A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and WestAsia

No evidence Classical Athenians were Anatolian admixed so far. What about Greek colonies in Italy? Archimedes?

Well, as to ancient Italy, the leaked data from an upcoming paper on Italian genetics (which, given this paper, I no longer think will answer all the questions convincingly) shows that some samples from the Greek colony near modern Naples carried a big chunk of Anatolia Bronze Age, if I remember correctly. The colony was founded by Euboea, not Ionian colonies in western Anatolia, and, of course, Late Bronze Age Greeks carried, what, 22% CHG. (Edited 8/29/22)

It will be interesting to see a comparison of the data in this upcoming Italianpaper with the data from Western Anatolia in this set of papers. I'd also like to see a comparison with data from mainland Greece and the Aegean islands in the migration period. Someone must be working on something.

This is my whole problem with the "Anatolia chest thumping" in this paper as regards Italy. YES, I get it, settlers would have gone from Anatolia to the capitol of the Empire, but from where in Anatolia? Were they Greek speakers of partly Greek ancestry from western Anatolia? I doubt there were a lot of Armenians or Kurds involved given the graphic showing so few samples with that profile.

What, indeed were the Greeks from the mainland or the Aegean like genetically during the migration period? Why couldn't some of those Antonio et al samples have come from there, either directly or via their colonies in Southern Italy?

It's tunnel vision.

We have a sample from Marathon in Greece as well, and two from Empuries.
 
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No evidence Classical Athenians were Anatolian admixed so far. What about Greek colonies in Italy? Archimedes?


The Myceneans, which are the historical precursors of all the Greek groups show such admixture, on top of that Athenians were Ionics and the Ionian lebensraum was in Anatolia, Herodotus himself (Carian from his father and Ionian from his mother in Halicarnassos) writes about Athenians:

"ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἱέντες. εἰ τοίνυν ἦν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασγικόν, τὸ Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος, ἐὸν Πελασγικόν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε."

"the Pelasgians spoke barbarianly ... but the Attic nation, even though it was Pelasgian, it transformed into Greek, and changed its language."

The DNA results show ancient Greeks to be just that?
 
The Myceneans, which are the historical precursors of all the Greek groups show such admixture, on top of that Athenians were Ionics and the Ionian lebensraum was in Anatolia, Herodotus himself (Carian from his father and Ionian from his mother in Halicarnassos) writes about Athenians:

"ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἱέντες. εἰ τοίνυν ἦν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασγικόν, τὸ Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος, ἐὸν Πελασγικόν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε."

"the Pelasgians spoke barbarianly ... but the Attic nation, even though it was Pelasgian, it transformed into Greek, and changed its language."

The DNA results show ancient Greeks to be just that?
We have new Mycenaean samples from Attica they seem to plot like the Empuriote samples.

One Anatolian admixed outlier from Pylos was probably just a random outlier. The Iron Age samples seem to have preserved the mainstream Mycenaean genetic profile.
 
We have new Mycenaean samples from Attica they seem to plot like the Empuriote samples.

One Anatolian admixed outlier from Pylos was probably just a random outlier. The Iron Age samples seem to have preserved the mainstream Mycenaean genetic profile.


I am sorry, have we read the same paper?


Web-capture-28-8-2022-221852.jpg
 
I am sorry, have we read the same paper?


Web-capture-28-8-2022-221852.jpg

Are you talking about Neolithic Anatolian admixture? That is common sense. Nobody was denying that. I was implying the Classical Athenians were probably like Mycenaeans and not like Dodecanese Islanders.
 
On twitter now:

Lazaridis on why the "EHG male / CHG female" argument doesn't hold very well:


A direct test of the sex bias hypothesis is to fit the same model on the autosomes and chrX; since the chrX spends 2/3 of its life in females, under the assumption that CHG ancestry is mediated by females we'd expect more CHG ancestry on chrX than autosomes.

The simple CHG-EHG model gives a CHG estimate of:

51.9+/- 1.3% (autosomes)
34.2+/- 8.5% (chrX)

In other words, the evidence is (2.1 s.e.) in favor of male CHG bias and _not_ the opposite.

The evidence for male CHG bias is not super strong so we did not dwell on this point in the Southern Arc paper. But, I thought it would be useful to report here as I want people to be aware that the data don't point to a male EHG:female CHG mix and if anything the opposite.

