FASCINATING STUDY OF ANCIENT ROME DNA PROVES ETHNIC DIVERSITY

STANFORD : GENETIC HISTORY OF ROME

Excerpt:  An analysis of some of the earliest samples more or less comports with what has been found around Europe - they represent an influx of farmers primarily descended from early agriculturalists from Turkey and Iran around 8,000 years ago, followed by a shift toward ancestry from the Ukrainian steppe somewhere between 5000 and 3000 years ago.  By the founding of Rome, traditionally dated to 753 BCE, the city's population had grown and diversity and resembled modern European and Mediterranean peoples.