from 2017 (New studies contradict some of the Blogger’s opinions)
Italian Genetics: Italy in 6 Parts
(... Google Translated from Italian, with a few tweaks
In this article I will try to do a genetic analysis of Italian ethnicity , based on the scientific evidence provided to us by the genetics of the populations and by the various DNA results of tests that I have been able to observe in recent years.
ITALIAN ETHNICITY
When we speak of Italian ethnicity, we generally refer to a group of people who, although united by the same nationality, present marked cultural and linguistic differences between them depending on the area of origin.
Beyond the Italian language, which is used by convention, there are many other dialects and languages in the peninsula that change not only depending on the region, but often even after a few tens of kilometers within the same region.
Even the cultural traditions are quite varied, even if, starting from the unification of Italy, they are slowly disappearing.
If these differences can be perceived immediately because they appear obvious, there are however others that are out of sight but which are perhaps even more accentuated, namely the genetic ones.
Even from the genetic point of view, Italy appears to be fragmented: in Europe it is the most genetically inhomogeneous country, to the extent that the genetic differences between northern and southern Italy are greater than those that sometimes occur even between different nations.
Not only that, but these differences are rooted in very ancient times and were already consolidated already in the pre-Roman era, although obviously some small local variations occurred even in later historical periods.
Italian genetics
There are clearly some points in common among all the Italians of the peninsula, first of all the distinctly
Neolithic substratum, inherited from those populations coming from the Middle East (
I, me, Salento say Anatolia, and some old Iran) who brought agriculture to Europe in the Neolithic era.
This genetic contribution, expanding throughout the boot and being slowed down in its diffusion in the rest of Europe by the Alpine geographical barrier,
makes Italy a genetically South-European Country also with regard to its northern part, which is positioned in the PCA graphs (like the one above) even below other countries, such as Serbia, which are located at a lower latitude on the map.
Clearly every area of Italy has a different percentage of Neolithic genetics, less in the North than in the South and maximum in Sardinia which, being an island, has remained largely preserved by the influence of the various successive immigration waves (mainly Greco-Anatolian and Phoenician from the east and Indo-European from the north).
From the genetic point of view, Italy can be distinguished in at least 6 distinct clusters (genetic groupings):
Northern Italy
Tuscany
Italy of the Center
South Italy
Sicily
Sardinia
Sometimes some further subdivisions are made (for example Sicily is divided into western and eastern regions, northern Italy is divided into regions), other times central Italy is omitted and Sicily is incorporated into the south, but I would say that 6 geographical / genetic areas they are a good reference for the analysis we need to do.
These areas differ from each other both in terms of autosomal analysis and haplogroups.
If you still do not have these terms clear, I refer you to these two articles, so you can have a general idea before continuing the reading:
DNA TEST
Haplogroup
The genetic distance between the various clusters, which can be assessed by observing the position of each on a PCA graph like the one examined above, only partially reflects the geographical distance.
Sicily, for example, is often genetically located more to the north than the rest of Southern Italy, more similar to the center, while Sardinia, despite being to the west of the boot, occupies a position much more distant from the other Italian clusters than the one on the graph it could be supposed and suggests a much stronger genetic isolation than the geographical one and certainly unique in Europe.
Clearly the determination of the clusters is based on a limited number of samples from a restricted geographical area.
In the case of northern Italy, for example, the cluster is based on a sample of a dozen analyzed of Bergamo, which are taken as a reference for Northern Italy but are certainly not representative of the whole Padana area or even of the whole of Lombardy, but they nevertheless constitute a valid reference.
ITALIAN HAPLOGROUPS
The first difference between the areas of Italy is found in the distribution of the haplogroups and in particular of the haplogroups of the Y chromosome.
As I have already explained in the article I linked to above,
haplogroups are often overrated and provide really minimal indications on the genetic background of the individual.
In fact, they are able to tell us from which area a distant ancestor of ours came in a straight line, but without giving us any indication of all the other ancestors who contributed to our genetic heritage.
However, if we have to analyze an entire population, understanding which are the most widespread haplogroups can be quite useful because it gives us an idea of the displacements of populations that occurred in a given area.
As for Italy, we can see in the following map of
Eupedia how the various haplogroups have expanded along the territory.
