Comparing Ancient Greek populations to modern Greeks and Italians

[Vitruvius]

oversize circles!? come on man...

It clearly overlaps with the entire south and center:

That last image of the Daunian PCA is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Notice how they are taking a direct path from sardinian like to the modern Sicilian/Imperial roman cluster? The majority of these Daunians are from 500 BC. Rome was nothing but a city state during this era and was just becoming a republic after expelling the Tarquin dynasty of Kings. This is a preroman phenomenon at its core.

 

[torzio]

Can C7 data and information be isolated and separated from C6 ? .................this will help

As per the 2021 paper...Daunuans are linked with the Japodes ( Iapodes ) a inland tribe stting on the modern borders of Croatia and Slovenia................migrated to Italy in the late bronze age and merged into samnite society in the next 200 years .......................before the Messapics of the salento peninsula arrived in Italy

 

[torzio]

Daunians where only around modern Foggia ......................neighbours of the samnites

That last image of the Daunian PCA is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Notice how they are taking a direct path from sardinian like to the modern Sicilian/Imperial roman cluster? The majority of these Daunians are from 500 BC. Rome was nothing but a city state during this era and was just becoming a republic after expelling the Tarquin dynasty of Kings. This is a preroman phenomenon at its core.

 

[D.L.M]

Central Italians today are roughly a 50/50 split between a Northern Italic and a LBA/Magna Graecian Greek profile. The Northern Italic came from late antiquity onward and is not the same source of ancestry as IA Latin ancestry (although the two are closely related). Their "Northern" pull after the imperial age comes directly from Northern Italy itself and we see this in a minority of outlying Northern Italian profiles (which seem to exist before the langobard migrations I might add).

The Ischia samples are overlapping the Sicilian cluster based on where they sit and neither of them look Minoan like. Minoans cluster far closer to EEF populations as they they had less caucasian and steppe ancestry. The modern population four dots underneath the Ischians are maltese as a reference. You can see which common West Eurasian PCA they were using to map it with if you look closely. I'll even draw in where I'm seeing the samples to be crystal clear.

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Jovalis is right with his comment, however. Your perception that Ancient Greeks did not overlap Southern Italians is an outdated assumption and has been disproven. This idea was perhaps correct for EBA/MBA greeks, but not LBA Greeks which is the population we are are assuming Magna Graecians will closely reflect and the leaked Ischians do confirm this. The west asian ancestry you refrence is already found in these Greek populations anyways. Many Anatolians also considered themselves Greeks by the Iron age and would've been a part of the Magna Graecian phenomenon to at least some extent. Nobody is denying West asian genetic input, but we are instead rejecting panmixia with the middle east on the whole.

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It depends what you consider as a "overlap". Ancient Greeks are close but they are distinguishable in every PCA expect for the one Jovialis posted.

0.038 distance is not overlapping in my book, close, but not that close as Ukrainians and Poles are with Pagan Slavs.

In a nutshell, my opinion:
Latins/Etruscans and other Italic people in red. (Even though some genetic variation, IMO did exist in the South so I don't believe all Italic tribes were identical to Latins). The old Greeks in purple circle, in black circle the Imperial Romans and parts of West Asia in yellow circle.

To me it seems that Imperial Romans were created with a varying degree of Middle Eastern and Latin/Central Italic admixture. Those who lean Italic, cluster as Southern Italians and those lean more Anatolian/Levantine are obviously more eastern forming a tail around the modern Aegean Greeks, especially Cyprus towards the Anatolia and Levant.

If you ignore Mycenaeans and hypothetically use Southern Italians as a proxy for say, 90% Greek transplants. You will get a a 80% replacement of Italic people in Abruzzo and 70% replacement in Lazio.

 

[Vitruvius]

It depends what you consider as a "overlap". Ancient Greeks are close but they are disgustiable in every PCA expect for the one Jovialis posted.

0.038 distance is not overlapping in my book, close, but not that close as Ukrainians and Poles are with Pagan Slavs.

In a nutshell, my opinion:
Latins/Etruscans and other Italic people in red. (Even though some genetic variation, IMO did exist in the South so I don't believe all Italic tribes were identical to Latins). The old Greeks in purple circle, in black circle the Imperial Romans and parts of West Asia in yellow circle.

To me it seems that Imperial Romans were created with a varying degree of Middle Eastern and Latin/Central Italic admixture. Those who lean Italic, cluster as Southern Italians and those lean more Anatolian/Levantine are obviously more eastern forming a tail around the modern Aegean Greeks, especially Cyprus towards the Anatolia and Levant.

If you ignore Mycenaeans and hypothetically use Southern Italians as a proxy for say, 90% Greek transplants. You will get a a 80% replacement of Italic people in Abruzzo and 70% replacement in Lazio.

