Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

Many Romans are south of southern Italians. Would Germanic admixture be sufficient to explain the subsequent northern shift? How much Germanic Y-DNA is there in southern Italy, 5-10%?

Apulia:

E: 22%
J2a: 20%
G: 15%
R1b: 13%
J1: 8%
I2: 8%
I1: 6%
T: 5%
R1a: 5%

Basilicata:

J2a: 24%
G: 21%
E: 16%
R1b: 16%
J1: 7%
I2: 7%
T: 5%
I1: 2%
R1a: 2%

Calabria:

G: 24%
J2a: 18%
E: 18%
R1b: 16%
R1a: 8%
J1: 8%
I1: 5%
T: 2%
I2: 1%

(from Ftdna)

R1b might be both local and foreign, E-V13 too as we have seen.

I'm getting confused. This is the map which was supposedly leaked and published upthread, right?

PZahiV8.png


The ancient Roman samples are the purple triangles and the Etruscans the purple squares, yes? I'm assuming this is a different paper from the Moots one. I don't know where those more "northern" like Republican Era Romans would plot, but these ancient Romans seem to plot right on top of Southern Italians and some Greeks. We have one Tuscan like Etruscan, some Spanish like ones, a few Northern Italian like and one veering toward Bulgarians? I'm bad with these things so don't quote me. :)


I found this map, which I think might help in understanding that jumble in the leak.

d50cMfc.png


As for "Germanic" ancestry, I don't know, but I don't think much more than that, at least not in those three provinces, because they didn't experience the migration of northern Italians, i.e. the "Lombards" who were sent to Sicily to Latinize it in both language and religion.
 
I'm getting confused. This is the map which was supposedly leaked and published upthread, right?

PZahiV8.png


The ancient Roman samples are the purple triangles and the Etruscans the purple squares, yes? I'm assuming this is a different paper from the Moots one. I don't know where those more "northern" like Republican Era Romans would plot, but these ancient Romans seem to plot right on top of Southern Italians and some Greeks. We have one Tuscan like Etruscan, some Spanish like ones, a few Northern Italian like and one veering toward Bulgarians? I'm bad with these things so don't quote me. :)


I found this map, which I think might help in understanding that jumble in the leak.

d50cMfc.png


As for "Germanic" ancestry, I don't know, but I don't think much more than that, at least not in those three provinces, because they didn't experience the migration of northern Italians, i.e. the "Lombards" who were sent to Sicily to Latinize it in both language and religion.

Yeah, it is the leaked PCA. I had just rotated it to mirror the PCA from the thread's paper.
 
I'm getting confused. This is the map which was supposedly leaked and published upthread, right?



The ancient Roman samples are the purple triangles and the Etruscans the purple squares, yes? I'm assuming this is a different paper from the Moots one. I don't know where those more "northern" like Republican Era Romans would plot, but these ancient Romans seem to plot right on top of Southern Italians and some Greeks. We have one Tuscan like Etruscan, some Spanish like ones, a few Northern Italian like and one veering toward Bulgarians? I'm bad with these things so don't quote me. :)


I found this map, which I think might help in understanding that jumble in the leak.



As for "Germanic" ancestry, I don't know, but I don't think much more than that, at least not in those three provinces, because they didn't experience the migration of northern Italians, i.e. the "Lombards" who were sent to Sicily to Latinize it in both language and religion.

I would say the center of the Roman Empire cluster lies right with the southernmost Italians. However, the samples are from north of Rome I believe, and many of them diverge towards Cyprus causing them to plot outside modern variance (in the blank space between modern Italians and modern Cypriots).

If the PCA is accurate, why do they plot there, and what changed? Alternatively, could slavery have introduced more northern autosomal admixture?
 
I would say the center of the Roman Empire cluster lies right with the southernmost Italians. However, the samples are from north of Rome I believe, and many of them diverge towards Cyprus causing them to plot outside modern variance (in the blank space between modern Italians and modern Cypriots).

If the PCA is accurate, why do they plot there, and what changed? Alternatively, could slavery have introduced more northern autosomal admixture?
I'm wondering that myself, actually. That is interesting
 
Is there a version of the PCA where modern samples are not grouped into regions? Even without the ancient data, it is already interesting to see the various Italian, Greek and Albanian clusters.
 
I would say the center of the Roman Empire cluster lies right with the southernmost Italians. However, the samples are from north of Rome I believe, and many of them diverge towards Cyprus causing them to plot outside modern variance (in the blank space between modern Italians and modern Cypriots).

If the PCA is accurate, why do they plot there, and what changed? Alternatively, could slavery have introduced more northern autosomal admixture?

There's about what, 23 or 24 samples? Four or five seem to drift off toward Cyprus, and the rest plot right with Southern Italians/Sicilians.

Why do we have some that drift that way? I don't know.

Where would Dodecanese people plot, for example? Or Minoan like people? Where precisely would the Mycenaeans plot? Also, parts of Italy were settled by Greek colonists who had first settled coastal Anatolia.

Are you thinking most of them might have actually been like that and were pulled north subsequently? In Sicily I would say definitely, given the Lombard migrations. Perhaps Campania too, which got some "more northern" influence. It was long believed the Celt-Ligurians were re-settled in Samnite areas. I don't think that's true for Calabria, however, and northern parts of Apulia got more "southern" input from "Moorish" troops re-settled there after the end of that era. Supposedly they were all eventually killed or sold into slavery, however.

The issue of slavery is a tricky one. I've hunted for years for some sort of contemporary evidence as to whether slaves from certain campaigns went to one part of the empire versus another, or one part of Italy versus another, and have never found a single thing. In the south, in particular, there were many vast latifundia or agricultural estates, but why would Germanic or Gallic slaves be sent there in preference to slaves from Greece or Anatolia or the Levant? Slaves went where they were needed. Plus, you didn't last long on latifundia, or mines, or on the galleys. The slaves who would be more likely to attract the notice of owners and perhaps freed after long service would be house slaves or slaves who had more skills. The Greek slaves were always the most prized, and if anything would have made them more "southern", and would have produced little change at all.

Plus, we have to be careful of the time periods here, don't you think?

Were those more "southern" "Romans" during the Republican Era very much like the "southern like" Romans of the Imperial Era? What are the exact dates for all of the samples? From that we would know what groups were or were not enslaved by that time and could have had an impact. In much of the Republican Era it would be from other people of the Italian peninsula.

However, let's be clear. Slave graves are quite different from the graves of reasonably well off Roman citizens. As are the graves around brothels where women didn't last too long, and graveyards full of aborted fetuses and newborns have been found, or in the merchant quarters right next to the docks. There's little likelihood such people would have had a great impact on genetics. Goodness, we have a big bunch North Africans in medieval London too. If they've done some isotope analysis that would help us wade through some of this.

Is that information that they came from north of Rome another leak? How far north of Rome? It doesn't matter if it's not in the city of Rome itself. Anything in "Latin" territory would do. There was a small area north of Rome which was still in the lands of the "Latini", but if you really go north you're in the lands of the Etruscans, Sabines, and Umbrians and Picene, which the leaks also said were similar to one another and more "northern", so that wouldn't be consistent.
6a00e551f08003883401b7c73e2739970b-600wi


If the Sabines, like the Etruscans, are more "northern" like, then things like the "Rape", really "Kidnapping" of the Sabine women would just make them more northern.

The locations as well as the dates and the burial contexts are all really important here, and I hope they did isotope analysis. If the Republic Era samples are not here because this isn't the Moots paper then that leaves a lot of holes.
 
There's about what, 23 or 24 samples? Four or five seem to drift off toward Cyprus, and the rest plot right with Southern Italians/Sicilians.

Why do we have some that drift that way? I don't know.

Where would Dodecanese people plot, for example? Or Minoan like people? Where precisely would the Mycenaeans plot? Also, parts of Italy were settled by Greek colonists who had first settled coastal Anatolia.

Are you thinking most of them might have actually been like that and were pulled north subsequently? In Sicily I would say definitely, given the Lombard migrations. Perhaps Campania too, which got some "more northern" influence. It was long believed the Celt-Ligurians were re-settled in Samnite areas. I don't think that's true for Calabria, however, and northern parts of Apulia got more "southern" input from "Moorish" troops re-settled there after the end of that era. Supposedly they were all eventually killed or sold into slavery, however.

The issue of slavery is a tricky one. I've hunted for years for some sort of contemporary evidence as to whether slaves from certain campaigns went to one part of the empire versus another, or one part of Italy versus another, and have never found a single thing. In the south, in particular, there were many vast latifundia or agricultural estates, but why would Germanic or Gallic slaves be sent there in preference to slaves from Greece or Anatolia or the Levant? Slaves went where they were needed. Plus, you didn't last long on latifundia, or mines, or on the galleys. The slaves who would be more likely to attract the notice of owners and perhaps freed after long service would be house slaves or slaves who had more skills. The Greek slaves were always the most prized, and if anything would have made them more "southern", and would have produced little change at all.

Plus, we have to be careful of the time periods here, don't you think?

Were those more "southern" "Romans" during the Republican Era very much like the "southern like" Romans of the Imperial Era? What are the exact dates for all of the samples? From that we would know what groups were or were not enslaved by that time and could have had an impact. In much of the Republican Era it would be from other people of the Italian peninsula.

However, let's be clear. Slave graves are quite different from the graves of reasonably well off Roman citizens. As are the graves around brothels where women didn't last too long, and graveyards full of aborted fetuses and newborns have been found, or in the merchant quarters right next to the docks. There's little likelihood such people would have had a great impact on genetics. Goodness, we have a big bunch North Africans in medieval London too. If they've done some isotope analysis that would help us wade through some of this.

