Genetic Origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans

Y dna represents only 2% of your genome. I wouldn't get so worked up about it. Autosomally, mainland Greeks and Albanians are pretty similar. Indeed, Albanians in some graphs are within Modern Northern Greek variation, a subset, if you will.

I'm half Eastern Ligurian/Tuscan, and I get some similarity to Mycenaeans, although not like Southern Italians or Greek Islanders. If there are no Northern Italians on a calculator I come out either Bulgarian or Albanian. If more Albanians posted their results I'm pretty sure they'd get some matches to Mycenaeans as well.

In patriarchal cultures y-Dna is an essential key to understand ancestry. Albanian speakers come from a small homogeneous group of people so their Y-Dna is key and essential to understand the journey through time. Main Albanian y-Dna lines have no relation with Greek ones.


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Then the patriarchal cultures are wrong, at least in terms of genetics. Your y dna is only 2% of your total dna; it's swamped by autosomal dna which is very similar to that of northern mainland Greeks.

Whether Albanians or Greeks like those particular facts or not, that's the reality.
 
Then the patriarchal cultures are wrong, at least in terms of genetics. Your y dna is only 2% of your total dna; it's swamped by autosomal dna which is very similar to that of northern mainland Greeks.

Whether Albanians or Greeks like those particular facts or not, that's the reality.

No sure if I understand your point here, autosomal to divide Greeks and Albanian is useless, Y-Dna is the only tool usable for this purpose. I am hoping that you are not suggesting that Greeks and Albanians are the same. Y-Dna may be 2% but is a good tool to understand the journey of my ancestors when autosomal test are similar for population that have lived under the same empires for 2000 years.


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That makes absolutely no sense to me. My U2e mtDna is most common in countries in Scandinavia, in Germany etc. It would make absolutely no sense for me to identify with them. I'm Italian, and thus have far more in common not only culturally, but genetically, with my Italian compatriots who carry mtDna H than any German who carries U2e.

Same goes for yDna. My dad, my brother, are U-152. That's the Emilian side, but Tuscany has a lot of U-152, along with a lot of J2. A Tuscan U-152 and a Tuscan J2 are both Tuscans genetically.

But hey, whatever floats your boat.

If people in the Balkans focused on how similar they are rather than their differences in percentages of certain uniparental markers, markers accounting for about 2% of their total make up, they and the Balkans as a whole would be much better off. In fact, Europe would be better off.
 
That makes absolutely no sense to me. My U2e mtDna is most common in countries in Scandinavia, in Germany etc. It would make absolutely no sense for me to identify with them. I'm Italian, and thus have far more in common not only culturally, but genetically, with my Italian compatriots who carry mtDna H than any German who carries U2e.

Same goes for yDna. My dad, my brother, are U-152. That's the Emilian side, but Tuscany has a lot of U-152, along with a lot of J2. A Tuscan U-152 and a Tuscan J2 are both Tuscans genetically.

But hey, whatever floats your boat.

If people in the Balkans focused on how similar they are rather than their differences in percentages of certain uniparental markers, markers accounting for about 2% of their total make up, they and the Balkans as a whole would be much better off. In fact, Europe would be better off.

Here is not a matter of floating or finding similarities with our neighbors. Here is a matter of understanding and dividing different paths of different populations. To me, y-Dna is a great tool to understand how for example my family ended up where they are today and how their cultural background was created.
In Europe differences are not caused by genetics but from wealth (mostly achieved from conquest) and politics that try to preserve the accumulated of wealth and power to western nations. It would be naive to think that lack of cooperation between Balkans or European comes from their genetic differences, it comes primarily from their economic interest.


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Y dna represents only 2% of your genome. I wouldn't get so worked up about it. Autosomally, mainland Greeks and Albanians are pretty similar. Indeed, Albanians in some graphs are within Modern Northern Greek variation, a subset, if you will.

