Haplogroup J2, Romans, Christianity and Viticulture

In some other thread I was musing about J2 standing behind copper age of Varna and Cucuteni cultures. Chalcolithic started very early in Balkans.
 
In some other thread I was musing about J2 standing behind copper age of Varna and Cucuteni cultures. Chalcolithic started very early in Balkans.

Okay, but how did it get to Italy in such quantities? I think you mentioned in another thread that the distribution of J2 at low levels in other parts of western Europe seemed similar to the limits of the Roman Empire and that seems plausible, but are you saying that the reason J2 is so high in Italy is because it was brought to Italy by Copper Age people from the Balkans?
 
Just looking at Maciamo's map, the argument could be made for both a Neolithic or a Metal Ages spread, which makes sense because the Bronze and Iron Age migrations from Greece and/or Anatolia come from the same part of the world which was the source of the Neolithic.

Haplogroup-J2.jpg


As for frequency within Italy, the Boattini data is better sourced in that it is surname based, which is very important in a country that has experienced massive amounts of internal migrations relatively recently, but on the other hand the sample numbers are very small, so I'm not sure of the accuracy of a 22% or so frequency in Umbria and the Marche, which would bring those east of the Apennines, more Adriatic leaning provinces close to or even surpassing some of the levels in southern Italy and parts of Sicily.

My personal feeling is that some of it may indeed have a late Neolithic source from the Balkans, or at least that wouldn't surprise me, but I would find it extraordinary if all of the Bronze Age and Iron Age movements from Crete, the other islands and Greece proper into the mainland and Sicily did not impact those levels significantly, and that doesn't even take into account any possible movement involved in the formation of the Etruscan culture in the Bronze Age by migrants from Anatolia or the eastern Aegean directly into Tuscany, should that ever be proven. (Although interestingly enough, Tuscany itself, based on the Boattini data as well as the composite data put together by Maciamo, is rather low.) Then there are Byzantine era influences to be considered.

I think, as Maciamo pointed out, that it's interesting that the Apennine area in central and southern Italy is a yDNA "G" heavy, but a yDNA "J" light area. Perhaps the mountains served as a refugia for Neolithic peoples, with later emigrants having more impact on coastal areas? I think that heavy coastal pattern for "J" is also apparent in areas like Liguria and the northeast, where "J2" in some frequency maps seems to peter out as you go inland. (Then again, in the north, the entrance of R1b may have changed the proportions of the yDNA haplogroups.)

Ancient DNA will be the most probative, obviously, but if modern distributions are going to be used, you need very high resolution scans as well as much larger samples.

FWIW, the Boattini papers do give more resolution than we usually have, so we can see different clades of J2, which might very well have formed parts of different migration movements. I think it's a mistake to think J2 is any more monolithic than some of the "R" clades. One thing that I did learn from those papers is that there is very little "Semitic" J1 in Italy. Most of the J1 that is present is of the northern near East, presumably older, Neolithic variety. Maybe some of the J2 will fall into that category as well. However, as I said, I think much of it will also be of the Cretan, generally Greek islander and Ionian Greek variety, as an example.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...in-Italy-(Boattini-et-al-)?highlight=Boattini

The latest Boattini paper on southern Italian markers also provides TMRCA dates for J2 of between 1700 and 1250 B.C., which is, of course, Bronze Age. I'm a bit of a skeptic myself about this kind of dating, so I certainly don't find it definitive, and in addition, that doesn't mean that's when it came, but it's an indication, I think, that these markers don't have a really ancient presence in Italy.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...aper-2014?highlight=Boattini+-+southern+Italy
 
Okay, but how did it get to Italy in such quantities? I think you mentioned in another thread that the distribution of J2 at low levels in other parts of western Europe seemed similar to the limits of the Roman Empire and that seems plausible, but are you saying that the reason J2 is so high in Italy is because it was brought to Italy by Copper Age people from the Balkans?
Looking at this wide distribution of J2 and in substantial number, and practically all over Europe, it makes it entrance not later than IE bronze age. It doesn't correlate with R1a or R1b IEs and later big population movements from South to North are not known. From Bronze Age on all migrations went from West to East and from North to South. It looks like J2 distribution went from South to North, or rather from South East. This is the way of Neolithic Farmers, or Copper Expansion.
Now, assuming that copper age started in Balkans in Farmers communities, it means that J2 had to show up earlier, perhaps on a wave of one of farming improvements. Unless Chalcolithic started in Near East and was brought to Balkans with J2.

