Genetic study Ancient DNA of Roman Danubian Frontier and Slavic Migrations (Olalde 2021)

[ihype02]

If is it easy can you send the link of the study?? I remember they used the empuries samples to calculate the native admixture

The whole point of the study are the Roman Age samples of Serbia! Check the OP.

"The Roman Empire expanded through the Mediterranean shores and brought human mobility and cosmopolitanism across this inland sea to an unprecedented scale. However, if this was also common at the Empire frontiers remains undetermined. The Balkans and Danube River were of strategic importance for the Romans acting as an East-West connection and as a defense line against “barbarian” tribes. We generated genome-wide data from 70 ancient individuals from present-day Serbia dated to the first millennium CE; including Viminacium, capital of Moesia Superior province. Our analyses reveal large scale-movements from Anatolia during Imperial rule, similar to the pattern observed in Rome, and cases of individual mobility from as far as East Africa. Between ∼250-500 CE, we detect gene-flow from Central/Northern Europe harboring admixtures of Iron Age steppe groups. Tenth-century CE individuals harbored North-Eastern European-related ancestry likely associated to Slavic-speakers, which contributed >20% of the ancestry of today’s Balkan people."
They used the Ancient Greek samples only for Greeks.

 

[Angela]

I have to agree with the other users here the authors seem to have done a poor job modelling modern balkan people.Why would they ever use ancient Greeks as a proxy to calculate the pre slavic component in modern South slavs??? Why aren't they at the very least using the Iron age Bulgarian sample, the HRV samples and some of the scythian Moldovan samples which were clearly of balkan origins??And then they are using mordovians to measure the northeastern European component instead of Ukrainians or Bellarussians who seem to be the "purest" slavs around

Once again, if you had read the paper, you would know that Bulgarian Iron Age clusters close to ancient Greeks and they attempted to model modern Balkanites using the Bulgarian Iron Age sample, among others.

"First, we attempted to model the ancestry of present-day Balkan populations as one-way models with different groups whose ancestry derived entirely from pre-Roman Balkans populations: Croatia_MBA_EIA (Mathieson et al., 2018), the cluster of Roman-period individuals from Timacum Minus and Viminacium modelled in supplementary section 12.1 (Balkans Iron Age cluster), and 400 BCE - 200 CE individuals from the Greek colony of Empúries (Spain) with fully Aegean-related ancestry (Greek_Empuries ¹⁴) (Table ST8). These three groups acted as representatives of northern, central and southern Balkans-related ancestry, respectively. If the 1-way models provided a good fit to the data, this would indicate genetic continuity in the Balkans since prior to the Roman period and no significant long-term demographic impact of the Slavic migration or other population movements in the region over the past ~2,000 years. However, all the models failed with extremely low P-values, strongly rejecting population continuity in the Balkans since pre-Roman times, and documenting a history of mixture."

"We then tried to model the present-day groups as a two-way model. Similar to the modelling of 10^th century individuals from Kuline (supplementary section 12.1), we try models with one local Balkans source (either Balkans Iron Age cluster, Croatia_MBA_EIA or Greek_Empuries), and a proxy for Northeastern European-related ancestry (either Russia_Ingria_IA or present-day populations from Eastern Europe).

"A model having Balkans Iron Age cluster (as the local source) and Russian_Ingria_IA (as the Northeastern European-related source) fitted for three present-day Balkan populations, Hungary, Croatian and Serbian with P-value>0.01 (Table ST9), as well as for the Kuline 10th c. CE with almost identical mixture proportions as in the 1240k dataset (supplementary section 12.1).

Let's remember, of course, that the Balkans Iron Age cluster was about 2/3 Mycenaean ancient Greek, with the remaining 33% being Slovenian Iron Age.

That explains the fact that in the PCA some Serbs and Hungarians are in between the Kuline cluster and the NCE cluster.

Now, I seem to recall from somewhere that the Slovenian Iron Age sample is close to Croatian Middle Bronze Age, but

However, this is only found in Hungary, Croatia and Serbia, because they're the only populations which can be fitted with Balkans Iron Age Cluster.

For Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Greece...

"However, this model did not fit the ancestry of the remaining more southern (except Romanian) populations, who instead required a more local source represented by Greek_Empuries, and present-day Mordovian or Russian as proxy for Northeastern European-related ancestry. These models fit the ancestry for the remaining Balkans populations (Table ST10; Table ST11), with ~30-55% Northeastern European-related ancestry."

Albanians come out needing about 38% Mordovian or Russian ancestry, similar to Greek Macedonia.

Now, if in the future a more proximate source is found, these percentages may change, but if it is a sample closer in space to the Balkans, it would seem to me that the percentages might even be higher.









And no, the Ukrainians are not the "purest" Slavs. They're too far south of that. Plus, because of the mass depopulation of the area caused by the Tartars, the Ukraine was re-settled by Slavs from all over the east. They wouldn't at all be representative of the Slavs of the early Medieval period.

 

[Angela]

1) Can you please clarify something for me? Reich Lab used the Kuline Cluster as a proxy for the Northeastern Europeans/Slavs?

If that�s the case then it�s a problematic model because the Kuline samples were over 50% Balkan IA, thus leaving around 20-25% Northeastern input.

The Kuline individuals are more shifted towards present-day Slavic-speaking populations as compared to individuals in the Central/Northern European cluster, agreeing with the presence of Y-chromosome lineage I2-L621 in Kuline, which is common in present-day Slavic-speaking groups and absent in earlier periods.


2) Who are these modern Slavic-speaking populations? They better left out Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks and included only Ukrainians and Belarusians for instance, otherwise it�s misleading.

3) They used the words ���more shifted� which does not mean is fully shifted only in 1 direction but rather there could be more Northeastern ancestry than Central/Northern. Again, very misleading.

In light of these results, we modeled the ancestry of the Kuline individuals as a mixture of 56% deriving from the local Balkan Iron Age substratum and 44% deriving from Northeastern European Iron Age groups, and obtained a good statistical fit (Figure 2; Supplementary section 12.8).

4) Who are these Northeastern European Iron Age Groups that provided a good statistical fit with a 44% contribution in the Balkans? Sarmatians? Scythians?

P.S. Regarding the 7-20% in the Aegean islands, for now I�m only willing to accept that they received 7-20% Kuline-like admixture, not �undiluted� Northeastern admixture straight from the source. More like 3-8.8% of Northeastern (mainly) as well as slightly older Central/Northern already present in the Balkans.

This paper�s conclusions stink. The older Peloponnese paper that I read months ago came up with a maximum of 14% Polish-like admixture in Peloponnese, which is for me personally understandable considering that using Poland kills 2 birds with 1 stone since it could include both Slavic, Gothic, and other older Carpathian related ancestries during the Imperial period.

I�m again going to trust my eyes on this too. I can�t picture a Cretan or islander being 1/5th Russian.

A South-Eastern Albanian? Yes, sure, in accordance with the settlement of Bulgarians and Vlachs, elevated R1a and I2a-Din North up to 30%, rounder heads and facial features, smaller noses, as well as more fair hair and eyes. It cannot be a coincidence.

You go West and North from there, the features get immediately more Mediterranid/Dinarid, with Slavic Y-DNA ranging from 3-10%.

When putting forth your ideas about whether or not you agree with the conclusions of a paper it makes sense to READ the paper first, which some of you have clearly not done.

If you had read the paper you could not possibly conclude that the Kuline cluster is the Medieval INCOMING SLAVIC speaking group. The paper specifically says they're a Medieval (900-1000 C.E.) group which shows ADMIXTURE between local Balkans people and incoming Slavs.

