Albanians = Illyrian

Albanians are shifted towards CHG/Asia Minor. Selection doesn't explain this.

You mean shifted towards Imperial Romans? You are very desperate to disentangle at any point possible Albanians from their heritage. But the crux of your argument being autosomal is very weak.

Very plain and simple fact is that 90% of Albanian Y-Dna is west-balkanic and your argument amounts to saying that our male ancestors have had many greek and slav women since then to shift them a bit south-east.

A very desperate and pathetic endevaour from your end to be honest. Instead of focusing on your own history, all you do is hover above Albanian related topics and play the game of the contrarian and provocateur.

Sad...
 
You mean shifted towards Imperial Romans? You are very desperate to disentangle at any point possible Albanians from their heritage. But the crux of your argument being autosomal is very weak.

Very plain and simple fact is that 90% of Albanian Y-Dna is west-balkanic and your argument amounts to saying that our male ancestors have had many greek and slav women since then to shift them a bit south-east.

A very desperate and pathetic endevaour from your end to be honest. Instead of focusing on your own history, all you do is hover above Albanian related topics and play the game of the contrarian and provocateur.

Sad...

The CHG shift is too strong, and it doesn't affect Bosnians and Croats, who presumably mixed with the local populations. So you'd need an influx of Anatolian women after the Slavs came to Bosnia.
 
The CHG shift is too strong, and it doesn't affect Bosnians and Croats, who presumably mixed with the local populations. So you'd need an influx of Anatolian women after the Slavs came to Bosnia.

They did mix, but not to such a great extent that bosnians and croats would conserve the autosomal profile of the natives.
A place with a big population turnover(Like bosnia/croatia during slavic migrations), would of course be genetically pulled away from the places which didn't have those migrations(Albania etc.). Some components would be diluted more than others due to random selection, CHG could be one of those.
Albanians conserved more of the CHG they got from Romans, due to not being overrun by slavs.

So most of the extra CHG would probably be an artifact from imperial rome and the early eastern roman empire.

Anatolian women are not out of the question either. Although their impact would be much, much smaller(if not even invisible altogether).
My family has personally brought in women a couple of times from Izmir in Turkey, and from Austria, in the course of the last 200 years.
We were albanians before we brought them in, and we were still Albanian afterwards, even though our family may have had a minor rise in CHG due to those women.

The luxury of bringing in exotic women was of course mostly confined to the wealthier families, which is why it wasn't widespread at all to bring in anatolian women.
But selection would make those genes expand even to peasants and the middle class, because these persons with elevated CHG(from anatolian women) would be from wealthy families and would therefore have better healthcare and better reproduction rates due to kids not dying during birth. Their wealth would also make them able to feed more kids and bring more kids towards a succesful future with kids of their own.

In other words:
A few aristocratic families importing a few anatolian women, would be enough for a minor elevation of CHG of a whole small town in the course of 200 years. That town would in turn mix with people from other towns, thus spreading the minor increase in CHG to those towns as well.

But, again, most part of the CHG is probably from the times of the roman empire as Derite pointed out.
 
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They did mix, but not to such a great extent that bosnians and croats would conserve the autosomal profile of the natives.
A place with a big population turnover(Like bosnia/croatia during slavic migrations), would of course be genetically pulled away from the places which didn't have those migrations(Albania etc.). Some components would be diluted more than others due to random selection, CHG could be one of those.
Albanians conserved more of the CHG they got from Romans, due to not being overrun by slavs.

So most of the extra CHG would probably be an artifact from imperial rome and the early eastern roman empire.

Anatolian women are not out of the question either. Although their impact would be much, much smaller(if not even invisible altogether).
My family has personally brought in women a couple of times from Izmir in Turkey, and from Austria, in the course of the last 200 years.
We were albanians before we brought them in, and we were still Albanian afterwards, even though our family may have had a minor rise in CHG due to those women.

The luxury of bringing in exotic women was of course mostly confined to the wealthier families, which is why it wasn't widespread at all to bring in anatolian women.
But selection would make those genes expand even to peasants and the middle class, because these persons with elevated CHG(from anatolian women) would be from wealthy families and would therefore have better healthcare and better reproduction rates due to kids not dying during birth. Their wealth would also make them able to feed more kids and bring more kids towards a succesful future with kids of their own.

