The Genetic history of Crete

Angela

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Very interesting:

See:
Petros Drineas et al

"Genetic history of the population of Crete"


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ahg.12328

"Abstract

The medieval history of several populations often suffers from scarcity of contemporary records resulting in contradictory and sometimes biased interpretations by historians. This is the situation with the population of the island of Crete, which remained relatively undisturbed until the Middle Ages when multiple wars, invasions, and occupations by foreigners took place. Historians have considered the effects of the occupation of Crete by the Arabs (in the 9th and 10th centuries C.E.) and the Venetians (in the 13th to the 17th centuries C.E.) to the local population. To obtain insights on such effects from a genetic perspective, we studied representative samples from 17 Cretan districts using the Illumina 1 million or 2.5 million arrays and compared the Cretans to the populations of origin of the medieval conquerors and settlers. Highlights of our findings include (1) small genetic contributions from the Arab occupation to the extant Cretan population, (2) low genetic contribution of the Venetians to the extant Cretan population, and (3) evidence of a genetic relationship among the Cretans and Central, Northern, and Eastern Europeans, which could be explained by the settlement in the island of northern origin tribes during the medieval period. Our results show how the interaction between genetics and the historical record can help shed light on the historical record."
 
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"These Neolithic settlers and subsequent waves of Neolithic migrants (Broodbank & Strasser, 1991; Cherry, 1981; Nowicki, 2008; Weinberg, 1965) established the first advanced European civilization, the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Crete from 3000 to about 1450 B.C.E. (Evans, 1921). The island was subsequently conquered by the Myceneans of mainland Greece (Bennet, 2011; Chadwick, 1976; deFidio, 2008) who ruled from around 1450 to 1100 B.C.E. Homer (1650) describes Crete as a populous island with 90 cities inhabited by several tribes: the Achaeans, who correspond to the people now called Myceneans (Bennet, 2011; Schofield, 2007); the Pelasgians who were the pre‐Hellenic population of the Helladic space (Herodotus, 1999; Strabo, 2006); the Eteocretans (Cretans of the old stock); the Kydonians; and the Dorians (Strabo, 2006). Eteocretans and Kydonians were considered to be autochthonous Cretans while the other tribes originated from Greece (Strabo, 2006). "

"
Following the Hellenistic period during which there is no record of population migrations to Crete, the island was conquered in 69 B.C.E. by the Romans (Sanders, 1982). The almost 400 years of Roman occupation was followed by about 500 years of relatively peaceful rule by the Byzantines (Tsougarakis, 1988) until Crete fell in 827 C.E. to Arab exiles from Andalusia (Brooks, 1913; Christides, 1984; Detorakis, 2015; Vassiliev, 1980). The Arab Emirate of Crete was frequently raided the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, but after 134 years of Arab rule, the island was recaptured in 961 C.E. by the Byzantines (Norwich, 1998; Vassiliev, 1980). The 243 years of the second Byzantine rule ended when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Francs and the Venetians of the Fourth Crusade. The Venetians purchased the island in 1204 C.E. from the crusader Boniface of Montferrat; they ruled Crete for 465 years and established a feudal system that provoked several revolutions of the population (Detorakis, 2015; Xanthoudidis, 1939). From 1645 to 1669, Ottomans and Venetians fought for 24 years over Crete and the island was captured by the Ottomans who ruled for 267 years during which the Cretans revolted several times (Detorakis, 2015). The island gained its autonomy in 1889 and was unified with Greece in 1913."

Finally someone who is doing the sampling correctly.

"
We focused on the rural population of Crete. The participants were males or females 70 years or older (range of ages 70 to 94 years) who had paternal and maternal grandparents originating from villages located in the same district of Crete. With this approach, we reconstructed the rural population of Crete at the time of birth of the grandparents of the participants (i.e., the population of the period 1850 to 1880)."

"
Genetic differentiation of the Cretan populations. (a) Results of principal component analysis (PCA) analysis of the 17 Cretan subpopulations. Notice that the individuals of the study are not distributed randomly but they form clusters distinguishing several subpopulations. Also notice that the eastern and the western subpopulations are placed on the opposite sites of the graph."

