Population history of southern Italy during Greek colonization

^^

Briefly, if you had read the paper carefully instead of just pulling out the dates of R437 and R850 you would know that other than the Parma Beakers we don't have Bronze Age samples from northern and southern Italy. Hopefully some will be published, but the number will be limited because some of the groups burned their dead.

The information I missed wans't even the point of the study and would have been a detail I would have forgotten regardless.

As to the Parma Beakers, one had a lot of steppe, one had almost none, and one was in the middle. So, you are misinformed.
I see, I only see average through the nMonte runner.

Given the dearth of U-106 and I1 in Italy a substantial "Germanic" input in us is, imo, impossible, and in most of the south didn't exist at all, unless you want to consider Sicily, where you might have a little input in a small area. As for the Gauls, all the evidence suggests it was not in any way a "replacement". Plus, the Gauls migrated into Italy before the Empire.
Yes that's what I said.
"Substantial" depends on what you mean by that but obviously it was not more than what some people would call elite replacement(which is also vague, but let's say at the most 10%)

We've known that there's a break in the Italian genetic cline just south of Rome for years and years, at least since the time of Novembre et al, and there was no wall, just rule by different entities. I'll decide whether I think there was a break in the cline at the time of the Republic when I see some samples from Bronze and Iron Age Southern Italy. IF there is a difference in ancestry at that time it was not because of the slavery practiced during the Empire.
What do you mean by break? I thought the peninsula has generally a quite drastic cline to begin with.

I'm quite aware that the Germanics poured into the Empire because they were terrified of the Huns and fleeing from them, and that they were also experiencing hunger etc. The Goths had the sense to leave some of the infrastructure in place and leave Italians to run things, but the Gothic War resulted in mass destruction, famine, and disease. Then the Langobards, illiterate, completely unused to Roman civilization, moved in and destroyed the rest. There is no comparison. Italy was a wasteland.
The Lombards are not responsible for the Byzantine-Gothic war, climate(Late Antique ice age) and plague decimating Roman population and cities before they even entered.
Maybe they mismanaged Rome's Italian ruins, but so did the Western empire mismanage itself in the last century of its life and the Lombards were in an even worse situation with the spread of Islam and Islamic raiding on top of the problem region they inherited already. On top of that their internal faidas in division was also not simply a feature of their culture but also brought by Byzantine interference.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sicily
When Ravenna fell to the Lombards in the middle of the 6th century, Syracuse became Byzantium's main western outpost. Latin was gradually supplanted by Greek as the national language and the Greek rites of the Eastern Church were adopted.[12]


It turns out a large propotion of Sicily was Latinised in the late antiquity and early Dark Ages and the Greek language made a comeback through the Eastern Roman Empire.
Any opinion?
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sicily
When Ravenna fell to the Lombards in the middle of the 6th century, Syracuse became Byzantium's main western outpost. Latin was gradually supplanted by Greek as the national language and the Greek rites of the Eastern Church were adopted.[12]


It turns out a large propotion of Sicily was Latinised in the late antiquity and early Dark Ages and the Greek language made a comeback through the Eastern Roman Empire.
Any opinion?

Your conclusion doesn't flow from the quoted material, imo. Yes, Sicily was "Latinized", but most of that occurred in the early Middle Ages once the Saracens were removed from power and then when the rulers heavily promoted migration from Lombardia, Piemonte, Liguria etc. because fields were lying fallow after the expulsion of the Muslims. Also, as westerners, the rulers weren't happy about the Greek Catholicism practised on the island.

As to the proportions of Greek speaking versus Latin speaking Sicilians at various points in Sicily's history I've never seen figures which I think are hard and fast. Did "all" Sicilians who spoke Greek switch to Latin once Rome incorporated them, and then switch back to Byzantine Greek when they were part of the Byzantine Empire? I don't know. I doubt anyone does. What I know is that at the court of Frederick II, they still spoke Greek, Arabic, a Latin based "volgare", and probably some spoke French and German.

How much genetic change took place at each stage is another unknown in my opinion. We've been discussing the situation on the thread on the genetic changes which took place in the islands of the western Mediterranean. The Reich Lab paper uses a source for later Sicilians which is half Moroccan Late Neolithic. However, that population was half EEF like, probably from Spain. Do they have a sample of the Saracens from the invasion period which shows that type of population was still around? I don't know, but they didn't produce it.

