Ancient civilizations-2

Local populations in areas colonized by Greece

The presence of the Siculi in Sicily and in the Italian peninsula is attested by the historical sources (Thucydides and Polybius). But the extent of their diffusion and their connections with other peoples of the peninsula (such as the Ligurians, the Itali, the Oenotrii, the Ausones) is more difficult to establish. A few small non-Greek inscriptions found in eastern Sicily and referable to the Siculi (the most noteworthy was found at Centuripe), coin legends, and Siculan words reported by Classical writers demonstrate the Indo-European character of the Siculan language, which seems to show an affinity with Latin and also has connections with the Umbro-Sabellian dialects. The immigration of the Siculi from the Italian peninsula into Sicily goes back to a prehistoric but not extremely early epoch; this assumption is based on the fact that there are some echoes of it in tradition and that a continental archaeological influence suddenly appears at the end of the Bronze Age. The characteristic Siculan iron culture, evident in the necropolises of Pantalica near Syracuse and of Finocchito near Noto, flourished between the 9th and the 5th centuries bce and was progressively submerged in the superior civilization of the Greeks.

Evidence is quite scarce for the Siculi in the peninsula and for the other primitive indigenous populations of what is now Calabria and of Lucania (the Oenotrii, Ausones, Chones, Morgetes, and Itali) and Campania (the Ausones and Opici). Modern scholars have hypothesized that along the Tyrrhenian coastal arc there extended in earliest times a belt of paleo-Italic peoples (so-called western Italics or Proto-Latins) originally related to the Latins and distinct from the eastern Italic peoples inhabiting the Apennine and Adriatic regions. (The archaeological documentation consists of cemeteries with Iron Age graves, but there are also traces of cremation necropolises, especially in the province of Salerno and in Calabria.) Large fortified towns arose, particularly in the interior zones of Lucania. The ethnic individuality of these ancient peoples, however, was progressively obliterated between the 8th and the 4th century bce by the Greek penetration and by the expansion of the Etruscans and the eastern Italics (Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttii).