Moots: Ancient Rome Paper

[Angela]

Yeah, you're right, it is sort of like the playing chess with a pigeon meme.

Amazing, really. Don't they get that this was the capital of the Empire, and we have no way of knowing whether these samples are "natives" of even a few generations or just travelers?

Maciamo went through a lot of the immediate post Roman Empire samples and it was clear a lot of them were visitors from Northern Europe.

There couldn't have been visitors, traders, and on and on from the east that just happened to die in Rome?

It's just stupid.

By the way, did you see the new Sarno and Boattini paper posted on the site? Seems like Southern Italians can be pretty well described as a mix of Anatolian Farmer and Caucasus Hunter Gatherer. Makes sense to me. Just wish I could get the tree to post.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...als-ancient-events-and-long-term-isolation-in

 

[Jovialis]

^^ I haven't, thanks for the heads up!

 

[real expert]

Amazing, really. Don't they get that this was the capital of the Empire, and we have no way of knowing whether these samples are "natives" of even a few generations or just travelers?

Maciamo went through a lot of the immediate post Roman Empire samples and it was clear a lot of them were visitors from Northern Europe.

There couldn't have been visitors, traders, and on and on from the east that just happened to die in Rome?

It's just stupid.

By the way, did you see the new Sarno and Boattini paper posted on the site? Seems like Southern Italians can be pretty well described as a mix of Anatolian Farmer and Caucasus Hunter Gatherer. Makes sense to me. Just wish I could get the tree to post.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...als-ancient-events-and-long-term-isolation-in

I read somewhere that the Neolithic Iranian DNA didn’t have really an impact on Italy, but instead only CHG. Iran Neo and CHG are very similar components, albeit not identical. Furthermore, the increase of this CHG component is due to the largest change from "Iron Age/republic era Romans" to "imperial" and present day Central Italians. This change, namely the increasing of CHG (which in the paper is labeled as Neo Iran,) was attributed to the "Near Eastern immigration" by the researchers. However, based on the Sicilian Beaker samples, it seems that South Italians largely had this CHG component already elevated in them by the Bronze Age. In contrast to Central or North Italians who appear to have received the CHG or Neo Iran around the time of the Iron Age to Roman imperial times. Hence, it can be concluded that there was a high degree of immigration from either Southern Italy or Greece/Anatolia to Rome.The authors of the Roman paper even hinted in the study that what they label as Iran Neo could be entirely a Caucasian component.

 

[torzio]

There is no such thing as Imperial-Roman ethnicity, or Republican-Roman ethnicity. There are Latins & various Italics, Greeks, Etruscans, Illyrians, Celts, etc...

But more importantly, the point I am making is that you cannot take a bunch of disparate samples from one time period, and make an aggregate of it, and use it as a viable construct to deduce ethnicity. As I was saying, the haplotype sharing clusters are better for that, and make sense. But apparently some people think that is over-complicated. It is almost as if they are feigning stupidity to protect their arguments.

I can think of countless examples of how this is idiotic.

fig# 3 in the paper, indicates where the ethnicity came from for each period...........from the base of the blue arrow to the arrival at rome ( the tip )

so B , 900 BC states from northern balkans
C, year 27 BC from the Levant
D, year 300 AD from France
E, year 700 AD from Germany

 

[Angela]

I read somewhere that the Neolithic Iranian DNA didn’t have really an impact on Italy, but instead only CHG. Iran Neo and CHG are very similar components, albeit not identical. Furthermore, the increase of this CHG component is due to the largest change from "Iron Age/republic era Romans" to "imperial" and present day Central Italians. This change, namely the increasing of CHG (which in the paper is labeled as Neo Iran,) was attributed to the "Near Eastern immigration" by the researchers. However, based on the Sicilian Beaker samples, it seems that South Italians largely had this CHG component already elevated in them by the Bronze Age. In contrast to Central or North Italians who appear to have received the CHG or Neo Iran around the time of the Iron Age to Roman imperial times. Hence, it can be concluded that there was a high degree of immigration from either Southern Italy or Greece/Anatolia to Rome.The authors of the Roman paper even hinted in the study that what they label as Iran Neo could be entirely a Caucasian component.

