Let's go to the discovery of the origin of the population of the Sicilians, from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, through the synoptic reading of ancient texts in Greek and Latin, linguistic analysis and archaeological finds.
di Alexander Bonfanti
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For just over ten years I have been dealing with βSiculiβ problem within the ethnographic and cultural framework of the prehistoric and proto-historical structure of Sicily. Few archaeologists, together with an even smaller number of anthropologists, have been interested in the precious Sicilian populations of the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, very often drawing too superficial conclusions and without any scientific objectivity that would give a precise description of the object of the research and at the same time gave new impulses to new investigations in the field. Well, it wasn't like that for me. What little I have read about the essays published so far and available in university academies have never satisfied my scientific curiosity, although it was precisely the sloppy carelessness of these scholars that made me take the initiative to give life to this great research work, because to this day it cannot be said to be definitively concluded, although the results have always been positive, abundant with data to the point of allowing me to reconstruct with such meticulousness the profound spirituality and the extraordinarily lively culture of Anellenic (or pre-Greek) people of Sicily: that is, Siculi, Sicani and Elimi.
When you hear about "Siculi", everyone, especially non-Sicilians, always thinks of cliche proposed for the '' Sicilian '' of the late nineteenth century: a little man with a dark complexion, often short in stature, with raven hair and mustache, the typical coppola, shotgun with shoulder strap, advancing along an arid path to the sound of marranzano among plants of prickly pears and dried weeds yellowed by the scorching sun. This "type" is now in the collective imagination all over the world due to a bad publicity that has nothing to do with reality: just note how widespread blond hair and light eyes are; as well as the marranzano it is an ancient instrument of Nordic origin present in Scandinavian, Celtic and Slavic folk music; as well as prickly pears come from Central America and are therefore a recent import, and so do many other plants on the island. In films this phenotype is often proposed and very often the actors are not Sicilian, not to mention the remembrances, those that reproduce "u siculu", which do not serve so much to stimulate the poor observation capacity of those tourists who have come to the island to grasp and experience what is real in all this, but even infirm with their figurative unreality as much as already in the minds of these it has been distorted by the imagination of the allochthones.
In fact, everyone thinks that "Sicilians" are all Sicilians, indistinctly, although no one, and not even many of the islanders, knows who was this population that gave the current name to our wonderful island. In fact, we speak of Greek Sicily, Roman Sicily, Byzantine Sicily, Normans, Swabians, Aragonese and so on, but almost never about those who long ago inhabited this island, giving it the name of Sikelia "Sicily" (attested Hellenic form, certainly reconstituted on the Sicilian coronym Sikulia) and, alas, even if improperly, to the current inhabitants considered "Sicilians" and not properly "Sicilians". I will try to briefly explain who the Sicilians were, who the Sicans, who the Elymians, who the Siceliots and finally who the current Sicilians would be. My work was mainly based on synoptic reading of ancient texts in Greek and Latin (i.e. a reading conducted simultaneously on different texts placed side by side to carry out an immediate comparison): directly Stories o Peloponnesian War of Thucydides (XNUMXth century BC), Roman antiquities of Dionysus of Halicarnassus (XNUMXst century BC), Historical library of Diodorus Siculus (XNUMXst century BC); indirectly, through the texts already mentioned above, Sikelika o Made from Sicily of Antiochus of Syracuse (V century BC), Sikelika of Philistus of Syracuse (IV century BC), and again Sikelika of Timaeus of Tauromenio (III century BC) known as the '' detractor ''; and then reading theAeneid by Virgil, the '' archaeologist '' poet in the true sense of the word, as well as many other texts. Then I compared the synoptic readings with the data obtained from the analyzes of the archaeological material; then i proceeded with linguistic analysis and finally with anthropological analysis, the most difficult but also the most satisfying. All this has allowed me to make a very accurate reconstruction of the pre-Greek Sicilian peoples of the prehistoric and proto-historical age, although, I add, I am always greedy for many other discoveries. As an Indo-Europeanist I can say that it was a very demanding job, that of deciphering the languages ββof the Sicilians, the Elymians and the Sicans (the latter did not leave written texts but many toponyms and hydronyms), at the end of which, however, I saw one of my dreams come true: the classification of three other languages ββof purely Indo-European filiation and their arrangement within the family tree. All this is obviously present in my two works already mentioned in the previous article, respectively Siculi: Arius people who came from the North (that is to say Historia Siculorum) to Indo-European Sicilians. The Nordic origins of ethnos, volumes I-II.
