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.
Sardinian is the most archaic Romance language, closer to Latin than any of the others. But I doubt that Oetzi could have declined cerevisia to save his life.
Since the Basques speak the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe, you would expect them to have DNA that reflected the earlier population of Europe before the spread of Indo-European languages.
fascinating. Ping to blam and odds