolls who want to kick south Italians out of Europe due to their hatred and bigoted views

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Originally Posted by davef

Since there were very few Phoenicians who were in Italy and Sicily and going by what the Levantine slaves went through in Ancient Rome, i don't see how the gene pool of southern Italy and Sicily could've changed due to a substantial inflow from the Levant. These people would have to travel across miles of harsh mountainous terrain to find people to mate with but that would be a huge effort. the Phoenicians were very intelligent and I'm certain they would never have risked their lives over mating with a certain group of people. So if we discard the phoenicians and Levantine slaves, that leaves what other Levantine group responsible for impacting the southern Italian gene pool?

disclaimer: I have nothing against levantines, it's the t-rolls who want to kick south Italians out of Europe due to their hatred and bigoted views

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There’s plenty of victimization to go around, Davef, not just for southern Italians. The Irish, Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and others were subject to genocide, not just “getting kicked out”. As a matter of fact, regretfully, southern Italians actually helped to facilitate some of those genocides against those people. For example, in Bari, there was a genocide committed against Jews in the Middle Ages. Some were kicked out of Puglia, or fled. This forced the Jews into other lands in Europe where they were subjected to the same treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...dieval_history

Hatred of Yugoslavians was a component of Fascism, and people in my grandfather’s generation bitterly despised them. Hatred of Slavs in general was a component of Nazism. Polish people were on the same level of inferiority as Jews, and Gypsies according to Nazi Directive No.1306.

Nazi Germany's Directive No.1306 stated: "Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level."^[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment#Fascism_and_Nazism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Polish_sentiment

In Anglophone, and Francophone countries, many other groups, Italians included, were subjected to heinous discrimination. American History was one of my majors, so I am well versed in the subject. Blacks and Irish were nearly basically one in the same for a long time, in regards to social status in the United States. Often, you would see dehumanizing caricatures of Irish people looking like monkeys, in US newspapers. There was even racist sophistry, that promoted a theory that the Irish were descended from Africans, via Iberia. With the implication that this made them inferior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment

https://i.imgur.com/jZzJp77.jpg

Mexicans, and Spanish in general were regarded as non-whites, who were barred from services, at some establishments in the U.S. south.

https://i.imgur.com/okGlrik.png
Even the Nordicist concept of Ancient Greece could be seen as a projection of a feeling of inferiority on the part of the 19^th century historians that conceived of Nordic Greeks. Especially since so many in the gentry admired people like Aristotle, who suggested that only Greek men were truly human, and all other races were of a servile and barbaric disposition; who were only fit for slavery. Lo and behold, Ancient Greeks cluster with Southern Italians. Even the Armenoi_Crete sample, that new age Nordicist Steppists use as some kind of straw-grabbing justification, clusters with southern Italians, when you include other regions in the south.

At any rate, let’s stay focused on the subject of the thread. Generally southern Italians, and actual geneticists are aloft to the aspersions of t-rolls, and their laughable theories.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jovialis

There’s plenty of victimization to go around, Davef, not just for southern Italians. The Irish, Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and others were subject to genocide, not just “getting kicked out”. As a matter of fact, regretfully, southern Italians actually helped to facilitate some of those genocides against those people. For example, in Bari, there was a genocide committed against Jews in the Middle Ages. Some were kicked out of Puglia, or fled. This forced the Jews into other lands in Europe where they were subjected to the same treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...dieval_history

Hatred of Yugoslavians was a component of Fascism, and people in my grandfather’s generation bitterly despised them. Hatred of Slavs in general was a component of Nazism. Polish people were on the same level of inferiority as Jews, and Gypsies according to Nazi Directive No.1306.