Is that information that they came from north of Rome another leak? How far north of Rome? It doesn't matter if it's not in the city of Rome itself. Anything in "Latin" territory would do. There was a small area north of Rome which was still in the lands of the "Latini", but if you really go north you're in the lands of the Etruscans, Sabines, and Umbrians and Picene, which the leaks also said were similar to one another and more "northern", so that wouldn't be consistent.
6a00e551f08003883401b7c73e2739970b-600wi


If the Sabines, like the Etruscans, are more "northern" like, then things like the "Rape", really "Kidnapping" of the Sabine women would just make them more northern.

The locations as well as the dates and the burial contexts are all really important here, and I hope they did isotope analysis. If the Republic Era samples are not here because this isn't the Moots paper then that leaves a lot of holes.

Forgot to include the following:

Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia[1] (modern day Marseille, in France) in 600 BC, Emporion(modern day Empúries, in Catalonia, Spain) in 575 BC and Elea (modern day Velia, in Campania, Italy) in 540 BC.

Rhodes and Crete founded Gela in Sicily which founded many other city states.

Ed. Phocaea was on the western coast of Anatolia.
 
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There's about what, 23 or 24 samples? Four or five seem to drift off toward Cyprus, and the rest plot right with Southern Italians/Sicilians.

Why do we have some that drift that way? I don't know.

Where would Dodecanese people plot, for example? Or Minoan like people? Where precisely would the Mycenaeans plot? Also, parts of Italy were settled by Greek colonists who had first settled coastal Anatolia.

Are you thinking most of them might have actually been like that and were pulled north subsequently? In Sicily I would say definitely, given the Lombard migrations. Perhaps Campania too, which got some "more northern" influence. It was long believed the Celt-Ligurians were re-settled in Samnite areas. I don't think that's true for Calabria, however, and northern parts of Apulia got more "southern" input from "Moorish" troops re-settled there after the end of that era. Supposedly they were all eventually killed or sold into slavery, however.

The issue of slavery is a tricky one. I've hunted for years for some sort of contemporary evidence as to whether slaves from certain campaigns went to one part of the empire versus another, or one part of Italy versus another, and have never found a single thing. In the south, in particular, there were many vast latifundia or agricultural estates, but why would Germanic or Gallic slaves be sent there in preference to slaves from Greece or Anatolia or the Levant? Slaves went where they were needed. Plus, you didn't last long on latifundia, or mines, or on the galleys. The slaves who would be more likely to attract the notice of owners and perhaps freed after long service would be house slaves or slaves who had more skills. The Greek slaves were always the most prized, and if anything would have made them more "southern", and would have produced little change at all.

Plus, we have to be careful of the time periods here, don't you think?

Were those more "southern" "Romans" during the Republican Era very much like the "southern like" Romans of the Imperial Era? What are the exact dates for all of the samples? From that we would know what groups were or were not enslaved by that time and could have had an impact. In much of the Republican Era it would be from other people of the Italian peninsula.

However, let's be clear. Slave graves are quite different from the graves of reasonably well off Roman citizens. As are the graves around brothels where women didn't last too long, and graveyards full of aborted fetuses and newborns have been found, or in the merchant quarters right next to the docks. There's little likelihood such people would have had a great impact on genetics. Goodness, we have a big bunch North Africans in medieval London too. If they've done some isotope analysis that would help us wade through some of this.

Is that information that they came from north of Rome another leak? How far north of Rome? It doesn't matter if it's not in the city of Rome itself. Anything in "Latin" territory would do. There was a small area north of Rome which was still in the lands of the "Latini", but if you really go north you're in the lands of the Etruscans, Sabines, and Umbrians and Picene, which the leaks also said were similar to one another and more "northern", so that wouldn't be consistent.
6a00e551f08003883401b7c73e2739970b-600wi


If the Sabines, like the Etruscans, are more "northern" like, then things like the "Rape", really "Kidnapping" of the Sabine women would just make them more northern.

The locations as well as the dates and the burial contexts are all really important here, and I hope they did isotope analysis. If the Republic Era samples are not here because this isn't the Moots paper then that leaves a lot of holes.

Indeed, the city of Lucera became the re-settlement area for the Sicilian Muslims:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_settlement_of_Lucera


The city thrived for 75 years, and had a population of about 20,000. However, it was sacked by Charles II, with half the population being killed. The other half was sold into slavery, or fled across the Adriatic into the Balkans. However, I don't think a population like that would have had much of an impact on the surrounding area. However, I'm sure the legacy of those specific people could exist in trace amounts, in some individuals. But It could also be similar DNA from an earlier period, perhaps. The rest of Puglia doesn't seem to get visible amounts of NA, or very little in the admixture charts for the paper. I myself get 0.6% Broadly Western Asian & North African on 23andme:

vl8tToO.png


That's an interesting theory regarding the Sabines, and the Romans. Perhaps, that could have made them shift North genetically, if the Sabines were like the Etruscans:

tARy19H.jpg
 
There's about what, 23 or 24 samples? Four or five seem to drift off toward Cyprus, and the rest plot right with Southern Italians/Sicilians.

