Y-chromosomal analysis of Greek Cypriots

Sile

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Y-chromosomal analysis of Greek Cypriots reveals a primarily common pre-Ottoman paternal ancestry with Turkish Cypriots

Genetics can provide invaluable information on the ancestry of the current inhabitants of Cyprus. A Y-chromosome analysis was performed to (i) determine paternal ancestry among the Greek Cypriot (GCy) community in the context of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East; and (ii) identify genetic similarities and differences between Greek Cypriots (GCy) and Turkish Cypriots (TCy). Our haplotype-based analysis has revealed that GCy and TCy patrilineages derive primarily from a single gene pool and show very close genetic affinity (low genetic differentiation) to Calabrian Italian and Lebanese patrilineages. In terms of more recent (past millennium) ancestry, as indicated by Y-haplotype sharing, GCy and TCy share much more haplotypes between them than with any surrounding population (7–8% of total haplotypes shared), while TCy also share around 3% of haplotypes with mainland Turks, and to a lesser extent with North Africans. In terms of Y-haplogroup frequencies, again GCy and TCy show very similar distributions, with the predominant haplogroups in both being J2a-M410, E-M78, and G2-P287. Overall, GCy also have a similar Y-haplogroup distribution to non-Turkic Anatolian and Southwest Caucasian populations, as well as Cretan Greeks. TCy show a slight shift towards Turkish populations, due to the presence of Eastern Eurasian (some of which of possible Ottoman origin) Y-haplogroups. Overall, the Y-chromosome analysis performed, using both Y-STR haplotype and binary Y-haplogroup data puts Cypriot in the middle of a genetic continuum stretching from the Levant to Southeast Europe and reveals that despite some differences in haplotype sharing and haplogroup structure, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots share primarily a common pre-Ottoman paternal ancestry.
 
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Interesting! I have rightfully concluded that main Hellenic haplogroup is J2a. The presence of it reflects Hellenic conquest of the island. Also this study has also proved that Phoenicians were there as well in similar numbers( J2b1+J1). I don't know how to explain the large amounts of E 123.. It could be Phoenician marker
 
The bulk of the today inhabitants of Cyprus are Armenians. I don't know how much this historical fact is reflected in the genetic of this people.
 
The bulk of the today inhabitants of Cyprus are Armenians. I don't know how much this historical fact is reflected in the genetic of this people.
Did you read the paper? Cypriots cluster mostly with Lebanon (Phoenician legacy) and Calabria (Greek settlement) legacy) and of course Greece. But they share genes with Albanians(5) and Croatians(3) If it was large Armenian population should have been reflected
 
Did you read the paper? Cypriots cluster mostly with Lebanon (Phoenician legacy) and Calabria (Greek settlement) legacy) and of course Greece. But they share genes with Albanians(5) and Croatians(3) If it was large Armenian population should have been reflected
There was substantially more geneflow than the ones you mentioned in Cyprus. The Arabs from the Muslim conquest for example.
 
Keep your Balkan Wars out of this thread! Take it to the Balkan disagreements thread, because nobody else wants to read any more of this.

I'm tired of being disturbed on a Saturday night because of you people.

Laberia: The bulk of the today inhabitants of Cyprus are Armenians. I don't know how much this historical fact is reflected in the genetic of this people.

There is no genetic support for this claim whatsoever, nor any objective historical support either.
 
Keep your Balkan Wars out of this thread! Take it to the Balkan disagreements thread, because nobody else wants to read any more of this.

I'm tired of being disturbed on a Saturday night because of you people.



There is no genetic support for this claim whatsoever, nor any objective historical support either.

Excuse me, but do you have read this study that we are discussing here?
The Armenians have a continuous presence in Cyprus since the 6th century AD, with a well-documented Armenian community up to this day [68,69]. With a lack of Armenian Y STR-haplotype data, it is not possible to prove any recent shared paternal ancestry.
 
Keep your Balkan Wars out of this thread! Take it to the Balkan disagreements thread, because nobody else wants to read any more of this.

I'm tired of being disturbed on a Saturday night because of you people.



There is no genetic support for this claim whatsoever, nor any objective historical support either.

Excuse me who gave me this infraction:
09:11 LABERIA has lost -19 Points for User points
and for what reason?
 
Excuse me, but do you have read this study that we are discussing here?

I think perhaps you have forgotten your first comment on this topic.

Laberia: The bulk of the today inhabitants of Cyprus are Armenians. I don't know how much this historical fact is reflected in the genetic of this people.

To paraphrase your comment, you are saying that while the genetics might not reflect it, it is historical fact that the bulk of Cypriots are Armenians.

When I replied that this is not historical fact and that the genetics support that it is not historical fact, you posted this excerpt from the paper in rebuttal:

The Armenians have a continuous presence in Cyprus since the 6th century AD, with a well-documented Armenian community up to this day [68,69]. With a lack of Armenian Y STR-haplotype data, it is not possible to prove any recent shared paternal ancestry..

I don't see how any rational interpretation of that sentence would be that the bulk of Cypriots are Armenians as a historical fact.

There were huge settlements of Jews in Eastern Europe, in the millions. Does that mean that the bulk of Eastern Europeans are descended from Jews? There are documented communities of Turks in the Balkans for hundreds of years. Does that mean that the bulk of Balkan people, including Armenians, are Turks? There have been Arbereshe communities in southern Italy for hundreds of years. Does that mean that the bulk of southern Italians are Albanians?

Do I really have to post more ridiculous examples?

Your statement was incorrect. There is no saving it.
 
I think perhaps you have forgotten your first comment on this topic.



To paraphrase your comment, you are saying that while the genetics might not reflect it, it is historical fact that the bulk of Cypriots are Armenians.

When I replied that this is not historical fact and that the genetics support that it is not historical fact, you posted this excerpt from the paper in rebuttal:



I don't see how any rational interpretation of that sentence would be that the bulk of Cypriots are Armenians as a historical fact.

There were huge settlements of Jews in Eastern Europe, in the millions. Does that mean that the bulk of Eastern Europeans are descended from Jews? There are documented communities of Turks in the Balkans for hundreds of years. Does that mean that the bulk of Balkan people, including Armenians, are Turks? There have been Arbereshe communities in southern Italy for hundreds of years. Does that mean that the bulk of southern Italians are Albanians?

Do I really have to post more ridiculous examples?

Your statement was incorrect. There is no saving it.

OK. The last thing that pass to my mind is to contradict you. I don't want other infractions. By the way, speaking about infractions, why you didn't answer to this question:
Excuse me who gave me this infraction:
09:11 LABERIA has lost -19 Points for User points
and for what reason?
 
OK. The last thing that pass to my mind is to contradict you. I don't want other infractions. By the way, speaking about infractions, why you didn't answer to this question:

I think infractions take out around 100 points or more. You may have lost 19 points due to down-votes.
 
I'm going to explain this one last time. I have never in my life issued an infraction because a poster disagreed with me civilly. I disagree with Bicicleur sometimes, or LeBrok, or Marko, or Moesan, or Maciamo, or any number of other posters. I don't issue them infractions or speak to them with anything but respect, because they deserve respect, and they are unfailingly respectful in their treatment of me, as I hope I am in my treatment of them.

The operative word is civilly.

There are rules on this forum. The rules are clearly laid out. The posters who break those rules will get infractions. Infractions account for two to four points each. When you accumulate ten infraction points you are banned for a definite period of time. Accumulate enough infraction points and you are permanently banned.

This is not quantum physics here.

As for the reputation points, I normally don't thumbs down a comment just because I disagree with it. There are a lot of posts with which I disagree but still respect. Honorable people can agree to disagree on how to interpret certain data. The operative word here is "honorable". I usually save down thumbing for reputation for either abjectly, deliberately or blindly stupid posts, or mendacious posts.

