A Genome-Wide Study of Modern-Day Tuscans: Revisiting Herodotus's Theory on the Origi

LOL???

WTF is this crap?

I am not surprised that the authors are Iberian.
 
Few things wrong with this study:

1. Highly SSA admixed Yemenis are used as reference population for the Middle Eastern admixture in the ADMIXTURE analysis.
2. ANE and WHG admixture are both considered as European, hence Northern Middle Easterners scoring high European admixture.

3. Estimates of the age of admixture in TSI with Caucasus/Middle Eastern people by using the ALDER software???

What is the purpose of using an European admixed population to get an estimate for age of the Middle Eastern admixture in Tuscans? Obviously this is going to completely skew the results.

It's like using Brazilian mulattos to estimate the age of African admixture among the Portuguese.
 
The paper predicts about 25% ME admixture among Tuscans which isn't really any different from results 3 years ago when Dienekes first opened up the Dodecad project using Admixture. (Just add West Asian with SW Asian)

I'm anticipating that the "first farmers" brought some ME admixture to Europe, but then subsequent waves of eastern people brought more ME admixture. YDNA J2 comes to mind as the strongest candidate for the later waves and the real differentiation between north and southern Europe.

Tuscans carry a normal level of SWA for Southern Europeans. They actually have less of it than most Neolitich farmers, including the ones in Scandinavia.

The West Asian component is not really Middle Eastern, as it is very ANE/North Asian like influenced. The West Asian and the North European components are closer to each other, than either of them is to both the Med and the SWA components.

The oldest J2a in Europe has been found in Bronze Age Hungary and there is no reason to believe that J2 is not much older than that in Southern Europe.

The whole paper is obviously wrong. Using populations with so much recent European ancestry like the Turks and the Caucasians to estimate the age of West Asian admixture in Tuscany makes no sense at all.

I am waiting for a much serious paper without Iberian authors.
 
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Guido Barbujani "Why modern-day Tuscans don't descend from the Etruscans"

Video (in Italian)

http://www.dialoghisulluomo.it/mult... dagli Etruschi&rel1=Guido Barbujani &watch=1

Thanks for the link, Pax Augusta. I posted the video myself years ago on 23andme in response to a discussion with Gioiello, but I could never find it again. It's very informative. (He gives a nice introduction to dna testing and terms and the problems with getting ancient samples and then dealing with contamination issues as well.)

I think that the kinds of distinctions he's drawing are sort of lost on a lot of hobbyists. As he points out, what the ancient samples he tested tell us, looked at one way, is that of the 27 sequences, 5 were indeed found in Anatolia, but 7 were found in Germany, and only 2 may be found in Tuscany. So just looking at the results in this way would see a higher correspondence to Germany than to Toscana. (In other interviews and publications he points out that at the level of resolution that they did, and the age of the mtDna lineages, it's impossible to tell if they arrived in Europe in the late Bronze/Iron Age or in the Neolithic thousands of years earlier. )

They then seem to have looked at upstream lineages and compared modern lineages to them through a Bayesian analysis. They found that of the three ancient Etruscan cities of the League where they thought there was the most likelihood of finding Etruscan dna, i.e. Cosentino, Murlo, and Volterra, only in Cosentino was there are indication of population continuity. So, as he says, although the Tuscans may be the closest population to the ancient Etruscans, most of them are not descended from the Etruscans by any measure that they tested, which is mtDna.

I think this may be like the situation discovered in the recent paper about the Lombards in Piemonte . In a few small communities where there was a founder effect, a small group who went to the area and whose descendents basically never moved anywhere else and intermarried only among themselves, you can find some traces of these ancient peoples, but other than that, there is no trace of them.

Given that there is absolutely no record archaeologically of a mass migration into Tuscany around 800 BC, I have my doubts that the common people were anything but Villanovans. Perhaps the upper classes were mixed with newer arriving migrants. Certainly, the civilization shows rapid signs of sophistication in every area, perhaps most particularly in metallurgy. Those people and any unique genetic signature they carried were rapidly absorbed by the Romans, however, along with their culture and accomplishments. The language disappeared.

