Genetic study Population changes in northern Italy from the Iron Age to Modern Times

[Vallicanus]

Those commentators who postulate up to 20pc Longobard admixture in early medieval Northern or Central Italy have never explained how this is possible when WHG is relatively low south of the Alps.

 

[MOESAN]

So your big distinctive trait would be heavier EEF (parallelic to lighter WHG)?
It's true that La Tène of Champagne (400/300 BC) were around 42 % 'steppe' for 44,5% EEF....
Now, on another side the IA tumuli of Slovenia Dolge Nijve (700/650BC?) had around 32% 'steppe' and 58% EEF (poor for WHG: 10%) and at BA (1900/1600 BC) some of Cetina Dalmatia showed 33% 'steppe'' for 55/60% EEF), kind of cline between Celts and Balkans not only for 'steppe' but also for WHG.
And it seems to me that ancient Italy (more the North) showed more than an autosomal tie with western Balkans (Chalco and then BA and IA): pan-Italics and pan-Illyrians??? Of course this big scheme hides numerous local differences. Could also some proto-Etruscan pop have been the partly unifying basis of the diverse crossings, the most of them loosing their language for an IE one, except some clans?

 

[Vitruvius]

So your big distinctive trait would be heavier EEF (parallelic to lighter WHG)?
It's true that La Tène of Champagne (400/300 BC) were around 42 % 'steppe' for 44,5% EEF....
Now, on another side the IA tumuli of Slovenia Dolge Nijve (700/650BC?) had around 32% 'steppe' and 58% EEF (poor for WHG: 10%) and at BA (1900/1600 BC) some of Cetina Dalmatia showed 33% 'steppe'' for 55/60% EEF), kind of cline between Celts and Balkans not only for 'steppe' but also for WHG.
And it seems to me that ancient Italy (more the North) showed more than an autosomal tie with western Balkans (Chalco and then BA and IA): pan-Italics and pan-Illyrians??? Of course this big scheme hides numerous local differences. Could also some proto-Etruscan pop have been the partly unifying basis of the diverse crossings, the most of them loosing their language for an IE one, except some clans?

Which is again evidencing the idea that the original Proto-italics migrated not directly south from places like France, Austria or Southern Germany, but instead west, settling and moving through the Julian March from the direction of the Carpathian Basin before heavily diluting or displacing possible prior northerly genetic elements and cultural influences that may or may not have prexisted in the EBA Italian Alps from areas of Polada occupation. The Illyrians show a link to the Venetics in the historic era through the Histri of which also shared the bronze age Castellieri culture with the Veneti in the territory of Friuli as well. I've already expanded upon the numerous Terramare cultural links to the Vatya culture in several other threads so I won't dive too deep into that.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Those commentators who postulate up to 20pc Longobard admixture in early medieval Northern or Central Italy have never explained how this is possible when WHG is relatively low south of the Alps.

The 20% Longobard DNA is based on Posth's 2021 estimates of medieval samples of Tuscans who actually plotted more with Marche, so many modern Tuscans would need a higher percentage than 20% Longobard DNA to fit in his model, making his estimates even less credible. Posth himself also used TSI, but Posth's estimates are surely wrong here as well, so that by his miscalculations TSI has almost 10% WHG, ending up inflating Iran_N, which becomes higher than in all earlier-period samples and this is simply not possible. Then the 20% was also taken up for northern Italy in a later study that has not yet been published. The raw data of a sample analysis has its own objectivity, while the narratives and conclusions of geneticists should always be taken with caution, because they often push their own data to try to make a point. it is undeniable that a Longobard genetic contribution may still exist in some areas of northern and central Italy today, but there is no definitive proof that it can reach 20% of the genome.

 

[Pax Augusta]

The question is the First Celts were (I think) more 'northern' than theLaTène ones! More on the Germany BB means of auDNA. But even the IA Celts of the Marsilia region were 'northern' and 'steppe' enough (7: Steppic: 37% - WHG: 13% - EEF: 50%)

I confirm what Vallicanus said, in amateur calculators 37% Steppe is a value that can be reached by some modern Italians from Tuscany upwards. The difference is precisely WHG which does not reach 10% even in Italian alpine areas, much less south of the Alps in Italy. Clearly WHG contributes to moving a sample to the northwest in a PCA. And 37% of Steppe is a value reached by, for example, R1 (the protovillanovan sample from Abruzzo) but not having WHG remains in the southern European cluster. Typically modern Central Europeans exceed 40% Steppe with still significant percentages of WHG. Of course, all these calculations should be taken with a grain of salt because percentages of ancestral components are always estimates, never 100% accurate.