The Italian haplogroups analyzed by Eupedia can be divided chronologically into 3 groups:
Autochthonous European Mesolithic:
I1: Pre-Germanic
I2a1: Sardinian, Iberian
I2a2: Pre-Celtic-Germanic
Neolithic:
G2a: Caucasian, Greek Anatolian
E1b1: North African, Balkan, Middle Eastern
T: (Black Sea), Middle Eastern, East African
Bronze Age:
R1a: Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian
R1b: Celto-Italic, Hittite, Armenian, Tocaro
J1: Caucasian, Mesopotamian, Semitic (Arabs, Jews)
J2: Greek-Anatolian, Caucasian, Mesopotamian
Clearly not all Italians who inherited a given haplogroup belong to the same clade, so the information given by this type of map turns out to be very generic.
The haplogroup
R1b found in Italy, for example, is more frequent in its U-152 clade, that is the Celto-Italic one, taking its name from the populations that spread it in the peninsula, while its middle-eastern clades are rarer.
Without making distinctions of clades (but always keeping in mind this point), haplogroup
R1b is the most frequent of all in Central-Northern Italy, occurring in about 50% of the population, while in Southern Italy it is found only in 25% and leaves room for the haplogroup
J2,which in the center-north amounts to about 10% while in the central-south area it doubles, as does the haplogroup
J1 , passing from 1.5% in the north to about 3.5-4% in the South and Sicily.
Even the haplogroup
E1b1b undergoes a rapid growth in percentage passing from about 10% of central north to about 20% in the South (while central Italy in this case preserves percentages closer to those of the center-north.).
In Sardinia instead haplogroup I2a1 dominates, which is that of the
Ancient Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers, and is found in the measure of 37.5% (where in continental Italy its presence does not go beyond the 1-3%), followed by an 18.5 % of
R1b and 12% of
G2a.
Minor but significant is also the
presence of some Y haplogroups that are due, at least in part, to the various invasions of Germanic peoples such as the Lombards and the Normans.
I refer overall to the haplogroups I1 and I2a2 (or I2b), and secondly to the R1a.
These haplogroups are found more frequently in the North, while in the south they are rarer, except for single areas such as Palermo and Sannio / Irpinia, which were places of massive Germanic presence, although this genetic impact manifests itself almost exclusively to level of haplogroups, while to the autosomal analysis, as we shall see, there are no huge traces of northern European genetics.
This is probably due to the fact that Men have always moved less than Women, who often changed cities / villages to reach that of their future husband (who instead generally inherited the family home).
This is also the reason why the
maternal mtDNA haplogroups, which in Italy are predominantly
H, U,
T and
J are more evenly distributed in the territory than those of the Y chromosome.
ITALIAN AUTOSOMAL DNA
As we have seen in the specific article on the test DNA analysis, autosomal DNA analysis can lead to different results depending on the type of admixture.
As for the analyzes carried out through programs based on admixtures, in general they are taken from 7 reference:
Admixture
North Sea: it is found in maximum concentration in Scotland and western Norway
Admixture
Atlantic: maximum concentration in the Basque Country.
Admixture
Baltic: epicenter in Lithuania and the Baltic countries in general
Admixture
Eastern European: epicenter in central Russia
Admixture
Mediterranean: typically Sardinian
Admixture
West Asian: admixture of Caucasian type
Admixture
East mediterranean: epicenter in the Middle East, Lebanon and Syria
These are some of the most common admixtures when analyzing the oldest genetics of an individual.
Sometimes these admixtures are further subdivided, other times they are incorporated between them, as is the case for example of the Dodecad calculator on which the Italian maps I present below are based. The first 4 are those that interest us most.
The
northwest european admixture is a mix of north sea and atlantic and shows a distribution in europe similar to that of haplogroup
R1b.
It is therefore the admixture that in all probability was brought to Italy by Celts and Italics (but partly also by Germanic peoples).
The
east european is instead an admixture that encompasses the east european and baltic admixture, and is an admixture similar to the distribution of the haplogroup
R1a and arrived in Italy with the last Germanic invasions, but perhaps even much earlier, through the
Amber-way
The
Mediterranean it is probably the
oldest admixture and, as you can see, it is
distributed a little in all of Italy, acting as a glue between the various ancient populations of the boot.
It is an admixture that, similarly to the Atlantic, is given by a
mix between the genetics of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and the subsequent Levantine farmers.
The
west asian came to Italy probably during the
Bronze Age and is associated with the distribution of the haplogroup
J2
As you can see the percentage of the various admixtures changes quite significantly depending on the geographical area of reference, which is why those who speak of Italy as a genetic whole show little competence in this matter.
