The Italian Genome-Fiorito et al 2015

No the North African admixture is present only in Sardinia, Calabria and Sicily. Calabrian samples are only from Reggio Calabria, so they are clearly mixed with Sicilians.
 
Their Tuscan samples are Arezzo and Siena. I think they should really have included one more from the North West so we could see if there was more overlap with Liguria etc.

I still don't think Ferrara was the best choice for Emilia Romagna.

I agree, Ferrara isn't really Emilia and neither Romagna. Neither Arezzo and Siena are the best choice for the whole Tuscany but just good enough for Southern Tuscany. I agree they should really have included one more from the North West Tuscany, Pistoia and Lucca would be good choices.
 
Why do you think is there such a large genetic distance between northern and southern Italians?

Also - is there an intermediary population (central Italians?), or a "very sharp" boundary?

And if there is a sharp genetic boundary, then roughly where is the dividing line?
 
Angela said:
Basically all the tests, IBD, ADMIXTURE, and PCA, say Italian genetic diversity correlates with geography.

Sorry but if even Iberians are closer genetically to Romanians, than Northern Italians are to Southern Italians, then we can't say it is "just geography". It correlates with geography only as far as different ancestral ethnic groups settled different geographical areas...

Geographical distance from Iberia to Romania is many times greater, than from Southern Italy to Northern Italy...

And you also wrote, that there is (or was until ca. 1950) almost no IBD sharing between Southern and Northern Italy - why?
 
No the North African admixture is present only in Sardinia, Calabria and Sicily. Calabrian samples are only from Reggio Calabria, so they are clearly mixed with Sicilians.

We have no way of knowing that. They didn't include Apulia (which usually just looks southern Italian) or Campania, for example.

From the evidence of 23andme, and Dodecad, it seems that Sicilians and southern Italians, all southern Italians, cluster together generally speaking, and show the same minority ancestry, although I would speculate that the cline is still there so there's probably slightly less North African as you move north, not that there's much to begin with...much less than you can find in Iberia for example, although it doesn't appear that way here because they don't use samples from all over Spain and Portugal. (That's what the results I've seen seem to indicate as well.)

I know that's not what some Sicilians themselves have tended to believe, but it seems to be a fact. (I should send this to an old professor of mine from university. He always insisted to his students that he was Sicilian, not Italian, not even southern Italian. Of course, culture is what matters the most, so he might not be swayed by these results. :)
 
I know that's not what some Sicilians themselves have tended to believe, but it seems to be a fact. (I should send this to an old professor of mine from university. He always insisted to his students that he was Sicilian, not Italian, not even southern Italian. Of course, culture is what matters the most, so he might not be swayed by these results. :)
Those separatists are truly ludicrous :D
 


Sorry but if even Iberians are closer genetically to Romanians, than Northern Italians are to Southern Italians, then we can't say it is "just geography". It correlates with geography only as far as different ancestral ethnic groups settled different geographical areas...

Geographical distance from Iberia to Romania is many times greater, than from Southern Italy to Northern Italy...

And you also wrote, that there is (or was until ca. 1950) almost no IBD sharing between Southern and Northern Italy - why?


Sorry, that wasn't my statement; that was made by Fire-Haired. He started a thread after this one was posted, and asked me to close it. I moved his post over here. I'll make it clearer in the post that it is a quote from Fire-Haired. I'll let him explain what he meant by it.

As for myself, I think what the paper shows is how geographical proximity to very different populations created the Italian cline. I'd go back to Dienekes' comment from years ago. You have a Neolithic base all over the peninsula and islands, and then you have certain kinds of populations coming through or around the Alps and disproportionately affecting the north and center, and southern Balkan, Greek, perhaps Anatolian like populations entering Italy from the south and so having a disproportionate effect on those southern populations. Those differing migrations created the cline.

I don't think that the paper shows that there was no IBD sharing between the Center-North and the South, but there certainly wasn't much of it. I'm not going to bore you by droning on about it, but it's basically because the two areas had very different histories for the last 1500-1700 years. From the fall of Rome in some areas, and the fall of the Lombard kingdoms of the south in other areas, they were only sporadically under the same rulers. The Byzantines took back the south, and then later parts of it were ruled by the Normans, and the Holy Roman emperors; these latter two were definitely not folk movements. Then it was under the control of the Aragonese and the Spanish for centuries.