I doubt that will be a comfort to you.
 
Trust me, LABERIA, if Angela gives out infractions solely for disagreeing with her, or not sharing her point of view, I think I would've been banned by now :). She's corrected me countless times, and I learned a lot simply by spending time thinking about why she thought I was wrong.
 
the J2 breakdown

16 x J2b-M205:
14 x J2a1-Z387:
13 x J2a1-M319:
12 x J2a1-Z500:
10 x J2a1-Z7700:
7 x J2a1-PF5191:
7 x J2a1-S25258:
7 x J2a2-PF5008:
6 x J2a1-L210:
4 x J2b-M241:
3 x J2a1-Z7671:
3 x J2a1-Z6065:
 
the J2 breakdown

16 x J2b-M205:
14 x J2a1-Z387:
13 x J2a1-M319:
12 x J2a1-Z500:
10 x J2a1-Z7700:
7 x J2a1-PF5191:
7 x J2a1-S25258:
7 x J2a2-PF5008:
6 x J2a1-L210:
4 x J2b-M241:
3 x J2a1-Z7671:
3 x J2a1-Z6065:

Sile, you could've quoted me as the source eh!

....Btw thats the J2 breakdown for Greek Cypriots.
 
Well, finally took a look in the paper. I guess, speaking generally, it's all in the title:
[h=1]Y-chromosomal analysis of Greek Cypriots reveals a primarily common pre-Ottoman paternal ancestry with Turkish Cypriots[/h]Their proof for that is the following:
"Y-haplogroup frequencies within GCy and TCy can be found in S6 Table. Y-haplogroup frequencies of Cypriots, Greeks, and Turks, as well as other surrounding populations can be found in Fig 1 (as well as S7 Table). GCy and TCy showed very similar frequencies for the major Y-haplogroups, differentiating both from Greek and Turkish sub-populations (Fig 3). The most frequent major Y-haplogroup subclade in both GCy and TCy was J2a-M410 (23.8% and 20.3% among GCy and TCy, respectively), followed by E-M78 (12.8% Vs 13.9%) and G2-P287 (12.5% Vs13.7%). R1b-M343 was found in higher frequency among GCy (11.9%) than TCy (6.8%), while the same applies for E-M123 (13.1% Vs 6.3%). Finally, haplogroup, although in much lower frequencies than the aforementioned haplogroups, haplogroup I2 was somewhat higher among TCy (6.8%), than among GCy (2.3%), while haplogroup J2b was higher among GCy (5.8%) than TCy (1.8%). Other, less common haplogroups (i.e. I1, R1a, L, and T) showed similar frequencies (in the range of 1–5%) between GCy and TCy."

Of course, since that's all str based it doesn't show the variation in terms of sub-clades.

I think their general conclusion might still be correct, however: that is, that the division is primarily a matter of religion, not genetics, and the Cypriots are, primarily again, an "old" Mediterranean population.

The pie chart is very interesting:

View attachment 8873

Crete has quite a bit more J2a than the rest of Greece, even more than Cyprus. It even has more than Turkey except for Central Turkey. Since the movement of people carrying J2a was probably from Cyprus to Crete, that may be because new migrations into Cyprus, and even Turkey, some bearing "Turkic" haplogroups, may have whittled away at it there but not in Crete?

Anybody know if more of the Turkic tribes were settled more to the north and east in Turkey than to the south?

The percentage of J2a in the rest of Greece seems to be roughly the same, except for Macedonia. It's also roughly the same in mainland Greece as it is in the islands and neighboring Asia Minor, but also in Turkey, except for Central Turkey.

J2b is a different story. In Greece, J2a and J2b are at about equal levels everywhere except Greek Thrace and the Peloponnese, where it's less. It's found in the Islands and Asia Minor (far western coast of Turkey which had a very large amount of Greek settlement) but not in the rest of Turkey.

