Genetic of Italy (also taken from Wikipedia)

[Jovialis]

I would quite like that. "Bend the knee, Jon Snow!"

I have no dragons, though, to enforce my rule!

Seriously, for a moment, I think Tuscans and central Italians, although impacted by other migrations, are probably less impacted than either the north or the south, so perhaps they should be used as the reference population?

I've been trying to wrap my head around the way they organize the reference populations.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/34439-Regional-Populations-for-NG-2-0-Helix-Version?p=517399&viewfull=1#post517399

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-Helix-Version?p=517505&viewfull=1#post517505

 

[Angela]

I've been trying to wrap my head around the way they organize the reference populations.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-Helix-Version?p=517399&viewfull=1#post517399

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-Helix-Version?p=517505&viewfull=1#post517505

Some of that doesn't make any sense to me. Why would some people be getting such relatively high Jewish Diaspora scores?

Clearly, their centrum for Italy is southern Italy if Tuscans score only 67% "Italian". It's basically the same in 23andme, where I score in the high 50s, which makes sense as I always scored between Bergamo and Florentines in the old dodecad calculators, and with the Piemonte sample when that's available (Piemonte, Liguria, Emilia, actually, given where the sample was collected). I thought in that case it was because their reference population for Italians includes their own customers, who are almost all Italian-Americans, and thus almost by definition southern Italians.

I think perhaps in the case of this company they are including almost all of France in the northwestern centrum, so a lot of northern Italy is going to be subsumed in that? That is certainly not the way I would have done it. There's nothing particularly "northwestern" about southwestern France, as we know from samples taken there, or southeastern France I have no doubt, as I think we would see if we had a research sample from there.

So much of this kind of analysis is based on the assumptions and sometimes even the prejudices of the creators of these tests. Obviously, Spencer Wells thinks the French are all predominantly northwestern (which they are not, as the results from Gascony tell us), as are the Norwegians and Swedes, and the people of the British Isles, and "real" Italians are southern Italians. If he had a Northwestern category based on the British Isles, and a Northern category for northern Germany and Scandinavia, and a Northeastern category, and an "Italian" category based on Tuscans, and an Iberian category, and maybe a Greek one, the percentages would all shift.

I personally don't pay too much attention to it. If you know your ancestry, you don't need it. If you're mixed, it can't tell you anything very specific. The only thing it can do is confirm you are who you thought you are, and you're similar to the people in your region...

 

[davef]

Why not instead of having one Italian category, split by region.: north, central, and south Italy. That way nobody will be confused.

 

[Angela]

^^Even that isn't foolproof. The Abruzzi are part of "Central Italy" geographically but are southern Italian culturally, linguistically and genetically. Some of Lazio used to be part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and thus southern Italian in culture and language, and from what I have seen also southern Italian genetically. Tuscany is sort of in between northern Italy and central Italy, as all the downstream R1b might indicate. The different regions in the north are, in my opinion, more different from one another genetically than are parts of the south from one another, perhaps partly because of the many city states, duchies, foreign rulers, and maybe some drift.

Just take a look at the spread of the Italian populations on any PCA. Half of the rest of Europe doesn't take up as much room.

 

[Salento]

Uncofuse Yourself.
Who Were the Italians 2000 years ago!
Italy according to Augustus. ps by this time in history the inhabitants of Rome and the Italians considered themselves Romans, not just citizens of Rome, for the most part.
Diocletian eventually added Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and as Bonus Malta.
View attachment 9092

 

[Jovialis]

Some of that doesn't make any sense to me. Why would some people be getting such relatively high Jewish Diaspora scores?

I made a post about this, the history of the Jewish expulsion from Italy to those countries would account for those percentages I think.

Clearly, their centrum for Italy is southern Italy if Tuscans score only 67% "Italian". It's basically the same in 23andme, where I score in the high 50s, which makes sense as I always scored between Bergamo and Florentines in the old dodecad calculators, and with the Piemonte sample when that's available (Piemonte, Liguria, Emilia, actually, given where the sample was collected). I thought in that case it was because their reference population for Italians includes their own customers, who are almost all Italian-Americans, and thus almost by definition southern Italians.