The Sicilians were a population of Indo-European lineage and proto-Illyrian stock, which in the distant stone age, around the fourth millennium BC was still one with the other proto-Illyrian peoples settled in the center of Europe, much above the middle course of the Danube, in the central and southern area located between the Elbe and Vistula rivers, bordering other Indo-European macro-groups, precisely with the one from which the Proto-Latins, the Osco-Umbrians and the Venetians emerged ( Paleoveneti or Venetici) to the west, with that from which the Hellenes, Macedonians and Phrygians emerged in the east and south-east, with part of the Celtic group (at the proto-Celtic time) and part of the Germanic one in the north (which with that Proto-Celtic and then Ur-Celtic had a long and intense osmosis), and also undergoing some cultural osmotic process with the Indo-European group defined as "Upper European" or "Paleo-European" or "Indo-European A", to which the Sicans belonged, countrymen of the Sicilians even in much later times (starting from 1270/1250 BC in Sicily). With the latter group, the influence was however hampered by the Danubian course, since this group of Carpathian origin called "A" extended at that time starting from the southern bank of the river. All this is evident not only from the anthropometric analyzes, but also and above all from the phonetic analysis that characterize the language of the Sicilians (method of lateral areas, glottochronology through phono-component analysis, detection of primitive isoglosses and therefore in the identification of the original phones: that is the treatment of the sonants, the phonetic thrust and traction chains, consonant rotations, detection of the original laryngals with reconstructions of the primitive vowel systems etc.).
This group of proto-Illyrians, growing in number, abandoned their ancestral central European sites, crossing the Danube in its middle course, in the region of present-day Hungary, pouring into the Balkans at the end of the IV or the beginning of the III millennium BC, thus occupying the whole peninsula up to the extremity of Greece known in historical times with the name of Peloponnese. Many tribes were created starting from the northernmost offshoots of the Balkan peninsula, among which were the Liburnians, the Sicilians, the Ausoni, the Dauni, the Peucezi, the Messapi, the Caoni, the Coni, the Pelasgians and the Enotri. The Liburnians and the Sicilians, closest neighbors and relatives of the former, occupied respectively the shores and the hinterland of Dalmatia, precisely the territories from present-day Slovenia to Albania, followed in succession by the Daunians, then by the Peucezi (these welcomed part of the Enotri once arrived in Italy), the Caoni, the Coni, the Ausoni, the Pelasgians (these reached Greece), the Messapi and finally the Enotri, which had a maximum extension from Epirus to the Peloponnese. Not long after, famines and other calamities pushed a part of all these tribes towards the coast facing the Adriatic Sea, that is our peninsula. First came the Ausoni, in the second half of the third millennium BC from the south-eastern coast, going as far as present-day Lazio, so that Italy was called Ausonia; then the Sicilians arrived together with the Liburnians in the peninsular center, between Emilia-Romagna, Umbria and Marche, around the beginning of the second millennium BC; then again the Enotri, who arrived around the seventeenth century. BC always from the South-East and driving the Ausoni further north, mainly in Campania and Lazio, and giving a new name to that area, that is Enotria. The Pelasgians were the last to arrive, at the beginning of the second half of the second millennium BC, first reaching the mouth of the Po, covering most of the peninsula following the Apennines towards the south and joining proto-Latin groups of terramaric centers, with which they chased away the Sicilians and Liburnians from those territories, making the Liburnians sail away and pushing the Sicels further south into Lazio.Β
The Sicilians undertook the escape for safety, finding the hostility of many other tribes, especially Oscan (the heirs of the culture of the pit tombs), finally arriving in the territory of their cousins ββEnotri, who welcomed them. There, in today's Calabria, the Sicilians became numerous and very powerful, to the point that their king, whose name was Italo "Torello", took possession of the whole Enotria and that after his death he caused all his people to fall into hatred among the Enotri, to the point that they had to flee back to Sicily (I always remember that the anthroponym Italians, so called in the Greek, is attested only in the Sicilian inscriptions, and never found in the enotrie lands, from Basilicata to Calabria, which is why the good Thucydides saw well [2] in the Sicilian and non-enotrie origins of Italo [1]). This was the year 1270 BC and the Sicilians, "a great army", as