Genetic Origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans

Does anyone know if there's been any discussion of the peculiar fact that the modern Italian population sample from southern Italy has a low FST to absolutely everyone (including ancient and modern Greeks) except Sicilians?

I've thought and said for a long time there's something wrong with that sample, and thus of all the convoluted analysis of it, and this may be the proof. If I remember correctly, it was collected as part of a medical paper looking at isolated populations for genetic disease markers. Perhaps it was from an Estonian Biosphere paper on that subject? Does anyone have any data on that?

If that's the case, it might just be a very drifted, idiosyncratic sample, like the ones from very isolated areas in far northeastern Italy, whom no one would consider using for a study like this. I think there's a problem with using samples like this to make big generalizations about the population genetics of a large area like southern Italy, or even Calabria itself. It would be like using that drifted still Griko speaking sample from the mountains behind Reggio Calabria.
 
Does anyone know if there's been any discussion of the peculiar fact that the modern Italian population sample from southern Italy has a low FST to absolutely everyone (including ancient and modern Greeks) except Sicilians?

I've thought and said for a long time there's something wrong with that sample, and thus of all the convoluted analysis of it, and this may be the proof. If I remember correctly, it was collected as part of a medical paper looking at isolated populations for genetic disease markers. Perhaps it was from an Estonian Biosphere paper on that subject? Does anyone have any data on that?

If that's the case, it might just be a very drifted, idiosyncratic sample, like the ones from very isolated areas in far northeastern Italy, whom no one would consider using for a study like this. I think there's a problem with using samples like this to make big generalizations about the population genetics of a large area like southern Italy, or even Calabria itself. It would be like using that drifted still Griko speaking sample from the mountains behind Reggio Calabria.

I think I brought that up earlier!! I was baffled by it! Other drifted populations like Ashkenazim and even Sardinians are getting way lower scores.

Also the sephardics seem to score real low in respect to the Mycenaens and minoans. Interesting.
 
Well if we knew more about the method they used. For me the most weird thing about it is the space between the eyes, and maybe the space between the nose and lips or the shape of the lips. Today wavy brown hair are more common.

Concerning pigmentation, he doesn't seem that dark to me.

I have a grandmother from there (near Pylos) who is much lighter but the people of the village probably have ancestry from Franks and Latins.
Pylos is just another famous Arvanite settlement. Perhaps there's no need to go as far as Franks and Latins.

Anyway, does this paper actually indicate that the similarity between Greeks and Sicilians is much older than the Greek colonization?
 
Pylos is just another famous Arvanite settlement. Perhaps there's no need to go as far as Franks and Latins.

Anyway, does this paper actually indicate that the similarity between Greeks and Sicilians is much older than the Greek colonization?

I wouldn't be surprised if this is true.
 
Pylos is just another famous Arvanite settlement. Perhaps there's no need to go as far as Franks and Latins.

Anyway, does this paper actually indicate that the similarity between Greeks and Sicilians is much older than the Greek colonization?

I think that's an extremely good bet, as one would expect from the fact that they both experienced the same Neolithic waves, and there weren't very many if any WHG to dilute that ancestry. They also seem to have experienced the second Bronze Age wave from that direction, and I believe that southern Italy as a whole, like Greece, was only minimally impacted genetically by steppe populations. The ancient dna will tell us if that's correct.
 
I think that's an extremely good bet, as one would expect from the fact that they both experienced the same Neolithic waves, and there weren't very many if any WHG to dilute that ancestry. They also seem to have experienced the second Bronze Age wave from that direction, and I believe that southern Italy as a whole, like Greece, was only minimally impacted genetically by steppe populations. The ancient dna will tell us if that's correct.
We were debating together a few months back about it and it seems I was right that the major part of the similarities could be the result of pre-colonization events. I guess I was right in this one.

Nevertheless, we need much more BA Mycenaean samples to have a more solid conclusion.

For me it seems logical that there must have existed some sockets of Mycenaeans with more Steppe admixture, although I agree with Maciamo on the fact that they probably stopped in Illyria and Thracia for some before going further South. Greece wasn't their final destination and obviously they didn't even know about it. They just expanded rapidly until they reached the Mediterranean, where it took several hundreds of years to spread their language to the islands and beyond.
 
Mycenaeans from the east ?

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Bronze_Age_migrations_(Ancient_Near_East)

However, the article claims that the destruction was caused by migrating Hittites who displaced the Greeks from the west who then migrated to the Peloponnesus, and then says that newer evidence contradicts that the Hittites or other Anatolians were responsible for it.

But what if proto-Greeks did it from the beginning? in this scenario, they migrated in mass from Bronze Age Armenia across the northern part of Anatolia destroying everything in their path until they reach the Aegean.

Destruction

Archaeological evidence shows that the cities of Erzerum, Sivas, Pulur Huyuk near Baiburt, Kultepe near Hafik, and Maltepe near Sivas were destroyed during the Middle Bronze Age. The great trading city of Kanesh (Level II) was also destroyed. From there in the hill country between Halys the destruction layers from this time tell the same story. Karaoglan, Bitik, Polatli and Gordion were burnt, as well as Etiyokusu and Cerkes. Further west near the Dardanelles the two large mounds of Korpruoren and Tavsanli, west of Kutahya, show the same signs of being destroyed.
The destruction even crossed into Europe in what is now Bulgaria. The migration brought an end to Bulgaria's Early Bronze Age, with archaeological evidence showing that the Yunacite, Salcutza, and Esero centers had a sudden mass desertion during this time.[1]

Into Greece

From the Dardanelles, the refugee invaders moved into mainland Greece, and the Peloponnese saw burnt and abandoned cities on par with the much later Dorian invasion which destroyed the Mycenaean civilization.[1] At this time, 1900 BC, destruction layers can be found at southern Greek sites like Orchomenos, Eutresis (de), Hagios Kosmas, Raphina, Apesokari, Korakou, Zygouries, Tiryns, Asine, Malthi and Asea. Many other sites are deserted, e.g. Yiriza, Synoro, Ayios Gerasimos, Kophovouni, Makrovouni, Palaiopyrgos, etc. This destruction across Greece also coincided with the arrival of a new culture that had no connection with the Early Helladic civilization, who were the original inhabitants.[1] Northern Greece escaped destruction, as well as southern Anatolia, which during this time showed no disturbances.[1]

The paper doesn't rule out a migration from BA Armenia http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...and-Mycenaeans?p=516126&viewfull=1#post516126

A linguistic argument in favor of this http://www.jolr.ru/files/(128)jlr2013-10(85-138).pdf

We may preliminarily conclude that Armenian, Greek, (Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other or even formed a dialectal group at the time of the Indo-European dispersal. Within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (to the west) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (to the east). On the northern side it might have neighboured, notably, Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic. After the Indo-European dispersal, Armenian developed isoglosses with Indo-Iranian on the one hand and Greek on the other. The Indo-Iranians then moved eastwards, while the Proto-Armenians and Proto-Greeks remained in a common geographical region for a long period and developed numerous shared innovations. At a later stage, together or independently, they borrowed a large number of words from the Mediterranean / Pontic substrate language(s), mostly cultural and agricultural words, as well as animal and plant designations. On the other hand, Armenian shows a considerable number of lexical correspondences with European branches of the Indo-European language family, a large portion of which too should be explained in terms of substrate rather than Indo-European heritage

I wonder if there is any Y-dna evidence ? didn't look into it.
 
We were debating together a few months back about it and it seems I was right that the major part of the similarities could be the result of pre-colonization events. I guess I was right in this one.

Nevertheless, we need much more BA Mycenaean samples to have a more solid conclusion.

For me it seems logical that there must have existed some sockets of Mycenaeans with more Steppe admixture, although I agree with Maciamo on the fact that they probably stopped in Illyria and Thracia for some before going further South. Greece wasn't their final destination and obviously they didn't even know about it. They just expanded rapidly until they reached the Mediterranean, where it took several hundreds of years to spread their language to the islands and beyond.