There are possibilities however that big disasters, like 3,000 BC population collapse in Balkans or Bronze Age collapse creates demographic void and opportunity for tribes from far away for a quick and deep entrance. Sort of like Slavic expansion.
 
Haplogroup J2 and Christianity (and Mithraism, Zoroastianism, hebrew).

Correlations between Haplogroup J2 M172, the Roman Empire, Christianity and Viticulture.

Haplogroup J2 - Spread of Christianity.

555133_517420614982765_1576923373_n.jpg

Diffusion of religions;

10574476_795718893819601_7691432219553642064_n.jpg

Source (MIT): http://web.mit.edu/course/21/21h.580/www/timesatlas/p26_1.jpg

1379310_623171751074317_1544350417_n.jpg

(Left: The geographic space over which Classical Greek and Latin served as a lingua franca in antiquity. Right: Y-DNA Haplogroup Frequency map of J2-M172.)
Source of Language Map (Harvard University): http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=4827

GrecoRoman.gif

Greco-Roman Spheres of Influence: Source Griffith University.
 
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Haplogroup J2 and the Roman Empire.

"Yeah, it`s just that J2 isn`t really found in the modern Irish population," says Adam. "it is found in very small percentages in England, mostly areas that used to have a large Roman presence during the Roman conquest of Britain."
Silver Alert - A Florida Story.
http://books.google.nl/books?id=-qLxAwAAQBAJ

"Roman Empire (150 BC – 400 CE): very likely this era imported most of the modern European J2a, especially to Northwestern Europe. Probably also J2b expanded out of the Balkan to Western Europe mainly in this period. The migration was probably driven by commerce, trade, military movements and (re)settling of free land."
J2-M172 Haplogroup Research - Cultural History
http://j2-m172.info/links/cultural-history/

"J2 has been well-studied and can be split into several subgroups, although the modes of individual distribution for those subgroups are not well understood. Many influences, such as Greek and Roman societies, would have played a part."
Gerardi/Gelardi Family History.
http://gelardifamily.net/gerardigelardi_dna

Hg J2-M172 & Roman Republic.

1236259_591804834211009_98755787_n.jpg

"Il DNA greco/etrusco. L'aplogruppo J2, presente in tutta Europa, è di chiara origine neolitica e mediorientale. Fenici, Etruschi, Grecie da ultimo Romani (e, a nostro parere, anche i Bizantini), contribuirono a diffonderlo in Europa, fermo restando il fondo derivante dall'invasione neolitica. I confini della maggior diffusione di J2 presentano una notevole somiglianza con quelli dell'Impero romano, in accordo con quanto detto in precedenza. Tuttavia, per quanto riguarda la Padania, la sua presenza è piuttosto messa inrelazione con l'influenza etrusca. Un esame della distribuzione di J2 mostra come tale aplogruppo, in Padania, abbia una consistenza relativamente alta solo in una ristretta fascia attorno alla costa adriatica. Nel resto della Padania le percentuali sono paragonabili a quelle dell'area centro europea (ad est) ed iberica (ad ovest). Il pensiero, a nostro parere, non può non andare alle colonie greco-etrusche di Adria eSpina ed anche all'influenza bizantina a Venezia. Ricordiamo che già gli studi di Cavalli Sforza avevano messo in luce una (minoritaria) influenza greca nelle zone considerate. Ci sembra quindi che J2, in Padania, derivi principalmente dal fondo neolitico e, sulla costa adriatica, dal ben noto contributo greco ed etrusco (e bizantino)."
DNA barbarico (e non) in Padania.
http://www.academia.edu/7391890/DNA_Barbarico_e_non_in_Padania

"J2: essenzialmente è un aplogruppo originario della Mesopotamia. E’ l’aplogruppo principale delle società che hanno dominato il Mediterraneo. Esso si divide a sua volta in due ramificazioni principali J2A e J2B. La prima ramificazione si è diffusa nel mediterraneo grazie all’espansione dei Greci, dei Romani, dei Fenici, degli Ebrei e degli Etruschi. Ed è quello presente anche come aplogruppo maggioritario in regioni come l’Inguscezia e la Cecenia. L’aplogruppo J2B è meno diffuso, ed è comune nei balcani, soprattutto tra l’Albania, la Macedonia e nel nord dell’India. Quindi probabilmente, l’aplogruppo J2B può al pari di alcune ramificazioni dell’aplogruppo G, far parte delle tribù indoeuropee ariane che invasero l’India. Alcuni ipotesi dicono come questo aplogruppo sia quello degli antichi macedoni di Alessandro Magno, dato che si ritrova nel percorso di conquista nella truppe macedoni."
Hescaton.com - L’Europa genetica.
http://www.hescaton.com/wordpress/leuropa-genetica/
 