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations-next-gen/
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations/

The older descriptions for the Tuscan reference population explains that the Lombards contributed to increasing Northern European ancestry in the 6th-8th centuries. This ancestry would be shared with people in Northern Europe. Lydia Ramsey is Scandinavian, so if you look at how they break down her ancestry, It makes sense as to why Northern Italians and Tuscans have an increase of those components. Thus that would account for the increase to 9% Northwestern, and 12% Eastern Europe components, via Lombards, in Tuscans. These are more recent contributions.

Lydia's Results:

"The Lombards were one of the Germanic tribes that formed the Suebi, and during the 1st century ad their home was in northwestern Germany."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lombard-people

I think perhaps in the case of this company they are including almost all of France in the northwestern centrum, so a lot of northern Italy is going to be subsumed in that? That is certainly not the way I would have done it. There's nothing particularly "northwestern" about southwestern France, as we know from samples taken there, or southeastern France I have no doubt, as I think we would see if we had a research sample from there.

No they don't, they only consider Northern France to be Northwestern European, and few other countries. The map is misleading; here's the description.

So much of this kind of analysis is based on the assumptions and sometimes even the prejudices of the creators of these tests. Obviously, Spencer Wells thinks the French are all predominantly northwestern (which they are not, as the results from Gascony tell us), as are the Norwegians and Swedes, and the people of the British Isles, and "real" Italians are southern Italians. If he had a Northwestern category based on the British Isles, and a Northern category for northern Germany and Scandinavia, and a Northeastern category, and an "Italian" category based on Tuscans, and an Iberian category, and maybe a Greek one, the percentages would all shift.

I personally don't pay too much attention to it. If you know your ancestry, you don't need it. If you're mixed, it can't tell you anything very specific. The only thing it can do is confirm you are who you thought you are, and you're similar to the people in your region...

I'm pretty sure these are based on historic populations, not just sampling from Southern Italians. It includes migrates from the north pushing southward. At least that's what the description indicates. But I think it's worth investigating to know for sure.

I guess the only way to really know is to e-mail them. Care to help me outline a few bases to touch upon?

 

[davef]

I think something is seriously wrong with nat geno if it's giving 16 percent Ashkenazi to Germans. That's insane. Really insane.

 

[Salento]

I think something is seriously wrong with nat geno if it's giving 16 percent Ashkenazi to Germans. That's insane. Really insane.

I think is correct! Not only that is kind of Ironic!

 

[Jovialis]

I personally don't pay too much attention to it. If you know your ancestry, you don't need it. If you're mixed, it can't tell you anything very specific. The only thing it can do is confirm you are who you thought you are, and you're similar to the people in your region...

If this was the case, wouldn't it say I'm 100% Italian/southern European?

I'm pretty sure the other components (i.e. Northwestern; Eastern, etc.) indicate other admixture acquired over time, more related to recent outside populations. The description already indicates subsuming the prehistoric populations from the early northern populations pushing south, and the early farmers into the Italian component. It would be redundant to include it in one component, and then represent it differently as another separate component.

Nevertheless, I would like for this to be totally verified by NG.

 

[davef]

I find more value in tests that scan your relatedness to prehistoric populations like Anatolian farmer, European hunter gatherer, Caucasian hunter gatherer and steppe... because thats how every European genome or even near eastern genome breaks down into. That's all we are. That's it. It's that simple.

 

[Jovialis]

I find more value in tests that scan your relatedness to prehistoric populations like Anatolian farmer, European hunter gatherer, Caucasian hunter gatherer and steppe... because thats how every European genome or even near eastern genome breaks down into. That's all we are. That's it. It's that simple.

It is in fact scanning for that, just take a look at my posts about the rationale for the breakdowns.

The new test also scans more than 250,000 (autosomal) markers from across your entire genome that were inherited from both your mother and father, revealing insights into those ancestors who are not on a strictly maternal or paternal line.

