Between the eighth and seventh centuries BC, the first manifestations of the Italic people known as Veneti appear in the territory of today's Veneto, the main region of the northeast of Italy together with Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino Alto-Adige (an area known in Roman times as the X Regio , then Venetia et Histria ). And the Veneti were distinctive for the nature worship beliefs through their Pora Reitia goddess in open grove settings.

The Veneti (properly " Venetkens," their native name which probably means "the winners" or "the united", and not to confound with the modern inhabitants of Venice!) came after the multimillennial succession of numerous previous cultures that developed from Paleolithic to the Bronze Age in this part of Europe.