Genetics of the Greek Peleponessus

Angela said:

A Yale professor of Greek history would agree with your last comment, as that you tube clip I posted shows. He maintains that the "core" of Greece is the Aegean islands.

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I wouldn't be so sure about this. The Greek islands were populated by many non-Greek populations (Carians, Minoans, and so on) and were colonized by the mainland the same way Cyprus, Sicily, and southern Italy were. Without ancient samples we cannot say if the people there were ever mostly 'Greek' by blood, or Hellenized. They may have changed comparatively less over the millennia, though.

Also, I would be surprised if all the Aegean islands are genetically the same as one another. There may be a gradient there too.

oreo_cookie said:

I wouldn't be so sure about this. The Greek islands were populated by many non-Greek populations (Carians, Minoans, and so on) and were colonized by the mainland the same way Cyprus, Sicily, and southern Italy were. Without ancient samples we cannot say if the people there were ever mostly 'Greek' by blood, or Hellenized. They may have changed comparatively less over the millennia, though.

Also, I would be surprised if all the Aegean islands are genetically the same as one another. There may be a gradient there too.

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There is a difference between islands and the continent. The amount of occupations by different ethnics is much lower. Many continental folks are no seamen, therefore don't travel by sea; and islands have a limited capacity. Populations are often changed completely, if at all. Only the large islands may have several different populations. So the chances are good that an island remains 'indigenous', or Greek or something else. The peopling by the Greeks is well documented, you know which home polis was doing it.

By comparing one island with the other you will see the pattern, you can point to the characteristics of certain Aegean populations, there are not many unknowns, so you can pinpoint the genetics of certain tribes to a good degree. That's not possible on the continent, where at least every hundert years another tribe runs over the country with mostly unknown population numbers and not always known periods of occupation/dominance etc. There is often such an intense mixing of populations that you can't define a certain tribe's genetic characteristics. That doesn't happen on islands.

Yetos said:

How much admixture with previous populations could have the Slavs when they enter until Peloponese when all this happens at max 2 generations 60-70 years?
and surely endogamous until full Hellenization? isolated from the other Slavs.

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Eurogenes is accusing the study's authors of confirmation bias for not including South Slavic populations...and then is engaging in confirmation bias itself, by saying without proof that migrating Slavs absorbed lots of non-Slavic Balkan natives in their movements into Greece. This also could be fraught with problems, because without knowing how can we say which Balkan populations they were and how closely related they were to medieval populations of the Peloponnese?

Then Eurogenes went full absurdity by posting a picture of a Greek soccer team and saying incoming medieval Slavs may have looked like them.

Either way, this study looks solid to my layperson eyes, Balkan admixture implications notwithstanding. There have not been many genetic studies of Greek rural populations, especially those in the Peloponnese.

ngc598 said:

There is a difference between islands and the continent. The amount of occupations by different ethnics is much lower. Many continental folks are no seamen, therefore don't travel by sea; and islands have a limited capacity. Populations are often changed completely, if at all. Only the large islands may have several different populations. So the chances are good that an island remains 'indigenous', or Greek or something else. The peopling by the Greeks is well documented, you know which home polis was doing it.

By comparing one island with the other you will see the pattern, you can point to the characteristics of certain Aegean populations, there are not many unknowns, so you can pinpoint the genetics of certain tribes to a good degree. That's not possible on the continent, where at least every hundert years another tribe runs over the country with mostly unknown population numbers and not always known periods of occupation/dominance etc. There is often such an intense mixing of populations that you can't define a certain tribe's genetic characteristics. That doesn't happen on islands.

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That's why we find the most "conserved" genetic signals on islands like Sardinia or mountain valleys in the Alps. Even better is a remote, rather inaccessible region on an island, i.e. those Ogliastra samples from Sardegna.

I don't think the Aegean Islands would be like that because there was traffic through there from antiquity. It would probably be much better than the plains of Thessaly certainly. If they do test in the Aegean I certainly hope that they test octogenarians, and not college students. We want samples that go back beyond the dislocations of the 20th century.

