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For example it is known that, in post-Neolithic times 5 kya, North West Anatolia developed a complex society engaged in a widespread Aegean trade referred to as “Maritime Trojan culture”, involving both the Western Anatolian mainland and several large islands in the
Eastern Aegean Sea (Korfmann, 1997). Interestingly, J2a-M67 also harbours a high microsatellite variation age in Volterra, which is located in the core area of ancient Etruria. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed concerning the origin of Etruscans, but our observations tend to support the view that Asia Minor was the ancestral source of the Etruscan gene pool, as already proposed by Achilli et al. (2007) on the basis of mtDNA data.
from "Reconstructing the genetic history of Italians: new insights from a male (Y-chromosome) perspective", paper published the past year, not from memory
"What I've seen so far after my entire career chasing Indoeuropeans is that our solutions look tissue thin and our problems still look monumental" J.P.Mallory
"The ultimate homeland of the group [PIE] that also spread Anatolian languages is less clear." D. Reich
We've already discussed this study.
J2a-M67 in Volterra is only 2.7%, while G2a-L497 is around 7.1%, R1b is circa 50% (24.5% R1b U52).
J2a-M67 exists also in Spain and Portugal and has its in peak in the study in Calabria Jonica. In Italy is considerably more common in the Italic areas of the Adriatic side.
These below are the conclusions of the paper. Grugni is even forced, given the results, to open the possibility that the Etruscans came from the north or were autochthonous.
In the end, this study shows just the opposite of an Anatolian origin. In any case, pure speculations based on modern samples. Since only ancient DNA can tell us who the Etruscans were.
"«As a matter of fact, while the presence of J2a-M67* suggests contacts by sea with Anatolian people, in agreement with the Herodotus hypothesis of an external Anatolian source of Etruscans, the finding of the Central European lineage G2a-L497 at considerable frequency would rather support a Northern European origin of Etruscans. On the other hand, the high incidence of European R1b lineages cannot rule out the scenario of an autochthonous process of formation of the Etruscan civilisation from the preceding Villanovan society, as first suggested by Dionysius of Halicarnassus; a detailed analysis of haplogroup R1b-U152 could prove very informative in this regard.»."
At more or less the same time of terramare ( which occupied lower eastern lombardy, lower western veneto and emilia ) there was in northwestern Italy ( west lombardy, eastern piemonte and a little bit of northwestern emilia) the Canegrate culture which looks like the precursor on italian soil of the urn fields culture.
Also actually the terramare did not collapse. They migrated in central and southern Italy. That is obvious if you think that these cremators disappear from the Po valley and at the same time cremation burials pop up like crazy all over central and southern Italy.
Very well put, I find that this is exactly the reason for centuries of obfuscation of history. The Mycenaeans were indeed "southern", overlapping with Sicilians, South Italians, and Peloponnese Greeks. If the "leak" is indeed true, the Romans, certainly by the Imperial era at least were just about as "southern". Regardless of what the "original" Romans were like, the men that formed the cohorts that conquered lands for the empire, were probably comparable to central and southern Italians. Julius Caesar himself, could probably be counted among them. Moreover, the Etruscan, who were regarded by some as "West Asian", were actual comparable to Northern Italians. These benighted individuals got it backwards, The Greeks were "southern", and the Etruscans were more "northern"; I love how ancient DNA can turn things on it's head.
Last edited by Jovialis; 31-05-19 at 07:02.
As Angela is so fond of saying we need more ancientDNA. We also need DNA from population movements/invasions from about 400AD-1500AD.
Its the classic nordicist idea of Northern Europeans being descended from (and exactly the same as) Greeks and Romans (as well as other iconic civilizations im too lazy to list here). DNA studies have concluded the opposite-that the closest living populations to mycenaens are South Italians, Sicilians, Southern mainland Greeks and Aegeans (and based on the PCA, it could possibly be that a lot of imperial Romans were similar to those populations as well. I'm not making a contest out of this...if most turn out to be more Northern, whatever).
