Haplogroup J2, Romans, Christianity and Viticulture


Are we reading the same study? I believe you've raised this issue before. I don't see any complete FGS mtDNA results in this paper, which is what I've said is lacking.

An FGS is what they've been doing with the ancient samples from Central Europe for example. You really can't draw conclusions about mtDNA without it, in my opinion. The time depths are just too huge.

Ed. Perhaps you meant that we do have some coding region results from Pompeii. I've edited my post to reflect that.
 
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"DNA of men whose forebears probably were Etruscans show they weren't local, but migrated, study says. Genetic studies of Italians in Tuscany show that their forefathers, the ancient Etruscans, moved to Italy from what is now Turkey -- an origin that many archeologists have dismissed as unlikely. The Etruscans, who emerged about 1200 BC, reached their zenith in the 6th century BC, dominating Italy and the Mediterranean area until being assimilated into the Roman Republic about 200 BC. They provided many of the cultural underpinnings of Roman society. They were skilled metallurgists and masterful seafarers, but their origin has been a source of dispute for at least 2,500 years."
LA Times - Genetic tests: Italians were from Turkey
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun...ci-etruscans18

RomulusEtRemus.jpg


"An earlier tradition that gave Romulus a distant ancestor in the semi-divine Trojan prince Aeneas was further embellished, and Romulus was made the direct ancestor of Rome's first Imperial dynasty. Possible historical bases for the broad mythological narrative remain unclear and disputed. The image of the she-wolf suckling the divinely fathered twins became an iconic representation of the city and its founding legend, making Romulus and Remus preeminent among the feral children of ancient mythography."
Romulus and Remus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_and_Remus

Aeneas'_Flight_from_Troy_by_Federico_Barocci.jpg

Aeneas Flight from Troy by Federico Barocci.

"In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (/ɪˈniːəs/; Greek: Αἰνείας, Aineías, possibly derived from Greek αἰνή meaning "praise") was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. He is a character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, and receives full treatment in Roman mythology as the legendary founder of what would become Ancient Rome, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid."
Aeneas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneas

17715-01.jpg

Map Aeneae Troiani Navigatio

journeys_of_Aeneas.jpg

Travels of Aeneas.

"J2a-M92 is a well-defined J2a-M67 sub-lineage, with a distribution restricted to Asia Minor, the Balkans and the north-eastern Mediterranean coasts. Frequency and variance maps make plausible an origin in north-western Turkey, where the highest variance is registered, and a subsequent migration to the Balkans and then to the Italian Peninsula."
Ancient Migratory Events in the Middle East: New Clues from the Y-Chromosome Variation of Modern Iranians.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...e-0041252-g002

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"Working with linguistic evidence and etymogical "method" Georgiev asserts that the Etruscans were none other then the Trojans, the legendary founders of Rome." (Philip Baldi, The foundations of Latin, Walter de Gruyter, 2002. p. 111)"
Etruscans - Ancient Mediterranean Türks of Eurasia (proto-Hungarian - proto-Türkic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKFCs5m19pQ

"Genetic research made public at the weekend appears to put the matter beyond doubt, however. It shows the Etruscans came from the area which is now Turkey - and that the nearest genetic relatives of many of today's Tuscans and Umbrians are to be found, not in Italy, but around Izmir......The latest findings confirm what was said about the matter almost 2,500 years ago, by the Greek historian Herodotus. The first traces of Etruscan civilisation in Italy date from about 1200 BC.......But the latest conclusions may add weight to a rival, apparently more fanciful, theory that links their name to Troy, the "city of towers" and a part of the Lydian empire. The most likely date for the fall of Troy, as described by Homer, is between 1250 and 1200 BC. The Etruscans' contribution to Roman civilisation is still debated. They provided Rome with some of its early kings, and maybe even its name."
The Guardian - The enigma of Italy's ancient Etruscans is finally unravelled DNA tests on their Italian descendants show the 'tuscii' came from Turkey.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/18/italy.johnhooper
 