Speaking of which polis settled which area, that lecture by the Yale professor is very interesting on that issue. He points out that northern Greece was "colonized" by areas in central Greece. As you say, we have a lot of information about which polis had the most contact with which area, including which island.

Before people draw conclusions about "Greeks" from dna, they have to define that term and in particular have to determine the time period. "Greek" speakers weren't native to Greece. Once they arrived, over time, the populations mingled. So, which Greeks are people discussing? The ancient people of the Greek mainland and islands before the Mycenaeans, the Mycenaeans, the Dorians, the people of Classical Greece? Which parts of Classical Greece? How about the Greeks of the Roman period? What about the diaspora Greeks of the Roman period? It gets very complicated when you're not speaking of some isolated corner of Europe with limited contact with anyone beyond their own valley until virtually the modern era.

I also don't know where this notion comes from that the people of Crete are so different from the people of the mainland, and it makes even less sense if they're talking about the people of the mainland before the Slavic migrations. People from Crete went to Greece in the Neolithic, and the Bronze Age migration from Asia Minor into Crete would have flowed on into the mainland. The Mycenaeans and the Minoans had a lot of contact, both in terms of trade and settlements. Based on admixture in Paschou et al, the people of Crete are not so very different from mainlanders even today.

I suppose people do mean Pericles or someone very much like him. I'd like Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus myself, or, oh wait...Homer! Sapho too, and Plato, and Aristotle. My husband always wanted a time machine so he could go back and talk to Socrates.

I don't think we're going to get them.

I was going to comment on the "Ancient Greek" or "true Greek" DNA but then Angela covered it for me. You are sounding like Fallmerayer but instead of Slavs replacing Greeks, you're saying the Greeks replaced the "Pelasgians".

If I would have to speculate, max I'd say this:

E-V13 - Concentrated in the mountainous areas together with G and I2a, especially before the urbanization and expansion of many city states.
J2a - More prevalent in the lowlands and coastal areas, possible at higher numbers in the Aegean islands and lower in mainland compared to today
R1b & R1a - More prevalent in urban areas assuming that they represent the true IE Hellenes

Obviously by 400 BC this assumed dispersion "trend" would have changed as like I said more and more people were urbanized.

Nik said:

I was going to comment on the "Ancient Greek" or "true Greek" DNA but then Angela covered it for me. You are sounding like Fallmerayer but instead of Slavs replacing Greeks, you're saying the Greeks replaced the "Pelasgians".

If I would have to speculate, max I'd say this:

E-V13 - Concentrated in the mountainous areas together with G and I2a, especially before the urbanization and expansion of many city states.
J2a - More prevalent in the lowlands and coastal areas, possible at higher numbers in the Aegean islands and lower in mainland compared to today
R1b & R1a - More prevalent in urban areas assuming that they represent the true IE Hellenes

Obviously by 400 BC this assumed dispersion "trend" would have changed as like I said more and more people were urbanized.

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Actually, since we're guessing, my guess would be that the IE speaking peoples didn't at all replace the "indigenous" population. They didn't even replace them in Central Europe, why would they replace them in Greece? The only places where there was anything close to "replacement" was where the Neolithic/Chalcolithic people were few in number. Many places in the far north weren't populated at all.

Nik said:

R1b & R1a - More prevalent in urban areas assuming that they represent the true IE Hellenes

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What we call Hellenes, what we call Greek language, what we call Classical Greece, is the result of the mingling between the Proto/Pre-Greeks and the IE Greeks.

Most likely, though, the locals were actually much more in numbers.

@Sakattack

You're basically saying what I already said. Are you just agreeing with me or what?

Angela said:

... that lecture by the Yale professor is very interesting on that issue.

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Now you have advertised Kagan the Sleeping Pill for the third time. So I listened for God's blessing, and yes I see - he dared to write off me

... Before people draw conclusions about "Greeks" from dna, they have to define that term and in particular have to determine the time period.

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Pretty much the same as with Slavs or with any other people. I think most Greek people of today would agree, if we were defining them as the people coming to 'sterea' Hellas and the Peloponnese in the time between, let's say, 1600 BC and the not so dark 'Dark Ages', those people who, at least in the imagination, were responsible for the development and 'boom' of the classical Greek culture.