 
Are you talking about Neolithic Anatolian admixture? That is common sense. Nobody was denying that. I was implying the Classical Athenians were probably like Mycenaeans and not like Dodecanese Islanders.


The 20%+-2.2% CHG and 18.5+-3.8% PPN is part of the Turkey_N package?

And I don't want to hear about "Dodecanese Islanders" as they are some sort of benchmark because moriopoulos says so, sorry, that's it for me.
 
Well, I wouldn't go that far; some idolize Sparta for example. I, if not idolize, greatly esteem Athens. :)

I personally think that a big lack in this set of papers is that we don't have Aegean samples, and enough samples from Greek itself after the Bronze Age. If I had to guess, yes, the people of western Anatolia and the Greeks of the same period might have been very similar. However, Anatolia is bigger than that. What of those Anatolians?

For all the hype for this paper, we still don't have some important samples necessary to answer a lot of remaining questions.

I totally agree with you. We have a lot of Mycenaean samples but not enough samples from Greece after that.
 
thanks, i do have a gedmatch account and probably will find my living Dna file. if i have any problems may i still bother you?
agaij thanks for the info

No problem, run your Dodecad Coordinates in K12. Once you get those you are good to go.
 
The 20%+-2.2% CHG and 18.5+-3.8% PPN is part of the Turkey_N package?

And I don't want to hear about "Dodecanese Islanders" as they are some sort of benchmark because moriopoulos says so, sorry, that's it for me.

When we talk about Anatolian admixture we usually mean LBA and after. Not pre historical components.

Atticans of the Homeric time are closer to Thracians than they are to West Anatolians. Just sayin'.
 
When we talk about Anatolian admixture we usually mean LBA and after. Not pre historical components.

Atticans of the Homeric time are closer to Thracians than they are to West Anatolians. Just sayin'.


Might help if you specify who 'we' are. Didn't realize there was a cut off date under which something is considered as "Anatolian" or "not-Anatolian".

Greeks are intertwined with Anatolia (3rd time I post this) all the way to the early 20th century, the sooner your group accepts and internalizes this truth the whole world knows (apart from your 'we' of course) the better it will be for you (and the less the salt).


PS. Lucid on a rampage on twitter, lol.
 
Might help if you specify who 'we' are. Didn't realize there was a cut off date under which something is considered as "Anatolian" or "not-Anatolian".

Greeks are intertwined with Anatolia (3rd time I post this) all the way to the early 20th century, the sooner your group accepts and internalizes this truth the whole world knows (apart from your 'we' of course) the better it will be for you (and the less the salt).


PS. Lucid on a rampage on twitter, lol.

When you said Westerners idolize Ancient Greeks who are partly Anatolian I supposed you were talking about something more recent because Westerners themselves have pre
historical Anatolian roots.

I got the vibe you were implying there is something ironic there.
 
The Myceneans, which are the historical precursors of all the Greek groups show such admixture, on top of that Athenians were Ionics and the Ionian lebensraum was in Anatolia, Herodotus himself (Carian from his father and Ionian from his mother in Halicarnassos) writes about Athenians:

"ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἱέντες. εἰ τοίνυν ἦν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασγικόν, τὸ Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος, ἐὸν Πελασγικόν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε."

"the Pelasgians spoke barbarianly ... but the Attic nation, even though it was Pelasgian, it transformed into Greek, and changed its language."

The DNA results show ancient Greeks to be just that?


First of all Herodotus has an almost anti-Ionian bias and Halikarnassos was a Dorian colony. Secondly he equates Dorians with Hellenes and the Makednoi, something not seen anywhere else,

His narrative is Spartans = Dorians = an Hellenic ethnos
Athenians = Ionians = a Pelasgian ethnos

According to his account Dorians/Hellenes migrated from Pthiotis to Olympus/Ossa then to Pindus mountains where they were called 'Makednoi', then to Dryopis and ultimately to Peloponnesus so there is a south to north migration that predates a north to south migration. By the way Cadmeians expelled them from the original homeland according to his account. So if we take the account and the myths litterally people with some Levantine ancestry of some short expelled them from Pthiotis.

The Pelasgians are presented as 'formely their neighbours' with a homeland (?) in Thessaly.

He supposes that Athenians may have changed their language from 'Pelasgian' to Hellenic but he is unsure about the language Pelasgians were speaking originally but he supposes it was a 'barbarian' language whatever that means. Either way, both Hellenic and Pelasgian ethne are presented as essentially native in Greece.
 
