Yes, exactly Populonia was the most important port in northern Etruria and was one of the most important metallurgical centers, obviously frequented by many foreigners, which then underwent a process of decadence, until it was completely destroyed during the rule of the Longobards. There the modern population is not in continuity with the ancient one, the area became uninhabited for centuries. If I remember well Y-DNA's POP001 could be indicative of local origin (he is downstream to R1b-U152). Who knows, maybe an Etruscan with some non-etruscan ancestors. Based on his position in the PCA, hard to figure out who these non-Etruscan ancestors were. Because two-way models are too simplistic.
It's super complicated to answer here. I will do in the next few days.
Totally agreed.
It could be. I put the directions in the PCA for you but I did it by eye, just take it as a guideline. VEN014 and TAQ007 go in the direction of North Africans (which were probably Punic in the Iron Age). If you look at the position of R475 you realize for yourself that what is stated in the Antonio 2019 study is not correct, where it is assumed to be 53% African using a Late Neolithic Moroccan sample which however was a sample that certainly does not look like Iron Age North Africans and was partly descended from Neolithic Iberia. Certainly some of these samples are of North African descent, but the fact that many Punic were mixed with Sardinian Nuragic and Iberian (if you model them using the G25 some even have Steppe) makes it very complicated to understand all the ancestry of some samples, especially those that could be mixed with parents of several different ethnic groups. The mediators between the Etruscan world and the Punic/Phoenician world were the Sardinian Nuragics. as well as in their turn the Etruscans acted as mediators between the classical world and central Europe.
