Comparing Ancient Greek populations to modern Greeks and Italians

I'll reply to the best of my ability,

1) When I make historical points and references is because I come from such a background, it boggles my mind how some can jump over nearly 1800+ years of Byzantine/Ottoman recorded history and go straight to the Bronze/Iron Age when they want to explain population backgrounds. Ethnographically, with the exception of Tsakonia, Peloponnesians show no unique ethnographic/linguistic evolution of 'ancient times' compared to their other peers.

2) The PCAs obviously show a distorted sense of reality, that's why formal stats are usually preferred in academic papers. If you head to my other thread, you can see that FST distances are better for Albanians than for Greeks in relation to the Mycenean samples (Reich dataset that Lazaridis et al (2017) used).

3) I am not a nordicist or any other -icist. I treasure my nation's ancient/Byzantine/Ottoman past, its history and ethnography equally and I only post historical (or other) references that I can back with sources or that are easy to cross reference. I think that a jump of 2k+ years of historical and ethnographic evolution is not very academic to say the least. Why shouldn't Moreans/Peloponnesians treasure their Albanian, Slavic, Italian, Saracen and Greek roots equally? Aren't they an amalgamation of all these things, just like the historians tell us? Is one past more important and more 'pure' than the others?

4) For disclosure purposes, I am half Arvanite from Thrace from my dad, and half Pontic Anatolian from my mom. Shall I discount my Balkan and South Caucasian genetics, culture and ancestral tradition, just so I can pretend that I am Cretan, like the PCAs say, and henceforth also close to ancient Greeks by proxy? Will I score more internet points if I do that?

I think you have misunderstood me, with all due respect, my background is anthropology and ethnography and so I am very keen on these middle/late Medieval details some people want to leave out.

Hey these autosmal comparisons are in "good fun" and I don't believe anyone is saying that if they cluster with an ancient population then they're a direct descendant. I'm super close to the Logkas 2 sample as are Tuscans and other Central Italians so are we genetically linked? Hardly. We just share similar genetic components but that's what makes it interesting. it allows you (in good fun) to compare your genetic makeup to the ancients. As far as the Medieval history of Greece I find it super fascinating particularly when discussing the various Frankish and Venetian principalities, the Slavic and Albanian settlements, and the strongholds of the Byzantine East. It's absolutely an underappreciated segment of Greek history but for the sake of this thread I was simply trying to present (with the various samples available) how similar Greeks and Italians are when comparing these populations to the Ancients.
 
Yes I agree the standard modern mainland Greek is pretty much a mix of Classical era Greeks (or something of the sort) with additional Slavic admixture. I will say that the entire Greek mainland is pretty uniform genetically. This was pointed out by someone on this site several years back (LeBrok I believe) who had a collection of mainland Greek samples. I remember asking him about that and he totally agreed. So if you look at Central (Greek) Macedonia, Thessaly, Rumeli and the Peloponnese there's an absolute (and pretty tight) genetic continuum. The outliers (if you want to call them that) are obviously the deep Maniots and Tsakonians who are pretty close (in comparative terms) to Cretans who in turn link up to other Aegean Islanders.

Again you do this again.

DO NOT MIX MANIATES WITH TSAKONES.

they are tottaly different population.
for seconf time plz Understand it,
Maniates population has nothing to do with Tsakones population,
 
Again you do this again.

DO NOT MIX MANIATES WITH TSAKONES.

they are tottaly different population.
for seconf time Understand it,
Maniates population has nothing to do with Tsakones population,
I know the difference. I’ve been to Greece 5 times. All of my family is from the Morea. My maternal grandmother was from a village called Paliochori that borders on Tsakonian villages. I’ve been to Kosmas and Leonidion. My paternal side is from Messinia and I’ve been to exo Mani. I dated a full blooded Maniatisa so yes I know the difference 😄
 
I know the difference. I’ve been to Greece 5 times. All of my family is from the Morea. My maternal grandmother was from a village called Paliochori that borders on Tsakonian villages. I’ve been to Kosmas and Leonidion. My paternal side is from Messinia and I’ve been to exo Mani. I dated a full blooded Maniatisa so yes I know the difference ������

Tsakones speak an ancient Dorian dialect as shelf improved through ages call exo-Lakonian
but their ethnogenesis as a sub-group strat at 8 century AD probably cause they served as light infantry,

Maniates are around 650 years after as a sub-group ethnogenesis
and has to do with Italian priviledges, mercenairies, and mainly piracy.

