Genetic Origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans

^ I find it hard to believe that Slavs that reached Greece were Serb-like. I have always assumed them to be more like Slovenes.

Definitely no Slovenian beauties made it down, I can guarantee you that.
 
Quotes are always open to interpretation. People then were writing contradictions as we do today on these forums. There were Slavs for sure. But no more than 8% overall. And if I am not mistaken. Nicephorus deported many Slavs to Anatolia, sothat they could be absorbed by the masses there. In the 9th century, the Slavs laid siege to Patras and lost. A few decades later we have documents of some Slavs revolting. Laying siege and revolting is indicative of a minority exogroup. The same is true for deportation. How can some people come and deport you against your will you have significant numbers. You only allow that to happen if you don't have significant power. And sometimes the Slavs fought with assistance. I.e. in the siege of Patras they were accompanied by Saraces. Why would they need Sarances to share the spoils if they were numerous enough?

It also caught my attention that the Greeks in the 10th century reffered to the Slavs as Scythians. So I don't think they were very Balkanic. As the Scythians are identified with the region of the Ukraine. Paleo-Balkan people however were pary of the Hellenic sphere by that time. Genetically they were quite similar to Greeks, and culturally they would have been Christians. These Slavic 'Scythian' newcomers were certainly not. Hence the term Scythian.

The Slavic numbers are vastly overrated. Mainland Greeks are related to other Balkaners mostly due to early migrations. Because Greeks colonized these areas, migrating tribes in ancient times and because the overlap from Hellenic/Aegean to Thracian/Illyrian was very gradual and overlapping.

Yes. And I've also always wondered if the term "Slav" is just a corruption/adaptation of the Greek word for "Scythian."
 
One thing that I was wondering is that Slavs in places like Croatia did replace the bulk the population and the Mainland Byzantine Greece was saparated in 4 themes. How did Slavs manage to reach Peloponnese why didn't they stop at Macedonia or Epirus?
 
One thing that I was wondering is that Slavs in places like Croatia did replace the bulk the population and the Mainland Byzantine Greece was saparated in 4 themes. How did Slavs manage to reach Peloponnese why didn't they stop at Macedonia or Epirus?

Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina was depopulated because the Romans slaughtered the local Illyrians and the ones that did survive they dispersed. If I am not mistaken Avars & Slavs were invited to repopulate that part of the Balkans by the Byzantine emperors.
 
In terms of place names, some older Greeks were calling their villages by their Turkish names, decades after they were officially changed and over a century after the Ottomans were gone. Perhaps place names are not always accurate indicators of ethnic make-up, especially after many centuries.

Also, Greeks are more southern-shifted than Balkan Slavs, which implies Slavs had a smaller genetic impact.
 
One thing that I was wondering is that Slavs in places like Croatia did replace the bulk the population and the Mainland Byzantine Greece was saparated in 4 themes. How did Slavs manage to reach Peloponnese why didn't they stop at Macedonia or Epirus?

There were territories that got settled later (either by Slavic newcomers or resettled Slavic tribes). The Slavic invaders would just sweep through the land on their way south.
For example according to Ivan Mikulcic the Slavic settlement of the territory of Republic of Macedonia is a late event (mid-IX c. on ) -when this process was just starting the Slavic tribes had been present in Mainland Greece for two centuries and some of them had already been displaced/resettled or "pacified" in the process of reestablishment of the Imperial authority.


https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004425613/BP000004.xml
 
at some stage i expect a fair amount of steppe heavy R1B to be found.

they came down the coast and not from the northern balkans nor from anatolia.

they werent nordic and would have resembled the british.

albanian is q celtic, that should offer up some hints.

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Something in between modern and Classical Greeks. Not too far off from the Mycenaeans.
based on what exactly, im not sure how educated greeks can reconcile with the fact that ancient myceneans were just like nodern greeks when its clear as day that the myceneans were invaders.

invaders from the steppe were not like modern greeks.

and im not trying to insult greeks here either.


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Well that's the story pretty match for all of Europe(with the exception of sardinia) indo Europeans were the invaders
 
based on what exactly, im not sure how educated greeks can reconcile with the fact that ancient myceneans were just like nodern greeks when its clear as day that the myceneans were invaders.

invaders from the steppe were not like modern greeks.

and im not trying to insult greeks here either.


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You are forgetting the hundreds, if not thousand years that separate the coming of IE speakers with the birth of the Greeks and other ancient European peoples: at least if we take the case of Spain as paradigmatic, it is true that north European-like folks invaded and provoked a large genetic turnover in the regions they settled in, bringing IE languages and culturess, but that happened around 2500-2000 B.C. (at least a first invasion wave that wasn't the same that brought the classical languages we know, for example there is some evidence that before the Celtic languages other IE tongues were spoken in both Great Britain[Pictish] and Iberia, and it might well be the case that before the Italic languages other IE languages might have been spoken in Italy, as the Sicanian language that might have been brought from Iberia into west Sicily). Already by the time of the Myceneans the levels of IE admixture were similar to those of southern Europeans, and even the "proto-greeks" we have (if they are proto-greeks, though I think it is likely they are) were at best "north southern European"-like; it is likely that the "proto-proto-greeks" were more northern european-like but it was their more southern european descendants that built the classical world much later.
Also, this observation is irrelevant because the question was about Byzantines: a priori it is likely they must have been between ancient Myceneans and modern Greeks.
 
based on what exactly, im not sure how educated greeks can reconcile with the fact that ancient myceneans were just like nodern greeks when its clear as day that the myceneans were invaders.

invaders from the steppe were not like modern greeks.

and im not trying to insult greeks here either.


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Mycenaean DNA clearly shows them as much more South European than North European.

In fact they were just like Minoans with a minor Steppe addition.
 
Again, if we were so inundated with Slavs, how come we don't look slavic/dinaric, don't have more percentage of blonde/blue eyes? Did we get the dark slavs?
 
Is eurogenes reliable?? I have heard that over the years he has claimed many things but many of them were never confirmed or were rejected so can we trust him suggesting that many Greeks were anatolian like during the iron age??
 
Again, if we were so inundated with Slavs, how come we don't look slavic/dinaric, don't have more percentage of blonde/blue eyes? Did we get the dark slavs?

i was in greece back in the day in a trip
from south to the north and i would say
that generally speaking you are correct
most greek look like regular med people to me ( but i am no expert in anthropology)
and dna not always going inline with the way a person look .....
greek woman look nothing like slavic woman .....
same goes for the man if you will put a greek in streets of krakow poland
hw will be spoted very fast for sure .....:unsure:
 
Mycenaean DNA clearly shows them as much more South European than North European.

In fact they were just like Minoans with a minor Steppe addition.

it looks like Myceneans and Minoans were rivals, to say the least

the Myceneans were influenced by the Minoans, but they didn't share the same culture and language
 
it looks like Myceneans and Minoans were rivals, to say the least

the Myceneans were influenced by the Minoans, but they didn't share the same culture and language

The culture and language may have been different but the Mycenaeans were genetically about 80pc Minoan-like.
 
Genetic similarity and even descent are OBVIOUSLY different from culture and language, which can change with one invasion.

Mycenaeans were Minoan like (Anatolia Neolithic plus some Anatolian Bronze) plus a minor steppe addition as Vallicanus so correctly said above.

The minority steppe input eventually spread to Crete as well, as the later sample shows.
 
Did we not have a thread about the Y-DNA breakdown of modern Greeks somewhere? Does anybody remember what were the numbers for R1a1-Din (M-417?) and I2A1-Din? I vaguely remember that the Y-DNA numbers did not support wholesale replacement.
 

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