Ping
And what of the Sardinians? I believe that the “islanders” of the Mediterranean are a relatively “pristine” snapshot of a particular moment in the history of the region. This is evident in Dienekes’ Dodecad Ancestry Project. Unlike their mainland cousins both the Sardinians and Cypriots tend to lack a “Northern European” component. Are the islanders in part descendants of the Paleolithic populations? In part. Sardinians carry a relatively high fraction of the U5 haplogroup, which has been associated with ancient hunter-gatherer remains. But it is also possible that the preponderant aspect of Sardinian ancestry derives from the first farmers to settle the Western Mediterranean. I say this because the Iceman carried the G2a Y haplogroup, which has of late been strongly associated with very early Neolithic populations in Western Europe. And interestingly some scholars have discerned a pre-Indo-European substrate in Sardinian which suggests a connection to the Basque. I wouldn’t read too much into that, but these questions need to be explored, as Ötzi’s genetic nature makes Sardiniaology more critical to understanding the European past.