Ancient Lombard Dna from Szolad and Collegno

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This is very interesting because it's based on 10 whole genomes. SZ36 seems to land right on the Tuscans. On other PCAs, it would appear perhaps right on TSI. SZ43 is perhaps around the Romagna? SZ1 Bulgarian like.

Are we looking at populations picked up in the northern Balkans?

When the Thracian paper came out, my proposal on this thread that perhaps the "elite" graves were giving us a false impression of what was going on in the Balkans, and that very "Tuscan like", i.e. Southern European like populations survived in the Balkans into the late Iron Age, was disputed, and, in some circles, ridiculed. Maybe I was right, eh, "gentlemen"?

Which Thracian do you refer to as there where 4 samples that I recall..........the rich one was the contaminated one with "steppe" mix
 
Quoting LATGAL:

"Balkan_BA_IA-Mycenaean -> modern Balkans and South Italy-Sicily) has moved towards the position that the outlying Yamnaya_Bulgaria occupies, which imo indicates further northern and near eastern influx since the Bronze Age".
So you're saying it's possible that Mycenaean like populations in the balkans and southern Italy mixed with more northern populations as well as near eastern populations giving rise to modern balkans and south Italians/ Sicilians right? Sounds likely since the Sicilian, south Italian, and greeks are more East and North than the Mycenaean.

I don't want to derail this thread too much, I just simply want to ensure I understand what you're saying :)
 
So, if the isotope analysis does not favor a local origin for all the northern and also the southern individuals buried in Szabo in a context that appears that of a migrating people (lots of indications of high moblity), then do we have, even if in other studies, a reliable suggestion of what the local Pannonians were like autosomally? Could those "southern-shifted" migrating people be just other Pannonians, more or less exactly like the average people of the region, who came accompanying the Lombards (their masters, or maybe their higher commanders?) from places far away from Szabo? I'm still a bit confused about this, since I and also other commenters I've read about this study were talking cofidently about all this "Southern European" genetic makeup of early medieval Hungary.
 
So, if the isotope analysis does not favor a local origin for all the northern and also the southern individuals buried in Szabo in a context that appears that of a migrating people (lots of indications of high moblity), then do we have, even if in other studies, a reliable suggestion of what the local Pannonians were like autosomally? Could those "southern-shifted" migrating people be just other Pannonians, more or less exactly like the average people of the region, who came accompanying the Lombards (their masters, or maybe their higher commanders?) from places far away from Szabo? I'm still a bit confused about this, since I and also other commenters I've read about this study were talking cofidently about all this "Southern European" genetic makeup of early medieval Hungary.

if the isotopes are not italian , then they cannot be southern European, so saying TUS or BER or IBS makes no sense since they are all southern............might go back to the current dilemma of what is balkan and what is not balkan......border countries fall on either side

Pannonians where recorded from bronze age as an illyrian/dacian mix , leter celtinized in the Iron age.........eventually in AD roman times the lombards where granted access to settle there by the Romans........clearly this suggest a 300 year mix of existing peoples with Roman soldiers and families with migrating lombards......300 years is a long time
 
if the isotopes are not italian , then they cannot be southern European, so saying TUS or BER or IBS makes no sense since they are all southern............might go back to the current dilemma of what is balkan and what is not balkan......border countries fall on either side

Pannonians where recorded from bronze age as an illyrian/dacian mix , leter celtinized in the Iron age.........eventually in AD roman times the lombards where granted access to settle there by the Romans........clearly this suggest a 300 year mix of existing peoples with Roman soldiers and families with migrating lombards......300 years is a long time

300 years? Are you saying that Lombards were already present living in Pannonia with the Romanized Pannonians and Romans in the early 3rd century, still during the heyday of the Western Roman Empire? Do we have evidences of such an early arrival of German tribes there?
 
