The Arrival of Steppe & Iranian Related Ancestry in Islands of West Mediterranean

The Moroccan_EN used in the paper I think, as virtually every other do, was "found quite Greek-like" but there must have been a mistake, and was used just to capture the small north african in Sicilians.
About Iran_N, I don't think that it came from a pure source, but that it came with Anatolian mixed with it, with no additional Lavant_N, because the latest study modelled Anatolian since the calcolithic as a two way mixture, and they did check whether using Levant_N gives better results.

As for your model, still I have my issues: talking precisely about Sicilians, the samples is ridicolously small ( six, but three per group) and I don't know where those are from ( I asked this question also in the other thread), and the big variability of Levant_N ( there are one with 0 or 3 and other with 10) makes me wonder even more, because as far as I know there hasn't been found such a hetereogenity in the Sicilian gene pool. As long as you use them as " a guesswork", you can't do better because you can't work with what you don't have, but when you suggest that these are better than professional studies that used dozens if not hundreds of samples, then I find it hard to accept such a suggestion.

You're being a bit too optimistic if you really think all professional studies use dozens if not hundreds of samples, but okay, at least a few do.

And, no, the variation is actually just because not all samples pick ancestry from Tepecik_Citflik and Kumtepe instead of Levant_N. Besides, 0-3% to 10-12% is not that much structure at all when you consider this is Levant_N (which is already much closer to Anatolia_N than Natufian), so it won't make individuals drift too much from each other in such low proportions, let alone entire populations (because genetic structure mainly considers average regional or at least social e.g. caste samples, not individual variation).


Also the paper about Crete, or their position on a PCA, suggests that they do not have more Levant_N ancestry than their ancestors since the neolithic, since they fall west of the straight line that runs from Greece_N and Iran_N, in fact they are either closer to Europe and to the caucasus compared to their Minoan ancestors, not closer to the Levant.

Of course that will not appear on a PCA. It's pretty minor ancestry and mostly offset by the much higher CHG/Iran_N and ANF ancestries. PCA is not everything. It's part of the evidences and will only show the broad and really significant trends.

In any case, I didn't say Minoans had significantly more Levant_N than previous samples from Greece, so I don't know what you are arguing about. I only mentioned Cypriots and Anatolian Greeks in later, post-Minoan times.

And frankly, I do not think that unsubstantiated opinions can play any role in a discussion about the best interpretation of the data we have: when we have new samples that support your opinion, than we might start to give it weight or even be "obliged to accept it in the face of evidence".

Okay, then end of discussion. I'm out. Too many lines have already been written, too many opinions have already been extensively explained (though you may say all the both amateurish AND professional models, graphs, PCAs and excerpts of published studies I included in my posts are totally unsubstantiated), and after all is said and done there are so many other even more interesting subjects to keep reading and writing about! We'll see what future holds for us. (y)
 
YGORCS: I think you and do agree, that if Morocco_LN can't be modeled admixture wise the way it is shown in Fernandes et al 2020 to model modern Sicilians, it is totally not a plausible source. That was the point I was making when I commented when it was at bioRxiv. So if it is roughly 30% Ancient Berber or Ancient NA, no way it works.

Yes, of course.
 
It's still the same thing, though. It's just that the Levant_N is now subsumed into Anatolia_N, because in the second model it includes all the somewhat Levant-shifted Neolithic Anatolian individuals. Two different ways to show the very same thing, nothing else. Now, what really needs to be investigated is when, where and if EEF became more Tepecik-Ciftlik (that is, with extra Levant_N and CHG/Iran_N) instead of overwhelmingly Barcin_N as most of the early samples are. (y):wary2:

No, not the same thing at all, because your hypothesis, to which you held in the face of all the academic papers finding no such "Levantine" component, and everyone here pointing out of the flaws in your argument, has always been that the "Levantine" you found in Southern Italians and Sicilians was from a specific gene flow sometime between the end of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age.

Now it's obvious that you were wrong, and what you found is at least in part just the variation in the Anatolian Neolithic which arrived in Europe, with perhaps part of it arriving in a later gene flow which arrived just before the Chalcolithic, as we can see in "The Iceman" and Remedello, which I've been pointing out for ten years, for all the good it did me.

