Talk on Ancient Italian/Roman DNA over in Stanford.

@ToBeOrNotToBe

Circassians have very low % of R1b so i don't think they would be the source. Proto-Armenian solution seems more likely.
 
@ToBeOrNotToBe

Circassians have very low % of R1b so i don't think they would be the source. Proto-Armenian solution seems more likely.

Circassians were ethnically cleansed and scattered across West Asia, so their current Y DNA % doesn't reflect much. Also, I don't believe that's entirely true.

proto-Armenian to me seems unlikely as Anatolia was densely populated, and there's no records of masses of people invading and migrating into Northern Turkey (on the scale of the Völkerwanderung, and even that has relatively low genetic legacy).

In contrast, a huge amount of Circassians migrated to Turkey - like hundreds of thousands at least I think.
 
Why would you expect trading posts to cause such a large increase in Iran_N? Settlement is the only thing that can really do that at scale. Unless you believe similar things about the Phoenicians etc., which I'm sure you don't.

Also, the majority of Scots and English never had an origin story with anything to do with Troy.

Clearly, once again you didn't read the link. That was one of the founding myths, just like it was a founding myth in Rome. How the heck do you know it wasn't believed in the Britain of that time? Are you another mind reader, only this time able to go back a thousand years?

You are also mistaken about the Greek input. I think it was large enough in Massalia to have an impact, probably in Liguria too, or where did all that E-V13 we carry come from?

5tpSqX4.png


Same for central Italy around the Adriatic. That's a big hotspot in Italy for J2 and there is abundant archaeological evidence for contacts with Greece. You know, the big green blob NORTH of Rome in the map you posted.

ddSeZVr.png


As for the Phoenicians, I do think they might have had a small impact in northwestern Sicily and Sardinia, the only places where they actually had their own settlements. It just didn't extend beyond that. Also, the Greeks went in for folk migrations, and imo the Phoenicians, at least originally, were much more about just establishing trading emporia and exploiting natural resources. Sort of like the European cantonments in 19th century China.

It's amazing to me how people distort my positions.
 
Clearly, once again you didn't read the link. That was one of the founding myths, just like it was a founding myth in Rome. How the heck do you know it wasn't believed in the Britain of that time? Are you another mind reader, only this time able to go back a thousand years?

You are also mistaken about the Greek input. I think it was large enough in Massalia to have an impact, probably in Liguria too, or where did all that E-V13 we carry come from?

5tpSqX4.png


Same for central Italy around the Adriatic. That's a big hotspot in Italy for J2 and there is abundant archaeological evidence for contacts with Greece. You know, the big green blob NORTH of Rome in the map you posted.

ddSeZVr.png
[/IMG]

As for the Phoenicians, I do think they might have had a small impact in northwestern Sicily and Sardinia, the only places where they actually had their own settlements. It just didn't extend beyond that. Also, the Greeks went in for folk migrations, and imo the Phoenicians, at least originally, were much more about just establishing trading emporia and exploiting natural resources. Sort of like the European cantonments in 19th century China.

It's amazing to me how people distort my positions.

If I did distort your positions it was unintentional - regarding the origin story of Britain, there's no evidence the majority of people believed in such a story. In Rome, there's tonnes of it.

The E-V13 map if anything seems to go against the idea of major Greek influence from Central Italy Northwards, as f.e. South Germany seems to have similar levels, and their source of E-V13 isn't likely to be so different as that for Northern Italy (and most of Central Italy). With Marseilles and Liguria, I'd probably agree I suppose.

You can check on YFull if E-V13 in Italy likely came from the Greeks.

As for the J2 map - besides Southern Italy, it doesn't seem to follow any logical pattern.
 
If I did distort your positions it was unintentional - regarding the origin story of Britain, there's no evidence the majority of people believed in such a story. In Rome, there's tonnes of it.

The E-V13 map if anything seems to go against the idea of major Greek influence from Central Italy Northwards, as f.e. South Germany seems to have similar levels, and their source of E-V13 isn't likely to be so different as that for Northern Italy (and most of Central Italy). With Marseilles and Liguria, I'd probably agree I suppose.

You can check on YFull if E-V13 in Italy likely came from the Greeks.

As for the J2 map - besides Southern Italy, it doesn't seem to follow any logical pattern.

Lots of people have thought and do think the world, indeed the universe, was created in 7 days. It doesn't mean it's true.

It's a Babylonian myth, originally, btw.