 

[MOESAN]

What is the posited %'s of steppe, WHG and EEF among first Longobards?

Which is again evidencing the idea that the original Proto-italics migrated not directly south from places like France, Austria or Southern Germany, but instead west, settling and moving through the Julian March from the direction of the Carpathian Basin before heavily diluting or displacing possible prior northerly genetic elements and cultural influences that may or may not have prexisted in the EBA Italian Alps from areas of Polada occupation. The Illyrians show a link to the Venetics in the historic era through the Histri of which also shared the bronze age Castellieri culture with the Veneti in the territory of Friuli as well. I've already expanded upon the numerous Terramare cultural links to the Vatya culture in several other threads so I won't dive too deep into that.

I confirm what Vallicanus said, in amateur calculators 37% Steppe is a value that can be reached by some modern Italians from Tuscany upwards. The difference is precisely WHG which does not reach 10% even in Italian alpine areas, much less south of the Alps in Italy. Clearly WHG contributes to moving a sample to the northwest in a PCA. And 37% of Steppe is a value reached by, for example, R1 (the protovillanovan sample from Abruzzo) but not having WHG remains in the southern European cluster. Typically modern Central Europeans exceed 40% Steppe with still significant percentages of WHG. Of course, all these calculations should be taken with a grain of salt because percentages of ancestral components are always estimates, never 100% accurate.

- My %'s are from scientists works, not from amateurish calculations.
- I don't know the exact %'s of this kind of admixture in pre-Italic Toscana. The numbers given for IA Italics and Etruscans vary between say 37%-24% (mean proxi: 30%) steppic, are they representative of the common pop of these times, I'm not sure? So if modern Toscans show todate this 37% of steppic, I wonder if it does'nt represent post Empire introgressions from more northern pops? I'll answer later concerning the WHG question, very interesting.

 

[Pax Augusta]

And it seems to me that ancient Italy (more the North) showed more than an autosomal tie with western Balkans (Chalco and then BA and IA): pan-Italics and pan-Illyrians??? Of course this big scheme hides numerous local differences. Could also some proto-Etruscan pop have been the partly unifying basis of the diverse crossings, the most of them loosing their language for an IE one, except some clans?

Western Balkans BA and IA seem more like modern northern Italians. We do not yet have sufficient data from northern Italian BA and IA to support a similarity with Western Balkans BA and IA. Although it is undeniable that there were migrations from the Balkans, there is the huge problem that the Latins are similar to the Etruscans, and not to the Western Balkans BA and IA. If the Italics came from the Balkans, it means that there is no language macrofamily that includes both Latin-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages, as supported by some linguists.

If I go to an archaeologist and tell him that Italics are of Illyrian origin, he will slap me in the face. Even the relationships between the Veneti and Illyrians are considered the subject of pseudoarchaeology; the consensus among linguists is that the Venetic language has remote relationships more with Latin more than with the Osco-Umbrian languages.

Unfortunately, it is all much more complicated, and it may very well be that there were multiple different layers of Indo-European language migrations, with only one IE language per group eventually becoming established in the Iron Age. A few weeks ago a study was presented that statea in the abstract that Oenotrians and Lucanians from southern Italy turn out to be genetically similar to people from Lazio and Etruria (Latins and Etruscans, I guess). Inscriptions found in Tortora and attributed to the Oenotrians are considered Paleo-Italic, those from Lucania are classified as Osco-Umbrian (of the Oscan type). Of course, as we have seen repeatedly, abstracts can change. But there is no doubt that we need many studies from all over Italy before drawing conclusions.

