At https://phys.org/news/2025-12-bronze-age-dna-calabria-reveals.html … in this one we are in Calabria in the southern Apeninnes of Italy. A cave known as the grotta dalla Monaca was used for local burials. It had quite a bit of skeletal material dating back to the Middle Bronze Age. Somewhere between 1780 and 1380BC. The population of this mountainous district had an interesting DNA profile. The genetic signature was related to people of the Early Bronze Age in southern Italy and Sicily. There was no connection with people from the eastern Mediterranean who colonised coastal southern Italy and Sicily in the Middle Bronze Age. However, the genome did have traits in common with people in NE Italy and the much earlier arrival of people with a distinct link to Anatolian farmers of the Neolithic. They also display some evidence of ancestry of people of the steppe zone. They arrived in Greece, the Balkans, and Italy during the upheavals at the end of the Early Bronze Age. Here they seem to have mixed with the local DNA base. The Calabrian community practised pastoralism and consumed milk and dairy products. They were able to survive in a challenging mountain environment as a result of dietary adaptation.
At https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ancient-hunter-dna-people-years.html … and this study also involves Italy. A quest to discover why so many Italians have a proclivity to live to a hundred years and beyond. Is it in their genes? Well, the study thinks it might be as it seems a fair proportion of those who lived a great age had DNA going all the way back to hunting folk that sought refuge in Italy, and southern Europe in general, during the Late Glacial Maximum. After the end of the Ice Age these people expanded into regions formerly too cold for comfort but some of them seem to left a significant mark on the population of Italy.
At https://phys.org/news/2025-12-beachy-woman-story-dna-analysis.html … it seems the skeleton of a young lady, known as the Beachy Head woman, is not what it seems. She lived during the Roman era and at first it was claimed she had sub Sahara African genes. A few years later another analysis claimed she had an origin in the Mediterranean region, somewhere like Cyprus. None of that would conflict with the human movement in and around the Roman empire. However, we now have a much fuller genetic analysis and it seems, after all the hype, she was a local. Just goes to show that genetic studies aren’t always what they are cracked up to be.