I'm half Eastern Ligurian/Tuscan, and I get some similarity to Mycenaeans, although not like Southern Italians or Greek Islanders. If there are no Northern Italians on a calculator I come out either Bulgarian or Albanian. If more Albanians posted their results I'm pretty sure they'd get some matches to Mycenaeans as well.

what you call Northern Greece used to be OLD Macedonia. There is historical evidence that Illyrians and Macedonians had linguistic similarities. ( Greeks would say to you they spoke Greek. Not true). Now you are saying there are genetic similarities. Glad to hear that! We new there were at least some blood relations. But Greeks genetically are a mix of Mediterranean people. According to MyHeretage 40% of Greek test takers, have Anatolian genes (associated with other genes), another 20% have Italian, and as many Middle Eastern. On the other hand Albanians have unimportant low percentages of such genes. So, this is the divide between Albanians and Greeks. Albanians are deeply Balkan stock, and Greeks basically Mediterranean
 
@Angela
OK uniparental markers are not the best markers of total autosomes proximity, but, principally the Y-ones, they keep some worth when comparing two pops with very different %'s of these uniparental markers. That neighbouring pops are or have been on the way to converge doesn't kill the interest of knowing where their male ancestors came from before, when we know how patriarcal and patrilocal these ancient societies were. Nothing in itself is sufficient, but these knowings can help nevetheless, I think.
That said, if Balkans people could get to some appeasement, I would buy it, but it is not the very topic.
That said, best wishes to all of us.
 
what you call Northern Greece used to be OLD Macedonia. There is historical evidence that Illyrians and Macedonians had linguistic similarities. ( Greeks would say to you they spoke Greek. Not true). Now you are saying there are genetic similarities. Glad to hear that! We new there were at least some blood relations. But Greeks genetically are a mix of Mediterranean people. According to MyHeretage 40% of Greek test takers, have Anatolian genes (associated with other genes), another 20% have Italian, and as many Middle Eastern. On the other hand Albanians have unimportant low percentages of such genes. So, this is the divide between Albanians and Greeks. Albanians are deeply Balkan stock, and Greeks basically Mediterranean

Please don't presume to tell me what I mean by Northern Greece.

What I meant was the academic sample from Thessaloniki, which is what most of the companies use for mainland Greeks, although there are also some "Central Greece" samples floating around, which I think includes the Peloponnese. In more than one PCA Albanians cluster near that Thessaloniki sample, a subset, as I said, of Greek autosomal variation.

Are they identical? No, and I never said nor implied they were. They're damn similar, however.

As for the uniparentals I also never said they don't have their uses, but as a tool for "ethnic" identification, they can be very faulty.

Please don't rely on MyHeritage. It's a complete disaster and no one should be drawing conclusions from it.

Since everyone seems so enamored of the Eurogenes runs, compare the results for the Albanians and Greeks on things like EEF and CHG. The differences from "Northern" Greeks are not very significant.
 
what you call Northern Greece used to be OLD Macedonia. There is historical evidence that Illyrians and Macedonians had linguistic similarities. ( Greeks would say to you they spoke Greek. Not true). Now you are saying there are genetic similarities. Glad to hear that! We new there were at least some blood relations. But Greeks genetically are a mix of Mediterranean people. According to MyHeretage 40% of Greek test takers, have Anatolian genes (associated with other genes), another 20% have Italian, and as many Middle Eastern. On the other hand Albanians have unimportant low percentages of such genes. So, this is the divide between Albanians and Greeks. Albanians are deeply Balkan stock, and Greeks basically Mediterranean
Here we go again with the nonsense. Macedonians spoke Greek and they were considered a Greek tribe who hadn't evolved into the city-State model. Macedonians were certainly not Illyrians. Last, as Angela noted, MyHeritage is a mess in terms of classifications.
 
That makes absolutely no sense to me. My U2e mtDna is most common in countries in Scandinavia, in Germany etc. It would make absolutely no sense for me to identify with them. I'm Italian, and thus have far more in common not only culturally, but genetically, with my Italian compatriots who carry mtDna H than any German who carries U2e.

Same goes for yDna. My dad, my brother, are U-152. That's the Emilian side, but Tuscany has a lot of U-152, along with a lot of J2. A Tuscan U-152 and a Tuscan J2 are both Tuscans genetically.

But hey, whatever floats your boat.

If people in the Balkans focused on how similar they are rather than their differences in percentages of certain uniparental markers, markers accounting for about 2% of their total make up, they and the Balkans as a whole would be much better off. In fact, Europe would be better off.

You're right, but ydna helps to understand our origins, especially on this thread. If we find an ancient skeleton from Mycenae which belongs to J2a1, than it is clear that certain nationalistic Albanian views on Pellasgians would finally mitigate. That's clear that G2a and J2a1 is found in greeks and not in Albanians. This makes sense.
Which is the true original proto Mycenean ydna according to you?
 