ARCHAEOGENETIC INSIGHTS INTO THE ANCIENT CITY OF BLANDA: A MILLENNIA-LONG PERSPECTIVE FROM THE NECROPOLIS OF TORTORA (CS, CALABRIA, ITALY)

Fabrizio Mollo1, Mariangela Barbato2, Afredo Coppa3,4,5, Francesco La Pastina3, Michaela Lucci3, Swapan Mallick5,6, Alessandra Sperduti7,8, Ron Pinhasi4, David Reich5,6, Alissa Mittnik9,5,6

1 University of Messina
2 Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the province of Cosenza, Italy
3 Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
4 Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria
5 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston (MA), USA
6 Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA), USA
7 Servizio di Bioarcheologia, Museo delle Civiltà, Italian Ministry of Culture, Rome, Italy
8 Università degli Studi “L’Orientale” di Napoli, Naples, Italy
9 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

The necropolis of Tortora comprises two main burial nuclei: the first dating to the Archaic and Pre-Roman period, features two culturally distinct chronological periods, the older Oenotrian (6th and 5th century BCE) and later Lucanian phase (4th century BCE). The second pertains to the Early Medieval period (7th to 9th century CE). In our ongoing archaeogenetic study, genome-wide data from 44 individuals across all phases, reveal five pedigrees, two from the Oenotrian, two from the Lucanian, and one from the Early Medieval phase. Population genetic analyses delineate two main genetic clusters aligning with the cultural and chronological groups. Most individuals from the 6th to 4th century BCE genetically resemble contemporaneous populations from Lazio and Etruria, while the Early Medieval individuals are shifted more toward Aegean and Near Eastern populations. Notable, genetic outliers from the first period suggest potential Greek gene flow or incorporation of Greeks into the local Oenotrian population. A series of absolute dates largely confirms the archaeological chronology, albeit with low resolution for the earlier phases due to the Hallstatt Plateau. Unexpectedly, two individuals from Tomb 61 were dated to the Roman Imperial period, a phase during which there is no archaeological documentation of the use of the necropolis. This Lucanian tomb had been violated in ancient times; it was devoid of grave goods, but the structure (chamber tomb of large blocks of limestone with red-coloured walls) signifies very high rank. These individuals are also outliers in terms of their genetics: the adult male (2nd-4th century CE) shares genetic affinity with ancient Eastern Baltic populations, while the adult female (1st century BCE-2nd century CE), clusters with contemporaneous population of Rome. This research illuminates the population and social dynamics of the city of Blanda, spanning over a millennium and offering nuanced insights into the use of its necropolis.

 

[HereToLearn]

I confirm what Vallicanus said, in amateur calculators 37% Steppe is a value that can be reached by some modern Italians from Tuscany upwards. The difference is precisely WHG which does not reach 10% even in Italian alpine areas, much less south of the Alps in Italy. Clearly WHG contributes to moving a sample to the northwest in a PCA. And 37% of Steppe is a value reached by, for example, R1 (the protovillanovan sample from Abruzzo) but not having WHG remains in the southern European cluster. Typically modern Central Europeans exceed 40% Steppe with still significant percentages of WHG. Of course, all these calculations should be taken with a grain of salt because percentages of ancestral components are always estimates, never 100% accurate.

Pax Augusta, please help me understand. WHG was the main ancestral component of most of Europe from Scandinavia to southern Iberia at some point so there's nothing inherently "northern" in that (surely not phenotypically, going by the facial reconstruction of WHG). It just happens that modern northern, western and south-western pops have retained more of that compared to modern pops living at comparable latitudes but more to the east. Is that correct? In that case why does WHG pull northwards in PCA's shouldn't its pull be westward?

 

[Pax Augusta]

What is the posited %'s of steppe, WHG and EEF among first Longobards?



- My %'s are from scientists works, not from amateurish calculations.
- I don't know the exact %'s of this kind of admixture in pre-Italic Toscana. The numbers given for IA Italics and Etruscans vary between say 37%-24% (mean proxi: 30%) steppic, are they representative of the common pop of these times, I'm not sure? So if modern Toscans show todate this 37% of steppic, I wonder if it does'nt represent post Empire introgressions from more northern pops? I'll answer later concerning the WHG question, very interesting.

To be precise, 37 percent is not an average value, but a result that can be reached by some in amateur calcolators. Of course in modern Tuscans there is some gene flow from non-Etruscan people that may have increased Steppe. As we have seen there are also Celts among the Etruscans, who have higher percentages of Steppe, and we know archaeologically that Etruscans assimilated individuals from neighboring peoples (Ligurians, Umbrians, Faliscans, Latins...), plus a post-Roman Empire gene flow. Leaving aside the discussion on migrants from the eastern Mediterranean of imperial Rome, Romanization was characterized by internal movements within the local population as well.