As to Greeks along the Adriatic coast, the trade contacts were there. Certainly, there wasn't the kind of colonization there that occurred in the more southern regions, but the latter was in the first millennium BC. We don't fully understand the migration movements earlier than that. When did J2 arrive and from where? I used to say Bronze Age, but now all bets are off. Directly from Anatolia, from Crete, or from mainland Greece and the southern Balkans? We just don't know.
 
Lots of people have thought and do think the world, indeed the universe, was created in 7 days. It doesn't mean it's true.

It's a Babylonian myth originally

That's clearly different though, it doesn't reflect immediate origins like the Troy myth, which would be within the cultural memory of the early Romans. The world being created in 7 days obviously isn't within cultural memory.

Also regarding the Y DNA points - I've missed the obvious, and that's that the Sea People hypothesis would have people Minoan-like anyway. So they'd carry similar Y DNA to the Greeks. It appears though then that perhaps U152 came into Central Italy after J2 arrived.
 
Well, they can read Etruscan, but the fact is that it is not IE far less Anatolian IE. The basic vocabulary, the syntax, morphology, anything has nothing to do with IE. At best it could have very ancient IE or PIE influence. Examples:

mother - ati
brother - ruva
daughter - sech
son - clan
water - thi, neri
sky - falatu
land - pes

Numbers:

  1. θu
  2. zal
  3. ci
  4. śa
  5. maχ
  6. huθ
  7. semφ
  8. cezp
  9. nurφ
  10. śar

ToBeOrNoTOBe, you should just leave a simpler hypothesis if it does not fit the data convincingly. That is how science works: the data come first, then the hypothesis is made or renewed to make sense of the data. No, Etruscan is not Anatolian at all, it is not IE at all. The best you could perhaps assume, but even then in utter speculation, is that Tyrsenian and Indo-European could have had a common source many millennia before they were spoken when they started to diverge. But since Anatolian probably split from PIE in the early Chalcolithic, that would mean a Etruscan-Neolithic back into Early Neolithic or even Mesolithic times. No way its expansion was linguistically homogeneous with the Anatolian one. Additionally, the few inscriptions in Minoan have never been successfully read as anything Anatolian IE, not even the endings and prefixes are safely Anatolian nor IE.

As for Lemnian, linguists have asserted that it is way too similar to Etruscan to beca remnant of a much earlier Tyrsenian spoken in the Aegean before it arrived in Italy and the Alps. It is just as likely or actually more likely that it is in fact a descendant of an Etruscan colonization FROM Italy to the Aegean, possibly in association with the Sea Peoples movements, since we know that for example Sardinians (Sherden) participated in it.

I know you like to think these population movements are simple, associated with just one people, culture and language, and that the spread of some archaeologically similar characteristics must also imply the spread of just one common language... But the fact is that in many instances the evidences point to a more complex reality. Think of the Austronesian-speaking Melanesians who spread a mostly Austronesian culture in islands to the east of Papua, even though they were genetically very different. Now imagine the opposite also happened as is notoriously the case of Anatolian Turks, who did not need to be genetically or even culturally close to the steppe Altai Turks to spread the very same language family.
 
ToBeOrNoTOBe, you should just leave a simpler hypothesis if it does not fit the data convincingly. That is how science works: the data come first, then the hypothesis is made or renewed to make sense of the data. No, Etruscan is not Anatolian at all, it is not IE at all. The best you could perhaps assume, but even then in utter speculation, is that Tyrsenian and Indo-European could have had a common source many millennia before they were spoken when they started to diverge. But since Anatolian probably split from PIE in the early Chalcolithic, that would mean a Etruscan-Neolithic back into Early Neolithic or even Mesolithic times. No way its expansion was linguistically homogeneous with the Anatolian one. Additionally, the few inscriptions in Minoan have never been successfully read as anything Anatolian IE, not even the endings and prefixes are safely Anatolian nor IE.

As for Lemnian, linguists have asserted that it is way too similar to Etruscan to beca remnant of a much earlier Tyrsenian spoken in the Aegean before it arrived in Italy and the Alps. It is just as likely or actually more likely that it is in fact a descendant of an Etruscan colonization FROM Italy to the Aegean, possibly in association with the Sea Peoples movements, since we know that for example Sardinians (Sherden) participated in it.

