Comparing Ancient Greek populations to modern Greeks and Italians

[TaktikatEMalet]

When I say "northern" I simply mean with origins geographically north of the Mycenaeans. It doesn't specifically have to be from places like the Carpathian basin.

Sure but I'm talking about Mycenaean period which is after they had conquered the Minoans. As for origins Mycenaean ancestors have come from the Steppe through Anatolia - maybe settled in Anatolia first and then proto Mycenaeans moved west into north Greece around 2000BC. Maybe explains the language link between Greek and Armenian or is that something from a later period when Greeks expanded into Anatolia?

 

[Vitruvius]

Sure but I'm talking about Mycenaean period which is after they had conquered the Minoans. As for origins Mycenaean ancestors have come from the Steppe through Anatolia - maybe settled in Anatolia first and then proto Mycenaeans moved west into north Greece around 2000BC. Maybe explains the language link between Greek and Armenian or is that something from a later period when Greeks expanded into Anatolia?

Mycenaean Greece spans 1750 to 1050BC and if I'm not mistaken, you're speaking of post 1400BC for the Minoan conquest. I'm saying that the Mycenaean world still continued to absorb ancestry from both Anatolian and more northerly Balkanic origin after their conquest of the Minoans, as well. We now have hundreds of samples attesting to this at this point.

I'm less well read on the Greek and Armenian languages, however it should be noted that all bronze age Anatolians form effectively a perfect simple two way admixture between neolithic Anatolians and neolithic Armenians. In fact, the south Caucasian component actually represents the majority of ancestry in this new profile at a combined total of 64.8%. The Barcin Neolithic component in contrast is found at just 32.9%, so it can be stated with confidence that the BA Anatolians derived 98% of their ancestry from Armenian highlanders mixing with local sources.

I made this model using purely surrounding neolithic populations so it should be quite accurate. I was even able to apply EHG and WHG-like ancestry as a potential source of ancestry by using neolithic outliers in France, Norway, Ukraine and Russia which retained HG like profiles along the European East-West cline. As you can see, Bronze age Anatolians have either none or almost no European HG ancestry and the same applies to Iraqi, Iranian and Levantine ancestry. So keeping in mind that they had effectively 0 HG ancestry in tandem with the fact that we would not see political conquest of really any part of Anatolia by a nation with steppe ancestry until the much later Trojan war - to me this is strong evidence of Proto-Indo European originating in the S. Caucasus and spreading northward and Westward by the end of the neolithic. From there we can agree that the Greeks absorbed a considerable amount of this new Bronze age Anatolian ancestry which likely heavily influenced their language.

 

[ihype02]

Pretty awesome, Lazaridis elaborates on Anatolian

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1737126388560462015

Parts of Cappadocia (in Bronze Age) also overlap with Cypriots which are very close to Aegean Islanders. It is obviously true that costal western Anatolian have/had Greek ancestry but even when you use a pure Central Anatolian source, Aegean Islanders come up as predominantly Anatolian.

I don't know why is that and I am not fully convinced. For Rhodes which is quite close to Anatolia, a possible theory is that the islands could've been emptied and repopulated with Byzantine Anatolians at some point but I find it really hard to believe that most of ancestry of Cretans is from Anatolians.

A possible explanation is maybe regional difference that Greeks in Crete were already more Anatolian-shifted before the Hellenistic period, who knows. Or maybe they have been mixed with something more eastern which caused a greater shift.

 

[Jovialis]

Pretty awesome!

 

[Dianatomia]

Parts of Cappadocia (in Bronze Age) also overlap with Cypriots which are very close to Aegean Islanders. It is obviously true that costal western Anatolian have/had Greek ancestry but even when you use a pure Central Anatolian source, Aegean Islanders come up as predominantly Anatolian.

I don't know why is that and I am not fully convinced. For Rhodes which is quite close to Anatolia, a possible theory is that the islands could've been emptied and repopulated with Byzantine Anatolians at some point but I find it really hard to believe that most of ancestry of Cretans is from Anatolians.

A possible explanation is maybe regional difference that Greeks in Crete were already more Anatolian-shifted before the Hellenistic period, who knows. Or maybe they have been mixed with something more eastern which caused a greater shift.

Cyprus was a continuation of the Bronze Age Anatolian mainframe, prior to the arrival of the Mycenaeans. The modern Cypriots likely represent the Anatolians from the Iron Age all the way to the Byzantine Age. As they are a Mycenaean/BA Anatolian mix.

Mycenaean Peloponnese is only one picture taken instantly. There were only a few houndred thousand people living in Bronze Age Greece. Yet, there were 4 to 5 million Greeks by the classical era. The Greek identity was slowly shaped within this timeframe.

Isn‘t mainland Greece also more Anatolian shifted?