The one Jovialis posted is the largest sample of BA Greeks we have to date. It shows quite clearly how they "became" more modern like as time progressed through the gradual absorption of both steppe rich and BA Anatolian DNA at the expense of EEF ancestry.

To give you an idea as to how close a 0.038 average is you should know that modern day Campanians (with no outliers outside of the S. Italian cluster) have a distance of 0.05 between each other based on the existing G25 dataset. So if you're willing to agree that Campanians overlap Campanians, you have to agree that the LBA Greek average overlaps Campanians as well. This is all without getting into the likelyhood that this process of Anatolian and steppe absorption continued into the IA where we see the Greek world now encompasses unbroken coastal regions of West Anatolia.

Also, from my perspective the Ischian samples you posted overlap the imperial roman black circle you've made (C6 cluster). This is what I presume Greece proper will look like (as far as southern Greece at least) and not so much the purple area.

 

[Jovialis]

It depends what you consider as a "overlap". Ancient Greeks are close but they are distinguishable in every PCA expect for the one Jovialis posted.

0.038 distance is not overlapping in my book, close, but not that close as Ukrainians and Poles are with Pagan Slavs.

In a nutshell, my opinion:
Latins/Etruscans and other Italic people in red. (Even though some genetic variation, IMO did exist in the South so I don't believe all Italic tribes were identical to Latins). The old Greeks in purple circle, in black circle the Imperial Romans and parts of West Asia in yellow circle.

To me it seems that Imperial Romans were created with a varying degree of Middle Eastern and Latin/Central Italic admixture. Those who lean Italic, cluster as Southern Italians and those lean more Anatolian/Levantine are obviously more eastern forming a tail around the modern Aegean Greeks, especially Cyprus towards the Anatolia and Levant.

If you ignore Mycenaeans and hypothetically use Southern Italians as a proxy for say, 90% Greek transplants. You will get a a 80% replacement of Italic people in Abruzzo and 70% replacement in Lazio.

To you it seems?

Well the authors clearly show there were deep demographic changes in Lazio, and that C6 supplanted most of the population. While the near eastern immigrants disappear. It is called the Urban Graveyard affect.

Also please correct your language. Anatolian/Levantine? Lazaridis stated that there wasn't any large scale Levantine migration into Anatolia at any time between ChL to Roman period. In fact they were likely mixed with Myceneans!

You are just repeating the ignorance of clueless inconsequential laymen.

 

[Jovialis]

The only time there was ever possibly a large scale migration into Anatolia from the Levant was when Natufians mixed with Anatolia HGs to create Anatolia_N. However even that remains to be seen, because we have not yet found the Basal Eurasian. It is absolutely fiction to claim Anatolia ChL to Roman Anatolia has large amounts of extra Levantine. Instead they have large amounts of Iran related ancestry.

 

[Vitruvius]

The only time there was ever possibly a large scale migration into Anatolia from the Levant was when Natufians mixed with Anatolia HGs to create Anatolia_N. However even that remains to be seen, because we have not yet found the Basal Eurasian. It is absolutely fiction to claim Anatolia ChL to Roman Anatolia has large amounts of Levantine. Instead they have large amounts of Iran related ancestry.

If we use Pinarbasi HG as a starting point for Anatolia (it's only a sample of one so take this with a grain of salt), which is a bit more European shifted than Barcin, we would have to infer a slight Caucasian admixture into Anatolians during the transition from HGs to Neolithic and not so much Levantine. The Levant's closeness to anatolia by the bronze age is a result of colonizations from Neolithic Anatolia, the Armenian highlands and Mesopotomian and/or Iranian populations which heavily diluted Natufian's Iberomaurusian related ancestry and brought its genetic average northward. These colonizations were one way migrations and anatolia during this time period seemed to really only be affected by Caucasian incursions - most of which seem to occur dramatically and in huge quantity during the end of the neolithic and the very beginning of the chalcolithic.

I think Iran Neolithic most likely has something else in it which seperates it from both Georgian HGs and Neolithic Caucasians. I'd speculate perhaps a south asian component but this requires a lot more samples to verify.

 

[Jovialis]

Razib Khan appreciates my observation, he is far more credible and respected than the entire Apricty forum combined.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1764102182670885241

 

[Vallicanus]

Central Italians today are roughly a 50/50 split between a Northern Italic and a LBA/Magna Graecian Greek profile. The Northern Italic came from late antiquity onward and is not the same source of ancestry as IA Latin ancestry (although the two are closely related). Their "Northern" pull after the imperial age comes directly from Northern Italy itself and we see this in a minority of outlying late antiquity Northern Italian profiles around Rome (which seem to exist before the langobard migrations I might add).

