Roman region had two major shifts in ancestry composition - arrival of EEFs & farming, then later the Indo-European invasion. By time Rome was founded, it was a typical Mediterranean population. Imperial era marked by migration from North Africa, Middle East, and N Europe.
As in much of western Europe, Italy was inhabited by small numbers of Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs) prior to the arrival of farmers.
Early European Farmers (EEFs) from Turkey introduced farming to Europe and replaced the WHGs in most places, Italy included. They did this in the late 6000s & early 5000s BC. These EEFs are associated with the Cardial Ware culture.
~2900 BC Europe was invaded by people from the steppe of modern S Russia & E Ukraine speaking Indo-European languages (Latin is an IE language). By the time of foundation of the Roman Republic, IE had heavily mixed with EEFs, & comprised ~1/3 of Italian ancestry.
While 8 of 11 samples from early 1st millennium BC were an EEF/IE mix, interestingly an Etruscan sampled was half North African & half Iron Age Italian in ancestry, possibly the child of a Carthaginian seafarer & a local Etruscan woman.
Two of the early 1st millennium BC samples seem to have high amounts of later Anatolian ancestry, possibly sign of Trojans immigrating to Italy as per the Aeneid?
Roman Empire saw immigration of large numbers of people to Italy - mostly from the E Mediterranean & Levant but also some from N Europe and N Africa.
E Mediterranean had greater population density than other areas, which is why it was likely source for most immigrants. These immigrants shifted the ancestry of Romans to the east, though there was some heterogeneity that remained despite extensive mixing.
West Mediterranean DNA paper that came out a few months later shows that immigration patterns were far from even across the empire - Sicily's population was mostly replaced by North Africans, probably from slaves in Roman times. https://twitter.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1233640551599112192
Authors sampled 24 people from the late Empire. Population collapse, German invasions, & decline in immigration led to shift in Roman ancestry towards NW Europe as the diverse urbanites died off & were replaced by relatively unmixed farmers from countryside.
Lombard & Norman invasions, as well as closer links with Holy Roman Empire in Germany, brought Romans even closer to Central Europeans in ancestry composition in the Middle Ages.
Roman admixture with time (treat with caution as always): cyan is WHG, tan is EEF, gray is a post-EEF ancestry component found in Levantines & Anatolians of Bronze/Iron Ages, brown is North African, orange is IE/Steppe.
Authors' model of Roman ancestry change - I don't particularly trust this one. "European" & "Mediterranean" are mixes of EEF & IE. EEF is labeled "Sardinian & Neolithic".
PCA of the data, with selected clusters circled
Davidski’s take - he thinks the two early 1st millenum BC outliers with “Anatolian” ancestry are actually Phoenicians, not Trojans. https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/11/open-analysis-and-discussion-thread.html?m=1
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