I know you like to think these population movements are simple, associated with just one people, culture and language, and that the spread of some archaeologically similar characteristics must also imply the spread of just one common language... But the fact is that in many instances the evidences point to a more complex reality. Think of the Austronesian-speaking Melanesians who spread a mostly Austronesian culture in islands to the east of Papua, even though they were genetically very different. Now imagine the opposite also happened as is notoriously the case of Anatolian Turks, who did not need to be genetically or even culturally close to the steppe Altai Turks to spread the very same language family.

Why is it likely that the Sea peoples spread from Italy to the Eastern Med? Afaik all evidence points towards Aegean origins (e.g. with that pig DNA study from the Philistines). The Sherden link then would be that these people are the name-sake for modern Sardinians as a result of taking over power from the natives.

In terms of the IE-Tyrsenian link, of course it's speculation, but it has some limited evidence backing it up (not that I understand it). There's also the point of where did Etruscan originate from if not from the Sea Peoples. It surely isn't dated all the way back to Cardial Ware farmers, and it definitely isn't related to any branch of IE in Central Europe. The Sea Peoples are the only real explanation imo (and there's circumstantial things like the Teresh-Troy links etc.). Tyrsenian has been linked with Minoan etc. languages as part of a greater Aegean language family, and that also fits with the archaeology. These people (if the Aegean language family is legit) were definitely Pelasgians, and it just so turns out that the Pelasgians were close allies of Troy.

I do thrive on all of this stuff, I'll admit, but I'm a big believer against coincidences (and things like e.g. independent inventions). Even if my idea isn't the truth, I reckon there's a link.

Also, I don't think spread of people always correlates with spread of language - the main idea I've been speaking about over the past few months is that the R1b Bell Beakers were originally non-IE and merely adopted it from the cultures they moved into.
 
It could have been a split between Patrician and Plebeian, OR, as I've said three or four times now, the 60% of the population which resembles Northern Italians could include both Patricians and Plebeians.

If Rome was originally an Etruscan "colony," with the "founding fathers" taking wives from the local Latins, then the "Patricians" could have mostly been families that claimed legitimate Etruscan heritage along the male line, with the first generation largely being "half-breeds," so to speak. The Plebeians could have simply been anyone else, including any Patrician "bastards." An open question is at which point after the founding did Patrician families begin practicing endogamy (denying Plebeians the rites of connubium), solidifying them as a ruling caste.

Originally, or at least at one period of the Republic, there was no Connubium between the Patricians and the Plebeians; but this was altered by the Lex Canuleia which allowed Connubium between persons of those two classes.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Matrimonium.html

Prior to 445 BC, intermarriage (connubium) between patricians and plebeians was forbidden. After that the children of such marriages took the social rank of the father, be it patrician or plebeian, regardless of the mother's status.

https://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-marriage.php

Under an Etruscan/Latin colony scenario, the original Etruscan ("northern"?) component could have been significantly diluted over time, with the Latin/Italiate ("southern"?) component increasing, especially after 445 B.C.
 
I know about the Etruscans having huge influence on early Rome, see my large earlier post (page 5). It's unlikely that the Etruscans came from the North though, what Early Bronze Age culture could they be associated with? There isn't one.

The Alpine zone might have been a complex mosaic of languages. The existence of an Alpine substrate ('Alpenwörter') is well established. Some words of the pre-Roman Alpine lexicon are Celtic, but many aren't.

If I had to guess I'd say that the Tyrsenians were one of those unknown Alpine peoples, with the Etruscans constituting a successful subgroup which became more expansive.

Makes more sense than Trojans who inexplicably became Alpine shepherds as Rhaetians to me, but I'm perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise by DNA.
 
The Alpine zone might have been a complex mosaic of languages. The existence of an Alpine substrate ('Alpenwörter') is well established. Some words of the pre-Roman Alpine lexicon are Celtic, but many aren't.

If I had to guess I'd say that the Tyrsenians were one of those unknown Alpine peoples, with the Etruscans constituting a successful subgroup which became more expansive.

Makes more sense than Trojans who inexplicably became Alpine shepherds as Rhaetians to me, but I'm more than willing to be convinced otherwise by DNA.

Well I don't think they were literally Trojans, but nearby Pelasgian allies of Troy. And the point about Rhaetian being a more archaic language than Etruscan (apparently) is valid, I don't have much of an argument against that other than there could be foreign influences on Rhaetian making it more different from Etruscan and Lemnian.

