Lombard DNA in Italy

One can go back further. There were hunter gatherers, then Neolithic farmers, and then various Indo-European cultures, all before the arrival of the Etruscans.

of course, but I do not know the names of any of these late-bronze age people ( or before )
 
I think you can also state a medieval migration of U152 in to these north italian areas......the frankish-salian group stayed a short time ( they spoke a franconian language and where from modern day Hesse and Nassua lands) , but the swabians of the upper rhine area migrated in great numbers to lombardy and veneto in particular , families like the scaliger, ezzelini, carrara brought swabian people and military personnel to govern these lands for very many decades. they where only replaced in the 15th century by italians.................I do not mean they where not italian, but that there swabian genes stopped coming

There is definitely a debate surrounding the theory that the Lombards were from Scania. It seems more plausible that the Lombards were from around Eastern Bavaria and Austria as there appears to have been a strong alliance between the Lombards and Bavarians at some stages during history (incidentally, against the Franks) ... this was possibly during the time of Charlemagne. The David Faux theory that U152 was a marker of the Cimbri from Denmark was something that seemed out of place at the time. There has however appeared (New-Age sequencing) some evidence of a Nordic marker of U152 that is beginning to make some of us take a second look at the 'crazy theory'.
 
Perhaps you didn't read my post carefully enough:
"As to the "Romans", we would first of all have to decide the relevant time period. The "Romans" of the first settlements on the seven hills, the Republican era, the era of Augustus? Should it be extended to all of Lazio? What about the Sabine era? Where are you going to draw the line geographically as well as temporally? The people of Sicily, in addition to Italic influence (and prior Neolithic influence, and perhaps slightly different Bronze Age migrations) would have had much more influence from the direction of Greece, and so their "mix" would have been different than that in central Italy, in my opinion, but these are all speculations."

Italian is indisputably an Indo-European language of the Italo-Celtic variety. The Romans spoke Italic. They are therefore presumed to be descended at least in part from the Indo-Europeans. The Indo-European languages in Europe track with R1b and R1a. Therefore, the Romans almost certainly carried R1b. This is not news, people. We're supposed to be beyond the basics now of having to explain what the Indo-European languages are, or basic undisputed facts about history. Even in terms of genetics, if you're going to debate a topic like the one that is the subject of this thread you should have read and tried to understand Haak et al.

See Haak et al 2015
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/02/10/013433
That is Maciamo theory,that IE speakers should have bear R1b and R1a. I do not agree with it.
Some IE bear indeed R1b,other R1a. Others bear J2,G and so on.
Look what is said in Boatini et al. :
The most frequent haplogroups in Italy are R-U152* (12.1%), G-P15 (11.1%),
So why not G-P15 for most Latins?
We should not look at paternal lines near Rome,to trace the descendants of Latins?
Why should we look in Northern Italy?

EDIT:
Well Boatini et al. lacks Y DNA from Lazio.
 
That is Maciamo theory,that IE speakers should have bear R1b and R1a. I do not agree with it.
Some IE bear indeed R1b,other R1a. Others bear J2,G and so on.
Look what is said in Boatini et al. :
The most frequent haplogroups in Italy are R-U152* (12.1%), G-P15 (11.1%),
So why not G-P15 for most Latins?
We should not look at paternal lines near Rome,to trace the descendants of Latins?
Why should we look in Northern Italy?

EDIT:
Well Boatini et al. lacks Y DNA from Lazio.

It's not "Maciamo's theory", it's quite well established at this point, through various lines of evidence, that R1a and R1b were the primary Y signatures carried by IE speaking men, read the recent studies. The key word there is "primary". It's also fairly well established that certain subclades of G were present as minority lineages but they definitely were minority lineages, and G was already present in Italy, probably in considerable numbers, prior to the arrival of the IE speakers, so it's no surprise that many present day male speakers of Italic languages carry G. This really isn't all that complicated.
 
I just want to clear something up which may have been ambiguous. I didn't say that I think the R1b which I do think the Romans carried (Romans as defined as Republican or early imperial era Romans) was necessarily U-152, although it could very well have been. It could also have been an upstream clade, which I think is now Maciamo's position. If any R1b was carried by Lombards, picked up, no doubt, in Pannonia or other stops along their journey, I would think that it would be L2 or even further downstream clades. L2 certainly has a stronger presence in northeast Italy than in central Italy, for example. We won't know for certain until we get ancient yDna. This is one area where we are all speculating, although hopefully it is informed speculation.