In other words:
A few aristocratic families importing a few anatolian women, would be enough for a minor elevation of CHG of a whole small town in the course of 200 years. That town would in turn mix with people from other towns, thus spreading the minor increase in CHG to those towns as well.

But, again, most part of the CHG is probably from the times of the roman empire as Derite pointed out.


So what is your claim here?


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So what is your claim here?


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That if we suppose that it is true when markod says there has been an increase of CHG in the western balkans since the Iron age, that this increase is mostly due to the fact that people from the western balkans were part of the Roman empire(which also saw an CHG increase during imperial times).

Also, that genetic input from asia minor to the balkans was minimal(almost non-existant) during the middle ages and the ottoman empire. And that this minimal genetic influence was mostly due to people bringing in women from asia minor, because when looking at albanian Y-DNA we see that there couldn't really have been many men from asia minor settling on albanian lands.

When we add to this that those asia minor women were mostly from Izmir, we should expect that genetic input from "true" turks was even lower, due to the fact that Izmir genetically were basically just greeks and albanians who also spoke turkish.
 
The CHG shift is too strong, and it doesn't affect Bosnians and Croats, who presumably mixed with the local populations. So you'd need an influx of Anatolian women after the Slavs came to Bosnia.

It is not clear what you are suggesting here? So what CHG shift tells us about Albanians?


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According to our project E-v13 + J2-L283 + R1b are about 75 % at Ghegs, and 50 % at Tosks. Interestingly J2-L283 is only 7 % at Tosks.

Established Illyrians for sure had many other haplogroups too. Like for example J2a influence from Mycenaeans.

EDIT: Now i just noticed that Tosks have more J2a then J2b2.
90%+ of the 3 main Albanian haplogroups in Ghegs last time I checked. The more you move towards the pure Gheg regions, the only haplotypes you will find are J2b2-L283, R1b-L23 and EV13, with minor I1.
 
Long story short, no matter the thousands of facts brought to prove the Illyrian origin, as long as there exist Thracian or Dacian or whatever else "hints", the unfriendly community will always prefer the Thracian/Dacian hypothesis while still acting open-minded and neutral by not completely refuting the Illyrian hypothesis in order to not lose face and credibility.

So anything but Illyrian. They're loyal to their nation and their forefathers who tried so hard to make us late migrants.

If they only visited Albania and paid close attention to phenotypes and then go to Wikipedia to see the faces of all the Roman Emperors of Illyrian or Thracian origin (including some real Romans) they'll understand the striking resemblance and continuation. Obviously this is not "scientific" evidence unlike dear Georgiev and his bs theories about the lack of maritime words despite the fact that his ancestors changed their language at least 4 times.

@markod and @ygorcs, is it your Slavic heritage that makes you (perhaps even subconsciously) so dismissive of anything related to the Illyrians?
Marko is probably Croatian, he is just a South Slav coping with the fact that he's not of Illyrian descent.

Funny thing is, the more we move towards the pure Gheg regions of the north and northwest, the less West Asian & East Med the Albanians there score, without any Slavic admix, but more of a North-Western shift instead.

Most of the West Asian & East Med admix we get in the first place is mediated from the Ancient Greek direction. Makes sense, since Greeks score the highest West Asian & East Med of the entire Balkans.
 
90%+ of the 3 main Albanian haplogroups in Ghegs last time I checked. The more you move towards the pure Gheg regions, the only haplotypes you will find are J2b2-L283, R1b-L23 and EV13, with minor I1.


I'm pretty sure its 75 % at Ghegs and 50 % at Tosks - http://www.gjenetika.com/statistikat/
We got lots of new samples lately.

There is plenty of other haplogroups in Gheg areas...

For example there is our very interesting Dibra R1a cluster, Very very Gheg haplogroup.. Even guy with Gega surname got it..
 
Has anyone considered the fact that Mycenaeans and Minoans had a lot of CHG/Anatolia admix and that simply means it's a local ancient Balkan admix? What makes you think the CHG admix is medieval or from late antiquity?