If you refer to Francocratia, then there is a castle there, the castle of Lello Lellou
even for this the argonese chronicles and local chronicles, and the 4rth crusade chronicles can not give a correct answer,

Hugues de Charpigny or de Lille
Guy de Nivelet or de Neuville or de Nevilles etc etc
 


I think our disagreement is based on a misunderstanding of goalposts.

I don't have an agenda to disprove anything, but I do consider myself an avid supporter of the restoration of Byzantine/Ottoman Greek medieval identity and culture in my own country.

I also believe that the genetics and ethnography of the successors of the Byzantine/Ottoman empires (both modern Greeks and Turks) are more complex than simple models of "ancient Greeks + extra Slavic/Albanian" or "Anatolian + extra Turkic", etc. Based on the historiographers of their times there were numerous populations also thrown in the mix of the Byzantine ethnos apart from Slavs and Albanians, like Armenians, Isaurians, Pecheneges, Seljuks/Iranians, and others, that also contributed their bit into the amalgamation of what consisted the Byzantine/Ottoman Greek ethnos; from my perspective those contributions and sacrifices of whom essentially are some of our ancestors need to also be recognized and not buried.

As for myself, I am not an Albanian spy, half or full, set out to get the poor Greeks; I think it's funny that Arvanites are automatically considered as Albanians in such an argument, most of my generation (late Xers/early Millenials) only very recently started to rediscover their roots and particularities within the context of the modern Greek ethnos, up until very recently Arvanite or Vlach was a connotation used for a 'villager/rural farmer' person, not necessarily tied to an ethnic context. A lot of people with Arvanite roots or such last names can't speak Arvanitic and sometimes don't even know if any of their ancestors spoke such a language, the linguistic Hellenisation was a process that began in the 11th-12th century in some cases.

That's all for now.
 
I think our disagreement is based on a misunderstanding of goalposts.

I don't have an agenda to disprove anything, but I do consider myself an avid supporter of the restoration of Byzantine/Ottoman Greek medieval identity and culture in my own country.

I also believe that the genetics and ethnography of the successors of the Byzantine/Ottoman empires (both modern Greeks and Turks) are more complex than simple models of "ancient Greeks + extra Slavic/Albanian" or "Anatolian + extra Turkic", etc. Based on the historiographers of their times there were numerous populations also thrown in the mix of the Byzantine ethnos apart from Slavs and Albanians, like Armenians, Isaurians, Pecheneges, Seljuks/Iranians, and others, that also contributed their bit into the amalgamation of what consisted the Byzantine/Ottoman Greek ethnos; from my perspective those contributions and sacrifices of whom essentially are some of our ancestors need to also be recognized and not buried.

As for myself, I am not an Albanian spy, half or full, set out to get the poor Greeks; I think it's funny that Arvanites are automatically considered as Albanians in such an argument, most of my generation (late Xers/early Millenials) only very recently started to rediscover their roots and particularities within the context of the modern Greek ethnos, up until very recently Arvanite or Vlach was a connotation used for a 'villager/rural farmer' person, not necessarily tied to an ethnic context. A lot of people with Arvanite roots or such last names can't speak Arvanitic and sometimes don't even know if any of their ancestors spoke such a language, the linguistic Hellenisation was a process that began in the 11th-12th century in some cases.

That's all for now.


I really can not understand you,
your writting seems you hide something, and want to provide something else,

Let me at least explain you the brown Iranian Neolithic is the primary genetical stuff of continental Greeks in antique

Altaic component is a mark of possible Turkic-Turkish origin,
no matter 400 years unde Ottoman Turks, Greece has the lowest almost 0 Altaic component.
 
