The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army

I reviewed the Y Haplogroup of the duplicate bams, they match I10944 Himera 480-BC-Battle Eurasian-Steppe, … disregard / delete I10949, as of now.

I removed it from the run.



Target: Angela
Distance: 1.7244% / 1.72441350 | ADC: 0.25x RC
55.2Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_Cent-Europe
22.2Polizzello_Sicani_Med
17.0Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med_lc
5.6Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_W-Europe_lc

I took out 949, but left in 944:


Target: Angela
Distance: 0.3859% / 0.38593672

35.2Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_W-Europe_lc
29.3Polizzello_Sicani_Med
19.6Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med
9.4Himera_480_BC_Battle_NE-Europe
6.1Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med_lc
0.4Himera_480_BC_Battle_Caucasus_lc

Once again I come out high for populations high in Neolithic ancestry.
O
Target: Angela
Distance: 0.3859% / 0.38593672

35.2Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_W-Europe_lc
29.3Polizzello_Sicani_Med
19.6Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med
9.4Himera_480_BC_Battle_NE-Europe
6.1Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med_lc
0.4Himera_480_BC_Battle_Caucasus_lc
 
I removed it from the run.


Target: Angela
Distance: 1.7244% / 1.72441350 | ADC: 0.25x RC
55.2Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_Cent-Europe
22.2Polizzello_Sicani_Med
17.0Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med_lc
5.6Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_W-Europe_lc

Target: Angela
Distance: 1.7244% / 1.72441350 | ADC: 0.25x RC
55.2Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_Cent-Europe
22.2Polizzello_Sicani_Med
17.0Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med_lc
5.6Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_W-Europe_lc
Target: Angela
Distance: 1.7244% / 1.72441350 | ADC: 0.25x RC
55.2Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_Cent-Europe
22.2Polizzello_Sicani_Med
17.0Himera_Civilian_Pop_Med_lc
5.6Himera_480_BC_Battle_Balkans_W-Europe_lc
:cool-v: … I10944 and I10949 share similar mtDNA, but different Y chr., … probably the reason that confused whoever developed, or named the bams.
 
… if the coordinates of 2 samples are the same, switching, or removing one of them shouldn’t change the results :)
 
I wish I could cross check the first six relatively close samples with the isotopic study, but I think the sample numbers are different. I'm not denying that they could all be from somewhere further north than Greece in the Balkans, ike MKD or MNE, since my matches with Bronze and Iron Age samples from there are quite good, but given we don't have very many samples of a similar age from Northern and Central Italy, I wonder if that's also a possibility?

When I saw those samples on the PCA, I immediately tought the same thing: "these could have been italic mercenaries".

Ligurians, for instance, were appreciated warriors serving as peltasts and light-infantry, while many oscan tribes were traditionally used as a recruitment pool by the greek world in Magna Grecia (expecially by Siracusa). So, considering that the Greek army at Himera looks quite heterogeneus, the absence of italic mercenaries would be strange.
 
What's the deal with this Syrian fetish within the anthrofora community, wouldn't (South) Italians be J1 rich if that were the case?

Not to mention the huge germanic input that would be necessary to put modern italians in their actual position on a PCA if one want to assume a huge shift towards the levant in the roman era, sparkly contrasting with the overall lack of germanic YDNA in Italy...but this is going off topic.
 
When I saw those samples on the PCA, I immediately tought the same thing: "these could have been italic mercenaries".

Ligurians, for instance, were appreciated warriors serving as peltasts and light-infantry, while many oscan tribes were traditionally used as a recruitment pool by the greek world in Magna Grecia (expecially by Siracusa). So, considering that the Greek army at Himera looks quite heterogeneus, the absence of italic mercenaries would be strange.

The problem is that academics, like the amateurs, don't have the slightest clue about Italian history and pre-history or even the general history of the Mediterranean during these periods. Not to mention they have no common sense.

Why else would the Antonio/Moots paper, for example, not take into account that all those bodies buried in the Isola Sacra cemetery at the Port of Ostia, were undoubtedly sailors and merchants from all corners of the Mediterranean, as is borne out by the fact so many of them are C5 if I remember correctly and can't possibly be used to model Italian population genetics going forward. At least the authors of the Carthaginian paper didn't make that mistake.

All of this is less excusable in academics, of course.
 
What's the deal with this Syrian fetish within the anthrofora community, wouldn't (South) Italians be J1 rich if that were the case?
,

It's a Syrian/Jewish fetish coming from two directions in my opinion.

One is the Neo-Nazi group, best represented in the amateur community by people of Eastern European ancestry who hate and have always hated Jews, and hate Italians because Southern Italians plot near Ashkenazim on PCAs and must therefore be Jewish admixed, right? Eurogenes famously said, before he realized he couldn't get away with it and scrubbed all his content, that Southern Italbians, as well as Jews (the few remaining), should be kicked out of Europe along with the Near Eastern refugees.

My personal opinion is that it's also about the fact that Italians put the lie to the story line that achievement, intellectual and otherwise, is correlated with high WHG, Steppe etc. ancestry. It really burns them. That's why for so long the ancient Romans were held to be Nordics who suddenly turned into Italians.

From the other direction you have the "wannabe Jews", a not uncommon group in the U.S., for example, who want there to be a genetic connection between the two groups to increase their "prestige". There's also supposedly someone actually Jewish or half Jewish at anthrogenica who spouts the same stuff.