The distribution of Y DNA J2 in Italy is actually consistent with this hypothesis (http://paleoglot.blogspot.com/2010/07/etruscan-entry-into-italy.html), rather than a migration of Sea Peoples immediately into Tuscany. Also, that map is consistent with one other tidbit:

Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17), himself a native of the Venetic town of Patavium, records that after the fall of Troy, the Trojan prince Antenor became the leader of the Paphlagonians after they all had been expelled from their homeland. Together, they migrated to the northern end of the Adriatic coast, where they established a settlement and conquered and merged with indigenous people known as the Euganei.[10] The story connects the Veneti with the Eneti, mentioned by Homer (850 BC).

 
Well I don't think they were literally Trojans, but nearby Pelasgian allies of Troy. And the point about Rhaetian being a more archaic language than Etruscan (apparently) is valid, I don't have much of an argument against that other than there could be foreign influences on Rhaetian making it more different from Etruscan and Lemnian.

The distribution of Y DNA J2 in Italy is actually consistent with this hypothesis (http://paleoglot.blogspot.com/2010/07/etruscan-entry-into-italy.html), rather than a migration of Sea Peoples immediately into Tuscany. Also, that map is consistent with one other tidbit:

Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17), himself a native of the Venetic town of Patavium, records that after the fall of Troy, the Trojan prince Antenor became the leader of the Paphlagonians after they all had been expelled from their homeland. Together, they migrated to the northern end of the Adriatic coast, where they established a settlement and conquered and merged with indigenous people known as the Euganei.[10] The story connects the Veneti with the Eneti, mentioned by Homer (850 BC).


This doesnt explain why the Etruscans were typical Urnfielders. One may always posit that there was an archaeologically invisible elite, but what are the arguments for of this? It was various IE peoples who claimed descent from Troy (Romans, Franks, Norse, Veneti did I forget anyone?) - that's the opposite of your hypothesis.
 
Off-topic but what's with the distribution of R1b in Turkey? Doesn't seem to be correlated with any R1b rich Indo-European population / empire there. Hittites, Luwians etc. generally were in Central-West, Greeks in West, Galatians in Central and Turkic people mostly settled in Central and West too. In this map Northern Turkey has the highest % of R1b
Hittites and luwians where in all of anatolia except NW-Anatolia
Carian, lydian, lycian, hurrian etc are all luwian based linguistic people
Palaic , hittite are Hatti based linguistic people
The Troad was different
western coastal anatolia was different, myceneans and ionions
NE coastal anatolia had non IE kaskian people
.
note ..why is Lydian still being noted the heart land of etruscans, now that it is based as a branch of Luwian and scholars can read Luwian, .....how can etruscans come from Lydian in Anatolia as their language cannot be deciphered
 
This doesnt explain why the Etruscans were typical Urnfielders. One may always posit that there was an archaeologically invisible elite, but what are the arguments for of this? It was various IE peoples who claimed descent from Troy (Romans, Franks, Norse, Veneti did I forget anyone?) - that's the opposite of your hypothesis.
Veneti do not claim they descent in full people from Troy, they claim they come from Eneti are branch of the Palaic people , allies of Troy.......what % is trojan is speculation.
while Nat geno did find this genetic link of veneti and Palaic in 2010, they concluded that this trip to italy happened at least 100 years before the fall of Troy .....so one need to ask, was their any trojans on this trip, was this Antenor a trojan or was Antenor someone else
.
its says Antenor , leader of the Trojans and the Veneti attacked and beat the indigenous people of north-east Italy, the Euganei
 
WTF, apparently Max Planck thinks IE originates with Anatolian farmers!

What is going on...

Migrations of some Maykop into Yamnaya territory, accompanied by the transfer of knowledge and language, still happened, Wang’s team suspects. Occasional migrations north through the Caucasus to Yamnaya grasslands fits a scenario in which the ancient homeland of Indo-European language lay among Anatolian farmers, the researchers speculate. If they’re right, they have resolved one of the thorniest issues in the study of languages. But the long-debated origins of Indo-European tongues remain uncertain.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-mating-asian-herders-european-farmers

Separate thread coming, but it looks like they think there was some elite-dominance model of Anatolian farmers along with the spread of metallurgy, wagons etc. That is basically the opposite of what everyone has been lead to believe - Anatolian farmers always seemed to be the ones who were dominated. Maybe not so, idk.

In that case though, what about the replacement of EEFs in Europe? How can they believe PIE is with Anatolia_N, I just don't get it :petrified: This is from the same Haak who proposed Steppe migrations as spreading IE, so they must have considered a lot to change their mind
 
WTF, apparently Max Planck thinks IE originates with Anatolian farmers!