To quote the paper:
"To understand this, we performed a PCA using present-day Germanic- and Slavic-speaking populations (Supplementary section 9; Figure S9) that we expected would be sensitive to more recent drift separating Central, Northern and Eastern European populations. The Kuline individuals are more shifted towards present-day Slavic[1]speaking populations as compared to individuals in the Central/Northern European cluster, agreeing with the presence of Y-chromosome lineage I2-L621 in Kuline, which is common in present-day Slavic-speaking groups and absent in earlier periods. In light of these results, we modeled the ancestry of the Kuline individuals as a mixture of 56% deriving from the local Balkan Iron Age substratum and 44% deriving from Northeastern European Iron Age groups, and obtained a good statistical fit (Figure 2; Supplementary section 12.8)."

The modern day Slavic speaking populations are the Slavic speaking populations in the BALKANS.

There is nothing misleading about saying a population is "more" shifted toward Slavs than towards the CNE cluster, especially when they provide a PCA where you can see exactly what they're saying. They're taking a cluster composed of locals, plus a Northern European Iron Age group, plus 13% steppe Sarmatian, and one which was composed of locals plus Slavs, and using very sophisticated genetics algorithms, show that the shift which occurred around the Medieval period around Kuline and which can also explain modern populations in the northern Balkans, was caused by Slavic speaking peoples.

Basically they're describing what can be seen in the PCA they posted in the Supplement. Now, given the variation in the Balkans it's not all neat and tidy. Most of the Serbs and Hungarians are in the Kuline cluster abutting Poles and Russians, but some appear in the NCE cluster. A lot of Romanians are in the space between the Kuline cluster and the eastern edge of the NCE cluster. Interestingly, the Albanians seem to be in the NCE cluster.

[/IMG]

Looking just at the PCA one might be tempted to say that perhaps the admixture was partly Germanic, but we always have to remember that PCAs only show two axis of variation. The much more robust statistical algorithms employed definitely see the major post 500 C.E. admixture as Slavic. Unfortunately, however, one of the early Slav samples, one found in the Czech Republic, doesn't work, which is why they stuck with a very far northeastern sample. I'm leaving an open mind as to whether there's a more proximate early Slav sample which perhaps has some Germanic which is a better fit?

The yDna of the Balkans supports the conclusions of the authors. Yes, there was a cluster of ancient samples which seemed to have both Germanic and late steppe admixture, like Sarmatians, but it must have been a case of people like the Lombards and Huns etc. just passing through and not leaving a very big impact. If it were otherwise you'd have a significant amount of yDna I1 and U-106. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that isn't the case. I don't know about the Sarmatian R1a mentioned in the paper, but I've never heard that referred to before, so I'm assuming there's not a lot of it.

Northeastern European Iron Age groups are the groups found in Russia_Igria, which posters would know had they read the Supplement. The area was occupied by Finnic and Slavic tribes.

You're free to believe anything you want, but until you have statistical proof using ancient samples, it's not going to convince anyone.

 

[Hawk]

I personally believe that it�s max 20% and it consists of Dacians/Free Dacians + Celts + Germanics and whoever the Goths absorbed + Slavs, not exclusively Slavic.

In my amateur opinion, North Albanians seem more North-West shifted than East shifted whereas South Albanians more South East (East Med) shifted than East European.

If we�re 30% solely Slavic, than what�s the percentage of Germanic and East Med? Anyone has some reliable data? I�d truly like to have a look because that would make Albanians only almost half Balkan IA.

Why Celts/Germanics when their influence was not nearly as much as Slavic migrations. As i said it can reach up to ~30% with averaged probably being somewhere closer to ~25%. It is what it is. Otherwise explain the anomaly of ancient Balkanites clustering with Italians, of course this is due to poor calculator algorithms, but they catch the bigger picture after all.

