Talk on Ancient Italian/Roman DNA over in Stanford.

Alyan

Regular Member
Messages
208
Reaction score
51
Points
0
https://events.stanford.edu/events/823/82317/

A 12,000-year Genetic History of Rome and the Italian Peninsula

Wednesday, February 6, 2019
12:00 pm
Archaeology Center
Sponsored by:
Archaeology Center


Ancient DNA has become a powerful tool for studying the human past. This talk highlights our team’s multidisciplinary approach to analyzing new genomic evidence from Rome and the Italian Peninsula in the context of the extensive archaeological and historical record of the region. We have built a time series of 134 ancient genomes that spans the last 12,000 years, from the Upper Paleolithic to the present, allowing us to present a contextually-situated discussion of genomic changes through time. This approach allows us to study changes ranging from individual traits of interest, such as lactase persistence, to broad population-level shifts. We see evidence that as Rome grew from a small city to an empire encompassing the entirety of the Mediterranean - or Mare Nostrum, ‘our sea’, as the Romans called it - and beyond, the city of Rome became a mosaic of inhabitants from across the empire and remained so even after the fragmentation of the Western Roman Empire. I will illustrate these general trends with case studies, such as paleogenomic data from Isola Sacra, the necropolis for the port towns of Ostia and Portus, in which contextualizing archaeological and textual evidence have been instrumental in understanding the genetic structure of the Roman population in our study.

Hannah Moots is a PhD Candidate in the Stanford Archaeology Center and the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her research draws on bioarchaeological, paleoenvironmental and genomic lines of evidence to investigate connections between environmental change and human health. Her work examines the recursive relationship biological and cultural changes - such as pathogen burden, mobility patterns, and dietary shifts that came about in the Neolithic transition. She holds an MPhil in Archaeological Science from the University of Cambridge and her past research includes an archaeogenetic analysis of the dispersal of several domesticated crops, including taro (Colocasia esculenta) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), and a paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the aridification of the Saharan Desert over the last 5,000 years at Gobero.

When:
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Where:
Archaeology Center
Tags:

Audience:
General Public, Faculty/Staff, Students, Alumni/Friends
 
Could be interesting.
I hope they won't just broadcast but also publish the study.
I would expect Isola Sacra to have genomes from all over the mediterranean.
 
DNA from the Ostia crypt should be a good representative of Roman/Iron Age Central Italian DNA.
 
Looking forward to this.
 
In a 1000 years would studying ancient DNA from the New York City of 2018 provide a good lens to make inferences about the American population as a whole? Color me a bit skeptical, but we'll see when the paper comes out. I don't know what Reich and Paabo are waiting for.
 
it says new genomic evidence from Rome and the Italian Peninsula

we'll see how the samples are distributed in time and space
 
it says new genomic evidence from Rome and the Italian Peninsula

we'll see how the samples are distributed in time and space

Indeed. That's why I said we'd have to wait and see. I certainly hope she's a competent computational geneticist and not just an anthropologist, and that Spencer Wells isn't involved. Everything he's done recently has been sub-par imo.
 
In a 1000 years would studying ancient DNA from the New York City of 2018 provide a good lens to make inferences about the American population as a whole? Color me a bit skeptical, but we'll see when the paper comes out. I don't know what Reich and Paabo are waiting for.

The fact that the samples come from port cities directly linked to the Roman metropolis also suggests to me that the results of this study should be read carefully. It'll probably indicate the degree of long-distance international travel and how much direct contact Central Italy had with the rest of the Empire and even beyond it, but I don't think it will be a good representation of what most of the population was like, especially as at least ~70% of them lived in rural areas even in such a highly urbanized area.
 
The fact that the samples come from port cities directly linked to the Roman metropolis also suggests to me that the results of this study should be read carefully. It'll probably indicate the degree of long-distance international travel and how much direct contact Central Italy had with the rest of the Empire and even beyond it, but I don't think it will be a good representation of what most of the population was like, especially as at least ~70% of them lived in rural areas even in such a highly urbanized area.

Yes, that's my concern. Something like 13% of the total New York City population is Jewish, but only 1.4% of the U.S. population. You go to Queens, and it could be 25% and up for the Jewish population. This applies to Asians as well. Go up the Hudson to upstate New York or west into Pennsylvania, and it's an entirely different genetic group. These are the kinds of skews which are common.

It may be interesting to know the make-up of the port cities of the Italian peninsula and of Rome itself, just as it was interesting to learn about the SSA people in Britain, or the Romans in Britain, for that matter, but it doesn't tell us how much of their genetic material had an important impact on the genomes of even modern day Lazio, much less the Veneto, as just one example.

Hopefully, she also has contemporaneous genomes from places like the Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Toscana as well. I'd like to see genomes from sites in the south which were settled by the Greeks as well, and a comparison with ancient samples from Greece.
 
