Mediterranean migration layers in Sicily and southern Italy

[Monsieur]

The authors also seem to have a poor understanding of georgraphy. According to the SUPP tables, they have included the Greek samples of Behar et al 2013, who are from Thessaly and Central Greece, in their Northern Greek cluster, alongside the self-reported "Greek" customers of GENO 2.0. Their "Peloponnesus" cluster is made of only samples from GENO 2.0, and that would explain why it is so different from actual Greek Peloponnesians of Paschou et al 2014 and Stamatoyannopoulos et al 2017.

 

[Angela]

Afaik the Peloponnese samples are only from Achaia and other from Geno 2.0. We need the samples of Stamatoyannopoulos and I wanna see samples from Campania (i.e Salerno, Napoli province) and Malta other than Gallo-Italics of Sicily and Basilicata, to have a clear genetic cline of Southern Italy and surroundings areas (Malta was part of Sicily for loads of centuries so I consider them a bunch of people with Southern Italian affinities as you know). Palermitan samples are from the Madonie which is a montainous area, not Palermitan citizens who are descendent of all Sicilians and mainland Italians.

PS: what do you think about the fact that Griko of Puglia (Salento) are a Southern Italian group while Greek-speaking Calabrese are a distinct group even from the local people of Reggio Calabria province?Isolation or what?

The paper attempts to explain it as a function of extreme drift because of isolation. I'm not familiar with the Bovesia at all. Is it all that isolated?

 

[oreo_cookie]

Here is the admixture chart. From this, you can clearly see that Crete is by far the closest Greek sample to the Sicilian samples, the difference being slightly higher Caucasus and slightly lower Near Eastern (compare Crete to the Palermitan sample two bars over for instance). Also, Trapani seems an outlier for Sicily, with more "European" like admixture and the lowest affinity to the Caucasus.

The Dodecanese sample (Greek_AEI) has even higher Caucasus and even lower Near Eastern.

Here is another PCA where the Greek islands/South Italy relationship is more obvious.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]

The paper attempts to explain it as a function of extreme drift because of isolation. I'm not familiar with the Bovesia at all. Is it all that isolated?

[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]Geographically no, but the Griko have fiercely held onto their culture and language and have thus remained a closed community, though they have been abandoning Greek and shifting to Italian especially among the younger generations. The genetic drift is likely caused in part by cultural preservation and not marrying out, rather than geography. [/FONT]

 

[Angela]

I have to take a look at the rest of the paper later today. However, if their samples and assumptions are questionable, then it calls the results into some question.

 

[oreo_cookie]

I looked at the samples and I didn't see too much strange except I question not having a southern Peloponnesian sample like Mani/Laconia in there. Based on other studies results, if that was in there it would show a smoother continuum from mainland Greece to South Italy and islands, while right now the transition looks abrupt and broken. Also would have been nice to have the North Aegean or Cyclades islands in there, as far as I know they're always left out and the Dodecanese is used to represent the entire Aegean other than Crete.

My guess is if Mani and the North Aegean were sampled, there would be a clearer continuum from northern Greece to South Italy/Crete and eventually the Dodecanese.

I also would have liked to know specifically where in Enna the sample came from, to know if it is from a Lombard area or not, as this would hint as to whether Sicilian Lombards are actually genetically Lombard, or only culturally and linguistically so. As far as the issue someone mentioned above with the Palermitan sample, I don't see why. They sampled a rural area of Palermo province that has not received so much migration from the rest of the island or from the mainland, wouldn't this be a good thing?

 

[LeBrok]

Here is a comparison of Greeks to South Italians in GedMatch Harappa World. There is quite a difference between Greek Islanders and Mainlanders. (Surprisingly they don't like mixing . Anyway the closest to South Italians are Mixed Greeks, which is shown as Greek mean. South Italians and Sicilians are almost identical so I didn't bother to differentiate.

