Comparing Ancient Greek populations to modern Greeks and Italians

[mount123]

The when-clause ought to make clear that I refer to those posters that insist on their delusions, since what I said applies when they engage in said behaviour, but to avoid misunderstanding, of course I have no intention of accusing all members of an ethnicity, since it would be dumb and directed towards people that aren't an annoyance.
With "100% or almost 100% Balkanites " I am referring to how certain Albanian posters here describe themselves as "100% descendants of ancient Balkanites" (when they insisted that "it is no coincidence that they are similar to Logkas 2") BUT they also insist that Greeks just "happen" to cluster close to them because Greeks would be heavily admixed with Slavs whereas they are not (so they claim, whatever meaning you want to give to "heavily").

Well, thanks for clarifying. I get your point but generally still think it is rather appropriate to address individually and not in regards to ethnicity.

I don't want to dwell too much into this discussion out of respect for matadworf but as long as people address for instance something like the population exchange between Turkey and Greece and how that has had its impact in certain groups I don't think that they are propagating when doing that. Or that population modelling does not always portray actual ancestry and other nuances. I don't want to comment on other standpoints posted here.

[eupator]

All of the Greeks of Thrace? Eastern, Western and Northern Thrace? This is just from memory while I am drinking my coffee, but 300,000 Greeks from all those areas found their way to Greece from 1878-1923.

Western Thrace didn't have a lot of Greeks, the majority was in Eastern and in the Principality of Eastern Rumelia/Bulgaria.

I am not sure if I understood the question correctly, but up until the point where the Young Turk movement started to take over in the 1910s+, the Thracian Ottoman Greeks were the most affluent artisan, bureaucratic and merchant group/class next to the capital (not discounting Pontus and Asia Minor coastline).

Also, please check your PMs.

[bigsnake49]

Western Thrace didn't have a lot of Greeks, the majority was in Eastern and in the Principality of Eastern Rumelia/Bulgaria.

I am not sure if I understood the question correctly, but up until the point where the Young Turk movement started to take over in the 1910s+, the Thracian Ottoman Greeks were the most affluent artisan, bureaucratic and merchant group/class next to the capital (not discounting Pontus and Asia Minor coastline).

Also, please check your PMs.

While the Greeks of Eastern Thrace and Northern Thrace that lived in the cities were all that, the farmers that lived in the villages were not. While the elite might have migrated from other areas of the empire to the area's cities, the farmers were probably hellenized locals, Thracians of old mixed in with some of the newer migrants.

[Angela]

And this comment is not even relevant, it's a clear nonsequitur, since I've never implied that Mycenaeans are not least differentiated from populations from Greece,Cyprus, Albania and Italy; I'll try to make it simple for you:

1) Among those populations, it is ascertained that the closest are Peloponnesian Greeks and Cretans and south Italians, and to the extent Cretans can be used as a proxy for other Greek islanders, also other Greek islanders are pretty close.
2) The genetic literature's consensus is that it is so because those populations had the fewest amount of external genetic input; to keep the discussion on topic, specifically that Peloponnesian Greeks (southern ones particularly) and Greek islanders have the lowest input from Slavic and hence are the closest to ancient Greeks, and more broadly Greeks as a whole are modelled as ancient Greeks + Slavs.
3) Other Greeks from particular ethnic backgrounds and Albanians in this thread deny point 2 and put forward laughable claims, namely that actually Greeks are made up from a very diverse array of different populations whose overall mix somehow approximates what you'd get if you mixed ancient Greeks and Slavs.
4) Since point three is what happens when you throw aside Ockham's razor and decide to take the pataphysical approach, I can't deduce it is motivated by ethnic inferiority complexes.



The when-clause ought to make clear that I refer to those posters that insist on their delusions, since what I said applies when they engage in said behaviour, but to avoid misunderstanding, of course I have no intention of accusing all members of an ethnicity, since it would be dumb and directed towards people that aren't an annoyance.
With "100% or almost 100% Balkanites " I am referring to how certain Albanian posters here describe themselves as "100% descendants of ancient Balkanites" (when they insisted that "it is no coincidence that they are similar to Logkas 2") BUT they also insist that Greeks just "happen" to cluster close to them because Greeks would be heavily admixed with Slavs whereas they are not (so they claim, whatever meaning you want to give to "heavily").




Your "historical truths" are wild speculations that fail many epistemological standards in historiography (said otherwise, you make a lot of inductive mistakes, you lack understanding of the larger picture, and show no critical appraisal of the information you read in ancient sources), I suggest you read some books about the methods and standards used in historical research.