Nazi Germany's Directive No.1306 stated: "Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level."^[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment#Fascism_and_Nazism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Polish_sentiment

In Anglophone, and Francophone countries, many other groups, Italians included, were subjected to heinous discrimination. American History was one of my majors, so I am well versed in the subject. Blacks and Irish were nearly basically one in the same for a long time, in regards to social status in the United States. Often, you would see dehumanizing caricatures of Irish people looking like monkeys, in US newspapers. There was even racist sophistry, that promoted a theory that the Irish were descended from Africans, via Iberia. With the implication that this made them inferior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment

https://i.imgur.com/jZzJp77.jpg

Mexicans, and Spanish in general were regarded as non-whites, who were barred from services, at some establishments in the U.S. south.

https://i.imgur.com/okGlrik.png
Even the Nordicist concept of Ancient Greece could be seen as a projection of a feeling of inferiority on the part of the 19^th century historians that conceived of Nordic Greeks. Especially since so many in the gentry admired people like Aristotle, who suggested that only Greek men were truly human, and all other races were of a servile and barbaric disposition; who were only fit for slavery. Low and behold, Ancient Greeks cluster with Southern Italians. Even the Armenoi_Crete sample, that new age Nordicist Steppists use as some kind of straw-grabbing justification, clusters with southern Italians, when you include other regions in the south.

At any rate, let’s stay focused on the subject of the thread. Generally southern Italians, and actual geneticists are aloft to the aspersions of t-rolls, and their laughable theories.

---

Very nicely explained. Yet I wonder...

I wonder whether being constantly on the lookout for nordicist/supremacist attitudes is not counterproductive in the long run. In my opinion, it ends up fueling the idea that we, farmer-descended people, suffer from some sort of inferiority complex.

Isn't simply enough to let the Greek and Roman (and Fertile Crescent) civilizations speak for themselves as self-sufficient achievements?

Some reflections about these studies that I have also reported elsewhere: it's true that anyone can work only with what is available, and evidently the harbours are generous with human remains more than other places. But it's also true that starting from a sample of dockers and projecting their results on the whole of Roman Italy to represent the overall genetic picture is not very convincing.

It has long been known that, for example, among members of imperial fleets, finding an "authentic" Italic was an almost impossible undertaking, from the earliest times and for precise military provisions, because almost all of them were of servile origin and / or - according to the center (Miseno, Ravenna...) of provincial origin: Greek, Balkan, Levantine, North African, Sardinian and Corsican. It's possible that many of them, discharged at the end of the military service, remained in the area and started a family (it could be the case of Ravenna, which I know well). This is an old article published in the Treccani Encyclopedia, but if you have the time and the desire, you can scour the inscriptions of the CIL or PLRE

http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/...a-Italiana%29/

Having said that, and having little and no geneticist skills, I limit myself only to some considerations more of a historical / literary and mythological / legendary nature, often scholastic knowledges, which should avoid us being so surprised before these links with the eastern Mediterranean world. I don't know what the new genetic samples of these ancient Romans will say, but wanting to associate the "Levantine" contributions solely with massive movements of the imperial or late imperial age seems to me a bit naive. As Pax rightly said, the idea that this component was distributed with the measuring cup along the entire Paeninsula is a bit funny.

If I had to make a bet, I believe that even in the future we will not find a unique position to establish who or what was the "true" Roman of Antiquity. Meanwhile they were the first to know that they were somehow mixed from the beginning, not attributable to a single group, it does not seem to me that they made a great mystery of it, quite the contrary. The scheme of the archaic distribution and merger between Ramnenses, Titienses and Luceres, although it may be a simplification, should already offer us an important caveat and talk about an ethnogenesis not entirely linear.

But going back to this Greek-Levantine quota that causes so many tummy aches, I’d remember that the Romans recorded in their historical sources - and I'm talking about ancient phases - not indifferent contacts with that world, and I believe that in the long run they admitted a partial origin or mingling with the Greeks. The most paradigmatic case, on which all of them have been slaughtered, is the famous theme of the Tarquini dynasty, Etruscans, but according to the narrative direct descendants in paternal line of Demaratus from Corinto, reported by series of authors including Cicero and Titus Livius. Read it as you see fit, but it is to some extent symptomatic of a possible significant mobility of peoples among the Greeks and the Roman-Etruscan world (in the contribution by Ampolo, which here I paste, there is a section dedicated to some epigraphic evidence that would seem to indicate Greek presences in Rome very dated).