Why do we have some that drift that way? I don't know.

Where would Dodecanese people plot, for example? Or Minoan like people? Where precisely would the Mycenaeans plot? Also, parts of Italy were settled by Greek colonists who had first settled coastal Anatolia.

Are you thinking most of them might have actually been like that and were pulled north subsequently? In Sicily I would say definitely, given the Lombard migrations. Perhaps Campania too, which got some "more northern" influence. It was long believed the Celt-Ligurians were re-settled in Samnite areas. I don't think that's true for Calabria, however, and northern parts of Apulia got more "southern" input from "Moorish" troops re-settled there after the end of that era. Supposedly they were all eventually killed or sold into slavery, however.

The issue of slavery is a tricky one. I've hunted for years for some sort of contemporary evidence as to whether slaves from certain campaigns went to one part of the empire versus another, or one part of Italy versus another, and have never found a single thing. In the south, in particular, there were many vast latifundia or agricultural estates, but why would Germanic or Gallic slaves be sent there in preference to slaves from Greece or Anatolia or the Levant? Slaves went where they were needed. Plus, you didn't last long on latifundia, or mines, or on the galleys. The slaves who would be more likely to attract the notice of owners and perhaps freed after long service would be house slaves or slaves who had more skills. The Greek slaves were always the most prized, and if anything would have made them more "southern", and would have produced little change at all.

Plus, we have to be careful of the time periods here, don't you think?

Were those more "southern" "Romans" during the Republican Era very much like the "southern like" Romans of the Imperial Era? What are the exact dates for all of the samples? From that we would know what groups were or were not enslaved by that time and could have had an impact. In much of the Republican Era it would be from other people of the Italian peninsula.

However, let's be clear. Slave graves are quite different from the graves of reasonably well off Roman citizens. As are the graves around brothels where women didn't last too long, and graveyards full of aborted fetuses and newborns have been found, or in the merchant quarters right next to the docks. There's little likelihood such people would have had a great impact on genetics. Goodness, we have a big bunch North Africans in medieval London too. If they've done some isotope analysis that would help us wade through some of this.

Is that information that they came from north of Rome another leak? How far north of Rome? It doesn't matter if it's not in the city of Rome itself. Anything in "Latin" territory would do. There was a small area north of Rome which was still in the lands of the "Latini", but if you really go north you're in the lands of the Etruscans, Sabines, and Umbrians and Picene, which the leaks also said were similar to one another and more "northern", so that wouldn't be consistent.


If the Sabines, like the Etruscans, are more "northern" like, then things like the "Rape", really "Kidnapping" of the Sabine women would just make them more northern.

The locations as well as the dates and the burial contexts are all really important here, and I hope they did isotope analysis. If the Republic Era samples are not here because this isn't the Moots paper then that leaves a lot of holes.


I think there aren't many options. Either the Italics were northerners and imperial Romans as well as present day South Italians derive much of their ancestry from Aegean and Near Eastern populations, or the northern admixture is intrusive and came with Etruscans, Celts etc .

How would one make Iberians/Ligurians etc. plot near Cyprus? Either through replacement or very significant admixture. Even the Myceneans don't seem to be sufficiently eastern, and if we're talking about Anatolian Greeks the influx must have been massive still. Both the northern population and the southern population seem to have existed in the Replubican era already in any case.

Those Italian papers might stir some controversy I feel :unsure:
 
I think there aren't many options. Either the Italics were northerners and imperial Romans as well as present day South Italians derive much of their ancestry from Aegean and Near Eastern populations, or the northern admixture is intrusive and came with Etruscans, Celts etc .

How would one make Iberians/Ligurians etc. plot near Cyprus? Either through replacement or very significant admixture. Even the Myceneans don't seem to be sufficiently eastern, and if we're talking about Anatolian Greeks the influx must have been massive still. Both the northern population and the southern population seem to have existed in the Replubican era already in any case.

Those Italian papers might stir some controversy I feel :unsure:

I wasn't aware we had ancient Ligurian samples. If we don't, how do we know they plot anywhere near modern Cypriots? Modern Ligurians certainly don't. Are you saying these imperial Roman samples were found in Liguria?

Well, if that's the case, that's easy. Genua was a Greek city and then a Roman city, and Luni was founded by Romans and was used by them to try to pacify the area.

