The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army

[Palermo Trapani]

Franceso: Here are the distances (Dodecad 12B) < 10 for the Sicani and Sicilian Bell Beaker I4930 (coordinates estimated from GEDMATCH Kit). So considering the Sicilian Beaker is 1600 years or more older than the Sicani sample, reasonable distances in my view. The other Sicani have distances > 10 to about 13.

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13394_IA_Sicily_Polizzello_Sicani_Med
10.07608555	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13386_IA_Sicily_Polizzello_Sicani_Med
8.79703927	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13385_IA_Sicily_Polizzello_Sicani_Med
8.56148936	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13384_IA_SicilyPolizzello_Sicani_Med
9.10696437	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13383_IA_Sicily_Polizzello_Sicani_Med
9.43329741	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13378_IA_Sicily_Polizzello_Sicani_Med
9.19333454	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13377_IA_Sicily_Polizzello_Sicani_Med
7.87553173	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

Distance to:	Reitsema_etal_2022_I13125_IA_Sicily_Baucina_MtFalcone_Sicani_Med
6.90797365	Olade_etal_2018:I4930_Bronze_Age_Beaker_Sicily

 

[Angela]

Clearly there was some admixture in between. I thought I read it was an increase in Aegean like ancestry.

 

[torzio]

Not unless there is something inside the study.



For the Venetians Italian geneticists continue to sample mostly the alpine areas of the region, with even samples from Sappada passed off as Veneti. Sappada is a German language island in Italy!

I don't know what this island term means .....................history of Sappada was it was under Veneto region pre-2010 and it was moved under Friuli region since then, it has nothing to do with language.
It was changed to its correct place as it was prior to the creation of Italy.............the first Italian government erred on the border settings ............same as they refuse to say that there is a South-Tyrol in Italy

 

[Pax Augusta]

I don't know what this island term means .....................history of Sappada was it was under Veneto region pre-2010 and it was moved under Friuli region since then, it has nothing to do with language.
It was changed to its correct place as it was prior to the creation of Italy.............the first Italian government erred on the border settings ............same as they refuse to say that there is a South-Tyrol in Italy

You're right, for the last five years Sappada has been part of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and no longer Veneto. All the more reason why this sample is meaningless. The fact remains that Sappada's original language is Germanic and therefore cannot be used to represent genetically the population of northern Italy, be it Veneto or Friuli-Venezia Giulia. At most, it can represent Italy's linguistic minorities.

LINGUA

La parlata di Sappada/Plodn, il sappadino o plodarisch, è stata classificata come austriaco-bavarese o pustero-carinziana, definizioni che caratterizzano la matrice tedesca dell’isola linguistica alloglotta e i contatti avuti durante i secoli con la Pusteria, il Tirolo dell’Est e la Carinzia. Come le comunità consorelle di Sauris (Zahre) e Timau (Tischlbòng) nella vicina Carnia, Sappada si differenzia nettamente dal territorio circostante per le sue differenze linguistiche e culturali. Il dialetto sappadino può essere definito come una sopravvivenza del medio-alto tedesco: i primi abitanti della valle hanno portato con sé questa parlata, che si è conservata fino al Novecento, subendo influenze lessicali dal ladino e dal tedesco. La grammatica sappadina rispecchia quella tedesca nelle costruzioni morfologiche e sintattiche, sebbene i parlanti abbiano apportato semplificazioni e uniformato eventuali eccezioni, appianando le difficoltà. In confronto alle parlate di altre isole linguistiche, nonostante gli influssi esterni, il sappadino risulta nettamente più fedele alla sua matrice germanica, fatto dovuto sicuramente all’isolamento.

http://www.plodn.info/dialetto_sappada.php

 

[torzio]

You're right, for the last five years Sappada has been part of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and no longer Veneto. All the more reason why this sample is meaningless. The fact remains that Sappada's original language is Germanic and therefore cannot be used to represent genetically the population of northern Italy, be it Veneto or Friuli-Venezia Giulia. At most, it can represent Italy's linguistic minorities.