HarappaWorld GedMatch	Number of Samples	S-Indian	Baloch	Caucasian	NE-Euro	SE-Asian	Siberian	NE-Asian	Papuan	American	Beringian	Mediterranean	SW-Asian	San	E-African	Pygmy	W-African
Greek, mainland	3	-	6	32	25	-	-	-	-	-	-	26	11	-	-	-	-
Greek, Islands	5	-	9	38	14	-	-	1	-	-	-	23	14	-	-	-	-
Greeek, Mean	8	-	8	35	19	-	-	-	-	-	-	25	12	-	-	-	-
Italy, South	5	-	8	32	17	-	-	-	-	-	-	27	13	-	1	-	-

We can see that there is not a huge difference between Greek Mean and South Italian. Greeks have definitely more Anatolian Bronze/Iran Ch/CHG with higher Caucasian and Lower Med. Which is logical being closer to the source. This makes S Italians being more EEF. Also we can see Slavic migration/WHG/Steppe influence in higher NE Euro in Greece, especially Mainland Greece.

 

[oreo_cookie]

Here is a comparison of Greeks to South Italians in GedMatch Harappa World. There is quite a difference between Greek Islanders and Mainlanders. (Surprisingly they don't like mixing . Anyway the closest to South Italians are Mixed Greeks, which is shown as Greek mean. South Italians and Sicilians are almost identical so I didn't bother to differentiate.

There are some Sicilians, Calabrese, and people from southern Campania (Salerno) who score similarly to the Greek Islands averages above. If you made a southern Calabria/eastern Sicily sample this would occur, as well as SOME Palermitans.

 

[spartan owl]

So we know the locations:

Calabrian Greek:

Griko of the Salento

They're apparently saying they're indistinguishable from the surrounding people,so not descended from Byzantine Greeks.

Bova:

I wonder if that's where Raoul Bova's Calabrian half came from?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01802-4/figures/1

calabria is a mountainous region so the isolation is both cultural and geografical.
This is proven by the fact that in calabria there are six major italian dialects plus grico plus arberese plus some occitan.
One other point that i want to make is that of course the griko of salento are indistinguishable from other salentines.
For what reason the byzantines would have to bring troops in great numbers from anatolia and not use the local population who were greek or latin speakers and they were loyal to the empire anyway.At least for the local peace keeping militia that should be the case.
And why are you viewing the empire as only as anatolian-greek and not as italian-greek as well?Griko salentines were as much byzantines as the constantinopolitans.

 

[New Englander]

There are some Sicilians, Calabrese, and people from southern Campania (Salerno) who score similarly to the Greek Islands averages above. If you made a southern Calabria/eastern Sicily sample this would occur, as well as SOME Palermitans.

Can we get some Salerno samples?

 

[Hauteville]

Can we get some Salerno samples?

I have a match with a guy of Scafati. If you want I can send you his kitnumber.

 

[Azzurro]

I'm very disappointed for two reasons:1) The study used Greek samples from GENO 2.0, who are almost all Greek Americans with self reported ancestries. No serious control has been made on those samples. That's extremely unreliable and inaccurate. Only the GRK cluster from Thessaly of Hellenthal et al is reliable. 2) The authors argue that modern South Italians have additional recent Levantine ancestry, assuming that modern Sardinians from the HGDP panel are a good proxy for Neolitich farmers. There is a problem though: Sardinians have quite a lot of additional WHG related ancestry not present in Anatolian farmers, who were much more Basal Eurasian rich and so Levantine like than any EEF. So there is no need to assume any "recent" MENA influence, beside the tiny (~4%) North African admixture present only in Sicily as for Sazzini et al.

They do have some recent Levantine like ancestry, its not all Bronze Age, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean for over 500 years, not only slaves but even auxiliaries and merchants could have brought Levantine like ancestry, in addition there was also Jewish communities established in Italy since the late Republic era. Italy has the most diverse Y in all of Europe, its not a coincidence.

 

[Angela]

It seems a Bronze Age introgression, not recent/historic.

We won't know the story until we get ancient dna from Italy, but from Mathiesen et al 2017 we know it began appearing in the Balkans in the Late Neolithic/ Chalcolithic, which anyone who knew anything about the archaeology would have suspected. We'll see if it's the same for Italy.

 

[New Englander]

I have a match with a guy of Pagani. If you want I can send you his kitnumber.

Yes, if you can send me the kit number, I would appreciate it. That is my surname (Salerno), and my family came from the area. Id be curious to see if I matched as well.

 

[Angela]

Here is the admixture chart. From this, you can clearly see that Crete is by far the closest Greek sample to the Sicilian samples, the difference being slightly higher Caucasus and slightly lower Near Eastern (compare Crete to the Palermitan sample two bars over for instance). Also, Trapani seems an outlier for Sicily, with more "European" like admixture and the lowest affinity to the Caucasus.