Of course, this may all change with more fine scale resolution and dating of mtDna lineages, or with ydna analysis, or even better, with a good enough sample for a sophisticated analysis of their autosomes. So far, thought, this is what we have.
 
Thanks for the link, Pax Augusta. I posted the video myself years ago on 23andme in response to a discussion with Gioiello, but I could never find it again. It's very informative. (He gives a nice introduction to dna testing and terms and the problems with getting ancient samples and then dealing with contamination issues as well.)

I think that the kinds of distinctions he's drawing are sort of lost on a lot of hobbyists. As he points out, what the ancient samples he tested tell us, looked at one way, is that of the 27 sequences, 5 were indeed found in Anatolia, but 7 were found in Germany, and only 2 may be found in Tuscany. So just looking at the results in this way would see a higher correspondence to Germany than to Toscana. (In other interviews and publications he points out that at the level of resolution that they did, and the age of the mtDna lineages, it's impossible to tell if they arrived in Europe in the late Bronze/Iron Age or in the Neolithic thousands of years earlier. )

They then seem to have looked at upstream lineages and compared modern lineages to them through a Bayesian analysis. They found that of the three ancient Etruscan cities of the League where they thought there was the most likelihood of finding Etruscan dna, i.e. Cosentino, Murlo, and Volterra, only in Cosentino was there are indication of population continuity. So, as he says, although the Tuscans may be the closest population to the ancient Etruscans, most of them are not descended from the Etruscans by any measure that they tested, which is mtDna.

I think this may be like the situation discovered in the recent paper about the Lombards in Piemonte . In a few small communities where there was a founder effect, a small group who went to the area and whose descendents basically never moved anywhere else and intermarried only among themselves, you can find some traces of these ancient peoples, but other than that, there is no trace of them.

Given that there is absolutely no record archaeologically of a mass migration into Tuscany around 800 BC, I have my doubts that the common people were anything but Villanovans. Perhaps the upper classes were mixed with newer arriving migrants. Certainly, the civilization shows rapid signs of sophistication in every area, perhaps most particularly in metallurgy. Those people and any unique genetic signature they carried were rapidly absorbed by the Romans, however, along with their culture and accomplishments. The language disappeared.

Of course, this may all change with more fine scale resolution and dating of mtDna lineages, or with ydna analysis, or even better, with a good enough sample for a sophisticated analysis of their autosomes. So far, thought, this is what we have.

Thanks for this, Angela.


I add something from an old interview to Barbujani: http://www.antrocom.it/textnews-view_article-id-760.html

[SIZE=-1]A.: - gli etruschi erano un gruppo elitario, che è l'ipotesi che caldeggiate nell'articolo. Se è vero, come spiegare le mappe genetiche di cui sopra e il fatto che la dodecapoli fosse una realtà fondamentalmente pacifica (romani e celti permettendo)? Un gruppo elitario non presuppone una dominanza di tipo militare rispetto al resto della popolazione? Da questo punto di vista, si può fare un parallelo tra l'India antica delle invasioni "ariane" e l'Etruria (con le dovute distanze)?

G.B.: Belle domande, non so le risposte. So però che molte delle nostre idee su come vivevano le popolazioni del passato sono ricavate da interpretazioni, a volte molto acute, spesso geniali, di fenomeni le cui conseguenze biologiche però fino a poco fa non potevano essere studiate. Adesso che questa possibilità esiste, anche se è limitata, mi sembra serio basarci sui dati reali più che sulle illazioni. Detto questo, non conosco abbastanza la storia dell'India, ma so qualcosa dei turchi. L'idea che mi sono fatto (ma questa è una speculazione) è che, un po' come i selgiuchidi e gli ottomani, che hanno imposto la loro lingua mongola ma rappresentavano una frazione piccola della popolazione dell'Anatolia, i gruppi di élite etruschi possono (possono) aver introdotto la loro lingua non-indo-europea in una popolazione che non era tutta geneticamente come loro. Se (se!) così fosse, e tenendo conto che abbiamo studiato soprattutto individui provenienti da sepolture ricche, il nostro lavoro dimostrerebbe solo che si è estinta questa élite. E dunque, passando alla prossima domanda...

