Free Republic

Asmall site on the rocky island of Tavolara off the coast of Sardinia may reveal a robust trading relationship between two Iron Age cultures. In the ninth century B.C., the Nuragic people of the main island of Sardinia exchanged ceramic and metal artifacts with the Villanovans, early Etruscans who inhabited central Italy. Although brooches and other Villanovan metal objects have been unearthed occasionally on Sardinia, evidence of exchange between the cultures has come primarily from Nuragic artifacts found in the tombs of high-status Villanovans in northern Etruria. As a result, scholars think that the Nuragic people and Villanovans mostly interacted...

An Italian village is offering villas for $1 to Americans who were sent into a tailspin and looking to flee the country after Donald Trump’s decisive 2024 presidential election win. The village of Ollolai, located in central Sardinia, is offering real estate for as little as $1.06 in a pitch to woo Americans who fancy the ex-pat lifestyle in the wake of the Nov. 5 election results, according to a new statement from Commune di Ollolai. “Are you worned [sic] out by global politics?” a website for the town wrote in a new advert. “Looking to embrace a more balanced...

A small rural village in Italy is offering homes for as little as $1.06 after the 2024 presidential election. “Are you worned out by global politics? Looking to embrace a more balanced lifestyle while securing new opportunities? It’s time to start building your European escape in the stunning paradise of Sardinia,” the promotional website says. The village of Ollolai on the island of Sardinia is working to increase their population size after decades of decline by attracting Americans seeking a new home.

A diver who spotted something metallic not far from Sardinia's coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins.Italy's culture ministry said Saturday that the diver alerted authorities, who sent divers assigned to an art protection squad along with others from the ministry's undersea archaeology department. The ministry posted images and video of the stunning discovery.The coins dating from the first half of the fourth century were found in sea grass, not far from the northeast shore of the Mediterranean island. The ministry didn't say exactly when the first diver caught a glimpse of something...

The necropolis is situated on the slopes of Mont’e Prama, a hill divided into the parallelepiped-shaped complex and the serpentine-shaped complex, towered by a nuraghe fortification.Previous excavations have found stone sculptures created by the Nuragic civilisation, a culture on Sardinia that emerged during the Bronze Age until the Roman period. The Nuragic are named for the large nuraghe tower-fortress constructions built across all parts of the island.The civilisation is also attributed with the construction of the Giants’ Graves, a collection of over 800 giant megalithic gallery graves either in the so-called “slab type” or “block type” format.In the latest excavations,...

Yahalom-Mack adds that her team was surprised to trace the ingots to Sardinia, which is “beyond the western Mediterranean, beyond the [Cypriots’] regular route of trade, which is Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and the Aegean.” Though Cyprus was once considered a passive player in the Bronze Age metal trade, simply producing copper for other countries, more recent research has painted a portrait of a “small but agile nation with both formal and informal trade ties that may well have helped fill the power vacuum that occurred with the collapse of entranced empires around 1200 B.C.E.,” per the Times of Israel.Divers...

It’s not so hidden…When we talk about Chinese information warfare and the effectiveness of its propaganda operations the discussion sometimes seems a bit abstract. We are aware the Chinese do this, and we are often aware of the effectiveness of their efforts, but it can feel like what we are witnessing is the result of some “invisible hand.” Turns out often that hand is not invisible at all.Consider the case of the Wuhan lab, the “wet market” lie, and Peter DaszakWhen the COVID-19 pandemic first struck the United States, and we began to search for its origins, we now know...

There are “portions” of 9 central-southern regions which could be affected by caduta of fragments of the Chinese space rocket ‘Long March 5B’: Umbria, Lazio, Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia. The return to earth is scheduled for 2:24 am on 9 May, with a time window of uncertainty of ñ 6 hours. The indications come from the Operational Committee of the Civil Protection convened by the head of the Department, Fabrizio Curcio. The advice is to stay indoors and not in open places since “it is unlikely that the fragments cause the collapse of buildings.”

Pasta makes everything better. This we know. But in the ancient villages of Sardinia, where the art of handmade pasta is practically a sacred ritual, there are ancestral, mouth-watering secrets that even the finest fettuccine can’t hold a candle to. We’re talking about the most beautiful and intricate shapes you’ve never seen; braided, stretched, twisted and crocheted using mesmerising bygone techniques. Did you know there’s only three women who still make one of the rarest pasta on earth? These are the disappearing recipes of Italian elders, passed down for generations by Sardinian and Italian women (and maybe a few men...

The small town of Nuoro, on Italy’s Sardinia island, is home to what many are calling the world’s rarest pasta, an intricate, hand-made treat that only a handful of people can make. Known as su filindeu (in Sardinia’s Sardo dialect), or Fili di Dio (in Italian), and translated as threads of God, this traditional pasta had been linked to La Festa di San Francesco, an ancient religious ritual celebrated every year, in May. For the past two hundred years, the only way to try threads of god pasta was to complete a 33km pilgrimage on foot or horseback from Nuoro...

