1.
Menhir
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A menhir, standing stone, orthostat, lith or masseba/matseva is a large upright standing stone. Menhirs may be found solely as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar stones and their size can vary considerably, but their shape is generally uneven and squared, often tapering towards the top. Menhirs are widely distributed across Europe, Africa and Asia, however, they are most numerous in Western Europe, in particular in Ireland, Great Britain and Brittany. There are about 50,000 megaliths in these areas, while there are 1,200 menhirs in northwest France alone, standing stones are usually difficult to date, but pottery, and/or pottery shards found underneath some in Atlantic Europe connects them with the Beaker people. They were constructed during different periods across pre-history as part of a larger megalithic culture that flourished in Europe. Some menhirs have been erected next to buildings that often have an early or current religious significance, one example is the South Zeal Menhir in Devon, which formed the basis for a 12th-century monastery built by lay monks. The monastery later became the Oxenham Arms hotel, at South Zeal, where menhirs appear in groups, often in a circular, oval, henge or horseshoe formation, they are sometimes called megalithic monuments. These are sites of ancient religious ceremonies, sometimes containing burial chambers, the exact function of menhirs has provoked more debate than practically any other issue in European pre-history. Until the nineteenth century, antiquarians did not have knowledge of prehistory. The developments of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology have done much to knowledge in this area. The word menhir was adopted from French by 19th-century archaeologists and it is a combination of two words of the Breton language, maen and hir. In modern Welsh, they are described as maen hir, or long stone, in modern Breton, the word peulvan is used, with peul meaning stake or post and van which is a soft mutation of the word maen which means stone. Almost nothing is known of the organization or religious beliefs of the people who erected the menhirs. There is not even any trace of these language, however we do know that they buried their dead and had the skills to grow cereal, farm and make pottery, stone tools. Until recently, menhirs were associated with the Beaker people, who inhabited Europe during the European late Neolithic and early Bronze Age — later third millennium BC, ca.2800 –1800 BC. However, recent research into the age of megaliths in Brittany strongly suggests a far older origin, many menhirs are engraved with megalithic art. This often turned them into anthropomorphic stelae, although images of such as stone axes, ploughs, shepherd crooks. With the exception of the axe, none of these motifs are definite
2.
History of Sardinia
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Archaeological evidence of prehistoric human settlement on the island of Sardinia is present in the form of nuraghes and others prehistoric monuments, which dot the land. The recorded history of Sardinia begins with its contacts with the people who sought to dominate western Mediterranean trade in Classical Antiquity, Phoenicians, Punics. Initially under the political and economic alliance with the Phoenician cities, it was conquered by Carthage in the late 6th century BC. The island was included for centuries in the Roman province of Corsica et Sardinia, included in 3rd and this led to the birth of four kingdoms called Giudicati in the 8th through 10th centuries. The Kingdom was to last until 1718, when it was ceded to the Piedmontese House of Savoy, later, in 1861, the oldest trace in Sardinia of the anthropomorphic prehistoric primate called Oreopithecus bambolii is dated to 8.5 million years ago. In 1996 a hominid finger bone, dated up to 250.000 BC, was found in a cave in the Logudoro region. Modern humans appeared in the island during the Upper Paleolithic, a phalanx dated to 18000 BC had been found in the Corbeddu cave, mesolithic human remains had been discovered at Su Coloru cave of Laerru but also in the south. Already in the Stone Age, Monte Arci played an important role, the old volcano was one of the central places where obsidian was found and worked for cutting tools and arrowheads. Even now the volcanic glass can be found on the sides of the mountain, the Neolithic began in Sardinia in the 6th millennium BC with the Cardial culture. The dolmens culture, around the end of the 3rd millennium BC, prehistoric and Pre-nuragic monuments and constructions that characterise the Sardinian landscapes are the Domus de Janas, the menhir and Statue menhir and the dolmens. Archeological cultures of Sardinia in the period, Bronze Age Sardinia is characterised by stone structures called nuraghes. The most famous is the complex of Barumini in the province of Medio Campidano, the nuraghes were mainly built in the period from about 1800 to 1200 BC, though many were used until the Roman period. Characteristics of this period are also the holy well temples, the megara temples, the Nuragics also produced a vast collection of bronze statuettes and the so-called giants of Monte Prama, perhaps the first anthropomorphic statues of Europe. It is known that the Sardinians had contact with the Myceneans, contact with powerful cities of Crete, such as Kydonia, is clear from pottery recovered in archaeological excavations in Sardinia. The name Sardinia could result from that of Sardus, a hero of the nuragic pantheon. The majority of the inhabitants in these cities were of indigenous nuragic stock while the Phoenician element was, although culturally predominant, the Phoenicians came originally from what is now Lebanon and founded a vast trading network in the Mediterranean. Sardinia had a position because it was central in the Western Mediterranean between Carthage, Spain, the river Rhône and the Etruscan civilization area. The mining area of the Iglesiente was important for the metals lead, after the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians took over control in this part of the Mediterranean, around 510 BC, after that a first attempt of conquest of the island in 540 BC ends in failure
3.