I think it's likely the Italics were more "Northern Italian" like and had more "steppe" than the "Imperial Romans". More than modern Southern Italians, for example. That's not "Northern" by any means. Northern Italians don't plot anywhere near Germans, much less Scandinavians. I'm also not convinced that this more "northern" like ancestry only arrived in Central Italy with "Etruscans" and "Celts", the latter of whom only raided in these more southern areas by the way, not settled. I think it might be earlier.

Are people on other forums fixating on those four samples that drift toward the Cypriots? For goodness' sakes. Talk about focusing on the minority.

Also, Mycenaean people were pretty darn "Aegean" like, and I think people like that were feeding into Italy at least from the Helladic Era. The Greek sample found in North Eastern Iberia in the Imperial Era still plots near Mycenaeans, who plot near Ashkenazi Jews, btw.

I don't personally find any of this very controversial.

We also still don't know what Neolithic Southern Italians were like, so maybe some people might be getting a little ahead of themselves.

Are the usual posters foaming at the mouth again about a flood of "Levant" like people coming into southern Italy? Fine with me if true, but where is the evidence? Is there any contemporary evidence of large migrations in writings, inscriptions, etc.? Did they just materialize out of thin air? I mean, the Carthaginians were only in the northwest corner of Sicily. That's giving them a little too much credit, don't you think? Or, are the Jewish members of some forums or the ones who think they're secret Jews or something proposing that floods of Jews moved to Italy but converted eventually? How many specifically Jewish yDna clades are there in Southern Italy or among imperial Romans?

The Moots leaks, btw, said that there was a "tail" leading toward the Near East at a certain time in the Imperial Era. They also mentioned some "sporadic" "Levantine" samples. I assumed the latter caused the former. That "tail", according to the leaks, then disappeared. I think it disappeared because a lot of the Jews moved on into the Rhineland.

Were the authors of this paper careful to distinguish local Roman from "foreign" burials? Did they do isotope analysis? I sure hope so.

This reminds me of all those "GOT" fan youtube sites where the creators would weave all these elaborate theories of what happened, garnering hundreds of thousands of views in the process, while the reality was much more simple. :)
 
I wasn't aware we had ancient Ligurian samples. If we don't, how do we know they plot anywhere near modern Cypriots? Modern Ligurians certainly don't. Are you saying these imperial Roman samples were found in Liguria?

Well, if that's the case, that's easy. Genua was a Greek city and then a Roman city, and Luni was founded by Romans and was used by them to try to pacify the area.

I think it's likely the Italics were more "Northern Italian" like and had more "steppe" than the "Imperial Romans". More than modern Southern Italians, for example. That's not "Northern" by any means. Northern Italians don't plot anywhere near Germans, much less Scandinavians. I'm also not convinced that this more "northern" like ancestry only arrived in Central Italy with "Etruscans" and "Celts", the latter of whom only raided in these more southern areas by the way, not settled. I think it might be earlier.

Are people on other forums fixating on those four samples that drift toward the Cypriots? For goodness' sakes. Talk about focusing on the minority.

Also, Mycenaean people were pretty darn "Aegean" like, and I think people like that were feeding into Italy at least from the Helladic Era. The Greek sample found in North Eastern Iberia in the Imperial Era still plots near Mycenaeans, who plot near Ashkenazi Jews, btw.

I don't personally find any of this very controversial.

We also still don't know what Neolithic Southern Italians were like, so maybe some people might be getting a little ahead of themselves.

Are the usual posters foaming at the mouth again about a flood of "Levant" like people coming into southern Italy? Fine with me if true, but where is the evidence? Is there any contemporary evidence of large migrations in writings, inscriptions, etc.? Did they just materialize out of thin air? I mean, the Carthaginians were only in the northwest corner of Sicily. That's giving them a little too much credit, don't you think? Or, are the Jewish members of some forums or the ones who think they're secret Jews or something proposing that floods of Jews moved to Italy but converted eventually? How many specifically Jewish yDna clades are there in Southern Italy or among imperial Romans?

The Moots leaks, btw, said that there was a "tail" leading toward the Near East at a certain time in the Imperial Era. They also mentioned some "sporadic" "Levantine" samples. I assumed the latter caused the former. That "tail", according to the leaks, then disappeared. I think it disappeared because a lot of the Jews moved on into the Rhineland.

Were the authors of this paper careful to distinguish local Roman from "foreign" burials? Did they do isotope analysis? I sure hope so.

This reminds me of all those "GOT" fan youtube sites where the creators would weave all these elaborate theories of what happened, garnering hundreds of thousands of views in the process, while the reality was much more simple. :)

Sorry, I meant modern Italians from Liguria, who seem to be very close to those northern Etruscan samples.

I think the upcoming papers might not have any samples from the LBA/EIA, so that's a big blind spot. I tend to believe that the CHG that distinguishes present day southern Italians and those Romans derives from this period rather than from foreigners, but I may be completely off the mark.