Excellent post. If I could give you ten upvotes I would.

I would add that when asked for actual evidence of those wild speculations one is met by a deafening silence.

[blevins13]

And this comment is not even relevant, it's a clear nonsequitur, since I've never implied that Mycenaeans are not least differentiated from populations from Greece,Cyprus, Albania and Italy; I'll try to make it simple for you:

1) Among those populations, it is ascertained that the closest are Peloponnesian Greeks and Cretans and south Italians, and to the extent Cretans can be used as a proxy for other Greek islanders, also other Greek islanders are pretty close.
2) The genetic literature's consensus is that it is so because those populations had the fewest amount of external genetic input; to keep the discussion on topic, specifically that Peloponnesian Greeks (southern ones particularly) and Greek islanders have the lowest input from Slavic and hence are the closest to ancient Greeks, and more broadly Greeks as a whole are modelled as ancient Greeks + Slavs.
3) Other Greeks from particular ethnic backgrounds and Albanians in this thread deny point 2 and put forward laughable claims, namely that actually Greeks are made up from a very diverse array of different populations whose overall mix somehow approximates what you'd get if you mixed ancient Greeks and Slavs.
4) Since point three is what happens when you throw aside Ockham's razor and decide to take the pataphysical approach, I can't deduce it is motivated by ethnic inferiority complexes.



The when-clause ought to make clear that I refer to those posters that insist on their delusions, since what I said applies when they engage in said behaviour, but to avoid misunderstanding, of course I have no intention of accusing all members of an ethnicity, since it would be dumb and directed towards people that aren't an annoyance.
With "100% or almost 100% Balkanites " I am referring to how certain Albanian posters here describe themselves as "100% descendants of ancient Balkanites" (when they insisted that "it is no coincidence that they are similar to Logkas 2") BUT they also insist that Greeks just "happen" to cluster close to them because Greeks would be heavily admixed with Slavs whereas they are not (so they claim, whatever meaning you want to give to "heavily").




Your "historical truths" are wild speculations that fail many epistemological standards in historiography (said otherwise, you make a lot of inductive mistakes, you lack understanding of the larger picture, and show no critical appraisal of the information you read in ancient sources), I suggest you read some books about the methods and standards used in historical research.

I see logic in your post, but it seem that you do not know the history of the Balkans. From the outsider view point as yourself I would probably say the same.

But you miss the following, malelines of the populations in the Balkans suffer tremendous bottle-necks between VI and VII century. For example the males lines of the Albanians come probability from 100 max men that have expanded in the last 1500 years as far as Morea after the Eastern Roman collapse. Same can be said for the Vllah male-lines and Greek male lines. But in case of Morea Greeks now the majority are not the male-lines of the Mycenaean Greeks or probably even classic Greeks. I am not saying that there is no continuity, but facts are facts, majority of the males lines has changed.




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[eupator]

Excellent post. If I could give you ten upvotes I would.

I would add that when asked for actual evidence of those wild speculations one is met by a deafening silence.

What is that actual evidence that you need? A copy+paste of the actual passages from Chalcocondyles' work?

What evidence is there to contradict those historical passages, you haven't refuted anything so far. You just said Herodotus was wrong about Etruscans and called it a day, what does this argument have to do with Medieval and Ottoman Greece?

Lazaridis' Greek_Thessaloniki samples in the 2017 paper are part West Asian or half West Asian, you can open the Reich dataset .ind and .anno files and see for yourself if you don't believe me. I am sure I also saw those samples circulating on a K12b list somewhere. The other Greek samples on the Lazaridis paper are from Crete and Cyprus, there's no Peloponnesians in there unfortunately.

What else is there to prove?

[Er Monnezza]

My ancestor :)

[Kuivamaa]

…but he does not mention Albanians movements nor he tries to distinguish them.

I have the impression (judging by what 23andme etc are doing) that it is difficult in general to distinguish mainland Greek from south Albanian autosomal dna. Which makes sense since the base “materials” were similar for both populations, they coexisted and migrated/colonized each other’s areas and later in history both received influx of similar populations (eg slavs).

This reminds me of the whole controversy a few years back about what dna footprint did the Danish Vikings leave in “danelaw” areas of England. Papers have found little but many have pointed out the obvious issue here, that Saxons, and particularly Angles and Jutes which were one of the building blocks of pre-Norman England were quite possibly nearly identical to Viking Danes.

