Genetics of the Greek Peleponessus

[Ralphie Boy]

Eurogenes accuses the study's authors of Greek confirmation bias...then engages in confirmation bias of its own, saying without evidence that medieval Slavs who invaded Greece were heavily mixed with native non-Slavic Balkan populations. Eurogenes is trying to shoehorn Slavs in Greece one way or another.

I don't necessarily doubt that Slavs who entered Greece were different than modern northern and eastern Slavic populations, but I have a hard time with the logic that non-Slavic Balkan populations survived enough to be blended with medieval Slavs, but medieval Greeks were extinguished or barely existed, even before the Slavs arrived.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Eurogenes accuses the study's authors of Greek confirmation bias...then engages in confirmation bias of its own, saying without evidence that medieval Slavs who invaded Greece were heavily mixed with native non-Slavic Balkan populations. Eurogenes is trying to shoehorn Slavs in Greece one way or another..

Eurogenes is a blog runned by a Slav, he could be accused himself of confirmation bias.

 

[Boreas]

Eurogenes accuses the study's authors of Greek confirmation bias...then engages in confirmation bias of its own, saying without evidence that medieval Slavs who invaded Greece were heavily mixed with native non-Slavic Balkan populations. Eurogenes is trying to shoehorn Slavs in Greece one way or another.

I don't necessarily doubt that Slavs who entered Greece were different than modern northern and eastern Slavic populations,

Thanks god, truth has been spoken

 

[LABERIA]

maniots were pagan long before and long after the slavic invasion
they continued to worship zeus until 9th century but the process of conversion continued 12th to 13th century
There is a description of Mani and its inhabitants in Constantine VII's De Administrando Imperio:^[19]

From wikipedia(not always a credibile source):
The Maniots at that time were called "Hellenes"—that is, pagans (see Names of the Greeks)—and were only Christianized fully in the 9th century AD, though some church ruins from the 4th century AD indicate that Christianity was practiced by some Maniots in the region at an earlier time.
Seems that Christianity was know and practiced among Maniots before slavic invasion.

 

[LABERIA]

The introduction of Christianity came late in the Mani: the first Greek temples began to be converted into Christian churches during the 11th century A.D. A Byzantine Greek monk called Nikon "the Metanoite" (Greek: Νίκων ὁ Μετανοείτε) was commissioned by the Church in the 9th century to spread Christianity to areas such as Mani and Tsakonia, which had remained Pagan. Mavromichalis
St. Nikon was sent to the Mani in the latter half of the 9th century to preach Christianity to the Maniots. Although the Maniots began to convert to Christianity in the 10th century due to Nikon's preaching, it took more than 200 years, i.e. until the 12th and 13th centuries, to eliminate most of the pagan Greek religion and traditions and for the Maniots to fully accept Christianity

Source of this, please?

 

[LABERIA]

Your post is inaccurate and totally of topic. It's not a problem to explain one by one that all your points here are wrong. But this are not part of our discussion here and i don't want other eggs.
Even the colonization of Greece and especially of Peloponnesus by this Albanians, for some strange reasons, is not allow to be discussed by the moderator.
So, let stay on topic.

 

[Angela]

Eurogenes accuses the study's authors of Greek confirmation bias...then engages in confirmation bias of its own, saying without evidence that medieval Slavs who invaded Greece were heavily mixed with native non-Slavic Balkan populations. Eurogenes is trying to shoehorn Slavs in Greece one way or another.

I don't necessarily doubt that Slavs who entered Greece were different than modern northern and eastern Slavic populations, but I have a hard time with the logic that non-Slavic Balkan populations survived enough to be blended with medieval Slavs, but medieval Greeks were extinguished or barely existed, even before the Slavs arrived.

I don't necessarily doubt it either. We need ancient dna to know that. However, the point is that when someone presents an argument about low levels of admixture from a certain migration for group A, but refuses to countenance even equal much less lower levels for group B which is further from the homeland in time and geography, but wants to argue extinction, you know you have a dishonest argument. This shouldn't be a surprise; consider the source.

Likewise, people who were arguing actual "Slavic" as in Polish or Russian ancestry in all of mainland Greeks of over 30% and trying to "prove" it by cherry picked photos of Greeks of whom it was claimed that they looked very "Polish" or "Russian", are now claiming they never meant anything of the kind, and they just meant they were Bulgarians or something. Please. Some of us are not stupid, and we also don't have Alzheimers. Our memories are functioning very well, thank-you.

People are also losing sight of a few other points. This 0-14% ancestry is the "shared" ancestry. Nothing says it arrived in the Peloponnesus after the fall of Rome. It's basically northeast European ancestry. Keep that in mind. Some of it could be from "Indo-Europeans", Goths, Celts, etc.