specified by Thucydides, conquered the entire eastern sector of the island, giving life to the Sikelia, that is the "Land of the Sicilians", devastating and repelling the Sicans with a long and bloody war [3], that paleo-European group (therefore always Indo-European) that had settled on the island around the second half of the third millennium BC, also fleeing from Italy (and not from Iberia) due to the arrival of the Ausoni [4]. Shortly afterwards the Elimi arrived in Sicily, always of proto-Illyrian lineage, because, like the Morgeti, they were the result of a fragmentation of the enotrium group, among which other ethnic elements converged by synecism, such as a small part of the Sicans and a large part of Hellenes (precisely those Hellenes of Achaean lineage who took possession in the Middle Bronze Age of the Anatolian stronghold, that Wilusa which later became known as Troy, being theIliad the narration of a clash that took place in the final Bronze Age between two Achaean groups, one from the motherland, Hellas, the other from the Anatolian colony in the Troad). The Sicans, strange to say, were neighbors of the Sicilians not only in the heart of Europe in very remote times, but also, albeit to a very small extent, in the Balkan peninsula itself (where there are not a few toponymic traces in present-day Slovenia) and finally in Sicily. All this is difficult, really very difficult, to understand at first reading from the historical sources, especially if they are read individually and without knowing the Greek and Latin languages ββwell.
All historians provide us with conflicting information, some apparently unlikely but real, others still credible but truly false. It is all a puzzle that took me many years and above all a lot of scientific rigor to complete it. In this research I have used an infinity of data coming from different scientific branches, not only from philology therefore, to reconstruct the ancient sources well, but a lot from physical anthropology and glottology. I can give a simple example. Thucydides (Athenian historian of the XNUMXth century BC) claimed that the Sicilians came from Italy and that they were different from the Enotri, that the Sicans were of Iberian origin and that the Elimi were a group of neighboring Trojans and Hellenes and in good relations with the Sicani, but not merged with the latter. Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Diodorus Siculus, both lived during the first century. BC, as already mentioned, diligently and fortunately reported large parts (lessons) of the now lost texts of these much more ancient Sicelian historians, who, being also in direct contact with these epicoric populations, could certainly dissert much more about them; referring again to Antiochus and Philistus of Syracuse, who lived respectively in the fifth and fourth centuries. BC, Hellanic of Mytilene, who lived in the fifth century. BC, and Timaeus of Tauromenio, who lived in the third century. B.C
Antiochus claimed the Iberian origin of the Sicani, the Trojan and Greek origin of the Elimi and the peninsular and enotria origin of the Sicilians [5]; Hellanic claimed the peninsular and enotria origin of the Elymians and peninsular and Ausonian origins of the Sicilians [6]; Philistus, very close to the Sicilian culture, being a general under Dionysius I and having a large group of Siculi in the army (the foundation of colonies in central Italy, such as Ancona, is proof of this [7]), claimed the Iberian origin of the Sicans and the peninsular one of the Sicilians, but wrongly considered Ligurians [8], knowing well however that his "Liburnians", very close relatives of the Sicilians, were considered Ligurians by the most ancient copyists and so the only one who had understood the truth was considered the worst; in the end Timaeus, who instead reported many errors, accusing all of them of ignorance, affirmed that the Sicans were indigenous, as if "sprung out of nowhere", and that the Sicilians were always of peninsular origin. Tucidides also maintained that the Sicilians had been driven away by the Oscan population of the Opici, who lived in Campania, and that the migration had taken place in the 1264th century. B.C; Antiochus claimed that the Sicilians had been chased away by the Enotri, but he did not know how to place this migration precisely; Philistus stated that in the eightieth year before the destruction of Troy, therefore in 1270 BC, the migration of the Sicilians to Sicily took place due to the Enotri; Ellanicus placed this migration very precisely in the twenty-sixth year of the priesthood of Alcione in Argos, therefore in XNUMX BC, but with the variant consisting in the expulsion of the Elimi always due to the hostility of the Enotri, who would have arrived in the westernmost part of the island, and after five years that of the Sicilians who fled from the Iapigi who inhabited the north of Puglia, as the Sicilians were according to him Ausoni.
