Ancient Italic peoples

The Italic peoples were an Indo-European ethnolinguistic group identified by speaking Italic languages.

The Italics were all the peoples who spoke an idiom belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages and had settled in the Italian peninsula. The first Italic tribes, the Latino-Falisci (or "Latino-Veneti", if the membership of the ancient Veneti is also accepted), entered Italy across the eastern Alpine passes into the plain of the Po River about 1200 BC. Later, they crossed the Apennine Mountains and eventually occupied the region of Latium, which included the area of Rome. Before 1000 BC, the Osco-Umbrians followed, which later divided into various groups and gradually moved to central and southern Italy.

The Italics were, therefore, the set of all Indo-Europeans present exclusively in Italy in antiquity, not Indo-European peoples who were present also in other areas of Europe, such as the Cisalpine Gauls (a Continental Celtic people) or the Messapians (related to the Illyrians).

The term is sometimes used improperly, especially in nonspecialised literature, to refer to all pre-Roman people of Italy, including those not of Indo-European lineages, such as the Etruscans, the Raetians and the Elymians.

According to David W. Anthony, between 3100–2800/–2600 BCE, a real folk migration of Proto-Indo-European speakers from the Yamna culture took place into the Danube Valley. These migrations probably split off Pre-Italic, Pre-Celtic and Pre-Germanic from Proto-Indo-European.Hydronymy shows that Proto-Germanic homeland is in Central Germany, which would be very close to the homeland of Italic and Celtic languages as well.

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