As for all these "Slavic" tribes being Bulgarians, I haven't even seen any data in terms of migration paths, numbers, etc., even though those things are always highly speculative and grossly inflated in most cases. It's like listening to the description of a fish some guy caught on his last trip. It was always as big as a whale. I beg leave to doubt. I don't believe the numbers for the Ligurians exiled to the Sannio by the Romans either. Ancient historians were even worse than modern historians in terms of cherry picking and bias.

 

[spartan owl]

Source of this, please?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_Peninsula
but you can also read the biografy of saint nikon the metanoite

 

[Tomenable]

saying without evidence that medieval Slavs who invaded Greece were heavily mixed with native non-Slavic Balkan populations.

According to Gravetto-Danubian from Anthrogenica, Slavs had lived the Balkans for 300 years before settling in the Peloponnesus. He says that first Slavs settled in the Peloponnesus shortly before 800 AD. They had lived in the Balkans since around 500 AD. So definitely they had had enough time for mixing with non-Slavic (but also non-Peloponnesian) Balkan groups.

The Slavs raided Central and Southern Greece already in the 500s, but actually settled there much later!

 

[Tomenable]

Does she look northeast European to anyone?

We should focus on genetics instead of physical anthropology because each generation of North-East Europeans looks different than other generations of North-East Europeans. For example between years 1978 and 2004 mean Cephalic Index in Rzeszów (South-Eastern Poland) declined from 85.1 to 81.9 among 18 year old boys and from 86.0 to 82.9 among 18 year old girls, as data below shows. So during just a quarter of a century you have a decline of mean C.I. by 3 points:

http://www.pmurz.nazwa.pl/PDF/2008/2/05_z2_2008.pdf

The same trend can be observed also in Czech Republic and in Germany today:

http://www.josephy.cz/how-czech-people-grow/

"For the Czech population round shape of head was typical for a long time. At the beginning of the twentieth century Appollinaire described the inhabitants of Prague as „round-headed folk drinking beer in their city.“ Yet it comes out that, especially from the 80’s of the twentieth century heads of the Czech people are constantly becoming more narrow and elongated while retaining the same circumference (the so-called tendency to dolichocephalization). This trend is evident in other countries as well, for instance in Poland and Germany. (...)"

====================

During the previous centuries, between ca. 1300 and 1900 AD, there was the opposite trend - mean C.I. was increasing. But changes were not as rapid as today. Instead of a few points per generations, it was ca. 0.3 point per generation:

As Carleton S. Coon wrote:

https://books.google.pl/books?id=Bq...ther Indo-Europeans originally Nordic&f=false

"Most of the Slavs retained their original dolichocephalic cranial form until at the earliest the thirteenth, and at the latest the fifteenth, century. At that time, those who inhabited Russia and Central Europe grew progressively brachycephalic, at a rapid but consistent rate. Well-documented series from Bohemia and from the Moscow government show how this change progressed from century to century, so that normal means of 73 to 75 rose as high as 83 by the nineteenth. Few Slavs were spared this change, which was parallel to that which affected the southern Germans and other peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. Although it took place in the full light of late mediaeval and modern history, no one fully satisfactory explanation has yet been offered. (...) In Poland, between the Carpathians and the Baltic, in a region of great ethnic stability and continuity, the mean cranial index has increased from about 74 to 84 since A.D. 1300, in about thirty generations. (...)"

====================

Here some Polish 10th century AD skulls from the region of Greater Poland:

http://i63.tinypic.com/161yk55.jpg

http://i64.tinypic.com/2gv5xn5.jpg

http://i68.tinypic.com/33c5g8n.jpg

====================

Anthropological studies of Early Slavs:

Ilse Schwidetzky, "Rassenkunde der Altslawen" - https://ariets.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/ilse-schwidetzky-rassenkunde-der-altslawen.pdf

Rösing, Schwidetzky, "Vergleichend-statstische Untersuchungen zur Anthropologie des fruhen Mittelalters":

http://www.mgh.de/bibliothek/opac/?...+500-1000+n+d+z&recnums=59363&index=1&db=opac

PDF: http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de//cgi-b...mg=0&tit=R%94sing%20Vergleichend-statistische

Adelheid Bach, "Germanen-Slawen-Deutsche" - https://www.db-thueringen.de/servle..._derivate_00027577/TLDA_WMUF_13027304X_19.pdf

J. Piontek, "Antropologia o pochodzeniu Słowian" - http://www.geoinfo.amu.edu.pl/sas/06/01/ANTROPOLOGIA/PIONTEK 2008.pdf

Ł. M. Stanaszek, "The Phenotype of Slavs (6th-10th century AD)" (in Polish + English summary):

http://www.archeo.uw.edu.pl/swarch/Swiatowit-r2001-t3_%2844%29-nB-s205-212.pdf

There is also one study by Alexeeva from 2003.