As you can see, there is so much confusion, so many discrepancies, but if all this information is superimposed through the synoptic reading of the sources and then all the data are received through an anthropological, linguistic and archaeological analysis filter, what is obtained in the end it is the truth of the facts. To begin with, the Sicans were not Iberians, in the most absolute way, since in their language (derived from anthroponyms, hydronyms, oronyms and toponyms) there is nothing Iberian but Indo-European A (among other things, well documented by Prof. Villar [9], even if he never included the Sicans in his group, still contributing a lot in the reconstruction of the most ancient Indo-European strata, those characterized by the laryngal isoglossal h2, from which e + h2 > a, which persisted in the Germanic group and underwent further evolution in the Old Slavonic with h2 > h3, therefore with outcome o). Then they were present ab antiquo in northern and central Italy, where their clash with the Ligurians took place, who were stationed between Liguria and Piedmont. Certainly there is a Sicano river in the Iberian Peninsula, but this is the distortion of a Celtic hydronym in the Iberian area, which was initially Sekwanos, that is "River that divides two territories", and that with this semantic root stylish- "cut" was present throughout France (hence the name of the river Seine from Sequana). In fact, these rivers, both in the Iberian peninsula and in the French region, bordered Celtic tribes such as the Sequani and Segobrigi, in whose ethnonyms the root can be read stylish- also present in the Sicani (hence the evident Celtic and not '' Iberian-Mediterranean '' ancestry on which some still insist). Subsequently, the Sicans clashed with the Ausoni, once they arrived in Lazio, and from that moment - mid-third millennium BC - they passed to Sicily. Many toponyms from Lazio to Calabria, therefore along the Tyrrhenian side, show a typical Sican suffixation, not present in Puglia and therefore on the Adriatic or Ionian side.
Virgil remembers in fact in theAeneid i Sicani veteres and the clash between this ethnos and the Ausoni, who put an end to the golden age [10]. The Sicans gave life to the faces of Castelluccio and Thapsos from 2200 to 1270 BC Some elements of the previous Dolmen culture merged with them and perhaps this invalidated the ancient thesis of Iberian origin, although that group was proto-Celtic and not Iberian. Some skulls of Castelluccio (in the territory of Noto) are in fact of the sphenoid type. Many archaeologists, starting with Paolo Orsi from Rovereto, argued that no change occurred at the time of the Sicilian migration and that Pantalica would have been the cultural continuation of Castelluccio. What, this, to be rejected absolutely. Not only has the material culture totally changed, but the skullcaps corroborate the migration thesis: the skulls of Pantalica are in most cases of the ellipsoid type, therefore a little different from those of the cultures of Castelluccio and Thapsos. [11]; moreover, the typically Sican pottery (of a gray-yellow mixture decorated first with painted bands forming various rhomboid and triangular weaves and subsequently with incisions) continued to exist on the western side of the island, while in the eastern part a new one appeared with a strong percentage of iron, garnet-red in color, whose composition does not appear to be insular but peninsular.