"
The east‐to‐west gradient could represent ancient population settlement patterns. It is known that the Minoan settlements concentrated in central and eastern Crete (Branigan, 1970) while the Myceneans (likely of Peloponnesean origin) dominated the central and the western parts of the island (deFidio, 2008). The Kydonians inhabited western Crete and the Eteocretans inhabited southern (Strabo, 2006) and eastern Crete (Duhoux, 1982). Eastern Crete received waves of new immigrants from the Anatolian coast through the Dodecanese in the Final Neolithic/Early Minoan (around 3,500 to 3,000 B.C.E.) (Nowicki, 2002, 2008). It was thus possible that the east‐to‐west gradient reflected these old population distributions that had been preserved by the geography of the island. Compatible with population movements between Crete, Peloponnese, and Dodecanese are the findings of IBD analysis (Figure S5) showing high IBD sharing between Peloponnese and west Crete and similarly high between Dodecanese and east Crete. Another explanation of the east‐to‐the west gradient, supported by the Cretan mountainous geography, is isolation by distance. Future analyses might help clarify this issue."

"To explore the genetic relationships between Cretans and the European and Near Eastern populations, we employed IBD analysis and PCA. In IBD analysis, our primary measure of relatedness was mean pairwise IBD, that is, the average amount of detected IBD (in segments >2 cM) shared between individuals in two populations (Tables S3 and S4). The heat map in Figure 3a shows the average amount of IBD shared between individuals in Crete, Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East. All three regions of Crete are most strongly related to Europe. Bootstrap analyses confirm that the Crete–Europe relationship is significantly stronger than either Crete–Caucasus or Crete–Near East (Figure S6)."

Sorry, the IBD analysis seems pretty useless to me. The most recent migrations are the ones that are going to show up, i.e. from the Slavic migrations filtering down and forward. The older ones which represent the majority of the population are too broken up by time and recombination to show up.

The PCA is more informative,

"
In contrast to the IBD data, PCA comparisons of Crete with the European populations distinguish the Cretans from Central, Northern, and Eastern Europeans (Figures 4a and S11a). PCA plots specifically show a clear separation of the Cretans from the Polish, Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarussians (Figures 4b and S11b). They are also clearly distinguished from Western and Northwestern Europe (Figures 4a and S11b). ADMIXTURE plots confirm the PCA findings (Figures S12 and S13)."

Now this is very interesting. Maybe they were listening to our complaints about the Peloponnese paper.

If someone knows how to get a bigger and clearer picture of these I'd really appreciate it.

uAOLBpl.png


It's pretty clear regardless. Cretans, Sicilians, and the people of the Peloponnese being very close. One part of the Sicilian population overlaps a bit with them, but a lot of them are equally close to the people of the Peloponnese.

Crete and various cities of Sicily, including PALERMO.

g8ShGbs.png


Cretans and the Ashkenazim:
3Fgobs9.png
 
Also interesting, within Crete, Sfakia, Anoyia, and Lassithi Plateu stand out as having among the highest IBDs, whilst having low IBD with each other.

rMctOUl.png
 
Also interesting, within Crete, Sfakia, Anoyia, and Lassithi Plateu stand out as having among the highest IBDs, whilst having low IBD with each other.

rMctOUl.png

I haven't yet read their explanation for it, but imo, isolation, isolation, isolation is usually the reason. It's why the internal plateau Sardinians don't plot near anyone else.

I'm convinced that's why I have such high matches to ancients, but low matches even to modern Italians of largely the same latitude and longitude. I'm at 3.6 with a late "Roman" in Hungary, but my closest matches to Bergamo and Toscana are 5 and 6.

Mountains and high plateaus are not good for mixing, or islands, for that matter.

I'm more interested in the PCAs in my prior post.
 