A.: Se gli etruschi erano un gruppo elitario, quale era la popolazione autoctona e quale la popolazione immigrata, sempre ammesso che si possa parlare di migrazione? Etruschi o "prototoscani"?

G.B.:
Forse (forse!) i prototoscani potrebbero essere le classi basse e gli Etruschi quella alta. Oppure (sempre forse) non c'erano differenze al loro interno, ma gli eventi di migrazione successiva potrebbero aver cambiato la popolazione toscana molto più di quanto verrebbe da pensare. Magari non è vero che i nostri antenati sono sempre quelli che stavano qui duemila o quattromila anni fa. Magari, anche senza immaginarsi migrazioni di massa, la nostra mobilità, poco alla volta, ha fatto sì che i nostri geni andassero in giro molto più di quanto pensiamo. [/SIZE]
 
Given that there is absolutely no record archaeologically of a mass migration into Tuscany around 800 BC, I have my doubts that the common people were anything but Villanovans. Perhaps the upper classes were mixed with newer arriving migrants. Certainly, the civilization shows rapid signs of sophistication in every area, perhaps most particularly in metallurgy. Those people and any unique genetic signature they carried were rapidly absorbed by the Romans, however, along with their culture and accomplishments. The language disappeared.

The story of Etruscans in Italy did not start at 800 BC but in 1200 BC, the city of Hatria (Hatti+ru) modern Adria


Hatria has also Mycenean elements, which means that Hatrians knew and met before with IE,
 
Thanks for this, Angela.


I add something from an old interview to Barbujani: http://www.antrocom.it/textnews-view_article-id-760.html

[SIZE=-1]A.: - gli etruschi erano un gruppo elitario, che è l'ipotesi che caldeggiate nell'articolo. Se è vero, come spiegare le mappe genetiche di cui sopra e il fatto che la dodecapoli fosse una realtà fondamentalmente pacifica (romani e celti permettendo)? Un gruppo elitario non presuppone una dominanza di tipo militare rispetto al resto della popolazione? Da questo punto di vista, si può fare un parallelo tra l'India antica delle invasioni "ariane" e l'Etruria (con le dovute distanze)?

G.B.: Belle domande, non so le risposte. So però che molte delle nostre idee su come vivevano le popolazioni del passato sono ricavate da interpretazioni, a volte molto acute, spesso geniali, di fenomeni le cui conseguenze biologiche però fino a poco fa non potevano essere studiate. Adesso che questa possibilità esiste, anche se è limitata, mi sembra serio basarci sui dati reali più che sulle illazioni. Detto questo, non conosco abbastanza la storia dell'India, ma so qualcosa dei turchi. L'idea che mi sono fatto (ma questa è una speculazione) è che, un po' come i selgiuchidi e gli ottomani, che hanno imposto la loro lingua mongola ma rappresentavano una frazione piccola della popolazione dell'Anatolia, i gruppi di élite etruschi possono (possono) aver introdotto la loro lingua non-indo-europea in una popolazione che non era tutta geneticamente come loro. Se (se!) così fosse, e tenendo conto che abbiamo studiato soprattutto individui provenienti da sepolture ricche, il nostro lavoro dimostrerebbe solo che si è estinta questa élite. E dunque, passando alla prossima domanda...

A.: Se gli etruschi erano un gruppo elitario, quale era la popolazione autoctona e quale la popolazione immigrata, sempre ammesso che si possa parlare di migrazione? Etruschi o "prototoscani"?

