The early Italic people

[Piccolo]

My understanding is that the ancient Italic people were not indigenous to Italy.

The Italic peoples were not indigenous to Italy, but arrived from the north probably by 1000 BC and slowly worked their way southward. North and central Italy had earlier been settled by successive waves of immigrants from across the Alps, while the southern regions, including Sicily, were partly under different cultural influence being in contact with Aegean peoples to the east at least as early as the Sicilian Copper Age (c.2500-2000 BC). Archeological evidence points to widespread cultural exchange throughout the region, making it all the more difficult to link the known Italic peoples of historical times with specific prehistoric cultures.

Benjamin W. Forston IV, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction Second Edition, page 274.

If the Italic people were Indo-European immigrants to the Italian peninsula, do we know anything about how the original Italics looked before mixing with the other people inhabiting Italy at the time of their arrival? Is there any way to detect ancient Italic ancestry through genetic testing?

[quaquaraqua]

[Ulla]

...

Otzi is surely not an Italic. He dates back to much before the arrival of Italics. Otzi is more likely linked to proto-Rhaetians, proto-Etruscans and proto-Sardinians. He was found in Velturno, province of Bolzano. Velturno seems a pre-Roman name, probably Rhaetian-Etruscan.

[Ulla]

My understanding is that the ancient Italic people were not indigenous to Italy.

No one is really indigenous to anywhere.

Is there any way to detect ancient Italic ancestry through genetic testing?

Some hypothetical subclade of R1b, as R1b-U152/S28.

[Smaug]

Italics are supposed to have originated in what is modern day Hungary, as an eastern variation of the Hallstatt culture, what would make sense when we consider the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.

[Ianus]

Italic arrived in several waves between III and II millennial BC. Probabily the looked Central European but they melted with local population.

[Vesuvian Sky]

There have been a number of theories on the subject. I made a poll some time ago discussing the various theories. Luigi Pigorini, the father of Italian pre- and proto- history assigned the process of Indo-Europeanization to the Terremare culture:

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...Italic-Origins

Gimbutas initially viewed the IEs as invading the already established Remedello culture, which as Ulla pointed out Oetzi was indigenous to, and creating a superimposition upon the culture. This was based upon the observation of stone stella appearing in N. Italy similar to the stelae found found north of the Black sea. You can read more about the stelae in the thread above I linked.

However, the Bell Beaker culture theory which is linked to Proto-Italo-Celtic has gained the most favor in recent years for a number of reasons for explaining proto-Italic's arrival/development.

Coon was the one (or one of the ones) who assigned Halstatt/Urnfield cultures to Proto-Italics, which I don't believe is correct because they were more likely proto-Celtic by then.

All IE's come from here eventually though:



Which is of course the Pontic Caspian Steppe or Kurgan theory.

[Ulla]

Italics are supposed to have originated in what is modern day Hungary, as an eastern variation of the Hallstatt culture, what would make sense when we consider the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.

There were various waves of migration of Italic people. Probably proto-Italics first settled in North Italy and then some of them gradually moved southward, generating the various tribes: Umbrians, Oscans, Samnites, Sabines, Latins.... The ones left in North Italy were later Celtizied. But North Italy was already inhabited by Ligurians (later Celtizied), Camunni, Raetians, Euganei (Ligurian tribe?)...

[Piccolo]

Some hypothetical subclade of R1b, as R1b-U152/S28.

Interesting. What do you make of the hypothesis of the poster "Maciamo" in this post from the website Eupedia? He seems to think there is a connection between the Italics and the Gauls and he discussed some genetics as well, specifically R1b-U152/S28.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ulish-or-Roman

In relevant part, he states:

But what about Italy ? If U152 was indeed associated with Hallstatt and La Tène Celts, why is it so common in the Italian peninsula ?