Hypotheses have to take into account historical plausibility. There is no plausible scenario for a late, i.e. Iron Age movement into Southern Italy directly from the Caucasus. It had to come as part of an admixture in other people. I don't take the conclusions of that paper too seriously given that they seem to think that every single person buried in Imperial Rome was a native or at least long standing resident who left descendants who merged into the population. It never seemed to occur to them that the reason the "tail into the Levant" disappeared is because Rome lost its status as the hub and trading center of the Empire long before it fell. It's just such a naïve, sophomoric mistake that I completely lost faith in them. I mean, if nothing else, where was their common sense. If they wanted to know how to do a paper on ancient dna trying to figure out what admixture had just or was occurring they should have followed the example of the paper on the Langobards. For heaven's sake, at least do RUDIMENTARY isotopic analyses.

I do agree with the highlighted comment. However, the only way to know is to get Bronze Age Southern Italian samples, Iron Age Greek samples, and compare to see how similar they are, and then get early Iron Age, Republican Era samples from southern rural eras and see how they changed.

It's immaterial to me what the results would show. I'm just tired of the stupidity which passes for analysis on anthrofora.

 

[Jovialis]

Amazing, really. Don't they get that this was the capital of the Empire, and we have no way of knowing whether these samples are "natives" of even a few generations or just travelers?

Maciamo went through a lot of the immediate post Roman Empire samples and it was clear a lot of them were visitors from Northern Europe.

There couldn't have been visitors, traders, and on and on from the east that just happened to die in Rome?

It's just stupid.

By the way, did you see the new Sarno and Boattini paper posted on the site? Seems like Southern Italians can be pretty well described as a mix of Anatolian Farmer and Caucasus Hunter Gatherer. Makes sense to me. Just wish I could get the tree to post.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...als-ancient-events-and-long-term-isolation-in

Absolutely fantastic! I feel vindicated!

In spite of all that grief, this is a glorious day!

Anthrogenica is repudiated. :grin:

Thank you for telling me Angela, and thank you to Kingjohn for posting the paper.

 

[Angela]

Absolutely fantastic! I feel vindicated!

In spite of all that grief, this is a glorious day!

Anthrogenica is repudiated. :grin:

Thank you for telling me Angela, and thank you to Kingjohn for posting the paper.

My man!

Wasn't it Lazaridis at one point, when people were exclaiming over where some samples from Reggio Calabria were plotting that they were undoubtedly from a very drifted subset? You can see it proved in the paper.

Could I ask you for one more favor? Could you also put it on the Calabrian paper site.

 

[real expert]

....... It's just such a naïve, sophomoric mistake that I completely lost faith in them. I mean, if nothing else, where was their common sense. If they wanted to know how to do a paper on ancient dna trying to figure out what admixture had just or was occurring they should have followed the example of the paper on the Langobards. For heaven's sake, at least do RUDIMENTARY isotopic analyses.

I do agree with the highlighted comment. However, the only way to know is to get Bronze Age Southern Italian samples, Iron Age Greek samples, and compare to see how similar they are, and then get early Iron Age, Republican Era samples from southern rural eras and see how they changed.

It's immaterial to me what the results would show. I'm just tired of the stupidity which passes for analysis on anthrofora.

I personally suspect that there was to a degree sampling bias in this Roman study. In my opinion, people don't take into consideration that native/Italic Romans practiced cremation (burning) of their dead. Cremation was the usual custom until about A.D. 100. Hence, geneticists won't have the DNA of all the cremated Romans, especially from the nobles, aristocracy. However, I do think that the "Eastern Mediterranean" component was in Italy before Imperial Rome came into being, and that the bulk of migrants was from Magna Graecia, Southern Italy, and to a lesser degree from Hellenized Anatolia.

