This list of ancient peoples living inItaly summarises the many different Italian populations that existed in antiquity. Among them, theRomans succeeded inRomanizing the entire Italian peninsula following theRoman expansion in Italy, which provides the time-window in which most of the names of the remaining ancient Italian peoples first appear in existing written documentation. Many names areexonyms assigned by the ancient writers of works inancient Greek andLatin, while others are scholarly inventions.
Scholars believe - though sometimes on the basis of scanty evidence - that the following peoples spoke non-Indo-European languages. Some of them werePre-Indo-Europeans orPaleo-Europeans while, with regard to some others, Giacomo Devoto proposed the definition ofPeri-Indo-European (i.e. everything that has hybrid characters between Indo-European and non-Indo-European).[2]
Italic andCeltic languages are commonly grouped together on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. This could imply that they are descended from a common ancestor and/orProto-Celtic andProto-Italic developed in close proximity over a long period of time.
The map shows the most important archaeological sites of Sicily related to pre-Hellenic cultures, as well as the possible extent of the cultures of theElymians,Sicani andSicels.
The specific identities or names of the tribes or groups of peoples that practiced these pre-Roman archeological cultures are mostly unknown. The posited existence of these archeological cultures is based on archeologicalassemblages ofartifacts that share common traits and are found within a certain region and originate within a certain prehistoric period. Therefore, many of these archeological cultures may not necessarily correspond to a specific group of ancient people and, in fact, may have been shared among various groups of ancient peoples. The extent to which an archeological culture is representative of a particular cohesive ancient group of people is open for debate; many of these cultures may be the product of a single ancient Italian tribe or civilization (e.g.Latial culture), while others may have been spread among different groups of ancient Italian peoples and even outside of Italy. For example, Latial culture is believed to be the product specifically of the AncientLatin tribe; theCanegrate culture andGolasecca culture have been associated with various ancient proto-Celtic, Celtic and Ligure tribes including theLepontii,Orobii, andInsubres, while other archeological cultures may have been present among multiple groups throughout and beyond the Italian peninsula.
Detail of fresco from theLucanian tomb, 4th century BC
A genetic study published inScience in November 2019 examined the remains of sixLatin males buried nearRome between 900 BC and 200 BC. They carried the paternal haplogroupsR-M269,T-L208,R-311, R-PF7589 andR-P312 (two samples), and the maternal haplogroupsH1aj1a,T2c1f,H2a,U4a1a,H11a andH10. A female from the precedingProto-Villanovan culture carried the maternal haplogroupsU5a2b.[41] These examined individuals were distinguished from preceding populations of Italy by the presence of ca. 25-35%steppe ancestry.[42] Overall, the genetic differentiation between the Latins,Etruscans and the preceding proto-villanovan population of Italy was found to be insignificant.[43]
^Ugas, Giovanni (2006).L'alba dei nuraghi (in Italian). Fabula Editore. p. 34.ISBN978-88-89661-00-0.
^Goring, Elizabeth (2004).Treasures from Tuscany: the Etruscan legacy. Edinburgh: National Museums Scotland Enterprises Limited. p. 13.ISBN978-1901663907.
^Leighton, Robert (2004).Tarquinia. An Etruscan City. Duckworth Archaeological Histories Series. London: Duckworth Press. p. 32.ISBN0-7156-3162-4.
^Camporeale, Giovannangelo, ed. (2001).The Etruscans Outside Etruria. Translated by Hartmann, Thomas Michael. Los Angeles: Getty Trust Publications (published 2004).
^Strabo.Geography. Book V, Chapter IV. Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University.Archived from the original on 2 September 2022. Retrieved 2 September 2022.
^Francesco Belsito (2013).Storia di Nocera. Monumenti, personaggi, leggende. Angri, Gaia.
^Harald Haarmann (2014). "Ethnicity and Language in the Ancient Mediterranean".A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 17–33.ISBN9781444337341.
^Markey, Thomas (2008).Shared Symbolics, Genre Diffusion, Token Perception and Late Literacy in North-Western Europe. NOWELE.
^Piceni popolo d'Europa, Vv.Aa., Edizioni De Luca, Roma, 1999, p. 139
^Hazlitt, William.The Classical Gazetteer (1851), p. 297.
^Pietrina Anello. "I Sicani nel IV secolo a.C.".Atti del convegno di studi su Diodoro Siculo e la Sicilia indigena (in Italian) (2005): 150.
^"Liguri". Enciclopedie on line.Treccani.it (in Italian). Rome:Treccani -Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. 2011.Le documentazioni sulla lingua dei Liguri non ne permettono una classificazione linguistica certa (preindoeuropeo di tipo mediterraneo? Indoeuropeo di tipo celtico?).
^Hartmann, Markus (2017). "Siculian". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.).Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. p. 1854.doi:10.1515/9783110542431-026.ISBN978-3-11-054243-1.S2CID242076323.
^John T. Koch (ed.)Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia ABC-CLIO (2005)ISBN978-1-85109-440-0
^"Liguri". Enciclopedie on line.Treccani.it (in Italian). Rome:Treccani -Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. 2011.Le documentazioni sulla lingua dei Liguri non ne permettono una classificazione linguistica certa (preindoeuropeo di tipo mediterraneo? Indoeuropeo di tipo celtico?).
^Herodotus,Histories, ΚΛΕΙΩ 1.56.2:μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἐφρόντιζε ἱστορέων τοὺς ἂνἙλλήνων δυνατωτάτους ἐόντας προσκτήσαιτο φίλους. ἱστορέων δὲ εὕρισκε Λακεδαιμονίους τε καὶ Ἀθηναίους προέχοντας, τοὺς μὲν τοῦ Δωρικοῦ γένεος, τοὺς δὲ τοῦ Ἰωνικοῦ. ταῦτα γὰρ ἦν τὰ προκεκριμένα, ἐόντα τὸ ἀρχαῖον τὸ μὲν Πελασγικόν Translation:Then he set out to examine who among the "Greeks" were the strongest, whom he could make friends with. And searching, he found that the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians were distinguished, the former among the Dorians, the latter among the Ionians. Because these nations were the best known, being in the old days the lastPelasgian[1]
.jpg)