We're getting sample DNA from at least Rome. And Rome for much of its history in the republic to empire from all evidence was overall homogeneous (that is, the foreigners were largely slaves who didn't have many children).
 
What's so odd about that? The Romans more or less started Western Civilization.
 
The talk starts today at 12:00 PM. A poster on Anthrogenica said he's going to it and will discuss what he saw there. See also: https://anthrogenica.com/showthread...logy-and-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News-quot/page192

Not sure what I need more, sleep or this study! I don't really expect any surprises, but it would be interesting to see when J2 arrived (I'm guessing 3rd millennium BCE with an expansion of warlike elites from West Asia; I think the spread of J2 during this period and the previous millennium is related to the spread of the Anatolian and Gutian branches of IE (so I actually think Minoan, Etruscan etc. are IE, and that Kura-Araxian J2 should be seen as equally IE as R1b and R1a)), and whether there was some very early R1b-L51 in the South (Gaudo culture etc.) as I'd guess that to be the case.

Z2103 and J2 (obviously only specific branches of J2a and J2b, as J2 is old) have such a magnificent modern-day correlation that I'm puzzled at the lack of J2 in Yamnaya.

Just look at this:

Haplogroup-R1b-Z2103.png


Haplogroup-J2.jpg


I am fully convinced that R1b-M269 was in the Middle East at least as early as the 8.2 ky event, and I am also fully convinced in a Paleolithic diversification of R1 in the Zarzian culture (which has clear links to the Epigravettian). Everything between that, I'm still trying to work out. At the moment, I'm thinking R1b-P297 expanded at the very beginning of the Holocene from the Zagros to the Volga-Urals via the Caspian region, and that R1b-M269 moved back down to somewhere in the Northern Middle East perhaps as a result of the 8.2 ky event, but I'm changing my mind a lot. I definitely think R1b-M269 diversified around the Northern Middle East, though, just not sure whether early R1b-M269 originated there or not.
 
Last edited:
What's so odd about that? The Romans more or less started Western Civilization.

People like Sikeliot and his numerous socks on Anthrogenica, and Davidski/Eurogenes/Generalissimo or whatever he's calling himself now don't give a damn about the Romans and Western Civilization. Well, if Davidski could prove they're clones of Corded Ware he'd be happy to claim them, I guess, just as he wanted to claim the Mycenaeans. He in fact explicitly claimed they would turn out to be just like Corded Ware. That didn't work out so well. :)

They have their own agendas. For their own reasons, personal in one case, Nordicist based on the other, they are desperate to prove that Italians are not "European", or at least not European in the sense of lots of descent from the holy Indo-Europeans. Years ago, on forumbiodiversity Mr. Davidski, or I think it was Polako on that site, opined that all Southern Italians should be kicked out of Europe because they were mongrels. Sikeliot wants them to be Levantine.

It's completely bizarre, but there you have it.

For some reason we attract this kind of garbage. Maybe we disrupt their ideology in some way. Who knows. It's just a shame that it should intrude on what should be intellectual and objective discussions.

I do hope we get the data from this paper, and the paper from Reich/Paabo as well. I've been saying for years that all I have is questions. It's time for some answers.
 
People like Sikeliot and his numerous socks on Anthrogenica, and Davidski/Eurogenes/Generalissimo or whatever he's calling himself now don't give a damn about the Romans and Western Civilization. Well, if Davidski could prove they're clones of Corded Ware he'd be happy to claim them, I guess, just as he wanted to claim the Mycenaeans. He in fact explicitly claimed they would turn out to be just like Corded Ware. That didn't work out so well. :)

They have their own agendas. For their own reasons, personal in one case, Nordicist based on the other, they are desperate to prove that Italians are not "European", or at least not European in the sense of lots of descent from the holy Indo-Europeans. Years ago, on forumbiodiversity Mr. Davidski, or I think it was Polako on that site, opined that all Southern Italians should be kicked out of Europe because they were mongrels. Sikeliot wants them to be Levantine.

It's completely bizarre, but there you have it.

For some reason we attract this kind of garbage. Maybe we disrupt their ideology in some way. Who knows. It's just a shame that it should intrude on what should be intellectual and objective discussions.

I do hope we get the data from this paper, and the paper from Reich/Paabo as well. I've been saying for years that all I have is questions. It's time for some answers.

Yeah, it is rather amusing - Sikeliot loves West Asians, Davidski hates them, and their opposites seem to converge on Italy and Greece.
 
Yeah, it is rather amusing - Sikeliot loves West Asians, Davidski hates them, and their opposites seem to converge on Italy and Greece.

Don't believe Sikeliot's current stories. For years he was Portuguese Princess and lots of other "Iberian" socks on theapricity, bashing the Southern Italians for having more inferior "Near Eastern" ancestry than the Portuguese (and by implication the Spanish) of his mother's people. All you have to know is that he hates his Sicilian father.

Unfortunately, I've been around a long time, so I know where all the skeletons are buried. Their recent PC talk doesn't cut it with me.
 
Ryukendo said:
Presentation by Hannah Moots. No pictures, not allowed. Paper coming out in a couple of months, done with Pinhasi and Pritchard.
134 genomes, spanning 12000s BP to Renaissance and enlightenment. 0.5-3.5X coverage.

Vast majority of sampling sites concentrated in Rome and surrounds, lowlands of Latium around the Tiber River, up to Ostia, almost all restricted to Lazio. Some extend to Abruzzo, South Le Marche, none, or maybe one, in Tuscany, and on the South of Tuscany if that.

Couple of samples from Sardinia.

I'll give a PCA position and a ADMIXTURE description for each time period. Note that the ADMIXTURE only had Iranian, EEF, WHG, EHG and Levant_N, no CHG. Where Iran N appears, it may be a stand-in for CHG. There is something quite puzzling in the list below, mislabeling in the slides? But that doesn't explain it either.

UPPER PALEOLITHIC
All WHG

NEOLITHIC
Mostly EEF, some WHG. Some Iran_N, quite a significant quantity, as much as WHG. PCA position Between Sardinia and Maltese, east of Sardinia, closer to Sardinia than to Maltese

BRONZE AGE (EARLY)
Overlaps modern-day Sardinia, Iran_N percentage declines, WHG and EEF increases
(Note that this represents a Europeanisation of the gene pool!)

IRON AGE TO REPUBLICAN PERIOD (700-20BC)
Note: Separated from previous period by 1000 year gap.
Fewer samples, of those that exist 60% overlap with North Italy, 40% overlap with South Italy and Sicily, centroid of overall cluster in central Italy but no samples occur there, very wide spread.
EHG appears, Levant N Appears for the first time, sporadic and inhomogeneous distribution, Iran_N increases further.

IMPERIAL PERIOD
Dense cluster centroid between Greeks, Cypriots, South Italians/Sicilians, and Syrians, closest to Sicilians. Long tail stretching from central cluster to Syrians and Iraqi Jews. Couple of Northern-shifted samples overlapping N Italy, France, Spain.
Iran_N increases further, Levant N again sporadic and inhomogeneous.

LATE ANTIQUITY
Tight cluster centroid in S Italy, in the same place as in the previous period. Southern tail to Middle East disappears. N Italian, Northern European and NW European outliers exist.

AFTER
Resemble modern central Italians.

Lactase persistence alleles appear abruptly after 0 AD.

Heterozygosity reaches modern level after Iron Age.

No information given on uniparentals.
Isotope information not available yet, no way apart from archaeological context to tell between migrants and locals.

Represents a preliminary effort, more work coming later.

Questions:
Why is Italian Neolithic different from all other European Neolithic??? Eastern shifted with Iranian ancestry since the beginning
Ans: Dunno

Do the different cluster centroids (N, S, S, N again) represent migratory fluxes within Italy and also from outside?
Ans: Probably

More sampling is needed, much more, populations much more inhomogeneous than in other archaeogenetic studies.

That's what he recorded.
 
That's what he recorded.

It would be good if he actually managed to get dates to the nearest 500 years rather than just "Neolithic". I'm going to assume the Iran_N ancestry in the Neolithic he's referring to is actually Chalcolithic.

And his point about an increase of WHG and EEF in the early Bronze Age (i.e. Beaker expansional period) is interesting.

EDIT: Actually from his phrasing, it seems Italian Neolithic was Iran_N from the beginning? THAT would be amazing and totally unexpected, surely that isn't the case right? Out of disbelief, I'm still going to assume that this increase in Iran_N is actually from the Chalcolithic. Presumably, the Rinaldone culture (4th millennium BCE onwards). Iran_N in pre-copper age Italy would be mindblowing.
 
Iron Age results are... interesting too. Especially the part about EHG - I'm trying not to bias myself towards thinking about pigmentation, but this perhaps explains why lots of the patricians were described as having light features. The part about the arrival of Levantine ancestry also seems to play into stereotypes about e.g. Sicilians...

The Imperial period results suggest that lots of the Middle Eastern ancestry in Southern Italians actually comes from migrants from the Roman Empire? The part about Syrians and Iraqi Jews is clearly a reference to the idea that Middle Eastern immigration caused part of this shift (and I suppose the presence of Y DNA e.g. R1a and Q1b in Sicily is a huge giveaway to this idea, as that can only have come from the 2nd millennium BCE at the very earliest (it only arrived in West Asia with the Indo-Iranians).

LOL, somehow this actually seems to play into BOTH Davidski and Sikeliot's fantasies.
 

This thread has been viewed 40310 times.

Back
Top