There is a great find in DNA from Greco-Anatolian southwest Turkey in this study, starting with Halicarnassus. Lazaridis et al. argue for Greeks mixing rather than isolation, as in Empuries. A large number of samples from that area are J-24 or below branches, like the heavily-Levantine L25 of Hellenistic Halicarnassus. There are others going to L70 or below, all associated with the Greek/Byzantine world.

None of the Minoan or Mycenaean samples are L24 or below, yet. The question is did this ancestry move through Europe first starting with the Romans, or was there other movements of this ancestry westward at earlier times. Will like to take a closer look at modern Dodecanese, to see if this ancestry still might persist.
 
Lazaridis concluded that the X chr analysis shows that the CHG didn't over-contribute on the X. This goes against the simple notion that the ubiquity of the specific M269 lineage meant that the EHG population rolled over the CHG population in the Steppe.

And yet, the CHG were not known to have this specific R1b M269 lineage. These conflicting facts can be explained by time. The population of EHG and CHG were combined but for some reason over a thousand years or so, the R1b lineage emerged as the dominant Y with perhaps a minor J2b component.

For one Y group to dominate a population they must have had strange mating customs. Or, the founding group of this population was small but spread rapidly and successfully, with the R1b having some advantage.
 
Here's a thought for all these academics and people that spend 14 hours a day making models: Do some mtDNA analysis.

Stop focusing on Y-DNA alone and see the specific clades of mtDNA that existed in the steppe/caucus/middle east.
 
Bergin: 2 questions 1) Do you have a GEDMATCH or Admixture Studio account? and 2) Do you have your DNA file from Ancestry, 23andMe, Living DNA, etc?
If answers are yes to both questions 1 and 2,
Then go to oracle calculator, see link below
http://promotopic.com/calculator/vahd.html
Estimate your Dodecad12B coordinates using GEDMATCH/Admixture Studio and then cut and paste them into the Target Tab. It should look the same as the Source Tab coordinates that Salento estimated, which you cut and paste into the Source Tab.
So your personal coordinates would be something like Bergin_Dod12,Cor1,Cor2,Cor3,Cor4,Cor5,Cor6,Cor7,Cor8,Cor9,Cor10,Cor11,Cor12
For Single distances, hit the Distance table. The Default is top 25 but you can change that box (maximum reported) to as many as you want. You can also change the gradient to see the distances better moving from the default of 30 to 100.
If you hit Single, you can get admixture models, you can set the parameters. So I usually start with Cycles 1 and no restrictions on populations, you can change the population to 2 Sources, 3 Sources, 4 Sources, etc.
Realizing that some source populations are themselves mixed, you can use the Distance column and run it with 0.25X (at least that is my interpretation of what that function is suppose to adjust for).
Hope this helps, maybe someone else can chime in with additional tips.
Distance to: bergin_d12b
3.59171268 ALB_Mdv:I14622
3.97795173 ALB_PostMdv:I14685
4.83779909 ALB_PostMdv:I15706
5.89654136 ALB_Çinamak_Anc:I16251
5.99139383 MKD_Anc:I10389
6.02790179 ALB_PostMdv:I14686
6.49134039 TUR_Marmara_Balıkesir_Byz:I14822
6.76742196 HRV_Trogir_Byz:I15744
6.94247794 HRV_Trogir_Byz:I15743
7.00493398 HRV_Trogir_Byz:I15463
7.42969717 ALB_PostMdv:I14687
7.45401234 MKD_BA:I7231
7.81090264 HRV_Cetina_BA:I11843
7.99463570 BGR_Tell_Ezero_EBA:I19460
8.11882381 TUR_Marmara_Balıkesir_PostMdv:I14823
8.18487019 BGR_Veliko_Tarnovo_Mdv:I17980
8.37684308 MKD_Anc:I10382
8.77167031 SRB_IA:I16814
8.79597635 BGR_TellKran_EBA:I19453
9.06409951 ALB_Çinamak_Anc:I14690
9.08181149 MKD_Anc:I10391
9.08400242 ALB_Çinamak_Anc:I16254
9.09588918 MKD_Anc:I10384
9.11872798 MKD_Anc:I10388
9.21351182 ALB_PostMdv:I15707

thanks
 
Bergin: You're welcome. You have some close distances for these samples.
 

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