Genetic Origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans

[Aaron1981]

Crete Armenoi is more southeastern than Tuscans (Tuscans are a western version of Greek_Thessaloniki in Lazaridis' PCA). Crete Armenoi is closer to modern Greeks, or just intermediate between Greek_Thessaloniki and Sicilians. Anyway, Lazaridis has said that Crete Armenoi is a low quality sample, can't be labelled Minoan or Mycenaean.

I suppose, but please point out to me a U5a rich Middle Eastern population. I'll give you some time to get back to me..no rush or anything.

I found this post from Dienekes' blog relevant. It wouldn't surprise me if they were genomically similar to the Cretan_Armenoi.
http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2008/05/mtdna-from-grave-circle-b-in-mycenae_07.html

 

[Angela]

I could quickly lay my hands on these ancient mtDna results from Bronze Age Armenia. There are 8 of them, with one U4c1a. How many more are there? Does anyone know? Minus the snarkiness, if you please.

http://aramepal.blogspot.com/2015/06/allentoft-2015-haak-2015-and-others.html

 

[Tomenable]

Here is a map of all U4 mtDNA samples in ancient DNA:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...s&ll=54.626058947190806,43.02658079999992&z=3

The map has five layers (from Mesolithic to Medieval).

All of Mesolithic and Neolithic U4 samples are in Europe.

 

[Ygorbr]

The invasion of 4th century BC is Gaulish, and is the last wave of Celtic migrations to north Italy. Proto-Celtic cultures flourished in north Italy from 14th/13th century BC: Scamozzina and Canegrate and then Golasecca, oftern merged with the local Ligurians. Scamozzina and Canegrate likely from Hallstatt culture, Golasecca from La Tène culture.

How's that possible if Hallstatt and especially La Tène postdate the 14th century BC by several centuries? By the 14th century BC, those peoples were still branching from the Urnfield culture, which was possibly Proto-Celtic. But, granted, those peoples could be Proto-Celtic or, as I honestly believe is quite likely, a Para-Celtic branch, since the Urnfield culture and successor societies were certainly not monolingual through their large territories, and Proto-Celtic must've been only one, the most successful, among many ancient Celto-Italic languages. In my opinion, Ligurian - with many links to Celtic and regarded by some even as a branch of Celtic - must've been associated with one of these earlier Proto-Celto-Italic waves into Italy.

Naples was never under the Etruscan rule and influence, Etruscans controlled other towns in Campania. The Etruscan rule in Campania was a conseguence of the earlier Villanovian expansion to south Italy, it's not due to a presumed Tyrrhenian element. Just as it occurred roughly in northern Italy, cities controlled by the Etruscans in Campania coincide with the previous Villanovian settlements. But unfortunately the Etruscans were defeated and expelled around 4th century BC from Oscans and other local populations.

Thanks for your informative post. But then, in other words, it does seem to me like you're precisely confirming that there was a pre-Italic Tyrrhenian element in those areas (though I was really misled about Naples, the Etruscan rule of which was assumed by another Eupedia member in this topic). The Tyrrhenian-speaking cultural elements could've been not very ancient, not predating the Italic tribes by milennia, but the Villanovan expansion was certainly earlier than the expansion of Italic tribes and above all of the Latins. Sorry if I misunderstood what you said.

 

[Pax Augusta]

How's that possible if Hallstatt and especially La Tène postdate the 14th century BC by several centuries? By the 14th century BC, those peoples were still branching from the Urnfield culture, which was possibly Proto-Celtic. But, granted, those peoples could be Proto-Celtic or, as I honestly believe is quite likely, a Para-Celtic branch, since the Urnfield culture and successor societies were certainly not monolingual through their large territories, and Proto-Celtic must've been only one, the most successful, among many ancient Celto-Italic languages. In my opinion, Ligurian - with many links to Celtic and regarded by some even as a branch of Celtic - must've been associated with one of these earlier Proto-Celto-Italic waves into Italy.

To be honest, you're pretending not to understand. In fact, as I said, those are considered proto-Celt cultures. Even though maybe it's a bit forced for Scamozzina.

14th-13th century BC Scamozzina (or Scamozzina-Alba and Viverone), then the rest. Urnfield culture>Hallstatt culture>La Tène culture.

Thanks for your informative post. But then, in other words, it does seem to me like you're precisely confirming that there was a pre-Italic Tyrrhenian element in those areas (though I was really misled about Naples, the Etruscan rule of which was assumed by another Eupedia member in this topic). The Tyrrhenian-speaking cultural elements could've been not very ancient, not predating the Italic tribes by milennia, but the Villanovan expansion was certainly earlier than the expansion of Italic tribes and above all of the Latins. Sorry if I misunderstood what you said.

Not really, just the opposite. There were other elements though. I challenge you to find these elements. But I have the impression that you are not really interested in finding them.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

I suppose, but please point out to me a U5a rich Middle Eastern population. I'll give you some time to get back to me..no rush or anything.

