Comparing Ancient Greek populations to modern Greeks and Italians

[Angela]

Wanderer you actually should run GEDmatch's Oracle's for whatever calculator you're using.

BTW, in 1940 there were 250,000 Greek descent people in Egypt. Now there are about 1,000. If this person is one of the descendants of the 250,000 I would expect some Egyptian/Middle East admixture. No way you're going to have Greeks in Egypt in large number since the Hellenistic period and not have admixture.

What is this obsession you have with admixture? Is it part of your WOKE political ideology or because of what you see in America, or the admixture in your own family or what?

First of all, even in the U.S. today, I know a lot of Greek families which have NOT admixed, and very much don't want their children to admix. The emphasis on sending their children to Greek school and having so many activities at the Greek church is part of helping to keep their children on board. Some break the tradition, but not most.

In Europe there are many examples showing the same determination to keep marriage within the ethnicity, although things have changed recently. As I think I explained in another thread, Germans were recruited to settle in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1600s. Until they were massacred and expelled after WWII, they had their own German churches, schools, newspapers, etc. spoke mostly German, certainly at home, and never admixed with the Slavs whom they considered inferior. Why is that so difficult to understand, especially when you're talking not only ethnicity, but language and religion.

Heck, had my father's father been alive when I was dating my husband, there would have been the biggest furor, and I'm talking about two Italian regions, with the same religion, roughly the same language, and food. My distant cousin, ten years older than I am, was absolutely forbidden to marry the son of a family which had emigrated north from Campania. That went on for eight years. Only when it became apparent that she would not marry anyone else did they relent.

You think that it would have been easier in Muslim Egypt? A Muslim girl, hardly let out of the house alone, much less allowed to date, would somehow have married a Greek boy? Or, a Muslim boy would convert, and be ostracized by his family, or perhaps even punished by the civil authorities, in order to marry into the Greek Orthodox community?

Perhaps you're thinking of the Copts? That too is a separate religion. In the Ottoman Empire, from things I read about the situation in Palestine, marriages had to be performed by the clergyman of your religion. So, since you needed their approval, there literally was no way for people of different religious faiths to marry. The few who managed it had to go abroad and get married in civil ceremonies there.

It's amazing to me that you post these fantasies as unequivocal fact.

 

[Dorian9]

What is this obsession you have with admixture? Is it part of your WOKE political ideology or because of what you see in America, or the admixture in your own family or what?

I don't know his ideology but it didn't seem to me that his comment came from such place , rather he wanted to explain these components for what he thought was a modern person but thing is these K36 components are meaningless and although I'm not very familiar with them it's obvious that if a neolithic scores them ,there will be moderns that will score more than those..and that without having to come from some recent community outside of Greece.Btw regarding Copts there is a half Egyptiote Greek half Copt in 23andme but yeah it wouldn't be near the norm.

Also to add something else ,although you are right about endogamy in the past and certain mentalities ,this is not the case in modern times.This is from Australia imgur . com / KFYz9Xf . png (and I don't think it will be very different in any other country) ,it will not be too long before these communities disappear and become fully assimilated.

 

[Angela]

^^Clearly you haven't read his posts on numerous threads on the same topic.As for whether this endogamy is dying out or how quickly it's dying out, perhaps it depends on the location and the size of the Greek community in that area.

I can tell you that in the greater Metropolitan area of New York and more specifically New York City and Long Island there are large numbers of Greek Americans, and a good number of them still center a lot of their social life around their church, and practice endogamy.

In fact, of all the "newer" immigrants to the U.S., (post late 19th century) they practice it the most. Italians are very different. Of all my 23 first cousins on my father's side, only 4, including me, married someone of Italian descent. Those are definitely "not" the statistics I see in the Greek community around me.

 

[Wanderer]

Wanderer you actually should run GEDmatch's Oracle's for whatever calculator you're using.

BTW, in 1940 there were 250,000 Greek descent people in Egypt. Now there are about 1,000. If this person is one of the descendants of the 250,000 I would expect some Egyptian/Middle East admixture. No way you're going to have Greeks in Egypt in large number since the Hellenistic period and not have admixture.

You know some ancient greek and egyptian kits I can run on gedmatch?