The later Sicilian pottery, the strictly island one, in fact has a gray-yellow mixture, since the clay of the mixture is that of the territory and it is from there that the feathered pottery was born, which is present only on the eastern side and not in the Sican context. Italian archaeologists, especially Sicilian ones, have simply '' seen '' the fake until today. The Elymians were clearly of proto-Illyrian origin and certainly with Acheo-Troian infiltrations and others of purely Hellenic (the Phocean element) and Sican lineage: their language in fact is very similar to that of the Sicilian Illyrians (emi '' I am '' present in the inscriptions of both ethnic, in Siculo also in the variant iemi, or rather with a slight suction on e); and their pottery has a gray-yellow mixture, just like that of the Sicani and the feathered one of the Sicilians (all island productions therefore), even if it changes in the shapes and symbols adopted in the decorations (the famous taurine protomes are not present in the shapes Sicilian or Sicilian ceramics).Β
Siculi, Sicani and Elimi, and all these compared to the Greeks who arrived a few generations later (starting from the XNUMXth century BC, the period of the second colonization) they present well-differentiated anthropological, linguistic and cultural elements, but always in a very relative and therefore small form, always remaining in the Indo-European context. On the meaning of the ethnic names of the Sicilians, the Sicans and the Elimi, as well as on their language and culture I could say a lot, indeed a lot, but I reserve this surprise for the readers of my books. I can end this short (and pleasant, I hope) article by saying that the Sicilians were the Proto-Illyrians who occupied the eastern part of the island, incorporating some Ausonius elements (already entered into the cultural orbit of the Proto-Villanovan, between Ausonius I and II of the Aeolian archipelago), supporting the enotria tribe of the Morgeti from the beginning of the XNUMXth century. BC, and through other subsequent migration phenomena (up to the XNUMXth century BC), and above all that called themselves such, or "Siculi", already starting from their first Balkan settlement (otherwise, Pliny the Elder would never have spoken of Siculi Balkan in his Naturalis Historia, still present there in his time [12]); that the Sicans were the Indo-Europeans A of sub-Carpathian origin who migrated from Italy to Sicily at the end of the third millennium BC; that the Morgetis were a fractionation of the enotria nation, therefore always proto-Illyrians, and that once they reached eastern Sicily they kept a certain distance from the Sicilians, even if the feathered pottery was found in the vestiges of their most famous foundation, namely Morgantina ( and then the well-known artificial cave tombs); that the Elimi were also proto-Illyrians, because they detached from the Enotri, welcoming over time other ethnic elements and in minimal quantities, so as not to distort their language, and that they occupied the western side of Sicily shortly after the arrival of the Sicilians; and finally that the Ausoni, always proto-Illyrians, were really expelled from the North-East by the arrival of the Illyrians Iapigi (Dauni), migrating in part towards the South and thus reaching the Aeolian Islands and then the coasts of northern Sicily (the area of Milazzo), merging in part with the Sicilians up to that of Pantalica and Lentini (the ancient Xuthia [13]).
Therefore Sicily was said first Trinacria '' Trinacria '', then Sikania βSicania '' and finally Sikelia, that is βSicily '' [14]. The name of Italy derives from the name of the Sicilian king Italo [15], being first Ausonia and then Enotria. Even the Adriatic Sea has a distinctly Sicilian-Illyrian origin in the name and so does the name of the person that derives from it, Adriano: both names have the common origin from the God Adranos (in Sicilian language Hatranus), God of Heaven, Light, Thunderbolt and Fire revered by the Sicilians, directly from the Sicilian radical form effect- '' fire / heat '', of clear Indo-European filiation, being the ancestral one aidh-. The Greeks born in our land were called Sicelioti, or "Greeks of Sikeliaβ, But they were not Sicilians at all; just as the Greeks born in southern Italy, later called Magna Grecia, were called Italioti, or the "Greeks born in the land ruled by the Sicilian king Italo". But where does the denomination of "Siciliano" come from then? Simple, the suffix in n reveals the mystery: they are all those who come from Sikelia, the island that was conquered by the Sicilians.
To conclude, I want to tell you one last thing, quite important and which is the introduction to all the articles to follow, that is, from the third onwards. Archeology and Anthropology, as well as all sciences (in my specific case also Glottology, of which I make abundant and above all qualified use), constantly need neologisms, often created precisely and following the best practices, Or even ex abrupto, which allow the researcher to very easily narrow down a vast range of concepts, very often stratified or intertwined with each other in a variously complex way, to form a new semiological entity, as if it were a symbol. This allows us researchers to acquire a large amount of data and in turn to be able to create very precise synthesis frameworks and with the main purpose that nothing can be left so oblivious, but that everything is always available at the moment of use of the same data. I understand that to the layman all these `` big words '' may seem abstruse, even unpronounceable, of which it is not possible to find any trace in the various dictionaries, because they are too specific and above all always and continuously coined scratch. We researchers are unfortunately like that. But it is thanks to us and above all to our work that it is possible for all of you to follow our research hand in hand, making you all participate in our experiences. However, the neologisms arise from a good command of classical languages, that is Greek and Latin, very often through a process not only of coining but of re-phonologizing certain phrases extrapolated from the many texts that make up the corpus of Greek and Latin literature.
