Population structure in Italy using ancient and modern samples

[MOESAN]

Same remark about subclades of other Y-haplos, in fact.

 

[Jovialis]

Moreover, why would Roman Anatolians/Levantines have relocated to Apulia/Basilicata etc. where their signal is strongest. It makes no sense.

The people who settled those regions must have thought it preferrable to live as poor mountain shepherds rather than stay in their previous homes.

Levant_N is about half Anatolian_N, half Natufian-like (brown), which I would assume is connected to North African. Which Puglia has a very weak to no (non-visible) signal for. Moreover, Basilicata is SItaly2 which is a bit different from Puglia (SItaly3). Furthermore, Puglia is the most Anatolian_BA like:

 

[Angela]

As I said, I've been reviewing notes I had made of the material in "Carthage Must Be Destroyed", in light of years of commentary that a "Levantine" signal in Southern Italians/Sicilians, came from Phoenicians/Carthaginians.

I'm not going to quote whole pages. Anyone is at liberty to pick up the book at amazon or from a library and check my conclusions. I assure you they are accurate.

A major point made by the author is that, as I've always maintained, the Phoenician colonies were entirely different from many of the Greek ones. The "Phoenicians" were "not" conquered by the Assyrians and driven out of their homes. Rather, they were "used" by the Assyrians and whoever else came to power in the region to conduct trade for them. It was because of the increasing pressure by the Assyrians to provide them with metals that the Phoenicians went west to establish colonies.

Their only "colony" on the Italian mainland was at Pithecusa near Neapolis, which, as was their wont, was located on a small island where they maintained markets and some manufacturies. Of the small population on that island, archaeologists estimate about 20% of that small population was actually Phoenician in origin. That's it for mainland Italy.

Now, there were, of course, in every port city in the Mediterranean, including in Etruria and Rome and Massalia and on and on, merchants of Phoenician, and Punic, and Greek, and Egyptian and every other nationality. Likewise, there were Venetian and Genovese and Lombard merchants and bankers all over Medieval central and Northern Europe. Is anyone going to seriously propose that they substantially changed the genetic signature of those countries?

As for the idiocy of suggesting that because Carthage signed a trade agreement with Etruscans and even Latins, that means there was a mass influx of Carthaginians into mainland Italy, I'm almost at a loss for words. Three big trading cultures, the "Punics", the Greeks, the Etruscans, and later the Latins were all present in the Mediterranean at the same time. When it was convenient they tried to cooperate, or to carve out territories belonging to one group or another in order to prevent conflict. Think of it in terms of China or Russia and the U.S. for goodness' sakes. You get to have your sphere of influence, your trading partners, and I'll have mine.

They tried it, it didn't work, and eventually wars broke out. Please do at least skim through this book and you'll understand this period of history in a much more nuanced way.

There were settlements in Sardinia and Spain as well, again established on ports or islands for the shipping of metals they found in the interior. The ports in southern Spain, in particular, can be compared to, let's say, The Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, as a place to ship and trade goods, farm land so as to be able to replenish supplies on your ships etc.

Concentrating on Italy, since that is the topic of this thread, we can see that in Sardinia their imprint geographically and culturally is much stronger than in mainland Italy, yet there is no Levant Neolithic signal in Sardinians in the same amateur runs that find it in Sicilians and Southern Italians.

Let's turn to Sicily. The only Phoenician/Punic settlements in Sicily were in the far northwestern corner, in three small settlements. Their attempts to expand their influence were stymied, according to the author of this exhaustive text, by a "deluge" of Greek migrants (his words, not mine). He also says, by the way, that unlike the "Punics", "the Greek colonial modus operandi often involved the violent expulsion of indigenous communities."

So, I would think any reasonable person would agree that the long proposed and defended "theory" that the Phoenicians/Carthaginians living in northwest Sicily, clearly small in number, considering the number and size of their "colonies" somehow managed to infiltrate their genes not only all over Sicily but across the water into all of Southern Italy is highly unlikely, to put it more kindly than it deserves.

So, where does that leave us in terms of the Punics as possible candidates for this "extra" Levantine Neo ancestry. The preferred idea is always slavery. OK. Rome did certainly take "Carthaginian" soldiers and sailors as slaves. The problem is that it's highly doubtful even the majority of the Carthaginian troops were actually Carthaginians. They used Libyans, Spaniards, Cisalpine Gauls and on and on. There weren't enough Carthaginians to man these large armies.

In the conflict over Himera in Spain, the Carthaginian troops included "large numbers of mercenaries from across the central and western Mediterranean, including Libya, Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica." These forces were further supplemented by those of Anaxilas, the Greek tyrant of Rhegium in southern Italy." Pg. 115. The defeat of this force was so total that "only a few bedraggled survivors made it back to Africa to bring news of the disaster." The forces for the next war on Sicilian soil were mostly Libyan levies and Iberian mercenaries. Pg. 122. According to the author, Carthage had "no permanent presence" in Sicily. In a subsequent war with mostly North African and Carthaginian troops, half of them died of plague. The rest managed to get a treaty with the Sicilian city states of western and central Sicily to pay tribute to Carthage. Under Dionysius of Siracusa, the Punics present in the city were expelled from the city. "Across Greek Sicily, towns and cities were now purged of their Punic inhabitants in an ugly orgy of ethnic cleansing that included atrocities and massacres." pg. 117. The last Punic outpost of Motya was totally destroyed and almost all their inhabitants, including women and children, were slaughtered.

In later periods, when he took on Rome, Hannibal, for example, employed not only lots of Iberian mercenaries, but Gallic ones, Cisalpine Gauls, my own Ligures/Apuani, Campanians, and even lots of Greeks. Indeed, some of his closest advisors were Greeks, and he had himself been schooled in the Greek classics and spoke Greek. There had also been Greek wives in the "royal" geneaology. Amazingly they apparently even had Scythian mercenaries.

As for the fate of the mercenary soldiers used by the Carthaginians, their fate, other than death, of course, varied. Many were enslaved, but the actual percentage or real "Punics" in their ranks is anybody's guess in my opinion. At the end of the First Punic War with Rome, one of the terms of the treaty was that Carthage had to evacuate all of its forces from Sicily. That was a master stroke. Once in North Africa they were an endless headache to the Carthaginians as they all demanded to be paid at once. These mercenaries almost led to the extinction of Carthage.

This was the situation with all the Carthaginian forces in all their great battles, so I would be very wary of assuming that the importation of some enslaved Carthaginian troops necessarily meant that they carried any actual "Punic" ancestry, or even North African ancestry.

That's over and beyond the fact that I don't know why they would all have been sent only to southern Italy and Sicily.

In addition, many fit men would have gone to the galleys and mines, young, attractive girls to brothels. Now, some would indeed become house slaves, some might be manumitted and start families. I just have no idea how you quantify the numbers involved or where they served and were manumitted.

I'll end with the destruction of Carthage itself. It was looted, sacked and burned to the ground. Those inhabitants who didn't die were indeed sent to the slave marts. By the end there were supposedly on 50,000 left alive:

"An estimated 50,000 surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery and the city was then leveled." I can find no information as to where precisely they were sent. As I said above, that most became house slaves who would procreate before or after manumission is highly unlikely. The Romans were not very kind to their enemies, and their mines, manufacturing centers, and galleys just ate up slaves. Some did, though, I'm sure.

I'm on my way out so I can't go into detail about another claim I just recently heard about, i.e. that this Levantine signal is because of the conquest of Syria. Syria was annexed in 64 BC. If it turns out that some of the "Southern Italian" like people of Rome who will be discussed in the Moots paper also have some of this purported signal, then that's a nonstarter. Even if it's only in the people of Pompei, that's 79 AD. In that short a period there were so many Syrian slaves, all deliberately sent only to southern Italy, to leave this kind of imprint?

