Altamura, Ceprano, and Gravina in Puglia.

[68]

The Ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Romans
emerged), Volsci, Oscans, Samnites, Sabines, the Celts, the Ligures, the Veneti, the Iapygians, and
many others – were Indo-European peoples, most of them specifically of the Italic group. The main
historic peoples of possible non-Indo-European or pre-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans
of central and northern Italy, the Elymians and the Sicani in Sicily, and the prehistoric Sardinians,
who gave birth to the Nuragic civilisation. Other ancient populations being of undetermined
language families and of possible non-Indo-European origin include the Rhaetian people and
Cammuni, known for their rock carvings in Valcamonica, the largest collections of prehistoric
petroglyphs in the world.[69] A well-preserved natural mummy known as Ötzi the Iceman,
determined to be 5,000 years old (between 3400 and 3100 BCE, Copper Age), was discovered in the
Similaun glacier of South Tyrol in 1991.[70]

The first foreign colonisers were the Phoenicians, who initially established colonies and founded
various emporiums on the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia. Some of these soon became small urban
centres and were developed parallel to the ancient Greek colonies; among the main centres there
were the cities of Motya, Zyz (modern Palermo), Soluntum in Sicily, and Nora, Sulci, and Tharros in
Sardinia.[71][72]

Between the 17th and the 11th centuries BC Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Italy[73]
[74][75] and in the 8th and 7th centuries BC a number of Greek colonies were established all along
the coast of Sicily and the southern part