You're right, but ydna helps to understand our origins, especially on this thread. If we find an ancient skeleton from Mycenae which belongs to J2a1, than it is clear that certain nationalistic Albanian views on Pellasgians would finally mitigate. That's clear that G2a and J2a1 is found in greeks and not in Albanians. This makes sense.
Which is the true original proto Mycenean ydna according to you?
As a sidenote, if we consider Pelasgians of Neolithic stock, and therefore representative of cultures such as Sesklo, Vinča, etc., then G2a would be the primary Y-DNA haplogroup of them, https://www.eupedia.com/genetics/haplogroups_of_neolithic_farmers.shtml. For example we know that 42 out of 69 Neolithic European samples belonged to G2a. J2a very likely came later, since we only have 1 Neolithic sample. It probably came during Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age, and can be associated with the CHG or Caucasus-Iran autosomal component that is present in both the Minoans and Mycenaeans in the range of ~9–32% , but not the Neolithic inhabitants.
 
Please don't presume to tell me what I mean by Northern Greece.

What I meant was the academic sample from Thessaloniki, which is what most of the companies use for mainland Greeks, although there are also some "Central Greece" samples floating around, which I think includes the Peloponnese. In more than one PCA Albanians cluster near that Thessaloniki sample, a subset, as I said, of Greek autosomal variation.

Are they identical? No, and I never said nor implied they were. They're damn similar, however.

As for the uniparentals I also never said they don't have their uses, but as a tool for "ethnic" identification, they can be very faulty.

Please don't rely on MyHeritage. It's a complete disaster and no one should be drawing conclusions from it.

Since everyone seems so enamored of the Eurogenes runs, compare the results for the Albanians and Greeks on things like EEF and CHG. The differences from "Northern" Greeks are not very significant.

What is wrong with my heritage, I get similar from 23 and me, and ancestry? I do not notice any big difference.


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Here we go again with the nonsense. Macedonians spoke Greek and they were considered a Greek tribe who hadn't evolved into the city-State model. Macedonians were certainly not Illyrians. Last, as Angela noted, MyHeritage is a mess in terms of classifications.

Let’s not go back in Macedonia here again....but since no bones than no proof.IMG_3965.jpgIMG_3964.jpg


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Let’s not go back in Macedonia here again....but since no bones than no proof.View attachment 11688View attachment 11689


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It is known throughout the academic world that Macedonians were Greeks, and even decades earlier when we had less evidence, Macedonians were classified as cousins of Greeks within a broader Hellenic group. Today we know that Macedonians spoke a northwest Doric dialect, similar to the one of Aetolians and Acarnanians in Central Greece.
 
It is known throughout the academic world that Macedonians were Greeks, and even decades earlier when we had less evidence, Macedonians were classified as cousins of Greeks within a broader Hellenic group. Today we know that Macedonians spoke a northwest Doric dialect, similar to the one of Aetolians and Acarnanians in Central Greece.

I thought Greeks called macedonians and Epirotes ,,,,,barbarians and non-greeks ...............please clarify
 
Here we go again with the nonsense. Macedonians spoke Greek and they were considered a Greek tribe who hadn't evolved into the city-State model. Macedonians were certainly not Illyrians. Last, as Angela noted, MyHeritage is a mess in terms of classifications.

i have read a book about Balkans by a Greek American professor teaching at Columbus University. Its been a while and i cant recall his name. You can probably find the name if you look around on internet. According to him Macedonian language had similarities with Illyrian and Thracian. Macedonians who were studding in Greece were learning the language, before studies.
To make my closing point: Nobody ever said Macedonians were Illyrians. Our position is they were separate ethnicity, who spoke their language up to 4 century ad.
But whatever the case I dont want to argue about it anymore. you keep your position in the matter, i will keep mine. One thing is sure: there is no certainty that Macedonians were Greeks. there are sources who doubt it.
 
You're right, but ydna helps to understand our origins, especially on this thread. If we find an ancient skeleton from Mycenae which belongs to J2a1, than it is clear that certain nationalistic Albanian views on Pellasgians would finally mitigate. That's clear that G2a and J2a1 is found in greeks and not in Albanians. This makes sense.
Which is the true original proto Mycenean ydna according to you?

We "have" yDna from Mycenaean tombs. We're discussing the paper which published some, yes?

I don't decide which yDna is the "true, original, proto Mycenaean, ydna". I let the ancient dna tell me, and a final conclusion waits upon a larger selection of samples.

If they came through the Caucasus and entered by a path which took them around the Black Sea, about which the authors of the paper are agnostic, J2a might very well turn out to be the proto-ydna. It perhaps more likely came by way of the northern Balkans and so carried an upstream R1b or R1a clade. Those clades are very minor ones in Greece today.

