Y Chromosome I-M26 Found Again in Continental Bronze Age Italy

 A new paper is out by Hannah Moots et al that analyzed DNA samples from several sites in the ancient Mediterranean.

The authors have been soundly panned for their lack of interdisciplinary historical knowledge.  Specifically: (1) Their maps of Greek "colonization" spreading too landward (shading versus dots); (2) their lack of knowledge about the nature of Carthaginian ports; and (3) their lack of historical knowledge of the Roman colonies in Etruscan cities.  We need not repeat the critiques here.

The paper is significant because it sampled ancient Italian sites outside Sardinia.  

It found (again) that Etruscans were western Europeans / indigenous Italians, and did not come from Anatolia.  (Although because of the problematic context cited about, we acknowledge the skeletons they tested could possibly have been Roman colonists, assuming those colonists did not practice cremation, a big IF).

And most significantly, it found I-M26 (I2a1a) in a continental Italian sample in an Etruscan or pre-Etruscan necropolois (Pian Sultano) just north of Rome, in the heart of what would become Etruria!  The sample was dated to about 1800 B.C.  

While it is theoretically possible that this was a trader from the powerful Nuraghe culture of Sardinia (the site featured obsidian that could have come from Sardinia) -- this is yet another example of M26 being present on the Italian mainland, 4000 years ago.  It is very clear that the "Out of Sardinia" hypothesis needs some tweaks.  Note this was the only male tested from the Pian Sultano acropolis!

Taking this study together, three themes become very clear:

(1) The Etruscan male lineages were fairly similar to male lineages in modern Western Europe, say Castile Spain.

(2) The Etruscans migrated and traded everywhere, which confirms what ancient sources say.  They were a source of out-migration and outward gene flow, not the other way around.

(3) M26 in modern continental Italy is likely continuity with very ancient populations, present before historical migration from Sardinia.