What is clear is that the Italic languages did not enter Italy by way of Sicily or southern Italy; instead it was at least generally a north/south movement, so any cline would be north/south as well for the yDna lineages in question. Also, as I pointed out, parts of southern Italy were heavily impacted by the Greek migrations in the first millennium BC and even earlier by way of Crete etc. If anyone wishes to dispute that, I can post sources. The first millennium BC migrations into northern and central Italy were by peoples who were also predominantly R1b bearers, except for whatever impact was made by the Etruscans, if indeed some of them came from the Aegean at a more recent time.

One final factor to consider is that the real drop off of U-152 is in southern Italy. The percentages north to center are not all that different, plus it also has to be taken into account that, as I said, this would include many subclades of U-152, all of which could have arrived at different times, and only some of which could be connected to the Romans.

As for sources, I've already pointed to Maciamo's work on this site. He is not the only person who posts about U152, however. You can also go to Richard Rocca's U152.org site although I don't know if it has been updated since the 2013 Boattini et al paper.
http://r1b.org/?page_id=242

This is a discussion of the so called Rhaetian cluster:
http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?2777-Raetian-Cluster&p=44021&viewfull=1#post44021
 
That doesn't mean that I necessarily think most of it came with the Lombards. I think it's very likely that it came with Italics or other "Indo-European" migrations that were earlier than the Lombards (perhaps Urnfield) and perhaps some downstream clades with the Celtici. That doesn't mean that some clades couldn't have come with the Lombards, since they traveled through U-152 territory.
U-152 in Northern Italy as a whole is both italic and celto-ligurian, depending on the clades. I doubt it has something to do with later contributions from the north.
In the case of Venetians, it can be of old Venetic origin (a branch of the italics), roman, or gaul (celtic).
 
One more thing to know is that Franks and Normans mixed with the Gothic and Lombard nobles.

The surname Garibaldi is a Frankified Gothic surname for example.
 
Since the Lombards or Langobardi have again come up...on another, inappropriate thread...

I will repeat, since I sometimes get misquoted and my comments misused...I never said there was no genetic impact from the Langobardi. We need more and better analyses to get some clarity. IF they carried mainly I1, R1b U-106, and perhaps R1a, they would have had very little impact in some areas of Italy, and quite a bit more in others. It's still an open question how this yDna input would translate into autosomal input, although since this was a folk migration, the incoming mtDna would also factor in.

The questions concerning the recently done analysis of ancient dna from that era in modern Piemonte is discussed in the appropriate thread.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...ern-Italy-(Piemonte)?highlight=Lombards+Italy

From this forum:
" Among the Germanic haplogroups identified in Campobasso by Boattini et al. (2013) there were 16% of I1, 10.5% of R1b-U106 and 3.5% of I2a2a. No R1a was found. The same study reported 5.5% of R1a, 2.5% of I1, and 2.5% of R1b-U106 in Benevento."

Of course, Boattini used very small samples, and these numbers, especially in the south, could be founder effect through the presence of a castle, and so might not, in the end, amount to very much autsomal admixture. We just don't know.

The Veneto and some other parts of northern Italy are a much better bet for actual autosomal impact, in my opinion, and we have a larger number of samples. In the Veneto, this site finds 8.5% I1. The U-106, from other studies, is from 5-10%. I'm not sure that the R1a should be included until we know the subclades. I know the vast majority of it is not M458, so it might have come during Bronze Age migrations. For that matter, according to Ralph and Coop there is no IBD sharing with anyone after 400 BC. So, maybe the U-106 also arrived with the Celtic migrations that had taken place by that time. The I1 may actually be from them. (Perhaps, if a Ralph and Coop analysis was done specifically in some of these areas, with larger numbers of samples, the conclusions would be slightly different.)

So, in that area and perhaps some parts of Lombardia, might we be looking at 20% or perhaps more. in a few instances. of an autosomal contribution from the Langobardi? It's possible. We just don't know yet.

The point remains that, even if, for the sake of argument, the Langobard autsomal admixture in some parts of northern Italy reaches 20%, it doesn't make those people Scandinavians. There are also then the areas that have virtually none.