I guess one problem will be that everyone was kind of mixed by the LBA/EIA. Y-DNA haplogroups might paint a clearer picture.
 
Sorry, I meant modern Italians from Liguria, who seem to be very close to those northern Etruscan samples.

I think the upcoming papers might not have any samples from the LBA/EIA, so that's a big blind spot. I tend to believe that the CHG that distinguishes present day southern Italians and those Romans derives from this period rather than from foreigners, but I may be completely off the mark.

I guess one problem will be that everyone was kind of mixed by the LBA/EIA. Y-DNA haplogroups might paint a clearer picture.

That's what I think too.

If some of the Etruscans are indeed like modern Ligurians that would tend to support what I'd been proposing as a possibility for a long time: that the Etruscans had ancient "Ligure" ancestry. That's why I was interested to find out if any linguists have looked for a substrate in the language of the ancient Ligures which might bare some similarity to something in Etruscan. Of course, we know so little about Etruscan. What we'd give for another Rosetta Stone type find.

There might be another clue in the fact that some of the Etruscans also seem to plot near Spaniards. The Ligures (before the Gallic invasions) spread all the way around the Med into Southern France and approaching Iberia, and I've seen speculation that they were related to the ancient Iberians.

If this information about the Etruscans turns out to be true, how things change, yes? I don't remember if you were here during that period, but I remember so well our then resident skadi types insisting all of Anatolia and the Levant had moved to Tuscany in the first millennium BC and the proof was all those really dark Etruscans on the wall paintings. :) I wonder if "he who must not be named" will acknowledge he was wrong. I suppose not; none of them ever do.
 
Sorry, I meant modern Italians from Liguria, who seem to be very close to those northern Etruscan samples.

I think the upcoming papers might not have any samples from the LBA/EIA, so that's a big blind spot. I tend to believe that the CHG that distinguishes present day southern Italians and those Romans derives from this period rather than from foreigners, but I may be completely off the mark.

I guess one problem will be that everyone was kind of mixed by the LBA/EIA. Y-DNA haplogroups might paint a clearer picture.
I agree, and I'm pretty sure there were migrations of people with lots of CHG into southern Italy and Greece during those periods as well, even before classic Greece. Just a guess, guys!
 
So it's exactly what one would expect considering the archaeological evidence. The position of the Romans relative to the Mycenaeans is interesting, as it indicates that the Proto-Italics either had higher Anatolian ancestry than the Proto-Greeks, or that they absorbed fewer natives than did the Greeks. I'm guessing it's #2.

Can you elaborate on that? As far as I can see in the PCA, unless I'm interpreting it incorrectly, the Mycenaeans plot closer to Anatolia_N than the Romans, who are mostly slightly to their north (some to the northeast toward modern Caucasians/Levantines), some to the northwest toward Central/Eastern Europeans). Why should Proto-Italics have higher Anatolian ancestry than the Proto-Greeks then?
 
If some of the Etruscans are indeed like modern Ligurians that would tend to support what I'd been proposing as a possibility for a long time: that the Etruscans had ancient "Ligure" ancestry. That's why I was interested to find out if any linguists have looked for a substrate in the language of the ancient Ligures which might bare some similarity to something in Etruscan. Of course, we know so little about Etruscan. What we'd give for another Rosetta Stone type find.

There might be another clue in the fact that some of the Etruscans also seem to plot near Spaniards. The Ligures (before the Gallic invasions) spread all the way around the Med into Southern France and approaching Iberia, and I've seen speculation that they were related to the ancient Iberians.

So that would mean that, as many of us speculated after the Iberia paper, there was lot of genetic and cultural mixing causing a high degree of inter-ethnic convergence, but some groups ultimately shifted their language and others did not? I mean, your hypothesis looks like Ligurians, Etruscans and Iberians would be genetically (and culturally too?) similar to each other, but speaking 3 completely different languages (IE Ligurian probably being the newcomer).
 
Sorry, I meant modern Italians from Liguria, who seem to be very close to those northern Etruscan samples.

The difference between Ligurians (green) and Tuscans (pinkish) is very small and the sample used in this PCA for Tuscans is TSI, and there are so many Tuscans who are further north genetically than TSI. Then there are even internal differences between Ligurians, both from an autosomal and uniparental markers point of view. Lunigiana is a world apart because of its long isolation, eastern Liguria is on pair with Western Emilia, Western Liguria has receveid strong recent influence from nearby Piedmont.

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That's what I think too.

If some of the Etruscans are indeed like modern Ligurians that would tend to support what I'd been proposing as a possibility for a long time: that the Etruscans had ancient "Ligure" ancestry. That's why I was interested to find out if any linguists have looked for a substrate in the language of the ancient Ligures which might bare some similarity to something in Etruscan. Of course, we know so little about Etruscan. What we'd give for another Rosetta Stone type find.