Even the Iron Age Thracian was Aegean shifted while the Bronze Age Thracian was Scandinavian-like. An average IQ would understand what that means.

We can't use Northern Balkan samples from 2000 BC or earlier and assume Iron Age Illyrians were the same. At that period the arriving IE tribes hadn't fully blended into the local population and within the same region you could probably find a one Steppe shifted and one Anatolian shifted individual.

The second problem is that we don't have samples from Albania itself so why would we use an early pre-Illyrian sample from Croatia to prove the origin of people living in modern Albania.

Shall we not talk about the contribution of one of the most dominant haplogroups in Europe before the IE waves, haplogroup G?

With is I'm not justifying 100% of the CHG admixture but rather the vast majority. Of course there could have been Illyrians and Albanians that brought wives from Asia Minor and further as well as various people settled during the Ottoman Empire, so using the tribal Ghegs would give us a clear idea of the pre-Ottoman Albanians and even late Illyrians.
 
Has anyone considered the fact that Mycenaeans and Minoans had a lot of CHG/Anatolia admix and that simply means it's a local ancient Balkan admix? What makes you think the CHG admix is medieval or from late antiquity?

Even the Iron Age Thracian was Aegean shifted while the Bronze Age Thracian was Scandinavian-like. An average IQ would understand what that means.

We can't use Northern Balkan samples from 2000 BC or earlier and assume Iron Age Illyrians were the same. At that period the arriving IE tribes hadn't fully blended into the local population and within the same region you could probably find a one Steppe shifted and one Anatolian shifted individual.

The second problem is that we don't have samples from Albania itself so why would we use an early pre-Illyrian sample from Croatia to prove the origin of people living in modern Albania.

Shall we not talk about the contribution of one of the most dominant haplogroups in Europe before the IE waves, haplogroup G?

With is I'm not justifying 100% of the CHG admixture but rather the vast majority. Of course there could have been Illyrians and Albanians that brought wives from Asia Minor and further as well as various people settled during the Ottoman Empire, so using the tribal Ghegs would give us a clear idea of the pre-Ottoman Albanians and even late Illyrians.
This would be unthinkable among the anti-Albanian members of these foras. Since our CHG is supposedly from Turko-Arab-Caucas-Shiptar imports from Sicily 1042 AD.
 
Has anyone considered the fact that Mycenaeans and Minoans had a lot of CHG/Anatolia admix and that simply means it's a local ancient Balkan admix? What makes you think the CHG admix is medieval or from late antiquity?

Even the Iron Age Thracian was Aegean shifted while the Bronze Age Thracian was Scandinavian-like. An average IQ would understand what that means.

We can't use Northern Balkan samples from 2000 BC or earlier and assume Iron Age Illyrians were the same. At that period the arriving IE tribes hadn't fully blended into the local population and within the same region you could probably find a one Steppe shifted and one Anatolian shifted individual.

The second problem is that we don't have samples from Albania itself so why would we use an early pre-Illyrian sample from Croatia to prove the origin of people living in modern Albania.

Shall we not talk about the contribution of one of the most dominant haplogroups in Europe before the IE waves, haplogroup G?

With is I'm not justifying 100% of the CHG admixture but rather the vast majority. Of course there could have been Illyrians and Albanians that brought wives from Asia Minor and further as well as various people settled during the Ottoman Empire, so using the tribal Ghegs would give us a clear idea of the pre-Ottoman Albanians and even late Illyrians.
I agree with basically everything in this post.

It would make great sense if there were pockets in the region where people had different ancestries. Like pockets of CHG rich populations, pockets of steppe rich populations, isolated pockets of neolithic populations who had not yet received steppe admixture, etc. etc. And as you say, we already see this in ancient DNA so far. Except the neolithic pockets, but i am sure those will show up too, since the geography of the region would let some populations stay isolated from steppe admixture longer than other populations on the peninsula.

The illyrians would probably only emerge later after a process of semi-homogenization of those populations of the western balkans.

Also what we really really need are some inland + coastal illyrian samples from 800 BC to 500 AD Montenegro, Kosova and Albania. Those samples would really shed some light on how the Illyrian tribes evolved after this homogenization process, and how they evolved during roman rule.
 
I agree with basically everything in this post.

It would make great sense if there were pockets in the region where people had different ancestries. Like pockets of CHG rich populations, pockets of steppe rich populations, isolated pockets of neolithic populations who had not yet received steppe admixture, etc. etc. And as you say, we already see this in ancient DNA so far. Except the neolithic pockets, but i am sure those will show up too, since the geography of the region would let some populations stay isolated from steppe admixture longer than other populations on the peninsula.

The illyrians would probably only emerge later after a process of semi-homogenization of those populations of the western balkans.

Also what we really really need are some inland + coastal illyrian samples from 800 BC to 500 AD Montenegro, Kosova and Albania. Those samples would really shed some light on how the Illyrian tribes evolved after this homogenization process, and how they evolved during roman rule.
Yeah, the Early Bronze Age Yamnaya samples from Ukraine alone were 25% CHG, and that's a big deal aswell.
 
Yeah, the Early Bronze Age Yamnaya samples from Ukraine alone were 25% CHG, and that's a big deal aswell.
Yea they had a good amount of CHG, I don't remember the exact numbers to be honest. But iirc the early bronze age populations of the steppe were primarily a mix of EHG and CHG, probably in varying proportions.
 
I'm pretty sure its 75 % at Ghegs and 50 % at Tosks - http://www.gjenetika.com/statistikat/
We got lots of new samples lately.

There is plenty of other haplogroups in Gheg areas...

For example there is our very interesting Dibra R1a cluster, Very very Gheg haplogroup.. Even guy with Gega surname got it..

Our Dibra cluster is so far the only confirmed Albanian founder effect in R1a. Gega like myself is from Okshtun. It still likely arrived with Proto-Slavic tribes, or carried minimally by Goths in the early middle ages before incubating among Proto-Albanians. It still is a northern barbarian lineage. Even though it took part in Albanian ethnogenesis, it was not around during the Illyrian time frame. Also, so far, it appears anyone in the Dibra cluster is a Gheg. The rest of R1a/I2a1b seems more general and Southern derived. I know 2 Mat samples in CTS1211 may have their own founder effect. Of course none of them tested any further so who knows.

It is important to remember Diber is also under sampled, like many other areas. Regardless if its 75 or 90, it still seems majority of the lineages among Ghegs are paleo-balkan in origin.
 
Also, so far, it appears anyone in the Dibra cluster is a Gheg.

There are no Tosk Dibra cluster results in the project so far, but there are 2 Tosks from two studies that fall in that cluster. There is ALB371fta from Boattini et al and ht147 from Ferri et al. Maybe they are from the Elbasan-Librazhd, maybe Gramsh area, but still south of Shkumbin, which would qualify them as Tosks. But I agree that it does look more common around Diber.
 
Our Dibra cluster is so far the only confirmed Albanian founder effect in R1a. Gega like myself is from Okshtun. It still likely arrived with Proto-Slavic tribes, or carried minimally by Goths in the early middle ages before incubating among Proto-Albanians. It still is a northern barbarian lineage. Even though it took part in Albanian ethnogenesis, it was not around during the Illyrian time frame. Also, so far, it appears anyone in the Dibra cluster is a Gheg. The rest of R1a/I2a1b seems more general and Southern derived. I know 2 Mat samples in CTS1211 may have their own founder effect. Of course none of them tested any further so who knows.

It is important to remember Diber is also under sampled, like many other areas. Regardless if its 75 or 90, it still seems majority of the lineages among Ghegs are paleo-balkan in origin.


Yes i agree, i only mentioned your clade as example as it is found mostly among Ghegs and its neiter R1b v13 or l283. I can give plenty of other examples also. It may be of Proto-Slavic tribes but since becoming Albanian it spread exclusively among Albanians (TMRCA 1200 years).