I said that "NONE" of the similarities were because of more ancient contributions from similar populations? That would be really strange, since I never believed that.

As to the proportion of similarity from the Neolithic (the Greek Neolithic is slightly different, after all, from Cardial or Impressed Ware) and Bronze Age, versus the Iron Age of the first millennium, we would need ancient Italian dna, and even then it might be difficult to unravel since there is a lot of similarity.
 
Does anyone know if there's been any discussion of the peculiar fact that the modern Italian population sample from southern Italy has a low FST to absolutely everyone (including ancient and modern Greeks) except Sicilians?

I wanted to ask what was up with that too in case anyone knew but I totally forgot about it. It showed a higher fst in the paper to the ancient samples even compared to most Northern Europeans (let alone other Italians, Albanians and Greeks) which was really surprising.
 
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Bronze_Age_migrations_(Ancient_Near_East)

However, the article claims that the destruction was caused by migrating Hittites who displaced the Greeks from the west who then migrated to the Peloponnesus, and then says that newer evidence contradicts that the Hittites or other Anatolians were responsible for it.

But what if proto-Greeks did it from the beginning? in this scenario, they migrated in mass from Bronze Age Armenia across the northern part of Anatolia destroying everything in their path until they reach the Aegean.



The paper doesn't rule out a migration from BA Armenia http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...and-Mycenaeans?p=516126&viewfull=1#post516126

A linguistic argument in favor of this http://www.jolr.ru/files/(128)jlr2013-10(85-138).pdf



I wonder if there is any Y-dna evidence ? didn't look into it.

Interesting opinion, linguistically there is a connection between Armenian and Greek, I think more ancient samples needs to be tested to see this, I also think the wiki article you posted is very important, I use this to make the connection for the Castelluccio Culture that appears in Sicily around the same time, this would easily explain the similarities between the Castelluccio Culture and Troy II-III. I also believe this migration is responsible for the Minyan ware or Middle Helladic period. Its possible it brought the Mycenaeans too, but again I would wait for more ancient samples, there is proof of another migration from Armenia to Greece in these results with the Minoans, the findings of 2 J-M319 and this Iran Neo-Chalco/Armenian/Mesopotamian/South Caucasian admixture we find in the autosomal to me proves the Kura Araxes expansion into Minoan Crete, which me and Maciamo have proposed.

Thanks for the post very interesting.
 
I wonder if there is any Y-dna evidence ? didn't look into it.


All Minoan and Mycenean found Y-DNA is J2a1 and J2a1d

the pre Minoan pre-Mycenean is G2a2a

yet they found more, but not published yet
 

All Minoan and Mycenean found Y-DNA is J2a1 and J2a1d

the pre Minoan pre-Mycenean is G2a2a

yet they found more, but not published yet

Did you hear any rumors of what Y they found?
 
I said that "NONE" of the similarities were because of more ancient contributions from similar populations? That would be really strange, since I never believed that.
Of course not. We can do better than using words such as NONE or ALL when it comes to such topics.

If I remember it correctly, you believed that the effect of the Greek colonization in Southern Italy were bigger than what I believed. I supported the idea of a slow constant expansion of people of the same stock rather than a rapid expansion out of Greece.

Anyway, with the current data we can't be anymore confident about the origin of the IE languages. Perhaps the Anatolian hypothesis will gain ground again.
 
Did you hear any rumors of what Y they found?
My bet is that whatever they found, its unlikely to be E-V13 which is ironically becoming a more Northern haplogroup than previously thought.
 

All Minoan and Mycenean found Y-DNA is J2a1 and J2a1d

the pre Minoan pre-Mycenean is G2a2a

yet they found more, but not published yet

I meant from the modern distribution, like some common haplogroups that date to the middle Bronze Age for example.

We know south Caucasians and Greeks share a lot of J2a, but I think most of the downstream subclades shared between them have no relation to this hypothetical proto-Greek migration but date earlier (many to the early Bronze Age) and so better attributed to Minoans and other pre-Greek peoples.

There is one E-V13 Armenian guy who is Z5018+ (main Balkan subclade ?) but negative for downstream L17- Z16242- S2979- A2192- but he could still be a result of some old Greek presence in the area from Alexander to the Byzantines, assuming this basal subclade is to be found in modern Greece.

Kurds have a relatively high amount of E-V13, but no information which downstream subclade it is. could still be Balkanic in origin.

R1b-Z2103 should from now on be thought of as three subclades : L277 / L584 / Z2106 (or its subclade CTS7822). The first two are shared between Greeks and south Caucasians, but more common in the latter, while the third is mostly East European(including Greeks) and possibly central Asian with very few Armenian results.

Funny thing is that the most promising subclade to be the common denominator is the minor I2c2, it has all the requirement, 4000 TMRCA, 4% in Armenians and 2.3% in Greeks, (6% in Thessaly, 9% in Crete).

This was a useful post on Greek haplogroups
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-origin/page11?p=495469&viewfull=1#post495469

Armenian dna project
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/armeniadnaproject/about/background
 
Every barbarian European wanted to live in Mycenaean Greece, it was the California of the times

Yes, it is big true, reputation.

Unfortunately, some Balkanites are very jealous of the ancient Greek civilization.

Greeks were as Californians present day but ancestors of others were Barbarians no matter where they originated from different areas Asia and Europe.

They did not have the benefits of a civilisation and culture like Greeks, including a letter and a written language.

Even some people try to find in their history something great that did not exist and then, in the absence of it, they fabricate.

All what we know about the ancient world comes from the Greeks (and other peoples who had a letter).

In today's interpretations it may seem that the Greeks felt superior, nationalistic, and humiliated Barbarians.

However, it has nothing to do with the truth.

Peter Wade, Race: An Introduction, 2015

(Quote)

“The Greeks did not try to divide humans up into types, according to their material, natural characteristics. Much more important was the form of political governance and civil association. The Greeks differentiated between themselves and ‘barbarians’, but this distinction was based not on geography, appearance or ancestry, but on how people lived. Barbarians were those who lived according to the laws of physics (‘nature’ in the sense of the domain of things that exist independent of human intervention) and thus lived brutishly, inarticulately, without real choice, governed by custom and habit alone, bound together by descent, and subject to tyranny and hierarchy. All people had to contend with physics and custom, but they did not have to be ruled by them alone. Those who lived by the rule of nomos – man-made laws operating through reason, moderation and properly formed speech in a public assembly – were civilised citizens who lived in the political way. People who lived under the rule of monarchs and despots would be inferior.”
 
I wanted to ask what was up with that too in case anyone knew but I totally forgot about it. It showed a higher fst in the paper to the ancient samples even compared to most Northern Europeans (let alone other Italians, Albanians and Greeks) which was really surprising.
I know, that makes no sense. Icelanders, French and Arabians seem to score lower.

Also notice how low sephardics of turkey score (check out the red square on turkey). That's strange.
 
I know, that makes no sense. Icelanders, French and Arabians seem to score lower.

Also notice how low sephardics of turkey score (check out the red square on turkey). That's strange.

The inclusion of France is odd, but Icelanders, Arabians, and all Jewish groups are very drifted because of either geographical or cultural isolation and inbreeding. I think Sardinians could also be included.

It may be that this is a very drifted little group and not even representative of Calabresi as a whole. This is the problem with using samples that were part of medical studies looking for very isolated populations with a lot of inbreeding. Maybe it's like using those highly inbred northeast Italian samples.
 
The inclusion of France is odd, but Icelanders, Arabians, and all Jewish groups are very drifted because of either geographical or cultural isolation and inbreeding. I think Sardinians could also be included.
It may be that this is a very drifted little group and not even representative of Calabresi as a whole. This is the problem with using samples that were part of medical studies looking for very isolated populations with a lot of inbreeding. Maybe it's like using those highly inbred northeast Italian samples.
Oh a lower fst score means closer and less drifted if i understand fst right; hence my confusion surrounding the low fst score that Turkish Jews have against the Mycenaeans and Minoans , but you're right about how it's wrong to use groups that were isolated for as long as they were.
 

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