History of Italy

Italy is a country in Europe where people have lived for at least 850,000 years. The Italian Peninsula was inhabited since classical antiquity by ancient Etruscans, several Italic peoples (including the Latins, Samnites, and Umbri), Celts, colonists from Magna Graecia, and other ancient peoples. Italy served as the cradle and hub of ancient Roman civilization. Rome was established as a republic in 509 BC, having first been a kingdom in 753 BC. After uniting Italy to form a confederation of the Italic peoples, the Roman Republic went on to rule over Northern Africa, the Near East, and Western Europe. Following Julius Caesar's assassination, the Roman Empire ruled over Western Europe and the Mediterranean for centuries, influencing the advancement of Western philosophy, science, art, and culture. Italy was divided into multiple city-states and regional polities following the fall of Rome in AD 476. This division persisted until the country's total unification in 1871. The maritime republics, especially Genoa and Venice, prospered. While Southern Italy remained mostly feudal due to a series of Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Spanish, and Bourbon monarchs, Central Italy continued to be governed by the Papal States. With the beginning of the modern age, the Italian Renaissance brought humanism, science, adventure, and art back to life and expanded to the rest of Europe. There were four waves of Indoeuropean migration to Italy during the Copper Age. Around the middle of the third millennium BC, a group of people who brought coppersmithing underwent the first Indoeuropean migration. The Po Valley was overrun by the Remedello civilization. The second wave of the Bronze Age took place in the Padan Plain, Tuscany, and along the shores of Sardinia and Sicily. These tribes were associated with the Beaker civilization and used bronze smithing techniques. The Bronze Age lasted from the late third to the early second millennium BC. A third wave, linked to the Terramare and Apenninian cultures, emerged in the middle of the second millennium BC.