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Okay, but when and how did so much J2 end up in Europe? It hasn't been found in Neolithic sites, and yet the levels of J2 in Italy and it's distribution pattern suggests that it must have been present in Europe since at least the Bronze Age, if not before. Why is there so much J2 in northern Italy? Except for an ambiguous finding among the Corded Ware folk which was probably actually I rather than J, no J has been found in early Europe.
 
Okay, but when and how did so much J2 end up in Europe? It hasn't been found in Neolithic sites, and yet the levels of J2 in Italy and it's distribution pattern suggests that it must have been present in Europe since at least the Bronze Age, if not before. Why is there so much J2 in northern Italy? Except for an ambiguous finding among the Corded Ware folk which was probably actually I rather than J, no J has been found in early Europe.


Ed. Most of the attachments are not working, so I have substituted direct links.

I haven't changed my mind since my post above. :) I still think J2 in Italy is at the earliest very late Neolithic, but most probably Bronze Age and later and mediated through the Balkans and Greece, including the Greek Islands.

If the Etruscan elite were from the eastern Aegean, that would have made an impact in Toscana/northern Lazio, and through the Etruscans into central northern Italy, while the coastal regions of Liguria/Venezia would have been impacted by Greek and Etruscan traders in the west, and Greek traders and Balkanites in the east. Liguria and Venezia(and south along the coast) were also the northern Italian regions that held out the longest against the Barbarian tribes and were part of the lingering presence of Byzantium. (This is the briefest of sketches about the history, but I don't want to drone on about the history for those members who might be interested.)

I'm sure this is old news to you, and some of our Greek members may know of more accurate representations, but these can give a general idea, I think.
Greece and its colonies in 550 B.C.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/AntikeGriechen1.jpg

This groups the Greek settlements of southern Italy by area of origin in the original Greek lands:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Graecia_ancient_colonies_and_dialects.svg.png
The orange areas are Doric, the brown NW Greek, the grey is Achaean, and the purple is Ionian.

These are the corresponding areas in the homeland:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...1218px-AncientGreekDialects_(Woodard).svg.png

This shows the various colonizations of the late Metal Ages, all of them probably bearing some J2:
It's an excellent map, imo, but too large to load directly. However, you just need to click on the link.
(Could an administrator load it?)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Ancient_colonies.PNG

The Etruscan League:
http://www.roebuckclasses.com/102/maps/etruscancities.jpg

Then you can add in some slaves from Greece (highly prized as they were very civilized) and from Asia Minor, some of whom must have left their genetic trace, although one must always deal with the IBD analysis of Ralph and Coop that anything after about 400 B.C. had a minimum impact, at least in most of Italy. (See Ralph and Coop et al)

The Byzantine empire in Italy at its height under Justinian:
http://blossomingbyzantine.yolasite.com/resources/byzantine-empire.gif


Italy after the Lombard invasions. The Lombards first entered Italy in 568AD.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...boin's_Italy.svg/855px-Alboin's_Italy.svg.png

It lasted much longer in a sliver near Venice and in the south, coming to an end in the south only with the Muslim invasions.

Byzantine territorial losses:
View attachment 6590
 
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Okay, but when and how did so much J2 end up in Europe? It hasn't been found in Neolithic sites, and yet the levels of J2 in Italy and it's distribution pattern suggests that it must have been present in Europe since at least the Bronze Age, if not before. Why is there so much J2 in northern Italy? Except for an ambiguous finding among the Corded Ware folk which was probably actually I rather than J, no J has been found in early Europe.

I agree, J2 is present in north-italy and alpine areas from ancient times. We see this from studies and Ftdna ALPGEN project

His language map is also wrong , it has no greek in southern Italy
 
I haven't changed my mind since my post above. :) I still think J2 in Italy is at the earliest very late Neolithic, but most probably Bronze Age and later and mediated through the Balkans and Greece, including the Greek Islands.

.......