[matadworf]

I see logic in your post, but it seem that you do not know the history of the Balkans. From the outsider view point as yourself I would probably say the same.
But you miss the following, malelines of the populations in the Balkans suffer tremendous bottle-necks between VI and VII century. For example the males lines of the Albanians come probability from 100 max men that have expanded in the last 1500 years as far as Morea after the Eastern Roman collapse. Same can be said for the Vllah male-lines and Greek male lines. But in case of Morea Greeks now the majority are not the male-lines of the Mycenaean Greeks or probably even classic Greeks. I am not saying that there is no continuity, but facts are facts, majority of the males lines has changed.
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This is off topic but my maternal grandfather was an Arvanite from Aetos, Messinia. My maternal uncle (only male offspring) died young and he had one son who lives in Virginia. I was just about to purchase him a dna kit to check his haplogroup and he’s disappeared on me. I’m truly bummed because I wanted to check my maternal line. I was able to trace the family back to a village near Magalopolis called Merze (another obvious Arvanite village). I have quite a few dna matches in Korce.

[eupator]

On the Slavs and Romans of Morea (pp 233):

De Administrando Imperio [On Administering the Empire] : Constantine Porphyrogenitus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


Chalcocondyles' accord of Vlachs from Bogdania colonizing en mass the regions of Epirus, Thessaly all the way to Peloponnesos.



Unfortunately, I don't have a translated copy of the above but you can trust my word for it or find a Greek speaker to confirm.

[Er Monnezza]

Ancient Greeks (I assume they mean from the mainland as well) had 30-40% Anatolia_BA without any shred of evidence.

Here you mean the Greeks of the Classical period? It's not that much evidence is needed, just compare modern Greeks with Mycenaeans. The modern Greeks (mainland and islands together), compared to the Mycenaeans or the Emporiotes, have the same amount or more of CHG, Iran_N, and Levant_PPNB while having definitely more Steppes.

It means that indeed there was an influence coming from the east and south, maybe in the Classical period or maybe in the Hellenistic period, we don't know. The problem is that we still know very little about what ethnic structure existed in Greece in the Iron Age, and 4 Mycenaeans (of which 2 should be discarded because they are of the lowest quality) and 2 settlers from another country are just not enough.

[eupator]

Arvanite speakers of modern Southern Greece, today:




Someone needs to inform these people that they need to provide proof they are not really ancient Greeks in disguise.

[eupator]

My ancestor :)

Ι see you, brother, and I raise you:




My ancestors were Imperial Romans from Lazio and South Italy, not Arvanitevlachs and Pontics like I've been told.

[eupator]

I have quite a few dna matches in Korce.

If you have a lot of dna matches in Korce you might want to read about the Remenoi Vlachs or the Arvanitovlachs:

Οι Αρβανιτόβλαχοι (Ρεμένοι Βλάχοι) (protothema.gr)

Use the google translate function from Greek to English for the page, it's a good translation.

This is also the source population of my own family as well.

[matadworf]

If you have a lot of dna matches in Korce you might want to read about the Remenoi Vlachs or the Arvanitovlachs:

Οι Αρβανιτόβλαχοι (Ρεμένοι Βλάχοι) (protothema.gr)

Use the google translate function from Greek to English for the page, it's a good translation.

This is also the source population of my own family as well.

Thanks enjoyed the article.

[iluvatar]

Well, thanks for clarifying. I get your point but generally still think it is rather appropriate to address individually and not in regards to ethnicity.

I don't want to dwell too much into this discussion out of respect for matadworf but as long as people address for instance something like the population exchange between Turkey and Greece and how that has had its impact in certain groups I don't think that they are propagating when doing that. Or that population modelling does not always portray actual ancestry and other nuances. I don't want to comment on other standpoints posted here.

I don’t get this particular argument. Why would the resettlement of Greeks from Anatolia to another place in Greece need to be addressed. They don’t differ genetically from other Greeks. Most of them plot between the islands and the mainland and were probably recent migrants to western Anatolia (check the rapid growth of the population of Smyrna for example).