300 years? Are you saying that Lombards were already present living in Pannonia with the Romanized Pannonians and Romans in the early 3rd century, still during the heyday of the Western Roman Empire? Do we have evidences of such an early arrival of German tribes there?
They left north Germany in AD17 heading for Pannonia.....they arrived on the opposite bank and asked the Romans for permission to enter Pannonia.......clearly an indication that the Roman empire still existed ...........we also know they invaded Italy After the fall of the Roman empire plus 200 years for the settlement of ostrogoths in Italy .........so do the calc
They are recorded in Roman sources for the first time in the second century AD.
.
The only debate is
There is fierce debate as to whether these “new” Longobards had anything in common with and whether there was any continuity between them and those mentioned during the Roman period, or whether a second ethnogenesis took place and resulted in a group that adopted the old name.
Clearly some are saying the original lombards of the second century are not the same as the lombards that went to Italy in the 5th century.
.
It could be that the long stay in pannonia changed the Lombard genes by more than half
 
Ok, now back to the Iron Age Thracian. Are you basing that assessment on something other than the PCA you showed me? Or, is the PCA not oriented with top as north, bottom as south, left as west and right as east? If it is, and even if it's late, isn't the Thracian-Iron Age Balkan sample not very far north of the Mycenaean and a shade further south than the most southern Italians.

On overall nmonte distances based on Davidski's Global25, what the modern samples generally seem to model as etc. Either way, it's still a very 'southern' and (obviously) 'western' sample considering its geographical origins in the northern Thracian area which either indicates still ongoing processes down to the 6th century BC or a generally very EEF-heavy and steppe-light population still being the norm south of the Danube. But yeah, one sample and all...

I don't want to derail this thread too much, I just simply want to ensure I understand what you're saying :)

I have done that too, unfortunately...Yes, with a similar process apparently happening in Iberia and the rest of Italy. But keep in mind that we still have very little data to create any good long-term models. Even the process within the steppe itself, before the migrations to Europe, which happens to actually have more (but still very few) samples currently, isn't perfectly clear yet. The overall impression based on the current sparse sampling is such to me though. We'll see. The world was certainly a very dynamic place, to put it mildly.

Promenade, that R1b1b caught me a bit off-guard too. Unless it's just a nomenclature difference and they actually mean some expected subclade of R1b1a.
 
Wonomyro, in fairness metageographical apportioning is always very subjective. I have met quite a few people (mostly familiar with Dalmatia) who'd consider Croatia a(n at leas partially) "Mediterranean" country as you said but it's true that from a genetic perspective, Croats fit in more as "Central-East" European. They're about as "northern" as the French, just in a more steppe-heavy direction.
Thank you, LATGAL! That's exactly my argument. However, when I said the same thing on another thread, both me and the other Croatian guy were labeled as being "nordicists" (I collect infractions on the regular basis). Of course, culturally and geographically, Croatia is both Central European and Mediterranean country. I mentioned our affinity for Mediterranean cultural circle only to explain that my motivation has nothing to do with "hating people of Southern European genetic ancestry" when rejecting "Balkan" label.
 
Thank you, LATGAL! That's exactly my argument. However, when I said the same thing on another thread, both me and the other Croatian guy were labeled as being "nordicists" (I collect infractions on the regular basis). Of course, culturally and geographically, Croatia is both Central European and Mediterranean country. I mentioned our affinity for Mediterranean cultural circle only to explain that my motivation has nothing to do with "hating people of Southern European genetic ancestry" when rejecting "Balkan" label.

a small difference in interpretation doesn't give you the right to insult another member, especially not a moderator.
 
Thank you, LATGAL! That's exactly my argument. However, when I said the same thing on another thread, both me and the other Croatian guy were labeled as being "nordicists" (I collect infractions on the regular basis). Of course, culturally and geographically, Croatia is both Central European and Mediterranean country. I mentioned our affinity for Mediterranean cultural circle only to explain that my motivation has nothing to do with "hating people of Southern European genetic ancestry" when rejecting "Balkan" label.

