Facts About The People of Italy

Culture and tradition rather than physical characteristics have given the Italians their sense of unity. Prior to the Roman era a commingling of peoples inhabited the Italian mainland. Of these, the Etruscans, who established a kingdom in west-central Italy between the Arno and Tiber rivers, were technologically the most developed. A variety of Italic peoples dwelt in other parts of the country. The Greeks first colonized southern Italy and Sicily during the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.

 

Eventually the Roman state not only absorbed these people but imported slaves from throughout the empire. After the fall of Rome, new invasions brought in Germanic Ostrogoths and Lombards as well as some Slavs. Saracens and Normans invaded Sicily and the south. It does not appear, however, that these incursions did much to change the physical appearance of the Italici.

 

The Mediterranean physical type predominates in the southern third of the country and in the islands. People of this type have olive complexions, dark hair and eyes, and rather broad heads, and they are usually shorter than peoples of northern Europe.

 

The population of the northern two-thirds of Italy is almost impossible to classify. One finds Mediterranean, Alpine, and Dinaric elements all mixed together. Northern Italy belongs to the vast racial mixture of west-central Europe; except for manners and gestures it is hard to distinguish its people from the Germans and the French. Although pure blonds are rare outside certain Alpine valleys, numerous mixed blonds and people with fair complexions are found throughout the Po Valley and northern Tuscany. The tallest Italians are found in the north.