They should leave their agendas behind and take pride in their own culture and heritage. It's unhealthy to do so otherwise.
mmmmmmmmm dooouuughhhnuuuutz
These "urban legend" explanations for the name of regions and ethnicities is one of the things that takes away even more of the scarce credibility of these ancient authors. This is not the first nor the "one hundredth" time that the name of an ethnicity or region is supposedly invented after a certain ruler/hero/patriarch that curiously was always named root of the ethnicity/area + us/os (depending on whether it's Latin or Greek). After some time it gets really tiresome. ;-p
We have almost no ancient Italian dna, nothing yet published on Italian Neolithic, Terramare, Canegrate, Veneti, Ligures, Rinaldone, and on and on, including, of course, the Etruscans and the Romans.
We have Oetzi, whose genome no one can seem to get, Remedello in the far north in the Copper Age, some Beakers from northwest Sicily, and "Migration Era" people in a Langobard cemetery in northeastern Italy(a great paper, btw). That's it.* As one might expect, the usual suspects were wrong about what those genomes would show as well.
You can't come to correct conclusions until you can compare the ancient samples in question to what was there before and to ancient samples from other areas which might have contributed genetically, proximate populations.
Greece hasn't been well served either. What happened after the Bronze Age collapse and the attendant depopulation? What were the Dorians like? What were Classical Era Greeks from the mainland, or Crete, or the Dodocanese like? What were the Greeks like just before the arrival of the Slavs?
Who were the groups who made up the Sea Peoples?
When did the "Western Jews" stop plotting in the Near East and why?
I could go on...
What astounds me is the continued insistence that these "theories" being brought up are correct even when proof they are not is staring us in the face. In light of these leaks who the hell in his or her right mind still wants to rely on Herodotus? If I had this mind set I wouldn't have lasted six months in my career. My head would have been handed to me on a plate.
This isn't the first time. People were still bringing up FALLMERAYER, that old fabulist, months after the publication of the studies on the Mycenaeans and the genetics of the Peloponnese. Why don't we just waste hours debating whether or not Galen and his theory of the four humours was correct while we're at it? This is supposed to be a quasi-intellectual forum, not a haven for the discussion of nutty ideas which are now obsolete.
Ed. *And some Beaker types from Parma.
Last edited by Angela; 31-05-19 at 22:19.
Non si fa il proprio dovere perchè qualcuno ci dica grazie, lo si fa per principio, per se stessi, per la propria dignità. Oriana Fallaci
I just looked up Hannah Moots and she is from Stanford. It's hard to imagine that there are two big papers on Italian genetics coming up and both are from Stanford, although I suppose it's possible.
"If" this "leaked" PCA is a legitimate and complete one from Hannah Moots' paper, then there is real cognitive dissonance between what she reportedly said to RYU and this PCA.
When I looked carefully at the placement of the "Ancient Romans" and compared them to the modern samples upon which they are superimposed, one lands in Tuscany and the rest land on modern Greeks, Sicilians and Southern Italians. (Contrary to what has been posted by "Generalissimo" most of them "do not" plot beyond modern mainland Southern Italians on the modern PCA.)
Yet, she is reported to have said about the Iron Age, i.e. "Republican" samples, (which would take you to about 20 B.C.) that 60% of them were Northern Italian like, and 40% were Southern Italian like. Even if you take Northern Italian to be anything north of Rome, which would include Tuscany in northern Italy, 60% of them decidedly do not plot in Tuscany.
Even given the distortion caused by superimposing ancient samples on top of modern samples, this doesn't make sense.
The only other possibility which comes to mind is that the Iron Age samples didn't come from the vicinity of Rome but it seems to me the quote was specifically talking about "Romans" .
Either there are two papers, or this "leaked" PCA is incomplete and doesn't include the Republic Era samples where 60% of the samples were supposedly Northern Italian like.
Whoever took it upon him or herself to post this "leaked" PCA has a responsibility to let everyone know whether it is the work of Hannah Moots, and if it is, why none of the Iron Age Roman samples plot in Northern Italy. Now, if these are only the "Imperial Era" samples, fine, just say so. Otherwise, it is misleading everyone.
I really hope someone is not playing games with a PCA from an academic paper.
Whoever posted it should explain what's going on.
Oh, the original quote From RYU said Umbrians, Picenes, and SABINES, not Samnites, clustered with Etruscans. I made the error once too. All those named groups clustered with modern N Italians. I don't know what academic Northern Italian samples they used. I hope not just Bergamo. As I've been saying ad nauseam for years there's far more diversity in northern Italy than in Southern Italy.
