Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

What do you think about what they are saying on Anthrogenica that the Romans, the Etruscans and all the Italic populations were quite similar to the Hallstatt Celts, the Celtiberians and some Bell Beakers and that modern Italians were formed thanks to the contribution of Levantine migrants?

I personally do not know whether to believe that it is true or not.
 
What do you think about what they are saying on Anthrogenica that the Romans, the Etruscans and all the Italic populations were quite similar to the Hallstatt Celts, the Celtiberians and some Bell Beakers and that modern Italians were formed thanks to the contribution of Levantine migrants?

I personally do not know whether to believe that it is true or not.

Who said that? I’m skeptical even though I think immigration played a bigger role than most
 
Generalissimo/Davidski/Polako and other users of Anthrogenica who try always to levantinize the Italians.

Link/quote pls

If he said something that explicitly I’m inclined to believe him. I could definitely believe the early Italic tribes were Hallstatt-like but given I believe the Etruscans derive from the Sea Peoples and imposed themselves on top of existing populations I am very skeptical that they were Hallstatt derived. Why were the Etruscans so much more developed than the Italic tribes around them if they were both derived from Central Europe and for that matter why would they speak such different languages?
 
Link/quote pls

If he said something that explicitly I’m inclined to believe him. I could definitely believe the early Italic tribes were Hallstatt-like but given I believe the Etruscans derive from the Sea Peoples and imposed themselves on top of existing populations I am very skeptical that they were Hallstatt derived. Why were the Etruscans so much more developed than the Italic tribes around them if they were both derived from Central Europe and for that matter why would they speak such different languages?


The origin of the Etruscans from the Sea Peoples is a completely debunked hypothesis. The PCA on anthrogenica shows Etruscans more north of the Romans and completely European.
 
What do you think about what they are saying on Anthrogenica that the Romans, the Etruscans and all the Italic populations were quite similar to the Hallstatt Celts, the Celtiberians and some Bell Beakers and that modern Italians were formed thanks to the contribution of Levantine migrants?

I personally do not know whether to believe that it is true or not.

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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Generalissimo/Davidski/Polako and other users of Anthrogenica who try always to levantinize the Italians.


Generalissimo/Davidski/Polako playes a lot of tricks against the Italians, just see his Global 25.
 
What do you think about what they are saying on Anthrogenica that the Romans, the Etruscans and all the Italic populations were quite similar to the Hallstatt Celts, the Celtiberians and some Bell Beakers and that modern Italians were formed thanks to the contribution of Levantine migrants?
Who is saying that? Even Generalissimo said "migrants from across the Eastern Mediterranean" and didn't claim it was all or mostly Levantine. IIRC most people leaning this way were looking at the Greeks as the main source.
 
What do you think about what they are saying on Anthrogenica that the Romans, the Etruscans and all the Italic populations were quite similar to the Hallstatt Celts, the Celtiberians and some Bell Beakers and that modern Italians were formed thanks to the contribution of Levantine migrants?

I personally do not know whether to believe that it is true or not.

The Latins and the Etruscans have indeed archaeologically a connection with the central European urnfields (Latial culture and Villanovan culture both derived from the proto-Villanovan by regionalization). It's no surprise to anyone who's read archaeology texts. Obviously only academic studies can tell us if they were really similar to the Hallstatt Celts, but I don't think these studies have been published yet.

Those who support this theory ("Italians were formed thanks to the contribution of Levantine migrants" or more generally from the Eastern Mediterranean sea during Roman times) are the same users who for years supported the eastern origin of the Etruscans, without a real knowledge of the main texts of etruscology, and if you contributed on Anthrogenica with arguments based on academic sources simply to say that there was no certainty of this eastern origin, you were consequently mocked, harassed, and accused of the worst wrongs.

Now the same users clearly support the new game, and the new game is the thesis that the Italian cline was formed thanks to the Levantines of Imperial Rome. A game created by the Nordicists but which also enjoys a certain popularity among the Orientalists. Which is very funny, because we forget for example the Greeks (any type of Greeks, also Greeks from Asia Minor) who arrived everywhere in Italy, even in the north, and the Italian cline follows much of the geography of Italy and this theory makes it appear that the Romans distributed along the peninsula with the measuring cup these Levantine migrants to form the current genetic cline of the Italians, forgetting for example to bring them to Sardinia that has never been a very populated island. So they all lack credibility. We are also all forgetting that the ones that have come out so far are just rumors, some of them contradictory, and that we can't draw conclusions before the studies are published.