I guess that's the only explanation that makes sense to me. Although J2 in Greece as a whole is only 19%, I notice that it's 34% in Crete, which probably has a population that's closer to the DNA profile of pre migration period Greece than modern mainland Greece is. So, if Greece used to be higher in J2, all that colonization of the Italian peninsula for centuries would have resulted in a lot of J2 in Italy, and particularly in the most Greek colonized parts of Italy. But, as you suggested, the muslim invasions of southern Italy would have somewhat decreased the J2 in some of those areas of southern Italy that were previously heavily colonized by Greeks, reducing the J2 level in those areas as compared to other heavily Greek colonized parts of Italy. I guess it all fits.
 
I guess that's the only explanation that makes sense to me. Although J2 in Greece as a whole is only 19%, I notice that it's 34% in Crete, which probably has a population that's closer to the DNA profile of pre migration period Greece than modern mainland Greece is. So, if Greece used to be higher in J2, all that colonization of the Italian peninsula for centuries would have resulted in a lot of J2 in Italy, and particularly in the most Greek colonized parts of Italy. But, as you suggested, the muslim invasions of southern Italy would have somewhat decreased the J2 in some of those areas of southern Italy that were previously heavily colonized by Greeks, reducing the J2 level in those areas as compared to other heavily Greek colonized parts of Italy. I guess it all fits.
Hey, don't forget that at least legally, Crete is part of Greece (correct me if I'm wrong). Also, I wouldn't be surprised if mainland Greeks were influenced by populations that Greek islanders weren't influenced by (such as the Mycenaeans or the Slavic migration). However, according to Anthropol Anz. 2014 the craniofacial morphology in modern and ancient Greeks indicates elements of ethnic group continuation within the unavoidable multicultural mixtures.
Link:
http://dienekes.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/craniofacial-morphology-of-greeks.html
 
Hey, don't forget that at least legally, Crete is part of Greece (correct me if I'm wrong). Also, I wouldn't be surprised if mainland Greeks were influenced by populations that Greek islanders weren't influenced by (such as the Mycenaeans or the Slavic migration). However, according to Anthropol Anz. 2014 the craniofacial morphology in modern and ancient Greeks indicates elements of ethnic group continuation within the unavoidable multicultural mixtures.
Link:
http://dienekes.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/craniofacial-morphology-of-greeks.html


The history of Crete and the Greek mainland are inextricably intertwined. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that there would have been no Mycenaean civilization without the influence of Crete, for one thing. Specifically to your point, however, the Mycenaeans around the middle of the 15th century BC conquered Crete, marking the end of Minoan thalassocracy.

I am personally quite sceptical about a lot of this internet chatter trying to draw hard and fast distinctions between different parts of Greece based on an extremely small number of samples, particularly when some of those samples seem to be drawn from perhaps not terribly representative areas of Greece. A study gathering uniparental and more importantly autosomal data from all areas of Greece, and controlled so that each person tested has all four grandparents from that specific geographic area has yet to be done, to my knowledge.

Until then, all these comments about how different islanders (and which islanders?) are from "mainland" Greeks is rather premature in my opinion. Not to mention that it's important to know what areas of the "mainland" are being discussed. Are the areas in the far north different from the Peleponessus? What about the areas in the north heavily colonized by returning Anatolian and Pontic Greeks? Greeks from Athens, given that they are drawn from all parts of Greece would have to be heavily screened for regional background it seems to me. (That's why Italian samples are never drawn from Rome or Milano, for example.)
 
I guess that's the only explanation that makes sense to me. Although J2 in Greece as a whole is only 19%, I notice that it's 34% in Crete, which probably has a population that's closer to the DNA profile of pre migration period Greece than modern mainland Greece is. So, if Greece used to be higher in J2, all that colonization of the Italian peninsula for centuries would have resulted in a lot of J2 in Italy, and particularly in the most Greek colonized parts of Italy. But, as you suggested, the muslim invasions of southern Italy would have somewhat decreased the J2 in some of those areas of southern Italy that were previously heavily colonized by Greeks, reducing the J2 level in those areas as compared to other heavily Greek colonized parts of Italy. I guess it all fits.

I think I was more cogent in post #163. :)

As I said there, it wouldn't at all surprise me if a Neolithic European sample turns up that bears a J2 lineage. However, as more and more time passes without one turning up, (as also indicated by the rather cryptic notes that have turned up about upcoming papers about Varna and other parts of the Balkans) I do think it looks like, for whatever reason, it is probably at the earliest Copper Age, and probably Bronze Age and later. Or, more likely, different clades arrived at different times. (All the interest has been in the "R" lineages, so we have very little data about specific J2 lineages.)