Nordicist from Scandinavia or Noricist from eastern alps ............2 different race of people ..........I do not understand
 
Thank you, LATGAL! That's exactly my argument. However, when I said the same thing on another thread, both me and the other Croatian guy were labeled as being "nordicists" (I collect infractions on the regular basis). Of course, culturally and geographically, Croatia is both Central European and Mediterranean country. I mentioned our affinity for Mediterranean cultural circle only to explain that my motivation has nothing to do with "hating people of Southern European genetic ancestry" when rejecting "Balkan" label.
That was quite a dumb thing to say that you get a lot of infractions. That like saying you got a big criminal record In which you lied too everyone saying that "you never got arrested"
 
So, if the isotope analysis does not favor a local origin for all the northern and also the southern individuals buried in Szabo in a context that appears that of a migrating people (lots of indications of high moblity), then do we have, even if in other studies, a reliable suggestion of what the local Pannonians were like autosomally? Could those "southern-shifted" migrating people be just other Pannonians, more or less exactly like the average people of the region, who came accompanying the Lombards (their masters, or maybe their higher commanders?) from places far away from Szabo? I'm still a bit confused about this, since I and also other commenters I've read about this study were talking cofidently about all this "Southern European" genetic makeup of early medieval Hungary.

Upthread I posted excerpts from the Supplementary Text section on the strontium isotope analysis of the samples at Szabo. Indeed, none of the residents of Szabo were "locals" to that particular area.

From the study:

"Within Szólád we find that adult individuals with both predominantly central/northern and southern genomic ancestry possess similar non-local signatures (Alt et al.13 described this as Range I) (Fig 4). This might suggest that individuals from both ancestry groups immigrated into Szólád together despite the differences in material culture. However, we also note generally a quite diverse non-local range amongst adults with central/northern ancestry (for example SZ4 and SZ16 are extreme outliers), pointing to not all individuals having origins from the same location prior to settling in Szólád."

Perhaps what they're saying is that the adults all show prior residence within a "Range 1" strontium isotope environment, but there is variation within that Range 1?

"A comparison of ancestry groups with the evidence of mobility at Szólád, aspreviously published in Alt et al.28, shows much greater heterogeneity than at Collegno. Like at Collegno, most children display local isotopic values. However, at Szólád there isa distinct cluster of children with >70% ‘northern’ ancestry who clearly all grew uptogether (identified as Range II in 56), whereas the two children with >70% ‘southern’ancestry (SZ36 and 40) grew up in a different location from them (in Range I). The adultsare highly variable. Individuals with >70% ‘northern’ ancestry have a greater range ofstrontium isotope values than those with >70% ‘southern’ ancestry. The latter group mayhave been local to the Balaton environs, based on bioavailable reference data from theregion, but their strontium isotope values do not overlap with the tight cluster of childrenin ‘range II’."
Doesn't this read as if the southern samples are connected to the Lake Balaton region which is also in Pannonia?

Also from upthread:

"Balaton is one of the areas of the
Keszthely culture, to which we were alerted on the prior thread by Wonomyro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keszthely_culture

There were only a couple of thousand of them left by that time, poor people, so it hardly seems likely that the ones brought with the Lombards to Italy would have had a huge impact, but some, perhaps. The fact that the Lombards were in such a horrible state by the time they arrived, in terms of not only battle injuries but malnutrition, adds to that. The isotope analysis at other sites would tell us.

It's nice to see that calm and steady and objective analysis of all the variables pays off."

Now, is that published speculation that there were only a few thousand of these people left, which was the source of my statement, correct, or was that autosomal signature spread throughout Pannonia, and this was the last group remaining which had some independence? I don't know, and I don't think anyone else does as of yet either.