 

[Milan.M]

Haven't read the entire paper but the only doubt to me here would be Viminacium was large city and military frontier in which migrants from all over the empire can come as soldiers,traders or anything else,for example if you tested Thesaloniki centuries ago you would have had different picture for today's inhabitants since back then majority were Jewish population,testing more simple from the inner in province could give better picture.Also the proxy for "Slavic" or northeast ancestry as Mordovian or Igria is laughable to me,since we can not determine what was that pure medieval Slav looking like,for instance if we found him in Balkans,and he has significant Balkan ancestry we will say he is admixed,or if we found him in Slovakia that north east ancestry will again lack,so that's why we need to take Mordovian as proxy which is not even Slavic to begin with.Much more samples are needed from different population and groups from all over the empire and out of it to come with such drastic conclusion.

 

[Milan.M]

At some point north east ancestry arrived in Balkans but when exactly is still open question to me,or whether was pure 'Mordovian' like ancestry or not,Perhaps they didn't had jets at that time to come such "pure" in such long distance.Simirarly when Peloponnesian paper was taking Ukrainian or Poles as proxies for Slavic ancestry which might not be even Slavic,since for example Kuline on his way down is "admixed" not pure this or that.

 

[Dushman]

@Angela, I have read the paper but perhaps you didn?t read Joviali?s post to which I replied. He wrote about the model used being Balkans IA + Kuline, which either he made a lapsus or I did not understand what he meant (which is bound to happen with genetics enthusiasts). So to make sure, I asked him directly what he meant.

I am in no position to convince anyone. I?m here to simply learn and max I can do is convince myself. But sometimes I also like to share those few things I know/read hoping I might be able to at least contribute by giving hints.

 

[Jovialis]

@Angela, I have read the paper but perhaps you didn�t read Joviali�s post to which I replied. He wrote about the model used being Balkans IA + Kuline, which either he made a lapsus or I did not understand what he meant (which is bound to happen with genetics enthusiasts). So to make sure, I asked him directly what he meant.

I am in no position to convince anyone. I�m here to simply learn and max I can do is convince myself. But sometimes I also like to share those few things I know/read hoping I might be able to at least contribute by giving hints.

What is it that you want me to explain? The study uses those components. Why don't you email the author and ask them directly why they used that? They're usually very good at responding.

 

[ihype02]

I personally believe that it�s max 20% and it consists of Dacians/Free Dacians + Celts + Germanics and whoever the Goths absorbed + Slavs, not exclusively Slavic.

In my amateur opinion, North Albanians seem more North-West shifted than East shifted whereas South Albanians more South East (East Med) shifted than East European.

If we�re 30% solely Slavic, than what�s the percentage of Germanic and East Med? Anyone has some reliable data? I�d truly like to have a look because that would make Albanians only almost half Balkan IA.

It's just a model. The study's focus was not even Albanians.
I agree that Albanians probably have a Northern Italian-like (and Germanic) component in their gene pool before the Slavic migration, so those percentage regarding the Slavic input in Albanians are probably not very accurate (assuming the old Slavs of Balkans were like modern Northern Slavs).

One study modeled modern Sicilians as 40% Northern African. Why are you so emotional about this?

 

[Jovialis]

Haven't read the entire paper but the only doubt to me here would be Viminacium was large city and military frontier in which migrants from all over the empire can come as soldiers,traders or anything else,for example if you tested Thesaloniki centuries ago you would have had different picture for today's inhabitants since back then majority were Jewish population,testing more simple from the inner in province could give better picture.Also the proxy for "Slavic" or northeast ancestry as Mordovian or Igria is laughable to me,since we can not determine what was that pure medieval Slav looking like,for instance if we found him in Balkans,and he has significant Balkan ancestry we will say he is admixed,or if we found him in Slovakia that north east ancestry will again lack,so that's why we need to take Mordovian as proxy which is not even Slavic to begin with.Much more samples are needed from different population and groups from all over the empire and out of it to come with such drastic conclusion.

Read the paper.
You will see that the Balkans_IA is the native genetic profile of the Balkans before and after the cosmopolitan era, of which all of those elements vanish as they did in Rome by late Antiquity. There is no Jewish population among the samples, there is one single outlier who was of Levantine origin. The so-called Near Eastern population here is Anatolian_chl + slight Iran_n. The native Balkan_IA is Aegean_IA plus Slovenian_IA. It models croatians like you 50% Kuline, and 50% native Balkan IA.

 

[Jovialis]

It's just a model. The study's focus was not even Albanians.
I agree that Albanians probably have a Northern Italian-like (and Germanic) component in their gene pool before the Slavic migration, so those percentage regarding the Slavic input in Albanians are probably not very accurate (assuming the old Slavs of Balkans were like modern Northern Slavs).

One study modeled modern Sicilians as 40% Northern African. Why are you so emotional about this?

Yeah, I also recall that. Though I recall it was based on a so-called punic sample that looked very similar to Myceneans. Perhaps the amount of actual north African in both Sicilians and that sample, combined with greek-like autosomal dna matched well. I wonder if they were to try these Balkans_IA samples, how it would change the modeling.

 

[Dushman]

What is it that you want me to explain? The study uses those components. Why don't you email the author and ask them directly why they used that? They're usually very good at responding.

The study says they used Empuries + Mordovia, Balkan IA + Mordovia or Ingria, and you said Balkans IA + Kuline. I wasn?t questioning the study, I was asking what you personally meant by that? That Albanians = 56% Balkans IA + 44% Kuline, or something else and I misunderstood you.

Whatever though, never mind. Not important.

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

Read the paper.
You will see that the Balkans_IA is the native genetic profile of the Balkans before and after the cosmopolitan era, of which all of those elements vanish as they did in Rome by late Antiquity. There is no Jewish population among the samples, there is one single outlier who was of Levantine origin. The so-called Near Eastern population here is Anatolian_chl + slight Iran_n. The native Balkan_IA is Aegean_IA plus Slovenian_IA. It models croatians like you 50% Kuline, and 50% native Balkan IA.

A quick correction: the near eastern cluster is best modelled as roughly half Anatolian_BA and half Balkan_IA, and a tiny bit of Iran_N.
It's in the supplementary. It is a mere conjecture at this point, but I think this genetic profile matches the populations of western Anatolia at this point of time.

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

My two cents about this discussion:
the theories aren't put clearly on the table, and as much as I've understood as implied I see the one discussed as the theory that Albanians are actually overwhelmingly north Balkan_IA and the "slav" component is actually the higher steppe component that north Balkanites had (that is what I see as heavily implied when I keep reading insistence on the logkas2 as a proxy for Albanians).

As far as that scenario goes, it looks implausible. It can be true that Albanians have a little less slavic than Greeks and more steppe ancestry coming from north Balkan pops, but it remains a mere conjecture and it needs samples and other studies. I too believe that the 20-30% slavic input is an overestimation because the usage of Greek empuries (average) is, I believe, not a good proxy (I think classical Greeks are going to turn more similar to the Mycenean sample that had most steppe of all and to Bulgarian_IA, and the one Greek empuries samples that is closest to south Italians, dated to the classical period first of all), but while it may not be very precise, it does hint at a significant slavic geneflow (more than 10%, but I think more towards 20% in south balkanites).

 

[Dushman]

It's just a model. The study's focus was not even Albanians.
I agree that Albanians probably have a Northern Italian-like (and Germanic) component in their gene pool before the Slavic migration, so those percentage regarding the Slavic input in Albanians are probably not very accurate (assuming the old Slavs of Balkans were like modern Northern Slavs).

One study modeled modern Sicilians as 40% Northern African. Why are you so emotional about this?

What makes you think I?m emotional about it? The fact that I?m questioning how do generally male-biased migrations contribute with 15% Y-DNA and 38% auDNA? Whereas Germanic Y-DNA is ~7% but their auDNA must be close to 0 because nobody is taking it into account?

Why does Ancestry auDNA testing show 1 North Albanian with 0-3% and another (South Eastern) with 22% Balkan/Slavic (both people I know personally)? Why does it surprisingly miss the Slavic? Am I missing something here?