The vector for Italy has to be, in my opinion, the Balkans and Greece. As for the fact that in the Boattini study some of the central Italian areas, notably Umbria, have levels even a bit higher than some areas in the south, I think that may in part be a function of the fact that good as it is, the authors used very small samples. It's also helpful to look at the Eupedia map, which has the benefit of drawing on many studies.

View attachment 6591

You can see that the percentages in some areas of the south are very similar to those of Crete, while others are similar to those of the Peleponessus. (In this regard, if I said somewhere that I think that the Moorish invasions left even enough y lineages to significantly change the distribution pattern in the south, then I was wrong, or at least not sufficiently precise. To the best of my recollection the specifically Berber lineages and the "Semitic" J1 lineages combined account for at most 4-6% of the total, even in Sicily, depending on the area.)

I've given some thought to that unusual amount of J2 on the Adriatic side of Italy even into the center, and I think the explanation lies in gene flow not only directly from Greece, but also from the coastal Balkans. The fact that it has been so diminished in Slovenia and Croatia, for example, may be due to the Slavic migrations, (R1a and probably I2a) which are obscuring the pattern of the flow. A similar thing is happening in northwestern Italy, where that mass of U152 is like a wedge changing prior patterns. (Of course, this is all rather imperfectly correlated with autosomal dna.)

The following is sheer speculation. However, I think it is interesting to consider these y lineages in terms of their correlation with the EEF/ANE/WHG formulation of Lazaridis et al based upon ancient genomes. If I had to guess, I would say that the J2 bearing people might have been a combination of EEF and ANE, and that what ANE exists in southern and central Italy is in part a result of those migrations. For one thing, J2 seems to have a Kurdish or Iranian or at least eastern Anatolian origin, and they are an ANE bearing people.
 
from an old search in a mountain clan in Greece seems I1 as palaiolithic, sardenian like etc etc.
.
G2a3a seems to be neolithic with J2, yet in Greece we do not have neolithic but epipalaiolithic.



could the difference among Neolithic and epipalaiolithic means something?

could Varna be a I1 culture?
 
from an old search in a mountain clan in Greece seems I1 as palaiolithic, sardenian like etc etc.
.
G2a3a seems to be neolithic with J2, yet in Greece we do not have neolithic but epipalaiolithic.



could the difference among Neolithic and epipalaiolithic means something?



could Varna be a I1 culture?

I think perhaps you mean I2?

At any rate, somewhere on our site texts were published from someone in the audience during a presentation on ancient dna recovered from Varna and surrounding cultures, and it seems it was once again G2a. I apologize, but I don't remember the precise thread. Perhaps someone else can provide a link.

Of course, it's best if we wait for the actual paper.
 
I guess that's the only explanation that makes sense to me. Although J2 in Greece as a whole is only 19%, I notice that it's 34% in Crete, which probably has a population that's closer to the DNA profile of pre migration period Greece than modern mainland Greece is. So, if Greece used to be higher in J2, all that colonization of the Italian peninsula for centuries would have resulted in a lot of J2 in Italy, and particularly in the most Greek colonized parts of Italy. But, as you suggested, the muslim invasions of southern Italy would have somewhat decreased the J2 in some of those areas of southern Italy that were previously heavily colonized by Greeks, reducing the J2 level in those areas as compared to other heavily Greek colonized parts of Italy. I guess it all fits.

What muslim invasions are you talking about? Muslims barely left any Y-DNA beyond few spots here and there. Anyway most of J2 in Italy is non Greek. The dominant J2 subclade in Greece is almost completely absent in Italy, excluding for areas which were colonized by Greeks and Albanians (Eastern Sicily, Salento, Southern Calabria).

Haplogroup-J2b.gif
 
You can see that the percentages in some areas of the south are very similar to those of Crete, while others are similar to those of the Peleponessus. (In this regard, if I said somewhere that I think that the Moorish invasions left even enough y lineages to significantly change the distribution pattern in the south, then I was wrong, or at least not sufficiently precise. To the best of my recollection the specifically Berber lineages and the "Semitic" J1 lineages combined account for at most 4-6% of the total, even in Sicily, depending on the area.)

If you are talking about this study, no semitic J1 linage were sampled at all. All J1 linages are counted as "moorish" although they most likely predated Moors, Greeks,... by thousands of years.

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/full/ejhg2008258a.html
 
If you are talking about this study, no semitic J1 linage were sampled at all. All J1 linages are counted as "moorish" although they most likely predated Moors, Greeks,... by thousands of years.