Target: Greek_Izmir Distance: 0.6495% / 0.00649527
62.4	Greek_Peloponnese
33.2	Greek_Kos
4.4	Greek_Macedonia

Populations used:
Greek_Peloponnese,0.117393,0.1445745,0.0071996,-0.0279395,0.0195001,-0.0102429,0.003429,8.4e-05,0.0019895,0.0140653,0.0040523,0.000872,-0.0016691,0.0049669,-0.0158114,0.0002169,0.0066851,0.0010192,0.0063877,-0.0044055,-0.0066928,0.0010004,0.003815,0.0010133,-0.0018506
Greek_Kos,0.1076261,0.1464618,-0.0220407,-0.0538692,0.0041031,-0.018252,0.0008617,-0.0036921,-0.0059994,0.0167861,0.0026524,0.0031472,-0.0039148,0.0009634,-0.0106012,0.0029906,0.0100107,0.0009432,0.0037151,-0.0036407,-0.0038128,0.0016762,-0.0001778,-0.0014059,-0.0021157
Greek_Trabzon,0.1088149,0.1395337,-0.0541922,-0.0612731,-0.0251739,-0.0177374,0.0072852,-0.0047076,-0.03798,-0.003517,0.0029556,0.0060996,-0.0143902,0.0076518,-0.0083876,-0.0124236,0.0065843,-0.0011655,-0.0010433,0.0023638,0.0040679,0.0013974,-0.0024403,-0.0025666,-0.0013412
Greek_Macedonia,0.1215631,0.1428511,0.0134758,-0.0164945,0.0188958,-0.0048713,0.0029453,0.0028768,-4.09e-05,0.0121735,0.0019703,0.0012888,-0.0023093,0.0103219,-0.0153365,-0.0062493,0.0018428,0.0006587,0.0069805,-0.0052526,-0.0065136,0.0004122,0.0024156,-0.0010364,-0.0005986


Most of the Greeks that were exchanged were from western Anatolia and Thrace. I cant post links and pictures but there is a map showing were the bulk of them were situated in 1914 in the Wikipedia article about the exchange.

The ones from Thrace were probably a bit closer to northern Greeks overall.

Pontic Greeks do differ but so what? Their profile is likely for the most part ancient anyway. But since I know that won’t convince the usual Balkan nationalists and since Eupator is so insistent on painting them as a foreign element, let me point out that they only really constituted about 18% of the population that was exchanged (this includes the ones from the Caucasus). Again i cant post links but you can check the official census for that.

[eupator]

Also, concerning linguistic affinities especially in the late Ottoman period.

This ethnographic map by Cvijic shows the linguistic (the term ethnic is used rather) for the late Ottoman period in the region.

My father's village as you can see below is painted as brown=Greek.




But if you read Meletios' Geography and History you get the following ethnographic detail:





The village is referred to be made by Arvanites ("Arvanitovillage").


So you can see the depths you have to go into to secure the ethnographic details and nuisances of each place inside the Byzantine and Ottoman periods where so many ethnic groups lived next to each other, where so many languages were spoken simultaneously.

How can anyone with a straight face say there is this ultimately unbroken continuity to 2000 B.C. in the region?

As for Crete, and their supposed unbroken continuity to Minoan and Mycenean times, I copy+paste an older relevant post of mine:

The main historical sources for the Cretan reconquista are Byzantine chroniclers/historiographers Theodosios and Leon Diakonos and the work titled as "De Creta capta"/"Expugnatio Cretae" written in 962/963.

Some excerpts (with my translation):

a) Cretan Pagans and Saracens are used interchangeably throughout the work, often under the umbrella "barbarians", "the liars ... the beasts of the wicked ...", the reconquista being the "the work of the people of Christ ..."

b) "the fall of the Handakan (Heracleion) castle followed by the mass killings of defenders, the elderly, the women and infants ..."

c) "τὴν νῆσον ἐξημερώσας ἅπασαν, Ἀρμενίων τε καὶ Ῥωμαίων καὶ συγκλύδων ἀνδρῶν φατρίας ἐνοικισάμενος", "the whole island domesticated fully, Armenians and Romans and the conjugates of the (army) clans settling (there) ..."

d) Who were comprising the Byzantine armies in the Cretan reconquista? Let's see, according to Constantinus Porphyrogenitus' Chronicles, we have: Bulgarians, Armenians, Varangian Rus, Anatolians as well as Christian Pechenegs, Alans and Cumans.

Happy reading!

[blevins13]

I have the impression (judging by what 23andme etc are doing) that it is difficult in general to distinguish mainland Greek from south Albanian autosomal dna. Which makes sense since the base “materials” were similar for both populations, they coexisted and migrated/colonized each other’s areas and later in history both received influx of similar populations (eg slavs).