Nuragic civilization
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The Nuragic civilization, born and developed in Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, lasted from the Bronze Age to the 2nd century AD. The civilizations name derives from its most characteristic monument, the nuraghe, today some 7,000 nuraghes dot the Sardinian landscape. No written records of civilization have been discovered. The only written information that we have comes from literature of the Greeks and Romans. In the Stone Age the island was inhabited by people who had arrived there in the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages from several parts of Europe, the most ancient settlements have been discovered both in central Sardinia and Anglona. Later several cultures developed on the island, such as the Ozieri culture, the economy was based on agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing and trading with the mainland. With the diffusion of metallurgy, silver and copper objects and weapons also appeared on the island, according to some scholars, the similarity between this structure and those found in Mesopotamia are due to cultural influxes coming from the Eastern Mediterranean. The altar of Monte dAccoddi fell out of use starting from c.2000 BC, when the Beaker culture, the beakers appeared in Sardinia from two different geographical areas, firstly from Spain and southern France and then from Central Europe, through the Italian Peninsula. The Bonnanaro culture was the last evolution of the Beaker culture in Sardinia and these two cultures shared common features in the material culture such as pottery with axe-shaped handles. These influences may have spread to Sardinia via Corsica, where they absorbed new architectural techniques that were widespread on the island. New peoples coming from the mainland arrived on the island at time, bringing with them new cults, new technologies and new ways of life. The widespread diffusion of bronze brought numerous improvements to the used in agriculture, hunting. From this period dates the construction of the so-called proto-nuraghe, a structure that marks the first phase of the Nuragic Age. There has long been controversy among scholars, in ancient times, Greek historians and geographers tried to solve the mystery of the nuraghe and their builders. They described the presence of fabulous edifices, called daidaleia, from the name of Daedalus, perhaps for protection reasons, new towers were added to the original ones, connected by walls provided with slits forming a complex nuraghe. It has been suggested some of the current Sardinian villages trace their origin directly from Nuragic ones. The usually cited tin sources and trade in ancient times are those in the Iberian Peninsula or from Cornwall, the late Bronze Age saw a vast migration of the so-called Sea Peoples, described in ancient Egyptian sources. They destroyed Mycenaean and Hittite sites and also attacked Egypt, according to Giovanni Ugas the Sherden, one of the most important tribes of the sea peoples, are to be identified with the Nuragic Sardinians
4.