I wish they had included South Italian samples rather than just Sicilian samples. See, I'm never satisfied. :)

"[FONT=&quot]Both PCA and ADMIXTURE point to the strong genetic similarities between Cretans and Southern Europeans, especially the Sicilians ...[/FONT][FONT=&quot]These results might reflect the common genetic history of Crete and Sicily rather than gene flow between the two islands. Sicily was heavily colonized by Greeks starting in the eight century BC (Freeman, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]1891[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Thucydides, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]1986[/FONT][FONT=&quot]). Dorian Greeks colonized the South and the Southeast coast of Sicily while the Ionian Greeks colonized the North and Northeast coast. Sicily continued to be Hellenized in medieval times but under the Norman domination the usage of the Greek language was discouraged and it was eventually replaced by Italian. Southern Italy was also colonized by Ionian, Achaean, and Dorian Greeks, and these colonies, together with Sicily, composed the Greek‐dominated part of Italy, which the Latin speakers called Magna Graecia (Burry, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]1963[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Ceserani, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2012[/FONT][FONT=&quot]). The PCA (Figure [/FONT]4[FONT=&quot]a and [/FONT]4[FONT=&quot]c) and ADMIXTURE (Figure [/FONT]S15[FONT=&quot]) data show that the historic bonds between Greece (including Crete) and Sicily were not simply cultural but genetic as well. The above findings were broadly confirmed by our ChromoPainter/FineSTRUCTURE analysis (Figure [/FONT]S16a[FONT=&quot] and [/FONT]S16b[FONT=&quot])."

"[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In the PCA of Crete vs Europe, the Cretans overlap with three populations: the Peloponneseans, the Sicilians and the Ashkenazi Jews (see Figures [/FONT]4[FONT=&quot]a, [/FONT]S17[FONT=&quot], and [/FONT]S18[FONT=&quot]). Southern European and Mediterranean ancestry of the Ashkenazi Jews has also been demonstrated before (Atzmon et al., [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2010[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Behar et al., [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2010[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Bauchet et al., [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2007[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Price et al., [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2008[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Seldin et al., [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2006[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; Tian et al., [/FONT][FONT=&quot]2008[/FONT][FONT=&quot]). Furthermore, we find in both PCA and ADMIXTURE analysis, that the Ashkenazi are more similar to the Cretans than to the two Levantine Semitic populations. One possible explanation is that this relation might reveal a common Mediterranean ancestry that the Cretan and Ashkenazi populations share."


[/FONT]
 
It all makes sense given what we know from history. Male dominated conquests (Arab, Venetian) rarely make a significant dent into the genetic makeup of the local populations.
 
"[h=4]The genetic effects of the Arab occupation[/h][FONT=&quot]Religious strife and a failed revolution in Arabic Andalusia in the beginning of the 9th century resulted in the exile of a large segment of the population of the area of Cordoba (Dozy, 1913). About 15,000 exiles settled in Morocco (Dozy, 1913; Levi‐Provencal, 1938; Ostrogorsky, 1969) and 12,000, in 827 CE, conquered Crete, established there a piratical state and ruled the island for 134 years (Christides, 1984; Ostrogorsky, 1969; Vassiliev, 1980). Historians refer to that period of Cretan history as “Arab occupation” although the majority of the conquerors were indigenous Andalusians whose ancestors had converted to Islam (Christides, 1984; Dozy, 1913); the term “Arab occupation” will also be used here. The Andalusians were joined by North African Arabs (Cannard, 1986; Dozy, 1913; McVean, 2009) and Moslems from the Near East settled in the island during the 134 years of the Arab rule. To obtain insights on the effects of the Arab occupation we compared the Cretans with Andalusians, North African and Near Eastern populations."

For this I think ancient dna showing a real transect through time would be very helpful.

"ADMIXTURE analysis for the Cretans and the Andalusians, North Africans, Near Eastern populations, and the Venetians. Results are shown for K equal to four, five, and six hypothetical ancestral populations. (a) A possible shared component can be observed between the Andalusian and the Cretans, especially the western populations (Kissamos, Kandanos), especially for K equal to six. (b) The North African populations are genetically distinct from the Cretans, except for a small amount of shared ancestry between Tunisians and the Anoyia subpopulation for K equal to six. (c) A possible shared component can be observed between the Near East to the Cretans for K equal to four or five. (d) Cretans and the Venetian populations appear completely distinct with only very minor shared ancestry. We can also observe a possible shared component between the Italian populations and the Cretan subpopulations [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]"

