We were (mostly) wrong about Sardinia

David Reich's lab has constrained ancient Sardinia. From 24 February: doi 10.1038/s41559-020-1102-0

Five of their samples come from the Iron Age and later. NONE of them are related to that Farmer/ WHG mix common to the earlier Bronze Age, and making up about half the modern Sardinian genome. The newer samples are related to the other 38-44% of said genome - that is, they made it.

To the extent the present Sardinians look like Farmers, much of that signal had come in from the Near East later. Specifically, mostly by way of Carthage and Utica given the strong African signal there. It's Punic. (Some Greek too.) I am sure that this population shifted the Sardinian language, throughout the African- and Sicilian-facing sides of the island.

Although I reserve my right to question the Corsica-facing north.

The "Tyrrhenian Sea" was a thing - the Greeks knew it as the Etruscans' lake. The Punic group although mighty came late, and they only got to enjoy the place for a few centuries before northern Italy - under Rome - reasserted her overlordship. It became politically-incorrect to speak Canaani languages, so the people learnt Latin and Greek. Corsica and Elba were some bridges - rather, ferries - further.

To sum up: the Punic and (to a lesser extent) Greek migration over the early Iron Age swamped Sardinia to such a point that when the Romans got there, whatever indigenous languages had existed in 1200 BC were since wiped from the whole island. It was Greek and Punic, mostly Punic, just like Calabria and Sicily and, thereby, of no interest to what passed for Republican-Roman ethnography.

I still question Iron Age Corsica - and Bronze Age Sardinia. The latter, before the great Punic immigration, underwent another population shift, but smaller. About six percent of the modern genome, or 10% of the pre-Punic population, drifted in over the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The place has plenty of HV, JT, and U from the women. Contemporary (Early Bronze) Sicily has R1b-Z195 from the men, which is Iberian; given the shipcraft of that time, it must have got at least to Elba and Corsica too by then. This particular study didn't look at Elba or Corsica; and if Z195 isn't in Sardinia yet, it could well be from the size of the sample. Earliest Sardinia instead has R1b-V88... like Chad.