Giudicati
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The giudicati were independent states that took power in Sardinia between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. They were sovereign states with summa potestas, each ruled by a king called judge, after a relatively brief Vandal occupation, from 535 until the eighth century, Sardinia was a province of the Byzantine Empire. After 705, with the expansion of Islam, Muslim pirates from North Africa began to raid the island. In 815, Sardinian ambassadors required military assistance from the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious, in 807, 810-812, and 821-822 the Arabs of Spain and North Africa tried to invade the island but the Sardinians resisted several attacks. This defence was so effective that in a letter in 851, Pope Leo IV asked the Iudex Provinciae of Sardinia, based in Caralis, the almost total absence of historical sources does not allow certainty surrounding the date of the passage from Byzantine central authority to self-government in Sardinia. It is believed that at point the Iudex Provinciae, perhaps the praeses. Each of the four States had fortified borders to protect their political and commercial interests, as well their own laws, administration, the central government and the entire Judiciary were ruled substantially by the judge. The king did not have possession of the land nor was he the repository of sovereignty since this was held by the Corona de Logu. They appointed the ruler and attributed the power to him. Then the judex was crowned with a hereditary system following the direct male line and, only in the alternative. The judge ruled on the basis of a covenant with the people, the judge was not an absolute ruler of feudal tradition, at least in form, he could not declare war or sign a peace treaty without the consent of the Corona de Logu. However, that was composed primarily of his aristocracys relatives and, therefore, the succession to the throne was dynastic but in some case there was the possibility of election by the Corona De Logu. In the government of the territory, the Judge was assisted by the Chancellery, the territory of various giudicati was divided into curadorias, administrative districts of varying sizes formed by urban and rural villages, dependent on a capital which housed the curadore. These administrators, aided especially by jurados and a council the Corona de curatoria, represented the judicial authority locally and tended to the public property of the Crown. The curadore appointed for each village was part of the curadorias a majore de Bidda with administrative and judicial powers, the Sardinian giudical armies were composed of troops made up of soldiers and free citizens, subject to periodic rotation. In an emergency forced conscription was used, the elite corps was made up of so-called bujakesos, chosen riders who served under the command of the janna de Majore, the commander in charge of the security of the sovereign. The main armaments were the sword, chain mail, the shield, the helmet, and the birrudu, a similar to the ancient verutum. The militias of the ground and the infantry used a version of this same weapon
5.
Kingdom of Sardinia
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The Kingdom of Sardinia was a state in Southern Europe which existed from the early 14th until the mid-19th century. It was the state of todays Italy. When it was acquired by the Duke of Savoy in 1720, however, the Savoyards united it with their possessions on the Italian mainland and, by the time of the Crimean War in 1853, had built the resulting kingdom into a strong power. The formal name of the entire Savoyard state was the States of His Majesty the King of Sardinia and its final capital was Turin, the capital of Savoy since the Middle Ages. Beginning in 1324, James and his successors conquered the island of Sardinia, in 1420 the last competing claim to the island was bought out. After the union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, Sardinia became a part of the burgeoning Spanish Empire, in 1720 it was ceded by the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants to the Spanish throne to Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. While in theory the traditional capital of the island of Sardinia and seat of its viceroys was Cagliari, the Congress of Vienna, which restructured Europe after Napoleons defeat, returned to Savoy its mainland possessions and augmented them with Liguria, taken from the Republic of Genoa. In 1847–48, in a fusion, the various Savoyard states were unified under one legal system, with the capital in Turin, and granted a constitution. There followed the annexation of Lombardy, the central Italian states and the Two Sicilies, Venetia, in 238 BC Sardinia became, along with Corsica, a province of the Roman Empire. The Romans ruled the island until the middle of the 5th century, when it was occupied by the Vandals, in 534 AD it was reconquered by the Romans, but now from the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium. It remained a Byzantine province until the Arab conquest of Sicily in the 9th century, after that, communications with Constantinople became very difficult, and powerful families of the island assumed control of the land. Starting from 705–706, Saracens from north Africa harassed the population of the coastal cities, information about the Sardinian political situation in the following centuries is scarce. There is a record of another massive Saracen sea attack in 1015–16 from the Balearics, the Saracen attempt to invade the island was stopped by the Judicatus with the support of the fleets of the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa, free cities of the Holy Roman Empire. Pope Benedict VIII also requested aid from the republics of Pisa. Even the title of Judices was a Byzantine reminder of the Greek church and state, of these sovereigns only two names are known, Turcoturiu and Salusiu, who probably ruled in the 10th century. The Archons still wrote in Greek or Latin, but one of the first documents of the Judex of Cagliari, their successor, was written in romance Sardinian language. The realm was divided into four kingdoms, the Judicati, perfectly organized as was the previous realm, but was now under the influence of the Pope. That was the cause of leading to a long war between the Judices, who regarded themselves as kings fighting against rebellious nobles
6.