On the even more archaic phases, which in my opinion are the ones most involved in the arrival of the Aegean / Anatolian / Caucasian... genetic component in Italy, we have no historical sources like the ones mentioned above, but we have some mythological / epic / legendary support that his way provides a (albeit confused) memory of complex upheavals of peoples occurring - among other things - precisely at the end of the Bronze Age. In my personal way of seeing the material of the "Nostoi" (for the little that remains), which reports the events of the Achaeans after the Troy war, like the legend of Anthenor, coming back to the west towards the Adriatic sea, until he settled in Veneto, and in the end the Eneide itself - with Aeneas and her family sheltering in Latium - it seems to me that they testify that in the Mycenaean and/or Anatolian /Hittite world the Italian Peninsula was not something so far away, but a known and sought-after destination in some critical phases of their history

https://www.academia.edu/36759719/De...iC2cHff3Ad_SKY

@Jovialis @hrvclv @Stuvanè

Good morning guys,
I think there are no mirrors in the house of the supremacists. They probably consider this item of household furniture superfluous and expendable. They do not like to look at themselves.:thinking:

Sorry me for the slightly off-thread comment Jovialis, but I could not fail to do so after your spectacular and clear explanation about the fundamentals of racism against the non anglo-saxon people in southern US.

Hugs to all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hrvclv

Very nicely explained. Yet I wonder...

I wonder whether being constantly on the lookout for nordicist/supremacist attitudes is not counterproductive in the long run. In my opinion, it ends up fueling the idea that we, farmer-descended people, suffer from some sort of inferiority complex.

Isn't simply enough to let the Greek and Roman (and Fertile Crescent) civilizations speak for themselves as self-sufficient achievements?

---

A lot of people aren't educated enough to know any history, and more so as time goes on. Also, lies repeated often enough become the truth. I see it happening all the time even today.

From the master spreader of lies:

"“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”
― Joseph Goebbels

I also wouldn't say that I, at least, am constantly on the look out for these ideas. I've been interested in this field for at least twelve years, when people were far less guarded about what they said, about which authors they quoted, and on which forums. Some of their comments were horrifying. The founders of some of these sites were sent to prison. I have a long memory. I know who a lot of these people are and what they're trying to do. History has a nasty way of repeating itself.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hrvclv

Very nicely explained. Yet I wonder...

I wonder whether being constantly on the lookout for nordicist/supremacist attitudes is not counterproductive in the long run. In my opinion, it ends up fueling the idea that we, farmer-descended people, suffer from some sort of inferiority complex.

Isn't simply enough to let the Greek and Roman (and Fertile Crescent) civilizations speak for themselves as self-sufficient achievements?

---

this inferiority complex exists. and probably it exists in all europeans to some degree. maybe it is just the wish to be considered as equal or not be pushed on the same level as near eastern or other non-european people. in another thread on another site i tried to explain to an italian woman that there is no european "white" race and a near eastern "arab" race. that those people are all basically the same and that you just can't draw such a line. she thought i must be arab or "mixed" cause no european would say such a thing. those racial categories are all just there to make people feel different and special. and many europeans still do not want to accept that the concept europeans being one distinct racial group that is somehow special is in fact just a big fat lie.

as long as it is just genetics then it doesn't really matter. but when people start to steal cultural achievements by saying those were made by different people it gets a bit annoying.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stuvanè

Some reflections about these studies that I have also reported elsewhere: it's true that anyone can work only with what is available, and evidently the harbours are generous with human remains more than other places. But it's also true that starting from a sample of dockers and projecting their results on the whole of Roman Italy to represent the overall genetic picture is not very convincing.

