Comparing Ancient Greek populations to modern Greeks and Italians

[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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[eupator]

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

I don't have time to waste on pendantics.

The GREEKALPOP samples in the Reich HO dataset with reference to Thessaloniki in the .anno file (originally from Lazaridis 2014) have various levels of West Asian admixture that puts them in between Albanians and Armenians, next to Crete, as you can see in their FST distances below:

fst(prefix, pop1 = "Greek_Thessaloniki", pop2 = c("Cretan.DG", "Armenian.DG", "Albanian.DG"), adjust_pseudohaploid = FALSE)
ℹ Reading allele frequencies from packedancestrymap files...
ℹ eptrfamilyHO.geno has 14317 samples and 597573 SNPs
ℹ Calculating allele frequencies from 19 samples in 4 populations
ℹ Expected size of allele frequency data: 86 MB
597k SNPs read...
✔ 597573 SNPs read in total
! 584443 SNPs remain after filtering. 409001 are polymorphic.
ℹ Allele frequency matrix for 584443 SNPs and 4 populations is 61 MB
ℹ Computing pairwise f2 for all SNPs and population pairs requires 486 MB RAM without splitting
ℹ Computing without splitting since 486 < 8000 (maxmem)...
ℹ Returning fst blocks
# A tibble: 3 × 4
pop1 pop2 est se
<chr> <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
1 Greek_Thessaloniki Albanian.DG 0.00888 0.00306
2 Greek_Thessaloniki Armenian.DG 0.00498 0.00113
3 Greek_Thessaloniki Cretan.DG 0.00197 0.00112

 

[eupator]

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

I don't know for sure, mate, I haven't read too much for the particularities of that period, there were alot of Albanophones and Arvanites in their ranks for sure.

 

[iluvatar]

I don't have time to waste on pendantics.

The GREEKALPOP samples in the Reich HO dataset with reference to Thessaloniki in the .anno file (originally from Lazaridis 2014) have various levels of West Asian admixture that puts them in between Albanians and Armenians, next to Crete, like you can see in their FST distances below:

I don’t know what GREEKALPOP represents. You mentioned the Thessaloniki samples from the Lazaridis study. The samples labeled "Greek Thessaloniki" are clearly located northeast of the "Crete Armenoi" high steppe sample and not with the blue Cretan dots. Regardless though i don’t see how any of this is relevant? There were no models involving moderns in the 2017 paper. The samples labeled "Greek Macedonia" in the "Cosmopolitanism at the Roman Danubian Frontier" study look similar (again clustering with Albanians). That is the study where models for moderns where provided.

 

[Kuivamaa]

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

In 1912, before any exchange of populations/ethnic cleansing/whatnot (after the short lived Bulgarian conquest in 1913 lots of Greeks got expelled or left) had about 255,000 inhabitants, 31% Greek, 55% Muslim and 13% Bulgarian.

 

[eupator]

I don’t know what GREEKALPOP represents. You mentioned the Thessaloniki samples from the Lazaridis study. The samples labeled "Greek Thessaloniki" are clearly located northeast of the "Crete Armenoi" high steppe sample and not with the blue Cretan dots. Regardless though i don’t see how any of this is relevant? There were no models involving moderns in the 2017 paper. The samples labeled "Greek Macedonia" in the "Cosmopolitanism at the Roman Danubian Frontier" study look similar (again clustering with Albanians). That is the study where models for moderns where provided.

The GREEKALPOP is the reference name.

The FST distance run is the proof for the argument I made several posts ago, you can scroll back and re-read.

The Danubian frontier paper is irrelevant to this argument, you just try obfuscate because you got dunked on by the evidence.

Everything I referenced can be recreated by everyone in 5 mins using the open sourced tools available and the Reich dataset which is also freely available.