Ed. I also find this emphasis on "Lombard" surnames as proof of descent as unpersuasive as when British people harp on about their "Norman" surnames. How on earth does anyone know if the surname was used by a descendent, legitimate or illegitimate, or was adopted by the stable man, or vintner, or whomever, in the lord's employ when it came time to have a surname. (That's my preferred source for all the Malaspina's in my line...blood suckers all of them, and decidedly not people from whom I want to descend.) Or let's consider the number of NPEs over the course of 1300 years, or the social climbers who just decided to take certain names. I hardly think this is a very good measure of actual ancestry.
 
Lombard surnames ... by the way Angela, where do you think the blue eyes of your Avatar came from? "Farae, hoc est generationes" Paolo Diacono, Historia Langobardorum

People of the Fara became Faraci and then italianized in Fallaci ... Oriana Family House was in Chianti near a place called "Sala" most important lombardic toponym in Tuscany.

Here is a list of the most significant lombardic place-names in Tuscany: http://bighipert.blogspot.it/p/toponimi-longobardi.html
 
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Lombard surnames ... by the way Angela, where do you think the blue eyes of your Avatar came from? "Farae, hoc est generationes" Paolo Diacono, Historia Langobardorum

People of the Fara became Faraci and then italianized in Fallaci ... Oriana Family House was in Chianti near a place called "Sala" most important lombardic toponym in Tuscany.

Here is a list of the most significant lombardic place-names in Tuscany: http://bighipert.blogspot.it/p/toponimi-longobardi.html

Your placename studies have nothing to do with Lombard DNA, which is rather slight in Tuscany, and Italy generally.
 
Lombard surnames ... by the way Angela, where do you think the blue eyes of your Avatar came from? "Farae, hoc est generationes" Paolo Diacono, Historia Langobardorum

People of the Fara became Faraci and then italianized in Fallaci ... Oriana Family House was in Chianti near a place called "Sala" most important lombardic toponym in Tuscany.

Here is a list of the most significant lombardic place-names in Tuscany: http://bighipert.blogspot.it/p/toponimi-longobardi.html

Blue eyes were apparently the norm for WHG. When the Neolithic farmers arrived in Europe from the Middle East, they absorbed them, and with them, the snps for blue eyes. I don't know if that specifically happened in Italy, but it could have. The snps were definitely present in Neolithic farmers of Central Europe and in the various Indo-European groups that came into Italy, including the people of the Urnfield culture, the Bell Beakers, and the Celts of the first millennium BC. Italy didn't remain totally brown eyed until the arrival of the Langobards. Whatever would give you that idea? Just remember your classics...there were light eyed people among the Etruscans and the Romans.

See Gamba et al
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141021/ncomms6257/images/ncomms6257-f3.jpg

Ian Matthieson et al: Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe
http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/03/13/016477.full.pdf

You don't need to tell me that there are light eyed Italians. I'm well aware of the percentages both in terms of anthropological data and in terms of the presence of the snps in the Italian peninsula. Even if I weren't, I have ten aunts and uncles on my father's side, and every one of them, in addition to my father, has light eyes. That I can remember there wasn't a single brown eyed person in their entire village. That doesn't mean they're all Langobards. They would plot with other Italians, northern Italians, perhaps, but Italians none the less.
 
Vallicanus, the last genetic studies on the population of Piedmont demonstrate the genetic continuity of some comunity from the Early Medieval to the Modern Inhabitans of Piedmont. Probably the solid social organization of the Lombards grouped in family clans (Fare, Farae) supported this continuity, not very differently from the Celtic clans.

From the conclusions: "We have demonstrated that aDNA can be successfully extracted from Early Medieval European samples from Northern Italy, and provided the first data concerning the genetic variation in a human group defined by material culture as Lombard"

https://www.academia.edu/10436577/G...y_Medieval_and_Modern_Inhabitants_of_Piedmont
 
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Samples of Lombard mtDNA (but unfortunately not Y-DNA) from the cemetery near Szólád in Hungary:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110793

Males:

Grave 3 - 45-60 years old, mesocephalic, height 166.9 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA H2a2b
Grave 4 - 30-40 years old, dolichocephalic, height 166.0 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA H
Grave 5 - 30-40 years old, brachycephalic, height 162.4 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA J2b
Grave 11 - 35-45 years old, hyperdolichocephalic, height 175.5 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA K
Grave 13 - mtDNA N1b2
Grave 15 - 13-17 lat, height 175.1 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA H1c1
Grave 16 - 45 or more years old
Grave 20 - 25-35 years old
Grave 22 - 40-50 years old, dolichocephalic, height 174.7 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA N1b2
Grave 24 - 45-65 years old, dolichocephalic, height 179.5 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA U4
Grave 27 - 40-55 years old, dolichocephalic, height 171.6 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA N1a
Grave 35 - 40-60 years old, height 162.8 +/- 4 cm
Grave 37 - 14-16 years old, mtDNA H
Grave 43 - 35-45 years old, dolichocephalic, height 159.9 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA H
Grave 45 - 30-40 years old, mesocephalic, height 174.6 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA J

Females:

Grave 9 - 20-25 years old, brachycephalic, height 164.7 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA J1b1a
Grave 17 - 45-60 years old, ultradolichocephalic, height 163.9 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA U*
Grave 19 - 17-25 years old, brachycephalic, height 154.0 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA HV
Grave 21 - 17-25 years old
Grave 25 - 30-40 years old, mesocephalic, height 156.8 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA J
Grave 26 - 20-40 years old
Grave 28 - 25-35 years old, hyperdolichocephalic, height 150.0 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA H
Grave 29 - 40-60 years old
Grave 30 - 30-40 years old, brachycephalic, height 154.3 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA H
Grave 31 - 35-45 years old, height 150.6 +/- 3.5 cm
Grave 41 - 45-55 years old, height 157.6 +/- 3.5 cm, mtDNA U4
Grave 44 - 18-25 years old, dolichocephalic, height 157.6 +/- 3.5 cm

Uncertain:

Grave 2 - 2-3 years old
Grave 6 - 8-12 years old
Grave 7 - 12-15 years old, mtDNA T2e
Grave 8 - 3-5 years old, mtDNA I3
Grave 10 - 3-5 years old
Grave 12 - 12-18 years old
Grave 14 - 13-17 years old, mtDNA I3
Grave 18 - 12-16 years old, mtDNA H
Grave 23 - 6-12 months old
Grave 32 - 6-10 years old, mtDNA H
Grave 33 - 0-2 months old
Grave 34 - 3-5 years old
Grave 36 - 8-16 months old, mtDNA U4
Grave 38 - 5-6 years old, mtDNA HV
Grave 39 - 0-6 months old
Grave 40 - 4-7 years old, mtDNA T2
Grave 42 - 4-8 years old, mtDNA K
 
Indeed, but - AFAIK - H1c1 is a very common mtDNA haplogroup in Europe.

More interesting is ~11% frequency of N1 in Lombard samples (3 out of 28).
 
Indeed, that's early Neolithic; by the mid-Neolithic in Central Europe the levels had gone down. I wonder where the Lombards picked it up?

The other interesting thing is the extremely low levels of mtDna "U" (WGH/EHG U5 and U4 clades): 3 mtDna U4, and one U*.
 
Where to begin?

1. @Dorianfinder: Your premise is faulty. I doubt we will ever know what is "Lombard DNA."

For this fool's errand itself, I blame the charlatans during the early days of DNA who tried to sell people on the notion that one haplogroup or another is a "Viking" (or whatever) marker.

That can only occur in relatively isolated places where you can show beyond a doubt that the haplogroup in question did not exist before, or when aDNA shows it, or when you are talking about a subclade with extraordinary specificity. None of these apply here.

ALL people by the dawn of recorded history were already significantly admixed. In fact, to assume otherwise is in direct conflict with many of the majoritarian theories here. By c. 5500 BC, Europe was already a melting pot of different Hgs. Certainly by 1000 BC. See http://snplogic.blogspot.com/2015/04/how-little-we-know-about-ancient-dna.html

In other words, it is false to assume that because our knowledge of a people's name and movements (i.e., recorded history) begins at a certain moment (i.e., during Greco-Roman times for most of Western Europe), that the people who stepped on the stage at that time (e.g., the Lombards) were atoms (pure essences). Europeans were all molecules (carrying many different strains) by this time. There is no one Lombard signature.