 

[Wanderer]

What is this obsession you have with admixture? Is it part of your WOKE political ideology or because of what you see in America, or the admixture in your own family or what?

First of all, even in the U.S. today, I know a lot of Greek families which have NOT admixed, and very much don't want their children to admix. The emphasis on sending their children to Greek school and having so many activities at the Greek church is part of helping to keep their children on board. Some break the tradition, but not most.

In Europe there are many examples showing the same determination to keep marriage within the ethnicity, although things have changed recently. As I think I explained in another thread, Germans were recruited to settle in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1600s. Until they were massacred and expelled after WWII, they had their own German churches, schools, newspapers, etc. spoke mostly German, certainly at home, and never admixed with the Slavs whom they considered inferior. Why is that so difficult to understand, especially when you're talking not only ethnicity, but language and religion.

Heck, had my father's father been alive when I was dating my husband, there would have been the biggest furor, and I'm talking about two Italian regions, with the same religion, roughly the same language, and food. My distant cousin, ten years older than I am, was absolutely forbidden to marry the son of a family which had emigrated north from Campania. That went on for eight years. Only when it became apparent that she would not marry anyone else did they relent.

You think that it would have been easier in Muslim Egypt? A Muslim girl, hardly let out of the house alone, much less allowed to date, would somehow have married a Greek boy? Or, a Muslim boy would convert, and be ostracized by his family, or perhaps even punished by the civil authorities, in order to marry into the Greek Orthodox community?

Perhaps you're thinking of the Copts? That too is a separate religion. In the Ottoman Empire, from things I read about the situation in Palestine, marriages had to be performed by the clergyman of your religion. So, since you needed their approval, there literally was no way for people of different religious faiths to marry. The few who managed it had to go abroad and get married in civil ceremonies there.

It's amazing to me that you post these fantasies as unequivocal fact.

Its pretty well known greeks colonized egypt. Why is it that controversial that egyptians may have greek ancestry also?

North africans also have european ancestry.

 

[Angela]

Its pretty well known greeks colonized egypt. Why is it that controversial that egyptians may have greek ancestry also?

North africans also have european ancestry.

Some may indeed have admixed in the Iron Age and the Imperial Era, particularly in light of the fact that both were polytheists and until Constantine the Empire didn't concern itself with who married whom.

The point is that evert era is different; you have to know the time period and its history in these matters.

So, as I said, it may well have happened to a certain degree, but whole sale admixing? I tend to think not given the fact that there was a lot of enmity between the three major groups who lived, for example, in Alexandria.

The Jews, the Greeks, and the Egyptians each had their own quarter of the city. There were constant brawls and sometimes so much violence between them that it was difficult for the Romans to maintain order in the city, as absolute chaos would ensue.

Think of the Palestinians and Jews with their own areas of Jerusalem, or the Protestant Ulstermen and Catholics of Northern Island. In the latter case, they are both Christians, just different versions, and the same race. In fact, even they can't distinguish amongst themselves by looks alone. The Protestants in the Republic of Ireland are another case in point. They've been in Ireland since the 1630s, but inter-marriage between members of the two groups was a rare scandal until a few decades ago.

It's a very big mistake to try to impose the values of the 21st century onto the people of the past. A knowledge of history, as well as archaeology, must be brought to bear on any conclusions.

 

[torzio]

Its pretty well known greeks colonized egypt. Why is it that controversial that egyptians may have greek ancestry also?

North africans also have european ancestry.

more Greek in libya than Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrene,_Libya

 

[Wanderer]

more Greek in libya than Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrene,_Libya

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_frescoes_from_Tell_el-Daba

 

[bigsnake49]

What is this obsession you have with admixture? Is it part of your WOKE political ideology or because of what you see in America, or the admixture in your own family or what?

First of all, even in the U.S. today, I know a lot of Greek families which have NOT admixed, and very much don't want their children to admix. The emphasis on sending their children to Greek school and having so many activities at the Greek church is part of helping to keep their children on board. Some break the tradition, but not most.

In Europe there are many examples showing the same determination to keep marriage within the ethnicity, although things have changed recently. As I think I explained in another thread, Germans were recruited to settle in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1600s. Until they were massacred and expelled after WWII, they had their own German churches, schools, newspapers, etc. spoke mostly German, certainly at home, and never admixed with the Slavs whom they considered inferior. Why is that so difficult to understand, especially when you're talking not only ethnicity, but language and religion.

