EAA2021: Abstract

The Etruscan civilization occupied a large area of central Italy known as Etruria during the Iron Age. The history and legacy of this population remain enigmatic as well as its extinct language, a non-Indo-European language not fully interpreted until today. Two main competing hypotheses have been proposed for the origins of the population associated with the Etruscan civilization: an autochthonous development or an Anatolian birthplace. Here we report an ancient genomic time transect across Etruria alongside a historical and linguistic synthesis of our findings through time. During the Iron Age, we identify a mismatch between ancestry composition and the non-Indo-European Etruscan language challenging previous hypotheses on the recent Anatolian origin. The documented genetic make-up is stably maintained in Etruria across the first millennium BCE, despite the arrival of migrants as shown by the presence of several genetic outliers. However, this broad genetic continuity is overturned during the Roman Imperial period due to a large-scale spread in the region of eastern Mediterranean ancestries. This suggests that the Roman Empire might have left a long-lasting demographic contribution to the genetic profile of central Italian populations resulting in a vast displacement of the Etruscan-related gene pool.

Ancient DNA, Indo-European languages, Iron Age, Etruscans, Roman Empire, Central Italy

 Abstract (PDF)

Cosimo Posth^1,2

Valentina Zaro³
Maria Spyrou^1,2
Stefania Vai³
Guido Gnecchi-Ruscone²
Michael McCormick⁴
Luca Bondioli⁵
Kirsten Bos²
David Caramelli³
Johannes Krause²