This reminds me of the whole controversy a few years back about what dna footprint did the Danish Vikings leave in “danelaw” areas of England. Papers have found little but many have pointed out the obvious issue here, that Saxons, and particularly Angles and Jutes which were one of the building blocks of pre-Norman England were quite possibly nearly identical to Viking Danes.

It is possible with Y-DNA. You can’t go wrong with that.


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[iluvatar]

For Greeks you're using the Armenian average to represent Anatolia/Caucasus and Serbian to represent South Slav? So I'm guessing high Steppe (40%) for the Serb sample what about the Armenian sample what does this represent? Explain the logic for this model.

These models might point us to a general direction when the big picture is concerned but they are not very informative because our ancient sample size is so limited and that can skew things quite a bit. For example, in the model posted by idontknowwhatimdoing Dodecanese islanders pickup Slavic admixture, but when a proper pre Slavic sample is used (the one from Marathon) they don’t pick any.

From the Danubian Limes paper supplement:

“We observe Northeastern Europe-related ancestry in the Cyclades and Crete which are more closely located to the Greek mainland. This ancestry signal (absent in Iron Age and Roman Balkan populations) decreases from North to South in the Balkans, but it is still substantial in populations from these Aegean islands. However, this North-Eastern signal is not significant in the farther islands: the Dodecanese and Cyprus, who even rejects the model by having negative values in the former.”

Concerning the Byzantine relocations from the east Eupator cites, we already know they didn’t play much of a role because again as per the Marathon sample which is dated to 252-412 CE, a Dodecanesian like profile already existed in Greece. When taking such a profile as a starting point nothing from the east gets picked up for modern Greek samples. In fact something abit more western like the Maniots (they plot with or slightly west of Crete) works better for mainland groups than using Dodecanesians.

Therefore, movements mentioned in vague historical sources are not solid proof of population replacement, ancient Dna is, at least when there is an adequate sample size to cover different eras and areas. We are quite a bit off from having an exhaustive sample size but we will eventually get there. Some of the theories proposed here might be proven, or not and some atleast (like byzantine era movements) already look unlikely.

The southern Arc paper is probably coming out in two days, if they have sufficient samples form the Archaic/classical/Roman era we might be able to get a general idea of what happened in Greece and the Balkans, why not chill out and wait for it to drop?

As a side note it is going to be fairly easy to tell when something is a coincidence or not. That Cretans are Saracens mixed with Varangians like Eupator sugested is quite an amusing idea, but it is very unlikely to be confirmed by ancient dna. The general picture for Crete will likely be that which was suggested in the Danubian Limes paper.

[eupator]

Pontic Greeks do differ but so what? Their profile is likely for the most part ancient anyway. But since I know that won’t convince the usual Balkan nationalists and since Eupator is so insistent on painting them as a foreign element, let me point out that they only really constituted about 18% of the population that was exchanged (this includes the ones from the Caucasus). Again i cant post links but you can check the official census for that.

That's not exactly true, Pontics were around 350K registered with the Lausanne Treaty, imo much more in actual numbers, and another 150K from the Caucasus/former USSR in the early 1990s.

Given the population of Greece, and especially Thessaloniki (and Macedonia in general) in both the 1920s and the 1990s, that was more than enough to southernize the rest of the mix (Macedonia+Smyrni) and create a "Cretan-like" result that obviously plotted close enough to the Mycenean cluster.

[iluvatar]

The samples from the Lazaridis paper dont cluster with Cretans though (the ones from Thessaloniki).

Some of the ones labeled “Greek Coriell” do and ofc the Cretans.

[eupator]

That Cretans are Saracens mixed with Varangians like Eupator sugested is quite an amusing idea, but it is very unlikely to be confirmed by ancient dna.

"Very unlikely" but yet no rebuttal, we are all ears.

Disprove the 962 text I quoted.

[eupator]

The samples from the Lazaridis paper dont cluster with Cretans though (the ones from Thessaloniki).

They are "close enough".

Are you running out of arguments and we have to play with words now?

[iluvatar]

They are "close enough".

Are you running out of arguments and we have to play with words now?

They aren't they plot where you would expect them, with Albanians. Overall abit more northern than the rest of the mainland.

[blevins13]

Arvanite speakers of modern Southern Greece, today:




Someone needs to inform these people that they need to provide proof they are not really ancient Greeks in disguise.

Is there any of the fighting leader of the Greek Revolution not Arvanites (Albanian - Christian)?




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