Heck, had my father's father been alive when I was dating my husband, there would have been the biggest furor, and I'm talking about two Italian regions, with the same religion, roughly the same language, and food. My distant cousin, ten years older than I am, was absolutely forbidden to marry the son of a family which had emigrated north from Campania. That went on for eight years. Only when it became apparent that she would not marry anyone else did they relent.

You think that it would have been easier in Muslim Egypt? A Muslim girl, hardly let out of the house alone, much less allowed to date, would somehow have married a Greek boy? Or, a Muslim boy would convert, and be ostracized by his family, or perhaps even punished by the civil authorities, in order to marry into the Greek Orthodox community?

Perhaps you're thinking of the Copts? That too is a separate religion. In the Ottoman Empire, from things I read about the situation in Palestine, marriages had to be performed by the clergyman of your religion. So, since you needed their approval, there literally was no way for people of different religious faiths to marry. The few who managed it had to go abroad and get married in civil ceremonies there.

It's amazing to me that you post these fantasies as unequivocal fact.

Congratulations to all the pure Greeks that went back to Greece and brought back Greek brides and had their kids marry other Greeks. But this is not about personal experience is it? If I go by personal experience my two best friends and I all married non-Greeks or mixed Greek Americans.

I go by the fact that most Pontic Greeks test very close to the Laz people. Same with Greeks from Georgia. I go by the Himera paper in which we see admixture with local people. I go by the fact that there is up to 30% slavic admixture in modern Greeks. Remember that Alexander the Great married 3 Persian women himself and presided in 324 in a mass wedding of 80 of his generals and nobles to local Persian noble women. Before Constantine established a state religion there were many religions in the Roman Empire and before that during the Hellenistic period the rulers respected the local religion and customs. This exclusivity and prohibition of other religions was found in Abrahamic religions.

Here is also this:

"By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Faiyum was made-up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins.^[14] By the time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century CE, the only way to differentiate Alexandria's "Greeks" from "genuine" ethnic Egyptians was "by their speech."<sup>[15][FONT=rubik, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]"[/FONT]

https://history.fandom.com/wiki/Greeks_in_Egypt#Greco-Roman_Egypt</sup>

 

[Jovialis]

Congratulations to all the pure Greeks that went back to Greece and brought back Greek brides and had their kids marry other Greeks. But this is not about personal experience is it? If I go by personal experience my two best friends and I all married non-Greeks or mixed Greek Americans.

I go by the fact that most Pontic Greeks test very close to the Laz people. Same with Greeks from Georgia. I go by the Himera paper in which we see admixture with local people. I go by the fact that there is up to 30% slavic admixture in modern Greeks. Remember that Alexander the Great married 3 Persian women himself and presided in 324 in a mass wedding of 80 of his generals and nobles to local Persian noble women. Before Constantine established a state religion there were many religions in the Roman Empire and before that during the Hellenistic period the rulers respected the local religion and customs. This exclusivity and prohibition of other religions was found in Abrahamic religions.

Here is also this:

"By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Faiyum was made-up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins.^[14] By the time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century CE, the only way to differentiate Alexandria's "Greeks" from "genuine" ethnic Egyptians was "by their speech."<sup>[15]"

https://history.fandom.com/wiki/Greeks_in_Egypt#Greco-Roman_Egypt</sup>

Those sources are not genetic studies, and it is from an art book from the year 2000, so there's no chance they could have any meaningful scope on the topic of genetic mixing with ancient people.

 

[Jovialis]

Just because your personal experience is different, does not negate the fact that Maniotes and eastern Peloponnesians are quite similar to the Ancient Greeks. That doesn't make them better than Greeks who have 30% Slavic admixture; it just is what it is.

 

[bigsnake49]

Those sources are not genetic studies, and it is from an art book from the year 2000, so there's no chance they could have any meaningful scope on the topic of genetic mixing with ancient people.

Does the Himera study count? Was it the Limes study that established that modern Greeks have up to 30% Slavic admixture+70% Mycenaean ? All I am saying is that there were Greek outposts all over the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Some of them were very far away from Greece and by necessity could not send home for brides. So they married local women. Now if you are talking about large self sustaining colonies like Siracusa or Taranto maybe they could marry within the Greek community.