Sardinia
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Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and an autonomous region of Italy. It is located in the Western Mediterranean, just south of the French island of Corsica, the regions official name is Regione Autonoma della Sardegna / Regione Autònoma de Sardigna, and its capital and largest city is Cagliari. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city and its indigenous language and the other minority languages spoken by the Sardinians enjoy equal dignity with Italian under regional law. The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *srd-, later romanised as sardus and it makes its first appearance on the Nora Stone, where the word Šrdn testifies to the names existence when the Phoenician merchants first arrived. According to Timaeus, one of Platos dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well might have named after Sardò. There has also been speculation that identifies the ancient Nuragic Sards with the Sherden, in Classical antiquity, Sardinia was called Ichnusa, Σανδάλιον Sandal, Sardinia and Sardó. Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 24,100 square kilometres and it is situated between 38°51 and 41°18 latitude north and 8°8 and 9°50 east longitude. To the west of Sardinia is the Sea of Sardinia, a unit of the Mediterranean Sea, to Sardinias east is the Tyrrhenian Sea, the nearest land masses are the island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia, the Balearic Islands, and Provence. The Tyrrhenian Sea portion of the Mediterranean Sea is directly to the east of Sardinia between the Sardinian east coast and the west coast of the Italian mainland peninsula, the Strait of Bonifacio is directly north of Sardinia and separates Sardinia from the French island of Corsica. The island has an ancient geoformation and, unlike Sicily and mainland Italy, is not earthquake-prone and its rocks date in fact from the Palaeozoic Era. Due to long erosion processes, the highlands, formed of granite, schist, trachyte, basalt, sandstone and dolomite limestone. The highest peak is Punta La Marmora, part of the Gennargentu Ranges in the centre of the island. The islands ranges and plateaux are separated by wide valleys and flatlands. Sardinia has few rivers, the largest being the Tirso,151 km long, which flows into the Sea of Sardinia, the Coghinas. There are 54 artificial lakes and dams that supply water and electricity, the main ones are Lake Omodeo and Lake Coghinas. The only natural lake is Lago di Baratz. A number of large, shallow, salt-water lagoons and pools are located along the 1,850 km of the coastline, the climate of the island is variable from area to area, due to several factors including the extension in latitude and the elevation. During the year there is a concentration of rainfall in the winter and autumn, some heavy showers in the spring
7.
Paleolithic
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It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools, probably by Homo habilis initially,2.6 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP. The Paleolithic era is followed by the Mesolithic, the date of the Paleolithic–Mesolithic boundary may vary by locality as much as several thousand years. During the Paleolithic period, humans grouped together in small societies such as bands, the Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers, however, due to their nature, surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as paleoliths. About 50,000 years ago, there was a increase in the diversity of artifacts. For the first time in Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archaeological record, the first evidence of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. The new technology generated an explosion of modern humans which is believed to have led to the extinction of the Neanderthals. Humankind gradually evolved from members of the genus Homo—such as Homo habilis. The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures, by c. 50,000 – c. 40,000 BP, the first humans set foot in Australia. By c. 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61°N latitude in Europe, by c. 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, and by c. 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed Beringia, the term Paleolithic was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek, παλαιός, palaios, old, and λίθος, lithos, stone, human evolution is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of anatomically modern humans as a distinct species. The Paleolithic Period coincides almost exactly with the Pleistocene epoch of geologic time and this epoch experienced important geographic and climatic changes that affected human societies. During the preceding Pliocene, continents had continued to drift from possibly as far as 250 km from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current location. South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama, most of Central America formed during the Pliocene to connect the continents of North and South America, allowing fauna from these continents to leave their native habitats and colonize new areas. Africas collision with Asia created the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean, climates during the Pliocene became cooler and drier, and seasonal, similar to modern climates. The formation of an Arctic ice cap around 3 million years ago is signaled by a shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic. Mid-latitude glaciation probably began before the end of the epoch, the global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas
8.