To be clear, I'm not denying that in Roman imperial times in Italy there really were Levantines or more generally people of middle-eastern descent or someone even from further away (many Levantines arrived for example in the Christian era to proselytize Christianity), who have certainly not disappeared but who were assimilated by the population of the Italian peninsula. Nothing to be ashamed of. But I don't think they were the main cause of the Italian cline.

For the Romans, I really don't know. We should not forget that the Romans and the Latins were not exactly the same thing. On the Etruscans we have this academic PCA, the genome of the three Etruscans analyzed by Stanford. Etruscans rich in EEF, WHG and even Steppe is also compatible with their mtDNA and archaeology, and both the Neolithic and the Bell Beaker are documented arcehologically in areas that will later become Etruscan. But we must not forget that we only have the elite burials of the Etruscans. If their position in the PCA discredits the theory that the Etruscan elite was of recent eastern origin, it cannot be ruled out that the Etruscan lower-class people not belonging to the elite kept less of an archaic genetic profile.

Then before drawing conclusions I'd like to see the samples of the culture of Rinaldone, Apennine culture, Gaudo culture, Laterza culture and many others. The archaeological history of the Italian peninsula is very complex, and cannot be reduced to a few samples taken from the ports of ancient Rome, which were obviously full of foreigners and less conservative than internal areas.



etruscans.jpg
 
Most people who have almost no interest in population genetics, already assume Greeks and Italians share an affinity. Most regular people would chalk up the fantasy of a mass transformational migration from the Levant, as complete nonsense. Because it would be the first they've heard of it, since it is not in any historical record. Thus, people who know next to nothing on the subject, are actually more informed than the people who subscribe to that sophistry.
 
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.

pBkGKNX.jpg

cB2JpnK.png
 
I'll leave Italian matters to Italians. So I'll just submit a few random remarks.

There is one element that clearly points to influx from north of the Alps. It's language.

Genitives in -i are said to be a western-IE innovation shared by Latin and Proto-Celtic (dominus > domini - tigernos > tigerni). It implies that the two populations were neighbors (or more) at a given point in time.

Similarly, Osco-Umbrian languages, though distinctly close to Latin, underwent the same kw/p mutation that occurred in the Brythonic and Gaulish Celtic languages. The two mutations may have happened independently. Or they may be due to the fact that an IE language was imposed upon similar substrate populations, speaking similar languages, and unable to properly manage the "kw". Or it may suggest that Osco-Umbrian tribes and P-Celtic tribes had shared the same "areal change" - ie, had been neighbors.

In other words, I wouldn't be surprised to learn sooner or later that there were in fact several waves from the north (and/or northeast) into Italy. Bell-Beaker pots were found in Remedello tombs. Villanovan biconic funerary urns seem Urnfield-derived.

An early migration could have ended up somewhere in the Po Valley and Tuscany, altering the culture and genetics, but not the language, in a process similar to the one described for the Basque Country. Later, the abundance of various metal ores - notably gold - in Tuscany would have shifted the center of gravity to where affluence was.

The Latins would have been another wave, still speaking a "kw" IE language, but with the "new" genitives already.

Then the Osco-Umbrians, with languages very much like Latin, but affected by the kw/p mutation.

(I don't know what to make of Veneti, with their language apparently half-way between Osco-Umbrian and Celtic, plus that strange, archaic, Germanic-looking pronominal system)

Genetically, the Celtic tribes that later settled in Northern Italy can't be discounted either, in the light of the proximity of northern Italians with some ancient samples. Have a look at the Mytrueancestry timeline results, and fitness levels.

That said, there still remains the riddle of those distinctly oriental influences in Etruscan art. Did a small elite group come and settle, altering the culture, but not the genes? Did locals imitate, and improve on, models brought to them by Greek merchants? Not a clue.

That's all, folks! As said above, these are strictly personal conjectures proposed here as food for thought. Feel free to disregard...
 
I have always held the belief that the etruscans where an ancient offshoot of the Umbrians and we do know that that the sabines, sabellics and samnites are also an offshoot of the umbrians............we also know that that umbrians entered italy from central europe via the NE of Italy.
There seems more etruscan connection with the umbrians and less with the Ligures

a paper below to consider on the linguistic and personnel names of Central european italian names/words

https://www.academia.edu/36806069/T...tive_Forms_in_Celtic_Venetic_and_South-Picene
 
An early presence of Italic in Italy would explain why the two branches (Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian) are so different from each other. I think that's one of the problems with the Villanovs hypothesis.

Agreed with your general sentiment. I guess the problem are the events we can never truly exclude with just DNA and archaeology: language shifts, elite dominance, tribal alliances etc. .

Or subsequent geographic separation:

432px-Italia_fisica_appennini.png
 
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?
 
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?


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.



 
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.

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.
 
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?

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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