Italian ǀ Mediterranean Europe
Image: Flavio Manzoni, born in Sassari, senior vice president of design at Ferrari
Sardinia Island is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the second largest island in the Mediterranean and is located south of Corsica and north of Tunisia. Due to geographical and historical reasons that isolated the island, Sardinia has been considered genetically different from other regions of the Mediterranean basin and from continental Italy in particular. Sardinia’s indigenous language and the other minority languages (Sassarese, Gallurese, Algherese Catalan and Ligurian Tabarchino) spoken on the island are recognized by the regional law and enjoy “equal dignity” with Italian.
Sardinia is one of the most geologically ancient bodies of land in Europe. The island was populated in various waves of immigration from prehistory until recent times. The first people to settle in Sardinia during the Upper Paleolithic (beginning around 50000 BCE) and the Mesolithic came from Continental Europe. Around the 9th century BCE the Phoenicians began visiting Sardinia with increasing frequency, presumably initially needing safe overnight and all-weather anchorages along their trade routes from the coast of modern-day Lebanon as far afield as the African and European Atlantic coasts.
Sardinia is home to nearly 4 million which makes the island one of the areas of the world with the highest density of sheep per kilometer. Wheat, barley, grapes and olives are some of the dominant agricultural products.
The Sardinia population represents data from 56 unrelated males and 69 unrelated females from Sassari and Orgosolo samples using the AmpFLSTR Identifier
Source publication: Population data for 15 autosomal STRs loci and 12 Y chromosome STRs loci in a population sample from the island of Sardinia, Legal Medicine, 2009, pp 37-40
[population 404]