Hominidae
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Several revisions in classifying the great apes have caused the use of the term hominid to vary over time. Its original meaning referred only to humans and their closest non-extant relatives and that restrictive meaning has now been largely assumed by the term hominin, which comprises all members of the human clade after the split from the chimpanzees. The current, 21st-century meaning of hominid includes all the great apes including humans, the most recent common ancestor of all Hominidae lived roughly 14 million years ago, when the ancestors of the orangutans speciated from the ancestral line of the other three genera. Those ancestors of the family Hominidae had already speciated from the family Hylobatidae, in the early Miocene, about 22 million years ago, there were many species of arboreally adapted primitive catarrhines from East Africa, the variety suggests a long history of prior diversification. Fossils at 20 million years ago include fragments attributed to Victoriapithecus, the most recent of these far-flung Miocene apes is Oreopithecus, from the fossil-rich coal beds in northern Italy and dated to 9 million years ago. Species close to the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans may be represented by Nakalipithecus fossils found in Kenya and Ouranopithecus found in Greece. Molecular evidence suggests that between 8 and 4 million years ago, first the gorillas, and then the split off from the line leading to the humans. Human DNA is approximately 98. 4% identical to that of chimpanzees when comparing single nucleotide polymorphisms, the earliest fossils argued by some to belong to the human lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Orrorin tugenensis, followed by Ardipithecus, with species Ar. kadabba and Ar. ramidus. The classification of the apes has been revised several times in the last few decades. The original meaning of the referred to only humans and their closest relatives—what is now the modern meaning of the term hominin. And the meaning of the taxon Hominidae changed gradually, leading to a different usage of hominid that today all the great apes including humans. A hominid is a member of the family Hominidae, the apes, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees. A hominine is a member of the subfamily Homininae, gorillas, chimpanzees, a hominin is a member of the tribe Hominini, Chimpanzees and humans. A homininan is a member of the subtribe Hominina of the tribe Hominini, a human is a member of the genus Homo, of which Homo sapiens is the only extant species, and within that Homo sapiens sapiens is the only surviving subspecies. For each clade it is indicated approximately when newer extant clades emerged, some texts will refer to Homonini as the Hominina branch. Many scientists, including paleoanthropologists, continue to use the term hominid to mean humans, as mentioned, Hominidae was originally the name given to the family of humans and their close relatives, with the other great apes all being placed in a separate family, the Pongidae. However, that eventually made Pongidae paraphyletic because at least one great ape species proved to be more closely related to humans than to other great apes. Most taxonomists today encourage monophyletic groups—this would require, in this case, thus, many biologists now assign Pongo to the family Hominidae
9.