It's so insignificant that the researchers don't give it head room, but it seems to be of extreme importance to you.

If there was indeed some additional "extra" Levantine admixture, the only way we'll really know is when we have proximate samples from the relevant time periods.

Otherwise, it was "much ado about nothing".

Sometimes, when you've been wrong, it's best to just admit you were wrong. All the verbiage in the world isn't going to change that.
 
No, not the same thing at all, because your hypothesis, to which you held in the face of all the academic papers finding no such "Levantine" component, and everyone here pointing out of the flaws in your argument, has always been that the "Levantine" you found in Southern Italians and Sicilians was from a specific gene flow sometime between the end of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age.

Now it's obvious that you were wrong, and what you found is at least in part just the variation in the Anatolian Neolithic which arrived in Europe.

It's so insignificant that the researchers don't give it head room, but it seems to be of extreme importance to you.

Sometimes, when you've been wrong, it's best to just admit you were wrong. All the verbiage in the world isn't going to change that.

You clearly misinterpreted what I was saying all this time just like others here. So, I won't admit I am wrong since in the end you yourself and several others conceded that, indeed, a gene flow from a source with more Levant_N, even if already heavily diluted amongst other ancestral components. If the change was from more Barcin-like to Tepecik-like, well, then some non-negligible change did happen after all, and that minor Levant_N signal was onto something, which obviously never had to have come straight from the Levant.
You and others seem to think that by acquiring more Levant_N-related ancestry (as I worded my understanding several times) I was necessarily implying direct gene flow from the Levant. But if you could only think of that possibility, then it's your problem, not mine, because a change did happen, and it may have involved a lot of different scenarios, one of which I specifically and explicitly suggested could be simply an EEF-like source with more Levant_N since the beginning of this discussion hundreds of posts earlier. So, no, I was not wrong. You and other Eupedia members simply didn't want to understand what I was saying because apparently you were all too focused on the "Levantine people" part of the subject, instead of the Levant_N-related admixture, which is obviously not the same thing (and obviously thousands of years earlier than the much more mixed and dynamic Bronze Age) and simply pointed to some kind of change that involved a slightly more Levant-shifted source. Some kind of change, not necessarily one only admixture event, not necessarily from the Levant. If you thought that could only have come via Levantines in some massive flow, then that's with you and your preconceptions about what other people must be "reeeeally" aiming to say, because I explicitly hypothesized several different (and maybe even cumulative) population sources since the start of this.

And I also must say: so kind of you to describe my effort to write substantiated and well explained posts here as "verbiage". I'll keep that sarcastic advice in further activity in this forum, as it seems it's not worth the time to try to explain in detail what I think and why I think. Good to know it, as time is always precious. ;)
 
You're being a bit too optimistic if you really think all professional studies use dozens if not hundreds of samples, but okay, at least a few do.

And, no, the variation is actually just because not all samples pick ancestry from Tepecik_Citflik and Kumtepe instead of Levant_N. Besides, 0-3% to 10-12% is not that much structure at all when you consider this is Levant_N (which is already much closer to Anatolia_N than Natufian), so it won't make individuals drift too much from each other in such low proportions, let alone entire populations (because genetic structure mainly considers average regional or at least social e.g. caste samples, not individual variation).




Of course that will not appear on a PCA. It's pretty minor ancestry and mostly offset by the much higher CHG/Iran_N and ANF ancestries. PCA is not everything. It's part of the evidences and will only show the broad and really significant trends.

In any case, I didn't say Minoans had significantly more Levant_N than previous samples from Greece, so I don't know what you are arguing about. I only mentioned Cypriots and Anatolian Greeks in later, post-Minoan times.



Okay, then end of discussion. I'm out. Too many lines have already been written, too many opinions have already been extensively explained (though you may say all the both amateurish AND professional models, graphs, PCAs and excerpts of published studies I included in my posts are totally unsubstantiated), and after all is said and done there are so many other even more interesting subjects to keep reading and writing about! We'll see what future holds for us. (y)

OK, I agree: we have all learnt something from this discussion, we haven't found a "common ground" but it is always a possibility when debating, and I also think that the last word will come when we have more samples and papers.
However, I used "unsubstantiated" to refer specifically to the idea that the Greek colonization brought significant Levant_N, because we do not have any indication of that (from accademic paper, and I also think that they would have pointed to such a possibility if they had any ground).
 
