Were Trojans the ancestors of the Romans?
score:31
The 2007 study referred to in the Guardian article was carried out by the Italian geneticist Alberto Piazza et al. The study was fairly big news in 2007, and received a lot of international coverage. Another example was the article Origins of the Etruscans: Was Herodotus right?, published in the New York Times.
The 2007 study, which had the catchy title Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Modern Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans, showed that modern populations living in three formerly Etruscan communities, exhibited a residual genetic link to communities in Turkey.
About the same time, another study, The mystery of Etruscan origins: novel clues from Bos taurus mitochondrial DNA, had found that a local breed of cattle also shared a genetic link with Turkey.
These results were discussed in context, and in rather more depth, in the paper DNA and Etruscan Identity, by Philip Perkins of the British Museum.
One significant problem with the conclusions that we saw in much of the media in 2007 was succinctly summarised by the archaeologist Anthony Tuck:
“The architecture of the Etruscans, the language of the Etruscans — virtually every aspect of the physical and material behavior of the Etruscans — doesn't look anything like that which we see in Lydia.”
- Quoted in the article PRI Speaks to Professor Anthony Tuck about Origins of Ancient Etruscan Civilization
A more-recent study, Origins and Evolution of the Etruscans’ mtDNA, was carried out on the same groups but this time included mitochondrial DNA from 14 individuals buried in two Etruscan necropoleis and DNA from medieval skeletal remains. This was published in 2013.
Now, it is important to note that this study examined only maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA. However, with that caveat, this study showed no genetic link to populations in Turkey. The authors therefore concluded that their evidence strongly suggested:
... that the Etruscan culture developed locally, and not as an immediate consequence of immigration from the Eastern Mediterranean shores.
Now, as far as I know, there has been very little detailed DNA analysis on human remains from ancient Etruscan graves. Recovery of ancient DNA is difficult, and burial conditions are a significant factor in that. I am not aware of any whole-genome sequences from Etruscan remains, and the only published mitochondrial DNA sequences that I could find are those referenced in the 2013 study cited above.
So, to answer the question in your title, "Were Trojans the ancestors of the Romans?", the answer is probably not, but we don't know for certain.
As you say, there are limits to what we can infer from tests on modern populations, but there seems to be no evidence of a wholesale migration of an Eastern Mediterranean population to Tuscany.
Upvote:18
(Greek) Trojans and Romans shared common ancestors, and that's the full extent of their relationship. They are otherwise no more closely related than they are to Germans and Gauls*.
First off, the Romans and the Etruscans were two unrelated peoples. It is probably true that at points early in their history, Rome was a client city, paying tribute to Etruscan cities, but that doesn't in any way imply they were the same people. Etruscan was not even an Indo-European language. So whatever you might find out through other means about the Etruscans, does not apply to Romans.
Livy and Virgil do mention a Roman creation myth that makes the claim that Rome was founded in part by Trojan exiles, but that's pretty much the sum of all the evidence that the Romans and the Trojans are related.
The Roman language is most decidedly not a descendant of Greek. Linguists will tell you it was spoken in the Italian peninsula, likely by recent immigrants from over the Alps, as early as 1800 BC.
Archaeologically there appears to be a continuity from the early republic back to the Villanovan culture, which appears to have evolved seamlessly from the Hallstatt culture of central Europe, after it was imported to the peninsula (presumably via migration).
The setting for the myth of the Trojan war is variously taken to be some time between 1135 and 1334 BC, which means all evidence we have is that there were pre-Roman Latin peoples in that area doing their pre-Roman Latin things long before peerless Helen would have been a gleam in Zeus's eye.
* - If Romans were in fact closely related to any other peoples, most linguists and archaeologists will tell you it would be Celts (Gauls), not Greeks
More post
- 📝 How independent were the Eastern European countries from the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What was clothing in ancient Palmyra like?
- 📝 How were artisans trained in Ancient Egypt?