The north was under the Holy Roman Emperors and occasionally the French, but the communes very soon asserted their independence, and there was extensive trade and cultural contacts between the different cities and republics of the North and Center, and also with the domains of the Pope in some parts of central Italy.

Over and beyond the effect of the Saracen invasions and rule of some areas of the south, the two populations drifted apart in those 1500 years.

Anyway, that's how I see it. Other people might have other insights to offer.

Tomenable: Why do you think is there such a large genetic distance between northern and southern Italians?

Also - is there an intermediary population (central Italians?), or a "very sharp" boundary?

And if there is a sharp genetic boundary, then roughly where is the dividing line?

It depends how you interpret the data, as with anything else. I've always felt that the Center clustered closer to the North, and I think this study supports that interpretation, putting the "dividing line" just south of Rome. I think prior studies have showed the same thing. So, although the Central Italians are a bit "south" of Northern Italians, they're pretty close to them, closer than they are to southern Italians. I think everyone knew that about Tuscans, but it seems it's also true of Lazio. I think Umbria would be much the same.
 
And you, Hauteville, are saying this? :petrified:
Hauteville was a dinasty and the kingdom included half of Italy :)
Anyway IRL those ludicrous separatists are like needle in a haystack, maybe the fake americans are different.

Close OT
 
It's very weird. IBD between South and North Italians is less than between North Italians and other Europeans. Maybe the tests done for Italy-Italy were differnt than Italy-Other.

The high NW African IBD with South Italy(inclu. Sardinia) clearly points towards recent NW African ancestry there. Turkey, including West Turkey, doesn't have high IBD with Tuscany or nearby regions. If Estruscans came from west Turkey, preserved much of their Anatolian blood, and Tuscans have stuck to their region, you'd expect high IBD with Turkey. But maybe IBD can't detect admixture from so long ago.
 
Sorry, that wasn't my statement; that was made by Fire-Haired. He started a thread after this one was posted, and asked me to close it. I moved his post over here. I'll make it clearer in the post that it is a quote from Fire-Haired. I'll let him explain what he meant by it.

As for myself, I think what the paper shows is how geographical proximity to very different populations created the Italian cline. I'd go back to Dienekes' comment from years ago. You have a Neolithic base all over the peninsula and islands, and then you have certain kinds of populations coming through or around the Alps and disproportionately affecting the north and center, and southern Balkan, Greek, perhaps Anatolian like populations entering Italy from the south and so having a disproportionate effect on those southern populations. Those differing migrations created the cline.

I don't think that the paper shows that there was no IBD sharing between the Center-North and the South, but there certainly wasn't much of it. I'm not going to bore you by droning on about it, but it's basically because the two areas had very different histories for the last 1500-1700 years. From the fall of Rome in some areas, and the fall of the Lombard kingdoms of the south in other areas, they were only sporadically under the same rulers. The Byzantines took back the south, and then later parts of it were ruled by the Normans, and the Holy Roman emperors; these latter two were definitely not folk movements. Then it was under the control of the Aragonese and the Spanish for centuries.

The north was under the Holy Roman Emperors and occasionally the French, but the communes very soon asserted their independence, and there was extensive trade and cultural contacts between the different cities and republics of the North and Center, and also with the domains of the Pope in some parts of central Italy.

Over and beyond the effect of the Saracen invasions and rule of some areas of the south, the two populations drifted apart in those 1500 years.

Anyway, that's how I see it. Other people might have other insights to offer.



It depends how you interpret the data, as with anything else. I've always felt that the Center clustered closer to the North, and I think this study supports that interpretation, putting the "dividing line" just south of Rome. I think prior studies have showed the same thing. So, although the Central Italians are a bit "south" of Northern Italians, they're pretty close to them, closer than they are to southern Italians. I think everyone knew that about Tuscans, but it seems it's also true of Lazio. I think Umbria would be much the same.
Of course, after the Ostrogothic Italy and Byzantine wars, the nation was divided into many parts and the Pope has always done by intermission between North Italy (Kingdom of Lombardy, independent towns, Serenissima Veneziana, Genoa) and South Italy (Kingdom of Sicily who was as well divided for a certain time in two parts in the war between Aragones and Angevins). Probably there weren't so much contact between North and South or they were present in minor number, like merchants etc.
 