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"Nice, France: The long-running controversy about the origins of the Etruscan people appears to be very close to being settled once and for all, a geneticist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Sunday June 17). Professor Alberto Piazza, from the University of Turin, Italy, will say that there is overwhelming evidence that the Etruscans, whose brilliant civilisation flourished 3000 years ago in what is now Tuscany, were settlers from old Anatolia (now in southern Turkey)."
European Society of Human Genetics - Ancient Etruscans were immigrants from Anatolia (now Turkey) - geneticists find the final piece in the puzzle
https://secure.medacad.org/eshg.org/13.0.html

The mystery of Etruscan origins: novel clues from Bos taurus mitochondrial DNA
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/274/1614/1175.abstract


Subtitled version:
http://dotsub.com/view/5978f5f8-ba84-401b-af6f-84d06e261684

"There is a distinct association of ancient J2 civilisations with bull worship."
Eupedia.com, 2011.
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_J2_Y-DNA.shtml

Etruscan_mural_bull.gif

Etruscan mural depiction of a Bull, from the Tomb of the Bulls in Tarquinia.

"Another fresco is situated horizontally between the two doorways, in the center of the wall. It portrays the ambush of Troilus by Achilles, which is described in the Cypria. The event precedes the pursuit and slaying of Troilus by Achilles at the altar of Apollo. .... He identifies the rider as Troilus because he wears a Phrygian cap and has a large knot of hair."
Wikipedia - Tomb of the Bulls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Bulls
 
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Haplogroup J2 Romans. (Aeneas, Trojans, Phoenicians, Carthage, Rome)

"The results regarding my paternal genetics were identified as belonging to Haplogroup J2 (M172). This genetic marker dates back to roughly 15 000 yrs ago and is found predominately in the Fertile Crescent. Most prevalent in Southern Italy, Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Cyprus and several other countries around the Mediterranean and Caucasus region, some sources claim that these are the genes of the ancient Phoenicians who may have settled in the Roman Empire long ago."
Livelearngrow.ca - My Roots.
http://livelearngrow.ca/category/my-roots/

"The excess of haplogroup J2, and PC1+ to PS3+ in coastal Tunisia, the site of Carthage, compared to inland Tunisian populations is exceptionally significant, and suggests that the Roman destruction of Carthage did not eliminate the Carthaginian gene pool."
Anthropology.net - The Y-Chromosomal Footprint Of Phoenicians Throughout The Mediterranean.
http://anthropology.net/2008/10/30/...-of-phoenicians-throughout-the-mediterranean/

"By a.d. 193 Rome had an emperor from North Africa, Septimius Severus, and he spoke with a strong Phoenician accent. That was the revenge of Carthage. The Phoenicians also persisted genetically."
National Geographic - Who were the Phoenicians?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/lebanon/phoenicians-text/5

"Carthage also became a centre of early Christianity."
Wikipedia - Carthage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage

Gu%C3%A9rin_%C3%89n%C3%A9e_racontant_%C3%A0_Didon_les_malheurs_de_la_ville_de_Troie_Louvre_5184.jpg

Aeneas recounting the Trojan War to Dido, a painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. This scene is taken from Virgil's Aeneid, where Dido falls in love with, only to be left by, the Trojan hero Aeneas.

"Dido (/ˈdaɪdoʊ/ DY-doh) was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first Queen of Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia). She is best known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid. ...... The person of Dido can be traced to references by Roman historians to lost writings of Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily (c. 356–260 BC)."
Wikipedia.org - Dido (Queen of Carthage)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido_(Queen_of_Carthage)
 
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J2a and Jewish origin is not even a theory but pure speculation.