Why do these 3 Balkan IA samples almost overlap with Albanians and Mainland Greeks? Why aren?t they using these 3 Balkan IA as a proxy instead of Empuries, Aegean IA, or the average of all the Balkan IA samples? For all we know, those so-called Balkan IA could have been a mixture of Dacians, Southern Thracians, Illyrians, Ancient Mainland Greeks, etc. since they show quite some diversity. Am I reading the map that wrong to think that the distance between those 3 North Balkan IA samples are quite close to modern Albanians and Mainland Greeks?

 

[Angela]

Haven't read the entire paper but the only doubt to me here would be Viminacium was large city and military frontier in which migrants from all over the empire can come as soldiers,traders or anything else,for example if you tested Thesaloniki centuries ago you would have had different picture for today's inhabitants since back then majority were Jewish population,testing more simple from the inner in province could give better picture.Also the proxy for "Slavic" or northeast ancestry as Mordovian or Igria is laughable to me,since we can not determine what was that pure medieval Slav looking like,for instance if we found him in Balkans,and he has significant Balkan ancestry we will say he is admixed,or if we found him in Slovakia that north east ancestry will again lack,so that's why we need to take Mordovian as proxy which is not even Slavic to begin with.Much more samples are needed from different population and groups from all over the empire and out of it to come with such drastic conclusion.

Well, if you HAD read the paper you would know that they DID take into account that there were people in Viminiacum from all over the Empire, a more Anatolian Chalcolithic or Bronze/Iron Age type group to be precise, and two Germanic types, and didn't include them in any of the calculations for the ethogenesis of the Balkan populations.

Plus, you seem to be unaware that the people of Ingria were "pure" Slavic tribes people, as pure as you're going to find. An early admixed Czech Slav didn't work statistically. So, yes, maybe the Slavs who came to the Balkans were relatively "pure".

In addition, the percentages for admixture with the Mordovians is virtually the same as for admixture with Russians.

Please refer to my posts on the prior page where I quote extensively from the paper.

 

[Angela]

Maybe this got buried when a new page opened.

"We then tried to model the present-day groups as a two-way model. Similar to the modelling of 10^th century individuals from Kuline (supplementary section 12.1), we try models with one local Balkans source (either Balkans Iron Age cluster, Croatia_MBA_EIA or Greek_Empuries), and a proxy for Northeastern European-related ancestry (either Russia_Ingria_IA or present-day populations from Eastern Europe).

"A model having Balkans Iron Age cluster (as the local source) and Russian_Ingria_IA (as the Northeastern European-related source) fitted for three present-day Balkan populations, Hungary, Croatian and Serbian with P-value>0.01 (Table ST9), as well as for the Kuline 10th c. CE with almost identical mixture proportions as in the 1240k dataset (supplementary section 12.1).

Let's remember, of course, that the Balkans Iron Age cluster was about 2/3 Mycenaean ancient Greek, with the remaining 33% being Slovenian Iron Age.

That explains the fact that in the PCA some Serbs and Hungarians are in between the Kuline cluster and the NCE cluster.

Now, I seem to recall from somewhere that the Slovenian Iron Age sample is close to Croatian Middle Bronze Age, but I can't find a reference to that in this paper.

However, this is only found in Hungary, Croatia and Serbia, because they're the only populations which can be fitted with Balkans Iron Age Cluster.

For Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Greece...

"However, this model did not fit the ancestry of the remaining more southern (except Romanian) populations, who instead required a more local source represented by Greek_Empuries, and present-day Mordovian or Russian as proxy for Northeastern European-related ancestry. These models fit the ancestry for the remaining Balkans populations (Table ST10; Table ST11), with ~30-55% Northeastern European-related ancestry."

Albanians come out needing about 38% Mordovian or Russian ancestry, similar to Greek Macedonia.

Now, if in the future a more proximate source is found, these percentages may change, but if it is a sample closer in space to the Balkans, it would seem to me that the percentages might even be higher.

To model Crete and the Dodecanese, they had to use the Roman_Greek sample in the upcoming Lazaridis paper, which is more shifted toward Anatolia.

