Although there is no direct historical or genetic information about the origins of Rome, archaeological evidence suggests that in the early Iron Age, it was a small city-state, among many culturally and politically similar Etruscan and Latin neighbors (24–26). Their contact with Greek and Phoenician-Punic colonies is evident in the incorporation of materials not available locally, such as ivory, amber, and ostrich eggshell, and design motifs such as lions, sphinxes, and palmettes, into Etruscan art and culture (3, 6).
The Iron Age individuals exhibit highly variable ancestries, hinting at multiple sources of migration into the region during this period (Figs. 2A and 3B). Although we were able to model eight of the 11 individuals as two-way mixtures of Copper Age central Italians and a Steppe-related population (~24 to 38%) using qpAdm, this model was rejected for the other three individuals (p < 0.001; table S16). Instead, two individuals from Latin sites (R437 and R850) can be modeled as a mixture between local people and an ancient Near Eastern population (best approximated by Bronze Age Armenian or Iron Age Anatolian; tables S17 and S18). An Etruscan individual (R475) carries significant African ancestry identified by f-statistics (|Z-score|>3; fig. S23) and can be modeled with ~53% ancestry from Late Neolithic Moroccan (table S19). Together these results suggest substantial genetic heterogeneity within the Etruscan (n = 3 individuals) and Latin (n = 6) groups. However, using f-statistics, we did not find significant genetic differentiation between the Etruscans and Latins in allele sharing with any preceding or contemporaneous population (|Z-score|<2), although the power to detect subtle genetic differentiation is limited by the small sample size.