"EEJ are Europeans probably of Roman descent who converted to Judaism at times, when Judaism was the first monotheistic religion that spread in the ancient world. Any other theory about their origin is not supported by the genetic data. Future studies will have to address their genetic affinities to various Italian populations and examine the possibility of other components both European and Non-European in their gene pool."
The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms.
http://www.biologydirect.com/content/5/1/57#B10

"Many people new to Genetic Genealogy think the J2 haplogroup is synonymous with having male Jewish ancestry. One should note that having a J2 haplogroup assignment does not necessarily indicate Jewish ancestry. The J2 haplogroup is far more ancient than the Jewish religion and is found in many lines with Mediterranean region ancient ancestry. Another relatively more recent mode for J2's entry into some parts of Europe from the Mediterranean areas could have been the Roman Legions and Roman settlements."
Kerchner.com - YDNA Haplogroup Descriptions & Information Links.
http://www.kerchner.com/haplogroups-ydna.htm
 
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Haplogroup J2, Romans, Britain & Viticulture.

"The Tree 11 MITCHELMORE belongs to Haplogroup J2 or J-M172. This group migrated westward from the Middle East about 25,000 years ago, travelling along the north and south Mediterranean coastlines. One hypothesis is that this haplogroup was introduced into the British Isles by Roman soldiers; certainly Italy is one of the European countries with the highest frequency of haplogroup J2 today."
M*CH*MORE one name study - DNA Results
http://www.mitchelmore.info/join/dna-results.htm

Haplogroup J2, Romans & Britain.
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"The findings so far indicate that the imperial Italians of the early first millennium AD did not introduce their British subjects only to legionaries, villas and togas, but to the delights of cheap plonk as well."
The Independent - Veni Vidi Viticulture.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...ns-of-roman-vineyards-found-in-uk-738723.html

Haplogroup J2, Britain, Romans and Viticulture.

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'In Vino Veritas'
 
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North Mediterranean, J-M172 and Romans.

"The first axis accounted for 43.71% of the haplogroup frequency variation and clearly separated east European populations from north Mediterranean groups. The second PC encompassed 34.60% of the observed variance and separated most of the north Balkan samples from the rest of European samples. Vector analysis demonstrates that the north Mediterranean cluster is most associated with haplogroups J-M172, E-v13 and R-M269."
Paleo-Balkan and Slavic Contributions to the Genetic Pool of Moldavians: Insights from the Y Chromosome.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0053731

"7.2 North Mediterranean. Overview. From Spain to Greece, the North Mediterranean cluster defines an arc from Gibraltar to Bosphorus. Ancient and robust, this group is dominant in Southern Europe. Its strongest source is from the first farmers to migrate out of Western Eurasia. They absorbed those who were there before, holdovers from the Ice Age. A long history of traveling merchants and seafarers shaped this cluster. The great empires of Rome and Greece carried it away to distant lands. They also brought a second wave of Western Eurasian influence into the cluster. Its modern geography speaks to the history of those who moved, either willingly or in chains, under the Roman Empire. Because of this, the cluster’s signature is strongest in the western part of the Mediterranean. It is particularly strong on the isolated island of Sardinia. It reaches also upwards to the British Islands as well as east into modern Turkey. The politics of empire and of a later Rome may explain why the cluster is part of many Southern European and non-European Jewish Diaspora populations."
FamilytreeDNA - MyOrigins Methodology.
https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/family-finder-pages/myorigins-methodology/
 
Haplogroup J2 and Romans (Netherlands/United Kingdom).

10268700_749968678394623_6319617964394007202_n.jpg


Fragment taken from the book 'Zonen van Adam', regarding Hg J2-M172.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonen_van_Adam
http://www.barjesteh.nl/omslag.JPG

NL "Een opvallende, oud cluster is te vinden noord-oostelijk Branbant. Hier stuiten we wellicht op een erfenis van de in en nabij Nijmegen gelegerde Romeinse troepen, waarin veel huurlingen uit het Midden-0osten te vinden waren. Een soortgelijke verklaring wordt gegeven voor een cluster J2 bij de muur van Hadrianus in Groot Brittanie."