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/faq/participation-testing-results/

Why do you all of the sudden minimize the value of the national geographic test? Did you read my posts? Angela said that the results would be about the same with 23andme, so I guess that's not a good test in your opinion either. FamlytreeDNA has a feature with the prehistoric populations, but they break down the regional populations in the same way of the other two tests. So it makes no difference to what we are discussing anyway. Which is "what is Italian, who is Italian, and why do DNA testing companies break it down they way they do?"

Breaking things down simply into 4 prehistoric ancestral components would make the results even broader. How are you going to designate Central Italian; South Italian; North Italian; or simply Italian, for that matter based on a test that presents only broad ancient populations?

Because that's what we're talking about in the first place, right?


Let's stay on topic.

 

[Jovialis]

I think is correct! Not only that is kind of Ironic!

It also makes sense as to why the Nazis would be compelled to accept individuals of 1/8 Jewish heritage as Deutschblütiger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany#Weimar_years.2C_1919.E2.80.9333The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer, and Worms formed the league of ShUM-cities which became the center of Jewish life during Medieval times (after the first letters of the Hebrew names: Shin for Schpira (Spira), Waw for Warmaisa and Mem for Mainz. The Takkanot Shum (Hebrew: תקנות שו"ם‎‎ "Enactments of ShU"M") were a set of decrees formulated and agreed upon over a period of decades by their Jewish community leaders. The official website for the city of Mainz states:

One of the most glorious epochs in Mainz's long history was the period from the beginning of the 900s and evidently much earlier. Following the barbaric Dark Ages, a relatively safe and enlightened Carolingian period brought peace and prosperity to Mainz and much of central–western Europe.
For the next 400 years, Mainz attracted many Jews as trade flourished. The greatest Jewish teachers and rabbis flocked to the Rhine. Their teachings, dialogues, decisions, and influence propelled Mainz and neighboring towns along the Rhine into world-wide prominence. Their fame spread, rivaling that of other post-Diaspora cities such as Baghdad. Western European – Ashkenazic or Germanic – Judaism became centered in Mainz, breaking free of the Babylonian traditions. A Yeshiva was founded in the 10th century by Gershom ben Judah.^[3]
​

Historian John Man describes Mainz as "the capital of European Jewry", noting that Gershom ben Judah "was the first to bring copies of the Talmud to Western Europe" and that his directives "helped Jews adapt to European practices."^[18]:27–28Gershom's school attracted Jews from all over Europe, including the famous biblical scholar Rashi;^[19] and "in the mid-14th century, it had the largest Jewish community in Europe: some 6,000."^[20] "In essence," states the City of Mainz web site, "this was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity."^[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish#Numbers_of_speakers

On the eve of World War II, there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers.^[8] The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life, were largely destroyed. Around five million of those killed — 85 percent of the Jews who died in the Holocaust — were speakers of Yiddish.^[9]Although millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war (including nearly all Yiddish speakers in the Americas), further assimilation in countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the strictly monolingual stance of the Zionistmovement, led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Orthodox (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as a minority language only in Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands^[28]and Sweden.

This is all I will say about this, as it is pertinent to the question of the integrity of the test. But if some want to discuss this, take it to this thread.

Let's stay on topic about Italian Genetics here.

 

[davef]

It is in fact scanning for that, just take a look at my posts about the rationale for the breakdowns.
Why do you all of the sudden minimize the value of the national geographic test? Did you read my posts? Angela said that the results would be about the same with 23andme, so I guess that's not a good test in your opinion either. FamlytreeDNA has a feature with the prehistoric populations, but they break down the regional populations in the same way of the other two tests. So it makes no difference to what we are discussing anyway. Which is "what is Italian, who is Italian, and why do DNA testing companies break it down they way they do?"
Breaking things down simply into 4 prehistoric ancestral components would make the results even broader. How are you going to designate Central Italian; South Italian; North Italian; or simply Italian, for that matter based on a test that presents only broad ancient populations?
Because that's what we're talking about in the first place, right?

Let's stay on topic.