G.B.:
Forse (forse!) i prototoscani potrebbero essere le classi basse e gli Etruschi quella alta. Oppure (sempre forse) non c'erano differenze al loro interno, ma gli eventi di migrazione successiva potrebbero aver cambiato la popolazione toscana molto più di quanto verrebbe da pensare. Magari non è vero che i nostri antenati sono sempre quelli che stavano qui duemila o quattromila anni fa. Magari, anche senza immaginarsi migrazioni di massa, la nostra mobilità, poco alla volta, ha fatto sì che i nostri geni andassero in giro molto più di quanto pensiamo. [/SIZE]

I don't think anything has substantially changed since he made those comments.

Yes, as he says, these are all speculations, but it is certainly possible that the "Etruschi", like the Seljuks and the Ottomans, were an elite who imposed their language and their advanced culture upon the mixed Neolithic/Urnfield (and/or other "Indo-European") base. It's also possible, as he points out, that they were all one people, although they would still have had to have been a mixed group of the prior inhabitants and any newcomers. I don't know if we'll ever be able to sort it out completely satisfactorily because as Barbujani says, any samples we have will be from elite burials, not from the majority of the population.

The other major complication is that the Villanovans cremated their dead, so no comparisions can be made with the people of the immediately preceding culture.

Regardless it will still be very interesting to discover if this very sophisticated civilization developed naturally from a group of mixed Middle Neolithic?/Bronze-Iron Age"Indo-European" stock who through trade with the east quickly incorporated advanced technology, or if the advances came from a group from the more developed areas of the Aegean and/or Anatolia.

I've said before that I doubt it was a mass migration. There is no indication of that in the archaeological record, and, in addition, from everything that I can see Tuscans are eastern shifted or Indo-European admixed Sardinians. No one has yet succeeded in showing me that a further massive gene flow from Anatolia in the first millennium BC is necessary to explain their genetic make up. They also fit seamlessly into the Italian cline.

I'm not saying that it isn't possible that there were further gene flows from the southeast in the Bronze Age. We know that there was gene flow from Greece into southern Italy during the first millennium BC and that could have diffused northward. Maybe there was some specific gene flow into Toscana from the Aegean/Anatolia starting in 1200 BC as well. I don't know. I'm just saying that in order to get a handle on Tuscan genetics and Italian genetics in general we need some Middle Neolithic genomes from this area, some incoming "Indo-European" genomes, some samples from the influence from Crete, some "Etruscan" samples, and hey, let's throw in some Greek immigrants from the first settlements of Magna Graecia as well.

Then we can come to some reasonable conclusions.

One thing that is clear to me is that the paper that is the subject of this thread has proved nothing, because there is no time stamp on any of these similarities, which you would think the authors should have known.
 
The story of Etruscans in Italy did not start at 800 BC but in 1200 BC, the city of Hatria (Hatti+ru) modern Adria


Hatria has also Mycenean elements, which means that Hatrians knew and met before with IE,

Adria , which was on the coast at the time ( it is now 20km inland ) was firstly a mycenean outpost and conquered by the etruscans, but not as early as 1200BC. the area was north Picene. The North Picene is linked also with liburnian .
The myceneans are also said to be in istria at the time

http://www.academia.edu/1491061/Terramare_and_glass_Mycenaean_influence_in_Northern_Italy_during_the_Late_Bronze_Age

[url]https://books.google.com.au/books?id=xgHnT3xNzvQC&pg=PA222&lpg=PA222&dq=mycenaean+istria&source=bl&ots=LKPgKq-0d6&sig=anuGxri5LpIK7C3ROOR9hKa_BJU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fYY-Vaq5CuTYmAXG5oH4CQ&ved=0CEIQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=mycenaean%20istria&f=false



[/URL]
 
I don't think anything has substantially changed since he made those comments.

Yes, as he says, these are all speculations, but it is certainly possible that the "Etruschi", like the Seljuks and the Ottomans, were an elite who imposed their language and their advanced culture upon the mixed Neolithic/Urnfield (and/or other "Indo-European") base. It's also possible, as he points out, that they were all one people, although they would still have had to have been a mixed group of the prior inhabitants and any newcomers. I don't know if we'll ever be able to sort it out completely satisfactorily because as Barbujani says, any samples we have will be from elite burials, not from the majority of the population.