UK "A remarkable old cluster can be found in North east Brabant (Netherlands). Here we see a possible heritage from the Roman soldiers who were stationed in and around Nijmegen (Noviomagus) among which were many mercenaries from the middle east. The same explanation is given for a cluster of J2 near Hadrians wall in Great Britain."


 
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"The likely deep ancestry source of Haplogroup J2 as found along the Anglo-Scottish border is probably to be found with members of the Roman Legions which were stationed along Hadrian's wall."
Border receivers - DNA Report Nov 2005.
http://www.borderreivers.co.uk/DNA Report 7 Nov 05.htm

"Moffat said his colleagues had also discovered DNA originating from Roman-period Illyria, the area occupied by modern Croatia, which may relate to Roman occupation of lowland Scotland."
The Guardian - Scotland DNA Study Project.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/15/scotland-dna-study-project

 
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Haplogroup J2 Romans. (Aeneas, Trojans, Phoenicians, Carthage, Rome)

"The results regarding my paternal genetics were identified as belonging to Haplogroup J2 (M172). This genetic marker dates back to roughly 15 000 yrs ago and is found predominately in the Fertile Crescent. Most prevalent in Southern Italy, Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Cyprus and several other countries around the Mediterranean and Caucasus region, some sources claim that these are the genes of the ancient Phoenicians who may have settled in the Roman Empire long ago."
Livelearngrow.ca - My Roots.
http://livelearngrow.ca/category/my-roots/

"The excess of haplogroup J2, and PC1+ to PS3+ in coastal Tunisia, the site of Carthage, compared to inland Tunisian populations is exceptionally significant, and suggests that the Roman destruction of Carthage did not eliminate the Carthaginian gene pool."
Anthropology.net - The Y-Chromosomal Footprint Of Phoenicians Throughout The Mediterranean.
http://anthropology.net/2008/10/30/...-of-phoenicians-throughout-the-mediterranean/

"By a.d. 193 Rome had an emperor from North Africa, Septimius Severus, and he spoke with a strong Phoenician accent. That was the revenge of Carthage. The Phoenicians also persisted genetically."
National Geographic - Who were the Phoenicians?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/lebanon/phoenicians-text/5

"Carthage also became a centre of early Christianity."
Wikipedia - Carthage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage

Gu%C3%A9rin_%C3%89n%C3%A9e_racontant_%C3%A0_Didon_les_malheurs_de_la_ville_de_Troie_Louvre_5184.jpg

Aeneas recounting the Trojan War to Dido, a painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. This scene is taken from Virgil's Aeneid, where Dido falls in love with, only to be left by, the Trojan hero Aeneas.

"Dido (/ˈdaɪdoʊ/ DY-doh) was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first Queen of Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia). She is best known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid. ...... The person of Dido can be traced to references by Roman historians to lost writings of Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily (c. 356–260 BC)."
Wikipedia.org - Dido (Queen of Carthage)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido_(Queen_of_Carthage)

R%C3%B6merhalle%2C_Bad_Kreuznach_-_Tiberius_Iulius_Abdes_Pantera_tombstone.JPG

The Roman tombstone in Bingerbrück, Germany

Tib(erius) Iul(ius) Abdes Pantera Sidonia ann(orum) LXII stipen(diorum) XXXX miles exs(ignifer?)coh(orte) I sagittariorumh(ic) s(itus) e(st)

Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera from Sidon, aged 62 years served 40 years, former standard bearer(?) of the first cohort of archers lies here.


"It was one of the most important Phoenician cities, and may have been the oldest."
Wikipedia - Sidon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidon

"The YDNA Haplogroup of the ancient Phoenicians is J2, also identified as the signature of human migration via the Mediterranean in the Neolithic or New Stone Age around 6,000 BC, from the Levant into Europe."
Ancientmed.org - The Mediterraneans.
http://www.ancientmed.org/TheMediterraneans.htm

"Was im ersten Moment exotisch erscheint, ist auf den zweiten Blick gar nicht so aussergewöhnlich. Rund jeder achte Europäer stammt aus der Linie J2."
Tages Anzeiger - Für 300 Franken auf den Spuren der eigenen Vorfahren. (German)
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/leben/ge...story/28960496

"J2 Orientalide West. Ihr Verbreitungsgebiet ist der europäische Mittelmeerraum."
Die Haplogruppen des Y-Adams nach Ländern Europas verteilt. (German)
http://www.manfred-hiebl.com/Y-Adam-...ung_Europa.pdf
 
Haplogroup J2 and viticulture.