"The Byzantines slaughtered or enslaved the Andalusians and the Arabs and perhaps many converts to Islam. The Arab fourteen century historian Nuwayri estimates that 200,000 Moslems perished in Crete (Gaspar, 1904), but this number is considered an exaggeration (Christides, 1984). The extinction of Andalusians, Arabs and Moslems should have created a population void in the island. There is a five words‐long sentence in the book of Leo the Deacon (Talbot & Sullivan, 2005), the contemporary historian who recorded the re‐capture of Crete by the Byzantines, which indicates that the Byzantines tried to fill this void with new settlers. Leo writes that after the extermination of the Arabs, Nicephorus Phokas, settled in Crete “Romans and Armenians and men from other tribes” (Talbot & Sullivan, 2005). The meaning of this statement has been debated; does it refer to the settlement of veterans from the army of Nicephorus Phokas, an event of minor population significance? Or, it refers to settlement to Crete of Byzantine populations from other areas of the Empire, an event that could have had a major impact on the structure of the Cretan population. Re‐settlements of large population groups for political and strategic reasons have been frequently practiced by the Byzantine administration (Charanis, 1961). By “Romans” Leo refers to all the populations of the Byzantine Empire which at that period extended from the Balkans to Syria; we can only speculate what the population origin of these “Romans and other tribes” would have been. Settlements of Armenians most likely occurred and have left traces recognized today in the names of villages (Tomadakis, 1939). Comparison of Cretans and Armenians by PCA and ADMIXTURE showed a clear separation of the two populations (Figures S23 and S24). Armenians shared with the Cretans the lowest proportion of pairs with IBD and mean pairwise IBD (0.20 cM) of all populations of Tables S3and S4. We conclude that there is no evidence for significant Armenian ancestry in the Cretan rural population."

"Historians have attempted to analyze the population effects of the Arab occupation of Crete on the basis of a relatively inadequate written record. Except for the campaign of the Byzantine general Nicephorus Phocas to Crete (which has been recorded in detail), little written record exists on the 134 years of Arab occupation. It has been suggested that the Arab occupation had a dramatic effect on the composition of the Cretan population (Sefakas, 1939; Treadgold, 1988). During the Arab rule, the Christian population of the island was largely converted to Islam while Arabs settled in Crete and Cretans sought refuge in lands under the control of the Byzantines. Arab sources have claimed that the whole Christian population of the island was expelled and replaced by Muslims. Comments in Byzantine sources (Bekkerus, 1840; Ceserani, 2012; Panayotakis, 1960; Talbot & Sullivan, 2005) point to population changes but they might refer to changes in religion rather than ethnicity. Opposing views have been presented by historians who claim that the very scant archaeological record left behind by the Arabs (Miles, 1964), the very small number of Arabic toponyms in the island (Detorakis, 2015; Tomadakis, 1960–1961), and the lack of Arabic additions to the Cretan dialect are all evidence of a rather limited impact of Arab occupation on the population of Crete (Christides, 1984; Tomadakis, 1960–1961)."

"A similar controversy exists on the impact of the 435 years of the Venetian rule. The Venetians were accomplished bureaucrats and left a good record of their administration of the colony. According to those sources, approximately 2,000 feudalists initially colonized Crete in the 13th century. However, many other Venetian and Italian merchants, soldiers, and artisans settled in the urban centers (McKee, 2000) later. Even though marriages between Venetians and Cretans were initially discouraged, there is considerable evidence for admixture between Latins and Cretans (McKee, 1993, 2000; Maltezou, 1995). The cultural and physical admixture was so extensive that even the notion of Greek ethnicity of the Cretans of that era has been challenged (McKee, 2000). Other historians, however, have argued that in spite of the extensive cultural impact, the influence of the Venetians was mostly on the populations of the major cities (Gasparis, 1998, 2005; Tomadakis, 1960–1961) and that the foreigners who came to Crete did not penetrate into the countryside until much later and, even then, on a limited scale (Gasparis, 1998, 2005)."

" Our statistical analyses included PCA, ADMIXTURE, IBD, ALDER, and the ChromoPainter/FineSTRUCTURE pipeline. All results from those statistical tools seem to be (broadly) in agreement. That being said, overinterpretation of statistical analyses is a common pitfall (especially when it comes to the ADMIXTURE and PCA) and further analyses using larger sample sizes, more sophisticated statistical tools, and ancient DNA might shed further light on the historical controversies surrounding Crete.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The genetic impact of the Andalusian and the Near Eastern Arabs seems minimal; similarly, the genetic contribution of the Venetians to Cretans is low Tables S6S8. This might be explained by the geography of Crete, which has many poorly accessible regions, as well as its agricultural and pastoral economy, which is sustained by a large number of small villages and hamlets spread all over the island. The Arab and Venetian conquerors settled mostly in the coastal urban centers and left the rural population intact."

The remaining analysis is about IBD and shows how and when it reached Crete.

Not the last word; we need ancient dna for that, and I'm not a big fan of some of these tools they used for the IBD analysis, but a good effort nonetheless, I think.[/FONT]
 
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(Enlarge for a better view)

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It all makes sense given what we know from history. Male dominated conquests (Arab, Venetian) rarely make a significant dent into the genetic makeup of the local populations.

What about Turks in Greece? is there any way to detect Turkish genes in Greek population. (mainland).?
 
What about Turks in Greece? is there any way to detect Turkish genes in Greek population. (mainland).?

Not all of the refugees during the 1922-23 exchange of populations were genetically Greek. Some of the Pontic and Capadoccian Greeks were Anatolian locals that got Hellenized or kept their Eastern Orthodox religion. If I had to guess I would say very very few were actually genetically Turkic. On the other hand the majority of the refugees that emigrated to Turkey were locals that got Islamized. So I expect to find quite a lot of genetically Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Slavs in Turkey.
 
Not all of the refugees during the 1922-23 exchange of populations were genetically Greek. Some of the Pontic and Capadoccian Greeks were Anatolian locals that got Hellenized or kept their Eastern Orthodox religion. If I had to guess I would say very very few were actually genetically Turkic. On the other hand the majority of the refugees that emigrated to Turkey were locals that got Islamized. So I expect to find quite a lot of genetically Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Slavs in Turkey.

there is no way of telling the percentage of Turkish contribution! I am curious because there is no way Turks did not leave there genes in Albania, Greece and other countries
 
So Sfakia has lowest Near East, lowest shared Italian ancestry, lowest shared Andalusian ancestry, lowest shared Slavic ancestry.


Some quotes from the suplement paper:

" It is worth noting that the Andalusian ancestry in Kissamos, Kandanos, Sfakia, and Anoyia is extremely limited and it appears that these populations had an even smaller number of inter-marriages than the other Cretan subpopulations that we analyzed."

"There is a low level of gene flow from Slavic populations to all the Cretan subpopulations that can be observed for K between two and four. For values of K between five and eight, the gene flow seems to be lesser in the subpopulations of Sfakia, Lassithi, and Anoyia."

"We note that the subpopulation of Sfakia shows the lowest signal of shared ancestry with Near Eastern populations."

" For all values of K, a small amount of shared ancestry appears between the Cretans and the Italian populations. Some gene flow can be observed for values of K larger than four. For values of K larger than five, this genetic flow becomes minimal in the subpopulations of Sfakia, Lassithi, and Anoyia and becomes more concentrated in the central populations."
 
there is no way of telling the percentage of Turkish contribution! I am curious because there is no way Turks did not leave there genes in Albania, Greece and other countries

Turks, whether Islamized locals or brought from Anatolia stayed in their own communities and did not intermix with others. Same way the Armenians stayed withinin their own community and the Jews did. Now there is still approximately 120,000 Turks in Western Thrace that were never exchanged. I am not aware of any large scale DNA studies to trace their genetic ancestry. My guess is that they're locals that got Islamized or brought over from Anatolia.

You have to distinguish between people in the eastern part of Turkey that are Turkic in origin and local Anatolians that have no Turkic DNA. They are Turks because they live in the country of Turkey, they speak Turkish and are Muslims but they are genetically Anatolians.
 
So Sfakia has lowest Near East, lowest shared Italian ancestry, lowest shared Andalusian ancestry, lowest shared Slavic ancestry.


Some quotes from the suplement paper:

" It is worth noting that the Andalusian ancestry in Kissamos, Kandanos, Sfakia, and Anoyia is extremely limited and it appears that these populations had an even smaller number of inter-marriages than the other Cretan subpopulations that we analyzed."