If you take a map of ancient Etruria and compare it to the demographics of Tuscany, you see that 2/3 of modern Tuscans live north of the Arno River, while the Etruscans were more concentrated in the southern areas of the region. it is obvious that an absolute equation cannot be made between the Iron Age and modern population, but this also applies to other areas of Italy (and other countries, of course).

The problem is not whether there was a genetic flow that increased Steppe, the problem is that the model proposed by geneticists (20% Longobard DNA) does not work.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Pax Augusta, please help me understand. WHG was the main ancestral component of most of Europe from Scandinavia to southern Iberia at some point so there's nothing inherently "northern" in that (surely not phenotypically, going by the facial reconstruction of WHG). It just happens that modern northern, western and south-western pops have retained more of that compared to modern pops living at comparable latitudes but more to the east. Is that correct? In that case why does WHG pull northwards in PCA's shouldn't its pull be westward?

In Scandinavia there is SHG (Scandinavian Hunter Gatherer), instead of WHG, and in northeastern Europe there is EHG. Then a few years ago the Baltic Hunter Gatherer was introduced. There are differences between them. Don't confuse pigmentation with facial features, and even the academic reconstructions are still too subjective and not very credible. Although they have darker pigmentation, WHGs and SHGs may have had a ruggedness in facial features that is even more characteristic of northern European populations today. WHG disappears as one approaches south-eastern Europe, until it is replaced by CHG/Iran_N in the Minoans.

PCAs do not follow geographic compass points, typically ancestral components shift a sample toward the population where the ancestral component peaks. In the case of WHG (and here the problem is whether to include SHG, and all the others), the peak is not so much to the west (it is more EEF which generally has its peak further west, where the Sardinians are) but more in a northern direction. So much so that the Basques, who have much more WHG than the other Spaniards, often end up close to the British populations in the PCAs, even though the Steppe values of the Basques are not higher than those of the other southern European populations.

All this should be taken as indications, not absolute truths. The first to produce studies that contradict each other are geneticists.

The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians - Nature

Analyses of imputed ancient genomes and of samples from the UK Biobank indicate that ancient selection and migration were large contributors to the distribution of phenotypic diversity in present-day Europeans.

www.nature.com

 

[HereToLearn]

So much so that the Basques, who have much more WHG than the other Spaniards, often end up close to the British populations in the PCAs, even though the Steppe values of the Basques are not higher than those of the other southern European populations.

The Basques were one of the examples I had in mind exactly, as they have such high level of WHG although they aren't a northen population though very much western. If I had to give labels (shaky as they are) I'd assume the "northern" label goes to the Steppe component if anything.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Pax Augusta]

The Basques were one of the examples I had in mind exactly, as they have such high level of WHG although they aren't a northen population though very much western. If I had to give labels (shaky as they are) I'd assume the "northern" label goes to the Steppe component if anything.

Thanks for the explanation.

If you see, according to this 2024 studio, WHG peaks in the Baltic countries.

 

[MOESAN]

Western Balkans BA and IA seem more like modern northern Italians. We do not yet have sufficient data from northern Italian BA and IA to support a similarity with Western Balkans BA and IA. Although it is undeniable that there were migrations from the Balkans, there is the huge problem that the Latins are similar to the Etruscans, and not to the Western Balkans BA and IA. If the Italics came from the Balkans, it means that there is no language macrofamily that includes both Latin-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages, as supported by some linguists.

If I go to an archaeologist and tell him that Italics are of Illyrian origin, he will slap me in the face. Even the relationships between the Veneti and Illyrians are considered the subject of pseudoarchaeology; the consensus among linguists is that the Venetic language has remote relationships more with Latin more than with the Osco-Umbrian languages.

Unfortunately, it is all much more complicated, and it may very well be that there were multiple different layers of Indo-European language migrations, with only one IE language per group eventually becoming established in the Iron Age. A few weeks ago a study was presented that statea in the abstract that Oenotrians and Lucanians from southern Italy turn out to be genetically similar to people from Lazio and Etruria (Latins and Etruscans, I guess). Inscriptions found in Tortora and attributed to the Oenotrians are considered Paleo-Italic, those from Lucania are classified as Osco-Umbrian (of the Oscan type). Of course, as we have seen repeatedly, abstracts can change. But there is no doubt that we need many studies from all over Italy before drawing conclusions.