The list of primary written sources which describe how Early Slavs looked like:

6th century AD:

- Procopius of Caesarea
- Theophylact Simocatta
- Theophanes the Confessor
- Emperor Maurice ("Strategikon")
- Pseudo-Caesarius of Nazianzus

7th century AD:

- Al-Ahtal
- Ibn Qutaybah

8th century AD:

- Ibn Al-Kalbi

9th century AD:

- Al-Baladhuri
- Al-Ğāhiz

10th century AD:

- Abraham ben Jacob
- Constantine Porphyrogennetos
- Al-Masudi
- Ibn al-Faqih
- Yaqut al-Hamawi*

*He lived in the 13th century but was quoting 10th century sources.

 

[Angela]

Great. I'm personally fine with that as a hypothesis until we get ancient dna.

So, a few tribes of people who spoke a Slavic language but were probably only about 30% ? actually Slavic, or more accurately northeastern and central European settled a few of those tribes in the Peloponnesus, and admixed with the "natives", with the result that present day Peloponnesians today have anywhere from virtually no such ancestry to a maximum of 14%.

Are you happy now?

 

[Angela]

I wasn't just talking about the skull. I was also talking about the noses, and the eyes, and the shape of the face. Those people are Meds anthropologically, if not Dinaric, which is not the phenotype of your average Slav or German. Period. Get over it.

All that gibberish from the 19th and early 20th century about how "Germanic" the ancient Greeks and Romans looked is a crock. The "scholars" who posited that from looking at classical statuary must have been blind. Use your common sense and just look at them, for goodness sakes. Look at Pericles while you're at it.

Look at Cleopatra, pure inbred Macedonian:

Why do people lose their common sense when these topics are discussed?

 

[spartan owl]

Did you give any thoughts to the fact that the Venetians invited many immigrants from the rest of Greece, Crete, Chios (and other Aegeans), Bulgarians, and Asia Minor Greeks and ended up doubling the population of Peloponnese within 10 years, but these immigrants did not settle in Mani.

Therefore I believe this event contributed to the general Peloponnesians being closer to other Greeks (Northern, islanders and Asia Minor) and Balkan people, while the Maniotes retained more their Dark Age admixture.


Another fact I would like to add is that the area of Messenia with towns such as Koroni and Methoni were vastly settled by Arvanites, some of whom migrated to Italy, some converted to Islam, and some remained Orthodox, which could have further increased the Balkan or so-called Slavic admixture and differentiated them even more from the Maniotes, but not much from Laconia due to it being also settled by Arvanites too.

By the way, I'm not trying to go off topic but simply sharing/contributing with what I know as such recorded movements seem to correspond to what the authors concluded. And I'm simply saying that these movements of Arvanites contributed to the differentiation, not caused it in case someone will go on a rampage against my post.

This is all I know, so hope it helps as doubling the population with non-Peloponnesians definitely is a big event.

The peloponnese when venetians took over had its population reduced in half because a lot of people fled because of the war.They followed a policy in order to convice them to return.
They did return and a lot of other greeks followed as well so the population was quickly restored .But i do not see how this event can drastically change the genetics of peloponnese as even the non peloponneseans were greeks as well.
Reguarding messenia: why are you so sure that the higher slavic percentage is because of the albanians (that they are not slavs to begin with) and not because of the slavic settlements of west taygetos.You see taygetos is the border between laconia and messenia so the east part belongs to laconia while the west in messenia.So maybe slavic tribes over time prefered to move towards the richer valley of messenia were they did not have to deal with war-like tribes like the maniots and the spartans.Or maybe they had settled less in the laconian part of the mountain (that is more wild) right from the start.
There can be dozens of explanations...

 

[LATGAL]

Likewise, people who were arguing actual "Slavic" as in Polish or Russian ancestry in all of mainland Greeks of over 30% and trying to "prove" it by cherry picked photos of Greeks of whom it was claimed that they looked very "Polish" or "Russian", are now claiming they never meant anything of the kind, and they just meant they were Bulgarians or something. Please. Some of us are not stupid, and we also don't have Alzheimers. Our memories are functioning very well, thank-you.

A couple of people I know of did reassure everyone that half of the mainland Greek population wouldn't look out of place in the Ukraine after all.


