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

"[FONT=&quot]We begin with the Neolithic inhabitants ([/FONT]4[FONT=&quot], [/FONT]6[FONT=&quot], [/FONT]7[FONT=&quot]), estimating proportions of ancestry using a five-source model that we developed for Southern Arc Holocene populations ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]), which includes as proxies for the sources Caucasus hunter-gatherers ([/FONT]9[FONT=&quot]), Eastern European hunter-gatherers ([/FONT]5[FONT=&quot], [/FONT]10[FONT=&quot]), Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic ([/FONT]11[FONT=&quot]), Balkan hunter-gatherers from the Iron Gates in Serbia ([/FONT]7[FONT=&quot]), and Northwestern Anatolian Neolithic from Barcın ([/FONT]5[FONT=&quot]). We infer that not only Neolithic Greeks from the Peloponnese ([/FONT]7[FONT=&quot]) but also those from Northern Greece ([/FONT]6[FONT=&quot]) had ~8 to 10% Caucasus hunter-gatherer–related ancestry ([/FONT]Fig. 1C[FONT=&quot]). We find small amounts of Caucasus hunter-gatherer–related ancestry in Southeastern Europe and Neolithic populations in general, which is different from the pattern in Central/Western Europe where there is none ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]). This provides proof of multiple streams of migration from different Anatolian Neolithic populations into Europe."

"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]any contribution of geographically intermediate populations (between the steppe and the Aegean) to the formation of Mycenaeans was minor. This conclusion is further supported by the following: (i) the lower (~5%) Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry in the Neolithic of the Balkans compared with the ~20% inferred for the Aegean substratum ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]), (ii) the near absence of Balkan hunter-gatherer (fig. S1) ancestry in the Aegean in contrast to other Southeastern European populations (~10%) ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]), and (iii) the presence of Yamnaya-like individuals with minimal local ancestry—immediately to the north of the Aegean—in Albania and Bulgaria during the Early Bronze Age ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]). Whatever the genetic makeup of people mediating the spread of steppe ancestry into the ancestors of Mycenaeans, the genetic impact of steppe on Aegean populations was quantitatively minor. We estimate the Yamnaya-related steppe ancestry proportion in Mycenaeans to be ~⅓ of the level of that in the Balkans to the north, ~½ of that in Armenia in the east, and ~⅕ to ⅛ of that of populations of Central/Northern Europe associated with the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware cultures ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot])."

[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]Didn't need Saracens to bring Levant ancestry to Crete.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Eastern European hunter-gatherer ancestry as a marker for Yamnaya steppe pastoralist ancestry is absent in a newly reported Middle Minoan period individual from Zakros on the eastern edge of Crete. This individual’s ancestry is generally similar to those previously published ([/FONT]13[FONT=&quot]), but with significant Levantine admixture (30.5 ± 9.1%), which is consistent with her either being a migrant to the island from the east or part of a structured Cretan population whose past ethnic diversity was noted as early as the [/FONT]Odyssey of Homer (Hom. Od. 19.172-177)."


 
So much for all the steppe in Mycenaeans which was bound to show up, and for there being a class structure with the elites having more steppe ancestry.

"[FONT=&quot]The Griffin Warrior ([/FONT]8[FONT=&quot]), the earliest individual (~1450 BCE) from the Palace of Nestor in Pylos, is genetically right in the middle of the general population of the Aegean and was thus plausibly of entirely local Aegean origin. He had no detectable Eastern European hunter-gatherer ancestry (compared with the average of 4.8 ± 1.1% for the rest of the Mycenaean-era individuals sampled at the Palace; [/FONT]Fig. 1H[FONT=&quot]). This finding could be consistent with a Cretan origin of this individual or his ancestors; alternatively, he could be drawn from a mainland population that had not experienced Eastern European hunter-gatherer admixture, as could two later individuals from Pylos—one buried near the Palace in a chamber tomb and another in a cist grave. Variation in Eastern European hunter-gatherer ancestry is observed at short geographical distance scales and within the same time periods: We observe that four individuals (~1450 BCE) of the sample from Attica buried at Kolikrepi-Spata had only 2 ± 1% Eastern European hunter-gatherer ancestry that was significantly less (by more than two standard errors) than that of individuals from the neighboring island of Salamis and all sampling locations in the Peloponnese. This suggests that the classical Athenian claim (e.g., Plat. Menex. 237b) of having received fewer migrants than other Greek poleis in the remote past may have had an element of truth, although larger sample sizes will be necessary to definitively establish such geographic patterns."

"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]This is also attested in the male line, for example, by a Y chromosome match of the rare R-PF7562 haplogroup between a pair of patrilineal relatives from the Palace of Nestor, which links Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece with an Early Bronze Age individual of the North Caucasus at Lysogorskyja that is genetically similar to the Yamnaya ([/FONT]14[FONT=&quot]). This patrilineal connection to the Yamnaya should not be interpreted as a general association of steppe ancestry with elite burial status, as the common people, making up most of our Mycenaean-era individuals, also had steppe ancestry, whereas some members of the elite (such as the Griffin Warrior) did not have significant evidence of it. [/FONT]
 
Greek Colonization:

"[FONT=&quot] This identifies an Archaic period individual from Kastrouli near Delphi in Phokis on the Greek mainland and individuals at Empúries in Northeastern Spain who are genetically very similar to Mycenaean-era individuals from the Greek mainland ([/FONT]20[FONT=&quot]). Empúries was an outpost colonized by Phocaeans from Western Anatolia, who were themselves said to be colonists from Phokis (Paus. 7.3.10). Thus, we capture the end points of a long chain of transmission, with little admixture, across the Mediterranean. "

"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ancestry typical of the Mycenaean period also spread to the Eastern Mediterranean, as in the case of an individual from Ashkelon associated with a Philistine archaeological context ([/FONT]21[FONT=&quot]). We also show the similarity of some individuals from inland Thrace (at Kapitan Andreevo) with the Mycenaean genetic profile, which suggests that Mycenaeans were genetically similar to some Thracians from the East Balkans, outside the sphere of the Late Bronze Age Aegean. This provides a cautionary tale highlighting the dangers of conflating genetic and cultural similarity."

"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The coastal regions of Anatolia formed another area of Greek settlement, and much of the Anatolian peninsula was incorporated into the Hellenistic kingdoms established by the successors of Alexander the Great, providing opportunity for population transfer from Southeastern Europe to Anatolia. Yet, we do not find Mycenaean-like individuals either at first millennium BCE Greek colony sites, such as Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), or Amisos (modern Samsun) in the Aegean and Black Sea regions, respectively. This pattern is qualitatively different from that at Empúries in Iberia and is consistent with the account of Herodotus that early Greek colonists of Anatolia married indigenous Carian women of Anatolia when they first settled there (Hdt. 1.146)."[/FONT]
 
Rome: I think he's reaching a bit here, and I'm rather disappointed that they took ALL the Roman Imperial samples as a group for analysis. I hope there's a more nuanced analysis in the supplement.

"[FONT=&quot]This suggests that the Roman Empire in both its shorter-lived western part and the longer-lasting eastern centered on Anatolia had a diverse but similar population plausibly drawn, to a substantial extent, from Anatolian pre-Imperial sources. In an irony of history, although the Roman Republic prevailed in its existential military struggle against the Anatolians rallied by Mithridates VI of Pontus during the first century BCE, the final incorporation of Anatolia into the Roman Empire and the increased connectivity that ensued may have set the stage for the very same Anatolians to become the demographic engine of Imperial Rome itself. This recreated, in historical time, the mythical journey of Aeneas and his Trojan exiles from Anatolia to the shores of Italy."

"[/FONT]Hierarchical clustering of raw ancestry estimates of diverse individuals shows overlapping distributions of Imperial Roman and Anatolian Roman-Byzantine individuals (black) without knowledge of their ancestry labels and differentiated from the distributions of Southeastern Europe, Armenia, and the Levant."


 
"[FONT=&quot]The Southern Arc was also a recipient of many immigrants from outside the region in the Historical period, such as two individuals sampled in Samsun in the Black Sea region from the Roman era in the second to third centuries CE ([/FONT]17[FONT=&quot]). These individuals have both Eastern European hunter-gatherer and some East Eurasian ancestry that contrasts them with the local population of the Black Sea region that had been stable since the Chalcolithic ([/FONT]30[FONT=&quot]), across the Early Bronze Age transition at Amasya, and down to the time of the Kingdom of Pontus (first century BCE). Broad genetic stability in Anatolia during the Roman-Byzantine period did not mean isolation, as outliers of likely Levantine, Northern European or Germanic, and Iberian origin are detected in the Marmara region (in the Basilica of Nicaea or present-day Iznik and the Virgin Mary Monastery at Zeytinliada, Erdek) close to the Imperial capital of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), which may have attracted a more diverse set of foreigners. Other outliers are found at the periphery of the Southern Arc in the Iron Age, in Moldova and Romania, long after the early steppe migrants previously discussed. These are distinctive because of the East Eurasian admixture of Central Asian Scythian individuals ([/FONT]31[FONT=&quot]–[/FONT]33[FONT=&quot])."[/FONT]
 
East Eurasian arrival:
"[FONT=&quot]East Eurasian ancestry also helps identify a noteworthy set of outliers at Çapalıbağ in the Aegean coast of Turkey dating from the 14th to 17th centuries ([/FONT]Fig. 4[FONT=&quot]) ([/FONT]17[FONT=&quot]). These have ~18% such ancestry, unlike Byzantine-era individuals from Turkey ([/FONT]Fig. 4B[FONT=&quot]), which suggests a Central Asian influence. An admixture date estimate of 12.2 ± 1.4 generations before their time using Roman-Byzantine and Central Asian sources ([/FONT]Fig. 4C[FONT=&quot]) suggests that the admixture occurred in the period surrounding the 11th century arrival and expansion of Seljuq Turks to Anatolia."


[/FONT]
 
Slavic arrival: Does this mean that as of 1100 AD the Albanians still weren't affected by Slavic admixture, and were still highly Anatolian Neolithic like? I'm sure our Albanian posters will let us know.

"[FONT=&quot]The reduction of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry was a long-term process in Southeastern Europe ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]), which allows us to differentiate present-day populations from those preceding the Slavic migrations. When we order individuals along this component of ancestry ([/FONT]Fig. 5[FONT=&quot]), we observe that present-day Slavs outside the Balkans have the least, whereas pre-Slavic inhabitants from the Balkans have the most of this type of ancestry, with present-day people from Southeastern Europe intermediate between the two extremes. Three individuals from Bulgaria (Samovodene), North Macedonia (Bitola), and an outlier individual from Trogir in Croatia (700 to 1100 CE) have the lowest levels of this ancestry. Most individuals from Trogir (a port city of the Adriatic in Croatia that was founded by Ancient Greek colonists and was part of the Byzantine Empire) overlapped with present-day people from ~700 to 900 CE, as did 12th century CE individuals from Veliko Tarnovo and Ryahovets in Bulgaria and a mid–fourth century CE Roman-era individual from Marathon in Greece, who, however, lacked the Balkan hunter-gatherer ancestry found consistently in the present-day population ([/FONT]Fig. 1[FONT=&quot]). Finally, three medieval individuals from Albania (500 to 1100 CE) and a Late Antique (~500 CE) individual from Boyanovo in Bulgaria preceding the Slavic migrations, overlapped with the more ancient population, having high levels of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry. Among present-day people, Greeks and Albanians have more Anatolian Neolithic ancestry than their South Slavic neighbors. "

[/FONT]
 
Angela said:
Slavic arrival: Does this mean that as of 1100 AD the Albanians still weren't affected by Slavic admixture, and were still highly Anatolian Neolithic like? I'm sure our Albanian posters will let us know.

"[FONT=&quot]The reduction of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry was a long-term process in Southeastern Europe ([/FONT]1[FONT=&quot]), which allows us to differentiate present-day populations from those preceding the Slavic migrations. When we order individuals along this component of ancestry ([/FONT]Fig. 5[FONT=&quot]), we observe that present-day Slavs outside the Balkans have the least, whereas pre-Slavic inhabitants from the Balkans have the most of this type of ancestry, with present-day people from Southeastern Europe intermediate between the two extremes. Three individuals from Bulgaria (Samovodene), North Macedonia (Bitola), and an outlier individual from Trogir in Croatia (700 to 1100 CE) have the lowest levels of this ancestry. Most individuals from Trogir (a port city of the Adriatic in Croatia that was founded by Ancient Greek colonists and was part of the Byzantine Empire) overlapped with present-day people from ~700 to 900 CE, as did 12th century CE individuals from Veliko Tarnovo and Ryahovets in Bulgaria and a mid–fourth century CE Roman-era individual from Marathon in Greece, who, however, lacked the Balkan hunter-gatherer ancestry found consistently in the present-day population ([/FONT]Fig. 1[FONT=&quot]). Finally, three medieval individuals from Albania (500 to 1100 CE) and a Late Antique (~500 CE) individual from Boyanovo in Bulgaria preceding the Slavic migrations, overlapped with the more ancient population, having high levels of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry. Among present-day people, Greeks and Albanians have more Anatolian Neolithic ancestry than their South Slavic neighbors. "

[/FONT]
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I have said it before.
 
Plenty R-A12332 and R-19434 in Urartian samples.
 
Angela said:
Rome: I think he's reaching a bit here, and I'm rather disappointed that they took ALL the Roman Imperial samples as a group for analysis. I hope there's a more nuanced analysis in the supplement.

"This suggests that the Roman Empire in both its shorter-lived western part and the longer-lasting eastern centered on Anatolia had a diverse but similar population plausibly drawn, to a substantial extent, from Anatolian pre-Imperial sources. In an irony of history, although the Roman Republic prevailed in its existential military struggle against the Anatolians rallied by Mithridates VI of Pontus during the first century BCE, the final incorporation of Anatolia into the Roman Empire and the increased connectivity that ensued may have set the stage for the very same Anatolians to become the demographic engine of Imperial Rome itself. This recreated, in historical time, the mythical journey of Aeneas and his Trojan exiles from Anatolia to the shores of Italy."

"Hierarchical clustering of raw ancestry estimates of diverse individuals shows overlapping distributions of Imperial Roman and Anatolian Roman-Byzantine individuals (black) without knowledge of their ancestry labels and differentiated from the distributions of Southeastern Europe, Armenia, and the Levant."
Click to expand...

Great work by Lazaridis and Reich, and their team, but if geneticists want to be taken seriously by all classicists, archaeologists and linguists, they should avoid such sentences.
 
Pax Augusta said:
Great work by Lazaridis and Reich, and their team, but if geneticists want to be taken seriously by all classicists, archaeologists and linguists, they should avoid such sentences.
Click to expand...

He admits it's a myth, but it should indeed by avoided, because there are some extremely literal minded almost autistic people in this "hobby".
 
Angela said:
He admits it's a myth, but it should indeed by avoided, because there are some extremely literal minded almost autistic people in this "hobby".
Click to expand...

Yes, what he means in general is clear, you can see that he works hard, and he remains one of the geneticists who manage to be most clear, he is certainly not expounding his own theory on that myth. But it was better to avoid that whole paragraph. He is neither an archaeologist, nor a classicist, nor a historian. Such considerations should be left to those who deal with them for work reasons. :)
 
Can someone send a pdf link for this?


Sent from my iPhone using Eupedia Forum
 
This is what I call Intellectual integrity

Angela said:
Rome: I think he's reaching a bit here, and I'm rather disappointed that they took ALL the Roman Imperial samples as a group for analysis. I hope there's a more nuanced analysis in the supplement.

"This suggests that the Roman Empire in both its shorter-lived western part and the longer-lasting eastern centered on Anatolia had a diverse but similar population plausibly drawn, to a substantial extent, from Anatolian pre-Imperial sources. In an irony of history, although the Roman Republic prevailed in its existential military struggle against the Anatolians rallied by Mithridates VI of Pontus during the first century BCE, the final incorporation of Anatolia into the Roman Empire and the increased connectivity that ensued may have set the stage for the very same Anatolians to become the demographic engine of Imperial Rome itself. This recreated, in historical time, the mythical journey of Aeneas and his Trojan exiles from Anatolia to the shores of Italy."

"Hierarchical clustering of raw ancestry estimates of diverse individuals shows overlapping distributions of Imperial Roman and Anatolian Roman-Byzantine individuals (black) without knowledge of their ancestry labels and differentiated from the distributions of Southeastern Europe, Armenia, and the Levant."
Click to expand...

Good to know that academics are still using samples from a necropolis known to have housed slave site burials as representative of the Imperial Roman population! Let's continue on with the theory that the region with the largest population within the empire since the start had undergone multiple mass population shifts (and damn near replacements) within the span of a few centuries, and obviously since YDNA distribution and autosomal DNA distribution does not back up such uniform shifts (but rather regional shifts correlating with historic events), we must hold on to these useless unrepresentative samples as long as possible and treat them like the holy grail!
 
Lucidrooted said:
Good to know that academics are still using samples from a necropolis known to have housed slave site burials as representative of the Imperial Roman population! Let's continue on with the theory that the region with the largest population within the empire since the start had undergone multiple mass population shifts (and damn near replacements) within the span of a few centuries, and obviously since YDNA distribution and autosomal DNA distribution does not back up such uniform shifts (but rather regional shifts correlating with historic events), we must hold on to these useless unrepresentative samples as long as possible and treat them like the holy grail!
Click to expand...

I may be wrong, but I don't think that's what he's saying there. It seems to me he's talking more about the economic and social impact, although again that sentence is a little florid for my taste.

I'm carefully reading the supplementary materials, since that's usually where you find the real meat of the papers.
 
Non-West Eurasian ancestry in the Southern Arc

As to the Natufians:
"The African-maximized “black” component isfound in Levantine individuals as early as the Natufians and should thus not be interpreted asevidence of recent African influence in West Eurasia. A likely explanation is the partialderivation of the Natufians from Paleolithic Iberomaurusian (48) North African-related ancestorsas suggested in (49) Indeed, the average proportion of this component in all Natufian individuals(including those for which it is less than the detection threshold of 10%) is 9.1%, while inTaforalt from Morocco it is 41.4%, thus suggesting ~22% of North African influence, similar tothe ~27% inferred using an admixture graph framework in (49)"
 
Angela said:
I may be wrong, but I don't think that's what he's saying there. It seems to me he's talking more about the economic and social impact, although again that sentence is a little florid for my taste.

I'm carefully reading the supplementary materials, since that's usually where you find the real meat of the papers.
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I suppose that's indeed what he's saying there. From the Supplementary Materials for A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia, p. 12.

To the west of Greece, 1 sample from Italy, a Punic sample from Sardinia (MSR002) is identified as Mycenaean-like.(53) We note that the samples from Italy do not include Sicily and Southern Italy at the time or postdating Greek colonization, but they do include a large set of samples from Imperial Rome which we infer to be mostly of Anatolian rather than Aegean or southeastern European origin.
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This is more or less what Reich had also said about Anatolia_BA being the source for Imperial Rome

"The demographic significance of Anatolia on a Mediterranean-wide scale is further documented by our finding that following the Roman conquest, the Anatolian population remained stable and became the geographic source for much of the ancestry of Imperial Rome itself. "

https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/david-reich-lecture


From the Science article. There are no samples from Italy in these three studies. So what exactly are we talking about?

"The papers also acknowledge the nuances of identity in later periods, for example in Imperial Rome. Previous genetic studies had shown that as the empire coalesced, the ancestry of people in and around the city of Rome shifted, with most having roots not in Europe, but farther east.

After obtaining dozens of additional Roman-era genomes from the region, the team zeroed in on the source of those newcomers: Anatolia. But the researchers agree that people with “Anatolian” DNA moving to the Italian peninsula likely saw themselves as citizens or slaves of Rome, rather than as part of a distinct “Anatolian” ethnic group. Contemporary chroniclers remarked on the new faces in Rome—and referred to many of them as “Greeks,” perhaps because the eastern peoples had spoken Greek for centuries, Lazaridis says."


https://www.science.org/content/art...provides-clues-origin-farming-early-languages


First criticism from archaeologists

"Some archaeologists still think the papers claim too much influence for ancestry. “DNA cannot tell us anything about how people shape their life worlds, what their social status was,” says archaeologist Joseph Maran of Heidelberg University. He says terms like “Yamnaya ancestry” suggest the Yamnaya spread by moving directly from place to place, rather than through a complex mingling of their descendants with local populations over centuries or more. “Equating history with ‘mobility’ and ‘migrations’ is … old-fashioned.”
 
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