Genetic Origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans

Yes Yetos, you are correct. My bad here.[/

Don't you worry Diomedes, Maciamo has done the same mistake as you in his post above....:I quote" This suggests that numerous waves of European invaders (Dorians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Slavs) contributed to a large share of modern Greek DNA." Maybe Yetos can shed some light here.


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Don't you worry Diomedes, Maciamo has done the same mistake as you in his post above....:I quote" This suggests that numerous waves of European invaders (Dorians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Slavs) contributed to a large share of modern Greek DNA." Maybe Yetos can shed some light here.

I suppose you are referring to the Dorian invasion. The fact is that we still don't know where the Dorians originated, except that they came from the north. This could have been in northern Greece or Macedonia, but also from Albania or further north in the Balkans. They might also have been a hybrid population of foreign invaders and assimilated northern Greeks, who joined up forces to run over central and southern Greece. It's often the case with invasions. In the context of the turmoils of 1200 BCE around the East Med, it's quite likely that some foreign invaders did participate to the Dorian invasion following the civilisation collapse in Greece proper.
 
@Maciamo,

*Relatively* speaking the Myceneans were mixed. All of their ancestors don't have to have lived in Greece for 20,000 years for them to be unmixed. The genetic shifts we see in ancient DNA; EEF migration, Steppe migration, occur once every like 5,000 years. For the most part people were born, had kids, and died on the same plot of land.

Mycenaeans were by and large EEF. The models give them like 70% EEF. Some EEF would have come from the north alongside Steppe admixture, some came alongside CHG admixture, but still by and large Myceneans traced their ancestry back to the Neolithic Aegean or at least Neolithic Greece and Turkey.

European genetic diversity is more complex than EEF, WHG, CHG, EHG. The EEF's in Poland may be more related to Sardinians than to Eastern Europeans but they share unique genetic markers (eg, mtDNA H1b2) only with Eastern Europeans. While there are other Europeans with a more similar EEF/EHG/etc. composition to Myceneans than what modern Greeks have, modern Greeks probably have the closest genealogical relationship with Myceneans.

The more recent admixtures in Greece; Goths, Slavs, ancient Anatolia, etc. are all hypothetical right now. Maybe the ancient Greeks didn't mix at all with people in Turkey.

I do think obvious difference between Myceneans and modern Greeks is really interesting. Coincidentally everywhere from Turkey to Ireland EEF got beat up during the Bronze age.
 
I suppose you are referring to the Dorian invasion. The fact is that we still don't know where the Dorians originated, except that they came from the north. This could have been in northern Greece or Macedonia, but also from Albania or further north in the Balkans. They might also have been a hybrid population of foreign invaders and assimilated northern Greeks, who joined up forces to run over central and southern Greece. It's often the case with invasions. In the context of the turmoils of 1200 BCE around the East Med, it's quite likely that some foreign invaders did participate to the Dorian invasion following the civilisation collapse in Greece proper.

Yes I am referring to that....Yetos prospective is quite different from yours, I guess further studies will clarify this.


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So, anyone shocked by this study? [emoji14]
Seems pretty reasonable
 
at the mergin:

"Similarly, ~79% of present-dayGreeks have light or dark brown hair, with the remainder split between blond and black."

with so a great precision in phenotypes, I wonder if it is worth comparing pops and studying the genotypes for pigmentation!!!
 
at the mergin:

"Similarly, ~79% of present-dayGreeks have light or dark brown hair, with the remainder split between blond and black."

with so a great precision in phenotypes, I wonder if it is worth comparing pops and studying the genotypes for pigmentation!!!
Most light hair and eyes came in middle ages. In ancient and prehistoric Greece, it was rare if not non existent.
 
What high steppe in Greeks?

Relatively high.

High steppe in modern Greeks compared to what Mycenaean peasants had. Modern Greeks have way more of steppe ancestry than Mycenaean commoners. Look at the PCA graph. Mycenaeans cluster with Sicilians, not with mainland Greeks - who are ca. 1/4 more shifted in the direction of Russians.

Why did you remove my satirical picture (Greek Nationalist's Dilemma)?:

w1EL4by.png
 
@Maciamo,

*Relatively* speaking the Myceneans were mixed. All of their ancestors don't have to have lived in Greece for 20,000 years for them to be unmixed. The genetic shifts we see in ancient DNA; EEF migration, Steppe migration, occur once every like 5,000 years. For the most part people were born, had kids, and died on the same plot of land.

Mycenaeans were by and large EEF. The models give them like 70% EEF. Some EEF would have come from the north alongside Steppe admixture, some came alongside CHG admixture, but still by and large Myceneans traced their ancestry back to the Neolithic Aegean or at least Neolithic Greece and Turkey.

European genetic diversity is more complex than EEF, WHG, CHG, EHG. The EEF's in Poland may be more related to Sardinians than to Eastern Europeans but they share unique genetic markers (eg, mtDNA H1b2) only with Eastern Europeans. While there are other Europeans with a more similar EEF/EHG/etc. composition to Myceneans than what modern Greeks have, modern Greeks probably have the closest genealogical relationship with Myceneans.

It doesn't mean anything to say that the Mycenaeans were by and large EEF. That is the case for practically all Europeans populations since the Neolithic! (except Bronze Age Steppe, and modern Finns and Lapps). By that logic the Mycenaeans could be closely related to the Sardinians and Basques, which is obviously nonsense, as their last common EEF ancestors date back to the Early Neolithic.

The more recent admixtures in Greece; Goths, Slavs, ancient Anatolia, etc. are all hypothetical right now. Maybe the ancient Greeks didn't mix at all with people in Turkey.

I do think obvious difference between Myceneans and modern Greeks is really interesting. Coincidentally everywhere from Turkey to Ireland EEF got beat up during the Bronze age.

Hypothetical? How is 3.5% of I1 in Greece with subclades dating from the Gothic migrations hypothetical? What about the 20% of clearly Slavic R1a-CTS1211, R1a-M458 and I2a1b-CTS10228 in modern Greece? There is nothing hypothetical about these migrations. Just look at the FTDNA Greece project. Among the I2a1 members, all those tested for deep clades belong to CTS10228. The subclades found downstream are Y4460 (2300 ybp), A2512 (2200 ybp), Z17855 (1650 ybp), and A10959 (1800 ybp), all too young to be anything but Slavic.
 
It appears to me that some of you imply that the ruling class of the Mycenaeans was different from the peasants. If so, why and where did they come from?

(in the background thoughts about the "Nephalem" and the ruling class of the archaic times. Could the Bible be right after all ...)
 
Relatively high.

High steppe in modern Greeks compared to what Mycenaean peasants had. Modern Greeks have way more of steppe ancestry than Mycenaean commoners. Look at the PCA graph. Mycenaeans cluster with Sicilians, not with mainland Greeks - who are ca. 1/4 more shifted in the direction of Russians.

Why did you remove my satirical picture (Greek Nationalist's Dilemma)?:

w1EL4by.png
Hahahahhahaha
 
They are very close to mainland Greeks also. By and large, the Slavic influence is very small in Greece.

Relatively high.

High steppe in modern Greeks compared to what Mycenaean peasants had. Modern Greeks have way more of steppe ancestry than Mycenaean commoners. Look at the PCA graph. Mycenaeans cluster with Sicilians, not with mainland Greeks - who are ca. 1/4 more shifted in the direction of Russians.

Why did you remove my satirical picture (Greek Nationalist's Dilemma)?:

w1EL4by.png
 
It appears to me that some of you imply that the ruling class of the Mycenaeans was different from the peasants. If so, why and where did they come from?

(in the background thoughts about the "Nephalem" and the ruling class of the archaic times. Could the Bible be right after all ...)

tell me where the Mycenian charriots and swords came from, and maybe you've got the answer

and the paper tells in what component the Mycenian genome differs from the Minoan genome
 
Not that surprising huh? The results likely show the Bronze Age Anatolian connection, apparently represented by J2a, of southern Greece and Crete some of us were expecting already and then some steppe admixture likely arriving from the Balkans. Greece looks like the contemporary Balkans with extra post-Neolithic Anatolian ancestry to me and with steppe in similar lower amounts with some slight outliers like in that case (and others might come along too). Post Bronze Age Greece seems to have reduced Neolithic and more steppe (likely impacts from the Northeast, mostly Slavic) and Anatolian which Fire Haired's little experiment seems to point to, as well.

Relatively high. High steppe in modern Greeks compared to what Mycenaean peasants had. Modern Greeks have way more of steppe ancestry than Mycenaean commoners. Look at the PCA graph. Mycenaeans cluster with Sicilians, not with mainland Greeks - who are ca. 1/4 more shifted in the direction of Russians.

This suffers from some projection bias it seems so the actual position will be better shown in non-projected PCAs but they're definitely close to South Italians. We need to see whether the post-Neolithic 'Anatolian' stuff had intruded in South Italy at this point or later on, even with the Greek settlements - who knows.

One of the samples was from the aristocracy while the higher steppe low-coverage woman was from a non-elite context but likely a recent immigrant from mainland Greece to Crete guessing by her autosomal DNA. You should at least wait for more samples that confirm your suppositions before bombarding us with your usual, yeah?

And that's a false dilemma even by the "Greek nationalist's" standards since both proto-Greeks and early Slavs would have reinforced the 'steppe' component compared to the locals, no matter how important demographically, since they were more northern populations. My guess is that you're proposing it because the currently available samples, even the aristocrat, were lower on steppe than you'd like I imagine based on your general views. ;)

The genetic exchange with Anatolia would surely have been considerable over time, considering all the Greek-speaking cities in Ionia or the Pontus, and the displacement of all these Anatolian Greeks to European Greece after 1918. Iosif Lazaridis is himself a Greek whose family hails from the Pontus region. It's baffling that he shouldn't have considered the impact of over 2000 years of intermingling with neighbouring Anatolian populations on those Greek communities that later resettled in the modern state of Greece.

Pontic Greeks were a minority of the total exchanged while West Anatolian Greeks (the bulk of the Anatolian exchangees) were Ottoman-era immigrants from southern Greece and the islands to Anatolia, not native remnants of Byzantium. So this particular example, which often pops up, is not particularly good. But continuing interactions with Anatolia and Northeast Europe in post-Bronze Age times were obviously the case and that's evident in the data. But by definition we can't tell if autosomal admixture comes from a population that's already autosomally similar like in the case of the Canaanites and the modern Lebanese.

@Cato, that's possible - or some of the Beaker-influenced cultures in the West Balkans. Clever modelling will likely not get us anywhere closer to a solution is my guess but more Y-DNA might.
 

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