The irony is that there may indeed be a genetic connection between Ashkenazim and Italians, but the gene flow goes the other way, i.e. perhaps Italian women entering the gene pool. It could also be Greek admixture of some kind, but the Jewish academics seem to prefer the Italian option. I understand that their natural impulse is to prefer that, certainly over emphasizing Lithuanian/Polish admixture. Every Jew I've ever met, and I've met thousands, loves Italy, and I understand their perhaps unconscious leanings.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't have responded because this is off-topic.

Let's return to the paper, everybody.

The ancient dna should be interpreted in as value neutral and objective a fashion as possible, but the history and archaeology and cultural practices of the periods in question have to be taken into account.
 
In addition to amateurs and some academicians not taking into account the history and archaeology of the locale, a lot of the amateurs don't take into account that the amateur tools they use work much better if the populations they use don't overlap. Let's take for example modeling modern Greeks as a mix of Mycenaeans and Slavs (of course you have to make sure that you're not trying to model Greeks of Pontian Greek descent). The tools will work much better if the slavic input is unadmixed with Balkanic input.
 
@Angela
That's some pretty bizarre and convoluted stuff. As for the Jews, there's a myth about "Aschenez" founding the cities of Reggio (Calabria) and Nicastro (Lamezia) and some roads named after them
 
@Angela
That's some pretty bizarre and convoluted stuff. As for the Jews, there's a myth about "Aschenez" founding the cities of Reggio (Calabria) and Nicastro (Lamezia) and some roads named after them

Obviously, you haven't been around for twelve years.
 
What's the deal with this Syrian fetish within the anthrofora community, wouldn't (South) Italians be J1 rich if that were the case?

South and Southeast Turkey are also sources of ancestry, not only Syria/Levant. As for haplogroups, I don't know; it is a field I have always neglected.
 
What's the deal with this Syrian fetish within the anthrofora community, wouldn't (South) Italians be J1 rich if that were the case?
Because it is a dogma that south Italians have levantine even though the genetic literature says nothing about it and actually doesn't support it; whether future studies will find trace levels is a matter that doesn't change that up to now their only "evidence" (in an extremely autistic manner, in the etymological sense of the word) is G25 and G25 is right because it is just right, and the fact that people who plotted close to southern Italians lived in south Italy since the IA is seen as a coincidence.
 
What's the deal with this Syrian fetish within the anthrofora community, wouldn't (South) Italians be J1 rich if that were the case?

J1 is around 25% in Lebanese who are among the purest Levantine population out there.
Personally when modelling Imperial Romans I prefer something more distant than Western Anatolia like Eastern Anatolians, because they are genetically more distant and leave more native ancestry for Rome.

Also those Western Byzantine Anatolian samples we have could have Greek, Thracian, Celtic, Italian and Slavic ancestry etc.
 
J1 is around 25% in Lebanese who are among the purest Levantine population out there.

I don't think so at all. They're a totally mixed population that overlaps with Anatolians and Caucasians, and a smidgen of SSA.

If anything, BedouinB is the most "Levantine" imo, because they're the most Natufian. The original HGs of the Levant.

6B54Hsw.jpg
 
I don't think so at all. They're a totally mixed population that overlaps with Anatolians and Caucasians, and a smidgen of SSA.

If anything, BedouinB is the most "Levantine" imo, because they're the most Natufian. The original HGs of the Levant.

6B54Hsw.jpg

Huh, modern Lebanese seem to be fairly close to Iron Age Levantines. Coincidence?
L6Lchtm.png
 
I don't think so at all. They're a totally mixed population that overlaps with Anatolians and Caucasians, and a smidgen of SSA.

If anything, BedouinB is the most "Levantine" imo, because they're the most Natufian. The original HGs of the Levant.

6B54Hsw.jpg

Exactly right. Bedouin B are the most Natufian like. Bedouin A have more of the Iran Neo and Anatolian, but they also have about as much SSA as the Egyptians.

The Lebanese cluster with the Druze in terms of having the most Iran Neo like ancestry in the Levant.

After them come the Syrians, especially the Alawites who didn't admix with the Saudi tribes coming up with the Muslim invasions. Then there's the rest of the Syrians, then Jordanians/Palestinians, who have more SSA. Then there's the people from Yemen and Saudi, who have a lot of Natufian as well, although there's variation among them.

What the Roman authors meant by "Syrians" is anyone's guess, imo.

The Orontes goes from Lebanon, which was "Phoenicia" all the way into Turkey. As for political designations, Syria, originally derived from Assyria, was applied to Province of Syria, which was the entire Levant. It was subdivided into Syria Phoenicia, Coele Syria, and Syria Palestine. I think we can take it as a given that when they talked about Syrian magicians and dancing girls they weren't talking about Syria Palestine.

We need some samples from around the time of the Maccabees to see what the differences there were, if any, between Jews and "Syrians", and how similar they are to the people of today.
 
Am I the only one who support a Slavic origin for the bulk of E-V13 in Peloponnese?
 
J1 is around 25% in Lebanese who are among the purest Levantine population out there.
Personally when modelling Imperial Romans I prefer something more distant than Western Anatolia like Eastern Anatolians, because they are genetically more distant and leave more native ancestry for Rome.

Also those Western Byzantine Anatolian samples we have could have Greek, Thracian, Celtic, Italian and Slavic ancestry etc.

preview.jpg

A comparison of moderns, from the Heraclides study on Cyprus
 

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