What is the origin of the Italians?

Answer 1

The Italian people have somewhat varied European origins apart from the originalAncient Italic peoples: Northern Italy had a strong Celtic presence in Cisalpine Gaul until the Romans conquered and colonized the area in the second century; the central portion of the Italian peninsula was inhabited by the Etruscans and Italic people; and southern Italy and Sicily was settled significantly by Greeks (see Magna Graecia).

The Romans took the entire peninsula and preserved common unity until the fifth century AD. In the later centuries of the Western Roman Empire, the Italian peninsula was unfiltered by Germanic peoples crossing the Alps, establishing settlements in north central Italy and to a much lesser degree in the south. The Germanic tribes underwent rapid Roman Influence.

The Byzantine Greeks were an important power in southern Italy for five centuries, fighting for supremacy first against the Ostrogoths and later against the Lombards of Benevento. Greek speakers were fairly common throughout Southern Italy and Sicily until the eleventh century when Byzantine rule ended: a few small Greek-speaking communities still exist in Calabria and Apulia.

In 827 AD, the island of Sicily was invaded starting a period of Arab influence in Sicily. Arabs controlled Sicily until the Norman Christians conquered much of southern Italy and all of Sicily in 1091 AD.

There are also still small Greek fishing villages in Calabria, Maltese-Italian residents whose family originated from Malta under Italian and then British rule from the 18th to the mid 20th centuries, and Catalan communities in Sardinia to this day.

For more than 500 years (12th to 17th centuries) after Norman rule, Swabian (German) and Angevin (French) swapped control of regions in Italy, predominately southern Italy and Sicily. During the 11th through 16th century the majority of city-states from Northern and Central Italy remained independent, nurturing the era now known as the Renaissance. Habsburg Spain and Bourbon Spain dominated in southern Italy. From the 16th C. right through to unification, most of the Italian states were controlled by the emerging European political powers, most notably the Austrian Habsburgs, Spain, and by the 19th C., Napoleonic France.

In 1720, Sicily came under Austrian Habsburg rule and was swapped between various European powers until Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and southern Italy, allowing for the annexation of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the new Italian state in 1860 (see Risorgimento).

Answer 2

Italians are descended from various ancient civilizations that inhabited the Italian peninsula, such as the Etruscans, Romans, and Greeks. Modern Italians are a blend of these different cultures, along with contributions from various other groups and migrations throughout history.