Thread by @_Italus

𝐏𝐫𝐞-𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐨-𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐲:
An overview of the autochthonous people of the peninsula.

When discussing Italy's first non-Indo-European (IE) peoples, a clear classification is evident between the Sardinian tribes, the Tyrrhenians and the contentious Ligurian-Sicanians.
We will broach the topic following this distinction.

The ancient tribes of Sardinia are broadly split between two people groups; the Balari and Iolei, each of them divided into their own respective tribes.
These Nuragic peoples would confederate as the Sherden and terrorize the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age.

Toponymic evidence indicates a link between the Paleo-Sardinian language, Proto-Basque, and the Pre-IE Iberian language.
By this logic, the tribes that became the Nuragic civilization likely came to the island due to prehistoric migration from the Iberian peninsula.

According to Pausanias, the northern Balari derived their name from "Punic mercenaries, possibly Libyans or Iberians, who, disputing over spoils, rebelled and joined the natives. Their name in the Cyrnian (Corsican) language is Balari, which is the word for fugitives."

To the Greeks, the southern Iolei derive their name from Iolaos, nephew of Herakles. He supposedly founded a colony in Sardinia and gave his name to the locals.
Others suggest that Trojans settled there and intermingled with the natives, keeping the name of their city, Ilion.

The Tyrrhenians as we understand them today consist of the Etruscans, Rhaetians and Pre-Greek Lemnians
The latter are excluded from today's range of study, so I recommend @hermahai if you wish to know more about Aegean matters.

The Etruscans, who called themselves, Rasenna, were composed of a league of twelve cities (and subsequent colonies) and inhabited most of north-central Italy.
Their origins are a matter of extreme debate, but two positions stand out:

The autochthonous (indigenous) theory asserts the Etruscans stem from the original human settlers of the region, with all "foreign" cultural elements having been a result of later Greco-Phoenician contact.
This is supported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Book I, sections 29-30).

The allochthonous theory claims an Anatolian provenance, namely due to Herodotus' attributing Lydian origins for the Etruscans.
This is however refuted by both the Lydian historian Xanthus and Dionysius (see the above quotation).
Turkish conspiracists are very fond of this one.

The Rhaetians were a group of tribes inhabiting the eastern Alps, famed for their savagery in combat and their resistance to conquest.
Their name is an exonym coming from the Celtic "Rait", meaning peaks or high-tops.
The Rhaetians would then be the "Mountain-Men".

According to Pliny, they were originally Etruscans who followed the prince Reto on his flight north from the Gauls when they invaded.
As the Etruscans were influenced by the Greeks, so were the Rhaetians influenced by the Celts, as seen with their use of Gallic names and arms.

Unlike the Sardinians and Tyrrhenians, the tentative term of "Ligurian-Sicanian" describes a series of peoples who 𝑚𝑎𝑦 have had a linguistic correlation dating back to Italian prehistory.
There is still debate about whether or not these people were non-IE in the first place.

The Ligurians get their name from the Greek Λίγυς (Ligys).
In archaic history, the Ligurians were thought to be the archetypical north-western barbarian, just as the Scythians were the north-east and the Aetheopians the south.
It was more of a blanket term than a specific name.

The debate about their IE origins stems from the lack of linguistic evidence and the influence of both IE (Celts) and non-IE (Iberians & Etruscans) peoples in their culture.
This is only galvanized by how old settlements in the region are, with copper mines dating to ~3000 PVC.

The matter is complicated by the Corsi people of Corsica.
According to Seneca, they were Ligurian exiles who mixed with the natives (presumably the Sardinians) and took the name of their Ligurian leader, Corsa.
Toponymic evidence suggests paleo-Corsican to be non-IE.

The Sicani are the oldest of the three Sicilian peoples, and were sandwiched in the central highlands between the Elymians and the Sicels, whom are thought to both be IE peoples (likely Italic, 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑦 Illyrian).

Like Ligurian, the absence of linguistic evidence is a cause of debate.
What we have of Sicanian toponyms 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚 similiar to other non-IE languages (reoccurring suffixes like: -𝑖𝑛𝑎, -𝑎𝑛𝑎, -𝑎𝑟𝑎, -𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑠,-𝑠𝑠𝑎), but the lack of material makes this not conclusive.

There are others whom we may theorize to be non-IE, the Pelasgians, Oenotrians and Ausones among them.
Most, however, are lost to myth or were supplanted by later peoples, erasing all trace of them.
This was but an introduction, I will go in depth on each people at a later date.

@cainntear We know very little about Northern Picene other than it is not related to the IE Italic Southern Picene.
My theory is that it is most likely a paelo-Italic language that was replaced with the expansion of the Osco-Umbrians into the peninsula.