I really can not understand you,
your writting seems you hide something, and want to provide something else,

Let me at least explain you the brown Iranian Neolithic is the primary genetical stuff of continental Greeks in antique

Altaic component is a mark of possible Turkic-Turkish origin,
no matter 400 years unde Ottoman Turks, Greece has the lowest almost 0 Altaic component.


I am not sure what the Altaic component has to do with anything we're talking about here.
 
When did I ever say anything of the kind?

I'm talking about the fact that certain Peloponnese populations are pretty close to populations like the Mycenaeans, as are some island populations. How does that not make sense? Isolated populations get less new input. The island Greeks got less Slavic.

It would also be interesting to compare modern Greek and Italian populations to the Greek Classical Era trader from Catalonia, or the one from Athens. I'd prefer a K12b comparison, especially considering that Eurogenes himself has said there are problems with the G25. Why people don't take him at his own word I'll never understand, but hey some of you still see it as the Holy Grail, and yet you don't want to accept the results. Don't understand it.

I wasn't addressing you but the thread in general. I wasn't even talking about the Islands and I am aware some people from Peloponnese plot very southern.
 
Some people just can't seem to abide the fact that perhaps there are still people on the Greek mainland who are pretty much like the ancient Greeks, and they themselves are very different.

So, they post all sorts of speculation about how this group or that group added a few genes here and there, and ignore the facts staring us in the face, which show a rather remarkable similarity to, for example, Mycenaeans. Or are we just going to ignore the analyses which show just that?

Anyone tried which modern populations are closest to the Greek trader from Catalonia?

If the Greeks referred to are Mycenaean-like then no, they are not even remotely "similar" to any population living today in either Greece or Italy.

The Mycenaean and Emporiote average have a distance of 4.85 and 4.72 from Greek_Deep_Mani which is the closest, it is practically the same distance that there is on average between an Irishman and a Czech!
 
All you have proved to me is that I guessed right, and you're one of the Albanians, or part Albanians, who want to deny any continuity in Greece to any meaningful degree. You are operating, imo, not from an objective analysis of "all" the data, but from your pre-conceived conclusions.

If I've got it wrong I apologize, but it seems to me as if you're just someone else trying to prove there are no Greeks, just some combination of Albanians, Slavs, Italians, Saracens, and what was it, Cretan pirates. Anyone else you'd like to throw into the mix?

To prove such a claim you'd have to provide verifiable, precise numbers of people, uniparental data etc., or ancient dna for each time period showing the change in the dna over time. You can't do it, although perhaps at some point in the future we'll have that kind of data.

What can be done, and has been done in academic papers, is to show that one can take the Greeks of their Golden Eras, add Slavic admixture, and you get modern Greeks. Those populations most isolated from that Slavic admixture are the closest to the ancient Greeks.

It makes perfect sense. If we've learned anything at all from the population genetics papers of the last few years it should be that the autosomal "signature" of a people is shaped by folk migrations, NOT a few Saracens, or pirates or Italians or soldiers here and there. The SLAVS were a folk migration; that's why they were able to change the genetics. No one denies it. The operative word, however, is CHANGE, not REPLACE, much as it may pain you to accept it.

Lol you're quickly to jump to assumptions and conclusions :LOL: Relax, we already know you are anti-Albanian :LOL:

I have seen him also on other forums and he is definitely not Albanian. There was another Greek guy arguing the same on Apecity , and I remember he showed that many of these samples are closer to other populations than to Greeks and plotting can also be misleading for many reasons.

Tell me, what happened to all these people ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey

The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey (Greek: Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, romanized: I Antallagí, Ottoman Turkish: مبادله, romanized: Mübâdele, Turkish: Mübadele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved at least 1.6 million people (1,221,489 Greek Orthodox from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps and the Caucasus, and 355,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece),[3] most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
 
Lol you're quickly to jump to assumptions and conclusions :LOL: Relax, we already know you are anti-Albanian :LOL:

I have seen him also on other forums and he is definitely not Albanian. There was another Greek guy arguing the same on Apecity , and I remember he showed that many of these samples are closer to other populations than to Greeks and plotting can also be misleading for many reasons.