ARCHAEOGENETIC INSIGHTS INTO THE ANCIENT CITY OF BLANDA: A MILLENNIA-LONG PERSPECTIVE FROM THE NECROPOLIS OF TORTORA (CS, CALABRIA, ITALY)

Fabrizio Mollo1, Mariangela Barbato2, Afredo Coppa3,4,5, Francesco La Pastina3, Michaela Lucci3, Swapan Mallick5,6, Alessandra Sperduti7,8, Ron Pinhasi4, David Reich5,6, Alissa Mittnik9,5,6

1 University of Messina
2 Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the province of Cosenza, Italy
3 Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
4 Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria
5 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston (MA), USA
6 Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA), USA
7 Servizio di Bioarcheologia, Museo delle Civiltà, Italian Ministry of Culture, Rome, Italy
8 Università degli Studi “L’Orientale” di Napoli, Naples, Italy
9 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

The necropolis of Tortora comprises two main burial nuclei: the first dating to the Archaic and Pre-Roman period, features two culturally distinct chronological periods, the older Oenotrian (6th and 5th century BCE) and later Lucanian phase (4th century BCE). The second pertains to the Early Medieval period (7th to 9th century CE). In our ongoing archaeogenetic study, genome-wide data from 44 individuals across all phases, reveal five pedigrees, two from the Oenotrian, two from the Lucanian, and one from the Early Medieval phase. Population genetic analyses delineate two main genetic clusters aligning with the cultural and chronological groups. Most individuals from the 6th to 4th century BCE genetically resemble contemporaneous populations from Lazio and Etruria, while the Early Medieval individuals are shifted more toward Aegean and Near Eastern populations. Notable, genetic outliers from the first period suggest potential Greek gene flow or incorporation of Greeks into the local Oenotrian population. A series of absolute dates largely confirms the archaeological chronology, albeit with low resolution for the earlier phases due to the Hallstatt Plateau. Unexpectedly, two individuals from Tomb 61 were dated to the Roman Imperial period, a phase during which there is no archaeological documentation of the use of the necropolis. This Lucanian tomb had been violated in ancient times; it was devoid of grave goods, but the structure (chamber tomb of large blocks of limestone with red-coloured walls) signifies very high rank. These individuals are also outliers in terms of their genetics: the adult male (2nd-4th century CE) shares genetic affinity with ancient Eastern Baltic populations, while the adult female (1st century BCE-2nd century CE), clusters with contemporaneous population of Rome. This research illuminates the population and social dynamics of the city of Blanda, spanning over a millennium and offering nuanced insights into the use of its necropolis.

Completely agree with your observations about Venetic and Illyrian, I said that myself. It's true that a confusion had arose about the value of the Roman labelling of "Illyrian".
I never said there was a direct lnguistic and final ethnic link between Italics and Illyrians. I suggered these peoples could have had serious contacts with common demic substrata at diverse times rather ancient (more BA/urnfields times?).
1- from people from N-Balkans passed to Italy at Chalco (the terminal ones in Italy only for Italics)
2- from later people of around Pannonia (themselves not without heritage from the 1- substratum) as well for formed Italics than for Illyrians, but these partial similarities of contacts with similar background were broken later.
I think one of the principal causes of the proto-Celtic-proto-Italic break away is linked to a long enough stage of southeastern Tumuli people in Pannonia. For Illyrians I suppose the have never been linguistically so close to the ancient Celtic-Italic group and they have been submitted later to vaguely satemized people of Central and South-Central Balkans. I try only here to find the partly similar auDNA making of these peoples before they diverged completely.
Thanks for the info concerning Lycanians and Oenotrians

 

[MOESAN]

If the Italics came from the Balkans, it means that there is no language macrofamily that includes both Latin-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages, as supported by some linguists.

What is your reasoning here?
I dont say Italics came from Balkans but they stayed long enough time around parts of Pannonia and today Croatia.
ATW it's complicated and some scholars think Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscan tribes were separated at some stage of their maturation by Venetics (mabe come from farther North?)

 

[Vallicanus]

What is your reasoning here?
I dont say Italics came from Balkans but they stayed long enough time around parts of Pannonia and today Croatia.
ATW it's complicated and some scholars think Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscan tribes were separated at some stage of their maturation by Venetics (mabe come from farther North?)