 

[Jovialis]

Does the Himera study count? Was it the Limes study that established that modern Greeks have up to 30% Slavic admixture+70% Mycenaean ?

Of course it counts, I was referring to the last snippet you posted. Also, being 70% similar to Mycenaeans means nothing to you?

It is funny how some people think. If an African-American was just 70% SSA, (many of them within that range) they're black in their opinion, and the opinions of many others.

Also, not all Greeks are that high in Slavic, mainly it is just the Northern Greeks that go up that high.

 

[bigsnake49]

Of course it counts, I was referring to the last snippet you posted. Also, being 70% similar to Mycenaeans means nothing to you?

It is funny how some people think. If an African-American was just 70% SSA, (many of them within that range) they're black in their opinion, and the opinions of many others.

Also, not all Greeks are that high in Slavic, mainly it is just the Northern Greeks that go up that high.

I said up to 30%. Look, modern Greeks are an amalgam of different admixed people. We had a lot of immigrants from Pontos, from Eastern and Northern Thrace, the Greek communities of Western Anatolia, Constantinople, Egypt and some communities on the Black Sea. People from the Eastern Thrace area if they are anywhere like me would score around 60-70% Greek and the rest Balkan, whether the Balkan is slavic or an earlier substrate. That does not mean that there are no Greeks that score higher than that but I know there are Greeks that score less than that. The small town I was born in was 90% Arvanites that came over from Eastern Thrace so they might score less. There are Albanians that emigrated from Albania in the last few decades that obtained Greek citizenship. But we are all Greeks now no matter where our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers used to live. There is intermarriage among the Pontic Greeks and the Arvanites, the Peloponnesian's and the Thracians, the Cretans and Smyrniotes, the Egyptiotes and the Thessalians. In couple of generations there will be just traces of other ethnicities. Our biggest cities are our melting pots.

 

[Dianatomia]

Of course it counts, I was referring to the last snippet you posted. Also, being 70% similar to Mycenaeans means nothing to you?

It is funny how some people think. If an African-American was just 70% SSA, (many of them within that range) they're black in their opinion, and the opinions of many others.

Also, not all Greeks are that high in Slavic, mainly it is just the Northern Greeks that go up that high.

Americans with 30% SSA ancestry are also considered black. And the average of SSA American who is 70% African does not even speak an African language, nor do they inhabit the continent of Africa, nor do they have a continuous litterary tradition.

Modern Greeks being so close to Mycenaeans overall was one of the key discoveries of the last five years in paleogenetics. And still the burden we put on Greeks proving their continuation with Mycenaeans is relatively high. Quite sure there was genetic variety within the Classical Greek world. Greeks from Ancient Epirus, Thrace, Ionia and Cyprus were most likely not entirely similar during Classical times. They most likely did not overlap with Mycenaeans. So why put the burden on all Greeks today being similar to Bronze Age Mycenaeans?

 

[Jovialis]

Modern Italians, with the exception of Sardinians, are very different from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age individuals from the same area, with some resemblance only in Iron Age samples [44]. A notable exception is the fact that the Iron Age Southern Italians here investigated do not overlap with the genetic variation observed in modern-day individuals from the same area, in line with previous observations [35]. Interestingly, three out of the five Neolithic Peloponnesians, together with the totality of Minoans and Mycenaeans included in our dataset, plot towards the genetic variability of people currently inhabiting Southern Peloponnese (Maniots and Tsakonians) and Southern Italian regions (Sicily, Calabria and Apulia) (Fig. 2B). Modern Southern Italians are closer to Southern European Neolithic and Bronze Age samples (Neolithic Peloponnesians and Minoans) than most modern Peloponnesian groups, with the exception of the Deep Mani and Taygetos individuals (Fig. 2B).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0888754322001501?via=ihub

You won't find people closer to the neolithic people of Greece than Deep Mani and Taygetos. With Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia as a close second.

I hope this puts an end to the discussion of the thread. But odds are, some will be obstinate.

 

[Jovialis]

Americans with 30% SSA ancestry are also considered black. And the average of SSA American who is 70% African does not even speak an African language, nor do they inhabit the continent of Africa, nor do they have a continuous litterary tradition.

