page_title: List of ancient peoples of Italy
section_title: Speakers of non-Indo-European languages
hierarchical_section_title: List of ancient peoples of Italy / Speakers of non-Indo-European languages
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Indicazione dettagliata delle tribù rilevate dai romani in Sardegna
context_page_description: This list of ancient peoples living in Italy summarises groupings existing before the Roman expansion and conquest. Many of the names are either scholarly inventions or exonyms assigned by the ancient writers of works in ancient Greek and Latin. In regard to the specific names of particular ancient Italian tribes and peoples, the time-window in which historians know the historical ascribed names of ancient Italian peoples mostly falls into the range of about 750 BC to about 200 BC, the time range in which most of the written documentation first exists of such names and prior to the nearly complete assimilation of Italian peoples into Roman culture. Nearly all of these peoples and tribes spoke Indo-European languages: Italics, Celts, Ancient Greeks, and tribes likely occupying various intermediate positions between these language groups. On the other hand, some Italian peoples likely spoke non-Indo-European languages. Peoples speaking languages of the Afro-Asiatic family are known to have settled in some coastal parts of insular Italy, Sardinia and western Sicily, specifically the Semitic Phoenicians and Carthaginians.
context_section_description: Scholars believe - though sometimes on the basis of scanty evidence - that the following peoples spoke non-Indo-European languages. Some of them were Pre-Indo-Europeans or Paleo-Europeans while, with regard to some others, Giacomo Devoto proposed the definition of Peri-Indo-European (i.e. everything that has hybrid characters between Indo-European and non-Indo-European).
caption: Ancient Sardinian tribes described by the Romans.
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