I don't get this mania about which was the "first" one, as other than a matter of intellectual interest. By the time their civilization was thriving, J2a was prominent among them, and not just among serfs if that's what you're implying.

As for the "Illyrians", the only data we have so far, and we have a few samples, shows that autosomally they're more related to other ethnicities than to Albanians.

I also don't get this point some some Albanian members are making that Greeks are so much more "southern" than they are. They're not, not if you're talking about mainland Greeks. It sometimes seems as if Albanians think they're not a Southern European ethnicity.

Part of the reason these discussions often degenerate into chaos is because Albanians are not included in papers or gedmatch because there's no academic sample of them. However, I'm sure lots of Albanians have tested and gone on gedmatch. We have results on spreadsheets for the various Greek populations. Publish your results in a side by side comparison with, say, Dodecad v3, and we'll see how you compare. It's simple enough.

Nationalist views propagated by authoritarian rulers from before the age of ancient ydna are bound to be wrong. "Pelasgian" is an outmoded, unscientific term. Who knows what the ancient authors meant by it? If you or "Albanian Nationalists" define Pelasgians as the Neolithic farming populations of Europe, including the Balkans, their most predominant yDna would have been G2a and I2a. Whether Albanians TODAY carry either specific clade is irrelevant to the fact that I'm sure they, like everyone else in the Balkans, is descended from those G2a and I2a carrying men.
 
I thought Greeks called macedonians and Epirotes ,,,,,barbarians and non-greeks ...............please clarify
There is a very big misconception about the Classical use of the word "barbarian". Initially the Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking peoples, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes and Phoenicians, emphasizing their otherness. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..", the alleged root of the word βάρβαρος, which is an echomimetic or onomatopoeic word. However, in various occasions, the term was also used by Greeks, especially the Athenians, to deride other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Macedonians, Boeotians and Aeolic-speakers) but also fellow Athenians, in a pejorative and politically motivated manner. Here more about the way it was used, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian#Etymology.

A lot has been written because Demosthenes called Philip a "barbarian". The reason is simple: Demosthenes was a pro-democrat Athenian and Philip was his greatest political enemy. You see, Macedonia was a monarchy and an emerging power in the Greek affairs, and thus a threat to the Athenian democratic supremacy. I will repeat it here once more: the ancient Greeks - particularly the Athenians, like Demosthenes - often used the word "barbarian" to insult and/or mock other Greeks. For example, Aeschines called Demosthenes himself a "barbarian", Demosthenes called Philip, a Macedonian, and Meidias, an Athenian, both "barbarians", etc..

Here are a few examples of Greeks insulting other Greeks by calling them "barbarians":

Aeschines: "But to be free from accusation, that was a thing which depended upon fortune, and fortune cast my lot with (referring to Demosthenes, who was an Athenian) a slanderer, a barbarian, who cared not for sacrifices nor libations nor the breaking of bread together." (Aeschines, "On the Embassy", 2.183)

Demosthenes: "And yet, though he has thus become the possessor of privileges to which he has no claim, and has found a fatherland which is reputed to be of all states the most firmly based upon its laws, he seems utterly unable to submit to those laws or abide by them. His (Meidias, an Athenian) true, native barbarism and hatred of religion drive him on by force and betray the fact that he treats his present rights as if they were not his own—as indeed they are not." (Demosthenes, "Against Meidias", 21.150)

"Is he (Philip II, a Macedonian) not our enemy? Are not our possessions in his hands? Is he not a barbarian?" (Demosthenes, "Third Olynthiac", 16)

Atheneaus: "And when he was asked again, according to the account given by Hegesander, which were the greatest barbarians, the Boeotians (Greeks) or the Thessalians (Greeks), he said: 'The Eleans' (Greeks)." (Athenaeus, "The Deipnosophists", 8.42)

Plato: "Was he not reproaching Pittacus for not knowing how to distinguish words correctly, Lesbian as he was, and nurtured in a barbaric tongue?" (referring to the Aeolic dialect, one of the major Greek dialects) (Plato, "Protagoras", 341c)

Aristophanes: (Strepsiades, an Athenian), "a man ignorant and barbarian." (Aristophanes, "Clouds", 491)

As for the Macedonians, we know they were Greeks. They spoke Greek, shared the same religion, cults and customs with the rest of the Greeks, and they also identified themselves as Greeks:
"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas (the Macedonians) are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history." (Herodotus, "Histories", 5.22)

Here is what modern academics say about the ancient Macedonians.
Nicholas Hammond, British scholar and expert on Macedon: "We must remember too that Philip and Alexander were Greeks." ( 'Alexander the Great', p.257)
Yale University: "We know the ancient Macedonians were fundamentally Greeks. That is to say they were Greek speakers and ethnically they were Greeks." (Yale University, "Introduction to Ancient Greek History, Philip, Demosthenes and the Fall of the Polis", 2007)

So much can be written about it, unfortunately today the subject is politically charged, and much misinformation has been spread to promote political agendas.
 
That makes absolutely no sense to me. My U2e mtDna is most common in countries in Scandinavia, in Germany etc. It would make absolutely no sense for me to identify with them. I'm Italian, and thus have far more in common not only culturally, but genetically, with my Italian compatriots who carry mtDna H than any German who carries U2e.

Same goes for yDna. My dad, my brother, are U-152. That's the Emilian side, but Tuscany has a lot of U-152, along with a lot of J2. A Tuscan U-152 and a Tuscan J2 are both Tuscans genetically.

But hey, whatever floats your boat.

If people in the Balkans focused on how similar they are rather than their differences in percentages of certain uniparental markers, markers accounting for about 2% of their total make up, they and the Balkans as a whole would be much better off. In fact, Europe would be better off.


According to Maciamo's table, Emilia-Romagna has not less J2 than Tuscany. Of course, an ethnicity does not depend only on uniparental markers. It's totally pointless to give uniparental markers all this importance. It happens when people have identity problems.

Anyway, many J2 are in Italy at least since Neolithic times, as proven by the findings in the Neolithic site of Ripabianca di Monterado in Marche region.






AU2FMKa.png
 
As for the "Illyrians", the only data we have so far, and we have a few samples, shows that autosomally they're more related to other ethnicities than to Albanians.

I also don't get this point some some Albanian members are making that Greeks are so much more "southern" than they are. They're not, not if you're talking about mainland Greeks. It sometimes seems as if Albanians think they're not a Southern European ethnicity.

Part of the reason these discussions often degenerate into chaos is because Albanians are not included in papers or gedmatch because there's no academic sample of them. However, I'm sure lots of Albanians have tested and gone on gedmatch. We have results on spreadsheets for the various Greek populations. Publish your results in a side by side comparison with, say, Dodecad v3, and we'll see how you compare. It's simple enough.
True, so far it seems like the Western Balkans may have been more western shifted up until the Iron Age. This is based on the fact that HRV_MBA and HRV_IA both are very similar to modern day Northern Italians in terms of auDNA. However, it is very likely that over time the Illyric speaking tribes, especially those further to the south, became more southern shifted and Mycenaean like. It should be noted though that when it comes to Y-DNA, Albanians are predominantly descended from these Illyrians/Western Balkan populations.

Albanians are a Southern European ethnicity, whoever denies that it just wrong. When it comes to auDNA, Albanians overlap with mainland Greeks for the most part. Though some do cluster near Tuscans.

As far as I know there are Albanian academic samples, I'm pretty sure the ones used in the G25 datasheet are from academic studies.

Run from G25 comparing Greeks and Albanians (the average and mine):

Albanian average
Distance: 1.7634% / 0.01763448
60.4 Anatolia_Barcin_N
29.8 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
4.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
4.0 Baltic_LVA_HG
1.0 East Asian

Me
Distance: 2.4746% / 0.02474594
62.6 Anatolia_Barcin_N
28.4 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
6.6 Baltic_LVA_HG
1.6 GEO_CHG
0.6 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
0.2 East Asian

Greek Thessaly average:
Distance: 1.2821% / 0.01282121
58.0 Anatolia_Barcin_N
33.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
5.0 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
2.6 Baltic_LVA_HG
1.2 Levant_Natufian
0.2 East_Asian

Greek Peloponnese average
Distance: 1.3937% / 0.01393737
62.2 Anatolia_Barcin_N
27.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
5.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
1.8 GEO_CHG
1.4 Levant_Natufian
1.2 Baltic_LVA_HG
0.4 East_Asian


Greek Central Macedonia average
Distance: 1.9753% / 0.01975263
57.2 Anatolia_Barcin_N
31.4 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
5.2 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
3.8 Baltic_LVA_HG
2.2 Levant_Natufian
0.2 East_Asian

Mycenaean average
Distance: 1.0505% / 0.01050512
73.0 Anatolia_Barcin_N
12.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
8.6 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
4.6 GEO_CHG
1.0 Levant_Natufian
0.6 Sub_Saharan
 

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