Giacomo Devoto in his book "Gli Antichi Italici" considered the Osco-Umbrian and Latin-Faliscan linguistic groups to be originally distinct and separate branches of IE which converged to a certain, somewhat minor, degree within Italy itself.

Devoto confined the term "Italic" to the Osco-Umbrian language branch only.

 

[Vitruvius]

What is the posited %'s of steppe, WHG and EEF among first Longobards?



- My %'s are from scientists works, not from amateurish calculations.
- I don't know the exact %'s of this kind of admixture in pre-Italic Toscana. The numbers given for IA Italics and Etruscans vary between say 37%-24% (mean proxi: 30%) steppic, are they representative of the common pop of these times, I'm not sure? So if modern Toscans show todate this 37% of steppic, I wonder if it does'nt represent post Empire introgressions from more northern pops? I'll answer later concerning the WHG question, very interesting.

It will always depend on what sources and calculator you use so it's all relative. That's the hard part with these discussions. Every single topic discussed either in good faith or bad hinges around the idea that participants are using the exact same limited source populations with the same calculators. If you start adding in the significant amount of non steppe caucasian ancestry which arrived to Italy from the Aegean, then the calculations change drastically. Additionally areas in central and northern Europe appear not affected at all by this Aegean type of influx so their calculations aren't necessarily comparable to the exact same source populations of Italians or Greeks. If you're looking for what Langobards looked like prior to entering Italy, I would assume the Icelandic/N. Euro like cluster from Collegno is your best bet as a proxy. The rest are likely native Italic or perhaps mixes of Italic/Germanic.

As far as prior Northern introgressions the definite pattern I see is that Italy's broad ancestry shifts south not north by the early empire and this quantitatively seems more impactful in central and probably also southern Italy more than the north based off this thread abstract. It appears that the spread of Roman civilization simultaneously coincided with the spread of aegean related ancestry at a bare minimum. This ancestry from what we know right now reaches Felsina and Torino but does it reach Milan in any significant quantity? What of Verona, Bergamo, or Padua and yet also deeper into the prealps and alps such as Ticino? Torino EMA is particularly interesting specifically because if we assume that S. Italian like ancestry found in the EMA arrived by at least early imperal era like in all other zones of Italy then it implies that either the city retained a broad spectrum of N., C., and S. Italian elements for ~500+ years or that northern Italian elements came from migratory populations outside of Torino from more rural places like Bardonecchia which appear unaffected by any aegean shift.

 

[Vitruvius]

Western Balkans BA and IA seem more like modern northern Italians. We do not yet have sufficient data from northern Italian BA and IA to support a similarity with Western Balkans BA and IA. Although it is undeniable that there were migrations from the Balkans, there is the huge problem that the Latins are similar to the Etruscans, and not to the Western Balkans BA and IA. If the Italics came from the Balkans, it means that there is no language macrofamily that includes both Latin-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages, as supported by some linguists.

The problem with this type of thinking from linguists is that they assume languages are a perfect/near perfect proxy for autosomal genetic structure when it is not and has never been. The differences between the Modern N. Italians/IA Picene/Illyrian group vs the Latin/Tarquina Etruscan group is simply an increasing cline of neolithic Italic ancestry as we move southward and I think there are many who have still failed to make this connection. Languages in this sense were clearly formed based off political and cultural alignment rather than the mostly invisible distinction of quantity of prior indigenous neolithic ancestry. Steppe influence in the north almost certainly was stronger than in the Appenines, where we have a clear example of ~ 2000 years of continuity from EBA Pian Sultano to the Etruscans of Southern Tuscany. So a bit more simplistically to me it appears the genes in this case remained regardless as to how linguistic and political affiliations shifted over time, which is probably instead a much more complex tale surrounding prehistoric events. Much of this probably explains the rather interesting competing dynamic between Etruscan related tongues and those of IE Italic branches across genetically identical populations as the protohistoric era emerges. I would be surprised if we don't see the same phenomenon between Raetics and Veneti as well.

If I go to an archaeologist and tell him that Italics are of Illyrian origin, he will slap me in the face. Even the relationships between the Veneti and Illyrians are considered the subject of pseudoarchaeology; the consensus among linguists is that the Venetic language has remote relationships more with Latin more than with the Osco-Umbrian languages.