"There is a low level of gene flow from Slavic populations to all the Cretan subpopulations that can be observed for K between two and four. For values of K between five and eight, the gene flow seems to be lesser in the subpopulations of Sfakia, Lassithi, and Anoyia."

"We note that the subpopulation of Sfakia shows the lowest signal of shared ancestry with Near Eastern populations."

" For all values of K, a small amount of shared ancestry appears between the Cretans and the Italian populations. Some gene flow can be observed for values of K larger than four. For values of K larger than five, this genetic flow becomes minimal in the subpopulations of Sfakia, Lassithi, and Anoyia and becomes more concentrated in the central populations."

Sfakia is a very isolated area up in the mountains of Crete. It is said that they were never never conquered by any of the invaders including the Germans. If there was any isolated population Sfakia is it.
 
I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift.

As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding:

By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another.

It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile.

Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.

From what I've read there was no such thing as "civil marriage"; marriages were performed by a holy man or teacher of that particular faith. A Christian and a Muslim couldn't marry without one of them converting or at least the ceremony being performed by either a Christian priest or a Muslim officiate.

So, if anything, I think there is Balkan ancestry in Ottoman Turks, but I don't see how it could have happened the other way around, except perhaps where whole groups converted to Islam, as many Albanians did. I don't know if in that case intermarriage did occur between Albanian Muslims and Muslims from Turkey, and if it did whether they went into exile back to Turkey or not.
 
I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift.

As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding:

By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another.

It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile.

Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.

From what I've read there was no such thing as "civil marriage"; marriages were performed by a holy man or teacher of that particular faith. A Christian and a Muslim couldn't marry without one of them converting or at least the ceremony being performed by either a Christian priest or a Muslim officiate.

So, if anything, I think there is Balkan ancestry in Ottoman Turks, but I don't see how it could have happened the other way around, except perhaps where whole groups converted to Islam, as many Albanians did. I don't know if in that case intermarriage did occur between Albanian Muslims and Muslims from Turkey, and if it did whether they went into exile back to Turkey or not.

It was called 'milliet'
a clear distinguish

there were many kinds of 'milliet'.
with different obligations to the empire.
but most were sub groups of the main 2
the 'Rum milliet' christians, divided acoording language families etc etc
the 'Turk milliet' Muslims according the Ottoman faith
also divided in sub milliet according Heresy language etc.

so for example Ibrahim Pargali who was Rum speaker but 'Turk milliet' married Souleiman magnificent sister

Sub 'Milliet' had difeerent taxation,
for example A Rum speaker and Rum milliet village was forced to 'blood taxation' meaning forced to provide most first male children as yanissaries.
a Turk speaker but Rum 'milliet' was not forced in blood taxation, but in other forms of taxes,
a non Turk speaker but Turk 'milliet' could serve at army even in very high positions.
a Turk speaker, Turk milliet but heretical, could not reach high ranks,
etc

that stoped around 1850-55
 
So Sfakia has lowest Near East, lowest shared Italian ancestry, lowest shared Andalusian ancestry, lowest shared Slavic ancestry.


Some quotes from the suplement paper:

" It is worth noting that the Andalusian ancestry in Kissamos, Kandanos, Sfakia, and Anoyia is extremely limited and it appears that these populations had an even smaller number of inter-marriages than the other Cretan subpopulations that we analyzed."

"There is a low level of gene flow from Slavic populations to all the Cretan subpopulations that can be observed for K between two and four. For values of K between five and eight, the gene flow seems to be lesser in the subpopulations of Sfakia, Lassithi, and Anoyia."

"We note that the subpopulation of Sfakia shows the lowest signal of shared ancestry with Near Eastern populations."

" For all values of K, a small amount of shared ancestry appears between the Cretans and the Italian populations. Some gene flow can be observed for values of K larger than four. For values of K larger than five, this genetic flow becomes minimal in the subpopulations of Sfakia, Lassithi, and Anoyia and becomes more concentrated in the central populations."

https://www.researchgate.net/public...age_predominates_in_a_Cretan_highland_plateau

Lassithi has a very high venetian ydna due to replacing the populuce completly
 
Nice study but they could've used Minoan samples since Crete was the Minoan homeland.
 

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