What is going on...



https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-mating-asian-herders-european-farmers

Separate thread coming

between north and south caucasus was a highway of people moving back and forward , the hundreds of kms between the fresh water black sea in the past ( which was lower in sea level ) and the mountain range was all grasslands, good for herding livestock etc
There was far more traffic in the caucasus than between Anatolia and europe in those early times
 
@CrazyDonkey,

We don't know anything specific about these 8 people, other than that perhaps 5 of them plot with modern North Italians and 3 with modern Southern Italians.

As I said many times, without burial context and iostopes there's a limit to how much we can deduce from that.

We don't know the genetic signature of Etruscans, so I don't know if they were genetically more "northern" than "Latins" or not. It's possible. After all, the Mycenaeans were a very "southern" (steppe light and WHG light), and yet Indo-European speaking intrusive group. However, the opposite is also possible.

Plus, it's impossible at this stage to know whether some of the samples were "actually" Etruscan or perhaps just Etruscan admixed. Burial context is key, and since the Etruscans weren't mentioned by the author, it's perhaps unlikely we have actual Etruscans here. Also, where precisely were they gathered? Timing is also important. In the early stages Etruscans lived right across the Tiber from the Latins. By the latter part of the first millennium, the Etruscans had already been effectively absorbed.

Whether, during the period when Etruscan (and half Etruscan/half Greek) kings ruled Rome there was extensive admixture I don't know. We do have the following:

"Livy also records that, after the war, a number of the Etruscan soldiers returned to Rome to seek shelter following the War between Clusium and Aricia, and that a number of the Etruscans remained to live in Rome, and were granted an area to live which thereby became known as the Vicus Tuscus.[15]"

However, is that legend or fact? Even if it is fact were they numerous enough to leave lots of descendants?

Also, in 396 after the last of the Latin wars against the Etrurian city of Veii, the territory was subdivided into lots for Latin settlers. Did intermarriage follow? I don't know.

What I do know is that some highly placed Senators claimed Etruscan descent. As to the really upper reaches, such as the imperial family, it seems to have been Etruscan women who were absorbed, i.e. Claudius' wife.

The Caecina gens is just one example of an Etruscan gens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caecina_(gens)
 
WTF, apparently Max Planck thinks IE originates with Anatolian farmers!

What is going on...



https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-mating-asian-herders-european-farmers

Separate thread coming, but it looks like they think there was some elite-dominance model of Anatolian farmers along with the spread of metallurgy, wagons etc. That is basically the opposite of what everyone has been lead to believe - Anatolian farmers always seemed to be the ones who were dominated. Maybe not so, idk.

In that case though, what about the replacement of EEFs in Europe? How can they believe PIE is with Anatolia_N, I just don't get it :petrified: This is from the same Haak who proposed Steppe migrations as spreading IE, so they must have considered a lot to change their mind

It would be Anatolia_Chl instead of Anatolia_N wich would have more Iran ancestry i guess. But the turn to Anatolian ancestry instead of Iranian one, when everyone is hammering that the CHG in Steppe looks way older than Maykop, is a weird turn. I'm too corrupted to not see obscure reasons, but it concerns only myself.
 
We don't know the genetic signature of Etruscans, so I don't know if they were genetically more "northern" than "Latins" or not. It's possible. After all, the Mycenaeans were a very "southern" (steppe light and WHG light), and yet Indo-European speaking intrusive group. However, the opposite is also possible.

By quoting "northern" and "southern" and following them with question marks I was trying to undercut the notion of them as designating origination, rather than simply where they ended up, in Italy.

Who the Etruscans or the Latins were and where they originated is a mystery. All we know with any security is that the Etruscans didn't speak an Indo-European language and the Latins did. It is quite possible that the noble "Etruscan" group were more Aegean/Anatolian (or "southern") in origination, while the peasant "Latin" group were more European/Steppe (or "northern"). Or maybe not.

That both the Etruscans and Latins, archaeologically, appear to have emerged from the preceding Villanovan/Urnfield culture presents us with a language conundrum - both can't be right. It is possible that the Etruscans were later intruders who became heavily admixed with the underlying ("urnfield") culture, imposing their language more than their genes. Or were the Latins the intruders, adopting the underlying ("urnfield") culture, but keeping their language? Or both were intruders? Who knows?
 

This thread has been viewed 40340 times.

Back
Top