The other major complication is that the Villanovans cremated their dead, so no comparisions can be made with the people of the immediately preceding culture.

Regardless it will still be very interesting to discover if this very sophisticated civilization developed naturally from a group of mixed Middle Neolithic?/Bronze-Iron Age"Indo-European" stock who through trade with the east quickly incorporated advanced technology, or if the advances came from a group from the more developed areas of the Aegean and/or Anatolia.

I've said before that I doubt it was a mass migration. There is no indication of that in the archaeological record, and, in addition, from everything that I can see Tuscans are eastern shifted or Indo-European admixed Sardinians. No one has yet succeeded in showing me that a further massive gene flow from Anatolia in the first millennium BC is necessary to explain their genetic make up. They also fit seamlessly into the Italian cline.

I'm not saying that it isn't possible that there were further gene flows from the southeast in the Bronze Age. We know that there was gene flow from Greece into southern Italy during the first millennium BC and that could have diffused northward. Maybe there was some specific gene flow into Toscana from the Aegean/Anatolia starting in 1200 BC as well. I don't know. I'm just saying that in order to get a handle on Tuscan genetics and Italian genetics in general we need some Middle Neolithic genomes from this area, some incoming "Indo-European" genomes, some samples from the influence from Crete, some "Etruscan" samples, and hey, let's throw in some Greek immigrants from the first settlements of Magna Graecia as well.

Then we can come to some reasonable conclusions.

One thing that is clear to me is that the paper that is the subject of this thread has proved nothing, because there is no time stamp on any of these similarities, which you would think the authors should have known.

I agree with that all, Angela.


A must-see interview (this time in English, so need a translation) dated 2010 to British archaeologist Phil Perkins about the Etruscan Dna and the modern studies. Perkins has excavated for a long time in Tuscany and northern Lazio.

Etruscan DNA 1 part

 
I like this interview, very balanced, smart, beautifully worded and objective.
Thanks
 
I agree with that all, Angela.


A must-see interview (this time in English, so need a translation) dated 2010 to British archaeologist Phil Perkins about the Etruscan Dna and the modern studies. Perkins has excavated for a long time in Tuscany and northern Lazio.

Etruscan DNA 1 part


Thanks for the link, Pax Augusta. Well, I'd never heard that Etruscan has some similarities to Finnish and Hungarian, which are Uralic languages. That certainly doesn't sound like Etruscan would have been spoken in Anatolia does it? Unless they were some late arriving non-Indo-European speaking people from the northern steppe who just passed through Anatolia. That would certainly over turn things.

His view of the "Oriental" nature of their culture as probably being "cultural" and acquired through trade and that the same process took place in Greece is an argument I've heard before. It's very difficult to sort all these things out, because there are fashions in science as there are in everything else. First archaeologists were certain that everything was cultural diffusion, and now geneticists are certain that every cultural change is due to mass migration. How about just looking at each civilization on its own and trying to figure it out?
 
Etruscan DNA 2 part


Actually, to the best of my recollection the newest papers say that because the samples were tested before tests for subclades were available, there's no way of knowing whether the material arrived in the Neolithic or 800 BC or even later. I'll try to find the citation for that.
 
What You think about this website??

Maravot's work in deciphering the Etruscan Language. This work was originally published in 1981 as the "Catalog of Etruscan Words," by Mel Copeland. The work now integrates the Tavola Cortonensis and Zagreb Mummy scripts, which are the most recent finds. The work shows Etruscan conjugation and declension patterns. The first page lists the words and is an easy reference as to where they can be found and where their declension and conjugation patterns may be compared and examined. Translation of the various scripts is nearly complete.
...[FONT=Times New Roman,Georgia,Times]Tables are furnished showing the relationship of hundreds of Etruscan cognates to the basic Indo-European language groups.[/FONT]
http://www.maravot.com/#anchor#5