Also upthread is a chart from the paper which attributes "ethnicity" to the Szabo southern samples. Using the Popres samples and algorithm the samples come out as Italian (3), French (2), and Romania (1). Using the Hellenthal data set and algorithm, they come out as Sicilian (2), TSI (2), Italian North (1), and Bulgarian (1). On the PCAs, if my memory serves, they all plot in Italy.

What I do know is that there was a lot of documented Slavic and Germanic input into Hungary, the latter way into the medieval period, which could have changed the genetic signature substantially.
 
Upthread I posted excerpts from the Supplementary Text section on the strontium isotope analysis of the samples at Szabo. Indeed, none of the residents of Szabo were "locals" to that particular area.

From the study:

"Within Szólád we find that adult individuals with both predominantly central/northern and southern genomic ancestry possess similar non-local signatures (Alt et al.13 described this as Range I) (Fig 4). This might suggest that individuals from both ancestry groups immigrated into Szólád together despite the differences in material culture. However, we also note generally a quite diverse non-local range amongst adults with central/northern ancestry (for example SZ4 and SZ16 are extreme outliers), pointing to not all individuals having origins from the same location prior to settling in Szólád."

Perhaps what they're saying is that the adults all show prior residence within a "Range 1" strontium isotope environment, but there is variation within that Range 1?

"A comparison of ancestry groups with the evidence of mobility at Szólád, aspreviously published in Alt et al.28, shows much greater heterogeneity than at Collegno. Like at Collegno, most children display local isotopic values. However, at Szólád there isa distinct cluster of children with >70% ‘northern’ ancestry who clearly all grew uptogether (identified as Range II in 56), whereas the two children with >70% ‘southern’ancestry (SZ36 and 40) grew up in a different location from them (in Range I). The adultsare highly variable. Individuals with >70% ‘northern’ ancestry have a greater range ofstrontium isotope values than those with >70% ‘southern’ ancestry. The latter group mayhave been local to the Balaton environs, based on bioavailable reference data from theregion, but their strontium isotope values do not overlap with the tight cluster of childrenin ‘range II’."
Doesn't this read as if the southern samples are connected to the Lake Balaton region which is also in Pannonia?



the way I read this is that the northern are new ( recent migration ) to Pannonia and the southern where born there
 
the way I read this is that the northern are new ( recent migration ) to Pannonia and the southern where born there

This would seem to support that view, although it's not carved in stone. We just don't know for sure yet: that's why the authors said "MAY".

"The latter group may have been local to the Balaton environs, based on bioavailable reference data from the region." since the latter group was the autosomally "southern" group.
 
This would seem to support that view, although it's not carved in stone. We just don't know for sure yet: that's why the authors said "MAY".

"The latter group may have been local to the Balaton environs, based on bioavailable reference data from the region."

(The latter group was the southern group.)

Sorry, I left out some important and clarifying information from the Supplement:

"Pannonia hadfallen first under Hunnic, then under Ostrogothic control, when the Ostrogoths movedinto the Balkans in 473. Soon after, in 476, Odoacer, a Roman commander of barbarianorigin in Italy who led a mixed army of Heruli, Rugii and others, overthrew the last WestRoman emperor and ruled Italy as king and patricius by arrangement with the EastRoman emperor in Constantinople. He exerted loose control over the former Romanprovinces to the north and east including Pannonia. The population of the region thuspresumably comprised descendants of Roman provincials as well as members of thevarious barbarian populations that had entered the region over the previous twocenturies2–4."

The length of stay by the Langobards in Szabo was only one generation.

"The small population settled for only one14generation in Pannonia at the shore of Lake Balaton and therefore appears to have beenvery mobile - especially the women indicate isotopically and genetically heterogeneousbackgrounds"

Also, "Most of the Longobard-period burial grounds in Pannonia are located nearformer Roman villas, forts and camps, and the Szólád cemetery seems not to be anexception, since there are hints of a Roman villa nearby."