Those separatists are truly ludicrous :D

I may have given the wrong impression. He wasn't really a separatist in a political sense at all, just very proud of what he saw as the particular history and culture of his island. He wasn't a crank or eccentric at all, just very attached to his island.

A sense of campanilismo that encompassed the whole island, perhaps. :)
 
Of course, after the Ostrogothic Italy and Byzantine wars, the nation was divided into many parts and the Pope has always done by intermission between North Italy (Kingdom of Lombardy, independent towns, Serenissima Veneziana, Genoa) and South Italy (Kingdom of Sicily who was as well divided for a certain time in two parts in the war between Aragones and Angevins). Probably there weren't so much contact between North and South or they were present in minor number, like merchants etc.

Well, this is all simple to us, but other Europeans and certainly Americans have no idea of the consequences of the invasions and the Gothic War for Italy, or how fractured and broken it was for so many hundreds of years. That all contributed to the substructure that we see in the genetics.
 
Turkey, including West Turkey, doesn't have high IBD with Tuscany or nearby regions. If Estruscans came from west Turkey, preserved much of their Anatolian blood, and Tuscans have stuck to their region, you'd expect high IBD with Turkey. But maybe IBD can't detect admixture from so long ago.

We already discussed about it many times. We can't completely rule out that there was a small migration of a supposedly religious elite from Anatolia related to the Etruscans without a substantial genetic impact, but it is now extremely clear that the vast majority of the Tuscans are not descended from this but from Villanovians who were part of the Etruscan ethnos.
 
Well, this is all simple to us, but other Europeans and certainly Americans have no idea of the consequences of the invasions and the Gothic War for Italy, or how fractured and broken it was for so many hundreds of years. That all contributed to the substructure that we see in the genetics.
That map summarize the fracture between South and North of Italy. The Papal state has prevented the unification of Italy in 1200 on an idea by Federico II.

 
It's very weird. IBD between South and North Italians is less than between North Italians and other Europeans. Maybe the tests done for Italy-Italy were differnt than Italy-Other.

The high NW African IBD with South Italy(inclu. Sardinia) clearly points towards recent NW African ancestry there. Turkey, including West Turkey, doesn't have high IBD with Tuscany or nearby regions. If Estruscans came from west Turkey, preserved much of their Anatolian blood, and Tuscans have stuck to their region, you'd expect high IBD with Turkey. But maybe IBD can't detect admixture from so long ago.

It's not a high level. You can see that from the Admixture runs. It's the fact that the segments are long that shows it was relatively recent. They're showing IBD into the first millennium BC, so it should show up, you're right. Ralph and Coop went back to approximately 2500 BC.

If the "Etruscans" did come from northwest Anatolia, they might have been a male elite. The paper that provided a PCA for ancient Etruscans showed them as generic Southern Europeans, maybe even pretty Balkan like, not West Asian as in Turkish, Anatolian or Armenian at all.*

There might have been a Bronze Age migration by way of the Balkans that carried ANE and high farmer levels but very little WHG. I've been proposing for a long time that the Indo-European migrations weren't a case of one specific group that somehow exponentially increased in population and then went out and invaded and admixed with native groups, but a case of "related" populations spreading in different directions, sometimes after a certain amount of back migration. So, some of the "Indo-Europeans" that came to Italy from the east may not have been exactly the same autosomally as the Indo-Europeans who arrived from the north.

We should know soon, when we get ancient Greek and Italian genomes from the relevant periods.

*Ed. For anyone who is unaware of it, the inhabitants of modern day Turkey are not genetically the same as the ancient Anatolians, because, among other reasons, they have "Turkic" admixture which arrived in the Middle Ages.
 