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/full/ejhg2008258a.html


You can take a look at the tables in the Supplementary Data section of Boattini et al, which divides the J1 in Italy into "J1e" and non J1e. One table also provides the strs. That one is by area.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0065441#pone.0065441.s012

I agree that the presence of J1 in Italy has been misinterpreted. The vast majority of it is, from more recent data, Neolithic era. The erroneous conclusions were partly based, imo, on very glib interpretations of Italian history, as well as the fact that J1 was treated as a monolithic clade. It wasn't until it was more resolved that it became clear that there is extremely little "Semitic" ydna J1 in Italy.

That, of course, means that interpretations of the extent of Moorish genetic influence in Italy must be re-examined, as it would imply that it has either been vastly over estimated, or there were very few Arabs involved and it was mostly a Berber phenomenon.

Given that the levels of E-M81 (the so called "Berber" clade) in southern Italy are in the low single digits, my personal take away is that the Moorish influence has been over-estimated, and that what influence there was stemmed mainly from Berber settlement drawn from the coastal areas, although there was, according to historical analysis, an elite "Arabic" layer, which from the almost non-existent traces remaining, must have been very small, and/or went into exile. If you're interested in the history of Sicily, or southern Italy in general in terms of the Moorish conquests, I highly recommend the book, A History of Muslim Sicily, by Leonard C. Chiarelli, 2011. It's very long, but it is groundbreaking in its analysis.

Btw, I don't make any claims about how many of them actually settled in Sicily, in particular, because the historical evidence is extremely sketchy. It may be that they came in rather substantial numbers but that most of them were indeed expelled.

As to your comment to Aberdeen about J2, I would point out that J2b is not the only J2 y lineage. Grugni et al 2012 Figure 2 shows, in the first column, the distribution of a J1 clade as well as various J2 clades. (The second column shows variance)
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0041252#pone-0041252-g002

As to the topic of J2 in Italy generally, I think, as I speculated above (which is all any of us are doing) that some of it may indeed have a late Neolithic source from the Balkans, including Greece, and from Crete, or at least that wouldn't surprise me, but I would find it extraordinary if all of the Metal Ages movements from Crete, the other islands, and Greece proper into the mainland and Sicily did not impact those levels significantly, and that doesn't even take into account any possible, and I emphasize possible movement involved in the formation of the Etruscan culture in the Bronze Age by migrants from Anatolia or the eastern Aegean directly into Tuscany, should that ever be proven. (Although interestingly enough, Tuscany itself, based on the Boattini2 data as well as the composite data put together by Maciamo, is rather low in J2 compared to other areas.) Then there are inputs from Greek maritime trading on the coasts of Liguria and Venezia, and possible Byzantine era influences to be considered, although their input may have been extremely minor. There are also the population movements engineered by the Romans through the creation of veterans colonies in the north, which may have spread the J2 into those areas.
,
Therefore, as I said above, I think J2 frequency in Italy today is probably the result of numerous different layers of migration from the direction of the southeast, some perhaps from the late Neolithic, and some, perhaps more, which took place during the Metal Ages, a flow which also spread from the northern Mediterranean coastline into France and Iberia. Those Grugni graphics are pretty informative in that regard.

It's a mistake in my view to look at even J2a as a monolithic clade. Different sub-groups were, in my opinion, doubtlessly brought or spread at different times.

Only ancient dna will bring us closer to the answers. Modern distributions provide only hints, and are very difficult to interpret in any precise way.
 
Personally I fail to see how those haplogroups can be connected with Moorish settlements in mainland Italy.

Eupedia map of Y-Haplogroup E-M81.

Haplogroup-E-M81.gif


Eupedia map of Y-Haplogroup J1.

Haplogroup-J1.gif


Frequency of Y-chromosome haplogroup J1e from Boattini et al. Table S1.

Area I = 0.6%
Area II = 0%
Area III = 6.9%
Area IV = 1.6%
Area V = 1.3%
Area VI = 1.5%
Area VII = 4.3%
Area VIII = 2.4%

preview_1070124.png


Also Albania/Greece and Southern Italy/Sicily have similar frequencies for the J2 haplogroup, but they mostly belong to 2 different subclades (J2b in the Balkans and J2a in Italy).

Haplogroup-J2.jpg

 
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Topic = Haplogroup J2, Romans, Christianity and Viticulture. (And the relationship between them.)
 

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