Geneticists have scanned the genomes of 173 Armenians from Armenia and Lebanon and compared them with those of 78 other populations from around the world. They found that the Armenians are a mix of ancient populations whose descendants now live in Sardinia, Central Asia and several other regions... Armenians share 29 percent of their DNA ancestry with Otzi, a man whose 5,300-year-old mummy emerged in 1991 from a melting Alpine glacier. Other genetically isolated populations of the Near East, like Cypriots, Sephardic Jews and Lebanese Christians, also share a lot of ancestry with the Iceman, whereas other Near Easterners, like...

After ravaging countries in Africa, the Middle East, and India, swarms of locust have now made their way to Europe as the Italian region of Sardinia recently saw its worst attack in 70 years. Around 30 000 ha (74 000 acres) of crops have been affected in Nuoro City alone, according to the Italian Journalist Agency (AGI). "When the locusts arrived in mid-May, my cabbages were small, it wasn't harvesting time yet, they were all still in the field. Then the swarm came through, started to devour all the leaves, leaving only the stem," a Sardinian farmer named Giovanni said....

A new study of the genetic history of Sardinia... tells how genetic ancestry on the island was relatively stable through the end of the Bronze Age, even as mainland Europe saw new ancestries arrive. The study further details how the island's genetic ancestry became more diverse and interconnected with the Mediterranean starting in the Iron Age, as Phoenician, Punic, and eventually Roman peoples began arriving to the island. The people of Sardinia have long been studied by geneticists to understand human health. The island has one of the highest rates of people who live to 100 years or more, and...

Scientists aren't particularly surprised to find volcanism in the region, which is home to active volcanoes like Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. But the new complex is unusual because it was created by a rare kind of fault... The western Mediterranean is seismically restless because of the collision of three tectonic plates: the African, the Eurasian and the Anatolian. Making matters more complex is a small chunk of crust called the Adriatic-Ionian microplate, which broke off of the African Plate more than 65 million years ago and is now being pushed under the larger Eurasian Plate in a process called...

We offer here an answer to one of the most intriguing questions in ancient Mediterranean history: the timing/contexts and incentives of early Phoenician expansion to Mediterranean and Atlantic regions in Africa and Europe ~3,000 years ago. This was enabled by a rare opportunity to analyze a very large sample set of ancient silver items from Phoenicia. An interdisciplinary collaboration combining scientific methods with precise archaeological data revealed the Phoenicians' silver sources. We propose that Phoenicians brought silver to the Levant from southwest Sardinia ~200 years before they de facto settled there, and later, gradually, also from Iberia. We show that...

The three-time Italian premier, who has made a career out of rebounding from legal woes, personal scandal, heart trouble and political setbacks, is running for the European Parliament in May elections. The 82-year-old Berlusconi announced his candidacy with his center-right Forza Italia party Thursday in Sardinia. He said he wanted to “bring my voice to a Europe that should change, a Europe that has lost profound thinking about the world.” Berlusconi had been barred from running for public office for nearly five years due to a tax fraud conviction. Citing his good conduct, a court last year ruled that he...

British retirees thinking of moving to the sun-soaked south of Italy could soon be able to take advantage of a massive tax break that is being mooted by the country’s new government. The populist administration hopes to reverse the chronic population decline of Italy’s southern regions by luring people to settle there with the promise of paying no taxes for 10 years. The scheme will be open not only to Italians but to foreigners too, it is envisaged. The idea has been proposed by The League, the hard-Right party which makes up one half of the coalition which came to...

A New Paleolithic Revolution Image Caption: The ‘Rangki Papa’ (‘Father of all Rafts’) built using Palaeolithic technology and approaching the coast of Komodo, Bali, having succeeded in crossing from Sumbawa, 7 October 2004. The vessel travelled 36.4km in 9 hours 22 minutes Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean KingsleyJuly/August 2007 For decades archaeologists have rightly respected the Neolithic period c. 8500 BC as a revolutionary era of the most profound change, when the wiring of mankind’s brain shifted from transient hunter-gathering to permanent settlement in farming communities. Hearths, temples, articulated burials, whistling ‘wheat’ fields and security replaced the...

An Etruscan settlement that dates back to the 9th century BC has been found on the Sardinian coasts near Olbia. The presence emerged during a review of the findings of recent years by the archaeological superintendency for the Sassari and Nuoro provinces. The area of the settlement - according to a statement issued by the superintendency - is on the Tavolara isle, a position that enabled a certain degree of caution in contact with coastal inhabitants and those further inland. Archaeologists note that other settlements might be found in the Gallura area, on the opposite shore from Etruria. Etruria's cities...

E. Matisoo-Smith from the University of Otago, New Zealand and Pierre Zalloua from the Lebanese American University, Beirut, and colleagues... looked at mitochondrial genomes... to investigate how Phoenicians integrated with the Sardinian communities they settled. The researchers found 14 new ancient mitogenome sequences from pre-Phoenician (~1800 BCE) and Phoenician (~700-400 BCE) samples from Lebanon and Sardinia and then compared these with 87 new complete mitogenomes from modern Lebanese and 21 recently published pre-Phoenician ancient mitogenomes from Sardinia. The researchers found evidence of continuity of some lineages of indigenous Sardinians after Phoenician settlement, which suggests that there was integration between Sardinians...