For example, the great prof. Paul Bears, who spent his entire life in the study of Sicilian prehistory (he himself, from Rovereto) invented various neologisms, still in use in our field, such as the coinage enchytrismos, indicating the burial, often infantile, '' inside a large vase '', inside the jar which in ancient Greek was called pithos. But it is clear that the neologism in question is not found in the ancient Greek-Italian dictionaries and not even in those of Italian only. Yet, thanks to the good Orsi, we researchers today know how to indicate a specific funeral rite thanks to a single word, instead of using an exhausting phrase. I myself, now tired of the obsolete '' formulas '' and the antiquated '' forms '' transmitted to me by the academic environment, I had to create new '' formulas '' and more efficient '' forms '' to better move in my researches, without falling into the same mistakes that all my predecessors ran into. If this were not the case, it would never go on, it would be groping in pitch darkness. I had to, and I like to do it, to coin neologisms of all kinds for this purpose, very often subverting the disciplinary frameworks imposed because they are fallacious. But I have always adhered to all the trappings of intellectual honesty, always warning my readers at the beginning of each reading of my hard position and explaining to them the new method of investigation and the new system of glosses to be adopted. to better assimilate the fruits of my research.
I therefore understand the discouragement of some readers in not suddenly understanding certain '' new '' words, of which my only lack, and therefore not inexperience, was not having given a preparatory explanation. I actually always regret this. The time available is what it is, unfortunately, and perhaps I'm not really used to talking to a very varied audience, but always far too small. But I can, indeed I must, always heal any lacunae. Therefore, if some of you, my dear readers, fail to understand certain neologisms, such as Urvolk, macro-group, proto-group, proto-Celtic e ur-Celtic, proto-Illyrian (therefore a little different from Illyrian, with which subsequent genealogical branches are designated), semantic cast, phonetic cast, upper European/paleo-European, sub-carpathian, xanthrocism etc., just ask and everything will be given to you. In the specific case of the lemma Urvolk (German form), we are dealing, as in all scientific neologisms, with a mere intellectual convention, a laboratory creation for the use and consumption of specialists. But given the importance that the lemma in question had during the first half of the twentieth century, a historical period in which archeology and anthropology had a great importance in the life of the German people, the same lemma even ended up in dictionaries, and this is due to a well-known process which in Linguistics is known as '' acclimatization ''. In other European languages, this did not happen in fact, also because anthropological and archaeological sciences did not play such an important role in the formation of individuals in the other European nations.
Ma it is clear that the lemma `` German '' Urvolk it is not really '' German '', but it is an academic invention, since the first radical and characterizing element, ur-, it is not precisely '' German '' but purely Indo-European. It is in fact an ancestral root form present in all Indo-European languages, therefore detectable in the lateral areas, and therefore absolutely Indo-European. This radical element is in fact found in various forms, of which I will mention only the most important ones: urΜ₯- '' strength '', comprising in its nucleus one r sonante, therefore with the possibility of vocalization, generated in Latin respectively screw '' force '' e vir '' man '' (in the sense of '' endowed with strength ''), but also take care '' bull '' (because '' male '' and therefore '' strong ''); in Norse will come '' man '' (from the oldest form wir); in present-day Irish Gaelic fear '' man '' (with metaphony of u/v > f); in ancient Greek, although with a slight semantic drift, we have Ξ²Ξ―Ξ± `` force / violence '' (through the well-known phenomenon of betacism, i.e. the bilabial voiced occlusive rendering b the voiced labio-dental fricative v, which in turn derives from the rounded and unrounded closed back vowel, i.e. the known digamma Indo-European). Therefore, this radical element ur- does not mean '' primeval '' or '' primordial '', but '' strength '', having therefore undergone a process of semantic drift up to meaning '' man '', '' bull '' etc. Now, and this is where I want you, just by entering the Worldview Indo-European, we realize that it is right in the mindset Indo-European indicate any creative act, therefore primordial, evoking the '' force '', being active precisely on the inert underlying matter, shaping it for one's own purposes. The act of force, ur, the masculine principle, is just that: active energy shaping the underlying passive matter, which is the feminine principle; being however the '' first '' act, that of creation, on the passive immobility of inert matter. Indeed, in the dictionaries of any modern European language we could never find this radical element, ur-, yes as important as a single gloss. This radical element is visible even in the Sicilian anthroponym Uitalus, that is the king Italo, who with his strength managed to deduce from the enotria federation becoming lord of that territory, thus creating the Italy, the land of Italo, our homeland.