Agreed.
Judging by the genetics of modern Italians, even Northern Italians, the IA Latin ancestry had rather more WHG.

 

[Vitruvius]

0.038 differences on the average samples not on individual samples, not the same thing.

Those two are the Latin outliers in black circle I made, check the Imperial Rome paper and make a comparison to get a clearer image.
One of those two Latins is fully in the Mycenaean triangle (also in the purple circle in the previous edited picture of mine) which is close with the Iron Age Greek. It's easy to detect both of them and correlate both of them with the Rome 2019 PCA.

Sicilians are in small dots opposite to them.

Distance is distance. Average vs Individuals does not change the validity. We've already posted the official study PCA which shows extensive overlap of the S. Italian cluster and you yourself have agreed this to be the case. I don't know what more proof anyone can give you here.

 

[D.L.M]

This how I believe most Ancient Greeks of Italy looked like genetically at least those in times of Plato:

However I could be wrong.

 

[Francesco]

Some daunian samples show an east med shift well before the imperial age, which is likely due to a Greek presence in the region. This east med signal might have been strengthened by a later influx from west Asia, but was already present in Magna Grecia since several centuries

 

[D.L.M]

Some daunian samples show an east med shift well before the imperial age, which is likely due to a Greek presence in the region. This east med signal might have been strengthened by a later influx from west Asia, but was already present in Magna Grecia from several centuries

My belief is similar but in an opposite direction. The East Med shift is heavily Roman-inspired but Greek colonies gave it a push centuries earlier.

 

[Jovialis]

This how I believe most Ancient Greeks of Italy looked like genetically at least those in times of Plato:

However I could be wrong.

Himera was established in the second wave of Greek Colonization by Ionian Greeks.

We can see that LBA Cretans were Dorian speakers, we can see that they were big colonizers of the South too, along with Aeolians & Achaeans. Judging from Logkas samples in Northern Greece, they too had more Central European BA, which is why they plot over central Italians/ Tuscans.

The Dorian-speakers colonized Apulia, and Sicily; Dorian speakers colonized Crete. Thus, I don't think it is a surprise that LBA Cretans and Apulian, (along with other Southerners/Sicilians) overlaps. Perhaps it was this genetic profile that became the more prolific?

 

[torzio]

I don't know about Sicily on when the greeks arrived there .............but the Greeks took Corfu from the Liburnians in 733BC and then formed the cities of Durres and Appolonia ( in Albania ) just after , about circa 725BC, so there Adriatic presence seems different to other places in Italy or beyond.

Taranto is another matter...........IIRC it was settled by greeks from Argos or Sparta

 

[HereToLearn]

"My beliefe is..." "I believe..." "In my opinion..." etc.

On the other hand hard facts. Thanks Vitriuvius and Jovialis for your knowledge. Let's hope this thread can now go back to the OP's purpose without hijacking that just goes to show my point on some people's "Near Eastern" wishful thinking, which in anthrofora (some more than others) seems to have even deeper roots than in academia.

 

[D.L.M]

"My beliefe is..." "I believe..." "In my opinion..." etc.

On the other hand hard facts. Thanks Vitriuvius and Jovialis for your knowledge. Let's hope this thread can now go back to the OP's purpose without hijacking that just goes to show my point on some people's "Near Eastern" wishful thinking, which in anthrofora (some more than others) seems to have even deeper roots than in academia.

I was simply being respectfully cautious.

Or maybe you're just wishful thinking to ignore my facts and believe that all scientists are engaging in a conspiracy.

 

[Francesco]

I personally respect ihype's point of view even if I don't agree with it.

Those two are the Latin outliers in black circle I made, check the Imperial Rome paper and make a comparison to get a clearer image.
One of those two Latins is fully in the Mycenaean triangle (also in the purple circle in the previous edited picture of mine) which is close with the Iron Age Greek. It's easy to detect both of them and correlate both of them with the Rome 2019 PCA.

Sicilians are in small dots opposite to them.

That's quite interesting. If those inside the black dots are actually the latin outliers from the Rome study, with the two samples from Ischia we would already have four iron age samples from continental Italy wich could be a great source population for the east med shift, well before the roman empire. Then of course you could add some later influx in the imperial era from the levant, but you wouldn't need some big number.

 

[Jovialis]

Again, Himera was founded by Ionians in the second phase.

LBA Cretans, which overlaps with Modern Puglia were Dorian-Speakers. The people who colonized Puglia were also Dorian-Speakers. Dorian Speakers also colonized a large part of Sicily. Achaean-Doric were likely genetically similar to Dorian-Speakers.

Thus I think it is more likely that these Dorian-Speaking Greeks who colonized large parts of the South, were largely responsible for much of the Southern Italian genetic profile via Magna Graecia.

I see this in my own genetics: