Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

Don't be cryptic. Who was in BA N. Italy other than Terramare and the Urnfielders?


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.
 
Identity problems that perhaps come from feelings of inferiority when looking at what they've actually accomplished in the last 5,000 years in comparison. Or perhaps problems with how they're viewed by the rest of the world. If you have true confidence, of course, it bounces off, although it might annoy.

That doesn't apply to the 19th century British and German Nordicists. Those areas had gotten their act together by about the 15th century or so. The problem for some of these "anthropologists" and "historians" was that they didn't want to be known as the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. So, they decided that in that era they were just peaceful folk wandering around trying to farm and they had no idea how all those buildings came down, and trade dried up, and roads got overgrown and controlled by bandits, and people forgot how to wash and read and all those little things. The only way out was to claim the Mycenaeans and the Romans were ALSO Nordics, so even if some of their ancestors destroyed ancient Rome, their ancestors created it in the first place.

I mean, there's an element of humor in it all if you can detach yourself emotionally from it, which I have, or I still wouldn't be here for five years, and in the "field" for five years before that. You also have to keep firmly in mind that one shouldn't judge any ethnicity by some nutjobs of that ethnicity posting on population genetics. There's good and bad in every group. It's just that this subject attracts a lot of people who are missing a few screws in their heads, as my Dad used to say. :)

Anyway, all this drivel some people are posting is IRRELEVANT. IF the leaks are right, ALL those "theories" being proposed are and were C***. Anyone who continues to post that nonsense just looks idiotic. They might as well join the "Flat Earth Society", or proclaim the earth was created in seven days.

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:
As Angela is so fond of saying we need more ancientDNA. We also need DNA from population movements/invasions from about 400AD-1500AD.
 
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.

So were only Imperial Romans shifted towards Southern Italian or were other Italic peoples too?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
What is being turned on it's head in this case?
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.
 
"The Pelasgians left Greece and came and settled in the Italian areas among the Aborigines. The Pelasgians were also called Tyrrheni [Etruscans] and the entire land was called Tyrrhenia, after one of their rulers, who was called Tyrrhenus."
Eusebius, Chronography, 102 - ca. 325 CE

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
 
As Angela is so fond of saying we need more ancientDNA. We also need DNA from population movements/invasions from about 400AD-1500AD.

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:
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.

Thank you for clarifying. That much has been clear for a while too.
 
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.

That's actually a pretty good advice. :)
 
I'm getting confused. This is the map which was supposedly leaked and published upthread, right?

PZahiV8.png


The ancient Roman samples are the purple triangles and the Etruscans the purple squares, yes? I'm assuming this is a different paper from the Moots one. I don't know where those more "northern" like Republican Era Romans would plot, but these ancient Romans seem to plot right on top of Southern Italians and some Greeks. We have one Tuscan like Etruscan, some Spanish like ones, a few Northern Italian like and one veering toward Bulgarians? I'm bad with these things so don't quote me. :)


I found this map, which I think might help in understanding that jumble in the leak.

d50cMfc.png


As for "Germanic" ancestry, I don't know, but I don't think much more than that, at least not in those three provinces, because they didn't experience the migration of northern Italians, i.e. the "Lombards" who were sent to Sicily to Latinize it in both language and religion.

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.
 
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.
 
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).
 
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.

There were a number of tribes that have lived in S. Italy before the Osco-Umbrian expansion. The Oenotrians and their mythical ruler Italus are interesting for instance.
 
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.

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.
 
There is no fixed rule saying that if one tribe invaded another lands that the loser was wiped out or its customs and language replaced

The viking danes took Normandy, ruled it for a very long time, but did not enforce it's viking customs or language on the people , but they ,the vikings gave way to the norman language and customs

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.
 

This thread has been viewed 326304 times.

Back
Top