Below is a table showing the autosomal results of another calculator, Eurogenes k15:
SARDINIAN GENETICS
The enormous percentage of
West Med admixture that covers
almost half of the Sardinian genetic heritage is immediately evident,
followed by a 20% Atlantic admixture. These two admixtures, as already mentioned, represent a mixture between the genetics of ancient
Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers (a group of which moved about 11 thousand years ago from the north of Spain to reach the island) and the first Farmers arrived in Europe in the Neolithic, to whom the Sardinians turn out to be the most genetically similar modern population.
The genetic homogeneity of the Sardinian population is the explanation of 2 particular phenomena found on the island:
The shortage of phenotypes: generally it does not range beyond the gracile Mediterranean and the alpine (often present in its most "raw" berid, also called paleosarda). At most we can find some Atlantean-Mediterranean, mostly in the northern part of the island, which is the one that has undergone major continental (Roman) influences.
Longevity Records: contrary to what most people believe, it is not the most mixed populations that are healthier and longer-lived, but generally the more homogeneous ones.
SICILIAN GENETIC DIVERSITIES
There is also a subdivision in two parts of Sicily, a western part that appears to have had a greater Atlantic contribution and a Caucasian minor with respect to both the eastern counterpart and the southern mainland Italy, which appears to have also suffered major influences from the eastern Mediterranean and minor ones from northwestern Europe.
This explains why, as we mentioned at the beginning, some Sicilians tend to be genetically more akin to central Italians, showing a noticeable difference from southern Italians even at the level of somatic traits.
The facial index of the Sicilians is in fact higher than that of the other southerners and more often they are found Sicilian with a Panitalian phenotype than for example in Campania, which instead usually have a phenotype much more characteristic of their area.
The first one that comes to mind is
Joe Dimaggio, whose parents were from the Palermo area, of very high stature and of a dinaricized Atlantic-Mediterranean phenotype.
23andme AUTOSOMAL DNA
23andme is a DNA test that aims to analyze the recent genetic (say the last 2000 years), so now let's jump ahead in time than just genetics that analyzed Italian based on the most ancient admixtures.
Here in the figure below we have a series of maps created based on the ancestral composition of the 23andme Italian users.
As you can see, a large part of the various preceding admixtures, here leaves room for a generic Italian genetics, which constitutes a subgroup of the Southern European which is present in the vast majority of the Italian population.
This "Italian" encompass all ancient peoples who passed through Italy and the highest concentration of a “
BASIC ITALIAN” is in the Center, the area that has had less newer influx and where it is less likely to have occurred overlapping with other ancestral groups.
Northern Italy, for example, has a strong overlap with northern European genetic groups (we recall that in 23andme, northern Europe also includes Alpine countries such as Austria and Switzerland and also western countries such as France, including the southern part which is in fact at a lower latitude to that of northern Italy) although the different distribution of the percentages of northern European genetics in the various areas of the north still makes it possible to establish which were the areas of northern Italy that suffered a greater recent Germanic influence, probably dating back to the late Roman Empire.
ITALIAN NORTHERN EUROPEAN GENETICS
If you look carefully at the map below, you can notice that in the north there is a certain overlap between the map of the blond type published in Biasutti's book and based on the studies by Ridolfo Livi and the percentage of Northern European genetics.
The more a population presents blondism, the higher the average percentage of NE present among the individuals of the area of reference.
The difference is particularly evident between the top and down of the Po Plain.
Emilia and Romagna tend to have a percentage of NE that is far lower than that of individuals who are just a few tens of kilometers away, and this difference also places them in a position much further south in the various PCA graphs.
Many Emilians and Romagnans tend to be genetically more akin to Tuscans than to other northerners, so much so that it could very well be said that
genetic Northern Italy ends with the Po (river) (although clearly then there are some appendages even further south, for example Tuscany northern region that is considered as Northern Italy).
ITALIAN MENA
A similar argument can be made in the South with the MENA genetics (middle eastern-north african ed.) Concentrated mainly in areas where the population tends to have darker hair.
This genetics, as explained in my old article on southern Italians , is not attributable to the Saracens (as many people commonly think) but is more Middle Eastern than North African (Sicily for example has about 10% of MENA but, of this, less than 1% is North African) and probably arrived in Italy during the late Roman Empire, as Coon had also suggested in its taxonomic analysis
.
CONCLUSIONS
In this article I have tried to summarize the Genetics of Italian Ethnicity.
It is very varied and presents significant differences between the various areas.
Although united by a common Neolithic substratum, modern Italians have a genetic profile that changes according to the region or macro-area of origin and this makes them a unique nation in the European Genetic Context and unique in its kind.
https://www.ilredpillatore.org/2017/12/la-genetica-italiana-litalia-in-6-parti.html?m=1