As to how and why and when they got to Pannonia:

"in 535 the Byzantine (East Roman Empire)invaded Italy and began a reconquest under Emperor Justinian I. From around this time,Byzantine diplomacy began to develop treaties with the Longobards in order to isolatethe Ostrogoths and to counter the Gepids, another barbarian people along the Danube and3Tisa Rivers, and granted them the “city of Noricum and the fortifications in Pannonia aswell as other towns and a great amount of money”."

"Seventh-century sources attribute the Longobard invasion of Italy in 568 toan invitation issued to the Longobard King Alboin by the Roman commander Narses,although this is not mentioned in sixth-century sources and is greeted with skepticism bymodern scholars2, p. 98-100). It was clear that the battered infrastructure in Pannonia4could not meet the ambitions of a growing Longobard army."

From that it doesn't seem that they spent more than about a generation in Pannonia as a whole, i.e 535 to 568.


"The invasion met with surprisingly little organizedRoman resistance, but still the Longobard conquest of parts of Italy was a poorlyorganized and long-drawn out affair. The main army moved westward and took Pavia,which would later become the Longobard capital, after a siege, but did not move on toattack Ravenna or Rome. Instead, Alboin’s army began to fall apart into separate bandsled by individual dukes who went their own ways, some into southern Italy and othersinto Burgundy, and some straight into Roman service."

"c Paul the Deacon wrote a much fuller history of the Longobards7, drawing on theOrigo Gentis Langobardorum, the now-lost history of Secundus, and otherseventh-century sources. His account, although written over two centuries or more afterthe events it recounts, has nevertheless been taken, often uncritically, as a reliableaccount of Longobard history, a position increasingly disputed8,9. Concerning theinvasion of Italy, he states that Alboin’s invading army included not only Longobards butGepids, Bulgars, Sarmatians, Pannonians, Suevi, Noricans, and others6,10."

Emphasis mine.
 
They left north Germany in AD17 heading for Pannonia.....they arrived on the opposite bank and asked the Romans for permission to enter Pannonia.......clearly an indication that the Roman empire still existed ...........we also know they invaded Italy After the fall of the Roman empire plus 200 years for the settlement of ostrogoths in Italy .........so do the calc
They are recorded in Roman sources for the first time in the second century AD.
.
The only debate is
There is fierce debate as to whether these “new” Longobards had anything in common with and whether there was any continuity between them and those mentioned during the Roman period, or whether a second ethnogenesis took place and resulted in a group that adopted the old name.
Clearly some are saying the original lombards of the second century are not the same as the lombards that went to Italy in the 5th century.
.
It could be that the long stay in pannonia changed the Lombard genes by more than half

Very interesting, I wasn't aware of those long relations with Romans, especially since it is usually considered pretty much demonstrated that Lombards were much less Romanized and "civilized" (to the Roman pov) than the average Franks and Goths. However, if they were living in Pannonia with locals and Romans for 300 years and their genes had changed "by more than half", then that didn't show in the individuals analyzed in the study we're discussing about here. There is not a sign of strong admixture and long established relations in those buried individuals at all. Not only are they very mobile and most of them probably not local, but there is also a striking genetic difference between some individuals and others, which does not correlate well with a history of 300 years of interbreeding and mutual assimilation. If Lombards were living in Pannonia much before the Volkerwanderung, then we'd have to assume that they were somewhat of a closed community maybe even with some hints of an ethnic "caste" system, because at least their higher social echelons didn't mix much at all, and there was not a gradual cline from one group to the other, but striking differences even though they probably lived together.
 
Very interesting, I wasn't aware of those long relations with Romans, especially since it is usually considered pretty much demonstrated that Lombards were much less Romanized and "civilized" (to the Roman pov) than the average Franks and Goths. However, if they were living in Pannonia with locals and Romans for 300 years and their genes had changed "by more than half", then that didn't show in the individuals analyzed in the study we're discussing about here. There is not a sign of strong admixture and long established relations in those buried individuals at all. Not only are they very mobile and most of them probably not local, but there is also a striking genetic difference between some individuals and others, which does not correlate well with a history of 300 years of interbreeding and mutual assimilation. If Lombards were living in Pannonia much before the Volkerwanderung, then we'd have to assume that they were somewhat of a closed community maybe even with some hints of an ethnic "caste" system, because at least their higher social echelons didn't mix much at all, and there was not a gradual cline from one group to the other, but striking differences even though they probably lived together.