"Wine making spread to Crete during the Minoan period and then later to Italy with the Etruscans and to Iberia with the Phoenicians. It was an integral component of the economy and social culture of the proto-greek civilizations and the phoenicians who both went on to settle other mediterranean coastal regions. And tracing the spread of Viticulture from its origins to its spread before the Roman period, we can see te highest levels of Haplogroup J2 today correlate with the geographical centres of all these civilizations. While viticulture may not represent the first wave of M172 migrants to Europe, M172 certainly played a strong role in bringing Viticulture to Europe with such civilizations as the Minoans, Greeks and Phoenicians."
M172 Blog - Correlations in the spread of Viticulture and Haplogroup J2, 2008.
http://m172.blogspot.nl/2008/10/correlations-in-spread-of-viticulture.html

"King et Al noted a strong correlation in precipitation levels and associated levels of J2a (M172+ M410+) within the Middle East, stating:The genetic memory retained in the extant distributions of Y-chromosome haplogroups J1-M267 and J2a-M410 within the FertileCrescent significantly correlates with regional levels of annual precipitation in a reciprocal manner. The statistically significant correlations of Y-chromosome haplogroups, precipitation levels and domestic lifestyle are pronounced. The spatial frequency distribution of haplogroup J2a coincides closely with regions characterised by >400mm of annual precipitation capable of supporting settled agriculture, while haplogroup J1-M267 distributions correlate inversely with semi-arid regions characteristically used by pastoralists. Thus, King et al have established that M410's spread seems to correlate with rainfall. It would then make sense that viticulture would likely mirror this spread since about 400 mm is also the level of annual precipiation required to support the farming of Wine Grapes (General Viticulture, Albert Julius Winkler p 395). And this is what we see; that viticulture mirrors the proposed spread of M172, M410 through the Near east during the bronze age."
M172 Blog - Correlations in the spread of Viticulture and Haplogroup J2, 2008.
http://m172.blogspot.nl/2008/10/correlations-in-spread-of-viticulture.html

10330406_751855728205918_5751958829207471782_n.jpg


"In the time of the Roman Empire, grapevine varieties assumed such great importance that many of the indigenous varieties were brought to the colonies or later imported."
VinetoWinecircle - The time of Roman Empire.
http://www.vinetowinecircle.com/en/history/the-time-of-the-roman-empire/

"Earlier studies have concluded that the J-M410 sub-clades, J-DYS445-6 and J-M67, are linked to the spread of farming in the Mediterranean Basin, with a likely origin in Anatolia."
Y-chromosomal evidence of the cultural diffusion of agriculture in southeast Europe.
http://www.unipv.eu/on-line/Home/AreaStampa/documento2986.html

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It really doesn't matter how much fanciful material you post. Until you have old DNA results from Phoenician sites, none of this proves that the Phoenicians were J2. And the Phoenician theory certainly doesn't explain the high levels of J2 in central Italy or the Balkans. I think a Neolithic expansion out of Anatolia explains the J2 distribution better.
 
It really doesn't matter how much fanciful material you post. Until you have old DNA results from Phoenician sites, none of this proves that the Phoenicians were J2. And the Phoenician theory certainly doesn't explain the high levels of J2 in central Italy or the Balkans. I think a Neolithic expansion out of Anatolia explains the J2 distribution better.

