The Nordicist direction of Fascist racial policy was challenged in 1938 by a resurgence of the Mediterranean faction in the PNF. By 1939, the Mediterraneanists advocated a nativist racial theory which rejected ascribing the achievements of the Italian people to Nordic peoples. This nativist racial policy was prominently promoted by Ugo Rellini. Rellini rejected the notion of large scale invasions of Italy by Nordic Aryans in the Eneolithic age and claimed that Italians were an indigenous people descended from the Cro-Magnons. Rellini claimed that Mediterranean and later Nordic peoples arrived and peacefully intermixed in small numbers with the indigenous Italian population.