Plus, the amount of actual North Africa specific ancestry in their models of modern Sicilians show extremely small percentages, so where does that leave us? How close were the Greek colonists of Magna Graecia genetically to the people of Sicily when they arrived? I don't know, because we have no specific samples of those Greek colonists. Also, to my knowledge there is no evidence of large scale folk movement from the East to Sicily during the Byzantine period. If such evidence shows up, then fine.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sicily
When Ravenna fell to the Lombards in the middle of the 6th century, Syracuse became Byzantium's main western outpost. Latin was gradually supplanted by Greek as the national language and the Greek rites of the Eastern Church were adopted.[12]

Early Catholic Cemetaries


It turns out a large propotion of Sicily was Latinised in the late antiquity and early Dark Ages and the Greek language made a comeback through the Eastern Roman Empire.
Any opinion?

I have always read the early Church Fathers. Below is a link from the Old Catholic Encyclopedia, it is an old article ,but it does deal with the Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome and whether Latin Rite or the Greek Rite was dominate in the early Church. The evidence suggest Latin first in terms of Liturgy as Sicily was under direct Jurisdiction of the Pope, not one of the Eastern Patriarchs in Alexandria and Antioch (3 major ones identified in Canon 6 of the Council of Nicea, 325AD) and later Jerusalem and Constantinople.

http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/13772a.htm
There are accounts of Bishops in Palermo and Trapani as early as the 2nd century. Saint Clement of Alexandria mentions a thriving Christianity in Sicily in the 2nd, and by the 3rd century, Saint Cyprian of Carthage speaks of the Church in Sicily was in tied closely to Rome and Carthage (which used Latin) as well. Early female martyrs in Sicily include Saints Agatha and Lucy. Most of the early Christian Cemeteries in Sicily generally in Latin, some in Syracuse in Greek. It is pretty clear that till the 8th century, the major Liturgical Rite in Sicily was the Roman Rite. Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictines, sent monks to Sicily and Pope Gregory the Great personally founded Monasteries In Sicily.

It does seem by the time of the Saracen invasion, Latin and Byzantine Rites were both present in Sicily but after the Saracens were evicted, the Normans and mainland Italians who reopened all the Churches closed by the Saracens and staffed those parishes/Churches with Roman Rite Clergy thus returning Sicily back to almost exclusively Latin Rite Liturgies and Latin Roman Devotions such as the Rosary, Stations of the Cross, etc.
 
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Your conclusion doesn't flow from the quoted material, imo. Yes, Sicily was "Latinized", but most of that occurred in the early Middle Ages once the Saracens were removed from power and then when the rulers heavily promoted migration from Lombardia, Piemonte, Liguria etc. because fields were lying fallow after the expulsion of the Muslims. Also, as westerners, the rulers weren't happy about the Greek Catholicism practised on the island.

As to the proportions of Greek speaking versus Latin speaking Sicilians at various points in Sicily's history I've never seen figures which I think are hard and fast. Did "all" Sicilians who spoke Greek switch to Latin once Rome incorporated them, and then switch back to Byzantine Greek when they were part of the Byzantine Empire? I don't know. I doubt anyone does. What I know is that at the court of Frederick II, they still spoke Greek, Arabic, a Latin based "volgare", and probably some spoke French and German.

How much genetic change took place at each stage is another unknown in my opinion. We've been discussing the situation on the thread on the genetic changes which took place in the islands of the western Mediterranean. The Reich Lab paper uses a source for later Sicilians which is half Moroccan Late Neolithic. However, that population was half EEF like, probably from Spain. Do they have a sample of the Saracens from the invasion period which shows that type of population was still around? I don't know, but they didn't produce it.

Plus, the amount of actual North Africa specific ancestry in their models of modern Sicilians show extremely small percentages, so where does that leave us? How close were the Greek colonists of Magna Graecia genetically to the people of Sicily when they arrived? I don't know, because we have no specific samples of those Greek colonists. Also, to my knowledge there is no evidence of large scale folk movement from the East to Sicily during the Byzantine period. If such evidence shows up, then fine.

I was not talking about colonization. My hypothesis was that the Greek language gradually decreased due to many reason the firstmost being the Latinization, however it was never completely ''defeated''. But after the Byzantine imperial rule it started to increase but not because of colonization.

Did old Greeks sent women when they colonized Sicily?
 
I was not talking about colonization. My hypothesis was that the Greek language gradually decreased due to many reason the firstmost being the Latinization, however it was never completely ''defeated''. But after the Byzantine imperial rule it started to increase but not because of colonization.

Did old Greeks sent women when they colonized Sicily?

It's very difficult to say, I think. English archaeologists of the Imperial Period imo drew conclusions more on the practices of the British in India, etc. than on actual evidence from Magna Graecia when declaring that "of course" the Greek migrants brought their own women with them and didn't intermarry with the indigenous population.