There might be another clue in the fact that some of the Etruscans also seem to plot near Spaniards. The Ligures (before the Gallic invasions) spread all the way around the Med into Southern France and approaching Iberia, and I've seen speculation that they were related to the ancient Iberians..


It is quite incredible that when it comes to the Etruscans we move from one exaggeration to another. :)

What we call ancient "Ligure" ancestry is nothing more than a western Neolithic plus Bell Beaker, both archeologically attested also in Tuscany. The only difference is that from the south and center of Tuscany there are contacts (from Rinaldone onwards) with central Italy (which in turn has contacts with southern Italy) that are missing in Liguria given the geographical location of Liguria.

Obviously the Etruscans were not Ligurians, modern Ligurians are just part of Italian cline, northwest of Tuscans and southeast of Iberians and other northwest Italians (Lombards and people from Piedmont). If we then add that the Ligurians on a theoretical level were also "Celtized" modern Ligurians were expected to plot even further north than where they actually plot. Etruscans seem to plot near Spaniards due likely to a larger Neolithic DNA and a Bell Beaker-like DNA. Which is quite normal for a population of 3000 years ago, even the Mycenaeans had much more Neolithic DNA than the Greeks and South Italians and plot west of them. Not to mention that Mycenaeans form a pretty large cluster in a PCA despite being only four.

What Etruscans and Ligurians have in common are pieces of Neolithic and the Bell Beaker and maybe even something related to proto-Villanovan. Nothing strange. Ancient ethnos (in the sense of self-awareness of belonging to an ethnos) are formed between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age. Not before, and are due to contacts first with the Mycenaeans and then with the Greeks, who in turn had learned in the east.

It is true that the Ligurians and the Etruscans had much more contacts than is usually thought (see for example the Etruscan remains found in the ancient port of Genoa) but they were clearly two distinct ethnos, and the Etruscans had the most fruitful relationships in north Italy with Golasecca, the Rhaetians and the Veneti. The Ligurians left no inscriptions and very few archaeological remains, a civilization that has not shone by the IA great developments, while the Etruscans on the contrary spread the euboic alphabet in northern Italy and became very rich and prosperous thanks to trade with populations further north, further west, further south and further east.

As today we know that the Etruscan language is related to another language spoken in Italy, the Rhaetian language spoken in the Alps. We now know enough about the Etruscan language to be able to exclude some of the most flimsy assumptions made in recent and less recent years. The problem of a substrate in the language of the ancient Ligures is the lack of inscriptions in ancient Ligurian but certainly before celtization the Ligurians spoke a pre-Indo-European language.

Just as it cannot be excluded the existence in Etruria itself of other languages, in particular of an IE language due to the influences arrived with the proto-Villanovan or maybe even earlier (Terramare, Bell Beaker...). The Etruscan language, which is a pre-Indo-European language, has two types of IE "strates". One very ancient, the other one more recent due to contacts with the Italic languages.




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If this information about the Etruscans turns out to be true, how things change, yes? I don't remember if you were here during that period, but I remember so well our then resident skadi types insisting all of Anatolia and the Levant had moved to Tuscany in the first millennium BC and the proof was all those really dark Etruscans on the wall paintings. :) I wonder if "he who must not be named" will acknowledge he was wrong. I suppose not; none of them ever do.


The issue was already solved many years ago by archaeologists, only that in the forums few have read the most important texts of etruscology. Not to mention the obvious manipulations.

Apart from the fact that most of those wall paintings come from northern Lazio (Tarquinia, Cerveteri), the wall paintings have clearly nothing to do with the origins of Etruscans and belong to the orientalizing period which was an artistic-cultural movement clearly of eastern mediterranean origin and which did not influence only the Etruscans, but first of all the Greeks, many Italic populations and even the Venetis. There were also movements of artists from the East, the orientalizing had indeed a huge impact on the Etruscans (who had become so rich that they could afford to exhibit these orientalized objects as a status symbol), but once again it reveals nothing significant about the origin of the Etruscans. The Etruscan civilization begins in fact around the tenth century BC with the Villanovan culture considered the most ancient phase of the Etruscan civilization. Once again nothing anomalous, because this is the period of formation of all the ethnos in pre-Roman Italy.
 
@Ygorcs: you wrote:
"If I had to guess, I'd put the ultimate origin of Italo-Celtic between France/Belgium and West Germany/Netherlands, and that of Italic somewhere in the vicinity of Northeastern Italy, in the vicinity of the Alps, maybe Austria, Slovenia or Hungary."