It has long been known that, for example, among members of imperial fleets, finding an "authentic" Italic was an almost impossible undertaking, from the earliest times and for precise military provisions, because almost all of them were of servile origin and / or - according to the center (Miseno, Ravenna...) of provincial origin: Greek, Balkan, Levantine, North African, Sardinian and Corsican. It's possible that many of them, discharged at the end of the military service, remained in the area and started a family (it could be the case of Ravenna, which I know well). This is an old article published in the Treccani Encyclopedia, but if you have the time and the desire, you can scour the inscriptions of the CIL or PLRE

http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/...a-Italiana%29/

Having said that, and having little and no geneticist skills, I limit myself only to some considerations more of a historical / literary and mythological / legendary nature, often scholastic knowledges, which should avoid us being so surprised before these links with the eastern Mediterranean world. I don't know what the new genetic samples of these ancient Romans will say, but wanting to associate the "Levantine" contributions solely with massive movements of the imperial or late imperial age seems to me a bit naive. As Pax rightly said, the idea that this component was distributed with the measuring cup along the entire Paeninsula is a bit funny.

If I had to make a bet, I believe that even in the future we will not find a unique position to establish who or what was the "true" Roman of Antiquity. Meanwhile they were the first to know that they were somehow mixed from the beginning, not attributable to a single group, it does not seem to me that they made a great mystery of it, quite the contrary. The scheme of the archaic distribution and merger between Ramnenses, Titienses and Luceres, although it may be a simplification, should already offer us an important caveat and talk about an ethnogenesis not entirely linear.

But going back to this Greek-Levantine quota that causes so many tummy aches, I’d remember that the Romans recorded in their historical sources - and I'm talking about ancient phases - not indifferent contacts with that world, and I believe that in the long run they admitted a partial origin or mingling with the Greeks. The most paradigmatic case, on which all of them have been slaughtered, is the famous theme of the Tarquini dynasty, Etruscans, but according to the narrative direct descendants in paternal line of Demaratus from Corinto, reported by series of authors including Cicero and Titus Livius. Read it as you see fit, but it is to some extent symptomatic of a possible significant mobility of peoples among the Greeks and the Roman-Etruscan world (in the contribution by Ampolo, which here I paste, there is a section dedicated to some epigraphic evidence that would seem to indicate Greek presences in Rome very dated).

On the even more archaic phases, which in my opinion are the ones most involved in the arrival of the Aegean / Anatolian / Caucasian... genetic component in Italy, we have no historical sources like the ones mentioned above, but we have some mythological / epic / legendary support that his way provides a (albeit confused) memory of complex upheavals of peoples occurring - among other things - precisely at the end of the Bronze Age. In my personal way of seeing the material of the "Nostoi" (for the little that remains), which reports the events of the Achaeans after the Troy war, like the legend of Anthenor, coming back to the west towards the Adriatic sea, until he settled in Veneto, and in the end the Eneide itself - with Aeneas and her family sheltering in Latium - it seems to me that they testify that in the Mycenaean and/or Anatolian /Hittite world the Italian Peninsula was not something so far away, but a known and sought-after destination in some critical phases of their history

https://www.academia.edu/36759719/De...iC2cHff3Ad_SKY

---

in regards to your last paragraph
natgeno tested in venice from 2005-2010 and presented this below in their paper

https://i.postimg.cc/YCpW9PSc/venice-str.jpg

the veneti apart from mixing with the indigenous Euganei and their 34 towns in veneto and friuli , did come from the region in anatolia with its linguistic split called Pala or Palaic ...........the venedi in poland or veneti in brittany france have zero dna connection

A few more interesting tidbits about Roman Northern Italy.

The author spends quite a bit of time explaining how thoroughly the Romans "intervened" in Northern Italy: its agriculture and land distribution, its routes of water and land transportation, and even its demography and why.