So, that tells me that they must have tried it with the Roman_Greek sample. Also, as the Supplement makes clear, they did try to model using Mycenaeans but the fit wasn't good.

Honestly, given that there is no early Slav sample which fits statistically, they did the best they could, using pure Slavs from Ingria, as well as Mordovians and Russians. They tried modeling with every conceivable sample, including Myceneans, Bulgarian Iron Age, Croatian MBA, the early Slav sample from the Czech Republic, and practically every other conceivable sample, and this is what they got.The high percentages surprise me too, but it is what it is. Maybe with more samples things will change, but be aware that a more admixed sample would result in even higher percentages of turnover.

Sorry for all the bolding. I don't know what happened and the site won't let me change it.

 

[Milan.M]

Well, if you HAD read the paper you would know that they DID take into account that there were people in Viminiacum from all over the Empire, a more Anatolian Chalcolithic or Bronze/Iron Age type group to be precise, and two Germanic types, and didn't include them in any of the calculations for the ethogenesis of the Balkan populations.

Plus, you seem to be unaware that the people of Ingria were "pure" Slavic tribes people, as pure as you're going to find. An early admixed Czech Slav didn't work statistically. So, yes, maybe the Slavs who came to the Balkans were relatively "pure".

In addition, the percentages for admixture with the Mordovians is virtually the same as for admixture with Russians.

Please refer to my posts on the prior page where I quote extensively from the paper.

Why would Ingrian Slav be pure and the Czech one wasn't?perhaps because won't fit in our picture?and what if the Slavs that came to Balkans were not Ingrian like?who can know that.Why is there even discussion for Mordovians they're not even Slavic and Slavic is primarily ethno-linguistic group.Mordovian can not be more Slavic in any sense than Czech or Slovak.To my knowledge no one can determine right now what is pure Slav and what not,except if we accept to choose one over another.

 

[Milan.M]

They had jets and "pure" as it comes came to Balkans and elsewhere.The same like the Poles and Ukrainians landed in Peloponesus in the previous paper.

 

[Dianatomia]

What makes you think I�m emotional about it? The fact that I�m questioning how do generally male-biased migrations contribute with 15% Y-DNA and 38% auDNA? Whereas Germanic Y-DNA is ~7% but their auDNA must be close to 0 because nobody is taking it into account?

Why does Ancestry auDNA testing show 1 North Albanian with 0-3% and another (South Eastern) with 22% Balkan/Slavic (both people I know personally)? Why does it surprisingly miss the Slavic? Am I missing something here?

Why do these 3 Balkan IA samples almost overlap with Albanians and Mainland Greeks? Why aren�t they using these 3 Balkan IA as a proxy instead of Empuries, Aegean IA, or the average of all the Balkan IA samples? For all we know, those so-called Balkan IA could have been a mixture of Dacians, Southern Thracians, Illyrians, Ancient Mainland Greeks, etc. since they show quite some diversity. Am I reading the map that wrong to think that the distance between those 3 North Balkan IA samples are quite close to modern Albanians and Mainland Greeks?
View attachment 12916

The IA Balkanians are paralel to modern Greeks overall to be honnest. Perhaps these tribes migrated South at some point or multiple points of time. I am thinking that there may have been a difference between Greeks inland and Greeks on the Southern coast and the islands. The Thessalian Greeks who had high Steppe admixture where isolated by mountainious terrain. Other than those two samples, all other samples are from Southern Coastal areas. Even the more recent Marathon sample who seems close to modern Greek islanders. Attica belonged to the South Aegean mainframe after all. I am betting that we are missing quite a lot of material when it comes to ancient Greeks. A lot of these IA Balkanians were probably also to be found in the Greek mainland, and the migrations during the iron age spread their genetic material all over the region.

Another overseen factor is sexual selection. Some types with more Steppe admixture may have had more access to sex. This is mostly due to the fact Greek heroes and some Gods where sometimes described fair. Probably because this seemed exotic to the Greeks.