List of ancient Corsican and Sardinian tribes


This is a list of ancient Corsican and Sardinian tribes, listed in order of ethnic kinship or the general area in which they lived. Some closely fit the concept of a tribe. Others are confederations or even unions of tribes.

Overview

Before the Roman conquest in the 3rd century BC, the islands of Corsica and Sardinia were inhabited by three main peoples or ethnic groups, the Corsi, the Balares, and the Ilienses, each of them divided into several tribes. With the Roman conquest, the province of Sardinia and Corsica was created, becoming the second province of the Roman Republic to be created after that of Sicily.
The ethnic and linguistic affiliation of the Nuragic people and tribes remains to be further studied, moreover "Nuragic" might have also been a geographical and historical name designating different peoples and languages, rather than indicating a single origin. Current knowledge indicates that they may have been related to the Iberians and the ancient Basque: these peoples were Pre-Indo-Europeans and spoke Pre-Indo-European languages, Proto-Basque and Iberian. There is also the possibility that the Nuragic peoples may have been related to the Etruscans and other Tyrsenian peoples and languages. One of the Sea Peoples may have been either a population hailing from Sardinia or a group of tribes that migrated to the island in the Late Bronze Age.
If the Corsi, dwelling in Corsica and in the northernmost tip of Sardinia, were a subset of the Ligurians and a group of tribes, then they would have been of a different ethnic and linguistic affiliation from the majority of the tribes of Sardinia.
The ancient Sardinian and Corsican tribes are the ancestors of most present-day native Sardinians and Corsicans, and their language or languages, like Paleo-Sardinian and Paleo-Corsican, are the substrate of the modern Sardinian and Corsican languages, now part of the Neo-Latin branch.

Ancient Corsican and Sardinian tribes

Paleo-Corsicans

Paleo-Sardinians