Modern Greeks being so close to Mycenaeans overall was one of the key discoveries of the last five years in paleogenetics. And still the burden we put on Greeks proving their continuation with Mycenaeans is relatively high. Quite sure there was genetic variety within the Classical Greek world. Greeks from Ancient Epirus, Thrace, Ionia and Cyprus were most likely not entirely similar during Classical times. They most likely did not overlap with Mycenaeans. So why put the burden on all Greeks today being similar to Bronze Age Mycenaeans?

This burden is purely manufactured by people wishing to hijack their ancestry. First by the Philhellenes, then by the Nazis, and now by obscure incel losers on the internet. I would throw woke people in there too, but they are trying to deny all European people of their identity and sense of belonging, as a tenant of the global guidelines for aDNA research; explicitly so.

 

[eupator]

Congratulations to all the pure Greeks that went back to Greece and brought back Greek brides and had their kids marry other Greeks. But this is not about personal experience is it? If I go by personal experience my two best friends and I all married non-Greeks or mixed Greek Americans.

I go by the fact that most Pontic Greeks test very close to the Laz people. Same with Greeks from Georgia. I go by the Himera paper in which we see admixture with local people. I go by the fact that there is up to 30% slavic admixture in modern Greeks. Remember that Alexander the Great married 3 Persian women himself and presided in 324 in a mass wedding of 80 of his generals and nobles to local Persian noble women. Before Constantine established a state religion there were many religions in the Roman Empire and before that during the Hellenistic period the rulers respected the local religion and customs. This exclusivity and prohibition of other religions was found in Abrahamic religions.

Here is also this:

"By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Faiyum was made-up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins.^[14] By the time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century CE, the only way to differentiate Alexandria's "Greeks" from "genuine" ethnic Egyptians was "by their speech."<sup>[15]"

https://history.fandom.com/wiki/Greeks_in_Egypt#Greco-Roman_Egypt</sup>

Bravo! Well said!


For the ancient Athenians:


“Έλληνας καλείσθαι τους της παιδεύσεως της ημετέρας ...”

"Greeks are those who have a Greek education ..."


Isocrates, Panigyricus 50.

 

[Jovialis]

This burden is purely manufactured by people wishing to hijack their ancestry. First by the Philhellenes, then by the Nazis, and now by obscure incel losers on the internet. I would throw woke people in there too, but they are trying to deny all European people of their identity and sense of belonging, as a tenant of the global guidelines for aDNA research; explicitly so.

Razib Khan has a great article on the topic:

https://razib.substack.com/p/theyre-all-greeks-to-me-part-1

https://razib.substack.com/p/theyre-all-greeks-to-me-part-2

Hitler himself had a fascination with proving that the ancient Greeks were Nordic, and was actually annoyed by the Nazi research focus on Northern Europe:

Of course, this thinking fed into the ideology that justified Nazi racial history, which synthesized the valorization of ancient Greece that was the norm in 19th-century Germany with scientifically concocted racial theories. While some in the Nazi elite sought to confirm the glories of the Aryan race through an archaeological and ethnographic investigation of Northern Europe, Heather Pringle in The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust reports that Adolf Hitler himself had only contempt for these endeavors. Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, exulted in the recovery of ancient clay pots in Scandinavia, but Hitler was insistent that the most outstanding achievements of the fair-haired Aryans had occurred in the Mediterranean, where the Nordic race had been invigorated by the healthful influence of the bright southern sun that unleashed their cultural dynamism, blossoming into the glories of Rome and Greece.

 

[Jovialis]

Bravo! Well said!


For the ancient Athenians:


“Έλληνας καλείσθαι τους της παιδεύσεως της ημετέρας ...”

"Greeks are those who have a Greek education ..."


Isocrates, Panigyricus 50.

This guy born in 436 BC. I don't see how this is different from someone like Joe Biden today saying anyone with a U.S. passport is an American. Clearly, the original Americans were Anglo-Saxon stock.

Of course when we are talking about Greeks, we are speaking of the people who are indigenous to Bronze age Greece. We know from the Southern Arc paper, that they are a 1:10 ratio between Minoan and Yamnaya.