The latter is interesting in light of our discussions here. In this area we are talking about layers of migration. The coming of the Gauls didn't erase the prior peoples, just as the coming of the Romans didn't obliterate the Gauls. The Romans did do a number on some of the Gallic tribes, however, like the Senones, and particularly the Boii. Why there was more animus toward the Boii than toward tribes like the Insubri of the transpadana is a complicated one, and I won't go into it here. It existed, and it meant that the Romans.

"These land confiscations expelled the Senones and Boii from much of their former territory; in the mid second century Polybius recorded that"not long afterwards I was to see these tribes expelled from the valley of the Po, except for a few districts at the foot of the Alps.""

In the author's opinion that's an exaggeration. While there was expulsion south of the Po, and the Boii and Senones were no longer present as political entities, the continuation of certain cult practices at Parma, for example, show that it was not a complete wipe out of the Gaulish tribes there in the southern Po Valley.

In the north at places like Brixia and Mediolanum, the centers of the Insubres and Cenomani, there was no such expulsion at all, and it wasn't until the later half of the second and first centuries BC that we see signs of expansion and re-organization. Before that, they continued to make their own coinage, and Latin, Celtic, and Italic names all still appear into the early Empire. The Veneti also remained nominally independent for a while.

This may be part of the explanation for some of the differences between the transpadana and the more southern part of Cisalpine Gaul, particularly the Romagna and the Emilian plain. Even then, there was a difference between the people of the mountains and the people of the plains.

Speaking of which, western Liguria seems to have been left alone, but eastern Liguria was heavily impacted. As probably everyone knows, most of the Apuani were exiled to Samnium, and the hill and mountain people were forcibly relocated to the plains around the Magra. The establishment of Luni also brought settlers from Central Italy into the mix.

One of the signs of cultural change? No more horse burials, which were common among all the Celtic tribes and even more so among the Veneti.



How thoroughly Northern Italy became part of "Rome" is shown by the speed with which it was given citizenship, but also by its participation in the legions. "...by the Julio-Claudian period roughly half of those legionnaires serving in upper and lower Germany whose origins could be determined come from Cisalpine Gaul. The same proportion holds true for the Legio XI Claudia in Dalmatia and the Legio VII in Moesia. "

The veneti became allies of rome circa 300bc and absorbed into the roman system by 100bc
They are saud to dress and have customs of the celts but have a different language....this is comments from the time of the celtic invasion of north italy.

The period of 800bc saw the venetic border at modern oderzo, where the illyrian histrians shared a market area with the venetic

I refer to Angela's last post, which I subscribe to 100%.
In fact it is always Polybius (II, 19-21) who remembers that it was Gaius Flaminius's policy of massive colonization in the northern Marche region that alarmed the Boi who, fearing the same fate as their Senones neighbors, turned out to be quite hostile towards Rome.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412...-h/44125-h.htm

http://docenti.unimc.it/simone.sisan...20Romana_5.pdf

I believe that with regard to the Insubres, the Cenomans and other transpadane populations in general, the Romans of a later generation were more wary, even with more practical policies of local military recruitment and subsequent granting of Roman citizenship, precisely in order not to trigger reactions to chain that would become less and less controllable as they left Rome.

That those territories, now corresponding more or less to the province of Pesaro-Urbino and to the entire Emilia-Romagna region, have been the object of an important Roman-Italic colonization is beyond doubt (in fact all the cities and centers along the Via Emilia have been Roman colonies). The Emilians and even more so the Romagnols, compared to their present Lombardi neighbors, emphasized in their autosomal - of some point - Caucasian and Mediterranean-eastern components that could very well be attributed to the arrival of Central Italic settlers.

However, I have always had many doubts about the total expulsion of Senoni and Boi from the Picenus and Po valley. In the first place, from the dialectal point of view, these are territories that remained Gallo-Italic in all respects, with very marginal external influences (in the province of Pesaro, the dialect is a variety of Romagna), where the general rule is a Latin that merges with a Celtic substrate. Some substantial pouch still had to be present.
What sense would the persistence of a language (or of such an important linguistic phenomenon) be due to a people decimated, vanquished, marginalized or even expelled?

Another hypothesis that I would like to advance is a supposition of mine born in relation to the 23andMe tool, Your DNA Family.
Given that in Italy this kind of test is still little known and adopted while it is widespread in the USA, UK, Canada, (so we are talking about statistics that are not significant on the one hand and overrepresented on the other), it remains to ask why someone like me - a matter of fact of areas of eastern Emilia/Romagna where the Gallic influence was already diluted in Antiquity, due to Etruscan, Umbrian and Greek strong coexistence and which clearly underwent Roman domination - it is found, however, at the top of the rankings respectively 87 % of genetic cousins ​​with Franco-German ancestral origins and another 85% with British origins? (For the moment my Italians are 28%). Keep in mind that I'm not talking about Italian-Americans and / or Italian-British, so individuals who do not bear Italian origins.

For now, in my opinion, the only possibility is to admit that even after the Roman conquest the Gallic genetic signal in northern Italy, in turn linked to the Celtic continental and insular, has remained more than persistent. Those written testimonies speaking of such drastic military interventions towards the Cispadan Gauls could be attributed to a certain kind of propaganda and above all to the need of the Romans to exorcise the fear of those unique barbarians who actually - like the Senones - managed to violate Rome and take it over.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stuvanè

I refer to Angela's last post, which I subscribe to 100%.
In fact it is always Polybius (II, 19-21) who remembers that it was Gaius Flaminius's policy of massive colonization in the northern Marche region that alarmed the Boi who, fearing the same fate as their Senones neighbors, turned out to be quite hostile towards Rome.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412...-h/44125-h.htm

http://docenti.unimc.it/simone.sisan...20Romana_5.pdf

I believe that with regard to the Insubres, the Cenomans and other transpadane populations in general, the Romans of a later generation were more wary, even with more practical policies of local military recruitment and subsequent granting of Roman citizenship, precisely in order not to trigger reactions to chain that would become less and less controllable as they left Rome.

That those territories, now corresponding more or less to the province of Pesaro-Urbino and to the entire Emilia-Romagna region, have been the object of an important Roman-Italic colonization is beyond doubt (in fact all the cities and centers along the Via Emilia have been Roman colonies). The Emilians and even more so the Romagnols, compared to their present Lombardi neighbors, emphasized in their autosomal - of some point - Caucasian and Mediterranean-eastern components that could very well be attributed to the arrival of Central Italic settlers.

However, I have always had many doubts about the total expulsion of Senoni and Boi from the Picenus and Po valley. In the first place, from the dialectal point of view, these are territories that remained Gallo-Italic in all respects, with very marginal external influences (in the province of Pesaro, the dialect is a variety of Romagna), where the general rule is a Latin that merges with a Celtic substrate. Some substantial pouch still had to be present.
What sense would the persistence of a language (or of such an important linguistic phenomenon) be due to a people decimated, vanquished, marginalized or even expelled?

Another hypothesis that I would like to advance is a supposition of mine born in relation to the 23andMe tool, Your DNA Family.
Given that in Italy this kind of test is still little known and adopted while it is widespread in the USA, UK, Canada, (so we are talking about statistics that are not significant on the one hand and overrepresented on the other), it remains to ask why someone like me - a matter of fact of areas of eastern Emilia/Romagna where the Gallic influence was already diluted in Antiquity, due to Etruscan, Umbrian and Greek strong coexistence and which clearly underwent Roman domination - it is found, however, at the top of the rankings respectively 87 % of genetic cousins ​​with Franco-German ancestral origins and another 85% with British origins? (For the moment my Italians are 28%). Keep in mind that I'm not talking about Italian-Americans and / or Italian-British, so individuals who do not bear Italian origins.