 

[ihype02]

Isn‘t mainland Greece also more Anatolian shifted?

Yes it is but I was talking about some regional minor regional differences to balance the Anatolian component because if you use Central Anatolians to model Cretans then they come up as predominantly Anatolian transplants with some old Greek and Slavic ancestry. Maybe that is true who knows it is a bit too much IMO. I said for Rhodes I could believe it as it is a small island opposite of Western Anatolia where millions of Greeks speaking Romans of Anatolian ancestry lived. So hypothetically at some point in history there might've been a time where this island was empty and thousands of those Romans passed by to repopulate it.

But for Crete as it is a large island if this ever happened it is unlikely that it would not be documented.

 

[Jovialis]

Based on Lazaridis' comments, Anatolia from ChL to Roman period is little changed, with the same amount of Natufian. Indicating no mass migration from the Levant. Furthermore, Roman period/Iron Age Anatolia looks like it has Ancient Greek influences.

 

[Jovialis]

People always seem to overestimate the Levant influence, with is a direct result of solely relying on distance analysis like G25. The only reason why this is a prevalent theme is because those are the easiest tools to use for laymen. This is bad for discourse because it violates formal stats, and more surly and less intelligent laymen go straight into demonstrateing the Dunning–Kruger effect when their erroneous models are challenged.

People need to learn how to us qpAdm for modeling ancestry.

 

[Vitruvius]

Based on Lazaridis' comments, Anatolia from ChL to Roman period is little changed, with the same amount of Natufian. Indicating no mass migration from the Levant. Furthermore, Roman period/Iron Ago Anatolia looks like it has Ancient Greek influences.

Yes, agreed. As I showed earlier, Levantine PPNB input in bronze age Anatolia is 0 and the same is true for iron age Anatolia. The two populations of IA and BA are almost identical, however we see a bit of an increase of European HG-like ancestry that was not present in the BA along with a little bit of reduction of Southern Caucasian Neolithic ancestry. To me this implies a new flow of admixture coming from Europe and probably more specifically the Greek world, which began after the Trojan wars.

People always seem to overestimate the Levant influence, with is a direct result of solely relying on distance analysis like G25. The only reason why this is a prevalent theme is because those are the easiest tools to use for laymen. This is bad for discourse because it violates formal stats, and more surly and less intelligent laymen go straight into demonstrateing the Dunning–Kruger effect when their erroneous models are challenged.

People need to learn how to us qpAdm for modeling ancestry.

If you use G25 properly, you don't even see Levantine influence. The main issue stems with some people refusing to acknowledge the Neolithic Armenian highlands as a major source of ancestry for the whole of the northern Mediterranean. This type of ancestry's importance and impact for this region is only second to Neolithic Anatolian Ancestry. It's apparent to me that the highlands were a major population center by the end of the neolithic for the reason as to how drastically it shifted Anatolia's ancestral makeup.

Until people can begin to grasp and acknowledge this admixture event which spread over the northern Mediterranean over the course of several thousands of years - they will continue to default to absurd ideas of Levantine based mass migration. When we investigate things more thoroughly, the reality is that the aDNA shows the opposite - Levantine populations were consistently and heavily impacted by Anatolian populations during the neolithic and then later by Caucasian, and Mesopotamian populations coming from the north during the bronze age.

 

[mrmshane]

Dang, Deep stuff discussion is going on here

 

[Jovialis]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1747422704016232959

 

[ihype02]

The focus should be in the Magna Graecian world which is the largest and best documented vector for Aegean ancestry in Italy instead of speculating mass undocumented middle eastern population replacement. Notice how they don't even specify "Greek-like" but instead "Eastern Mediterranean"? This is done purposefully with ill intent and a lack of interest in the historic/archaeologic record.

What if most Greeks samples in Magna Graecia plot like they one from Himera? What would that make of this theory?

95% of samples in Greek world so far overlap with their Bronze Age predecessors. Why should scientists ignore that?

 

[Jovialis]

What if most Greeks samples in Magna Graecia plot like they one from Himera? What would that make of this theory?

95% of samples in Greek world so far overlap with their Bronze Age predecessors. Why should scientists ignore that?

You mean THESE Bronze Age Greek predecessors that plot right on top of Southern Italians/Sicilians, and Central Italians?

Yes it cannot be ignored @ihype02

 

[Jovialis]

You mean THESE Bronze Age Greek predecessors that plot right on top of Southern Italians/Sicilians, and Central Italians?

Speaking of haplogroups, it is also a fact that mine is a subclade of XAN30

 

[ihype02]

Late Bronze age Greeks plotted like southern Italians. We have literally hundreds of samples attesting to this. Any genealogist up to date on Skouranioti et al 2023 is already well aware of this.