Modern archaeologists take the opposite view.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0...XoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Women colonists&f=false

I don't know who is right. What I think is true is that it might have been different for different time periods. Even in colonizations which ultimately became very "racist", like the settlement of South Africa by the Dutch, there was a lot of "breeding" with local and Asian women in the early years, if not outright marriage. The up to 10% of "exotic" ancestry in Afrikaners is proof of that, and must have come as highly unwelcome information.

Not that I mean to equate the ancient Greek attitude toward mingling with locals to that of Afrikaners. There's no evidence, to my knowledge, of that kind of societal imperative at all.

So, I would say that my personal opinion would be that eventually it happened, and the populations blended. There's also the fact that the hinterland would have been less changed genomically than the coastal Greek cities.

Once again, I think that archaeology sets the parameters, but ancient genomics is going to provide a lot of the answers.
 
It's very difficult to say, I think. English archaeologists of the Imperial Period imo drew conclusions more on the practices of the British in India, etc. than on actual evidence from Magna Graecia when declaring that "of course" the Greek migrants brought their own women with them and didn't intermarry with the indigenous population.

Modern archaeologists take the opposite view.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0...XoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Women colonists&f=false

I don't know who is right. What I think is true is that it might have been different for different time periods. Even in colonizations which ultimately became very "racist", like the settlement of South Africa by the Dutch, there was a lot of "breeding" with local and Asian women in the early years, if not outright marriage. The up to 10% of "exotic" ancestry in Afrikaners is proof of that, and must have come as highly unwelcome information.

Not that I mean to equate the ancient Greek attitude toward mingling with locals to that of Afrikaners. There's no evidence, to my knowledge, of that kind of societal imperative at all.

So, I would say that my personal opinion would be that eventually it happened, and the populations blended. There's also the fact that the hinterland would have been less changed genomically than the coastal Greek cities.

Once again, I think that archaeology sets the parameters, but ancient genomics is going to provide a lot of the answers.
They surely brought some of their women, but to what extend would be the right question (compared to my earlier one).
 
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"About 18% of the people in post‐colonial times were of Greek ancestry and lived equally distributed across Greek colonies and indigenous villages."

I mean, that's pretty significant is it not? Is that 18% of total ancestry, or that of those tested positive for Direct Greek Ancestry meaning only 18% have any ancestry at all, even if its very dissipated?

And I guess the Greek ancestry was not enough to change anything, because they were all too similar to begin with.

Now if the mobility was very low pre-colonization, how did the natives get to Southern Italy in the first place and stay distinct from continental Europe assuming they arrived by land? Was Western and Eastern Mediterranean ancestry not differentiated at that time? These are Bell-Beakers correct, Im not to great with ancient groups.
 
^^Let's not forget that this paper isn't about genetics. It's about the characteristics of teeth. I'll wait for the dna. :)

Likewise, as for whether the "natives" of Southern Italy during the latter part of the first millennium BC were similar to the incoming Greeks we'll have to wait for the ancient dna.
 
^^Let's not forget that this paper isn't about genetics. It's about the characteristics of teeth. I'll wait for the dna. :)

Likewise, as for whether the "natives" of Southern Italy during the latter part of the first millennium BC were similar to the incoming Greeks we'll have to wait for the ancient dna.

Yep we need more ancient DNA. As far as whether the colonists sent back for Greek women, at least judging from recent emigrations to the US or Germany, yes they did. Now, again judging from recent emigrations, the second generation colonists were more open to local women, the third more so. But the local women would have to "convert" so they had to learn to speak Greek, pray to the Greek gods, etc.
 
There is a paper comming up:
"
If done right, these may just answer many of the Italic-Etruscan-Greek questions that have been circulating for the past two thousand years:

- Unrevealing the genetic history of Italians: a genome-wide study of Iron Age Italic populations
- The origin and genomic legacy of the Etruscans
- Exploring the genetic diversity of Magna Graecia – The case of Campania. "

https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?p=769864#post769864
 
There is a paper comming up:
"
If done right, these may just answer many of the Italic-Etruscan-Greek questions that have been circulating for the past two thousand years:
- Unrevealing the genetic history of Italians: a genome-wide study of Iron Age Italic populations
- The origin and genomic legacy of the Etruscans
- Exploring the genetic diversity of Magna Graecia – The case of Campania. "
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?p=769864#post769864


They are three different papers, as I know. And there is also this paper coming up

- "Genomic and anthropological analysis on the human skeletal remains recovered in the House with Garden in Pompeii, Italy".
 
They are three different papers, as I know. And there is also this paper coming up

- "Genomic and anthropological analysis on the human skeletal remains recovered in the House with Garden in Pompeii, Italy".
Good to know. From what I read those papers are nearly finished but they get bogged down for months, due to peer-reviews.
 

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