I found this post from Dienekes' blog relevant. It wouldn't surprise me if they were genomically similar to the Cretan_Armenoi.
http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2008/05/mtdna-from-grave-circle-b-in-mycenae_07.html

There's a Minoan female with mtDNA U5a1 (I0071, Hagios Charalambos Cave, Lasithi, Crete 2400-1700 BC) along with J2a1 males.
What doesn that mean for you?

 

[Angela]

Here is a map of all U4 mtDNA samples in ancient DNA:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...s&ll=54.626058947190806,43.02658079999992&z=3

The map has five layers (from Mesolithic to Medieval).

All of Mesolithic and Neolithic U4 samples are in Europe.

How is that on point? We're talking about the Bronze Age. The mtDna U4 could have moved down through the Caucasus in the early Bronze and then west into Greece.

The paper where it can be found is Allentoft et al 2015.

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7555/fig_tab/nature14507_SF6.html

@Papadimitriou,
I thought I remembered an mtDna U4 in Neolithic Anatolia, but now I can't find it. It would make sense, though, given the y Dna I2a found there. That WHG like genetic material found in them came into Anatolia from the Balkans, or it was spread between the Balkans and Anatolia during the Mesolithic.

 

[Cato]

Giuseppe Sergi isn't particularly reliabe.

It's very old, but he provided pictures of the skulls cited in his books so i don't think that he made-up his data

https://archive.org/details/italialeoriginia00serg

but i understand that i'm OT..

 

[Ygorbr]

Not really, just the opposite. There were other elements though. I challenge you to find these elements. But I have the impression that you are not really interested in finding them.

Then your impressions aren't very accurate, so you should rely less on feelings and more on what is actually being stated here. I wouldn't be talking about this subject if I wasn't interested in learning more, so I don't understand why you can't inform us all better if you think you have more knowledge about the subject. That's better than negative subjective impressions.

 

[Angela]

Gentlemen, this isn't a thread on Italian genetics, so detailed discussions of it should go to the appropriate thread.

 

[I1a3_Young]

Using D-stats here's what modern mainland Greeks get...

Anatolia Neolithic-58%
CHG/Iran Neo-21%
EHG-18%
WHG-3%

Here's what Mycenaean get.

Anatolia Neolithic-80%
EHG-7%
Iran Neo-14%

And what Minoans get.
Anatolia Neolithic-86%
Iran Neo-14%

Take this in context with a post by Angela on page 1, who was quoting the authors who stated that the steppe mixture appears to have been through both a north and east route.

If the Steppe increase was a singular invasion through the Balkans, then they would have brought a EHG/Neolithic farmer mix. That would have reduced the Iranian chalcolithic percentage and increased the Neolithic farmer and EHG. However, the Minoan to Mycenaean transition kept a stable amount of Iran_Chalcolithic and increased EHG while reducing Neolithic farmer.

Wouldn't that point towards a more easterly source of the mix? Yet the authors say there's more common drift with Europe LBNA.

As is the usual case, there are probably multiple waves at play here. Perhaps the Minoan weakening was due to pressure from both sides and the chaos and moving is too hard to track.

The explanations are usually not simple but the fact remains that a significant amount of Steppe was introduced.

What if we flipped the map upside down and pretend ancient Greece was where ancient Sweden was. Think of the increasing Steppe in Greece as the increasing Neolithic farmer in Sweden. First it was only ~8% then it increased and stabilized. Nobody is claiming EEF takeover of Sweden but look at it as rather a natural drift of people. Sweden also experienced R1B-U106 incursion with no apparent takeover, unless I'm mistaken.

The single Mycenaean Y-DNA sample is a bit frustrating.

 

[Angela]

@Young,
Everything is relative. I wouldn't call the Yamnaya in even modern Greeks very significant...They Mycenaens had about 13%...they don't look to have gotten all that much more from the Slavs or other later migrations, although they got some (and these are mostly or all mainland Greeks)

Just a reminder that this graph is not based on a simple admixture run.

What is inescapable, imo, is that the processes that affected the Balkans, Greece, Iberia, (and perhaps Italy, although we have to wait for adna) are very different from what happened in central and even more in northern Europe (and perhaps in India). The same seems to be true for the Near East (i.e. Hittite and other Indo-European languages.)

In these latter areas the Indo-European speakers entered densely populated areas with advanced cultures. In northern and central Europe the territories were either empty or relatively depopulated because of population crashes caused by climate change, environmental degradation of the soil, and perhaps disease brought by the newcomers.

As a result, the total effect genetically in the Balkans and Greece was much smaller (75% replacement in the north originally, versus either 13 or 21% in the Mycenaeans depending on the group being examined.) Culturally there was a big difference as well. The newcomers in Greece, while changing the language, adopted a lot of the culture.

 

[Fatherland]

tick for top

likewise for you on bottom

You are wrong.

 

[Angela]

I suppose, but please point out to me a U5a rich Middle Eastern population. I'll give you some time to get back to me..no rush or anything.

I found this post from Dienekes' blog relevant. It wouldn't surprise me if they were genomically similar to the Cretan_Armenoi.
http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2008/05/mtdna-from-grave-circle-b-in-mycenae_07.html

Even the "modelers" seem to admit this is a terrible sample. Give it up. This is the height of special pleading.


