https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82591-9
Bronze Age influences in the gene pool of Southern Italians have been in fact associated to a non-steppe Caucasian-related ancestry carried along the Mediterranean shores at the same time, but independently from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe migrations that occurred through Continental Europe. Consistently with this viewpoint, genetic analyses performed by comparing our modern populations with the main ancient ancestral sources have displayed the clustering of analysed Southern Italian groups with Neolithic and Bronze Age samples from Anatolian, Aegean Minoan and Mycenaean populations, as opposed to the affinity of Northern Italy with Late-Neolithic and Bronze-Age samples from continental Europe (Suppl. Figure S8). Accordingly, both f3-outgroup, qpGraph and qpAdmixture analyses (Fig. 4, Suppl. Figure S9, Suppl. Figure S10) revealed influences related to a Steppe ancestry in the Northern Italian groups, instead paralleled in Southern Italy by an analogous Caucasian-related contribution from a non-Steppe CHG/Iran_N source.
Bronze Age influences in the gene pool of Southern Italians have been in fact associated to a non-steppe Caucasian-related ancestry carried along the Mediterranean shores at the same time, but independently from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe migrations that occurred through Continental Europe. Consistently with this viewpoint, genetic analyses performed by comparing our modern populations with the main ancient ancestral sources have displayed the clustering of analysed Southern Italian groups with Neolithic and Bronze Age samples from Anatolian, Aegean Minoan and Mycenaean populations, as opposed to the affinity of Northern Italy with Late-Neolithic and Bronze-Age samples from continental Europe (Suppl. Figure S8). Accordingly, both f3-outgroup, qpGraph and qpAdmixture analyses (Fig. 4, Suppl. Figure S9, Suppl. Figure S10) revealed influences related to a Steppe ancestry in the Northern Italian groups, instead paralleled in Southern Italy by an analogous Caucasian-related contribution from a non-Steppe CHG/Iran_N source.