It is exclusively Albanian Gheg R1a clade nowadays. If you find me any Slav with it and not having earlier separation i will accuse him for being of Albanian origin : )


Most of Albanian E-v13 R1b and J2-L283 clades are most likely Illyrian in origin, however they represent only a tiny fraction of once all of ancient Illyrian lines.
After severe bottlenecks, most of Albanian lines spread in last 1000 - 1500 years. While the rest bottlenecked out of Albanian ethnos thru wars, assimilation, natural disasters or just bad luck with making baby boys..
(for example we can notice this thru ancient Dalmatian sample where its closest relatives are in Italy and then second row of relatives among Albanians, meaning he bottlenecked out completely of Dalmatia where he used to live in ancient time, closest brother clade found shelter in Italy, therefore surviving, and next wave of relatives found among Albanians, naturally, as they are whats left of once ancient Illyrians living in Dalmatia.)
But we can notice this also thru modern living samples like E-v13>PH1204 bottlenecking out of Albanians thru assimilation.

Also, we should differentiate proto-IE with Illyrians, as fully developed Illyrians had for sure Neolithic remains, Phoenician, Celtic, Mycenaean, Sardinian I2a, Italic, Paleolithic remains and others people they encountered and colived with.

For example its known thru history that Celts were invading Macedonia and targeting Greece in 3 century BCE, also many of them settled in Illyrian territories and coolived with Illyrians. Also they were targeted by Illyrians when retreating from Macedonia.. Now where are Celtic haplogroups?

Its not that Illyrians had only 3 haplogroups and its not that Albanians have only 3 haplogroups how some people are trying to represent.

So, once again, about 60 - 70 % of modern Albanian lines are Paleo Balkan in origin, about 10 - 15 % are Slavic in origin, and the rest goes on various groups of people like from Paleolithic remains to modern day encounters.
 
We have Dalmatian, Pannonian and Montenegrin samples, none of which plot with Albanians. Future samples from Kosovo might, but I doubt it ������*♂️
The CHG shift is too strong, and it doesn't affect Bosnians and Croats, who presumably mixed with the local populations. So you'd need an influx of Anatolian women after the Slavs came to Bosnia.

Autosomal PCA plots don't mean much unless you have a very detailed record of ALL the populations that lived in a region and all around it at different moments in time. This is why authors are so careful to only forward limited claims which the data can support. No one can guarantee, for example, that IA Illyrians from Albania would not plot far from BA Croatians.

You claim no matching the two BA Croatians on the plot means there has to be an influx of Anatolian ancestry, but it may very well be that it was these NW shifted BA Croatian samples who were assimilated into a more SouthEastern local population between BA and IA, when the Illyrians, Thracians and all the first historical populations of the Balkans emerge. Here are some PCA projections which make more sense than your argument.

- Bulgaria is the only Balkan area where we have samples from both BA and IA. So we can compare them, thinking of IA as a mixture of local and newcomers of the Bronza Age. Look at the first plot, the possible local Balkan position we get from that is not too far from Sardinians, probably close to Anatolia, which makes sense.

PCA plot BA-IA-modern.jpg
- We can use this local Balkan population position to estimate IA Croatia as a mix of BA Croatia & local Balkan.
- Considering EEF ancestry increases from NorthWest towards SouthEast, IA Albania and IA Bulgaria should be close to IA Croatia, a bit more SouthEastern.
- We can now model modern Albanians as IA Albania + Medieval Slavs, who should be close to Belgorod: perfect fit.
PCA plot BA-IA-modern 2.jpg

Did we prove anything? No, because we don't know about the autosomal profiles of dozens of populations that passed through, or settled the Balkans, or even lived near it. Until we get a full record of autosomal data for all the peoples who lived in the Balkans and around it, from BA to today, we have to rely mainly on uniparental markers for inferences on modern populations.
 
There are no Tosk Dibra cluster results in the project so far, but there are 2 Tosks from two studies that fall in that cluster. There is ALB371fta from Boattini et al and ht147 from Ferri et al. Maybe they are from the Elbasan-Librazhd, maybe Gramsh area, but still south of Shkumbin, which would qualify them as Tosks. But I agree that it does look more common around Diber.

You’re right. Completely forgot about and boattini Tosk match. There was also a Gheg in that study. I didn’t know about the Tosk from Ferri Et al. Perhaps it’s more common in Diber and spread from this region with some going south?
 

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