Its because I was told he is J2b which is most frequent in the Balkans (Albanians have 10%, Greeks 10%, Ionian Greeks 6%, Sicilian Greeks and Cretans have around 4%) while, J2a on the other hand is most frequent among Cypriots, Greek S/Italians, Armenians, Georgians, Iranians, Lebanese (all have above 20%) .
Seems he is trying to say that J2a which are from the levant are related to J2b which is from Anatolia and they formed the basis of the Romans prior to Empire building.

So J2a pushed west from the Caucasus into Levant to form J2a and into Anatolia to form J2b. .........that's basically the idea of the story. Throw in the Roman story that they are trojans etc etc
 
As far as the Neolithic goes, we've got lots of G2a, some (absorbed?) I2a and E-V13. We might find some Neolithic era J2 in the Balkans if those darn results ever come out, but so far yDNA "J2" doesn't look very Neolithic to me.

Based on the current evidence, I'm inclined to think that J2 is a Metal Ages entrant into Europe and perhaps carried a dose of ANE along with it.

That doesn't mean it was necessarily Phoenician, however. J2a is also present all through Anatolia and the Greek islands. The clades in Italy have multiple other possible sources, including Crete and the other Greek islands, Greek colonists from Ionia, and possibly some late migration from Anatolia itself.

In that regard, I'd also just like to state for probably the tenth time, in relation to the posts about the Etruscans upthread that it isn't helpful to post very old studies. Some of the authors of the original papers postulating a Bronze Age Etruscan origin in Anatolia based on mtDNA have since published papers saying that the mtDNA is so old it could just as well have arrived in central Italy during the Neolithic. We aren't going to know until those bones are subjected to in depth high resolution testing.
 
As far as the Neolithic goes, we've got lots of G2a, some (absorbed?) I2a and E-V13. We might find some Neolithic era J2 in the Balkans if those darn results ever come out, but so far yDNA "J2" doesn't look very Neolithic to me.

Based on the current evidence, I'm inclined to think that J2 is a Metal Ages entrant into Europe and perhaps carried a dose of ANE along with it.

That doesn't mean it was necessarily Phoenician, however. J2a is also present all through Anatolia and the Greek islands. The clades in Italy have multiple other possible sources, including Crete and the other Greek islands, Greek colonists from Ionia, and possibly some late migration from Anatolia itself.

In that regard, I'd also just like to state for probably the tenth time, in relation to the posts about the Etruscans upthread that it isn't helpful to post very old studies. Some of the authors of the original papers postulating a Bronze Age Etruscan origin in Anatolia based on mtDNA have since published papers saying that the mtDNA is so old it could just as well have arrived in central Italy during the Neolithic. We aren't going to know until those bones are subjected to in depth high resolution testing.

Okay, valid point, there isn't the evidence so far to support the idea of J2 being Neolithic, and only a lack of data allows me to make that assumption at this point. But what are the alternatives, given the wide distribution of J2 and the places where it's most common? By "Metal Ages", do you mean Copper Age, Bronze Age or Iron Age? That covers a huge time span, so could you be more specific? If you mean Copper Age, are you associating J2 with Bell Beaker? If you mean Bronze Age, are you associating J2 with the Indo-European invasions?

As far as J2 not being present in Italy or the Balkans during the Neolithic, lack of data is not proof of anything. I said Neolithic (and should have specifically said late Neolithic) because none of the alternatives seem to fit, IMO. The only thing I feel confident in saying is that I don't think the distribution of J2 matches the Phoenicians very well.
 
Okay, valid point, there isn't the evidence so far to support the idea of J2 being Neolithic, and only a lack of data allows me to make that assumption at this point. But what are the alternatives, given the wide distribution of J2 and the places where it's most common? By "Metal Ages", do you mean Copper Age, Bronze Age or Iron Age? That covers a huge time span, so could you be more specific? If you mean Copper Age, are you associating J2 with Bell Beaker? If you mean Bronze Age, are you associating J2 with the Indo-European invasions?

As far as J2 not being present in Italy or the Balkans during the Neolithic, lack of data is not proof of anything. I said Neolithic (and should have specifically said late Neolithic) because none of the alternatives seem to fit, IMO. The only thing I feel confident in saying is that I don't think the distribution of J2 matches the Phoenicians very well.