1) The first possibility is that Celts moved in great number to Italy. This has been historically documented by the migration of the Gauls to northern Italy, which the Romans renamed Gallia Cisalpina. Just after the Roman conquest of Gaul and southern Germany, hundreds of thousands of Gauls were taken as slaves to Italy. In the following centuries, as they became integrated in Roman society, many more Gauls moved to Italy for business or politics. It is also documented that numerous Roman senators were of Gaulish origin. Once they have reached the top level in government, it is easy to imagine that just anybody from Gaul could settle in Italy (and vice-versa, as countless Romans established themselves in Gaul).

This is all very well, but it doesn't really explain why R-152 is so strong in Corsica and Sardinia. These islands were not settled by any migrating Celts that I know of, and their remoteness and little political or economic importance did not make them prime destinations for Gauls to settle in.

Additionally, Myres' map shows that U152 peaks around Umbria and the Latium but is weaker in Alpine Italy. This could be because Gauls migrated en masse to Rome, or because so many of them were taken as slaves to Rome. But it could just as well be because U152 was actually Roman to start with.

2) This leads us to the second hypothesis: Italic people were an early offshoot of the Hallstatt Celts, and therefore all Italic tribes, including the Romans, carried a high percentage of U152. The migration to Italy might have happened at the beginning of the Hallstatt period (circa 1200-1000 BCE), or just before, during the Tumulus culture (see maps).

I think that the answer is surely a combination of both hypothesis. U152 has numerous subclades, and some might later be identified as Roman, or at least Italic, while others will be exclusively Gaulish or North Alpine. So far data is too scarce to see any pattern. The main subclade of U152 is L2, which is found in roughly 3/4 of all lineages, but indiscriminately anywhere from Italy to England.

[Ulla]

Interesting. What do you make of the hypothesis of the poster "Maciamo" in this post from the website Eupedia? He seems to think there is a connection between the Italics and the Gauls and he discussed some genetics as well, specifically R1b-U152/S28.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ulish-or-Roman

In relevant part, he states:

Maciamo is just one of many blogger/poster guessing this, probably not even one of the first.

Read Diekenes (2010):

Of interest is the fact that while R-U152 has a clear French-Italian center of weight, the locations exhibiting highest STR variance are Germany and Slovakia, i.e., Central Europe. My guess is that R-U152 originated in Central Europe spreading to the west and south, perhaps with Italo-Celtic speakers or some subset thereof. In its home territory of Central Europe, its frequency decreased by the introduction of the Germanic and Slavic speaking elements which dominate the region.

Irrespective of what the ultimate origin of R-U152 is, it provides us with a good diagnostic marker for population movements out of the French-Italian area. In Italy for example it is noted at 26.6% for the north and 10.5% in the south. It would be extremely interesting to see its occurrence in Balkan Vlachs, as this would confirm/disprove the Italian component in their origin. However, R-U152 occurs in 7.3% of Cretans, suggesting introgression Y-chromosomes of North Italian (Venetian) origin, from the 4-century period of Venetian rule of the island. It also occurs in 4.1% of Greeks, where it might come from any period since the Roman annexation of the Hellenistic states to the Vlachs. However, its presence at only 1.8% of Romanians makes a large Italian contribution to the Romanian population unlikely. Balkan R-U152 chromosomes should be better resolved to determine when they arrived from the northwest.

The paucity of R-U152 in Turks (0.6%) make tales of wandering Galatians less likely to be true. There is no doubt that Galatians settled in Anatolia, but they were probably so few in numbers that they did not permanently alter the population. Knowledgeable readers should chime in about the Lebanese Christian R1b which was posited as a signature of the Crusades a couple of years ago, and its position in the phylogeny.

http://dienekes.blogspot.it/2010/08/...ntral-and.html

But also read Tibor Feher Co-Admin of Kerchner's R1b Project, just guessing the same around 2010.

http://www.kerchner.com/r1bu152proje...ay20100112.pdf

On the web you can find other poster/blogger/amateur geneticist starting from around 2010.