Memelland Lithuanians similarity map

Interesting German version of the town name. I think I twisted my tongue in a knot trying to say it.

smalininkai_xYAeR9cK.jpg
 
:) Smala is tar, so Smalininkai is a place where people make tar. Easy. But I like Germans very much for keeping the original names...
In East Prussia, the Curonian Spit the Baltic place names remained for 700 years - like Pilkopa or Pilkopiai (grey dunes) in German Pillkoppen, however, Russians changed everything just after one year ... and Pilkopiai became Морское ...


Just for you curiosity how linguist distinguish origins from place names, for instance, Pillkoppen would be

Pilakōpō In Prussian
Pilkupe In Curonian
Pilkopa In Lithuanian
 
When I checked each of these 67 samples from South Aukstaitija individually, I found that 23 of them are more similar to fellow Lithuanians (especially from West Aukstaitija), while the remaining 44 are more similar to Slavic populations. Most likely these samples include Polish minority

^^^
I revised it to about 40 samples with Slavic influences and 28 Balts (and 5 of these 28 have minor Slavic):

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/39415-Slavic-admixture-in-South-Lithuania
 
I was reading an interesting study on Lithuanian genetics (Doctoral Thesis by Alina Urnikyte dated 2018 12),
http://epublications.vu.lt/object/elaba:33050072/33050072.pdf
AN EVALUATION OF THE GENETICSTRUCTURE AND EVOLUTIONARYFORCES OF THE LITHUANIANPOPULATION ACCORDINGTO HIGH-DENSITY GENOTYPINGDATA: PAST AND FUTURESUMMARY OF DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
LIETUVOS POPULIACIJOS GENETINĖSSTRUKTŪROS IR EVOLIUCINIŲVEIKSNIŲ ANALIZĖ, REMIANTISPLATAUS MASTO GENOTIPAVIMODUOMENIMIS: PRAEITIS IR DABARTIS


One of the conclusions is that:

"Indo-Europeans, which had arrived in the Lithuanian territory during the Neolithic period, contributed to the formation of different Baltic tribes and may have had an important influence on the genetic variation and differences of Lithuanians".

I am not sure if I understand that correctly, do they mean that differences in Aukstaiciai and Zemaiciai could be due to different type/numbers of Indo-Europeans settling within those territories?
 
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Lithuanian ethnolinguistic groups.jpg


This is PCA of Lithuanian ethnolinguistic groups from this doctoral thesis.

According to this PCA Western Zemaiciai (who live in the territory of Memelland), plot somewhere in the middle among other Lithuanians.

North Zemaiciai (NZ in the PCA, blue stars), should be moving towards the direction of Finns, because they had most chances of mixing with Baltic Finnic people like Livonians. But they are not really... they stay in the West, some go South, some North ... (the Finns are somewhere East North)

South Aukstaiciai (SA in the PCA, purple diamonds) are more shifted towards CEU (Utah residents of Northern and Western Europe) which is expected, the Slavic people of neighbouring regions should be in that direction, too, more or less, probably.

It is a pity that the author compared Lithuanians to so very few other populations, it would be interesting to locate distances between Lithuanians and other different peoples, for instance, which direction would the Polish people be located, or to compare distances between Lithuanians and Poles from different regions in Poland.
 
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