I don't know the answers folks, but there are serious problems with these proposals.

 

[davef]

^^ I can't upvote this post enough

 

[torzio]

As to prevent confusion in this thread


Phoenicians where not in the north levant ...........that area was Luwian/Hittite at the time of Phoenician adventures

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

Luwian was spoken in northern levant until 600 BC

 

[markod]

Levant_N is about half Anatolian_N, half Natufian-like (brown), which I would assume is connected to North African. Which Puglia has a very weak to no (non-visible) signal for. Moreover, Basilicata is SItaly2 which is a bit different from Puglia (SItaly3). Furthermore, Puglia is the most Anatolian_BA like:

I think the Levant_BA component that Ygorcs and others found is contained in Anatolia_BA. The Luwian and Hittite samples had it, too.

 

[Angela]

I think the Levant_BA component that Ygorcs and others found is contained in Anatolia_BA. The Luwian and Hittite samples had it, too.

I had made the mistake of going to Eurogenes and anthrogenica and found the same old misstatements and misunderstandings. That's why the rather forceful post. It wasn't a response to Ygorcs at all, whom I very much respect.

I don't have the answers, as I hope I made clear. A lot depends on the dating of the actual samples both from what I think is a new paper and from the Moots paper, and the analysis of those samples. I'd also really like to see samples from Neolithic and Copper Age and Bronze Age Southern Italy.

Whatever the actual theory proposed it also has to explain this "extra" Levant Neolithic in the Greek islands.

As for the ancient Phoenicians, their closest modern proxy are the Christian Lebanese. Their base was in coastal Canaan, in between Syria and Israel. The most successful of the city states was Tyre.

For the Carthaginians it very much depends on the time period. The elites were originally strictly from Phoenicia. As time passed there was some intermarriage with Greeks and at a certain period Numidians, although there was also great conflict with both groups. I think it's a good bet that there was a substantial Libyan element in the general population.

In looking over this "leaked" PCA it seems a little dodgy. What academic paper wouldn't distinguish between Spaniards and the various Italian groups? Did someone hack a preliminary PCA or is it really "leaked"?

 

[Ygorcs]

I think the Levant_BA component that Ygorcs and others found is contained in Anatolia_BA. The Luwian and Hittite samples had it, too.

I had also thought that too, but for some reason the Anatolia BA samples available (Isparta, Övaören) do not fit as good proxy populations that would account for that Levant_N ancestry (the Levant_N admixture is also consistently present and way too large in South Italy and Sicily in my admittedly tentative models to be entirely attributable to Anatolia_BA, unless the genetic replacement on behalf of Anatolia_BA would've been massive). In my opinion, it might've come with several layers from the East Mediterranean, including BA Anatolians, but also Greeks from the eastern islands of the Aegean (Modern Cretans and Cypriots also have much of it, and even the BA Mycenaean sample appears to have some Levant_N ancestry in my model using many different reference populations), much later also assimilated Jews and Punic people, and even others. It's also possible, I think, that some of that signal in fact refers to North Africans, Egyptians and especially Maghrebis, since North Africa was a major agricultural province in the Roman Empire. But ultimately I think part of that Levantine influence may have appeared as early as the time when the Iranian Chalcolithic ancestry was also spreading to Southern Europe, in the CA or EBA. We'll see in future studies.

P.S.: Btw this is what I get for Mycenaean Greeks. As you say, the Levant_N in their case seems to be explained by Anatolian BA input.

[1] "distance%=1.6713 / distance=0.016713"

GRC_Mycenaean

Greece_N 42.75

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 19.70

Balkans_N 16.40

Yamnaya_Ukraine 7.25

Maykop 5.30

Levant_N 4.00

Remedello_BA 3.15

Catacomb 1.45

[1] "distance%=1.6109 / distance=0.016109"

Mycenaean

Greece_N 38.70

Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren 19.00

Balkans_N 11.20

Beaker_Sicily_no_steppe 10.30

Yamnaya_Ukraine 9.65

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 7.65

Maykop 3.50

 

[Mavors]

Regarding Levant_N in Sardinia, the recent paper on Nuragic Sardinians models moderns as all having various amounts of east Mediterranean input proxied by Lebanese(can't post images yet, it's the supplementary figure 12 of "Population history from the Neolithic to present on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia: An ancient DNA perspective", discussed elsewhere). I realize it isn't much, and I assume the HGDP and similar public academic samples are from the interior which has even less than Campidano/Carbonia according to this, but technically it should be there to some degree; Lebanese, correct me if I'm wrong, should have a sizeable amount of Levant_N, no?

 

[Angela]

I had also thought that too, but for some reason the Anatolia BA samples available (Isparta, Övaören) do not fit as good proxy populations that would account for that Levant_N ancestry (the Levant_N admixture is also consistently present and way too large in South Italy and Sicily in my admittedly tentative models to be entirely attributable to Anatolia_BA, unless the genetic replacement on behalf of Anatolia_BA would've been massive). In my opinion, it might've come with several layers from the East Mediterranean, including BA Anatolians, but also Greeks from the eastern islands of the Aegean (Modern Cretans and Cypriots also have much of it, and even the BA Mycenaean sample appears to have some Levant_N ancestry in my model using many different reference populations), much later also assimilated Jews and Punic people, and even others. It's also possible, I think, that some of that signal in fact refers to North Africans, Egyptians and especially Maghrebis, since North Africa was a major agricultural province in the Roman Empire. But ultimately I think part of that Levantine influence may have appeared as early as the time when the Iranian Chalcolithic ancestry was also spreading to Southern Europe, in the CA or EBA. We'll see in future studies.

P.S.: Btw this is what I get for Mycenaean Greeks. As you say, the Levant_N in their case seems to be explained by Anatolian BA input.

[1] "distance%=1.6713 / distance=0.016713"

GRC_Mycenaean

Greece_N 42.75

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 19.70

Balkans_N 16.40

Yamnaya_Ukraine 7.25

Maykop 5.30

Levant_N 4.00

Remedello_BA 3.15

Catacomb 1.45

[1] "distance%=1.6109 / distance=0.016109"

Mycenaean

Greece_N 38.70

Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren 19.00

Balkans_N 11.20

Beaker_Sicily_no_steppe 10.30

Yamnaya_Ukraine 9.65

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 7.65

Maykop 3.50

Ygorcs, I'm not sure about this, but didn't some of the papers say that Greek Neolithic didn't actually impact Greece very much?

Also, could you explain why you include populations like Remedello or Beaker Sicily no steppe?

 

[Jovialis]

I had also thought that too, but for some reason the Anatolia BA samples available (Isparta, Övaören) do not fit as good proxy populations that would account for that Levant_N ancestry (the Levant_N admixture is also consistently present and way too large in South Italy and Sicily in my admittedly tentative models to be entirely attributable to Anatolia_BA, unless the genetic replacement on behalf of Anatolia_BA would've been massive). In my opinion, it might've come with several layers from the East Mediterranean, including BA Anatolians, but also Greeks from the eastern islands of the Aegean (Modern Cretans and Cypriots also have much of it, and even the BA Mycenaean sample appears to have some Levant_N ancestry in my model using many different reference populations), much later also assimilated Jews and Punic people, and even others. It's also possible, I think, that some of that signal in fact refers to North Africans, Egyptians and especially Maghrebis, since North Africa was a major agricultural province in the Roman Empire. But ultimately I think part of that Levantine influence may have appeared as early as the time when the Iranian Chalcolithic ancestry was also spreading to Southern Europe, in the CA or EBA. We'll see in future studies.

P.S.: Btw this is what I get for Mycenaean Greeks. As you say, the Levant_N in their case seems to be explained by Anatolian BA input.

[1] "distance%=1.6713 / distance=0.016713"

GRC_Mycenaean

Greece_N 42.75

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 19.70

Balkans_N 16.40

Yamnaya_Ukraine 7.25

Maykop 5.30

Levant_N 4.00

Remedello_BA 3.15

Catacomb 1.45

[1] "distance%=1.6109 / distance=0.016109"

Mycenaean

Greece_N 38.70

Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren 19.00

Balkans_N 11.20

Beaker_Sicily_no_steppe 10.30

Yamnaya_Ukraine 9.65

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 7.65

Maykop 3.50

What population is used for "Southern Italy". It isn't necessarily a homogeneous place, as the admixture chart shows.

 

[markod]

I had also thought that too, but for some reason the Anatolia BA samples available (Isparta, Övaören) do not fit as good proxy populations that would account for that Levant_N ancestry (the Levant_N admixture is also consistently present and way too large in South Italy and Sicily in my admittedly tentative models to be entirely attributable to Anatolia_BA, unless the genetic replacement on behalf of Anatolia_BA would've been massive). In my opinion, it might've come with several layers from the East Mediterranean, including BA Anatolians, but also Greeks from the eastern islands of the Aegean (Modern Cretans and Cypriots also have much of it, and even the BA Mycenaean sample appears to have some Levant_N ancestry in my model using many different reference populations), much later also assimilated Jews and Punic people, and even others. It's also possible, I think, that some of that signal in fact refers to North Africans, Egyptians and especially Maghrebis, since North Africa was a major agricultural province in the Roman Empire. But ultimately I think part of that Levantine influence may have appeared as early as the time when the Iranian Chalcolithic ancestry was also spreading to Southern Europe, in the CA or EBA. We'll see in future studies.

P.S.: Btw this is what I get for Mycenaean Greeks. As you say, the Levant_N in their case seems to be explained by Anatolian BA input.

[1] "distance%=1.6713 / distance=0.016713"

GRC_Mycenaean

Greece_N 42.75

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 19.70

Balkans_N 16.40

Yamnaya_Ukraine 7.25

Maykop 5.30

Levant_N 4.00

Remedello_BA 3.15

Catacomb 1.45

[1] "distance%=1.6109 / distance=0.016109"

Mycenaean

Greece_N 38.70

Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren 19.00

Balkans_N 11.20

Beaker_Sicily_no_steppe 10.30

Yamnaya_Ukraine 9.65

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 7.65

Maykop 3.50

Yes, the East Mediterranean component is rather significant, that's why I suggested earlier in the thread that Greek settlers were an implausible source. We still have no samples from the entire coastal region between southern- and eastern Anatolia and the north-western extent of the Mesopotamian plain in Syria. I'd think that some fitting source population will be found there eventually.

I do not understand why you'd would think the Near Eastern admixture would have come later, though. Firstly, there was no good reason to migrate to rural regions of southern Italy, with the exception of wealthy Sicily of course (but there the Near Eastern signal is diminished). As for slavery, during the expansions of the Late Republic for 100 000 purported Jewish slaves there were 1 000 000 Celtic slaves, 500 000 Dacian slaves, 150 000 German slaves and an equal number from Epirus. Had the slaves contributed more than an insignificant amount of autosomal admixture to the ancestors of southern Italians, the latter would most likely plot in Central Europe nowadays.

 

[Angela]

As I said, a lot is going to depend on the dates of the samples, as well as their context, of course.

If the "end" date is the samples from Pompeii, that's 79 AD, so early Empire.

In the Republic up to 79 A.D. there were repeated battles against other peoples on the Italian peninsula, the Gauls, the people of Epirus, Carthaginians, Celt-Iberians, Macedonians, Illyrians, Greeks, Numidians, Gauls again, Germans, the peoples of "Asia Minor" including Pontus, or Anatolia, the Cilicians of Anatolia, the Syrians, Gauls again, Germans again, and the British.

I have no idea who went where, or how many captured people were in situations where they could reproduce either before or after manumission. What I don't think happened is that all the slaves from Numidia and Anatolia and Syria got sent to southern Italy and Greeks, the people of Epirus, Illyria, Gaul and Germany weren't.

The Italian "cline" existed before all of this.

See:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_history_of_the_Roman_military

For the "true" Iron Age Republican samples of presumably the Moots paper, we'd have to go back from their dates to see which conquests should be included. That site would provide the data.

 

[Aaron1981]

The uniparentals should be as follows. If MBA North-Central Italy was modern "North Italian" like, we should see large amounts of R1b-L51+ and downstream arriving in Italy from the North/Central Europe. Possibly Italics? Not sure, need to wait for paper. The Balkan/Anatolian influence should add additional "South Italian" like ancestry to central-southern Italy during the Imperial Age with more E-V13, J2, R1b-L23(xL51), G2 and so forth. The catch is that Italy was previously EEF like, so it will be interesting to see which Y lineages previously existed there. It's possible they are mostly rare today, such as R-V88/I2-M223 ie:Sardinia, but I'd expect some branches of G2 and J2 to also be commong before the MBA movements from the north.

 

[Ygorcs]

@Angela, Ygorcs:

I suppose the Mycenaean samples we have thus far have too much EEF. but if the Greek settlers came from a more exotic place (Asia Minor etc.) that could work, provided the Greeks managed to replace the previous inhabitants. I personally doubt this because to me it looks like the native Fossa culture made up the bulk of the population. We'll see once we get early Iron Age samples.

Why should this East Mediterranean pull be associated with only one population? It might well (and I think that's the most likely scenario) have accumulated over the milennia as it arrived with several different migrations.

 

[Ygorcs]

Ygorcs, I'm not sure about this, but didn't some of the papers say that Greek Neolithic didn't actually impact Greece very much?

Also, could you explain why you include populations like Remedello or Beaker Sicily no steppe?

I think these results shouldn't be taken literally. Greece_N probably means just "something related to the pre-Greek in the Balkans". Anyway, I also used many other EEF samples as possible reference populations, and even including Minoan_Lasithi in one of the calculations, but some consistently significant proportion of Greece_N also appeared as the preferred choice in the model, I don't know why. It's weird if some of the papers already concluded Greek_N didn't impact Greece much. Another intriguing thing is that using the very same reference populations the Mycenaean Greek was much more shifted to Greek_N, while the Empuries Greek was much more shifted to Minoan_Lasithi:

[1] "distance%=1.7667 / distance=0.017667"

Mycenaean

Greece_N 61.70

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 20.50

Catacomb 11.25

Levant_N 4.55

Minoan_Lasithi 2.00

[1] "distance%=2.0212 / distance=0.020212"

Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2

Minoan_Lasithi 55.05

Greece_N 16.40

Catacomb 13.45

Barcin_ChL 11.45

Levant_N 3.65

As for Remedello and Beaker_Sicily_no_steppe I modeled these Mycenaeans that way just to compare them to South Italians and Abruzzo Italians to see their differences better. They might also simply represent here a more "central" South European EEF. The fits became a bit better when I used these samples, so maybe the EEF ancestry in Greeks also included something more "western" (not necessarily from Italy). They don't actually have to mean what the labels say. These are just general guides to understand fundamental patterns in a people's genetic history. I don't think we have the exact sources of ancestry for all these peoples.

 

[Ygorcs]

Yes, the East Mediterranean component is rather significant, that's why I suggested earlier in the thread that Greek settlers were an implausible source. We still have no samples from the entire coastal region between southern- and eastern Anatolia and the north-western extent of the Mesopotamian plain in Syria. I'd think that some fitting source population will be found there eventually.

I do not understand why you'd would think the Near Eastern admixture would have come later, though. Firstly, there was no good reason to migrate to rural regions of southern Italy, with the exception of wealthy Sicily of course (but there the Near Eastern signal is diminished). As for slavery, during the expansions of the Late Republic for 100 000 purported Jewish slaves there were 1 000 000 Celtic slaves, 500 000 Dacian slaves, 150 000 German slaves and an equal number from Epirus. Had the slaves contributed more than an insignificant amount of autosomal admixture to the ancestors of southern Italians, the latter would most likely plot in Central Europe nowadays.

I didn't say the Near Eastern admixture would have come later. It seems to me you're thinking about this is a sort of mutually exclusive choice, i.e. this and that admxture must have come with one specific people, but we are talking about populations that were already very mixed. Admixtures shown in simplified models (they are always simplified, the truth is more complex) can cumulatively increase after wave after wave of migration. I in fact said in my answer: But ultimately I think part of that Levantine influence may have appeared as early as the time when the Iranian Chalcolithic ancestry was also spreading to Southern Europe, in the CA or EBA. We'll see in future studies.

 

[Angela]

I think these results shouldn't be taken literally. Greece_N probably means just "something related to the pre-Greek in the Balkans". Anyway, I also used many other EEF samples as possible reference populations, and even including Minoan_Lasithi in one of the calculations, but some consistently significant proportion of Greece_N also appeared as the preferred choice in the model, I don't know why. It's weird if some of the papers already concluded Greek_N didn't impact Greece much. Another intriguing thing is that using the very same reference populations the Mycenaean Greek was much more shifted to Greek_N, while the Empuries Greek was much more shifted to Minoan_Lasithi:

[1] "distance%=1.7667 / distance=0.017667"

Mycenaean

Greece_N 61.70

Kura-Araxes_Kalavan 20.50

Catacomb 11.25

Levant_N 4.55

Minoan_Lasithi 2.00

[1] "distance%=2.0212 / distance=0.020212"

Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2

Minoan_Lasithi 55.05

Greece_N 16.40

Catacomb 13.45

Barcin_ChL 11.45

Levant_N 3.65

As for Remedello and Beaker_Sicily_no_steppe I modeled these Mycenaeans that way just to compare them to South Italians and Abruzzo Italians to see their differences better. They might also simply represent here a more "central" South European EEF. The fits became a bit better when I used these samples, so maybe the EEF ancestry in Greeks also included something more "western" (not necessarily from Italy). They don't actually have to mean what the labels say. These are just general guides to understand fundamental patterns in a people's genetic history. I don't think we have the exact sources of ancestry for all these peoples.

Thanks, yeah, that all makes sense.

One of the other things I learned in this book on Carthage is more detail on Greece following the Bronze Age collapse: worse than the Dark Ages in Central and Western Europe after the fall of Rome: severe depopulation, little to no trade or manufacturing, and they even forgot how to write.

I wonder if there was a little continued migration from the east? Or, the sample from Spain might have been an islander. We really need more Greek samples from later periods both on the mainland and on the islands. Particularly interesting would be samples from the period of Magna Graecia in the large Greek city states which sent settlers to Sicily and Southern Italy.

Have you done any analysis of people from Crete? Are there available samples from Rhodes or the Dodecanese?

 

[markod]

Why should this East Mediterranean pull be associated with only one population? It might well (and I think that's the most likely scenario) have accumulated over the milennia as it arrived with several different migrations.

Italy is quite unlike other places in Europe in that there isn't that much going on south of the Po. Some coastal settlements sure, but inland there's just the mountain shepherds whose material culture didn't change much throughout the metal ages. No complex cultural layers etc. indicative of migrations.

I'm not an expert on soils and stuff, but I think the reason for this might be that southern Italy isn't exactly prime agricultural estate (again, Sicily excepted). I believe evidence suggests that the Greeks didn't venture much beyond the coasts. They probably saw no real reason to do so, and mobile highland tribes are of course notoriously difficult to deal with.

 

[Jovialis]

Modern clusters vs ancient populations

Much of the ancient populations (i.e. Mycenaean, Minoan) have components that are found in Southern Italians. I do not think it necessarily has to have come by way of Levant_N.

Puglia looks like ABA with some extra of the orange component, from WHG.