While we don’t really have the burial context, there are clear indications that not few of the sampled DNA were from non-locals, foreigners and slaves, too. To me, it appears that the authors made a mistake by suggesting that all of their tested DNA samples of Imperial Rome represents the entire Roman society. It's extremely unlikely that the native Romans who were like the early ones disappeared without a trace. So, I'm inclined to believe that not all, but many of the cremated Romans perhaps were genetically speaking still like the early Romans.

 

[Jovialis]

My man!

Wasn't it Lazaridis at one point, when people were exclaiming over where some samples from Reggio Calabria were plotting that they were undoubted from a very drifted subset? You can see it in the paper.

Could I ask you for one more favor? Could you also put it on the Calabrian paper site.

Sure, the heat map from the Mycenaean paper?

 

[Angela]

Sure, the heat map from the Mycenaean paper?

No, this latest tree and admixture is from the Calabrian paper and this is the Moots paper, but I just checked and you did put it there already.

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

My personal conjecture is that Italy was affected by the CHG gene flow (what was before labelled Iran_N but I think it is likelier it was CHG because I remember, sorry if I can't now recall the precise paper, that there was an Anatolian/CHG cline from Anatolia to the Caucasus and CHG/Iran_N from the Caucasus to southwards) that affected south east Europe, and the some migration that carried yamna-like admixture from the Balkans affected central-south Italy (judging from the distribution of the balkan R1b subclade versus the Italic subclade), and lastly a migration from central Europe or south France into north Italy and then a spread of proto-Italic peoples from north Italy to the rest of the peninsula, creating the Italian cline.

The Moot paper showed that the iron age centroid is indeed located in the central Italian region although no sample fell there, which I interpret as meaning that it is likely that it gradually came to existence as a more north Italian-like element mixed with a more south Italian-like one. I don't think it is really plausible to think that all Italy was north Italian-like but Greek colonists created the cline that exists today, given it extends well beyond the area of the Magna Graecia. I shouldn't be surprised if ancient south Italians were not too dissimilar from ancient Greeks and telling apart their direct ancestry in modern day's south Italians can be akin to figuring out how much "Saxon" or "Briton" the Englishmen are, given the initial similarity between them.

 

[Angela]

My personal conjecture is that Italy was affected by the CHG gene flow (what was before labelled Iran_N but I think it is likelier it was CHG because I remember, sorry if I can't now recall the precise paper, that there was an Anatolian/CHG cline from Anatolia to the Caucasus and CHG/Iran_N from the Caucasus to southwards) that affected south east Europe, and the some migration that carried yamna-like admixture from the Balkans affected central-south Italy (judging from the distribution of the balkan R1b subclade versus the Italic subclade), and lastly a migration from central Europe or south France into north Italy and then a spread of proto-Italic peoples from north Italy to the rest of the peninsula, creating the Italian cline.

The Moot paper showed that the iron age centroid is indeed located in the central Italian region although no sample fell there, which I interpret as meaning that it is likely that it gradually came to existence as a more north Italian-like element mixed with a more south Italian-like one. I don't think it is really plausible to think that all Italy was north Italian-like but Greek colonists created the cline that exists today, given it extends well beyond the area of the Magna Graecia. I shouldn't be surprised if ancient south Italians were not too dissimilar from ancient Greeks and telling apart their direct ancestry in modern day's south Italians can be akin to figuring out how much "Saxon" or "Briton" the Englishmen are, given the initial similarity between them.

The researchers of the Moots paper are using ALL the samples they found, some of which may have nothing to do with understanding the Italian cline, because they may be travelers or traders who came and went.

Southern Italy, once we get a time lapse set of samples, will, I think, show that the Italics did have some impact, as one would expect from the languages, but you would also have Greeks, perhaps like the Mycenaeans, perhaps similar to modern day Aegean populations, and some of the "locals". They may be pretty similar to the Greeks, as others said. We have to wait and see.

 

[Jovialis]

Absolutely fantastic! I feel vindicated!

In spite of all that grief, this is a glorious day!

Anthrogenica is repudiated. :grin:

Thank you for telling me Angela, and thank you to Kingjohn for posting the paper.

I have been permanently banned.

Funny not one single thread on the new paper, what a bunch of losers! Not a peep!

