Panorama Photo

It is always interesting to find out how much of our language derives from the local mythological substratum. Obviously in southern Europe the Greek and Latin culture prevails, with some contributions also from the Near and Middle East; and that's the reason why the Norse and Viking sagas are so fascinating and mysterious to us.
Just in this regard, as a curiosity, I point out that on the shoulders of a colossal - three meters high - stone lion, originally placed in the port of Piraeus, which currently guards the entrance to the Arsenale of Venice (brought to our city in 1600 by Francesco Morosini "the Peloponnesian") there are some inscriptions with runic characters dating back to the 11th century, made by Viking mercenaries at the service of the Byzantines. Just to say that traces of Nordic culture are arrived even in Venice, along very winding roads!
Ciao, Alvise

Thank you Alvise. The questions of settlements and migrations in Europe are extremely interesting to me. Long was a definite answer obscured, with various theories prevailing. We knew that:

- a hunter-gatherer culture was slowly, but steadily being replaced some (give or take) 7-8000 years ago, by agriculture.

- new burial styles, etc, came some (give or take) 4-5000 ago.

- nearly every language in Europe belong to the same family, indo-european. Few exceptions are members of the uralic languages (finnish, estonian, hungarian, and sami), or the one isolate: basque.

Modern genetics have solved the riddle, and detected 3 major migrations into Europe, with every european having the 3 components in various degrees. Any other migrations have "only" mixed the 3 components further, so to say. The 3 populations were: Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG), Early European Farmers (EEF), Western Steppe Herders (WSH).

WHG were the first to populate Europe. They left blue eyes as a genetical footprint. They were largely replaced by EEF in southern Europe, starting from Anatolia, but the EEF became increasingly fewer in NE-Europe. In particular Sardinia has a high degree of EEF ancestry. Basque is thus most likely a language of the EEF. Etruscian and Minoan will most likely be from EEF also. NW-Europe has slightly more EEF ancestry than WHG, and NE-Europe more WHG than EEF. These two components were overwhelmed in late neolithic-early bronze age by a massive migration from the Pontic Steppe by indoeuropeans (WSH). They make up more than 50% ancestry in northern Europe, and as low as 10-15% some places in the Mediterranean. They brought the indoeuropean language which must have prevailed as an elite language, and blond hair. So blue eyes and blond hair came from 2 different populations. That's funny!