Hopefully this article on Ancient Italy will encourage you to become better acquainted with the Early Foundations of Italy, and the origins of settlers, like for instance the debate of the origins of the Etruscans.

Ancient Italy was about Umbrians, Faliscans, Samnites, Picenians, Vestini, Sabines
Etruscans, Romans, Peligni, Marsians, Pentro, Campanians, Latins, Lucanians, Sicels, Baunians, Peucetians, Messapians, Ligurians, Celts, Venetians, and of course the Greeks and Cathaginians. About their Culture and their Conflict.

Below are a few tantilizing parargraphs of the text, and photos you will be enjoying in
The National Geographic Magazine -January 2005 issue and  Website at
Ancient Italy@National Geographic Magazine
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0501/feature3/index.html

National Geographic Magazine
January 2005

In the centuries leading up to the birth of the empire, ancient Italy saw the rise and fall of a host of cultures—Umbrians, Samnites, Faliscans, and others. All left their mark on the life of the modern country. Now archaeologists are learning more about how these early Italians thought, fought, worked, and worshipped.

Discoveries are bringing to light extraordinary new aspects of the peoples who lived in Italy before the Romans became its masters. In the Iron Age, around the ninth century B.C., when the Romans were merely a smallish farming tribe living in huts near the Tiber, Italy was teeming with distinctive cultures, languages, and works of art and craft.

In fact, until the fourth century B.C. the Romans weren't the ones you'd have picked as most likely to conquer the Western world. The smart money would have been on the Etruscans—or on the Samnites.

Origins of Italia
Photograph by David Alan Harvey

The streets of Sulmona in the Abruzzi region hum with daily life. But back in 91 B.C. this region buzzed with discord. The Peligni people who inhabited this area had joined other Italics to demand equality with Roman citizens. The united groups pronounced themselves a nation—named Italia—and declared war on Rome. The Romans defeated the alliance, but granted the Italics Roman citizenship.

Geographical Advantage
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta

The town of Pettorano sul Gizio nestles among steep slopes of the Apennines, Italy's mountainous spine. Here in the Abruzzi region of central Italy, Italic peoples such as the warrior Samnites and the Marsians, found protection in a sculpted landscape. Archaeologist Nicola Terrenato calls this "exactly the kind of environment that would nurture local identity, pride, and distinctive culture."

Midwinter Celebration
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta

The walls of Sant' Antonio Abate Church in Novoli in southern Italy blaze with holiday lights during a Mass on January 16, the eve of the feast day of the town's patron saint. After the service the townspeople gather at a giant bonfire of flaming grapevines—a ritual passed down from the first millennium B.C., when the Italian peninsula was a patchwork of vibrant cultures known today as the Italic peoples. Even as the Romans began to consolidate their power in fourth century B.C., these different groups retained their traditions, many of which are still visible throughout Italy today.

Wild Horses
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta

Splashing through a valley stream in Montenero Val Cocchiara in Molise, Pentro horses are a vanishing breed. Genetic studies show that only about 150 of them remain. Though owned, and occasionally put to work, by dairy farmers in this central valley, Pentro horses live wild, susceptible to attack by wolves from the surrounding mountains. Pentro was the name of one group of Samnites, and horses such as these once proved a battlefield asset as the Samnites wielded their military skills against Roman expansion.

These days the wildest action happens in August, when owners round-up the valley's horses for a small rodeo. First, about 300 horses, including the Pentri, "are driven at full tilt into the rodeo area and twice around the arena," reports writer Erla Zwingle. Then yearlings are separated out. Each man has eight minutes to try to mount one of the unbroken yearlings, "and the man," says Erla, "doesn't always win."
 
 

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