Neanderthal
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Neanderthals, or more rarely Neandertals, were a species or subspecies of archaic humans in the genus Homo that became extinct about 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals and modern humans share 99. 7% of their DNA and are closely related. Neanderthals left bones and stone tools in Eurasia, from Western Europe to Central, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, however, Neanderthals were widely considered a subspecies of Homo sapiens and a minority of scholars still hold this view. Several cultural assemblages have been linked to the Neanderthals in Europe, the earliest, the Mousterian stone tool culture, dates to about 160,000 years ago. Late Mousterian artifacts were found in Gorhams Cave on the south-facing coast of Gibraltar, male Neanderthals had cranial capacities averaging 1600 cm3, females 1300 cm3, extending to 1736 cm3 in Amud 1. This is notably larger than the 1250–1400 cm3 typical of modern humans, males stood 164–168 cm and females 152–156 cm tall. Recent studies also show that a few Neanderthals began mating with ancestors of modern humans long before the out of Africa migration of present day non-Africans. Claims that Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead, and if they did, the debate on deliberate Neanderthal burials has been active since the 1908 discovery of the well-preserved Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 skeleton in a small hole in a cave in southwestern France. In 2013, scientists sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal for the first time. The genome was extracted from the bone of a 50. In 2016, elaborate constructions of rings of broken stalagmites made by early Neanderthals around 176,000 years ago were discovered 336 m inside Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France and this would have required a more advanced social structure than previously known for Neanderthals. Thal is a spelling of the German word Tal, which means valley. Nevertheless, Kings name had priority over the proposal put forward in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel, the practice of referring to the Neanderthals and a Neanderthal emerged in the popular literature of the 1920s. The German pronunciation of Neanderthaler or Neandertaler is in the International Phonetic Alphabet, in British English, Neanderthal is pronounced with the /t/ as in German, but different vowels. In laymans American English, Neanderthal is pronounced with a /θ/ and /ɔ/ instead of the longer British /aː/, during the early 20th century the prevailing view was heavily influenced by Arthur Keith and Marcellin Boule, who wrote the first scientific description of a nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton. During the 1930s scholars Ernst Mayr, George Gaylord Simpson and Theodosius Dobzhansky reinterpreted the existing fossil record, Neanderthal man was classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis - an early subspecies contrasted with what was now called Homo sapiens sapiens. The obviously unbroken succession of fossil sites of both subspecies in Europe was considered evidence that there was a slow and gradual evolutionary transition from Neanderthals to modern humans, contextual interpretations of similar excavation sites in Asia lead to the hypothesis of multiregional origin of modern man in the 1980s. Current scientific ideas hold that both evolved from a common African ancestor, Homo erectus
10.
Corsica
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Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 13 regions of France. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, southeast of the French mainland, a single chain of mountains make up two-thirds of the island. While being part of France, Corsica is also designated as a territorial collectivity by law, as a territorial collectivity, Corsica enjoys a greater degree of autonomy than other French regions, for example, the Corsican Assembly is able to exercise limited executive powers. The island formed a single department until it was split in 1975 into two departments, Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud, with its capital in Ajaccio, the prefecture city of Corse-du-Sud. Bastia, the city of Haute-Corse, is the second-largest settlement in Corsica. After being ruled by the Republic of Genoa since 1284, Corsica was briefly an independent Corsican Republic from 1755 until it was conquered by France in 1769. Due to Corsicas historical ties with the Italian peninsula, the island retains to this day many elements of the culture of Italy, the native Corsican language, whose northern variant is closely related to the Italian language, is recognised as a regional language by the French government. This Mediterranean island was ruled by various nations over the course of history but had several periods of independence. Napoleon was born in 1769 in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio and his ancestral home, Maison Bonaparte, is today used as a museum. The origin of the name Corsica is subject to much debate, to the Ancient Greeks it was known as Kalliste, Corsis, Cyrnos, Cernealis, or Cirné. Of these Cyrnos, Cernealis, or Cirné derive from a corruption of the most ancient Greek name of the island, Σειρηνούσσαι, the claim that latter Greek names are based on the Phoenician word for peninsula are highly unlikely. Corsica has been occupied continuously since the Mesolithic era and it acquired an indigenous population that was influential in the Mediterranean during its long prehistory. The Romans, who built a colony in Aléria, considered Corsica as one of the most backward regions of the Roman world, the island produced sheep, honey, resin and wax, and exported many slaves, not well considered because of their fierce and rebellious character. Moreover, it was known for its wines, exported to Rome. Administratively, the island was divided in pagi, which in the Middle Ages became the pievi, Corsica was integrated by Emperor Diocletian in Roman Italy. In the 5th century, the half of the Roman Empire collapsed, and the island was invaded by the Vandals. Briefly recovered by the Byzantines, it became part of the Kingdom of the Lombards—this made it a dependency of the March of Tuscany. Pepin the Short, king of the Franks and Charlemagnes father, expelled the Lombards, in the first quarter of the 11th century, Pisa and Genoa together freed the island from the threat of Arab invasion
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