Anyway, much the rest of the stuff posted are meaningless digressions. When enough Classical samples come, one can meaningfully discuss how genetically more "Near Eastern"-ized or not the Balkans** have become from Hellenistic times onward. Until then, it's just retreading 19th-20th century theories that rested as much on preconceived notions of white supremacy as careful examination of the evidence (and pigmentation itself, even if it correlates with certain ancestry, doesn't tell you the whole story as we know by now). I can think of many potential scenaria.

**Because this involves the rest of the Balkans too - the other pre-Roman people, the Albanians, aren't Iberian-like either and instead seem very close to mainland Greeks as has been pointed out.

 

[oreo_cookie]

If all of the paint hadn't been rubbed off these statues, these theories would have had no legs at all, because you would have seen the variety in these people.

This statue was digitally altered to colorize it in accordance with paint residue found on it.

They also should have looked at the features of these statues more carefully..

This style of art is clearly Egyptian influenced. Not sure about the features though.

 

[Ralphie Boy]

I'm also fine with the hypothesis that Slavs were mixed with non-Slavic Balkan populations when they came to the Peloponnese. I'm fine with the idea that lots of Greeks in the Peloponnese today have Arvanite ancestry. Arvanites helped the Greek independence cause and gave a lot to Greece.

A problem I have is that non-Slavic Balkan populations survived in numbers enough to have altered the Slavic gene pool to such a degree that it looks "Greek-like" today, while medieval inhabitants of the Peloponnese, but more specifically Greece, were so few that the Slavs replaced their genes.

 

[LABERIA]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_Peninsula
but you can also read the biografy of saint nikon the metanoite

You have to read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniots

From wikipedia(not always a credibile source):

The Maniots at that time were called "Hellenes"—that is, pagans (see Names of the Greeks)—and were only Christianized fully in the 9th century AD, though some church ruins from the 4th century AD indicate that Christianity was practiced by some Maniots in the region at an earlier time.

Seems that Christianity was know and practiced among Maniots before slavic invasion. The interruption of Christianity in Mani coincide with this slavic invasion. After that the Byzantine power was restored, started the conversion of the inhabitants of Mani in Christianity.

 

[LABERIA]

The peloponnese when venetians took over had its population reduced in half because a lot of people fled because of the war.They followed a policy in order to convice them to return.
They did return and a lot of other greeks followed as well so the population was quickly restored .But i do not see how this event can drastically change the genetics of peloponnese as even the non peloponneseans were greeks as well.
Reguarding messenia: why are you so sure that the higher slavic percentage is because of the albanians (that they are not slavs to begin with) and not because of the slavic settlements of west taygetos.You see taygetos is the border between laconia and messenia so the east part belongs to laconia while the west in messenia.So maybe slavic tribes over time prefered to move towards the richer valley of messenia were they did not have to deal with war-like tribes like the maniots and the spartans.Or maybe they had settled less in the laconian part of the mountain (that is more wild) right from the start.
There can be dozens of explanations...

Can you quote any credibile source about this policy followed by Venetians that restored quickly the Greek population in Peloponnesus?

 

[kostop]

Pfft! Who's this squint-eyed hunk anyway?

Achilles was blond - Ilias I, 197-199



... and Menelaos as well - Odys. III, 324-326



... and I don't want to plough through the whole epos to show more of them among the Greeks.
To all people in denial ... Greek tribes introduced the Blondie to old Hellas.:bigsmile:

A short visit to a museum in Greece or South Italy is actually enough to put this nonsense to rest for most people, however....
those who desperately repeat this "blond ancient Greeks" fantasy constantly fail in basic logic:
- The "light" hair of some mythological/historical figures is mentioned in ancient texts as a means to make them STAND OUT from their group. if everyone in their group was blond, yellow hair would not be used as a reference.
- Light hair is not uncommon in Greece today.


Sorry for the off topic comment, but this thing is almost comical now.

 

[MarkoZ]

A short visit to a museum in Greece or South Italy is actually enough to put this nonsense to rest for most people, however....
those who desperately repeat this "blond ancient Greeks" fantasy constantly fail in basic logic:
- The "light" hair of some mythological/historical figures is mentioned in ancient texts as a means to make them STAND OUT from their group. if everyone in their group was blond, yellow hair would not be used as a reference.
- Light hair is not uncommon in Greece today.


Sorry for the off topic comment, but this thing is almost comical now.

Much of it probably came down to artistic choice as well. To cite an example, the Olympian gods are with the exception Athena quite dark (Apollo as a prince with black, long hair; Dionysos having full black hair) in the Homeric hymns, while some later depictions made them fairer. A parallel development can be observed the decreasing age of the gods - compare the middle-aged, bearded Ares with the beardless youth of later times, for instance. I don't think these fashions necessarily reflect how the Greeks themselves looked at the time.