OK, I agree: we have all learnt something from this discussion, we haven't found a "common ground" but it is always a possibility when debating, and I also think that the last word will come when we have more samples and papers.
However, I used "unsubstantiated" to refer specifically to the idea that the Greek colonization brought significant Levant_N, because we do not have any indication of that (from accademic paper, and I also think that they would have pointed to such a possibility if they had any ground).

We only have Mycenaean and Minoan samples. Wait till we have Anatolian Greek and Cypriot samples and we'll see. Also, you're contradicting yourself quite a bit: first you say minor Levant_N probably came via more Levant-shifted Anatolian-derived farmers like those in Neolithic Greece and Pelopponese (also Greece, but more specific group), then you claim it's impossible that population movements from Greece brought part of the minor Levant_N admixture we see in some models when using Barcin_N only. You need to decide what you really think, unless that is a way to imply that Mycenaeans, Minoans and especially later Greeks had nothing to do with the slightly more varied Neolithic Anatolian farmers that settled in the Aegean area since the Neolithic (which I don't think you want to do).
 
You clearly misinterpreted what I was saying all this time just like others here. So, I won't admit I am wrong since in the end you yourself and several others conceded that, indeed, a gene flow from a source with more Levant_N . You and others seem to think that by acquiring more Levant_N-related ancestry (as I worded my understanding several times) I was necessarily implying direct gene flow from the Levant. But if you could only think of that possibility, then it's your problem, not mine, because a change did happen, and it may have involved a lot of different scenarios, one of which I specifically and explicitly suggested could be simply an EEF-like source with more Levant_N since the beginning of this discussion hundreds of posts earlier. So, no, I was not wrong. You and other Eupedia members simply didn't want to understand what I was saying because apparently you were all too focused on the "Levantine" part of the subject, instead of the Levant_N-related admixture, which is obviously not the same thing and simply pointed out to some kind of change that involved a slightly more Levant-shifted source. If you thought that could only have come via Levantines, then that's with you, because I explicitly hypothesized several different (and maybe even cumulative) population sources.

And I also must say: so kind of you to describe my effort to write substantiated and well explained posts here as "verbiage". I'll keep that sarcastic advice in further activity in this forum, as it seems it's not worth the time to try to explain in detail what I think and why I think. Good to know it, as time is always precious. ;)

Do I really have to go back through the other thread and pull out where you specifically said there was a gene flow sometime between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age?

You saw it as a separate arrival, separate from the Neolithic, and held that it accounted for 10% of the ancestry of Southern Italians and Sicilians, which is no big whoops and undeserving of all this attention, but whatever.

Have the honesty to admit you were wrong for God's sake.

People respect that.
 
We only have Mycenaean and Minoan samples. Wait till we have Anatolian Greek and Cypriot samples and we'll see. Also, you're contradicting yourself quite a bit: first you say minor Levant_N probably came via more Levant-shifted Anatolian-derived farmers like those in Neolithic Greece and Pelopponese (also Greece, but more specific group), then you claim it's impossible that population movements from Greece brought part of the minor Levant_N admixture we see in some models when using Barcin_N only. You need to decide what you really think, unless that is a way to imply that Mycenaeans, Minoans and especially later Greeks had nothing to do with the slightly more varied Neolithic Anatolian farmers that settled in the Aegean area since the Neolithic (which I don't think you want to do).
From Antonio 2019 we know that some "south east european" ancestry made its way into Italy, and you yourself said that the BA Sicilian samples can be quite well be modelled with Tepecik( and had already some Iran_N), so I doubt by the time of the Greek colonization south Italy's gene pool was much diverse from Crete/Greece. Still we agree we can only be sure with other samples.
 
Do I really have to go back through the other thread and pull out where you specifically said there was a gene flow sometime between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Have the honesty to admit you were wrong for God's sake.

People respect that.

