Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Early Years
Italy's south has been busy for a very long time. The first inhabitant we know of is the
'Altamura Man' who is currently wedged in the karst cave of Lamalunga, Puglia, slowly
becoming part of the crystal concretions that surround him. He's about 130,000 years old.
Fast forward to around 7000 BC, when the Messapians, an Illyrian-speaking people from
the Balkans, were settling down in the Salento and around Foggia. Alongside them were
other long-gone tribes such as the Daunii in the Gargano, the Peucetians around Taranto
and the Lucanians in Basilicata, who were starting to develop the first settled towns in the
region - by 1700 BC there is evidence that they were beginning to trade with the Mycenae-
ans from mainland Greece and the Minoans in Crete.
The first evidence of an organised settlement on Sicily belongs to the Stentillenians, who
came from the Middle East and settled on the island's eastern shores sometime between
4000 and 3000 BC. But it was the settlers from the middle of the second millennium BC
who radically defined the island's character and whose early presence helps us understand
Sicily's complexities. Thucydides (c 460-404 BC) records three major tribes: the Sicani-
ans, who originated either in Spain or North Africa and settled in the north and west (giv-
ing these areas their Eastern flavour); the Elymians from Greece, who settled in the south;
and the Siculians (or Sikels), who came from the Calabrian peninsula and spread out along
the Ionian Coast.
It is commonly said that there is less Italian blood running through modern Sicilian veins than there is
Phoenician, Greek, Arabic, Norman, Spanish or French.