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Sorry, that wasn't my statement; that was made by Fire-Haired. He started a thread after this one was posted, and asked me to close it. I moved his post over here. I'll make it clearer in the post that it is a quote from Fire-Haired. I'll let him explain what he meant by it. As for myself, I think what the paper shows is how geographical proximity to very different populations created the Italian cline. I'd go back to Dienekes' comment from years ago. You have a Neolithic base all over the peninsula and islands, and then you have certain kinds of populations coming through or around the Alps and disproportionately affecting the north and center, and southern Balkan, Greek, perhaps Anatolian like populations entering Italy from the south and so having a disproportionate effect on those southern populations. Those differing migrations created the cline.I don't think that the paper shows that there was no IBD sharing between the Center-North and the South, but there certainly wasn't much of it. I'm not going to bore you by droning on about it, but it's basically because the two areas had very different histories for the last 1500-1700 years. From the fall of Rome in some areas, and the fall of the Lombard kingdoms of the south in other areas, they were only sporadically under the same rulers. The Byzantines took back the south, and then later parts of it were ruled by the Normans, and the Holy Roman emperors; these latter two were definitely not folk movements. Then it was under the control of the Aragonese and the Spanish for centuries. The north was under the Holy Roman Emperors and occasionally the French, but the communes very soon asserted their independence, and there was extensive trade and cultural contacts between the different cities and republics of the North and Center, and also with the domains of the Pope in some parts of central Italy. Over and beyond the effect of the Saracen invasions and rule of some areas of the south, the two populations drifted apart in those 1500 years.Anyway, that's how I see it. Other people might have other insights to offer.It depends how you interpret the data, as with anything else. I've always felt that the Center clustered closer to the North, and I think this study supports that interpretation, putting the "dividing line" just south of Rome. I think prior studies have showed the same thing. So, although the Central Italians are a bit "south" of Northern Italians, they're pretty close to them, closer than they are to southern Italians. I think everyone knew that about Tuscans, but it seems it's also true of Lazio. I think Umbria would be much the same.
Samples from Chieti, Abruzzo cluster with Sicilians so not.The authors should have got more samples from different regions.
 
We have no way of knowing that. They didn't include Apulia (which usually just looks southern Italian) or Campania, for example. From the evidence of 23andme, and Dodecad, it seems that Sicilians and southern Italians, all southern Italians, cluster together generally speaking, and show the same minority ancestry, although I would speculate that the cline is still there so there's probably slightly less North African as you move north, not that there's much to begin with...much less than you can find in Iberia for example, although it doesn't appear that way here because they don't use samples from all over Spain and Portugal. (That's what the results I've seen seem to indicate as well.) I know that's not what some Sicilians themselves have tended to believe, but it seems to be a fact. (I should send this to an old professor of mine from university. He always insisted to his students that he was Sicilian, not Italian, not even southern Italian. Of course, culture is what matters the most, so he might not be swayed by these results. :)
From the Supp Info."The North-African component is detectable in the Italian sample, especially in Sicily, Calabria, and Sardinia and it is distinguishable from random noise: 5.42% (2.99% - 7.85%) in South Italy and 4.66% (2.22% - 7.11%) in Sardinia. "Basilicata has comparable level of North African admixture as the rest of the peninsula, while the Calabrians are only from Reggio so not representative of Calabria who is likely similar to Basilicata.
 
From the Supp Info."The North-African component is detectable in the Italian sample, especially in Sicily, Calabria, and Sardinia and it is distinguishable from random noise: 5.42% (2.99% - 7.85%) in South Italy and 4.66% (2.22% - 7.11%) in Sardinia. "Basilicata has comparable level of North African admixture as the rest of the peninsula, while the Calabrians are only from Reggio so not representative of Calabria who is likely similar to Basilicata.

Let's try to focus shall we? THERE ARE NO SAMPLES IN THE STUDY FROM CAMPANIA OR APULIA OR INDEED FROM ANY PART OF CALABRIA OTHER THAN REGGIO.


It doesn't analyze those areas, so no real conclusions can be drawn based on this study as to how much North African they would show.

What we can do is look at other studies of southern Italians, studies both academic and private. Those studies SUGGEST that these other southern Italian areas would have some amount of North African, but perhaps on a south/north decreasing cline.

As to your prior post, why wouldn't someone from the Abruzzi place next to southern Italians? They are southern Italians, from everything I've ever seen of their genetic make-up.

I agree that in a place as diverse genetically as Italy they should have had more samples.
 
That map summarize the fracture between South and North of Italy. The Papal state has prevented the unification of Italy in 1200 on an idea by Federico II.


Very nice. People have focused so much in recent years on admixture and fst analyses that they forget about drift and how important it is in forming these clusters and in driving up fst differences.

That's what I meant when I said that reading this paper and the Busby/Hallenthal ones I feel like I'm back in the era before Lazaridis, Haak, etc. We're only getting half the picture here because the more sophisticated analyses weren't done.

What I'm trying to say is that I think the fst figures are exaggerating the differences somewhat. Some of it is just a function of the long separation between the two groups.
 

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