List of ancient peoples of Italy
This is a list of ancient peoples living in Italy before the Roman conquest. Nearly all the names are either scholarly inventions or endonyms assigned by the writers of works in ancient Greek and Latin. The time window necessarily falls into the range of about 750 BC at the foundation of Rome to about 300 BC in the middle Roman Republic. Before the invention of writing, archaeological cultures might be hypothesized to have been associated with historical identities only in relatively isolated and continuous regions. Any further assumptions would be presumptuous by current standards. The ancient peoples of Italy are therefore confined to the Iron Age of Italy.
Non-Indo-European speakers
The following peoples are believed to have spoken languages that were not Indo-European, although most on scanty evidence. Some of them were pre-Indo-Europeans, and some not. For some has been also proposed the definition of Peri-Indo-European.[1]
- Sherden (proto-Sardinians[2])
- Tyrrhenians
Indo-European speakers
- Osco-Umbrians, also called Sabellians:
Greeks
See also
- Prehistoric Italy
- Genetic history of Italy
- List of ancient Italic peoples
- List of Celtic tribes
- List of ancient Germanic peoples
- List of ancient Greek tribes
- List of ancient Iranian peoples
- Italo-Celtic
References
- ^ Giacomo Devoto, Gli antichi Italici, Firenze, Vallecchi, 1931.
- ^ See "Nuragic people".
- ^ http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/3/3*.html#ImageMapLocation
- ^ http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/3/3*.html#ImageMapLocation