Let's all try to be objective, people.

 

[I1a3_Young]

@Young,
Everything is relative. I wouldn't call the Yamnaya in even modern Greeks very significant...They Mycenaens had about 13%...they don't look to have gotten all that much more from the Slavs or other later migrations, although they got some (and these are mostly or all mainland Greeks)

Just a reminder that this graph is not based on a simple admixture run.

What is inescapable, imo, is that the processes that affected the Balkans, Greece, Iberia, (and perhaps Italy, although we have to wait for adna) are very different from what happened in central and even more in northern Europe (and perhaps in India). The same seems to be true for the Near East (i.e. Hittite and other Indo-European languages.)

In these latter areas the Indo-European speakers entered densely populated areas with advanced cultures. In northern and central Europe the territories were either empty or relatively depopulated because of population crashes caused by climate change, environmental degradation of the soil, and perhaps disease brought by the newcomers.

As a result, the total effect genetically in the Balkans and Greece was much smaller (75% replacement in the north originally, versus either 13 or 21% in the Mycenaeans depending on the group being examined.) Culturally there was a big difference as well. The newcomers in Greece, while changing the language, adopted a lot of the culture.

Accepted. Do you know of a way to put an individual on a chart like this? Side question: Why are Norwegians and Scottish rated with more Yamnaya than Ukraine?

 

[Angela]

Accepted. Do you know of a way to put an individual on a chart like this? Side question: Why are Norwegians and Scottish rated with more Yamnaya than Ukraine?

I'm sorry, I don't. I wish they'd take up a side job and analyze my dna with the new methods they have and are developing, especially in comparison to whatever ancient Italian dna is published, but I won't be holding my breath.

If you're interested, the methodology they did use is in the Supplement to Haak et al 2016.

As to your second question, to the best of my recollection the current populations of the Ukraine are not the original ones of the Bronze Age or even the Iron Age. There were subsequent migrations in the early Medieval period, and then quite extensive de-population at one time followed by re-settlement from areas in Belarus and Poland. Don't take my word for it, though, East European history wasn't my area of concentration so I can't vouch for the reliability of the data in a site like Wiki either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ukraine

 

[ThirdTerm]

The full list of mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups reported in this study. Two samples have U5a1 and one Minoan sample has U3b3. The Anatolia_BA sample listed at the bottom belongs to T2b. Yamnaya mtDNA haplogroups are known to be T1a and U2e (Wilde 2014) and there is no exact match in these ancient samples.

 

[Angela]

The full list of mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups reported in this study. Two samples have U5a1 and one Minoan sample has U3b3. The Anatolia_BA sample listed at the bottom belongs to T2b. Yamnaya mtDNA haplogroups are known to be T1a and U2e (Wilde 2014) and there is no exact match in these ancient samples.

I think Maciamo has always viewed U3 as a Near Eastern lineage.

There are more Yamnaya steppe mtDna than that, yes?

Jean Manco's sheet of ancient dna is not totally up to date any longer: perhaps she's given up on it. However, there are a lot of mtDna there that you can take a look at...
http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/copperbronzeagedna.shtml

You have to go down the whole list because it's not just Yamnaya, and it's grouped by time period.

It would be interesting to look at the Copper and Bronze Age Balkan samples and compare as well.

These are the Armenian ones that I linked to above:

Sample Name	Site	Culture	14C Date BP	cal BC low	yDNA	mtDNA
RISE396	Kapan	LBA	1192 BC	937 BC		H6b
RISE397	Kapan	LBA	1048 BC	855 BC	R1b1a2a2	T1a2
RISE407	Norabak	LBA	1115 BC	895 BC		H8a
RISE408	Norabak	LBA	1209 BC	1009 BC	J2b-Z580	I5c
RISE412	Noratus	LBA	1193 BC	945 BC		U4c1a
RISE413	Nerquin Getashen	MBA	1906 BC	1698 BC	R1b-P297	T2c1f
RISE416	Nerquin Getashen	MBA	1643 BC	1445 BC	E-M84	K1a17a
RISE423	Nerquin Getashen	MBA	1402 BC	1211 BC	E-M84	T2a

 

[Fire Haired14]

If y'alls have questions about mtDNA just ask [email protected].

 

[Fire Haired14]

Maciamo already did a pretty good analysis of the mtDNA results here. I dis agree with only a few things he said. He claimed the U5a1 is a link to Neolithic Greece but U5a1 is not associated with anything Neolithic Europe/Anatolia. 20% of Yamnaya had U5a1, maybe 1% in Neolithic Europe had U5a1.

I wouldn't call mHG I5 a Caucasian/CHG lineage. mHG I was found in Neolithic Levant, is found in East Africa today, so it isn't an exclusively CHG lineage like Maciamo thinks. I5 today has a strange distribution I'm still working out with peaks in Italy, Balkans, and Near East.

Btw, I've been arguing over the past year Minoan mtDNA published in 2013 indicate they were overwhelmingly EEF.