Keep calm ! I did read your posts and was still somewhat confused about national genographic assigning the average Joe German such a high Jewish percentage.
Also me finding more value in determining your prehistoric percentages is a personal thing and has nothing to do with the quality of national geno. I find more value in such a test more than any other test out there such as 23 and me.
We can go back to discussing Italian genetics, but I just wanted to point a few things out:

 

[Jovialis]

Some of that doesn't make any sense to me. Why would some people be getting such relatively high Jewish Diaspora scores?

Clearly, their centrum for Italy is southern Italy if Tuscans score only 67% "Italian". It's basically the same in 23andme, where I score in the high 50s, which makes sense as I always scored between Bergamo and Florentines in the old dodecad calculators, and with the Piemonte sample when that's available (Piemonte, Liguria, Emilia, actually, given where the sample was collected). I thought in that case it was because their reference population for Italians includes their own customers, who are almost all Italian-Americans, and thus almost by definition southern Italians.

I think perhaps in the case of this company they are including almost all of France in the northwestern centrum, so a lot of northern Italy is going to be subsumed in that? That is certainly not the way I would have done it. There's nothing particularly "northwestern" about southwestern France, as we know from samples taken there, or southeastern France I have no doubt, as I think we would see if we had a research sample from there.

So much of this kind of analysis is based on the assumptions and sometimes even the prejudices of the creators of these tests. Obviously, Spencer Wells thinks the French are all predominantly northwestern (which they are not, as the results from Gascony tell us), as are the Norwegians and Swedes, and the people of the British Isles, and "real" Italians are southern Italians. If he had a Northwestern category based on the British Isles, and a Northern category for northern Germany and Scandinavia, and a Northeastern category, and an "Italian" category based on Tuscans, and an Iberian category, and maybe a Greek one, the percentages would all shift.

I personally don't pay too much attention to it. If you know your ancestry, you don't need it. If you're mixed, it can't tell you anything very specific. The only thing it can do is confirm you are who you thought you are, and you're similar to the people in your region...

Created and led by project director Dr. Spencer Wells from 2005 to 2015, field researchers at 11 regional centers around the world collect DNA samples fromindigenous populations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genographic_Project

National Geographic doesn't base it's centrum for Italians, on just Italian-Americans. It compares samples from Italians in Italy. Why would it? And why would they hold other populations to a different standard, that would probably most like be far less in participation? (i.e. Amerindian (mexico), Bougainville, High Land Peruvian, Khoi and San peoples, native population of Madagascar, native to the island of Vanuatu)

How would they deduce those components based on just consumer participation?

This reference population is based on samples collected from Italians native to Tuscany.*
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations/

Keep calm !

I am calm. I'm responding to legitimate questions, and asking legitimate questions too.

Keep calm ! I did read your posts and was still somewhat confused about national genographic assigning the average Joe German such a high Jewish percentage.

Also me finding more value in determining your prehistoric percentages is a personal thing and has nothing to do with the quality of national geno. I find more value in such a test more than any other test out there such as 23 and me.
We can go back to discussing Italian genetics, but I just wanted to point a few things out:

I think something is seriously wrong with nat geno if it's giving 16 percent Ashkenazi to Germans. That's insane. Really insane.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...kipedia)/page7?p=518099&viewfull=1#post518099

 

[Angela]

I made a post about this, the history of the Jewish expulsion from Italy to those countries would account for those percentages I think.



https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations-next-gen/
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations/

I don't see how there's any way that some Jews expelled from southern Italy could contribute enough to Germans to make them 16% Ashkenazi, plus all the other groups which show it. By that time the laws against intermarriage between the two religions were Draconian, and that wasn't just on the Christian side. A Jew who married outside his or her religion was considered dead. Families were still sitting shiva for such people when I was in university. It was also just extremely dangerous, even for a Christian woman who converted and married a Christian, because they were never really accepted, as all the auto da fes of Conversos in Spain shows. For a man, in addition to becoming part of a persecuted, despised minority, he would have had to endure circumcision as an adult. It may have happened in individual cases, but I just don't think it would have happened to that degree. In addition, to the best of my recollection, most of the Jews expelled from Italy went to Ottoman lands and/or North Africa.

IBD sharing tests tell the same tale. No Italian group has any IBD sharing with Jews, certainly not within the last 1000 or so years. The IBD sharing with Germans/French is similarly just not there. The only at all significant sharing is with Poles/Russians, which makes sense given the history of those countries. Anyway, while this isn't about the Ashkenazim, I think these percentages point out a big flaw in the Nat Geo algorithm. Of course, every commercial company, imo, has flaws. This type of thing just isn't easy to do.

The older descriptions for the Tuscan reference population explains that the Lombards contributed to increasing Northern European ancestry in the 6th-8th centuries. This ancestry would be shared with people in Northern Europe. Lydia Ramsey is Scandinavian, so if you look at how they break down her ancestry. It makes sense as to why Northern Italians have an increase of those components. Thus that would account for the increase to 9% Northwestern, and 12% Eastern Europe components, via Lombards, in Tuscans.

]

Yes, I agree that the Lombards had a disproportional effect on Italy north of Rome (i.e. the Italian cline), but it's not only the Lombards. (Also, if the Lombard yDna is indeed majority I1 and R1b U-106, as some have speculated, the amount of actual "Lombard" autsosomal dna may not be very large.) It's also the Celts to some degree and the Liguri and Italics and Veneti as well.

No they don't, they only consider Northern France to be Northwestern European, a few other countries. The map is misleading; here's the description.

Well, that's good to know. It would be really bad if they were ignoring the Gascony sample, which is extremely low in "steppe" ancestry, and much more like the Basques or northern Spaniards than like the people of Brittany or Normandy, for example. They should really adjust the map so as not to mislead people.

I'm pretty sure these are based on historic populations, not just sampling from Southern Italians. It includes migrates from the north pushing southward. At least that's what the description indicates. But I think it's worth investigating to know for sure.

All any of these commercial companies are using is modern dna. In the case of Italy there really isn't even any ancient dna to use, other than Oetzi and Remedello, which are from roughly the same period and from far northern Italy. We have no Lombard dna from after the fall of Rome, or Gallic dna from the first millennium BC, or Greek/Italian dna from Naples or Calabria or Sicily from the first millennium BC either. What these companies are doing is what the creators of the gedmatch programs attempt to do, which is to look for genetic clusters. However, they're "modern" genetic clusters, the product of all the migrations that went before, and can be used to intuit specific historic migrations very imperfectly.

I guess the only way to really know is to e-mail them. Care to help me outline a few bases to touch upon?

Sure, no problem, although it will be difficult for me to be more specific than I have been given that I never took their test.

I do understand your frustration about all of this, but to some extent, in terms of genetics, ethnicity is a construct that is time dependent. Was Oetzi, were the people of Remedello "Italian" yet? When was the moment in history we're going to use? Will we use, when we get the ancient dna, the end of the Bronze Age, or perhaps the first millennium BC.? That's when Ralph and Coop found the IBD sharing between "Italians" and other groups to largely end, except for a pulse from the Balkans. Were the Celt-Ligures of the first millennium BC "Italian"? How about the probably "mixed" inhabitants of the city-states of Magna Graecia? When Julius crossed the Rubicon, he was crossing into "Italia" according to their maps, yet how different were the Romans of Lazio during the Republic from the people in the Po plain? How different were they from the southerners of that time? We just don't know yet.

As to something you wrote in another post, National Geographic may not do what 23andme does, and use their own customer base, and therefore Italian-Americans as their reference population. However, they obviously are using southern Italian samples from somewhere. That would be a good question to ask, btw. Which southern Italian samples are they using, from where and collected by whom?

I think it's pretty clear that's where their centrum for "Italian" is located. It's less clear to me that this is a better choice than, say, Tuscany, or Umbria, but as I said these are subjective decisions to some degree.