- 📝 Why wasn't Persepolis on Darius' royal road?
- 📝 Travel time for African Slave trade
- 📝 How long has British women royals' solemn ceremonial dress included a sword?
- 📝 Was John S. Mosby the model/motivation/template for John Carter?
- 📝 Was it illegal in 18th century France or Spain to use false titles of nobility?
- 📝 What was the life expectancy of an ancient Roman child and adult?
- 📝 What percentage of the German population worked on gathering the harvest in 1917?
- 📝 When did Abu Bakr agree to lower taxes for the Arabs living under the rule of Byzantine and Sassanid Empire?
- 📝 What kind of atomic bombs were anticipated after Nagasaki?
- 📝 When was the weekend changed in Jordan?
- 📝 What happened to the foreigners in Germany during the Nazis?
- 📝 Is Josephus' account for the length of the Jewish War generally accepted as correct?
- 📝 What was the final result for France after the Napoleonic wars?
- 📝 Why did the Ottoman Empire not industrialize like France, Germany or Belgium?
- 📝 Who said "one can be a powerful king with a very small sceptre"?
- 📝 Was Germany responsible for WW1?
- 📝 Are the Nazi Party, Communist Party, and Bolsheviks far-right or far-left?
- 📝 Who is the author of Romanoff's theorem?
- 📝 Did Yuri Gagarin really hear a ticking sound during his journey into outer space?
- 📝 Should I trust a church history book that's more than 50 years old?
- 📝 Why have population maps indicated a stark divide in population density of the United States on either side ot the 100th Meridian?
- 📝 Were cavalry used in the First World War?
- 📝 How were the earliest automatic traffic lights automated?
- 📝 Trying to understand the idea of a totalitarian administration from the pages of history
- 📝 Were there restrictions on German refugees entering the US during World War II?
- 📝 Help identifying Italian uniform, rank, regiment
- 📝 When did subtractive notation become common for Roman numerals?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Were Trojans the ancestors of the Romans?
- 📝 Were the Romans Trojans or Latins?
- 📝 Why were the Romans unable to conquer Germania?
- 📝 When did the Romans finally acknowledge that they were living in an empire?
- 📝 What were the thoughts of the Celts, Romans and other ancient European people about the standing stones which survive from prehistoric times?
- 📝 How aware were the latter Greek-speaking Romans (ERE: Byzantines) of the early history of Rome?
- 📝 Were there any Roman villas in Britain which were used rather than destroyed after the Romans left?
- 📝 Were the ancestors of Malays originally from Yunnan, China?
- 📝 What were the key difficulties for the Romans in the conquest of Germanic tribes?
- 📝 If Rome's women were the cause of her downfall, why did the Romans not import women from abroad?
- 📝 Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
- 📝 What drugs were used in England during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 What were the reasons for the Renaissance / scientific revolution in Europe?
- 📝 How did the Romans do division?
- 📝 Did the Romans eat breakfast?
- 📝 Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
- 📝 Where did the Romans store their cash?
- 📝 Why were the Allies so much better cryptanalysts?
- 📝 How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- 📝 Were Medieval Britons aware of the existence of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 How were smallpox vaccines enforced in the US?
- 📝 Why were helmets and other body armour not commonplace in the 1800s?
- 📝 ‘Avoid sleeping on your back’ & ‘breathe in toilet smells’ were seen as precautions against the Black Death. Why did doctors think these would work?
- 📝 In the "Christmas truce" of 1914 were there any football (soccer) matches between British and German troops?
- 📝 What were the acceptance criteria in universities of medieval Europe?
- 📝 How severe were the casualties in ancient/medieval battles?
- 📝 Why were the West African islands uninhabited?
- 📝 Were defendants at the Nuremberg trial allowed to deny the holocaust?
- 📝 Were there large scale protests after earlier presidential elections in the US?
- 📝 Did the Romans leave any technical instruction manuals behind?