Genetic structures and linguistic boundaries in Italy: A microregional approach

The amount of generic data (sequences, gene frequencies, and isonymy) avail able for the Province of Ferrara, Italy, makes this area one of the world's best known. In an effort to infer the underlying demographic processes, we studied the provinces population structure by comparing geological, palaeo climatic, archeological, historical, and linguistic data. This multilevel a pproach allowed us to date some characteristics of the population structure from prehistoric times to the Roman and Middle Ages, and to detect overlap ping biological, cultural, and geographic boundaries. To detect linguistic boundaries within this area we turned pronunciation differences into phonet ic notation. We then computed pairwise distances by using methods for multi ple genetic sequence analysis, in order to obtain a distance matrix of the overall pronunciation variability. This approach enabled us to test the ass ociation among linguistic, geographical, and genetic distance matrices usin g the same statistical tests. Results indicate that demographic phenomena c an be traced in an area as small as the Province of Ferrara and that, on a microregional scale, recent events may have influenced important aspects of the overall generic variation.