For now, in my opinion, the only possibility is to admit that even after the Roman conquest the Gallic genetic signal in northern Italy, in turn linked to the Celtic continental and insular, has remained more than persistent. Those written testimonies speaking of such drastic military interventions towards the Cispadan Gauls could be attributed to a certain kind of propaganda and above all to the need of the Romans to exorcise the fear of those unique barbarians who actually - like the Senones - managed to violate Rome and take it over.

---

I, in turn, agree with your post. :)

The author presents solid evidence that the claims of the Romans as to the total decimation of the Celts south of the Po (according to Polybius, even to a large extent North of the Po) are an exaggeration. At the same time, the Insubrians and Cenomani were treated somewhat differently. Expansion did arrive there, just not yet and not as intensively.

A word as to your matches with people of northwestern and northern Europe: I'm in the same situation. A very few of my cousins have tested, some people from the Lunigiana, La Spezia, eastern Liguria in general, and some from western Emilia, mostly the mountains, however, and not the plain, and some Piemontesi, who are from what are actually old Ligurian areas in the mountains, and show up in my list. Other than that my top matches are all northwestern Europeans, Irish and Welsh in particular, and Scandinavians. One Scandinavian family and one Irish family are within my top top 20 matches, and my top mtDna match is an Irish family!

I don't have any relatively close matches with anyone south of the Lucca, Versilia area of Toscana, and, in fact, I don't even have matches with people from the Veneto or eastern Lombardia. Yet, it's undeniable that I'm autosomally more similar to someone from the Veneto than someone from Ireland.

So, what gives? I also noticed that I don't have any matches with Spaniards, despite the fact we're supposed to be so alike autosomally, and indeed they come up very high in a lot of my gedmatch results, before southern Italians in most of them. I get no French matches either.

I think some of this is definitely down to the nature of the reference samples. You're going to get "northern" matches, perhaps even more than "southern" matches because there are so many more of them than there are of Italian, Spanish, and especially French ones, with the latter being particularly true given how difficult it is to test there.

However, it's pointing out something very real. While autosomally we may be different, as the Spanish are very different from the Celts of the British Isles, within the relatively recent past we received a good chunk of ancestry from these people, but not just "Celtic" or "Gallic". There were still "Italic" names in Italy north of the Po well into the Empire.

I also think there's some Lombard, at least in my case, although I've somewhat resisted the idea in the past, given my feelings about the local aristocracy, a loathing I think I imbibed with my mother's milk.:) I've said often enough they bred anarchists, socialists and communists here. My mother's father was a committed Socialist, although her mother's family was mostly a-political. No one was going to be looking for connections to Germanic overlords, even without the horrors of World War II to consider. However, facts must be faced honestly. I don't think it's true on a broad scale; more of it is present more north and especially north east, where there is more sign of their settlements, but all those Lombard castles dotting every damn hill in the Lunigiana mean something. It doesn't mean a huge effect on the autosomes, necessarily , especially by the time they got to the Lunigiana it was probably mostly young men, but they did leave their calling card in the form of yDNA. I just checked family tree dna's northern Italy project, and there in the foothills of the Apennines in the northern Lunigiana there's a lot of I1 and U-106, as well as the usual R1b. The other lineages up there seem to be "T" and the "northern" G2a, while the further south you go the more that E-V13 shows up, although it's still mostly R1b of the Z36, Z56, and L2 variety all.

Dna doesn't lie, right?

I suppose I've just given some support to Ancestry's contention that I'm 55% Italian and 45% French. The point still stands that if someone is adopted or for any other reason has no ideas as to their ancestry, DO NOT use Ancestry. Use 23andme. There, I'm definitely Italian. Also, upon reflection, if I had my parents' dna results, I would guess that most of the "Italian" comes from my mother, and most of the "French" comes from my father. He wouldn't mind a "French" connection, I don't think: he was quite the Francophile. However, the implication that it was "Celtic", i,e. to him, naked, blue painted barbarians and no or less connection to Romans would have him spinning in his grave. To each generation their own prejudices, I guess; he was brought up still under the sway of Mussolini's form of population genetics unfortunately.