Prehistory Sardinia was first settled by
modern humans from
continental Europe during the
Upper Paleolithic and the
Mesolithic; at the time Sardinia and
Corsica formed a single island, the largest in the Mediterranean, separated from the
Italian peninsula by a short stretch of sea. During the
Neolithic,
Early European Farmers settled in Sardinia. , erected by the Pre-Nuragic Sardinians from the Ozieri and
Abealzu-Filigosa culture. In the Late
Chalcolithic to the Early
Bronze Age, the
Bell Beaker culture from
Southern France, Northeastern Spain, and then
Central Europe entered the island, bringing new metallurgical techniques and ceramic styles and probably
Indo-European languages. An early modest
gene flow of the
Western Steppe Herders has been dated to about this period (~2600 BCE).
Nuragic civilization The Nuragic civilization arose in the Middle Bronze Age, during the Late
Bonnanaro culture, which showed connections with the previous Beaker culture and the
Polada culture of
northern Italy. Although the Sardinians were considered to have acquired a sense of national identity, at that time, the grand tribal identities of the Nuragic Sardinians were said to be three (roughly from the South to the North): the
Iolei/Ilienses, inhabiting the area from the southernmost plains to the mountainous zone of eastern Sardinia (later part of what would be called by the Romans
Barbaria); the
Balares, living in the North-West corner; and finally the
Corsi stationed in today's
Gallura and the island to which they gave the name,
Corsica. Nuragic Sardinians have been connected by some scholars to the
Sherden, a tribe of the so-called
Sea Peoples, whose presence is registered several times in
ancient Egyptian records. The language or languages spoken in Sardinia during the Bronze Age is unknown since there are no written records of such period. According to
Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, the
Paleo-Sardinian language was akin to
Proto-Basque and the
ancient Iberian. In contrast, others believe it was related to
Etruscan. Other scholars theorize that there were various linguistic areas (two or more) in Nuraghic Sardinia, possibly
Pre-Indo-European and Indo-European.
Antiquity , with the red dots being their most notable settlements. In the
8th century BCE,
Phoenicia founded
colonies and ports along the southern and western coast, such as
Karalis,
Bithia,
Sulki and
Tharros; starting from the same areas, where the relations between the indigenous Sardinians and the descendants of Phoenician settlers, the
Punic people, had been so far peaceful, the
Carthaginians proceeded to annex the southern and western part of Sardinia in the late 6th century BC. Well into the
1st century BCE, native Sardinians were said to have preserved many cultural affinities with the Punic people of
North Africa. After the
First Punic War, the whole island was conquered by the
Romans in the 3rd century BC. Sardinia and Corsica were then made into a
single province; however, it took the Romans more than another 150 years to manage to subdue the more belligerent Nuragic tribes of the interior, and after 184 years since the Sardinians fell under Roman sway,
Cicero noted how there was still not on the island a single community which had had friendly intercourse with the Roman people. Even from the former Sardo-Carthaginian settlements, with which the Sardinian mountaineers had formed an alliance in a common struggle against the Romans, indigenous attempts emerged aimed at resisting cultural and political assimilation: inscriptions in
Bithia dating to the period of
Marcus Aurelius were found, and they still followed the old Punic script at a time when even in North Africa the script was neo-Punic; Overall, Sardinia was quite disliked by the Romans and, as isolated as it was kept,
Romanization proceeded at a relatively slow pace. The Italic immigrants were confronted with a difficult coexistence with the natives, who were reluctant to assimilate to the language and customs of the colonists; many aspects of the ancient Sardo-Punic culture are documented to have persisted well into Imperial times, and the mostly mountainous innerlands came to earn the name of
Barbaria ("Land of the Barbarians", similar in origin to the word
Barbary) as a testament of the fiercely independent spirit of the tribes who dwelled therein (in fact, they would continue to practice their indigenous prehistoric religion up until the age of
Pope Gregory I). Nevertheless, Sardinia would eventually undergo cultural Romanization, the modern
Sardinian language being one of the most evident cultural developments thereof.