It looks to me as if J2a entered from the east or southeast, but J2b from a more northern and western location.
 
As to the other haplogroups, E-M78 is present but at very low levels in most of Turkey, and at high levels everywhere in Greece and in adjoining areas of Turkey like West Turkey and Asia Minor. The only anomaly is that Crete has the least in terms of Greece, less than Cyprus. I think it's pretty clear that what we're looking at is an early movement from Turkey to Europe, an expansion north and west (Bronze Age) that then moved south and east with Greeks. (Also west into Italy, I think.)

I2 also seems to have moved from more northern areas, although there's a respectable amount even in Central Turkey. It's virtually gone by the time you reach Kurdistan, however. The same is true for I1.

It would be good to know if the R1b is mostly of the "eastern" variety and how it varies from Turkey to Greece. Those percentages look almost the same in both countries except for Thessaly where it seems a bit smaller. If it's the same sub-clades, could it be a movement from Turkey due west?

R1a is also interesting. Is most of it again the "eastern" variety instead of the younger "Slavic" clades? That's important to know, because there are significant amounts of it in Turkey as well.

G2 is mostly a Turkey, Cyprus and Crete marker. It's even low in Asia Minor. Again, we would need detailed subclade analysis.

Honestly, unless they've done snp analysis for this by subclade somewhere in the Supplement that I haven't read yet, this just leaves more questions than answers.

Of course, even then it's modern distributions, which have turned out to be misleading in the past, but still.....
 
Azurro drew my attention to the blog at Eurogenes on this paper. My first reaction is that people really shouldn't let their agendas or personal dislikes influence them when they post about specific papers or data.

The authors themselves had to clarify that their major conclusions are based on str analysis. See, it pays to actually, carefully read papers and interpret them as objectively as possible.

Furthermore, I don't see how anything in this paper is remotely probative pf anything in regard to Roman era or post Roman era migrations into southern Italy.

If you're going to use modern dna, which is not the optimal choice, you'd need, at the least, very detailed sub-clade resolution with dating to see if it's possible they had a late arrival into Italy versus, say, a Bronze Age arrival.

I also don't see why there was any objection to Italicroots posting of quotes from the paper. It is what the authors concluded. You can disagree with it, but what is objectionable about posting the quotes? Are these Greek academics racists now too? Sometimes I don't get you people. It's not a good idea to throw this term around at people one doesn't like.

""If the high genetic affinity observed between Cypriots and Calabrian Italians is assumed to be true, it could be explained by the fact that South Italy has been a part of the ancient Greek world for centuries (Magna Graecia) and Calabria in particular has been settled by Achaean Greeks during the 8th and 7th cent. B.C [as Cyprus was, a few centuries back[67]]. Thus the high genetic affinity between Calabrians and Cypriots could be a result of a common ancient Greek (Achaean) genetic contribution to both populations."

"However, despite the very low genetic differentiation between Cypriots, Calabrian Italians, and Lebanese, the former appear to differentiate, in terms of Y-haplogroup frequencies, both from Middle Eastern (including Lebanese) and from Southeast European Mediterranean (including South Italians) populations. The main feature distinguishing Cypriots from Lebanese and other Middle Easterners included in our analysis is their much lower frequency of haplogroup J1. This observation clearly suggests that although Cypriots and Lebanese share common paternal roots, the latter received a substantial influx from populations high in J1, probably during the early Arab conquest era (7th cent. AD)."

"The separation of Cypriots from Southeast European Mediterranean populations included in our analysis is brought about by the much lower frequency in the former of haplogroups I2, R1a and R1b. South Italians in particular, although relatively low in haplogroups I2 and R1a, have a substantial proportion of haplogroup R1b (Fig 3). This difference suggests that although Calabrian Italians share primarily common paternal genetic roots with Cypriots, there has been an influx of populations high in R1b, which affected South Italy much more than Cyprus. With the lack of ancient DNA data from either region, it is difficult to disentangle the origins of this differentiation."
 

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