Tell me, what happened to all these people ?

Yes, I'm so anti-Albanian that for years I pointed out the absurdity of the claims made here that the Albanians were the descendants of Turks.

You guys have very short memories, and/or no capacity for gratitude.

As for all those people, at least in the academic study on the Peloponnese, great care was taken to get samples from people who were quite elderly, specifically so that the "all four grandparents from the same area" standard which was also applied would ensure that no people with long residence in the Peloponnese would have any of that ancestry.

I've only pointed that out on this thread four or five times already.

Do go back to the paper and look it up for yourself.
 
I wasn't addressing you but the thread in general. I wasn't even talking about the Islands and I am aware some people from Peloponnese plot very southern.

Well, as no mainland Greeks plot any further north than the Tuscans, and in fact usually southeast of them, which is the same for the Albanians, all of you are "Southern", in that sense.
 
If the Greeks referred to are Mycenaean-like then no, they are not even remotely "similar" to any population living today in either Greece or Italy.

The Mycenaean and Emporiote average have a distance of 4.85 and 4.72 from Greek_Deep_Mani which is the closest, it is practically the same distance that there is on average between an Irishman and a Czech!


how sure you are?
about
1 this,
2 the ancient myceneans,
3 Maniates are local to Lacedaimonia when Myceneans rull
4 Myceneans where main dwellers and not main rulers.

etc etc,

and who is emporiotes

are you another Albanian hiding behind Italian Flag?
 
how sure you are?
about
1 this,
2 the ancient myceneans,
3 Maniates are local to Lacedaimonia when Myceneans rull
4 Myceneans where main dwellers and not main rulers.

etc etc,

and who is emporiotes

are you another Albanian hiding behind Italian Flag?

I base this on the genomes of the ancient Greeks that we have so far. I am Southern Italian, not Albanian.

"GRC_Mycenaean" is an average of 4 individuals who lived in the Peloponnese between 1346 and 1300 BC.

"Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2" is an average of 2 individuals who lived in the Greek colony of Emporion in Spain between 576 and 276 BC.

Below you can see the closest modern populations to them, and also note that they are all far apart.

Distance to:GRC_Mycenaean
0.04621737Italian_Calabria
0.04809307Italian_Campania
0.04852104Greek_Deep_Mani
0.04995370Italian_Apulia
0.04999673Italian_Basilicata
0.05085882Sicilian_East
0.05100425Greek_Kos
0.05223553Greek_Dodecanese
0.05364111Italian_Jew
0.05422879Italian_Abruzzo

Distance to:Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2
0.04715049Greek_Deep_Mani
0.04766329Italian_Apulia
0.04778804Italian_Campania
0.04857601Italian_Calabria
0.04981762Italian_Basilicata
0.04994000Sicilian_East
0.05206948Greek_Dodecanese
0.05321564Italian_Abruzzo
0.05330776Greek_Kos
0.05402369Italian_Molise
 
If the Greeks referred to are Mycenaean-like then no, they are not even remotely "similar" to any population living today in either Greece or Italy.

The Mycenaean and Emporiote average have a distance of 4.85 and 4.72 from Greek_Deep_Mani which is the closest, it is practically the same distance that there is on average between an Irishman and a Czech!

Wow I forgot to add the NE Empuries sample. That population consisted of settlers from the Anatolian Coast who were originally from Central Greece and apparently Doric speakers. I'm guessing they had higher Steppe than the Myceneans.
 