Apropos of all this and as a matter of serendipity, Razib Khan has posted about why the results from different commercial companies vary so much. I'm going to start a thread for it. Here it is:
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/08/29/why-do-percentage-estimates-of-ancestry-vary-so-much/

 

[Jovialis]

@ Angela

I came to a realization. In regards to the NG test, I think you would score very high with the component known as West Mediterranean, which is represented as Sardinia and Corsica on the map; but is also an indigenous component to mainland Italians. It's also shared by the southern French, and Iberians. In addition to the Italy/Southern European component; Western Mediterranean is an Italian component within and of itself. Italy/southern European is more represented by Southern Italy. I recall from another post you made, that you said you share DNA with Iberians on 23andme. I believe the West Med component is the population that 23andme is identifying. It overlaps between the area stretching from Iberia, through southern France, all the way to North West & Central Italy.

Iberians themselves, according to NG, also have another component that's call Southwestern European; which is ubiquitous to Spain and Portugal. The Southern French would probably score high with West Mediterranean as well.

Sorry for the crappy screen cap, it's hard to find the descriptions for this version.

 

[Salento]

As a Reference: geno2 Helix
Southwestern Europe:
Interestingly, Southwestern Europe may have been the last refuge of the Neanderthals, due to its relatively sheltered position during the last glacial maximum. European hunter-gatherers also may have taken refuge there 20,000 years ago. Eventually, the first farmers arrived in the region from the eastern Mediterranean, and these are the ancestors of the modern-day inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula and neighboring regions. Connections across the Mediterranean, dating back to prehistory and down to the medieval period, connect Iberians with other coastal peoples, especially groups in Northern Africa. Some Southwestern Europeans also migrated across the Straits of Gibraltar, leading to a mutual genetic exchange. This cluster was also the pioneer Explorer, the group that expanded over 500 years ago to the Americas, as the Spanish and Portuguese established empires around the world.

 

[Angela]

@ Angela

I came to a realization. In regards to the NG test, I think you would score very high with the component known as West Mediterranean, which is represented as Sardinia and Corsica on the map; but is also an indigenous component to mainland Italians. It's also shared by the southern French, and Iberians. In addition to the Italy/Southern European component; Western Mediterranean is an Italian component within and of itself. Italy/southern European is more represented by Southern Italy. I recall from another post you made, that you said you share DNA with Iberians on 23andme. I believe the West Med component is the population that 23andme is identifying. It overlaps between the area stretching from Iberia, through southern France, all the way to North West & Central Italy.

Iberians themselves, according to NG, also have another component that's call Southwestern European; which is ubiquitous to Spain and Portugal. The Southern French would probably score high with West Mediterranean as well.

Sorry for the crappy screen cap, it's hard to find the descriptions for this version.

It's hard for me to tell, as I haven't taken the test, but I do think I would probably score pretty high in Western Mediterranean, given that in the Geneplaza Ancient samples comparison, I score higher Western European farmer than Eastern European farmer. I do score some Eastern European farmer, however, so I would probably score some of Nat Geo's "Southern European".

I didn't explain the 23andme situation clearly. I mostly share with Iberians only in the sense that we decided to share or look at each other's genomes. I share very few close matches with them in terms of IBD matching. I think it's because it has been so many thousands of years since Iberians and Italians were part of the same group that IBD sharing can't be picked up by 23andme's algorithm. Most of my close shares, or "relatives", of which, relatively speaking, I have very few compared to British Isles descent people, for example, or Ashkenazim, are from Liguria, Toscana, Emilia, Piemonte, and a few from Lombardia. I have almost no "relatives" from southern Italy. Strangely enough, I do have some Celtic fringe descent people, and even more with Danish or Scandinavian ancestry. I'm not sure that the latter are "legit". Sometimes the algorithms can mistake IBS for IBD. Either that, or the Celts in Liguria around 400 BC, and the Langobards in the very early Medieval period did leave a bit of a mark in my area.

 

[Jovialis]

Perhaps this would be a better representation of what the regional populations mean?

Just about, but not limited to the areas that they encompass.

 

[Angela]

Perhaps this would be a better representation of what the regional populations mean?

Just about, but not limited to the areas that they encompass.

Does Nat Geo give Asia Minor to Greeks? Is that what you mean?