I keep saying that, Angela. Never denied it, so your rant about it is honestly unnecessary. What part of my post didn't you understand? We were not discussing the entirety of Europe. We were discussing possible changes in genetic makeup shown by comparing the AVAILABLE (obviously, we're not fortune-tellers) aDNA from Sicily between the Neolithic and the IA. Europe may have seen gene flow from different kinds of Anatolian farmers, more specifically parts of the Balkans, but what is ACTUALLY shown by the AVAILABLE aDNA samples from Sicily indicates gene flow after the BA pulling it closer to Tepecik-Ciftlik/Tepecik ANF than Barcin ANF. Did I say that came from the Levant and could only come via Levantine migrations? No, I didn't. Did I say parts of South Italy and Sicily just couldn't have had that more "eastern" kind of ANF since a long time before those samples show? No, I didn't. I simply said that genetic makeup seems to have expanded more to show in all later samples. Can I be any clearer than that for you, or are you keeping your judgemental and higher-than-thou tone as if my entire character and reputation were at stake in this simple conversation? You really should avoid that, just saying.
 
From Antonio 2019 we know that some "south east european" ancestry made its way into Italy, and you yourself said that the BA Sicilian samples can be quite well be modelled with Tepecik( and had already some Iran_N), so I doubt by the time of the Greek colonization south Italy's gene pool was much diverse from Crete/Greece. Still we agree we can only be sure with other samples.

Yes, as I said before more than twice: the difference was one of quantity, not one of quality. Simply the mostly Barcin-like ANF became mostly or at least much more Tepecik-like. I don't think people should be that surprised by it considering everything we know about Sicily during and after the BA.
 
You saw it as a separate arrival, separate from the Neolithic, and held that it accounted for 10% of the ancestry of Southern Italians and Sicilians, which is no big whoops and undeserving of all this attention, but whatever.

Yes, a separate arrival of population, though of course not completely unrelated to the already settled EEF, in comparison with the earliest Neolithic samples from Sicily itself and Italy more broadly, which were far less Tepecik/Kumtepe-like and, using Barcin_N, had less Levantine affinity (as well as CHG/Iran_N too, of course). More Tepecik-like admixture already increases by the BA and becomes much more significant even in later South Italian-like samples as well as modern Sicilians. Maybe you took the conversation to be about Europe as a whole. No, it was always about Sicily's genetic history specifically. No, I never saw it as a separate arrival of people who were pretty much like Levant_N even in the BA and IA (that's so obvious, frankly). If you've been reading attentively enough, you know that, and if you didn't then you should before laying illegitimate accusations based on your misinterpretations.

Now I'm out of this. Unlike you think, I think you all seem a lot more emotional about this than me, and you definitely do show a much greater concern about the implications of these interpretation than me. I just don't like to keep people who posted replies to me waiting while I silence and don't address their questions and criticisms. That's all. Honestly I don't really care, I just find it a very interesting history topic that I have some opinions about and don't think we should be dogmatic nor get too self-righteous about it especially based on a tiny handful of (often misinterpreted, as I have seen here multiple times) past studies published by an extremely new science that is still developing.

Cheers and take care you all!
 
I think once Lazaridis' pre-print on Dzudzurna finally comes out, there are going to be some rethinking of these models. Considering that Dzudzurna is very similar to Anatolian_N. While Natufian is Dzudzurna, plus Ancestral North African. Perhaps Anatolian_N is an isolated Dzudzurna-like population, and not necessarily a mixture of WHG and Natufian.

I would also ask who the hell decided Barcin was the "CORE" of the Anatolian Neolithic?

If you read Kilinc et al you certainly don't get that impression AT ALL.

Boncuklu, the "original" HG who adopted farming are described as a primitive group, highly inbred and drifted, and it is pointed out that the trend of the Neolithic was increasing diversification, caused in all likelihood by people bringing in more advanced technology.

For goodness' sakes, when are people going to go back and read the papers before making statements like that.
 
I would also ask who the hell decided Barcin was the "CORE" of the Anatolian Neolithic?

If you read Kilinc et al you certainly don't get that impression AT ALL.

Boncuklu, the "original" HG who adopted farming are described as a primitive group, highly inbred and drifted, and it is pointed out that the trend of the Neolithic was increasing diversification, caused in all likelihood by people bringing in more advanced technology.

For goodness' sakes, when are people going to go back and read the papers before making statements like that.

They're the closest to AHG. I explicitly explained in my post what I meant by "core" in that sense, since it allows us to distinguish how other Anatolian samples differ and why. Read, preferably with some good will and attention, before criticizing.
 
@Palermo Trapani,

You've been reading too much of Sikeliot. If Ygorcs' "latest" model is correct, there's 3% "additional" "Levantine like" ancestry in Sicilians, so I guess all those "Phoenicians/Carthaginians", and Syrian slaves, and whomever else he loves to talk about didn't make a hell of an impact.
 
They're the closest to AHG. I explicitly explained in my post what I meant by "core" in that sense, since it allows us to distinguish how other Anatolian samples differ and why. Read, preferably with some good will and attention, before criticizing.

WHO CARES?

The Anatolian Neolithic which went to Europe was not Boncuklu. They died out, probably because they didn't keep up.

They're irrelevant by every paper ever published.
 
WHO CARES?

The Anatolian Neolithic which went to Europe was not Boncuklu. They died out, probably because they didn't keep up.

They're irrelevant by every paper ever published.

Yes, but so what? I didn't mention Boncuklu. I said Barcin (at least the large majority of the Barcin samples). I think you know from studies that Western and especially Northwestern Anatolia_N are still considered to be by far the main origin of the ANF in EEF. That's partly why Pelopponese_N stands out so clearly, in fact. Unlike most early and middle Neolithic Europeans, its ANF was not almost entirely Barcin-like.
 
Yes, a separate arrival of population, though of course not completely unrelated to the already settled EEF, in comparison with the earliest Neolithic samples from Sicily itself and Italy more broadly, which were far less Tepecik/Kumtepe-like and, using Barcin_N, had less Levantine affinity (as well as CHG/Iran_N too, of course). More Tepecik-like admixture already increases by the BA and becomes much more significant even in later South Italian-like samples as well as modern Sicilians. Maybe you took the conversation to be about Europe as a whole. No, it was always about Sicily's genetic history specifically. No, I never saw it as a separate arrival of people who were pretty much like Levant_N even in the BA and IA (that's so obvious, frankly). If you've been reading attentively enough, you know that, and if you didn't then you should before laying illegitimate accusations based on your misinterpretations.

Now I'm out of this. Unlike you think, I think you all seem a lot more emotional about this than me, and you definitely do show a much greater concern about the implications of these interpretation than me. I just don't like to keep people who posted replies to me waiting while I silence and don't address their questions and criticisms. That's all. Honestly I don't really care, I just find it a very interesting history topic that I have some opinions about and don't think we should be dogmatic nor get too self-righteous about it especially based on a tiny handful of (often misinterpreted, as I have seen here multiple times) past studies published by an extremely new science that is still developing.

Cheers and take care you all!

It's been quite clear to anyone with any brain cells in their heads that the populations of which you're thinking but don't name probably are or include the Phoenicians/Carthaginians, who of course have nothing to do with Southern Italy, so while you might have a shot at using them as a possibility for Sicily, the argument as a whole fails.

I'm not "emotional" about it at all. I'm not Southern Italian or Sicilian myself, so it really doesn't affect my ancestry. It is my husband's ancestry, and I'd bet a substantial sum that he has more than the average amount of "Levantine" or at least Iranian like ancestry in him, which is more than fine with me. Given my tastes in men, maybe that's why I fell in love at first sight. Also, my favorite people after Italians are Ashkenazi Jews, so unlike a lot of people in this hobby, I'd be proud to be related to them.

So, sorry, no one can throw the race card at me. Whatever the motivations of people like those at that italicroots place, my problem with this hobbyist "analysis" has always been an intellectual one. It doesn't hold water. Period.

What I am is irritated that it took so long to get you to see what has been obvious for years and even now you refuse to acknowledge your error.

Even if the hypothesis is one's own, one should have the ability to put one's ego aside and look at the evidence presented by others with as dispassionate a logic as possible, rather than insist that every single population geneticist in the world, as well as the people here, are wrong, and only you are right, particularly when the least bit of common sense should have shown you where you were going wrong.