Hungary-Austria as Italics cradle was the bet of a lot of old scientists, if I don't mistake. And I think so. Veneti of Italy could have stay some time more northern -
Less prudently I could say one possible hypothesis for Etruscans would have been Hungary too; after all, their auDNA or at least their mtDNA has been found to be closer to 3000 BC pops of Central Europe than to specifically more recent Anatolian pops - The Rhaetia position is maybe not due to a South-North move and could be ancient. Maybe too Italics and Etruscans links could be ancient too. Intrications of languages in shared material cultures and religions could be commoner and older that I thought before, and linguistic homogeneization could have taken generations of bilinguism before a language took the strong side. Maybe the basque question is here too?
 
@Pax Augusta: good post.
I regreat I've not red your last post before to write my one to Ygorcs; I was not aware of this old IE substrata in Etruscan. (spite I'm surprised of so a precise statement for a supposed badly known language).
 
Some interesting food for thought here as I "refined" these models for the genetic ancestry of the Italians. I first used dozens of different steppe-related samples, which is a somewhat "dangerous" thing given that many of them are just so close to each other that unrealistic and misleading artifacts of the algorithms may happen. But I did that just to try and identify the closest steppe-related peoples involved in the peopling of Italy (apparently Catacomb/Western Yamnaya-like, BB and Western CWC), so later I used fewer samples, and these are quite intriguing (but in my opinion not implausible) results:

https://imgur.com/vhkNoIZ

How do I personally interpret the data above? In my opinion, some conclusions and important questions that it inspires are these:

1) Sardinia is known to have spoken a non-IE language (according to some linguists, possibly distantly related to Etruscan, but it's just little more than a tentative conjecture) as late as after the Roman conquest in the 3rd century B.C. These samples (probably from the Barbagia?) clearly lack non-negligible steppe ancestry and are by far the most EEF-related among all the Italian populations. It seems to me then that EEF can be safely concluded as the "default" non-IE language family/families of ancient Italians, so Indo-European could only have been brought by the other elements that are present in all the regions of Italy: Steppe-related (CWC, BB, Catacomb) or CA/BA Transcaucasus-related (Armenia_Chl, Kura Araxes). For many reasons I don't think the latter makes much sense.

2) CWC_Germany seems to be correlated, in other aDNA and modern DNA samples I have analyzed, with Germanic populations, but also perhaps with some neighboring Celtic (or Italo-Celtic) populations in North-Central Europe (it's also present when I model BA Britain samples). CWC_Germany is curiously present in very similar frequencies in North Italy (Bergamo) and in South Italy, Sicily and Eastern-Central Italy (Abruzzo - wasn't it where the Duchy of Spoleto was located? Do you know how large was the Lombard migration to it?). But Tuscany and Sardinia lack it. Could it be the signal of the Migration Period Germanic tribes, or maybe earlier IE peoples that spread from the Adriatic coast southward to South Italy and then Sicily were also reasonably close to the Western CWC (CWC_Germany)? Who could they be? I think it's unlikely the Italic languages were spread by such a people. I wish the North Picene language had already been fully deciphered and classified. People even still discuss over whether it was just a highly divergent IE language with a strong non-IE substrate, or a non-IE language.

3) Catacomb-like ancestry only appear in South Italy, Sicily and Abruzzo (did it have Greek or more broadly BA/IA Balkanic settlement?), but not in North Italy (Bergamo), Tuscany and Sardinia. In all the models I have done, at least a very small proportion of Mycenaean DNA comes off as Catacomb-like, and the proportion increases if I don't use any BB and Yamnaya samples, too. Could Catacomb or Catacomb-like be the "Proto-Greek signal" correlating with the parts of Italy where Greek settlement had a large genetic impact? (perhaps Late Western Yamnaya? In other models the best proxies for the steppe ancestry in Mycenaeans is a mix of Yamnaya_Bulgaria + Yamnaya_Ukraine)

4) North Italy and Tuscany clearly have a very significant Bell Beaker, mainly a mix of France+Netherlands+North Italy (circum-Alpine?) BB ancestry, and Tuscany lacks CWC or Catacomb ancestry. North Italy also stands out from South Italy/Sicily and even from Tuscany in having much less CA/BA West Asian ancestry. Could it be that Etruscans/Rhaetians (Tyrsenians) and Italic peoples were initially very similar, and it just happened that some tribes shifted to the incoming BB language while others instead retained their traditional (North?) Italian language? Might BB France+Netherlands+Germany be related to the later Italic arrivals in the LBA/EIA (IIRC Proto-Italic split is estimated to have happened pretty late, ~1200 B.C., like that of Proto-Celtic), whereas the BB North Italy is more connected to the "ancient IE strata" that Pax Augusta mentioned in his last past?

5) Levant_N ancestry is found in all of Italy but Sardinia (it has a small North African ancestry though) and North Italy, and it's found in reasonably high proportions in South Italy (the highest proportion, so I don't think this Levant_N signal has much to do with "recent" events like the Muslim/Arab conquests), Abruzzo and Sicily. What could explain that?
 

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