Is the Central Italian component in Living DNA a good proxy for Roman ancestry?

The rest is generally Ireland. Here is a picture. Both MyHeritage and Living DNA have me at 84% Irish or Great Britain and Ireland. That is why I included some south England numbers in the original graphic to make up the about 25% that he needs.

View attachment 9074

Are these your DNA results or your grandfather? If it is your grandfather, then he is not Italian. All results give overwhelming Irish ancestry. Considering that you are R1b-M222 (an Irish haplogroup), I suppose that these are your results and you are referring to your maternal grandfather, right?
 
Are these your DNA results or your grandfather? If it is your grandfather, then he is not Italian. All results give overwhelming Irish ancestry. Considering that you are R1b-M222 (an Irish haplogroup), I suppose that these are your results and you are referring to your maternal grandfather, right?
Those are his.
 
Thanks. You mention that your grandfather scores little to no Italian, are you guessing this based on what you scored?

Yes, I phrased this poorly. I score little or no Italian on any of the 5 companies to which I sent my results. Since the Irish is consistently accounted for by about 75%, which matches the paper trail, I concluded that the remaining approximately 25% is from my Italian maternal grandfather.
 
Are these your DNA results or your grandfather? If it is your grandfather, then he is not Italian. All results give overwhelming Irish ancestry. Considering that you are R1b-M222 (an Irish haplogroup), I suppose that these are your results and you are referring to your maternal grandfather, right?

Yes, as explained to Davef, I was not clear. I have seen other people with non-southern Italian, but still Italian ancestry receive results like mine. In the US, Italian-Americans are very much from the south, especially Sicily and Calabria which Ancestry lists as Italy/Greece. My thought was that these commercial companies are following the money and putting their work into the south of Italy.

I did not mean to hijack the thread about Roman ancestry, but merely to add that in some cases, central Italy may be problematic with respect to these tests.
 
I score 9% Tuscan ( central Italy) and besides my Slovak side I'm a quarter mostly British isles with German, swiss, and French influence. My dad scores 8% Tuscan as a full Slovak. The Romans never really had a strong presence in Slovakia so I don't know where this component is from

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My mother recently participated to Geno 2.0. and they told her that she's 72% Western and Central European and 27% Southern European. I was wondering if Southern European component is a proxy for Roman ancestry. 27%, it's pretty big. She's 100% French Canadian, all from North-Western France (and a great-great-grandfather from the Buckinghamshire).
 
My mother recently participated to Geno 2.0. and they told her that she's 72% Western and Central European and 27% Southern European. I was wondering if Southern European component is a proxy for Roman ancestry. 27%, it's pretty big. She's 100% French Canadian, all from North-Western France (and a great-great-grandfather from the Buckinghamshire).

No, it's not a good proxy. It includes all southern European ancestry, even southern French one.
 
I score 9% Tuscan ( central Italy) and besides my Slovak side I'm a quarter mostly British isles with German, swiss, and French influence. My dad scores 8% Tuscan as a full Slovak. The Romans never really had a strong presence in Slovakia so I don't know where this component is from

The Romans had a considerable presence in Pannonia, notably around Vienna. Western Slovakia was also part of it.
 
...I am really interested in seeing how other Europeans from former parts of the Roman Empire, especially outside Italy (too high Roman ancestry) and Britain (too low Roman ancestry) will turn out. Please share your results.

First - Hello to everybody, my first post on this forum :- )


Here are my results from Living (my ancestry is mainly from Eastern and Western Thrace and to a lesser extent the Eastern Balkan mountains near the Black Sea..all ethnic Bulgarians).


Complete - SubRegions:


East Balkans- 22.4%
West Balkans - 11%
Pannonia - 10.1%
Northeast Europe - 5.6%
Mordovia - 3%
Baltics- 2.4%
South Italy-12.9%
Tuscany-10.9%
North Italy-3.4%
Aegean-3.1%
Germanic-8.4%
Pastun-4.5%
Kurdish-2.3%
..................


Standard - Sub Regions:


East Balkans- 22.4%
West Balkans - 11%
Pannonia - 10.1%
Northeast Europe - 5.6%
South Italy-12.9%
Tuscany-10.9%
Germanic-8.4%
Europe Unassigned-11.9%
Pashtun-4.5%
World Unassigned-2.3%
............