Strabo gave a brief summary about the Mountaineer tribes, living in what would be called
civitates Barbariae,
Geographica V ch.2:There are four nations of mountaineers, the Parati, Sossinati, Balari, and the Aconites. These people dwell in caverns. Although they have some arable land, they neglect its cultivation, preferring rather to plunder what they find cultivated by others, whether on the island or on the continent, where they make descents, especially upon the Pisatæ. The prefects sent [into Sardinia] sometimes resist them, but at other times leave them alone, since it would cost too dear to maintain an army always on foot in an unhealthy place. Like any other subjects of the Empire, Sardinians too would be granted
Roman citizenship in 212 AD with the
Constitutio Antoniniana by
Caracalla.
Middle Ages After the fall of the
Western Roman Empire, Sardinia was ruled in rapid succession by the
Vandals, the
Byzantines, the
Ostrogoths and again by the Byzantines, when the island was, once again in its history, joined to North Africa as part of the
Exarchate of Africa. During the
Middle Ages, the "Sardinian Nation" (
Nació Sarda or
Sardesca, as reported from the native and Aragonese dispatches) was juridically divided into
four kingdoms, known collectively in
Sardinian as
Judicadu,
Giudicau or simply
Logu "Place"; in ); all of them, except for the
Judicate of Arborea, fell under the influence of the
maritime republics of
Genoa and
Pisa, as well as some noble families from the two cities, like the
Doria family, the
Della Gherardesca family, and the
Malaspina family. The Dorias founded the cities of
Alghero and
Castelgenovese (today
Castelsardo), while the Pisans founded
Castel di Castro (today
Cagliari) and
Terranova (today
Olbia); the famous
count Ugolino della Gherardesca, quoted by
Dante Alighieri in his
Divine Comedy, favored the birth of the mining town of
Villa di Chiesa (today
Iglesias), which became an Italian
medieval commune along with
Sassari and Castel di Castro. These new cities attracted migrants from the Italian peninsula, Corsica and several regions of Sardinia. ''" (1572) Following the
Aragonese conquest of the Sardinian territories under Pisan rule, which took place between 1323 and 1326, and then the
long conflict between the Aragonese Kingdom and the
Judicate of Arborea (1353–1420), the newborn
Kingdom of Sardinia became one of the Associate States of the
Crown of Aragon. The Aragonese repopulated the cities of Castel di Castro and Alghero predominantly with
Catalans and the
Algherese dialect of Catalan is still spoken by a minority in the city of Alghero.
Modern and contemporary history In the 16th and 17th centuries, the main Sardinian cities of Cagliari (the capital of the Kingdom), Alghero and Sassari appear well placed in the trade routes of the time. The cosmopolitan composition of its people provides evidence of it: the population was not only indigenous, but also hailing from Spain, Liguria, France and the island of
Corsica in particular. In 1738, the
Ligurian colonists escaped from
Tabarka (
Tunisia) were invited by
Charles Emmanuel III to settle on the little islands of
San Pietro and
Sant'Antioco (at
Carloforte and
Calasetta), in the south-west area of Sardinia, bringing with them a
Ligurian dialect called "Tabarchino", still widely spoken there. Then, the Piedmontese
Kingdom of Sardinia annexed the whole Italian peninsula and
Sicily in 1861 after the
Risorgimento, becoming the
Kingdom of Italy. Since 1850, with the reorganization of the Sardinian mines, there had been a considerable migration flow from the Italian peninsula towards the Sardinian mining areas of
Sulcis-
Iglesiente; these Mainland miners came mostly from
Lombardy, Piedmont,
Tuscany and
Romagna. According to an 1882 census realised by the French engineer Leon Goüine, 10,000 miners worked in the south-western Sardinian mines, one third of whom being from the Italian mainland; most of them settled in Iglesias and
frazioni . At the end of the 19th century, communities of fishermen from
Sicily,
Torre del Greco (Campania) and
Ponza (Lazio) migrated on the east coasts of the island, in the towns of
Arbatax/
Tortolì,
Siniscola and
La Maddalena. In 1931, only 3.2% of the island's population was estimated to be native of the Mainland. In the same period, a few
Italian Tunisian families settled in the sparsely populated area of
Castiadas, east of Cagliari. Following the
Italian economic miracle, a historic migratory movement from the inland to the coastal and urban areas of
Cagliari, Sassari-Alghero-
Porto Torres and
Olbia, where today most Sardinians live, took place. ==Demographics==