The Dodecanese sample (Greek_AEI) has even higher Caucasus and even lower Near Eastern.

Here is another PCA where the Greek islands/South Italy relationship is more obvious.

Geographically no, but the Griko have fiercely held onto their culture and language and have thus remained a closed community, though they have been abandoning Greek and shifting to Italian especially among the younger generations. The genetic drift is likely caused in part by cultural preservation and not marrying out, rather than geography.

From what I have read so far, the biggest difference between the Grecanico speakers and the Griko speakers is indeed the geographical isolation of the former. Now, if you can find an academic source that says otherwise I'd be very interested. What I don't find probative is broad generalizations based on no data. Unless perhaps, suddenly, a Griko speaker from the Salento moved to the right of you and a Grecanico speaker from Calabria moved to the left of you, and they explained to you in detail their linguistic and social history?

 

[Angela]

calabria is a mountainous region so the isolation is both cultural and geografical.
This is proven by the fact that in calabria there are six major italian dialects plus grico plus arberese plus some occitan.
One other point that i want to make is that of course the griko of salento are indistinguishable from other salentines.
For what reason the byzantines would have to bring troops in great numbers from anatolia and not use the local population who were greek or latin speakers and they were loyal to the empire anyway.At least for the local peace keeping militia that should be the case.
And why are you viewing the empire as only as anatolian-greek and not as italian-greek as well?Griko salentines were as much byzantines as the constantinopolitans.

I wasn't aware that I was.

 

[Maciamo]

I haven't read the paper yet, but I am quite disappointed by the poor resolution of the charts provided. Reading the paper in html version the images are so small that it's not possible to see any names. Why didn't they provide higher quality picture which could be opened in full screen? The only way to see anything is to check the supplementary information in PDF. But even then, zooming at the maximum, the names are still fuzzy. They should also have provided a list of the abbreviations used, so that readers don't have to search the paper for each one of them every time. It's definitely not a user-friendly paper.

Unless I didn't check well, it seems that they didn't even bother providing Y-DNA results, which is a shame for a study of that scale. It would have been a great opportunity to study of fine-scale regional variations in Y-DNA within Greece and Albania in particular (since southern Italy has already been studied extensively).

 

[Hauteville]

They do have some recent Levantine like ancestry, its not all Bronze Age, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean for over 500 years, not only slaves but even auxiliaries and merchants could have brought Levantine like ancestry, in addition there was also Jewish communities established in Italy since the late Republic era. Italy has the most diverse Y in all of Europe, its not a coincidence.

The study don't say nothing about recent admixture of Jews or Levantine Slaves. A total myth.

 

[Hauteville]

Enna samples cannot be from a Lombard-speaking town but from Enna city. This study also made a comparison with linguistic minorities of Southern Italy compared to local groups. They know that there are Gallo-Italic towns in Enna province (as well as Messina etc).

 

[binx]

This is proven by the fact that in calabria there are six major italian dialects plus grico plus arberese plus some occitan.

The Occitans, are there still many in Calabria?

They do have some recent Levantine like ancestry, its not all Bronze Age, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean for over 500 years, not only slaves but even auxiliaries and merchants could have brought Levantine like ancestry, in addition there was also Jewish communities established in Italy since the late Republic era. Italy has the most diverse Y in all of Europe, its not a coincidence.

This sounds like the typical fairy tale about Italy based more on commonplace than on certain data. Italy is over-studied, if other countries were studied like Italy, they would show a diversity in Y-DNA not so different.

I think Italy has always been genetically a diverse country, it's hard to believe that slaves, auxiliaries, merchants and Jewish communities may have completely changed the genome of all Italy.

 

[oreo_cookie]

Enna samples cannot be from a Lombard-speaking town but from Enna city. This study also made a comparison with linguistic minorities of Southern Italy compared to local groups. They know that there are Gallo-Italic towns in Enna province (as well as Messina etc).

This is what I think because the Enna sample is indistinguishable from the other Sicilians and Calabrese (except Trapani). They should have sampled Gallo-Italic speakers as well.

They also could have gone to Corleone in Palermo province for that, too. It is a well known town and has Lombard roots.