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Originally Posted by
suyindik
How can we be so sure they are no different(based on how many samples?)? Arent they a mix of Neolithic Farmers and Bronze Age Bell Beakers? And arent the Iberian Bell Beakers equal to the Neolithic Farmers? Genetically the EEF component(Anatolia_N, Iran_N, Levant_N) among the Etruscans should be equal to the proto Etruscan language. The EHG component should be equal to the populations of the proto Italic tribes.
The EEF component is just Anatolian farmer with a little WHG picked up in Europe. The Late Neolithic peoples of Europe, like the people of "Old Europe" in the Balkans and Ukraine, and Iberia, Italy, etc. had picked up more WHG, up to 25% or so.
The relationship of the Anatolian farmers to the Iranian farmers to the farmers of the Levant is complicated. Anatolian farmers can be modeled with or as part Levant Neolithic, and Levant Neolithic can be modeled with Anatolian Neolithic, and Anatolian Neolithic can be modeled with even a bit of Iran Neolithic.
The point is that after the Anatolian farmers had left for Europe, there was a pinzer movement into Europe beginning in the Bronze Age from two directions: the steppe (60% EHG/40%CHG/IranNeo like ancestry) and the southern Caucasus by way of what used to be called Asia Minor. The ancestry which arrived by way of this southern route also contained some Anatolian farmer, but was very Iran Neo heavy. I personally think the wave may be Kura Araxes related.
It seems that both the Etruscans and the Italics are a combination of LN farmers (EEF plus up to 25%WHG) and some steppe input that probably arrived from Central Europe. So, they seem to have been very similar.
Autosomal analysis is quite different from analysis using yDna or mtDna. You don't need thousands of samples, although you have to be certain you got the dating correct, the burial context correct, and hopefully you've done some analysis so you know if the samples were born and raised in that area.
As for theories about the Etruscans, archaeologists always leaned toward them being local, but virtually everyone writing on genetics, from the academics, to Jean Manco, with whom I argued for ten years, to Eurogenes, to all the people on "biodiversity" sites, was convinced they came straight from the Near East. On here Pax and I and some of the other Italian posters who had studied the Etruscans a lot were the only ones who were skeptical of that idea. Not that you'd know that given the deafening silence on the subject on other sites. You'd think they always knew it.
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