I acknowledge I get irritated easily when people don't catch on as easily as I think they should or aren't as logical as I think they should be. I'm sorry I show it as much as I do. That doesn't change the facts.

Now I really am out.
 
It's been quite clear to anyone with any brain cells in their heads that the populations of which you're thinking but don't name are the Phoenicians/Carthaginians, who of course have nothing to do with Southern Italy, so while you might have a shot at using them as a possibility for Sicily, the argument as a whole fails.

Haha, I had to laugh at this sentence, sorry for that. As I said before: misinterpretations based on preconceived ideas and expectations, perhaps caused by prior discussions with other totally different people but about broadly the same subject. And, yes, I won't lie: I thought about Phoenicians and especially Carthaginians as a possible PARTIAL source, why not? Isn't the North African signal indicative of something, too? But I never thought only about them. In fact, if you had indeed read what I wrote, I specifically and explicitly said several times that my opinion is that that Levant_N (and also part of the extra CHG/Iran_N) accumulated over time with the arrival of several distinct populations in succession over the history of Sicily, including, e.g., after the LBA, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, other Aegeans, Jews, Romanized Eastern Romans, Byzantines, etc. I even hypothesized that parts of South Italy were already richer in those non-typical EEF admixtures before the LBA, and what happened was simply an expansion from that part of South Italy to other parts of the peninsula and to Sicily.

This is all written there if you read all the posts (I know, too many lines, too much "verbiage", so I get if that passed unseen). Too bad you preferred to be and (as I can see from your last post) remain judgmental. No problem, misunderstandings happen in life. Let's just get on with our lives. :cool-v:
 
The Moroccan_EN used in the paper I think, as virtually every other do, was "found quite Greek-like" but there must have been a mistake, and was used just to capture the small north african in Sicilians.
About Iran_N, I don't think that it came from a pure source, but that it came with Anatolian mixed with it, with no additional Lavant_N, because the latest study modelled Anatolian since the calcolithic as a two way mixture, and they did check whether using Levant_N gives better results.

As for your model, still I have my issues: talking precisely about Sicilians, the samples is ridicolously small ( six, but three per group) and I don't know where those are from ( I asked this question also in the other thread), and the big variability of Levant_N ( there are one with 0 or 3 and other with 10) makes me wonder even more, because as far as I know there hasn't been found such a hetereogenity in the Sicilian gene pool. As long as you use them as " a guesswork", you can't do better because you can't work with what you don't have, but when you suggest that these are better than professional studies that used dozens if not hundreds of samples, then I find it hard to accept such a suggestion.
iu

Also the paper about Crete, or their position on a PCA, suggests that they do not have more Levant_N ancestry than their ancestors since the neolithic, since they fall west of the straight line that runs from Greece_N and Iran_N, in fact they are either closer to Europe and to the caucasus compared to their Minoan ancestors, not closer to the Levant.
And frankly, I do not think that unsubstantiated opinions can play any role in a discussion about the best interpretation of the data we have: when we have new samples that support your opinion, than we might start to give it weight or even be "obliged to accept it in the face of evidence".
Cretans are obviously shifted towards Anatolia in that PCA compared to Mycenaeans at least 20% towards some Anatolians. And one of the two Cretans is shifted 1/3 towards Levantines in the map. Levantines are next to Cypriots:

33016272762_2f3e139a15_b.jpg
 
Cretans are obviously shifted towards Anatolia in that PCA compared to Mycenaeans at least 20% towards some Anatolians. And one of the two Cretans is shifted 1/3 towards Levantines in the map. Levantines are next to Cypriots:

33016272762_2f3e139a15_b.jpg
iu

It is better to compare today's Cretans with their ancestors, and even if they are shifted to north Levant compared to Myceneans, they do not compared to the Minoans. There is a Minoan that is quite "tepecik", but if you look that the Anatolia_N and Greece_N range it still falls inside the imaginary straight line from the most south east Greece_N and the Iran_N. It is a visually estimation but also the paper (lazaridis 2017) modelled Minoans as Anatolian_N and Iran_N.
Futhermore I was referring to south levantines, given that we were talking about additional amount of levant_N (which would pull south east).
 

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