Story of Italy, part 1 - The birth of a people of artists
Note: so much of it is copied and adapted from Wikipedia. Shame on me. Strange words can be Google Translate's fault.
Italic people
The first inhabitants of Italy, perhaps coming from a migration started from Apulia around 37.000 years ago, moved across the peninsula, establishing themselves in small settlements far from each one. Around 12,000 years ago, the diminishing number of big game forced their descendants to populate the coast areas.
At the same time of the appearance of metalwork, other people migrated to Italy. Not all of these various peoples were linguistically or ethnically closely related. the inhabitants of Italy spoke Italic languages, the migrants spoke Greek, Indo-European and more.
That is really important to keep in mind: that differences, and the various historical facts, made Italy a place full of differences, that are so clear even in the present days.
For example, before Etruscan culture started to spread, in north Italy there were Celtics, Liguri, Veneti; in south Italy Umbrians, Latins, Sabines, Piceni, Samnites, Lucans, Sicilians, Sardinians... And in Sardinia, we had also a megalitic civilization, that begun with the misterious Sherden people, and the so-called Nuragic civilization. Not to mention Greek and Fenician colonies. So as you can see, Italy was always so full of differences, in such a small territory.
A characteristic that most archeologist tend to point out is that even before a real civilization, italic people had a huge tendency to create artistic things. When other people arrived and approached them, they were already artistically advanced. A trend that lead to a beautiful renaissance later on.