Circassians in Italy

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A. C.

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R-Z253
After receiving my LivingDNA results, I started to investigate my reported 6.2% Northwestern Caucasian ancestry. FTDNA had already reported 4% ancestry from Anatolia, Armenia, Mesopotamia.

Eurogenes K13 & EUtest V2 give me as mixed population, beside Southern European combinations, 90% Tuscan and 10% North Caucasian (Adygei, Kabardin, North Ossetian, ...). Gedrosia K12, aimed primarily at South and West Asian heritage, gives me consistently as one of my four populations Adygei or Trabzon Turks (where many Muslims from the Caucasus sought refuge after Russia's invasion).

From a historical perspective, I have found the following articles and sources:
  • The Italian maritime republics and slave trade from the Caucasus (Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa).
  • Egyptian and Italian Merchants in the Black Sea Slave Trade, 1260-1500 (Barker, 2022).
  • Abkhazia and Italian city-states of the XIII-XV centuries (Chirikba, 2020).
In essence by the 15th century 5% of the population of Northern Italy were slaves from the Black Sea, Circassians being the majority.

I would be curious to hear your opinions on this.
 
A. C. said:
After receiving my LivingDNA results, I started to investigate my reported 6.2% Northwestern Caucasian ancestry. FTDNA had already reported 4% ancestry from Anatolia, Armenia, Mesopotamia.

Eurogenes K13 & EUtest V2 give me as mixed population, beside Southern European combinations, 90% Tuscan and 10% North Caucasian (Adygei, Kabardin, North Ossetian, ...). Gedrosia K12, aimed primarily at South and West Asian heritage, gives me consistently as one of my four populations Adygei or Trabzon Turks (where many Muslims from the Caucasus sought refuge after Russia's invasion).

From a historical perspective, I have found the following articles and sources:
  • The Italian maritime republics and slave trade from the Caucasus (Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa).
  • Egyptian and Italian Merchants in the Black Sea Slave Trade, 1260-1500 (Barker, 2022).
  • Abkhazia and Italian city-states of the XIII-XV centuries (Chirikba, 2020).
In essence by the 15th century 5% of the population of Northern Italy were slaves from the Black Sea, Circassians being the majority.

I would be curious to hear your opinions on this.
Click to expand...

This is what happens when you only use modern samples. The reason why the Caucasian shows up, because it is an excess of CHG to their centrum population.


Egyptians are not plausible, because they are very North African-related, with extra Sub-Saharan African admixture post-medieval period; which is very different from modern Northwestern Caucasian. The other scenarios I don't think are plausible either to cause that kind of a shift of 6.2%. If they did have an impact, I would guess it was infinitesimal at most.


It is most likely related to Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean influences from the Iron Age and/or Roman Imperial era, who have extra CHG/Iran_N autosomal components.
 
^^Nevertheless, we already see that Protovillanovan R1 can be modeled as about 1/3rd Minoan. Which is Anatolian_N+ smaller amount of CHG. We also the same for Sicily_BA, Sardinia, and Daunians, can be modeled as partly "Minoan".


This leads me to believe the Patterson et al. 2022 claim that Iran_N geneflow into Europe indeed could have began about 10,000 years ago.


Now I've gone down the rabbit hole... All in all, ancient DNA will show you the reasons for these weird results for modern population tests that Direct-to-Consumer companies insist on using for some reason.
 
Thanks for the reply. I am currently waiting for my 23andMe results. As a rule of thumb, should I assume that if I get West Asian ancestry in commercial tests it most likely comes from the older CHG component?
 
A. C. said:
Thanks for the reply. I am currently waiting for my 23andMe results. As a rule of thumb, should I assume that if I get West Asian ancestry in commercial tests it most likely comes from the older CHG component?
Click to expand...

At least partly, imo.

If you PM me your Dodecad K12b results, I can help you further.
 
I must premise that Living DNA oracles have always left me a bit perplexed (IMO they are better calibrated and more accurate for the British, while the Italians - even the most isolated and conservative communities - almost always tend to assign something "exotic").