In addition, how can people not realize, when they’re trying to model modern Southern and even Central Italians, that the most reliable way would be to use Italian Neolithic or at least something like Rinaldone, neither of which we have, or at least Sicily Beaker, which is not very Beaker like, and not necessarily Minoan Lashithi. Minoan Lasithi is basically EEF. How do you know you’re measuring actual migration in the BRONZE AGE when you’re using that sample.
Think through what you’re doing when chucking in samples, people.
The leaked document of H. Moots seems to suggest that the Roman republican era times ( 700Bc to 20Bc ) was 60% northern because of the absorption of the samnites into roman society. We know by very many scholars that the Samnites are an offshoot of Sabines and Sabellics ( both peoples lived north of Rome ) and that they are an offshoot of Umbrians who are also north of Rome.
It makes sense then that H.Moots refers to these Romans as in bulk of being northern.
looking further south into italian ancient Italian tribes we come to the Oscans ( naples, campania area ), we only know that the etruscans ruled the coastal oscans for a period, but we know little else about them. On the adriatic side we have the apulian Illyrians who arrived from the area of modern croatia circa 1000BC from the ancient Iapodes tribes.
My guess is that the Moots paper has split of northern and southern italians as being Rome, the city is the border. It would then indicate that the large number of oscan tribes as the only southern Italians ................I have doubts about this scenario (the Moots theory.)
I have no comment on Sicily or Sardinia ancient populace.
It suggests absolutely nothing about WHY 60% of the Republican Era Romans were Northern Italian like. That's in addition to the fact that none of the "Roman" samples in that leaked PCA lands in Northern Italy, which is the real problem.
As I said, the person who got the leak has to say if it is from the Hannah Moots paper, and if it is, whether or not only the Imperial Era samples are on it.
Are you thinking about the "rape" of women from other tribes which is part of the mythology of Rome? First of all, "raptio" in Latin means "kidnapping" or abduction, not RAPE as in sexual violation, although I certainly wouldn't go on record as saying no rape was involved. Second of all, it was of the SABINE women, not the SAMNITE women, although again this is mythology, like Romans coming from Troy, so who knows.
The Samnites were not mentioned. The comment about this PCA was that the Picenes, Umbrians and SABINES clustered near Etruscans. That's it. Did the early Republican Era Romans also cluster with them? It seems perhaps so.
That's all we know. Imo, this wild speculation in the absence of the ancient samples is not helpful.
I would add that if these or many of these "Roman" samples are from places like Ostia, we have a big problem. That's where merchants, sailors etc. lived. You would absolutely HAVE to do isotope analysis to find out if they grew up locally, or outside the Italian mainland and islands. Even that would only tell you where they came from, not if they were or were not transitory.
I can't believe I have to point out such an obvious fact.
@Pax Augusta: Thanks. I'll try to get it, maybe not immediately (question of lack of time).
According to an Anthrogenica poster who was in contact with the leaker, some of the Roman samples come from Pompeii (probably the ones clustering with modern southern Italians). Maybe the more northern ones are from the "Republican" era, and ones veering towards Cypriots were merchants from somewhere in the Hellenic world (the islands, Anatolia, Pontus, etc), which for some reason hasn't crossed the mind of anyone on Anthrogenica yet. Nothing was said whether it's from the Moots paper or not however.
Well, you're essentially repeating what I said when you claim there is "no fixed rule saying that...". Precisely because there are historic instances where the migration of a large number of people, but still a minority in their new homeland, imposed their language onto the local population, and others in which the newcomers instead adopted the local language, we cannot rule out the possibility that Etruscan might have arrived with a language family spoken by Iran_Chl/CHG-rich people of West Asia that spread especially in Southern Europe during the Chalcolithic and/or the Bronze Age. You know, possibility - I specifically wrote that and differentiated it from likelihood. You and I definitely don't know if that spread of a non-EEF component in Italy and elsewhere in Europe was always like the Nordic people in Normandy, or whether it sometimes was like the Slavs in Bulgaria or the Turks in Anatolia. So, I maintain: we can't still rule out the possibility that Etruscan was not an EEF language.
There are NO Northern Italian like Roman samples in that "leaked" PCA. The most Northern one lands on Tuscans.
So, it doesn't reflect what Hannah Moots said in her presentation about 60% of the early samples resembling Northern Italians.
The discussions over there are chaotic because there is a conflict between the PCA and the Moots presentation and quotes.