By ~2500 BC, Turanians arrived in Britain and almost completely replaced Neolithic lineages, giving us a lower bound for when Brutus, Arthur, etc. would have been around (see figure 3):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323916898_The_Beaker_phenomenon_and_the_genomic_transformation_of_northwest_EuropeInterestingly, around this same time period, Troy was destroyed, corresponding to the major Turanian migrations which were occurring:
The second destruction took place around 2300 BC, as part of a crisis that affected other sites in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy#Troy_IIHomer's Troy is believed to have existed around 1000 years later, however:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy#Troy_VI-VIIIf we take the story of the Trojan war literally, the timing doesn't make sense for Aeneas, Brutus, or Thor to have left after Homer's Trojan war. But it does make sense if ancient authors had conflated multiple similar stories of wars and migrations over the prior thousands of years.
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As for Aeneas's founding of the Roman lineage, some archaeological evidence suggests the Etruscans could have founded Rome or otherwise heavily influenced it. They even invented the fasces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization#Possible_founding_of_RomeThe Etruscans continued to speak a non-Indo-European language into Roman times (and I think it makes sense to imagine it was a language brought over during the Neolithic migrations).
Some genetic studies found Etruscans can trace their genetics back to the Neolithic as well:
A couple of mitochondrial DNA studies, published in 2013 in the journals PLOS One and American Journal of Physical Anthropology, based on Etruscan samples from Tuscany and Latium, concluded that the Etruscans were an indigenous population, showing that Etruscans' mtDNA appear to fall very close to a Neolithic population from Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary) and to other Tuscan populations, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan civilization developed locally from the Villanovan culture, as already supported by archaeological evidence and anthropological research,[13][69] and that genetic links between Tuscany and western Anatolia date back to at least 5,000 years ago during the Neolithic and the "most likely separation time between Tuscany and Western Anatolia falls around 7,600 years ago", at the time of the migrations of Early European Farmers (EEF) from Anatolia to Europe in the early Neolithic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization#Genetic_researchI don't recall if this was picked up in the Diffusion Series, but the Etruscan word for god is ais/eis (plural aisar/eisar). That may sound very familiar!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Etruscan_word_listhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AesirSome linguists have speculated Etruscan can be placed in the "Tyrsenian" language family--which seems like it would clearly be linked to Neolithic dispersal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrsenian_languages----
Brutus, Aeneas's descendant, continued migrating to Britain, according to myths.
Neolithic individuals from southern France and Britain are also significantly closer to Iberian Early Neolithic farmers than they are to central European Early Neolithic farmers (Fig. 2b), consistent with a previous analysis of a Neolithic genome from Ireland.
[...]
Our results suggest that a portion of the ancestry of the Neolithic populations of Britain was derived from migrants who spread along the Atlantic coast. Megalithic tombs document substantial interaction along the Atlantic façade of Europe, and our results are consistent with such interactions reflecting south-to-north movements of people.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323916898_The_Beaker_phenomenon_and_the_genomic_transformation_of_northwest_EuropeAbove we can also see they found evidence of seperate Danubian Basin and coastal dispersions that were known from archaeology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Expansion_n%C3%A9olithique.pngBy ~4000 BC, they had made it to Britain (according to archaeology):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chronology_of_arrival_times_of_the_Neolithic_transition_in_Europe.jpgBut not before passing through Aquitaine/Vasconia and northern France (according to mythology and the map above).
Geoffrey of Monmouth's account tells much the same story, but in greater detail.[11]
[...]
After some adventures in north Africa and a close encounter with the Sirens, Brutus discovers another group of exiled Trojans living on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, led by the prodigious warrior Corineus. In Gaul, Corineus provokes a war with Goffarius Pictus, king of Aquitaine, after hunting in the king's forests without permission. Brutus's nephew Turonus dies in the fighting, and the city of Tours is founded where he is buried. The Trojans win most of their battles but are conscious that the Gauls have the advantage of numbers, so go back to their ships and sail for Britain, then called Albion. They land on "Totonesium litus"—"the sea-coast of Totnes". They meet the giant descendants of Albion and defeat them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_of_Troy#Historia_Regum_BritanniaeAccording to genetics, the giants were defeated indeed:
Unlike other European Neolithic populations, we detect no resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry at any time during the Neolithic in Britain. Genetic affinities with Iberian Neolithic individuals indicate that British Neolithic people were mostly descended from Aegean farmers who followed the Mediterranean route of dispersal.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0871-9----
As for southern Spain and Aquitaine/Vasconia, Greek/Roman writer Strabo reported the Tartessian people of Spain traced their history back 6000 years. Any ideas of how this region fits into mythology? (I don't think Tartessos is Atlantis, as some have proposed, since that would be the opposite direction of the Neolithic migrations.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartessian_language#HistoryFrom the discussion here:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/ancient-world/the-ancient-rolemodels-of-our-enemies/Racially, we could speculate that Occitania had more Aryan blood than the rest of medieval Christendom in part due to absence of Viking genetic imprint, hence not coincidentally came up with the most Gnostic form of Christianity.
Correspondingly, in Al-Andalus:
The Turdetani of the Roman period are generally considered the heirs of the Tartessian culture. Strabo mentions that: "The Turdetanians are ranked as the wisest of the Iberians; and they make use of an alphabet, and possess records of their ancient history, poems, and laws written in verse that are six thousand years old, as they assert."[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartessian_language#HistoryAssuming their dating chronology is at least somewhat accurate, this could easily mean the Tartessians traced their mythological origins back to the Neolithic diffusion. (Note how some sites in Occitania are also of similar age):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chronology_of_arrival_times_of_the_Neolithic_transition_in_Europe.jpgThe Tartessian language is a non-Indo-European language, and I would speculate it's most likely it's a remnant of the languages brought by the Neolithic diffusion.
It has been hypothesized that the Basque language is the last remaining member of the "Vasconic languages". The originator of this theory suggests it is a Paleolithic language, some others have suggested it was a non-Indo-European language related to Turanian migrations, but I think it is just as likely to be Neolithic. This doesn't necessarily mean Basque culture as a whole retains more Aryan qualities than others, just that, being in an isolated backwater, the language was not replaced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesisHowever, note that the swastika is a customary symbol of the Basques, and I think I read it was also used by other "Paleohispanic" cultures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LauburuSparse data has prevented the Tartessian language from being grouped under the Vasconic languages, but, again, it was among the non-Indo-European languages spoken in Spain into Roman times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleohispanic_languages