No actually Myceneans have higher Steppe:

Target: GRC_Mycenaean:I9033
Distance: 3.4885% / 0.03488502 | R4P

57.6TUR_Barcin_N
17.4TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA_low_res
16.6Yamnaya_RUS_Caucasus
8.4GEO_CHG


Target: Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2
Distance: 1.1605% / 0.01160544

49.8TUR_Barcin_N
19.8TUR_Barcin_C
18.8TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA_low_res
11.6Yamnaya_RUS_Caucasus

I'm guessing these Phoceans absorbed Anatolian admixture during those 200 years of settlement on the Anatolian coast before emigrating to Iberia. It would be interesting to see what their admixture was like prior to their settlement in those coastal regions of Anatolia.
Target: GRC_Mycenaean:I9033
Distance: 3.4885% / 0.03488502 | R4P

57.6TUR_Barcin_N
17.4TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA_low_res
16.6Yamnaya_RUS_Caucasus
8.4GEO_CHG
 
I base this on the genomes of the ancient Greeks that we have so far. I am Southern Italian, not Albanian.

"GRC_Mycenaean" is an average of 4 individuals who lived in the Peloponnese between 1346 and 1300 BC.

"Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2" is an average of 2 individuals who lived in the Greek colony of Emporion in Spain between 576 and 276 BC.

Below you can see the closest modern populations to them, and also note that they are all far apart.

Distance to:GRC_Mycenaean
0.04621737Italian_Calabria
0.04809307Italian_Campania
0.04852104Greek_Deep_Mani
0.04995370Italian_Apulia
0.04999673Italian_Basilicata
0.05085882Sicilian_East
0.05100425Greek_Kos
0.05223553Greek_Dodecanese
0.05364111Italian_Jew
0.05422879Italian_Abruzzo

Distance to:Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2
0.04715049Greek_Deep_Mani
0.04766329Italian_Apulia
0.04778804Italian_Campania
0.04857601Italian_Calabria
0.04981762Italian_Basilicata
0.04994000Sicilian_East
0.05206948Greek_Dodecanese
0.05321564Italian_Abruzzo
0.05330776Greek_Kos
0.05402369Italian_Molise

Er Monnezza: What are you using to calculate those distances? Dodecad12b or G25? From what I have always understood, the orginal Dodecade12B calculator suggested 0.05 as the "critical value/cutoff" to determine if a population is genetically the same/similar, etc. For G25 per Duarte who is a very reputable poster here and one whose posts I read and value, the suggested value is 0.029. I think for G25, 0.05 is considered "ok" as I distance so maybe a related population, etc.

Cheers, PT
 
Er Monnezza: What are you using to calculate those distances? Dodecad12b or G25? From what I have always understood, the orginal Dodecade12B calculator suggested 0.05 as the "critical value/cutoff" to determine if a population is genetically the same/similar, etc. For G25 per Duarte who is a very reputable poster here and one whose posts I read and value, the suggested value is 0.029. I think for G25, 0.05 is considered "ok" as I distance so maybe a related population, etc.

Cheers, PT

I am using Global25 which uses a different "scale" than Dodecad K12b.

These are the Dodecad K12b distances

Distance to:GRC_Mycenaean
12.70876936Italian_Campania
13.28266798Italian_Molise
13.33339112Italian_Calabria
13.97269368Sephardic_Jew
14.08212586Greek_Icaria
14.33625714Italian_Sicily
14.49913338Italian_Abruzzo
14.57746270Italian_Jew
14.64152549Ashkenazi_Jew
15.40629802Italian_Basilicata

Distance to:Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2
10.73443990Sephardic_Jew
11.90094114Greek_Icaria
11.95750392Italian_Jew
11.97646442Italian_Calabria
12.49214553Italian_Campania
12.70723416Morocco_Jew
13.03312702Ashkenazi_Jew
13.39700713Italian_Molise
13.84223248Italian_Sicily
14.39025017Moldovan_Jewish

As for Global25, two averages are very close if they have a distance less than 1.30, and close if they have a distance less than 1.80. For the distances of an individual to an average, I also tend to consider 3.00 as the cut-off value although technically there is none.
 
Er Monnezza: Ok, thanks.
 
Sorry, duplicate post.
 

This thread has been viewed 123325 times.

Back
Top