In the end it's of course impossible to detach the definition from origin, location and time, and so it should be handled when analysing DNA data. That's hard enough and we'll see whether there is someone who has the sense to gather the right data sets for this task.

... I also don't know where this notion comes from that the people of Crete are so different from the people of the mainland, ...

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Infact, Crete and the mainland share a lot of population. On the other hand, Y-chromosome data show some significant differences, but overall there is more in common than separate. And then there is Sicici...ah, we already had that cleared!

... My husband always wanted a time machine so he could go back and talk to Socrates.

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M-e-e-e-h! I wouldn't. His discussions were chewy like shoe soles, says my memory (Or was it just Plato, having his own agenda with his heritage?).

Nik said:

@Sakattack

You're basically saying what I already said. Are you just agreeing with me or what?

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I think the wording you used is not the best.
The "true Hellenes" are what you get when you mix the locals with some - most likely much smaller in numbers - IE.

Sent from my Robin

@ngc598,


Throughout Kagan's lecture I was actually thinking, my God, is this a required class or something? He's the kind of professor whom students generally avoid like the plague if it's at all possible. I, of course, always had such awesome powers of concentration and focus that it didn't matter.:grin:

No, no, it's Plato who wanted to see the world run by an oligarchy! I'm much more of an Aristotelian than a Platonist. You could say, if you wanted to really generalize, that all of western philosophy swings between the two.

You're also right about the focus of much of this interest. I want to know Caesar's make-up, Augustus, Livia, as well as Ovid and Livy and Cicero. Throw in Agrippa too, and the Gracchi and Sulla. I also want to know about the unnamed people of the Republic into Imperial period: the chief engineers who designed the aqueducts and water systems and roads, the architect who designed the Pantheon, my favorite building in the world, the first legionnaires, and on and on. While I'm at it, I want to know what my Ligures, whom the Romans did their best to crush, were like.

I like to dream big.

Nik said:

I was going to comment on the "Ancient Greek" or "true Greek" DNA but then Angela covered it for me. You are sounding like Fallmerayer but instead of Slavs replacing Greeks, you're saying the Greeks replaced the "Pelasgians".

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The only 20th century Nordicist promulgation that I hate more than the Greek replacement theories is 'aboriginal Pelasgians'

Nik said:

You are sounding like Fallmerayer but instead of Slavs replacing Greeks, you're saying the Greeks replaced the "Pelasgians".

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I guess this was directed towards me! Now, let me repeat what I said...

Populations are often changed completely, if at all. Only the large islands may have several different populations. So the chances are good that an island remains 'indigenous', or Greek or something else.

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I have no idea where the Pelasgians came into the discussion. Not even the Greek historians had a clue who they really were, at least everybody had another view, and there are at least half a dozen other Aegean folks described by them. Is 'Pelasgians' kind of a mixing bowl for everything around there?

Nik said:

...If I would have to speculate, max I'd say this:

E-V13 - Concentrated in the mountainous areas together with G and I2a, especially before the urbanization and expansion of many city states.
J2a - More prevalent in the lowlands and coastal areas, possible at higher numbers in the Aegean islands and lower in mainland compared to today
R1b & R1a - More prevalent in urban areas assuming that they represent the true IE Hellenes...

Click to expand...

E-V13 are no mufflons, as far my biological knowledges go. I see no reason why they should limit themselves to grass plucking. E-V13 are in similar amounts in all southern Balkan populations, just Kosovo has considerably more. This haplogroup is therefore not specific for some ethnicity or culturally distinct people or had some mountain theology.

J2a - there are at least half a dozen different subtypes on Crete, the continent should have at least as many, if not considerably more. All of them are clades older than 8000 years, so they are part of south European populations anywhere, again no specific population nor culture to give them a separate territory.

Martinez-Cruz was selecting continental Greeks in a more rural environment for comparison in his Roma-Study. If there is any evidence that some haplogroup is more in cities or more between the flowers, then there are more R1a and less J2 on the countryside than in the average population, but it's still well within error margins of such a sample.

