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Sardinia's history is very ancient. In 1979 human remains were found that were dated to 150,000 BC. In Prehistory Sardinia's inhabitants developed a trade in obsidian, a stone used for the production of the first rough tools, and this activity brought Sardinians into contact with most of the Mediterranean people. Desiccated grapes, recently found in several locations, were DNA tested and proved to be the oldest grapes in the world, dating back to the Pyramids' and Mesopotamia’s era. The Cannonau wine is made with these grapes and may qualify as the mother of all the European wines. From Neolithic times till the Roman Empire, the Nuragic civilisation took shape on the island. Still today, more than 7,000 Nuraghe survive. It is speculated that, among others, the Shardana people landed in Sardinia coming from the eastern Mediterranean. Shardana had joined the Shekelesh and others to form the coalition of the Sea Peoples, but were defeated by Ramses III around 1180 BC in Egypt. Shardana and Shekelesh were also called by the Egyptians as the 'people from the faraway islands', implying that Shardana were already residents of Sardinia at the time of the Egyptian expedition. This assertion holds some truth, in fact most of the tombe dei giganti have a tombstone shaped like a ship vertically dug into the ground witnessing to their sea traveling activities. According to some linguistic studies, the town of Sardis in (Lydia) would have been their starting point from which they would have reached the Tyrrhenian Sea, dividing into what were to become the Sardinians and the Etruscans. However most theories regarding the original population of Sardinia have been formulated prior to genetics research and in the traditional frame of east-west movements. Genetics has now shown that Sardinians are a pre-Indo-European population and, like Basque, different from all surrounding and much younger groups. The density, extensiveness and sheer size of the architectural remains from the Neolithic period, points to a considerable population of the island. Beginning around 1000 BC, Phoenician mariners established several ports of trade on the Sardinian coast. In 509 BC, war broke out between the native Nuragic people and the Phoenician settlers. The settlers called for help from Carthage, and the island became a province in the Carthaginian Empire. In 238 BC, after being defeated by the Roman Republic during the First Punic War, Carthage ceded Sardinia to Rome. From 456 - 534, Sardinia was a part of the short-lived kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa, until reconquered by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Under the Byzantines, the imperial representative was a judge who governed from the southern city of Caralis. Byzantine rule was practically nonexistent in the mountainous Barbagia region in the eastern part of the island, and an independent kingdom persisted there from the sixth through ninth centuries. Beginning in the eighth century, Arabs and Berbers began raiding Sardinia. Especially after the conquering of Sicily in 832, the Byzantines were unable to effectively defend their most distant province, and the provincial judge assumed independent authority. To provide for local defense, he divided the island into four Giudicati, Gallura, Logudoro, Arborea, and Caralis. By 900, these districts had become four independent constitutional monarchies. At various times, these fell under the sway of Genoa and Pisa. In 1323, the Kingdom of Aragon began a campaign to conquer Sardinia; the giudicato of Arborea successfully resisted this and for a time came to control nearly the entire island, but its last ruler Eleanor of Arborea, was eventually defeated by the Aragonese in the decisive Battle of Sanluri, June 30, 1409. The native population of the city of Alghero (S'Alighera in Sardinian, L'Alguer in Catalan) was expelled and the city repopulated by the Catalan invaders, whose descendants spoke Catalan till quite recently. After the merge of the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, Sardinia was incorporated into the newly created national entity, Spain. Under Spain, Sardinians were regularly employed on the royal Spanish fleet. On October 7, 1571, at the Battle of Lepanto, Sardinian mariners on Board the admiralship of Infante Don John of Austria, brother of Felipe II, boarded the Turkish admiralship, overpowered the crew, and cut off the head of a Turkish admiral. The sight of the admiral's head on a spear put such a fear in the heart of the Turks, that they abandoned the fight and completely surrendered to Christians. This was the first time Turks lost out to Europeans signaling a trend of military decline and defeats from which Turks never recovered.

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