The Himerans existed on a Sicanian to Aegean cline with most samples plotting somewhere in between. Like the Daunians, they were in the middle of a transition process. We also see this with the leaked Etruscans of Pontecagnano. Their results are not mirrored in Ischia whose leaked samples plot more homogenously like the LBA greeks.



West african entrance into the United States through the slave trade is well documented and a civil war was fought in part over their status in American society. We have exact demographic figures to know their numbers and exactly what proportion of society they represent in various time periods. We can say none of this for the middle eastern replacement hypothesis in Italy.

It was not a "Middle Eastern replacement". Just substantial additional admixture with a Italic majority.
If you use those Aegean-samples plotting with Crete you get a >60% replacement in Lazio.

How much Italic do you believe Lazio Italians and Abruzzes to be?

The Ischia samples pretty plot in Aegean cluster as written below:

https://imgur.com/mQwkAlS

One is more pushed towards the Sicilians (which reflects a part of genetic variation that also existed among LBA Greeks the ones with more steppe overlapping with the borders of Sicilian cluster and the ones with less steppe being closer to Minoans. )

Ancient Greeks were similar to Southern Italians but pushed in Western direction towards the Minoans due to higher ANF ancestry.
If you hypothetically create a 2/3 Greek and 1/3 Italic model you'd still more West Asian admixture to fully achieve the Imperial cluster.

 

[Jovialis]

It was not a "Middle Eastern replacement". Just substantial additional admixture with a Italic majority.
If you use those Aegean-samples plotting with Crete you get a >60% replacement in Lazio.

How much Italic do you believe Lazio Italians and Abruzzes to be?

The Ischia samples pretty plot in Aegean cluster as written below:

https://imgur.com/mQwkAlS

One is more pushed towards the Sicilians (which reflects a part of genetic variation that also existed among LBA Greeks the ones with more steppe overlapping with the borders of Sicilian cluster and the ones with less steppe being closer to Minoans. )

Ancient Greeks were similar to Southern Italians but pushed in Western direction towards the Minoans due to higher ANF ancestry.
If you hypothetically create a 2/3 Greek and 1/3 Italic model you'd still more West Asian admixture to fully achieve the Imperial cluster.

If th

You mean THESE Bronze Age Greek predecessors that plot right on top of Southern Italians/Sicilians, and Central Italians?

Yes it cannot be ignored @ihype02

@ihype02

You are wrong,

Ancient Greeks already plot on top of Southern Italians, this isn't 2017 using GEDMATCH.

These are from a study in 2023 using academic tools.

From the LN-EBA Cretan samples received non-steppe CHG and then Central European admixture to create LBA Greeks. That is why they plot on top of Southern and Central Italians.

 

[Jovialis]

@ihype02

You are wrong,

Ancient Greeks already plot on top of Southern Italians, this isn't 2017 using GEDMATCH.

These are from a study in 2023 using academic tools.

From the LN-EBA Cretan samples received non-steppe CHG and then Central European admixture to create LBA Greeks. That is why they plot on top of Southern and Central Italians.

It is a canard to imply that panmixia among the Imperial sample occurred when the very study they come from denies this.

C6, the only cohort salient to the discussion, (besides C7) overlaps with LBA Cretans, which overlap with Central-South Italy.

 

[ihype02]

You mean THESE Bronze Age Greek predecessors that plot right on top of Southern Italians/Sicilians, and Central Italians?

Yes it cannot be ignored @ihype02

I think those are oversized circles that makes it look like that since the point of this study was not show relationship between ancient and modern populations, in that case scientists have neglected certain details. One Greek circle is nearly the size of three 3 modern population circles.

There are at least 5 different studies showing the same thing I am saying.

I am not denying substantial admixture from Iron Age Greek colonies but what I don't believe that it was the key architect of the Roman cluster/shift.

 

[Jovialis]

I think those are oversized circles that makes it look like that since the point of this study was not show relationship between ancient and modern populations, in that case scientists have neglected certain details. One Greek circle is nearly the size of three 3 modern population circles.

There are at least 5 different studies showing the same thing I am saying.

I am not denying substantial admixture from Iron Age Greek colonies but what I don't believe that it was the key architect of the Roman cluster/shift.

One of the studies you are citing hasn't even been posted as a pre-print, so perhaps something was up with it.

The one I am citing seems to be one of the most recent from 2023:

Ancient DNA reveals admixture history and endogamy in the prehistoric Aegean - Nature Ecology & Evolution

The authors generate a genome-wide dataset of 102 individuals who lived in Crete, the Greek mainland and the Aegean islands between the Neolithic and the Iron Age, identifying high levels of biological and cultural connectedness within the ancient Aegean.

www.nature.com

 

[Jovialis]

oversize circles!? come on man...

It clearly overlaps with the entire south and center: