Genetic Origins of Minoans and Mycenaeans

It doesn't make a big difference, there could be also some migrations from Siberia and eastern Europe to Eurasian steppe or Armenia, Mukanians (Mycenaeans) migrated from this region in the northwest of Iran which is close to both Armenia and Caspian steppe to Greece.

Read the rest of my comment.
 
I don't see how he could know that with confidence.
As for his interpretation of the paper, here on twitter, Lazaridis responds to him:
pM73ZmJ.png



"If there was a Mionan-like population in mainland Greece", in fact he means if it is proved that people of mainland Greece were also Minoans then we can consider a steppe theory too. But we know Minoan culture in Crete fundamentally differed from Helladic culture in mainland Greece and both of them differed from Cycladic culture in the Cyclades.

It is believed that Minoans migrated from Anatolia:

n001_minoan.jpg
 
"If there was a Mionan-like population in mainland Greece", in fact he means if it is proved that people of mainland Greece were also Minoans then we can consider a steppe theory too.


Both alternatives given by Lazaridis are just different versions of the steppe theory:


"populations of (Middle/Late Bronze Age) Armenia themselves have some EHG-related ancestry, so it is possible that Mycenaeans received both the Iran-related and EHG related ancestry together from a population similar to that which inhabited Armenia. Thus, it is possible that Mycenaeans received ancestry from these sources separately (from the north and the east), or in a population that had ancestry from both, as in the populations of Armenia. (p.35)

The two alternative scenarios differ in their derivation of the northern (steppe) / eastern (Near East) non-Anatolian Neolithic ancestry in Mycenaeans. In the first one, Anatolian Neolithic first admixed with an eastern population in the Aegean, with subsequent admixture from a northern population. In the second one, the eastern/northern populations admixed east of Greece (in a population related to Middle/Late Bronze Age Armenia), and then the aggregate population admixed into the Aegean. (p.45)

The existence of Eurasian steppe ancestry in Mycenaeans (either directly from the north, or indirectly from the east) suggests the possibility that the Indo-European linguistic ancestors of the Greeks also came from the Eurasian steppe as was likely for central/northern Europe. The finding that up to ~1/2 of the ancestry of some populations of south Asia could also be derived from steppe populations provides a unifying factor for the dispersal of a substantial subset of Indo-European languages.” (p.49)

Lazaridis et al. 2017, Supplementary Material

 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5565772/


As I said in the other thread, Lazaridis 2017 models the Mycenaean samples as either 13.2% Steppe_EMBA (Steppe Early/Middle Bronze Age), or 17.5% Steppe_MLBA (Steppe Middle/Late Bronze Age), or 19.8% Europe_LNBA (Europe Late Neolithic/Bronze Age), and the rest as 'Minoan'. (Table 1 'Proximate Sources')
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...ort=objectonly

According to Eurogenes the Mycenaean samples can be modelled as 21% Sintashta/ Corded Ware or Srubnaya, and 79% Minoan:


[/FONT]https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/08/steppe-admixture-in-mycenaeans.html


And:
"The existence of Eurasian steppe ancestry in Mycenaeans (either directly from the north, or indirectly from the east) suggests the possibility that the Indo-European linguistic ancestors of the Greeks also came from the Eurasian steppe as was likely for central/northern Europe. The finding that up to ~1/2 of the ancestry of some populations of south Asia could also be derived from steppe populations provides a unifying factor for the dispersal of a substantial subset of Indo-European languages.” (p.49)
Lazaridis et al. 2017, Supplementary Material


The following is from the Antonio et al. 2019 paper on Rome:

“Here we present 127 genomes from 29 archaeological sites in and around Rome, spanning the past 12,000 years. We observe two major prehistoric ancestry transitions: one with the introduction of farming and another prior to the Iron Age. […]
The Iron Age and the origins of Rome

The second major ancestry shift occurred in the Bronze Age, between ~2900 and 900 BCE… We collected data from 11 Iron Age individuals dating from 900 to 200 BCE (including the Republican period). This group shows a clear ancestry shift from the Copper Age, interpreted by ADMIXTURE as the addition of a Steppe-related ancestry component … we modelled the genetic shift by an introduction of ~30 to 40% ancestry from Bronze and Iron Age nomadic populations from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, similar to many Bronze Age populations in Europe. [...]
The Iron Age witnessed a striking shift in the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups compared to previous periods, indicative of large-scale immigration before the Iron Age (our dataset did not contain any Bronze Age individual from central Italy). Five of the seven male individuals in this time period belong to the R-M269 (R1b1a2) group, which is not observed in the nine earlier male samples. Unlike the general R-M343 (R1b) haplogroup, the R-M269 subgroup is thought to be tightly associated with Steppe related ancestry, as it was absent in ancient individuals in western Europe before 3,000 BCE but found in all Bronze Age Yamnaya males from Russia (c. 3,500-3,000 BCE), >90% males associated with the Beaker-complex in Bronze Age Britain (c. 2,700-2,500) and nearly 100% of males in Iberia after 2,000 BCE. Therefore, the appearance of R-M269 at high frequency (5 out of 7) in central Italy is consistent with the arrival of Steppe ancestry detected based on autosomal SNPs, via migration of Steppe pastoralists or intermediary populations in the preceding Bronze Age.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7093155/
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/11/06/366.6466.708.DC1/aay6826_Antonio_SM.pdf

And this is from Narasimhan et al. 2019 ('The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia'):

"By sequencing 523 ancient humans, we show that the primary source of ancestry in modern South Asians is a prehistoric genetic gradient between people related to early hunter-gatherers of Iran and southeast Asia. Following the Indus Valley Civilization’s decline, they mixed with people in the southeast to form one of the two main ancestral populations of South Asia whose direct descendants live in southern India. Simultaneously, they mixed with descendants of Steppe pastoralists who spread via Central Asia after 4000 years ago to form the other main ancestral population. The Steppe ancestry in South Asia has the same profile as that in Bronze Age Eastern Europe, tracking a movement of people that affected both regions and that likely spread the unique shared features shared between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages. (…)
The main population of the BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex) carried no ancestry from Steppe pastoralists and did not contribute substantially to later South Asians. However, Steppe pastoralist ancestry appeared in outlier individuals at BMAC sites by the turn of the second millennium BCE around the same time as it appeared on the southern Steppe. Using data from ancient individuals from the Swat Valley of northernmost South Asia, we show that Steppe ancestry then integrated further south in the first half of the second millennium BCE, contributing up to 30% of the ancestry of modern groups in South Asia. (…)
We add more than one hundred samples from the previously described Western_Steppe_MLBA genetic cluster, including individuals associated with the Corded Ware, Srubnaya, Petrovka, and Sintashta archaeological complexes … Our analysis suggests that in the central Steppe and Minusinsk Basin in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, Western_Steppe_MLBA ancestry mixed with about 9% ancestry from previously established people from the region carrying WSHG-related to form a distinctive Central_Steppe_MLBA cluster that was the primary conduit for spreading Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist-derived ancestry to South Asia. (…)
from 2100–1700 BCE we observe outliers from three BMAC-associated sites carrying ancestry ultimately derived from Western_Steppe_EMBA pastoralists, in the distinctive admixed form typically carried by many Middle to Late Bronze Age Steppe groups (with roughly two thirds of the ancestry being of Western_Steppe_EMBA origin, and the rest consistent with deriving from European farmers). Thus, our data document a southward movement of ancestry ultimately descended from Yamnaya Steppe pastoralists that spread into Central Asia by the turn of the 2nd millennium BCE. (…)

Steppe Ancestry in South Asia is Primarily from Males and Disproportionately High in Brahmins.

the introduction of lineages from Steppe pastoralists into the ancestors of present-day South Asians was mediated mostly by males. (…)

the fact that traditional custodians of liturgy in Sanskrit (Brahmins) tend to have more Steppe ancestry than is predicted by a simple ASI-ANI mixture model provides an independent line of evidence, beyond the distinctive ancestry profile shared between South Asia and Bronze Eastern Europe mirroring the shared features of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages, for a Steppe origin for South Asia’s Indo-European languages prior to ~2000 BCE. (…)
while our analysis supports the idea that eastward spread of Anatolian farmer-related ancestry was associated with the spread of farming to the Iranian plateau and Turan, our results do not support large-scale movements of ancestry from the Near East into South Asia following ~6000 BCE (the time after which all ancient individuals from Iran in our data have Anatolian farmer-related ancestry even though South Asians have very little). Languages in pre-state societies usually spread through movements of people, and thus the absence of much Anatolian farmer-related ancestry in the Indus Periphery Cline suggests that the Indo-European languages spoken in South Asia today are unlikely to owe their origin to the spread of farming from West Asia.
Our results not only provide negative evidence against an Iranian plateau origin for Indo-European languages in South Asia, but also positive evidence for the theory that these languages spread from the Steppe. While ancient DNA has documented westward movements of Steppe pastoralist ancestry providing a likely conduit for the spread of many Indo-European languages to Europe, the chain-of-transmission into South Asia has been unclear because of a lack of relevant ancient DNA. Our observation of the spread of Central_Steppe_MLBA ancestry into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE provides this evidence, and is particularly striking as it provides a plausible genetic explanation for the linguistic similarities between the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian sub-families of Indo-European, which despite their vast geographic separation, share the Satem innovation and Ruki sound laws. (…)

Our analysis also provides a second line of evidence for a linkage between Steppe ancestry and Indo-European languages. Steppe ancestry enrichment in groups that view themselves as being of traditionally priestly status is striking as some of these groups including Brahmins are traditional custodians of literature composed in early Sanskrit. A possible explanation is that the influx of Central_Steppe_MLBA ancestry into South Asia in the mid-2nd millennium BCE created a meta-population with varied proportions of Steppe ancestry, with people of more Steppe ancestry (or admixing less with Indus Periphery Cline groups) tending to be more strongly associated with Indo-European culture. Due to strong endogamy, which kept groups generally isolated from neighbors for thousands of years, some of this population substructure persists in South Asia among present-day custodians of Indo-European texts.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6822619/


Regarding Iranian origins, see also:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-mycenaean-and-iron-age-iranian-walk.html
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/07/an-early-iranian-obviously.html
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As I said in my previous post, the main problem is that Minoans didn't live in the mainland Greece, so Mycenaeans who lived in mainland Greece couldn't obtain about 80% of their ancestry from them.
About Indo-Iranians, the oldest known Indo-Iranian culture is Mitanni in the Levant, recent genetic studies also show that they migrated from Iran/Caucasus, not the steppe.
 
As I said in my previous post, the main problem is that Minoans didn't live in the mainland Greece, so Mycenaeans who lived in mainland Greece couldn't obtain about 80% of their ancestry from them.

Lazaridis isn't saying that they got 80% of their ancestry from Minoans, just that Mainland and Cretan samples were largely similar genetically, except the Mycenaean Greek samples had additional steppe ancestry not seen in the Minoan samples.
 
Lazaridis isn't saying that they got 80% of their ancestry from Minoans, just that Mainland and Cretan samples were largely similar genetically, except the Mycenaean Greek samples had additional steppe ancestry not seen in the Minoan samples.

Immigrants who are "largely similar genetically", are actually "the same people with the same culture", Minoan, Helladic and Cycladic cultures were not the same, the only culture which became common in Greece, was Greek (Indo-European) culture.
 
There is a good point here: The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe

No evidence that steppe-related ancestry moved through southeast Europe into Anatolia

One version of the Steppe Hypothesis of Indo-European language origins suggests that Proto-Indo-European languages developed north of the Black and Caspian seas, and that the earliest known diverging branch – Anatolian – was spread into Asia Minor by movements of steppe peoples through the Balkan peninsula during the Copper Age around 4000 BCE. If this were correct, then one way to detect evidence of it would be the appearance of large amounts of steppe-related ancestry first in the Balkan Peninsula, and then in Anatolia. However, our data show no evidence for this scenario. While we find sporadic examples of steppe-related ancestry in Balkan Copper and Bronze Age individuals, this ancestry is rare until the late Bronze Age. Moreover, while Bronze Age Anatolian individuals have CHG-related ancestry, they have neither the EHG-related ancestry characteristic of all steppe populations sampled to date, nor the WHG-related ancestry that is ubiquitous in Neolithic southeastern Europe. An alternative hypothesis is that the ultimate homeland of Proto-Indo-European languages was in the Caucasus or in Iran.

As you see it says steppe ancestry is rare in the Balkan peninsula until the late Bronze Age (1200–700 BC) but Mycenaean samples in this study date back to 1700 BC, so there is also no evidence that steppe-related ancestry moved through southeast Europe into Greece in 1700 BC.
 

Both alternatives given by Lazaridis are just different versions of the steppe theory:


"populations of (Middle/Late Bronze Age) Armenia themselves have some EHG-related ancestry, so it is possible that Mycenaeans received both the Iran-related and EHG related ancestry together from a population similar to that which inhabited Armenia. Thus, it is possible that Mycenaeans received ancestry from these sources separately (from the north and the east), or in a population that had ancestry from both, as in the populations of Armenia. (p.35)

The two alternative scenarios differ in their derivation of the northern (steppe) / eastern (Near East) non-Anatolian Neolithic ancestry in Mycenaeans. In the first one, Anatolian Neolithic first admixed with an eastern population in the Aegean, with subsequent admixture from a northern population. In the second one, the eastern/northern populations admixed east of Greece (in a population related to Middle/Late Bronze Age Armenia), and then the aggregate population admixed into the Aegean. (p.45)

The existence of Eurasian steppe ancestry in Mycenaeans (either directly from the north, or indirectly from the east) suggests the possibility that the Indo-European linguistic ancestors of the Greeks also came from the Eurasian steppe as was likely for central/northern Europe. The finding that up to ~1/2 of the ancestry of some populations of south Asia could also be derived from steppe populations provides a unifying factor for the dispersal of a substantial subset of Indo-European languages.” (p.49)

Lazaridis et al. 2017, Supplementary Material


It really doesn't matter how often you present it; if I've learned one thing it's that people believe what they want to believe. Even if they find what should amount to definite proof, there will be those who deny it.

Good effort,though. :)
 
I was going to post this on the Sicilian thread, but seems better suited here . . . .

Also, you have to understand that the Drews "theory" isn't saying that the Mycenaeans don't have steppe; it's saying the "route" was from the steppe, through the Caucasus and across Anatolia.


It doesn't matter which route was taken. The autosomal signature of the Mycenaeans remains the same: they had very little steppe.


I completely agree with you that their culture is too sophisticated and advanced to only have steppe influence, but don't forget that they also have Iran Neo like ancestry, as do the Minoans, who had a sophisticated civilization before them, which came from influence from Anatolia. They adopted a lot of their culture from the Minoans, and who knows, perhaps they got the Iran Neo like genes in part from admixture with them.


So, yes, Lazaridis found STEPPE in the Mycenaeans, although not in the Minoans, but he didn't come to a conclusion as to whether the route was from the steppe west and down through the Balkans, which I still think is more likely although I'm not married to the idea, or from the steppe through the Caucasus, and across Anatolia to the Aegean, which would be the Drews' Greeks from the east hypothesis.


Drews locates the PIE homeland not on the Pontic Steppe, but "south of the Caucasus, somewhere in the area now covered by northeastern Turkey, the northwestern tip of Iran, and the Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia." I am quoting from Drews' 1988 book The Coming of the Greeks, page 148. Drews' argument is narrowly focused on chariot technology, and it was in Armenia that the trees were to be found for building spoked wheels, as well as the craft-sophistication in working with wood. (I haven't read Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe, so not sure if, or how, his views have changed.)


Drews distances his argument, in TCotG, from the "racist" views held by earlier historians: "Initially, racist presuppositions impeded some historians from assigning much importance to the chariot in these movements. Believing in the existence of an 'Aryan' race, and in the superiority of that race, they were not inclined to attribute the Indo-Europeans' success to a gadget (even Gertrud Hermes allowed that the Indo-Europeans' rise to power was rooted in their moral qualities as well as in their chariots). The reaction to Aryanism was equally uncongenial to the idea that the PIE speakers began as charioteering conquerors. In such a picture, even if one gave it only a superficial glance, one was embarrassed to see that the PIE speakers still looked like a Herrenvolk, lording it over Semites, Hurrians, and the pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Europe. Another school of thought was not averse to seeing the chariot as one of several means by which the PIE speakers prevailed, but was not inclined to believe that mastery of chariot warfare had motivated them to embark on their expeditions" (page 147).


Although I would not call him a racial supremacist, Ricardo Duchesne's thesis of the "aristocratic egalitarianism" of the Yamnaya as the primordial ground of (virtually all) later European greatness is reminiscent of earlier theories in its emphasis on the (supposedly) unique moral & genetic qualities selected for on the Steppe. Homer & Plato, in Duchesne's treatment, are exemplars of the unique spirit of the Steppe, of the competitive drive of aristocrats to distinguish themselves from their peers, to win fame, status, recognition. Plato-to-Caesar-to-Galileo-to-Goethe is the agon of the Steppe sublimated. It is as if the other components of European culture and genetics were of no consequence.


Both Duchesne and Drews posit an "elite takeover" of the Greek mainland, followed by Crete and other islands (though Duchesne is a speculative historian, at some remove from primary research). According to Drews, "We may still suppose that when PIE speakers took over the best parts of the Greek mainland--a land that seems to have had almost no political organization, and a populace that seems to have set little store by military prowess--they controlled an alien population perhaps ten times as large as their own. Such was the ratio of helots to Spartiates as a much later time, and even the Greeks who took over a relatively well-organized Knossos ca. 1450 B.C. may not have numbered over a tenth of their Minoan subjects. One can only guess at the numbers involved in 'the coming of the Greeks,' and I shall hazard mine: if at the beginning of the sixteenth century B.C. the population of the Thessalian plain, the Argolid, the Eurotas Valley, Messenia, Boeotia, and Attica was approximately three-quarters of a million men, women, and children, the PIE-speaking conquerors may have numbered no more than about 75,000 men, women, and children" (page 195). And Duchesne's gloss on Drews: "While the Mycenaean minority 'did not ethnically transform the land,' it superimposed its language and culture, and thus it 'Indo-Europeanised Greece'" (Uniqueness of the West, page 366).


The Lazaridis 2017 study is not, at first blush, inconsistent with the theory of an elite takeover. Mycenaeans could owe 75% of their ancestry to Neolithic Anatolia, but still have their high culture decisively shaped by an alien elite. The only finding of Lazaridis that undercuts this theory is that the Mycenaean buried in an elite grave did not differ genetically from Mycenaeans buried in common graves. But I think Lazaridis looked at a total of four graves?


The Drews thesis is radical & heterodox. He emphasizes circa 1600 BC as the key period of military conquest, not only in Greece, but in the Carpathian basin, and then points westward. In general, he adheres to the Gamkrelidze-Ivanov thesis, whereby it was only the "European" branch of the Indo-European family (including the Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic) that lived on the Pontic Steppe. The Hittite-Indo-Iranian-Greek-Armenian branch followed a different course. Drews' chronology at odds with prevailing scholarship. He imagines a very rapid pace of language change pre-Homer, and he evinces little interest in "satem vs centum."


My own intuition -- which is in no way history or science, just a man's intuition! -- is that Drews is right about the PIE homeland and the takeover of the Greek mainland circa 1600 BC by Armenian warriors (who sailed on ships from Armenia to the Aegean, with horses and chariots on board). But the Armenian takeover of Greece was preceded by some 5,000 years of CHG and Iran Neolithic slowly making its way, sometimes in trickles, sometimes in waves, across Anatolia, into the Aegean, mainland Greece, Southern Italy, Sicily. The taking of Greece in one fell-swoop was merely the most dramatic chapter.