Cautious - Regional (this is the lowest level in this mode):


Northeast Europe-related ancestry - 49.1%
Tuscany-related ancestry-32.1%
Europe unassigned-11.9%
Pashtun related ancestry- 4.5%
World unassigned- 2.3%


I got 43% Italy/Greece on Ancestry ( and "Southeastern Europeans Genetic Community" with 95% confidence )


FTDNA gave me 74% Southeast Europe


23and me --- 5% Italian .


My Bulgarian matches on 23andme with 4 Bulgarian GrParents score between 2% and 14% Italian . My Greek matches with 4 Greek GrParents score between 3% and 43.3% Italian .
 
Two British results on Living DNA, they both get 10-12% Tuscan


IMG_1747-768x1024.png


medium_livingsub.jpg
 
At present Living DNA only divides Italy in four parts: North, Centre, South and Sardinia. It will be interesting to see the correlation between Italian provinces and other Europeans once the scale is further refined. But it's quite telling that the current match with Belgians is almost exclusively Central Italians (and they use Tuscany as a population reference, so it's not really all Central Italy). I had already noticed that on the PCA plot in first version of 23andMe a few Belgians were clustered both with French-Germans and Tuscans (but no other part of Italy). One of my HLA types is also found almost exclusively in central Italy. I think that the Roman ancestry is quite incontrovertible.

If this Central Italian/Tuscan component in Living DNA is a good proxy for Roman ancestry, it could imply a proto-Villanovan connection.

Latial culture and Villanovans (Tuscans) descend from the proto-Villanovan culture.
 
I now have the results of several Belgian people who tested with Living DNA. All got a bit of Scandinavian, and some got a from 1 to 3% of French, Basque, West Balkans, North Anatolian or Kurdish. But what really stood out is that all of them had considerable amount of Italian DNA, and in all but one samples that was exclusively Central Italian/Tuscan DNA. It ranged from 11% (in West Flanders) to 19% (in central Wallonia), with an average of about 15%. This is what I originally estimated to be the genetic contribution of the Romans to the Belgian gene pool, before I revised that estimate down to 5-10% based on the more conservative 'Italian' and 'Broadly South European' components in 23andMe.

Estimating Roman ancestry based on Y-DNA alone is very difficult because the Romans shared most of their haplogroups (such as R1b-U152, G2a-L497, G2a-U1, J2b2a-L283 and maybe even E-V13) with the Hallstatt and La Tène Celts (including the Gauls and Belgae). It's also not clear how haplogroups such as E-M34, E-M81, E-V22, J1, J2a, L1 and T1a got to the Benelux, although the ancient Romans/Italians are prime candidates. Altogether the former group (Italo-Celtic) makes up about 17% of the population. The latter group, that is to say the more recent Middle Eastern influx to the East Med, probably derived for the most part from the Kura-Araxes culture via Greece, amounts to 7.5%.

Based on the modern Y-DNA frequencies in the Latium, each group represent about half of the non-Germanic haplogroups. The ancient and modern Latium might be very different in terms of Y-DNA, but as it is the only good proxy we have at the moment, it is reasonable to say that 15% (± 5%) of Belgian Y-DNA might be of Roman origin. And that is exactly what the autosomal results from Living DNA say! At least now we know that, among all the potential Mediterranean populations that could have contributed to the above haplogroups, the Belgians correlate almost exclusively with the Central Italians autosomally. And indeed there is no other reasonable historical explanation for their presence. 5 or 6 years ago we might still have imagined that E-M34, E-V22, J1, J2a and T1a might have come to the Low Countries with Neolithic farmers. But that can be pretty much ruled out now. Even the G2a in Belgium is mostly of post-Indo-European origin, not Neolithic remnants from the LBK, Rössen or Michelsberg cultures.

Living DNA's autosomal composition isn't perfect yet, as all Belgians are reported to be mostly a mix of Southeast England, East Anglia, South England, Devon and Yorkshire. Overall Belgians get between 60% and 85% of British, depending on the individual, due to the close proximity and historical connections (Belgae, Anglo-Saxons) between the two populations. That should be resolved soon when more samples from the Benelux get tested. But when it comes to clearly differentiated populations (i.e. not immediate neighbours), like Central Italians, the results are pretty amazing.

I am really interested in seeing how other Europeans from former parts of the Roman Empire, especially outside Italy (too high Roman ancestry) and Britain (too low Roman ancestry) will turn out. Please share your results.