I totally agree that the distribution of J2 requires a lot more than the Phoenicians to explain it.

In terms of J2 and the Neolithic, it's not just that we don't have any evidence yet of J2 in a Neolithic context; it's that if it were early or even mid-Neolithic I would expect to see more of it in Central Europe. However, as you often note yourself, modern distributions have been proven to be poor indicators of ancient presence time and time again, so we could find localized J2 in Neolithic contexts in Anatolia or Greece or southern Italy tomorrow and it wouldn't be a great surprise to me.

Even were that to happen, however, I think J2 frequency today is probably the result of numerous different layers of migration from the direction of the southeast, many of which took place during the Metal Ages. I think one obvious source is the Iron Age colonization of southern Italy and Sicily by the Greeks. Many of the founders of these colonies were from Ionian city states on the western coast of Anatolia, or from the islands.

There was also influence from this direction, which could have entailed actual gene flow, earlier in the Bronze Age.
See, Philip Baldi, The Foundations of Latin, for an English language source.
http://books.google.com/books?id=af...6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=apennine culture&f=false

I'll try to find some relatively short Italian articles that can be google translated for the same proposition.

I also think it looks like there was a definite movement of J2b directly across the Adriatic from the Balkans into Italy. The question is when. Since it doesn't seem to have been accompanied by I2a, that has implications for the timing of the move into Italy and also for analyses of I2a in the Balkans.
 
I thought about the possibility of Greece being the source of the J2 in Italy, and was put off that idea by the fact that modern central Italy has approximately as much J2 as Sicily and more than southern Italy and Greece itself. Of course, there are all sorts of ways to explain that away, given the various population shifts that happened in those areas over the centuries, so I still can't rule it out. And Greece doesn't have nearly as much I2 as other Balkan countries, which would be an argument in favour of I2 being a Slavic import, even though I've been assuming that I2 was probably ancient in the Balkans.

On the other hand, if we use current DNA results to tell us something about the past (which I'll admit I've argued against), the massive quantity of J2 in central Italy might suggest that the non-Latin population of central Italy was strongly J2. The involvement of such populations in the armies of imperial Rome could explain why J2 is found at low levels everywhere in Europe that the legionnaires went. Of course, that argument also works if the source of J2 in central Italy was Greek colonization, but I'm not sure the levels of J2 would be that high if the source was the colonization of Magna Grecia. And of course if I2 did arrive in the Balkans later than I've been assuming, the J2 could have migrated from somewhere in the Balkans other than Greece. In which case, we're back to considering the possibility of late Neolithic migration of J2 into Italy, IMO.
 
In terms of J2 and the Neolithic, it's not just that we don't have any evidence yet of J2 in a Neolithic context; it's that if it were early or even mid-Neolithic I would expect to see more of it in Central Europe. However, as you often note yourself, modern distributions have been proven to be poor indicators of ancient presence time and time again, so we could find localized J2 in Neolithic contexts in Anatolia or Greece or southern Italy tomorrow and it wouldn't be a great surprise to me.
Yea, nothing from Neolithic Central Europe survived very well the arrival of R1a/R1b. But what if J2 was a branch of Bronze-Age Indo-Europeans? We still don't know what haplogroup brought Latin to Italy...
 
Yea, nothing from Neolithic Central Europe survived very well the arrival of R1a/R1b. But what if J2 was a branch of Bronze-Age Indo-Europeans? We still don't know what haplogroup brought Latin to Italy...

I'll admit that we can't rule out that possibility until we get the old Y DNA results we need from various sources. I'm inclined to think that J2 is too common in some parts of Italy to have arrived there that late, but the same argument would obviously apply to R1b and most people on this forum seem to think that R1b was in fact brought to western Europe by Bronze Age invaders. Maybe J2 was as well. That isn't what I think, but I can't say I can disprove the idea.
 

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