And the Armenians who became Mycenaeans carried perhaps 20% Steppe blood (don't have exact percentage ready-to-hand), in addition to CHG/Iran and Anatolian. But they were not fundamentally shaped by the experience of the Steppe; their culture, which would later spread throughout Magna Graecia and the Classical World, was not a product of the Steppe. It originated in Armenia. The road taken means everything.


Such is the "sports team" that I support. As a half-Calabrese, I tend to over-identify with Minoan-like peoples. I am also part Irish & English, but don't identify with Steppe ancestry.
 
Drews locates the PIE homeland not on the Pontic Steppe, but "south of the Caucasus, somewhere in the area now covered by northeastern Turkey, the northwestern tip of Iran, and the Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia."

Not the Pontic Steppe, but Mukana (Mugan) Steppe.

map_Mugan_steppe.GIF
 
You just reminded me to update you on something i learned on Monday and had totally forgotten about it. After our little exchange on Saturday, i decided to re-watch the aforementioned preliminary presentation by Nikos Psonis, and at the end of it i learned something that i hadn't grasped the first time i watched it. Psonis actually states after 23:52 that a future publication will show the relationship between Archaic/Classical Corinth and its colony of ancient Ambracia. So i decided to clarify if this is what he meant by additional samples back in February and sent him a new message. I also asked him whether the non-Ambracian aforementioned samples of the table at 14:17 will be included. Here is a translation of his answer.

"
Hello Demetrios,

The samples from Ambracia are in the same project as the ones from Corinth. The sample from Lefkada is pending publication (expected at the end of the year) as part of an anthropological/archaeological study, but it didn't have much DNA and we were only able to detect its sex (male). The rest (he meant the one Neolithic Greek and two Byzantine Greek samples from the table at 14:17) were part of pilot studies to check for protocols. These last ones aren't expected to be published soon but only in the future with additional samples. It is a time consuming and above all costly process.

Good luck,
Nikos"

I then asked him whether the Lefkada sample would be appropriate for PCA analysis, and whether it was from the EBA/MBA burial mound cemetery of Lefkada in Steno and Skaros, considering its date (3300-1600 BCE). Here is a translation of his answer.

"
It is from a new excavation that will be published along with the sample. I don't have permission from the archaeologists to say more. There was very little DNA for any analysis other than gender identification.

Sincerely,
Nikos
"

So, to sum things up. There is a publication that will include at least one low-quality EBA/MBA sample from Lefkada at the end of the year. And then there is a paper that will certainly include numerous Archaic/Classical Greek samples from ancient Ambracia and Corinth, expected in the next two-three years.

As for Eurogenes, i can only hope he has good sources. I wouldn't say no to more Mycenaean samples, and if any of them indeed possess an R1b-M269 paternal haplogroup it wouldn't surprise me personally. But till now it appears these are only rumors awaiting confirmation by a publication.

I am so happy they are including Classical samples from Peloponnese.
 
I am so happy they are including Classical samples from Peloponnese.

Ancient Corinthians were Doric-speaking. It will be interesting to see if they were close to the Ionian Phocaeans who founded Empuries in Spain. Lazaridis said the samples from Greek Empuries of different eras were remarkably like Mycenaeans.

One of the big reveals of this paper is that Mycenaeans were mostly indigenous, unlike some assumed. Maybe that will be the case with Dorians, that they were mostly indigenous and not from some northwest areas, like some assume.
 

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Ancient Corinthians were Doric-speaking. It will be interesting to see if they were close to the Ionian Phocaeans who founded Empuries in Spain. Lazaridis said the samples from Greek Empuries of different eras were remarkably like Mycenaeans.

One of the big reveals of this paper is that Mycenaeans were mostly indigenous, unlike some assumed. Maybe that will be the case with Dorians, that they were mostly indigenous and not from some northwest areas, like some assume.
The newcommers might have resembled Myceaneans from the very beginning, so we cannot be sure if it necessarily disprove substantial input during and after the late bronze age.
There are however many speculations that there was a civil war that caused the collapse of the Myceanean civilisation, or maybe the Dorians were a sub-group of Myceaneans themselves. You never know. I agree that it's highly unlikely that Dorians came from Central Europe and somewhere close to it.