It seems that there was a steady flow of "lombards" into Pannonia over many decades ...........they could be Heruli or Rugii even suevi and some sarmatians .......we will never know.......we do have history stating that as the lombards enetered italy to fight against the ostrogoths, their allies stopped and settled in Concordia Friuli, we do not know who else went to Italy.

BTW....was there not 2 separate cemeteries in Collegno ...a lombard and a goth one?
 
It seems that there was a steady flow of "lombards" into Pannonia over many decades ...........they could be Heruli or Rugii even suevi and some sarmatians .......we will never know.......we do have history stating that as the lombards enetered italy to fight against the ostrogoths, their allies stopped and settled in Concordia Friuli, we do not know who else went to Italy.

BTW....was there not 2 separate cemeteries in Collegno ...a lombard and a goth one?

I have no idea where you get this stuff. Don't you read other people's posts?

The Romans with whom they were in contact were the Eastern Romans, the Byzantines.

They weren't given the right to enter Pannonia until 535 and left in 568.

This is the second time I've highlighted it.

If you have no source for a contradictory view then you're making it up, and you know what I told you about that.

Find a source, or retract the comment. I'll give you some time to do one or the other, or you're going to get an infraction.

You have to stop confusing other people.
 
Now, is that published speculation that there were only a few thousand of these people left, which was the source of my statement, correct, or was that autosomal signature spread throughout Pannonia, and this was the last group remaining which had some independence? I don't know, and I don't think anyone else does as of yet either.

Also upthread is a chart from the paper which attributes "ethnicity" to the Szabo southern samples. Using the Popres samples and algorithm the samples come out as Italian (3), French (2), and Romania (1). Using the Hellenthal data set and algorithm, they come out as Sicilian (2), TSI (2), Italian North (1), and Bulgarian (1). On the PCAs, if my memory serves, they all plot in Italy.

What I do know is that there was a lot of documented Slavic and Germanic input into Hungary, the latter way into the medieval period, which could have changed the genetic signature substantially.

Thanks! Now things are getting clearer to me. It does seem to me, from the way they phrased their results, that the southern individuals were not "locals", but were from the same region in the Pannonian plain. As for the assertion written in the Wikipedia article that there were just a few surviving populations of Romanized Pannonians, if all previous findings (in genetic studies and elsewhere) have taught us something good it is that we should take such claims with many grains of salt, especially if the population in question is not some bunch of hunter-gatherers or primitive Neolithic farmers, but a large civilized population. Most of the past claims of huge slaughters and displacements of the previous populace during the medieval Folk Migrations have turned out to be extremely exaggerated.
 
Thanks! Now things are getting clearer to me. It does seem to me, from the way they phrased their results, that the southern individuals were not "locals", but were from the same region in the Pannonian plain. As for the assertion written in the Wikipedia article that there were just a few surviving populations of Romanized Pannonians, if all previous findings (in genetic studies and elsewhere) have taught us something good it is that we should take such claims with many grains of salt, especially if the population in question is not some bunch of hunter-gatherers or primitive Neolithic farmers, but a large civilized population. Most of the past claims of huge slaughters and displacements of the previous populace during the medieval Folk Migrations have turned out to be extremely exaggerated.

As to the first I absolutely agree.

As to the second I'm leaning more toward your position, although I remain cautious. It's my nature. :)

An awful lot of "Italian like" people still around by the early Middle Ages, really until the Slavic Migrations, even in Central Europe. Maybe we're just the ones who didn't get over-run by them.
 
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