That said, without detracting from the possible medieval or early modern age introgressions that you cite, as Jovialis explained to you, many times the Caucasian components in the autosome of Italians are probably older, starting from the late Bronze Age and ending in the full Roman imperial age. First of all, it is a less strange component than one can imagine, that for the most archaic phases is part of the genetic make-up of the Indo-Europeans themselves, born from a very ancient hybridization of hunter-gatherers from Eastern Europe (EHG) with hunter-gatherers from Caucasus (CHG).


Always quoting Jovialis, when this Caucasian share exceeds independently and begins to be well detectable - as it seems to happen in Italy compared to other European regions -, some migrations flowing from the Aegean world, from the eastern Mediterranean and in general from the Micro-Asiatic region can be ascribed to it (in protohistoric ages I suspect that the collapse of the bronze civilizations around the XIII-XII centuries B.C. was one of the first upheavals to move it from us, according to rather mysterious trajectories and not yet well defined historically).

Almost certainly the Greeks of the classical age, the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic populations of the Roman period inserted in the Empire and perhaps also some Byzantine presence here and there were the main vectors along our Peninsula with different proportions (more diluted in northern Italy, more marked in the south and usually well present along the Adriatic coast, which is a natural corridor to the Greek-Anatolian region and the Black Sea).


If I remember correctly, using the Eurogenes k13 in the Po Valley area the signal is already present with an average value of 6-7% (and in Tuscany I think we are at similar percentages of 8%), while in southern Italy can reach values of 15%, sometimes even more. As already said, I don't feel to exclude more recent migratory phenomena, but compared to the big one happened before, I don't think that these episodes can distinguish too much.


Also keep in mind that these oracles should be taken with a grain of salt: I don't know where you're from, but unless you have firm or recent attestations of Caucasian/Pontus ancestry, more often than not the combinations they propose serve to better adjust your averages and ethnicity estimates. In concrete terms, in order to give you a value as approximate as possible of your "geographic" DNA, the oracle identifies a majority "Tuscan" component that, however, compared to the reference samples of k13 from which it starts, is evidently moved a bit more to the east, and in the end it identifies in the Caucasian sample the missing tile more suitable to complete your puzzle.

But most likely it's only a statistical game.
 
Thank you a lot for the very in-depth explanation. My father is from Northwestern (25%) and Central-Southern (75%) Italy, while my mother is from Veneto.

I can see how the much more consequential and widespread CHG migration would be a more likely explanation than a minor medieval introgression.
Unfortunately I cannot trace my genealogy further than the 19th century, which is up to then entirely Italian.

The only link to those medieval sources would be that my parteral Northwestern ancestry is centered around Genova, and my maternal's around Venezia, matching the areas were most of these slaves were. I realize that this has weak ground and, in light of what I have learned in this thread, attributing my West Asian component to CHG sounds more plausible.
 
A. C. said:
Thank you a lot for the very in-depth explanation. My father is from Northwestern (25%) and Central-Southern (75%) Italy, while my mother is from Veneto.

I can see how the much more consequential and widespread CHG migration would be a more likely explanation than a minor medieval introgression.
Unfortunately I cannot trace my genealogy further than the 19th century, which is up to then entirely Italian.

The only link to those medieval sources would be that my parteral Northwestern ancestry is centered around Genova, and my maternal's around Venezia, matching the areas were most of these slaves were. I realize that this has weak ground and, in light of what I have learned in this thread, attributing my West Asian component to CHG sounds more plausible.
Click to expand...

This makes sense. Certainly the combo of your Ligurian/Northwestern and Central Italian origins is something that can "simulate" a "Tuscan" position in some oracles.


I don't feel like ruling out the possibility that your extra-CHG may have been inherited not only from central/southern Italy, but also from your Veneto side. Certainly this part of Veneto projects you a little more to the East than Tuscany, but if it were coastal Veneto and/or the Po Delta, I'm quite ready to bet that there is a little bit of "Caucasus" there too, because of some ancient Greek and more recently Byzantine presence
 
Stuvanè said:
This makes sense. Certainly the combo of your Ligurian/Northwestern and Central Italian origins is something that can "simulate" a "Tuscan" position in some oracles.


I don't feel like ruling out the possibility that your extra-CHG may have been inherited not only from central/southern Italy, but also from your Veneto side. Certainly this part of Veneto projects you a little more to the East than Tuscany, but if it were coastal Veneto and/or the Po Delta, I'm quite ready to bet that there is a little bit of "Caucasus" there too, because of some ancient Greek and more recently Byzantine presence
Click to expand...

Indeed, I think it is a phenomenon that had a far reaching impact. Swiss (Italian, French, and German) as well as Austrian, and Bavarian can be modeled with some "Minoan as well". Genetically, they sort of look like Northerner-Northern Italians in my model.
 
KTt7ipu.png
 
Stuvanè said:
I must premise that Living DNA oracles have always left me a bit perplexed (IMO they are better calibrated and more accurate for the British, while the Italians - even the most isolated and conservative communities - almost always tend to assign something "exotic").


That said, without detracting from the possible medieval or early modern age introgressions that you cite, as Jovialis explained to you, many times the Caucasian components in the autosome of Italians are probably older, starting from the late Bronze Age and ending in the full Roman imperial age. First of all, it is a less strange component than one can imagine, that for the most archaic phases is part of the genetic make-up of the Indo-Europeans themselves, born from a very ancient hybridization of hunter-gatherers from Eastern Europe (EHG) with hunter-gatherers from Caucasus (CHG).


Always quoting Jovialis, when this Caucasian share exceeds independently and begins to be well detectable - as it seems to happen in Italy compared to other European regions -, some migrations flowing from the Aegean world, from the eastern Mediterranean and in general from the Micro-Asiatic region can be ascribed to it (in protohistoric ages I suspect that the collapse of the bronze civilizations around the XIII-XII centuries B.C. was one of the first upheavals to move it from us, according to rather mysterious trajectories and not yet well defined historically).

Almost certainly the Greeks of the classical age, the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic populations of the Roman period inserted in the Empire and perhaps also some Byzantine presence here and there were the main vectors along our Peninsula with different proportions (more diluted in northern Italy, more marked in the south and usually well present along the Adriatic coast, which is a natural corridor to the Greek-Anatolian region and the Black Sea).


If I remember correctly, using the Eurogenes k13 in the Po Valley area the signal is already present with an average value of 6-7% (and in Tuscany I think we are at similar percentages of 8%), while in southern Italy can reach values of 15%, sometimes even more. As already said, I don't feel to exclude more recent migratory phenomena, but compared to the big one happened before, I don't think that these episodes can distinguish too much.


Also keep in mind that these oracles should be taken with a grain of salt: I don't know where you're from, but unless you have firm or recent attestations of Caucasian/Pontus ancestry, more often than not the combinations they propose serve to better adjust your averages and ethnicity estimates. In concrete terms, in order to give you a value as approximate as possible of your "geographic" DNA, the oracle identifies a majority "Tuscan" component that, however, compared to the reference samples of k13 from which it starts, is evidently moved a bit more to the east, and in the end it identifies in the Caucasian sample the missing tile more suitable to complete your puzzle.

But most likely it's only a statistical game.
Click to expand...

Excellent explanation of a complicated history.
 
I remember I got some Asia Minor % in the first version of FTDNA myOrigins.
 
I had actually gotten a surprising 26% Asia Minor with MyOrigins V2, which then went down to 4% in V3, though other odd things appeared with that update, like 8% Ireland and 6% Magyar. MyHeritage has been the most conservative in terms of West Asian ancestry, giving me only 0.8%. I am curious to see how 23andMe will compare.
 
A. C. said:
I had actually gotten a surprising 26% Asia Minor with MyOrigins V2, which then went down to 4% in V3, though other odd things appeared with that update, like 8% Ireland and 6% Magyar. MyHeritage has been the most conservative in terms of West Asian ancestry, giving me only 0.8%. I am curious to see how 23andMe will compare.
Click to expand...


ftdna is not accurate ................it is next to last with Living DNA ( which is last )
 
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