Magna Grecia paper

Francesco

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Hi all, I'm new here, even if I've started being interested in population genetics some months ago.
Some time ago I red about an upcoming paper on Magna Grecia by Lazaridis, but I haven't heard of it ever since. Do you have any info?
 
So far, all we have is the abstract, and a leaked PCA:

EXPLORING THE GENETIC DIVERSITY OF MAGNA GRAECIA – THE CASE OF CAMPANIA

Starting in the 8th century BCE, coastal Campania in Southern Italy became a melting
pot of various cultures and peoples when Etruscan and Greek colonizers joined local Italic
tribes. By establishing cities and trade posts, the contact networks of Campania were
further expanded across the Mediterranean and inland.
We generated ancient genomes from Campania, spanning the 8th to 3rd century BCE,
i.e. the Orientalizing, Archaic and Hellenistic-Roman period in this region. While most
individuals can be attributed to a genetic ancestry that arose on the Italian mainland, we
also discover descendants of migrants from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
Most notably, an individual dated to the 8th century at the first Greek settlement,
Pithekoussai, a site that also yielded the earliest example of writing in the Euboean
alphabet, was genetically of Aegean origin, and we find that this type of ancestry
persisted at the site for several centuries. We compare the genetic composition of these
descendants of Greek settlers to the local Campanians represented by individuals from
the site San Marzano and Etruscan immigrants from Pontecagnano.

We integrate a thorough analysis of the associated material culture and, where available,
strontium isotopes to establish temporal and cultural patterns of mobility, ancestry and
admixture that shaped the genetic landscape of Campanian Magna Graecia.

https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa20...itory_pdf.php?abstract=3776&source=repository

mQwkAlS.jpg
 
Do we know if those italic and etruscan samples are all from Campania?
 
Do we know if those italic and etruscan samples are all from Campania?

I have vague memories but I remember reading in a presentation that they all came from necropolises in Campania.

Generally speaking, archaeologists think that the presence of Etruscans in Campania is due to migratory movements from southern Etruria ( = northern Latium) that occurred at the beginning of the Villanovan era. Here too, if I remember correctly.
 
Hope this can shed light on the ethnogenesis of southern Italy and on its "aegean connection". We haven't many Iron age greek sample, do we?
 
Hope this can shed light on the ethnogenesis of southern Italy and on its "aegean connection". We haven't many Iron age greek sample, do we?

You should read Raveane et al. 2022 discussed here:

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...lysis-of-genome-wide-data-from-Southern-Italy

I believe there is no doubt that later periods had some contributions from Iron Age Greeks, (i.e. Magna Grecia). But I think they only served to maintain the genetic structure that was already there.

Basically pre-indo european people who probably originated from the Aegean came to southern Italy, who mixed with incomers from the north. Later mixed also with people with a similar trajectory from the Balkans and Greece.
 
Yes, I red that paper. Unfortunately I'm not a geneticist, nor I have a specific background in the matter, so I can't understand it properly, since, if I'm not mistaken, they didn't even release a PCA with their samples.
Aniway, from a historical point of view, I concurr with your point of view: the genetic of sothern italy was already "aegean like": late bronze age Sicily was more east shifted in the PCA than neolithic Sicily, if I recall correctly, possibly due to minoan and mycenean influence, which is attested by archeology too. This affinity was probably reinforced during iron age greek colonization.
 
Yes, I red that paper. Unfortunately I'm not a geneticist, nor I have a specific background in the matter, so I can't understand it properly, since, if I'm not mistaken, they didn't even release a PCA with their samples.
Aniway, from a historical point of view, I concurr with your point of view: the genetic of sothern italy was already "aegean like": late bronze age Sicily was more east shifted in the PCA than neolithic Sicily, if I recall correctly, possibly due to minoan and mycenean influence, which is attested by archeology too. This affinity was probably reinforced during iron age greek colonization.

I'm not sure why a PCA would matter, we know where all of them plot already. PCA is just another visual tool. In fact 2D PCAs can be very misleading, because there is a z axis that shows their true position. A paper can not do that.
 
I have vague memories but I remember reading in a presentation that they all came from necropolises in Campania.

Generally speaking, archaeologists think that the presence of Etruscans in Campania is due to migratory movements from southern Etruria ( = northern Latium) that occurred at the beginning of the Villanovan era. Here too, if I remember correctly.

Pax Augusta and Jovialis: Regarding the paper "EXPLORING THE GENETIC DIVERSITY OF MAGNA GRAECIA – THE CASE OF CAMPANIA" related to the PCA that Jovialis showed in post 2, I remember a thread from May 2021 where this paper was first mentioned along with the Etruscan paper that came out recently by Posth et al 2021. There were 2 other papers that were mentioned in that thread that were in progress, one of them was entitled "Unrevealing the genetic history of Italians: a genome-wide study of Iron Age Italic populations" and the other was "Genomic and anthropological analysis on the human skeletal remains recovered in the House with Garden in Pompeii, Italy"

I think the Iron Age paper had some samples from several regions, one of them I think was Sicily and the early reports were that these samples largely overlapped with the Bronze Age Sicilian samples from Fernandes et al 2020. The Pompeii paper I think would be directly related to the Campania paper and might provide clues about Roman Elite leaving there, since this House had a Garden perhaps it was someone with status and wealth? (that is just conjecture on my part).
 
At this point, what ever the abstract and leaked PCA doesn't tell us is all speculation. I assume the blue triangle are the Mycenaeans from Lazaridis et al. 2017, and the red shape is the range of Daunians from Aneli et al. 2021

If the blue triangle are the Myceneans (wich I assume they are, since they plot with the two iron age greeks from Pithecusa), It seems logical to conclude that modern southern italians largely plot between aegean iron age and southern italic tribes (the latter being already more similar to the aegean people than their northern cousins like latini and etruschi, due to the minoan and mycenean substratum in the south from the late bronze age).
 
Yes, they played a nice joke on us
 
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