Sicani

The Sikanen or Sicani were very early inhabitants of Sicily. According to Thucydides lived before them only the mythical Cyclopes on the island. The Sicani, after which Sicily had originally been called Sikanien are, originally came from Iberia, from the area around the river Sikanos where they had been driven by the Ligurians. As Thucydides writes in the same place, the Sicani from himself but claimed that they were indigenous. Timaeus of Tauromenion, the Diodorus follows, said that the Sicani were the original inhabitants of the island.

According to Thucydides settled after the Trojan war, some Trojan in the northwest ( Eryx and Segesta) of the island and were given the name Elymians. Later, the Sicani were displaced by the coming from Italy Sicels to the south and west of the island - according to Thucydides, nearly 300 years before the Greek colonization. After Sicily was named after the Sicels. Diodorus, however, writes that the Sicani were, emigrated to the West of the island because of a massive eruption of Mount Etna, which devastated over the years more and more fields. The resulting vacant areas have been colonized generations later by the immigrant Sikels.