No, assignments of major haplogroups to populations won't work.

s.e laconia is a large valley in the s.e extremity of pelponnese and is fairly isolated by a mountainous region from the rest of laconia.
the distance from sparta is 112km (2 hours by car because of the mountains).
A veterinarian friend of mine once had told me that a specific disease affecting the flocks, that is endmic in greece, is absent in neapoli probably because of the geografic isolation.
of course they did not live in total isolation as they are mainly sea people but i would not be surprised if they made a distinct group within laconia as the maniots do.
On the other hand they did not maintain their indipendence like the maniots did
So they gone through an ottoman and venetian occupation but they are more distant from the slavic settlements so i would expect even lower slavic influence.
If had to guess as they are included in the laconian sample i would expect something between laconians and deep mani for them.

It's been said that a good portion of Peloponnese Greeks are descendants of Arvanite colonies whom supposed to share the same origin with Aberesche in Italy and Albanians. Genetically speaking the E-V13 haplotype which peaks in Kosovars and some Albanian related tribes is also very significant in the Southern regions of Greece which suggest a shared origin between Albanians and Peloponnese Greeks.

spartan owl said:

s.e laconia is a large valley in the s.e extremity of pelponnese and is fairly isolated by a mountainous region from the rest of laconia.
the distance from sparta is 112km (2 hours by car because of the mountains).
A veterinarian friend of mine once had told me that a specific disease affecting the flocks, that is endmic in greece, is absent in neapoli probably because of the geografic isolation.
of course they did not live in total isolation as they are mainly sea people but i would not be surprised if they made a distinct group within laconia as the maniots do.
On the other hand they did not maintain their indipendence like the maniots did
So they gone through an ottoman and venetian occupation but they are more distant from the slavic settlements so i would expect even lower slavic influence.
If had to guess as they are included in the laconian sample i would expect something between laconians and deep mani for them.

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They're not included in this paper at all from what I can see. They were the S.E.Laconia sample in the Paschou et al paper.

MarkoZ said:

The only 20th century Nordicist promulgation that I hate more than the Greek replacement theories is 'aboriginal Pelasgians'

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What's the "aboriginal Pelasgians" promulgation? How is it Nordicist?

I guess I missed this one.

Blanco said:

It's been said that a good portion of Peloponnese Greeks are descendants of Arvanite colonies whom supposed to share the same origin with Aberesche in Italy and Albanians. Genetically speaking the E-V13 haplotype which peaks in Kosovars and some Albanian related tribes is also very significant in the Southern regions of Greece which suggest a shared origin between Albanians and Peloponnese Greeks.

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But how much with Arbereshides? ????
and considering that V-13 does not showhigh peaks in areas of Arbanites, how sure you are that it cognates?

MarkoZ said:

The only 20th century Nordicist promulgation that I hate more than the Greek replacement theories is 'aboriginal Pelasgians'

Click to expand...

If I get your point, then,
oh boy that is really outrageous, or better 'Autochthones Pelasgians' with aspirations from baltic sea.

Angela said:

@ngc598,


Throughout Kagan's lecture I was actually thinking, my God, is this a required class or something? He's the kind of professor whom students generally avoid like the plague if it's at all possible. I, of course, always had such awesome powers of concentration and focus that it didn't matter.:grin:

No, no, it's Plato who wanted to see the world run by an oligarchy! I'm much more of an Aristotelian than a Platonist. You could say, if you wanted to really generalize, that all of western philosophy swings between the two.

You're also right about the focus of much of this interest. I want to know Caesar's make-up, Augustus, Livia, as well as Ovid and Livy and Cicero. Throw in Agrippa too, and the Gracchi and Sulla. I also want to know about the unnamed people of the Republic into Imperial period: the chief engineers who designed the aqueducts and water systems and roads, the architect who designed the Pantheon, my favorite building in the world, the first legionnaires, and on and on. While I'm at it, I want to know what my Ligures, whom the Romans did their best to crush, were like.

I like to dream big.

Click to expand...

Saw the lecture for a few seconds and was like "booooring" before clicking x.

I do admire his ability to compute pi to the 1000000000000000000000th decimal place. According to him, it only takes him .00000000000000000036*e^.00004 seconds before his memory buses begin to erode.

Ok back to the topic .