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The Elymians were an ethnic group living in northwest and central Sicily before the Phoenicians and Greeks settled there. Some people think they were Italic from the mainland, others think they were Anatolian and their language related to Hittite, Trojan, Armenian, etc.
Here is what we know. What seems more likely?
1. The Sicels, the Italics living in eastern Sicily, were not easily assimilated by the Greeks. The Elymians, on the other hand, were, due to what were said to be linguistic similarities between Elymian and Greek. With that said, Elymian has not been wholly deciphered but what has been, has showed links to Hittite. If it is true that Armenian and Greek languages are distantly related, Elymian, Hittite, and Trojan must also have been in that grouping.
2. The Elymians shared some basic cultural similarities with the Phoenicians, thus there was limited tension. Their language, however, was not similar, as the former were Indo-European and the latter were Semitic.
3. There is a lot of R1b and J2 in the Palermo and Trapani area, but not much E1b1b today.
4. People who have traveled to the region that I know have said if you go to the rural areas, some of the people look almost Armenian, Kurdish, etc.
5. The Trapani region today is genetically the most north/west shifting part of Sicily because of increased North African/Berber and West European admixture, considerably more so than the results I see from Palermo but still not as northward plotting as central Italians or Greek mainlands.
My guess is they were an Anatolian group related to the ancestors of Armenians.
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