If someone can always give you an explanation of his work then his work is always sincere and loyal, otherwise he is mendacious. So far I have heard so many, both in academia and elsewhere, about the Sicilians or the Sicans: who has seen `` runic glyphs '' (sic) in the graphemes of the Sicilian inscriptions scattered in the eastern insular part; who has come to the derivation of Sicilian from Sanskrit; plus other obscene amenities. The only thing we really need nowadays is seriousness, only seriousness.
Note:
[1] Thucydides, Stories, VI, 2, 4 (Italo, king of the Sicilians); See. Aristotle, Policy, IV, 9, 1-3; Antiochus of Syracusan in Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman antiquities, I, 35, 1-3 (Italo, king of the Enotri, news not to be understood as "king of enotria origin", being an error, but as "regency over the Enotri"); Virgil, Aeneid, VII, vv. 176-181.Β
[2] Thucydides, Stories, VI, 2, 5; Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman antiquities, I, 22, 5.
[3] Diodorus Siculus, Historical library, V, 6.Β
[4] Pausanias, Periegesi of Greece, V, 25, 6; Strabo, Geography, VI, 2, 4 (in whose text it is Ephorus cumane to say that the first to live there Sikelia were the Iberians, or rather the Iberians, therefore the people of the bell-shaped glass).
[5] Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman antiquities, I, 22, 5.Β
[6] Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman antiquities, I, 22, 1-3.
[7] This is also confirmed by Pliny (Naturalis Historia, III, 13, 111): Numana a Siculis condita, ab issdem colony Ancona.Β
[8] Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman antiquities, I, 22, 4-5.
[9] Francisco Villar, The Indo-Europeans and the origins of Europe, Ed. Mulino, Bologna, 1997.Β
[10] Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, vv. 322-332.
[11] Giuseppe Sergi, Prehistoric skulls of Sicilyin Proceedings of the Roman Anthropological Society, Vol. VI, Rome 1899, pp. 3-13; Joseph Sergi, Neolithic Sicilian skullsin Bull. Italian Palethnology, Vol. XVII, Rome 1891; Joseph Sergi, Ancient skulls of Sicily and Cretein Proceedings Soc. Rom. of Anthropology, Vol. II, Rome 1895. These texts must always be read with due reservations. Prehistoric and ancient skulls have been mainly studied by me cum manual; also making many comparisons (not really direct, because I would have aroused horror in people, but using a photographic kit or my good memory capacity for this purpose) with those of current populations, i.e. those still living in small villages or remote countryside districts, above all in the Hyblean area, places with a strong Sicilian heritage (municipalities such as Buscemi, for example, where I noticed this ellipsoidism accompanied by a beautiful blond, xanthocroism, and very clear complexion, leukoderma, of a very pale pink and subject to easy emotional rubescence) . Β
[12] Pliny, Naturalis Historia, III, 22, 141.Β
[13] Diodorus Siculus, Historical library, V, 8.Β
[14] Diodorus Siculus, Historical library, V, 2, 1-2.
[15] Thucydides, Stories, VI, 2, 4.
Excellent exposure. It would also be nice to know the mysteries and origins of the Canarian peoples
Thank you! I wrote to us a few years ago: https://axismundi.blog/2016/02/03/enigmi-del-mediterraneo-i-guanci-i-popoli-del-mare-e-atlantide/
Very interesting post, congratulations. Is anything more known about the people of the Cones or Choni, mentioned in the article? Thank you.
Thanks Stefano. If you want I can put you in email contact with the author of the study so you can ask him directly. I remain available
MM
Copy and paste from an email from the author:
βIn my books I treat everyone in great detail. The Cones were exiles of the nation of the Chaoni of Epirus and merged with the Enotri giving life to the Culture of the chamber tombs of the Cones of Basilicata. "
It would be time to put together the forum of the Swords Naue II and the Urnfield funerary compositions of the Sicilians in Lipari ((Incendio del Castello) of which Brea illustrated very well in his work.