Are there genetic differences in Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs?

AdrianPiskovic · Dec 16, 2019

Do Serbs and Croats from the same towns like Mostar, Sarajevo or Banja Luka all share the same DNA? For example if a Serb and Croat lived in a Bosnian town for centuries, is it possible to track if there is a difference in their DNA?

Angela · Dec 16, 2019

AdrianPiskovic said:
Do Serbs and Croats from the same towns like Mostar, Sarajevo or Banja Luka all share the same DNA? For example if a Serb and Croat lived in a Bosnian town for centuries, is it possible to track if there is a difference in their DNA?

The short answer is that there's essentially not much of a difference.

See:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105090

It's essential reading for an understanding of the genetics of the Balkans.

See also just this one admixture chart:

Romania and Bulgaria and Romania are a bit different, and the Albanians weren't sampled, but would probably be more like the Bulgarians or even the Tuscans.

bigsnake49 · Dec 16, 2019

Angela said:
The short answer is that there's essentially not much of a difference.

See:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105090

It's essential reading for an understanding of the genetics of the Balkans.

See also just this one admixture chart:

Romania and Bulgaria and Romania are a bit different, and the Albanians weren't sampled, but would probably be more like the Bulgarians or even the Tuscans.

A very interesting study Angela! Explains why in most calculators I match closer to Kossovars than Bulgarians. Maybe I am not as Thracian as I thought I was

and my ancestors were moved to Thrace either during the Byzantine or the Ottoman Empire. It would be interesting if some Greek geneticists conducted genetic studies on the different migration patterns into Greece in the early 20th centuries. I am especially interested in the Eastern Thrace and Northern Thrace (Eastern Romylia) into what is now Greece.

Angela · Dec 16, 2019

bigsnake49 said:
A very interesting study Angela! Explains why in most calculators I match closer to Kossovars than Bulgarians. Maybe I am not as Thracian as I thought I was and my ancestors were moved to Thrace either during the Byzantine or the Ottoman Empires. It would be interesting if some Greek geneticists conducted genetic studies on the different migration patterns into Greece in the early 20th centuries. I am especially interested in the Eastern Thrace and Northern Thrace (Eastern Romylia) into what is now Greece.

That's only part of the admixture chart, and there are other analyses as well. In my own case it explains why I get so many Spanish populations in my oracle, and why, for example, if there are only Southern Italian samples for all of Italy, as is the case with some amateur "calculator" results, I get either Bulgarian or Albanian as top population, although at worse fits than the actual people from those areas.

There's a lot of similarity between Southern European populations. That label basically stands for a lot of Anatolia Neolithic, minority steppe, and very little WHG. Southern European levels of steppe are about 25-35% give or take, and in Northern Europe it can reac 45%, plus more WHG.

The steppe people were just the last layer on top of old Neolithic populations, although sometimes there's a dollop of more Anatolia Neolithic and some CHG/Iran Neolithic that also came, mostly in the Bronze and early Iron Ages.

bigsnake49 · Dec 16, 2019

Angela said:
That's only part of the admixture chart, and there are other analyses as well. In my own case it explains why I get so many Spanish populations in my oracle, and why, for example, if there are only Southern Italian samples for all of Italy, as is the case with some amateur "calculator" results, I get either Bulgarian or Albanian as top population, although at worse fits than the actual people from those areas.

There's a lot of similarity between Southern European populations. That label basically stands for a lot of Anatolia Neolithic, minority steppe, and very little WHG. Southern European levels of steppe are about 25-35% give or take, and in Northern Europe it can reac 45%, plus more WHG.

The steppe people were just the last layer on top of old Neolithic populations, although sometimes there's a dollop of more Anatolia Neolithic and some CHG/Iran Neolithic that also came, mostly in the Bronze and early Iron Ages.

Now in actual ancestry sites, my top 90-95% are with Greeks. The other 5-10% are with people with Western European surnames but if you look at their genealogy, there's some Greek blood somewhere. The closest matches are with people from my mother's village that emigrated to Germany.

Angela · Dec 16, 2019

bigsnake49 said:
Now in actual ancestry sites, my top 90-95% are with Greeks. The other 5-10% are with people with Western European surnames but if you look at their genealogy, there's some Greek blood somewhere. The closest matches are with people from my mother's village that emigrated to Germany.

Academic studies are hampered by the fact that a lot of them only use, for example, the small sample of students in Lyon for France, one small sample of half Catalans/half Andalusians for Spain, and a small sample from Thessaloniki for Greece. At least for Italy they usually have three samples.

However, there are problems with the ancestry sites as well. 23andme uses its own testees as part of the reference sample, which is helpful in some ways, but, for example, they're undoubtedly flooded with Americans with ancestry from southwestern Germany, which makes the French and Germans look almost identical, and they also have a lot of Southern Italian/American customers, so the "centrum" for Italy drifts south.

Deciding which areas should be in which cluster is more subjective than you might think. The Balkans are a perfect example. Where do you put Greece? Ancestry used to have a Southern Italian/Greek cluster. It made some sense. Now, looking at their results, you wouldn't know how similar some of the Balkan countries also are to Italians.

The "truth" is rather amorphous, and can only be gleaned from a gestalt of the meaning of all these different tests. You have to be able to think "globally" not literally, and the conclusions are difficult to put into a few sentences.

bigsnake49 · Dec 23, 2019

Angela said:
Academic studies are hampered by the fact that a lot of them only use, for example, the small sample of students in Lyon for France, one small sample of half Catalans/half Andalusians for Spain, and a small sample from Thessaloniki for Greece. At least for Italy they usually have three samples.

However, there are problems with the ancestry sites as well. 23andme uses its own testees as part of the reference sample, which is helpful in some ways, but, for example, they're undoubtedly flooded with Americans with ancestry from southwestern Germany, which makes the French and Germans look almost identical, and they also have a lot of Southern Italian/American customers, so the "centrum" for Italy drifts south.

Deciding which areas should be in which cluster is more subjective than you might think. The Balkans are a perfect example. Where do you put Greece? Ancestry used to have a Southern Italian/Greek cluster. It made some sense. Now, looking at their results, you wouldn't know how similar some of the Balkan countries also are to Italians.

The "truth" is rather amorphous, and can only be gleaned from a gestalt of the meaning of all these different tests. You have to be able to think "globally" not literally, and the conclusions are difficult to put into a few sentences.

I hope that the ancestry sites use a well selected reference group local to the area. For example you cannot use Pontic Greeks in your reference group if you are testing in Crete.

Are there genetic differences in Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs?

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