A lot of that nonsense was propagated by Arvanites themselves to be fair (see Kollias and his attempt to connect Arvanitika to Homeric Greek, we both posted in a thread where an Albanian user posted that theory in fact) because they wanted a linguistic connection to ancient Greece that just wasn't there.
Very true.
Not trying to support all their claims, but aren't there Homeric Greek words similar to Albanian? AFAIK, we share quite a few similarities, which is to be expected.
Y-DNA wise the Aromanians seemed to differ quite a bit from place to place but I've never come across autosomal results, it's a topic I haven't looked into, to see what they look like from place to place so you might be right. Much of the 'Slavic' admixture must be genuinely Slavic though considering the toponymy in both Albania and Greece.
I believe Aromanians seem to be mostly of Eastern Balkan origin and very diverse, considering there are groups with lots of J2a, R1a, and I2a-Din. Bulgaria, Romania, and FYROM seem like ideal candidates for a good part of them. Like I said, that could explain the genetic variation in Thessaly, Greek Macedonia and Thrace, and even Epirus to an extent.
Or it could be simply Thracian input which predates both Vlachs and Slavs.
Honestly, I still don't buy the Slavic admixture explanation yet although seems the easiest one. I try to use several fields in my analysis before I'm fully convinced, and the most "Slavic" admixed area in Albania with a majority of I2a-Din+R1a is surprisingly the shortest and most Mediterranean looking out of all. Similarly, Romanians can appear as almost Russian or Ukrainian but they look very Mediterranean, so I believe that admixture must be ancient. I'm sure there are flaws in my explanations and I'm open to critics to better understand the situation.
Also we have a 5th century Thracian genome from Bulgaria now (in the Mathieson et al. paper about Southeastern Europe) and she didn't look particularly 'northeastern', she seemed to be very heavily Neolithic in fact (not unlike those Mycenaeans with high Neolithic and low steppe - but with probably no/less extra CHG-Iran stuff in her case), but we'll probably be able to tell better when the genomes are released and we definitely need better temporal and spatial coverage for a clear picture. That Mathieson paper showed individuals from the same location could differ quite a bit in their ancestral proportions after all but perhaps by the 5th century it was already starting to homogenize.
Unfortunately we need way more than 1 example. I'd say at least 10 ancient samples per region to do some justice to it.
For the time being it does seem like something might have increased the average steppe ancestry and depressed the Neolithic one in the Balkans in post-Classical times (and it might be instructive that Albanians -especially- and Greeks are somewhat more Neolithic and somewhat less steppe than the Slavic-speaking Balkan peoples but like you said, variation might have already existed, and it isn't like Albanians and Greeks must have remained untouched by anything else either) but we'll see.
Completely agreed. I'm still somehow impressed by the results of Gheg Albanians and some mountainous Tosk areas, which make me take everything with a grain of salt.
There's more to haplgroups and admixture than simple conclusions such as Mycenaean, Dorian, Illyrian, Celtic, Slavic, etc. migrations into Greece. The only thing that it's for sure is the North to South constant migrations which have definitely changed some proportions in Peloponnesus, which in my opinion is more Central-West Balkan while Macedonia and Thrace more East Balkan.
I don't blame Angela btw, you know what shitshows we can turn those Balkan threads into, we've seen it here too.
I believe threats are to be used once you see members resorting to insults and that wasn't the case. I've already mistakenly received an infraction for smth I didn't say from her and nobody bothered to read twice my post and remove it. Basically nobody gives a crap anymore, which is a shame.