For people so obsessed with Southern Italians, you would at least think there would be a thread on the new Sarno paper. No matter, they are trying to cover the sky with their hands, but the sky is crashing down on them hard.

It looks like that is the only way they could remove the content of my signature, which linked the paper and Tree graphic. Pathetic attempt to suppress information. What a joke!

 

[real expert]

I have been permanently banned.
Funny not one single thread on the new paper, what a bunch of losers! Not a peep!
For people so obsessed with Southern Italians, you would at least think there would be a thread on the new Sarno paper. No matter, they are trying to cover the sky with their hands, but the sky is crashing down on them hard.
It looks like that is the only why they could remove the content of my signature, which linked the paper and Tree graphic. Pathetic attempt to suppress information. What a joke!

I knew it! I was about to ask you whether you think you'll get permanently banned because of your argument there. The AG Mods are disgusting banning and blocking maniacs, a bunch of arrogant, partial and intolerant bullies who in the name of etiquette and quality content get rid of users they don't like. I've never seen a forum that moderates discussions and bans users so massively like AG. Besides, aside from Afrocentric trolls from ES nobody has a safe haven there anyway, especially not if you challenge certain gold class members. Chin up! You did nothing wrong.

 

[Jovialis]

I knew it! I was about to ask you whether you think you'll get permanently banned because of your argument there. The AG Mods are disgusting banning and blocking maniacs, a bunch of arrogant, partial and intolerant bullies who in the name of etiquette and quality content get rid of users they don't like. I've never seen a forum that moderates discussions and bans users so massively like AG. Besides, aside from Afrocentric trolls from ES nobody has a safe haven there anyway, especially not if you challenge certain gold class members. Chin up! You did nothing wrong.

Thank you for your kind words!

It is just a ridiculous garbage website full of sophistry.

 

[real expert]

I am laughing because you are so predictable, I have nothing to discuss with you. All the concerns you have have been discussed by several people at Anthrogenica over the years. If you wouldn't immediately go hostile people would discuss with you.

Oh, please antrogenica is full of smug folks who don't like to debate if you know more than the "veterans" or "gold class members, or disagree with their views. New users are usually ignored unless they repeat and agree with the opinion of certain top dogs there. Besides, many posters love to report others who challenge them to get them banned. Plus, the AG Mods are unfair bullies with client politics that ban users right and left, and treat posters who behave the same differently. These PC cowards however, barely ban Afrocentric trolls there.

 

[Palermo Trapani]

Oh, please antrogenica is full of smug folks who don't like to debate if you know more than the "veterans" or "gold class members, or disagree with their views. New users are usually ignored unless they repeat and agree with the opinion of certain top dogs there. Besides, many posters love to report others who challenge them to get them banned. Plus, the AG Mods are unfair bullies with client politics that ban users right and left, and treat posters who behave the same differently. These PC cowards however, barely ban Afrocentric trolls there.

real expert: If you don't mind me asking, why are the Afrocentrist allowed to troll there at antrogenica and if you challenge them you get banned. FYI, I am not a member there nor have I ever been. Do the Afrocentrist there still have problems with the Schuenemann et al 2016 paper on Ancient Egypt. That paper had 90 ancient Egyptians, I know from the Middle Kingdom analyzed in terms of mtDNA and if I remember correctly 3 Full genomes. The paper had J. Krause on it who was involved with the sequencing of the Denisovans so if people there are having problems with that paper, then.

If you want to say the samples were only from the Middle Kingdom and not Upper Egypt, ok, but the results are what they are.

 

[kingjohn]

Thank you for your kind words!
It is just a ridiculous garbage website full of sophistry.

Agree
With you
the only good
Thing there is that they are good source
For new papers

P.s
Many of my new dna papers posts are based on them as source

 

[Jovialis]

Glad to be in good company! At any rate, it is my fault that this thread has gotten off track. Let's get back on topic.

 

[Angela]

Well, Sarno's paper is on both Lazaridis' and Razib Khan's twitter feed, virtually guaranteeing it will be read.

So much for trying to bury papers with which one disagrees.