Alexandros
Regular Member
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- Ethnic group
- Greek
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1a1a (R-L1029)
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H14
There are plenty of autosomal calculators around (http://gedmatch.com/) and I have used practically all of them in order to identify any hint that would point me to the ancient Greek admixture. I will use data from the Dodecad project (k12b calculator) and concentrate on 3 populations who, I believe, may be giving us some hints: the modern Greeks, the Greek Cypriots and the Lebanese. A question that automatically arises is 'what do the Lebanese have to do with the ancient Greeks?'. An easy answer would be 'not much', which is quite accurate. The Lebanese can thus be seen as an eastern Mediterranean population not related to the Greeks; a sort of 'negative control' if you like. Below are the normalized median proportions for the admixture of these 3 populations.
If we start from left to right, Cypriots seem like an almost perfect match between Greeks and Lebanese, that until we reach the North European admixture. The North European admixture is astonishingly high among the mainland Greeks compared to the Greek Cypriots. One could easily conclude that then basically Greek Cypriots are not at all Greek, but merely a West Asian (i.e. Lebanese) population with a bit of European admixture. There is a problem though. If you look at the Atlantic_Med admixture (a West European component), Cypriots have twice the frequency to that of the Lebanese. This admixture could not have been introduced to Cyprus by any nation other than the ancient Greeks, simply because no other nation from mainland Europe migrated 'en masse' to Cyprus during ancient or modern times. There is strong historical and archaeological evidence for mass migrations from the Mycenaeans to Cyprus between the 12th and the 5th centuries BC, followed by practically no major migration from Europe afterwards. What's with the North European component though? Shouldn't the Cypriots have received a substantial component from those migrating Greeks? The answer is yes, if it was there.. Interestingly, we find archaeological evidence only for Mycenaean culture in Cyprus but practically no evidence for Dorian culture. I speculate here that the Dorians are a major source of North European admixture among Greeks, which failed to reach hellenized places like Cyprus. This North European component among modern Greeks probably also received a later boost from the Germanic migrations of the 2nd-6th century AD and to a larger extent the Slavic expansion from the 6th century onward, which again did not reach Cyprus. Of course these are speculations, but I would be very interested to read your views.
Population | Gedrosia | Siberian | NW_African | SE_Asian | Atlantic_Med | North_European | S_Asian | E_African | SW_Asian | E_Asian | Caucasus | Sub_Sah |
Greek | 3.3 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0 | 28 | 20.2 | 0.1 | 0 | 10.1 | 0 | 37.4 | 0 |
Cypriot | 5.8 | 0 | 2.1 | 0 | 20.5 | 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 17.7 | 0 | 49.3 | 0 |
Lebanese | 10.8 | 0.2 | 4.7 | 0.6 | 11.8 | 3.7 | 0 | 2.4 | 23.5 | 0 | 41.3 | 1 |
If we start from left to right, Cypriots seem like an almost perfect match between Greeks and Lebanese, that until we reach the North European admixture. The North European admixture is astonishingly high among the mainland Greeks compared to the Greek Cypriots. One could easily conclude that then basically Greek Cypriots are not at all Greek, but merely a West Asian (i.e. Lebanese) population with a bit of European admixture. There is a problem though. If you look at the Atlantic_Med admixture (a West European component), Cypriots have twice the frequency to that of the Lebanese. This admixture could not have been introduced to Cyprus by any nation other than the ancient Greeks, simply because no other nation from mainland Europe migrated 'en masse' to Cyprus during ancient or modern times. There is strong historical and archaeological evidence for mass migrations from the Mycenaeans to Cyprus between the 12th and the 5th centuries BC, followed by practically no major migration from Europe afterwards. What's with the North European component though? Shouldn't the Cypriots have received a substantial component from those migrating Greeks? The answer is yes, if it was there.. Interestingly, we find archaeological evidence only for Mycenaean culture in Cyprus but practically no evidence for Dorian culture. I speculate here that the Dorians are a major source of North European admixture among Greeks, which failed to reach hellenized places like Cyprus. This North European component among modern Greeks probably also received a later boost from the Germanic migrations of the 2nd-6th century AD and to a larger extent the Slavic expansion from the 6th century onward, which again did not reach Cyprus. Of course these are speculations, but I would be very interested to read your views.
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