I was really shocked too, how similar they were, they were not even affected by the indigenous Anatolians and Iberians at all, let alone some northern input.
 
Ancient Corinthians were Doric-speaking. It will be interesting to see if they were close to the Ionian Phocaeans who founded Empuries in Spain. Lazaridis said the samples from Greek Empuries of different eras were remarkably like Mycenaeans.

One of the big reveals of this paper is that Mycenaeans were mostly indigenous, unlike some assumed. Maybe that will be the case with Dorians, that they were mostly indigenous and not from some northwest areas, like some assume.
What i also find interesting is that the earliest Ionian Greek samples (red square with triangle inside) from Empúries had a drift towards the modern Greek cluster from what i see in the PCA below, which can also be seen as a drift towards the low quality sample of Crete_Armenoi. Having said that, i still support that we won't see any major difference in Dorians.

Iberian-Graph.png
 
What i also find interesting is that the earliest Ionian Greek samples (red square with triangle inside) from Empúries had a drift towards the modern Greek cluster from what i see in the PCA below, which can also be seen as a drift towards the low quality sample of Crete_Armenoi. Having said that, i still support that we won't see any major difference in Dorians.

Iberian-Graph.png
I think the others are shifting towards Minoans. Here are two Empurie samples I wonder how would the missing ones plot, probably towards Minoans.
2xPE1Cb.png
 
I think the others are shifting towards Minoans. Here are two Empurie samples I wonder how would the missing ones plot, probably towards Minoans.
2xPE1Cb.png
These two samples look like the Hellenistic ones, am i correct? I believe the Classical one would be closer to Sicilian_West instead.
 
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I think the others are shifting towards Minoans. Here are two Empurie samples I wonder how would the missing ones plot, probably towards Minoans.
2xPE1Cb.png

That's interesting also, that the Archaic/Classical Empuries sample is a little closer to modern Sicilians, south Italians and Greeks than the two samples of Hellenistic Empuries. I look forward to see if steppe ancestry was diluted or enhanced in post-Mycenaean ancient Greece, or if it was more or less the same.
 
That's interesting also, that the Archaic/Classical Empuries sample is a little closer to modern Sicilians, south Italians and Greeks than the two samples of Hellenistic Empuries. I look forward to see if steppe ancestry was diluted or enhanced in post-Mycenaean ancient Greece, or if it was more or less the same.
It's just coincidence, those differences are normal. I think the Classical Empurie is the one which is closests to Bul_IA, and the Hellenistic one is shifting a bit towards Minoans, in the non-Acadamic PCA that I posted.
 
These two samples look like the Hellenistic ones, am i correct? I believe the Classical one would be closer to Sicilian_West instead.

I was surprised Pontic Greeks plot so far away from Mycenaeans, even farther than mainland Greeks. I assumed because they have archaisms in their dialects, from ancient Greek, they would be closer to Mycenaeans. I thought they’d be less shifted because they didn’t have the Slavic invasions. The Pontics seem to genetically resemble their neighbors.
 
I was surprised Pontic Greeks plot so far away from Mycenaeans, even farther than mainland Greeks. I assumed because they have archaisms in their dialects, from ancient Greek, they would be closer to Mycenaeans. I thought they’d be less shifted because they didn’t have the Slavic invasions. The Pontics seem to genetically resemble their neighbors.
Their linguistic conservatism can be easily explained through the fact that they were living at the outlier of the Greek-speaking world. Plus, there is even variety among Pontic Greek-speakers, with their most conservative sub-dialect being the Ophitic Greek. As for genetics, other than the PCAs i shared, i have personally observed autosomal variety among Pontic Greeks on an individual basis, with some being even close to the mainland, others in between mainland and Pontus, but most are usually macro-clustering with northwestern Turks, Armenians, and Laz, which is understandable. I mean, you can even see such variety and detachment from let's say the Mycenaean autosomal profile even in the aforementioned Greek colony of Empúries (look at all of the relevant samples) from almost the beginning of its existence, imagine Pontus millennia later.
 

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