For LivingDNA I get 13.7 Italian, 15.2 if you count Sardinian. Would this be related to Roman ancestry in the case of other ethnicities including Albanians?

North Italy: 6.7
South Italy: 4
Tuscany: 3
Sardinia: 1.5
 
(...)
I am really interested in seeing how other Europeans from former parts of the Roman Empire, especially outside Italy (too high Roman ancestry) and Britain (too low Roman ancestry) will turn out. Please share your results.
Their estimation from Italy is 4.8% Tuscany and 5% South Italy.
But also 8.7% England... although all the ancestors I know for 150-200 years are from a small region in central-south Romania.
Y-DNA G2a-P303
 
It's more likely to be a Neolithic connection with Tuscans who are already mostly Neolithic in makeup, that's my bet
 
It's more likely to be a Neolithic connection with Tuscans who are already mostly Neolithic in makeup, that's my bet

It could also be both: Neolithic Tuscan connection and Italic Roman.

I also would like to congratulate you, Your Majesty, for being Anointed as the new:
King of New York”!
King Davef :)

KJ41ozH.jpg
 
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imo It’s possible that there’s Roman DNA assigned to UK Results.
Look at this Map:

EogjlIQ.jpg


It Matches the Southern Roman settlements and Towns, the Antonine Wall to the North, but Nothing in the Middle.

East Anglia shows the highest %, and is the region of Queen Boudica of the Iceni, who led an uprising of about 100-Thousand Spears against Rome, but ... (a great story).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

I’ve been told that those DNA Markers could have come into Italy with the Lombards, or the Normans.
It could be, but I doubt it; no German and no Scandinavian DNA % in this case.
 
It could also be both: Neolithic Tuscan connection and Italic Roman.

I also would like to congratulate you, Your Majesty, for being Anointed as the new:
King of New York”!
King Davef :)

KJ41ozH.jpg
Lol thanks! It's a shame our current New York King Cuomidus Taxmaximus still has the throne
)
 
imo It’s possible that there’s Roman DNA assigned to UK Results.
Look at this Map:

EogjlIQ.jpg


It Matches the Southern Roman settlements and Towns, the Antonine Wall to the North, but Nothing in the Middle.

East Anglia shows the highest %, and is the region of Queen Boudica of the Iceni, who led an uprising of about 100-Thousand Spears against Rome, but ... (a great story).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

I’ve been told that those DNA Markers could have come into Italy with the Lombards, or the Normans.
It could be, but I doubt it; no German and no Scandinavian DNA % in this case.

I read now for the first time about Iceni, Boudica or Boadicea. Sound... Romanian for me.
The term Iceni struck me because it is meaningful in Romanian language! :cool-v:
Does anyone know if the word "Iceni" has other meaning in English?
- In Romanian it is used as a suffix in the name of many localities (like Topliceni, Dobriceni, Fălticeni, Băiceni, Urziceni, Voiniceni ...) (and even in the names of people in forms like "icean", "iceanu").
The meaning of -iceni in Romanian is (peoples) from here or from this place. I am not a linguist, but I think iceni comes in Romanian from the adverb aici (here) with the old forms ici, ice, icea, still used, from which the iceni suffix with the same meaning from here or from this place.
and even more :cool-v:...
- Romanian names similar with Boudica or Boadicea: Budica, Bădicea(this is also a locality), Badicean, Budicean, Bădiceanu.

What do you think that means?
 
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If words were not easy to pronounce or sounded too strange, a Romanization of the Names culd have occurred.
It happens all the time. For example, in the past in the United States, countless immigrants had their names changed at their port of entry by mistake, and sometimes by choice in order to sound more Americans.
Even today, to me personally is a daily thing, many people call me ...rio, I even get junk mail with that Name. That’s not my Name at all, LOL.
I stopped correcting it years ago to people, I gave up. All my neighbors, knows my real Name, but ...rio it’s easier for them.
 
Salento, I think your argument could be a verry good explanation, but I have now looked at the localities and only one (Dobriceni) is on the territory controlled by the Romans in Dacia. And anyway, England has been under Roman occupation for much longer than Dacia but I do not know that such locality name exist there. That's why I think that it would not be excluded that tribe of Celts borrowed from Dacia the way to call themselves before the Roman conquests.
 

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