2. @Taranis. The same applies for Etruscan. There is no way to say it was predominantly one Hg or another. They were a mosaic. On Etruscans generally, see http://snplogic.blogspot.com/2014/02/scholars-finally-apply-some-logic-not.html

3. @Zanipolo. Define "aboriginal." In an area that is as well-traversed as Europe and Italy, do you mean the Neandertals? Archaic Modern Humans? Cro-Magnons? I'm a bit of an expert on pre-Roman Italic tribes, so I can tell you anything you might want to know about the conjecture on who was there first, in what region. It is mostly conjecture, with a smidge of archaeology, linguistics, and as of yet, no real DNA proof.

4. @Vallicanus and others. While I dug the foray into prosopography, the study of names and surnames, a large part of prosopography, is helpful in Italy only before c. 1200 AD. Anything much later, and indeed, the modern distribution means nothing. Surnames, too, mean little, since they affixed in most of Italy only during the Counter-Reformation.

Names were widespread and adopted by non-native speakers. In other words, after 1200 AD or even 1000 AD, you will find Roman Italians with names like "Gandolfini" (originally Norman), Rolando (originally Germanic), and the descendants of Germanics with names like Giulio, Sergio, Antonio, Valerio, etc., which are traditional Roman names. Tread carefully with how much you read into names. Angela said this much more eloquently than I could, a different way, on page 7 of this thread.

I would further note that "Lombard" took on an entirely different meaning in Italy after a couple hundred years had passed. It changed from an ethnonym to a profession: someone trading in jewelry. In the Byzantine provinces, it was slang for any non-Byzantine-ruled Italian, similar to how the word "Frank" changed from an ethnonym to mean, "any European," during the crusades.

5. @Corinth. Your theory on the origin of the Goths in certainly interesting, but I would note that it goes against almost all of the linguistic evidence, and all the ancient sources. The Goths spoke an East Germanic language, and there is a historical Gotland in South Sweden that bears material affinities with the wandering Goths' culture.

6. @mihaitzateo. AMEN. Your comments on the problems and northcentrism that gets in the way of explaining Indo-European markers in Southern Europe (aka, 1/2 of IE lands) are well-taken, and explained in detail here. http://dlc.hypotheses.org/807

7. @Skaheen15. The R1b theory, which has only been fleshed out in the last 1-3 years, is anything but well-accepted, and as for Italy, the recent Remedello finds complicate the simplistic nature of this theory considerably. There are current discussions on this on the haplogroups board.

8. @Angela. I dispute the extent of the Greek impact in Southern Italy. I believe, as you've posted elsewhere, the extant clines existed before the Bronze Age. Modern makers of online maps often show Magna Grecia as extending inland, for convenience sakes, but the truth of the matter is that Magna Grecia consisted of only coastal cities, always on the ocean. Sadly, many of these cities were completely depopulated and destroyed by Lucani, Bruti, and Romans. The experience of the Greeks in Thurii was typical. Harassed by Italic tribes, it became one of the few Greek cities that DIDN'T fall to the Italic tribes c. 300 BC, but after siding with Carthage, was utterly destroyed, so much so that the Romans had to relocate 3000 Latins there. Despite the Roman settlement, most of these cities were abandoned by the common era. (This is slightly off-topic).





 
@Moore,

I don't know how much of the ancestry of Italians comes from actual Greek settlement in the first millennium BC versus common ancestry with Greeks from the early Neolithic, the mid-Neolithic, the late Neolithic, or the early Bronze Age, and neither do you or anyone else, as we have absolutely no dna results upon which to ground our speculations.
 
Exactamundo!

I've made this point repeatedly: the "Greek-LIKE" appearance in certain parts of S. Italy could be the result of gene flow in 4000 BC (pre-ethnic), 400 BC (Ancient Greek colonies), or 400 AD (some rehellenization during Byzantine times).

I caution folks from assuming 400 BC, simply because we have better records for that period.
 
I just wanted to point out that I'm full Italian, born and living in Italy, my family from both sides has always been here. My father's line is from a village called Moscufo, the one I live in. Before doing the DNA test I read a book on the history of this village and found out that it was founded by the Lombards during the Lombard Kingdom of Italy and was originally called Meuskulf. As far as anyone knows in my family, we've always been here, especially my father's line who apparently never moved out of Moscufo. On the test, my Y-DNA turned out to be R-U106, very uncommon in Italy (4% of the population) thus proving that the Lombards carried this haplogroup.
 

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