http://www.plodn.info/dialetto_sappada.php

treading in unknown waters when you want to exclude languages in italy which are not italian .........we have albanian, greek, german, french and slav pockets of language all over italy


most likely reason the populace wanted the change in sappada is that like Sardinia, Friuli pay no taxes to the state, while Veneto does ...................but staying under Cadore in Belluno province, Veneto would have been more profitable IMO

 

[Malaparte]

This seems to prove that Sicani, unlike Sicels and maybe Elymnians, didn't mix much with the proto-italic peoples descending the peninsula and were still quite similar to their medium bronze age predecessors. It will be interesting to compare them with Sicel and Elymnian samples.

The Sicani have been variously claimed to be indigenous, i.e. Neolithic farmer like, which doesn't seem to be the case, from Iberia, Illyrians from the Balkans, or from the Italian mainland. In the latter case they might then be somewhat similar to Italics or at least perhaps to Ligurians, although perhaps with less steppe because of admixture with a large Neolithic population in Sicily.

When we describe the Sicani as indigenous or autochthonous, what does that mean exactly?

1 - Do we mean that the ancestral components of the Sicani first coalesced into a single population in Sicily?

2 - Or do we mean that the population had been in Sicily for a significant length of time, perhaps a 1000 years, before the Greeks began to colonize the island, but that the Sicani had in fact originated elsewhere, perhaps in Iberia, perhaps somewhere on the Italian mainland, perhaps even Illyria?

3 - Or do we mean that the Sicani were an Iron Age population that was largely continuous with earlier Bronze Age populations in Sicily, but contained certain new elements from elsewhere? And if this last meaning, where were the post-EBA but pre-Greek elements from?

 

[Malaparte]

This comment by Markod, comment #31 on the 2019 thread devoted to Fernandes & Olalde, "Arrival of Steppe & Iranian Related Ancestry in Islands of the Western Mediterranean," seems to support notion that a major ancestral component of the Sicani came from Illyria == [h=1]

The most interesting find to me are the LBA Sicilians from Trapani whom I would consider to be speakers of Indo-European. They have very little if any Caucasus admixture, and no steppe admixture. They cannot be Neolithic holdovers either since they carry Bronze Age TMRCA G2a-Z1903, one of them with a subclade specific to present day Scandinavia.

I'm pretty sure these are Balkaners. Ultimately from Chalcolithic Bulgaria, perhaps by way of Baden-Boleraz.

[/h]

 

[Angela]

Just gotta love how conclusions are drawn absent any evidence from archaeology or genetics.

 

[Malaparte]

Just gotta love how conclusions are drawn absent any evidence from archaeology or genetics.

You snicker relentlessly. However, if you look at my comment just above, #246 on this thread, you will see that I actually posed a very naive, three-part question. I am definitely not drawing conclusions about where the Sicani originated. I simply pointed to Markod's comment regarding possible origin of the major G lineage among the Sicani (which happens to be my own), and this lineage appears to have been in Sicily at least since middle Bronze Age.

So let me yield the floor to you, and maybe you can address the 3-part question I posed in comment #246.

 

[Malaparte]

Going back to the paper, already quoted by Real Expert on page 1 of this thread, it looks Iron Age Sicani largely descended from earlier Bronze Age populations in Sicily, but they now carried an Iranian-related component (6.3% give or take)

this group can be modeled as an admixture of four sources that distantly contributed to the genetic composition of Europeans (P = 0.179): Northwestern Anatolian Neolithic farmers (Turkey_Barcin_N; 76.4 ± 1.2%), WHGs (6.4 ± 1.0%), early farmers from Iran (Iran_GanjDareh_N; 6.3 ± 1.5%), and Early Bronze Age (EBA) Steppe herders associated with the Yamnaya cultural complex (Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya; 10.9 ± 1.6%), which indicates an increase of Iranian-related admixture compared with the preceding LBA Sicily group, which can be best modeled without that component

And then for more recent gene flow, the authors construct various two-way models with Iron Age Italy, BA Spain, IA Spain, LBA Armenia, and IA Balkans. Perhaps all these places contributed elements to the Sicani make-up, though Armenian influence was surely more mediated than the others.