A curious turn in our exploration of the Etruscan language has led to the Phrygian language and its very similar grammatical patterns that relate to the Etruscan language. Herodotus and other ancients, particularly Strabo, provided pointers suggesting that the Etruscans, originating in Lydia, and the Phrygians shared a common heritage and land. Strabo and others further point out that the Phrygians are identical to the Mysians and Thracians. He also compares the Thracians to the Celts. The ancient texts that point to the Etruscan-Phrygian-Celtic connection are at the "Etruscan Phrases" Phrygiank.html. Strabo describes these people as being very ancient and attributes many inventions, such as wagons, to them. He, as well as other ancient writers, says that the Phrygians are believed to have come from Thrace. He further points out that the Getae and Thracians share the same tongue. Strabo then points out that the island of Lemnos was first settled by Thracians. Lemnos has strong connections to the Phrygians and interestingly the Lemnos Stelae, Script S, written in Etruscan characters, shows a punctuation (3-dot colon) like the Phrygian script. While the Lemnos Script has been identified as an Etruscan writing, it appears that it is Phrygian, though both the Etruscans and Phrygians appear to share the same language.

http://www.maravot.com/Etruscan_Phrases_a.html#anchor_1_06_08_1
 
I see a lot off cognates in Etruscan and other IE languages. This is strange because I always thought it was not related to IE in anyway. Also the probable link between Phrygian and Etruscan is interesting
 
Maybe an echo of Anatolian roots

Etruscan huth - Five
Georgian hut-(i) - Five

Etruscan papa - Grandfather
Georgian papa - Grandfather

Etruscan teta - Grandmother
Georgian deda - Mother

Etruscan marish - Bridegroom
Georgian qmar-(i) - Husband
Svan mare - Man

Etrsucan lupu - (has) died
Georgian -lp- -To rot

Etruscan tinia - Day
Georgian -ten - Light

Etruscan tiur - Month
Georgian tve<-- ttue - Month

http://etruskisch.de/pgs/vc.htm
 
Nah I find more probable that Basques came from the Caucasus.

Shared words between Kartvelian and Basque languages.

Lo (sleep)– Logini (bed)
Ur (water)– Ur (old georgian) water
Ashur (lamb) – Shuri (sheep)
Gau (night)– Game (night)
Karoin (ice)– Karuime (ice)
Ashli (limb) – Ashal (leg)
Apal (low)– Dabali (low)
Nigar (weeping)– Ngara (weeping)
Sagu (mouse)– Tagu (old georgian) mouse
Pipril (ash) – Perpli (ash)
Shagar (apple)– Ushguri (apple)
Mayte (dear)– Malate (dear)
Eger-ezer (good)– Ezer (good)

 
Back to topic these ridiculous attempts to date admixtures with statistical methods, are completely useless!

Do not forget that untill 2011, everyone thought that R1b was a Paleolitich European haplogroup!

Funny that the highest frequencies of J1 and J2 haplogroups in Tuscany are found in non Etruscan areas, like the Appenines, while Italo Celtic y-dna lineages are most common in the Etruscan areas, like the coast.

I want to see how the prophets of the Anatolian theory can explain this.
 
Nah I find more probable that Basques came from the Caucasus.

Shared words between Kartvelian and Basque languages.

Lo (sleep)– Logini (bed)
Ur (water)– Ur (old georgian) water
Ashur (lamb) – Shuri (sheep)
Gau (night)– Game (night)
Karoin (ice)– Karuime (ice)
Ashli (limb) – Ashal (leg)
Apal (low)– Dabali (low)
Nigar (weeping)– Ngara (weeping)
Sagu (mouse)– Tagu (old georgian) mouse
Pipril (ash) – Perpli (ash)
Shagar (apple)– Ushguri (apple)
Mayte (dear)– Malate (dear)
Eger-ezer (good)– Ezer (good)


Certain linguistic similarities do not necessarily mean genetic relatedness. In case of Etruscan and Georgian/Kartvelian both might have borrowed these words from some other source in Anatolia.
 

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