Illyrian is hardly attested to and not well understood to my knowledge. The same is true of Northern Italic languages like Venetic, although we probably have a little bit of a better handle on Venetic, comparatively. Rather than viewing it as Italics directly from Illyrians it's more useful for me to consider the possibility of a parent population diverging into Illyric and Italic, similar to what occurred after the protovillanovan phenomenon fragmented. Just look at how drastically Etruscan and Latin languages were differentiated despite the two regions sharing the same material culture and geography in the final bronze age. These two places also have identical autosomal patterns, just like Northern Italians and Illyrians. Languages can be learned in less than a generation and history has shown phenomenal overturns in ancestral tongues. I see no reason to assume prehistory was any different. Genetic overturn is much more difficult to achieve by comparison.

Unfortunately, it is all much more complicated, and it may very well be that there were multiple different layers of Indo-European language migrations, with only one IE language per group eventually becoming established in the Iron Age. A few weeks ago a study was presented that statea in the abstract that Oenotrians and Lucanians from southern Italy turn out to be genetically similar to people from Lazio and Etruria (Latins and Etruscans, I guess). Inscriptions found in Tortora and attributed to the Oenotrians are considered Paleo-Italic, those from Lucania are classified as Osco-Umbrian (of the Oscan type). Of course, as we have seen repeatedly, abstracts can change. But there is no doubt that we need many studies from all over Italy before drawing conclusions.

This remains surprising to me but it points to the idea that perhaps the Appenine culture was rather genetically homogenous between north and south, which proved to have rather strong continuity into the iron age. We'd probably need more bronze age samples from southern Italy to confirm this idea.

 

[Vitruvius]

Pax Augusta, please help me understand. WHG was the main ancestral component of most of Europe from Scandinavia to southern Iberia at some point so there's nothing inherently "northern" in that (surely not phenotypically, going by the facial reconstruction of WHG). It just happens that modern northern, western and south-western pops have retained more of that compared to modern pops living at comparable latitudes but more to the east. Is that correct? In that case why does WHG pull northwards in PCA's shouldn't its pull be westward?

People associate WHG ancesty with geographical northerness due to the fact that in modern populations, southern europeans have near 0% of it outside of Iberia, but it is retained more significantly in central europe and scandanavia in broad measure. It just so happens that WHG ancestry saw more robust survival (either due to fertility or higher total numbers) in northern europe than southern europe as a general statement.

We have the same issue today with people who associate anatolian and caucasian ancestry with "middle eastern" heritage. The truth of the matter is that the caucasus is not geographically middle eastern at all and anatolia was effectively a border region between continents that colonized both europe and middle east largely at the expense and displacement their prexisting HG population genetics. These simplistic categorizations just do not do the whole story justice.

In my opinion it makes more sense to associate regions with their unique ancestry ratios and existing cultural histories rather than one ancestral source. More specificity demands a better understanding and respect of the rather complex events that created these nations to begin with.

The Basques were one of the examples I had in mind exactly, as they have such high level of WHG although they aren't a northen population though very much western. If I had to give labels (shaky as they are) I'd assume the "northern" label goes to the Steppe component if anything.

Thanks for the explanation.

As a generality I typically assume higher WHG+EHG confers a more northerly-like european base. When these levels reach a slight majority of ancestry you are typically always dealing with someone with non southern european ancestry. It's effectively impossible to distinguish specifically WHG and EHG combos from SHG heritage on a PCA as Pax brought up. In the mesolithic this was yet again another type of cline defined by increasing west to east ANE elements coupled with cases of isolation and localized environmental bottlenecks selecting for light hair/skin/eyes at the more northerly latitudes.

 

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Spina was the only etruscan port in the Adriatic that I can recall.

Spina - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

They tried to trade with the Greeks who entered the Adriatic circa 730BC

The Liburnians where already trading with Greeks in Issa ( Vis ) and Phasos before the etruscan set up Spina.

Liburnians where trading Baltic amber with the Egyptians from 1700BC, trading with the Veneti from 1000BC ( Veneti grain and glass beads for Liburnians Wine and Amber ) ...................this is all known

I agree with the Acheologistss findings from 2020 that Liburnians spoke a mix Old-italic language and central European language and used it to trade with the Veneti and the North-picenes

 

[torzio]

Adria is the other etruscan town