 

[Francesco]

[/COLOR]
When we describe the Sicani as indigenous or autochthonous, what does that mean exactly?
1 - Do we mean that the ancestral components of the Sicani first coalesced into a single population in Sicily?
2 - Or do we mean that the population had been in Sicily for a significant length of time, perhaps a 1000 years, before the Greeks began to colonize the island, but that the Sicani had in fact originated elsewhere, perhaps in Iberia, perhaps somewhere on the Italian mainland, perhaps even Illyria?
3 - Or do we mean that the Sicani were an Iron Age population that was largely continuous with earlier Bronze Age populations in Sicily, but contained certain new elements from elsewhere? And if this last meaning, where were the post-EBA but pre-Greek elements from?

By saying autoctonous, we mean that sicani seem identical to the previous middle bronze age Sicilian population, which in itself already showed some connection to the Minoan and Mycenean world. In particular, Sicani don't seem affected by any italic input, wich could differentiate them from the neighboring siculi, nor from the Iron Age Greek colonization.

 

[kingjohn]

What are the haplogroups?

we don't know
i think salento look at them and they are in bad quality
or he can't asign the y haplogroup to each individual

 

[Jovialis]

I plot almost exactly on top of PUG74, from the Salento.

 

[Jovialis]

I would likely be bracketed between Theopetra_BA and Sarakenos_BA just going by the PCA from that study.

 

[Hawk]

This comment by Markod, comment #31 on the 2019 thread devoted to Fernandes & Olalde, "Arrival of Steppe & Iranian Related Ancestry in Islands of the Western Mediterranean," seems to support notion that a major ancestral component of the Sicani came from Illyria ==

The ones who are hypothesized to come from Illyria are Siculi not Sicani. And that sample is interesting case indeed, he scores close distance with Iron Age E-V13 samples from Psenicevo-Svilengrad. The Chalcolithic Bulgaria shouldn't be taken literally, it could be somewhere from more West like Serbia-Hungary border which were similar in a way to Chalcolithic Bulgarians (who were in majority G2a anyway). I don't know if the close distance should be taken literally or not, but that G2a subclade was also found in Early and Late Chalcolithic Hungary: https://haplotree.info/maps/ancient...tree_Variant&searchfor=G-CTS5990&ybp=500000,0

 

[kingjohn]

this should be interesting paper

 

[Francesco]

I plot almost exactly on top of PUG74, from the Salento.

Looking again at this samples on the PCA, I can't but note how the bulk of the greek army seems composed by a mixed population of greek colonist and sicanian individuals.
This hypothesis could be further explored by examining the composition of the armies of the greek colonies and by seeing, in particular, if they used to muster some kind of "metekoi", like the carthaginians did too.

 

[Pax Augusta]

[/COLOR]

When we describe the Sicani as indigenous or autochthonous, what does that mean exactly?

Generally speaking, autochthony means that they are descended from the prehistoric migrations that you would expect to have occurred in a given place, and not from a recent, intrusive migration.

 

[kingjohn]

This should be interesting
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=2323

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB56216

 

[Angela]

Close kin marital practices preserve the original genetic signatures whatever the other disadvantages.

This might partly explain why so many of the Himera soldiers are so "Mycenaean-like" even after 1000 years.

Admixture with other ethnicities might only have begun late in the Iron Age, and then practices might have been different in different locations. The Empuries merchant might have been "pure" Greek, while in Asia Minor perhaps there was some admixture, as perhaps there was in Sicily, by the Iron Age.

I really want to see the paper on ancient Campania to see if the admixture had already begun, and how extensive it was, or if it began later.

Perhaps going home for a Greek wife has very ancient roots. Seriously, it might have taken a long time to break down, perhaps triggered in some areas by the arrival of a new elite, i.e. Rome, in the case of Campania or major conflicts, i.e. with the Phoenicians in Sicily.