The Peoples Of Archaic Italy

    The first men to appear in Italy were of the Neanderthal type and first emerged some 200,000 years ago. They were followed by a Cro-Magnon type which appeared at around 10,000 B.C.. Both the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were hunter-gatherers. The first cultivators of the land appeared at around 5000 B.C. and were called the Neolithic peoples. Their era was followed by the Copper Age, brought along by the infiltration of knowledge of copper from Bohemia and Hungary and during which appeared the Alpine Man. Some time in 1800 B.C., the discovery of an alloy made by adding tin to copper brought along the Bronze Age.

    It was during the Bronze Age that two main cultures flourished. The first was that of the Terramara, which cremated their dead, in the North and the second was that of the Apennine, which buried their dead and were found along the Apennines, which stretched from Bologna in the North to Apulia in the South. Peaceful interactions between these two cultures caused them to be drawn much closer together and resulted in emergent cultures which were a fusion of the two.

    The Terramara and the Apennine were succeeded by the Villanovans during the Iron Age, which is postulated to have begun some time between 1000 to 800 B.C.. It is yet unclear whether the Villanovans were autochthonous or whether they migrated into the land. There were two main groups of Villanovan culture – one in the North around Bologna and another in the South in Tuscany and Northern Latium.

    Archaic Italy comprised a motley of peoples and tribes. In addition to the Villanovans, there were the Ligures, who might have been descended from the Neolithics, and the Golaseccans, the Comacines and the Atestines who inhabited areas around the Italian lakes and Venetia. There were also three groups of Iron Age inhabitants who buried their dead. These comprise the Picenes, a warlike people, the Fossa Grave culture, which began at the close of the Bronze Age, and one found in Apulia.

    A possible view is that a group of peoples speaking Indo-European dialects migrated South from North of the Alps and comprised peoples who cremated their dead and who settled to the West of a line which ran from Rimini to just South of Rome. A second group to the East could have been descended from the Apennines, retaining the custom of burying their dead but speaking Indo-European dialects as well due to influences from other cultures.

    The Villanovans in the North were eventually absorbed by the Etruscans, Celts and Romans. Those further South had their culture evolve into Etruscan civilisation. Those in Latium and Rome survived as Latins.

Updated >> 21 September 2004