Italy Bronze Age
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The Fifty-Three Known Forefathers of the Italian People: Latest Discoveries from Genetics
This is a story about Italian y-DNA. But putting it that way is misleading. For there is not a single coherent story of “Italianness” that stretches back in time. And that story is almost inseparable from the stories of the surrounding populations with which developments in Italy are intimately connected. But it is the case that the science of genetics is gradually unfolding a richer picture of the past than was known before. If we go back far enough (thousands of years) we find (along the patrilineal line) that virtually all Italians are descended from only fifty-three men. Why there are so few, we will see below. Casual labels are…
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Of Villages and Vesuvius: 1800BC
The ancient mount Vesuvius rises high above the Campanian plain. The plain – a great oval ringed by mountains – stretches north, east and south for hundreds of kilometres. Along its northern edge, the river Volturno, the longest river in Italy, flows to the sea. Below Vesuvius is a great bay: the Bay of Naples, although it will be well more than a thousand years before new arrivals from the Greek island of Euboea build a city here which will bear that name. We are Italy’s deep past, although the very idea of Italy is yet to be invented. Vesuvius is not the only volcano here. It is part of…
