Debate need clarification on the topic of Italian population genetics and its amateur and academic treatment

[Vitruvius]

I agree in whole with your general point, if I may I would just add that, very oddly, some of "those who have a bone to pick with the Italian sense of identity and the idiots that are naive enough to believe them" are indeed Italian themselves.

That's a curious phenomenon I have observed on other boards, Italians seeking connections with more geographically southern and eastern peoples and it has no parallelism with any other peoples, who instead often try to establish links with more northern regions for themselves.

It would seem that if there's one thing that modern Italians have retained from the Roman era is a taste for the exotic.

Absit iniuria verbis: what you cite is partly determined in my opinion by an unconscious or semi-conscious psychological mechanism (an inferiority complex?), according to which many of my compatriots - not considering themselves (or not being perceived) as true Europeans - prefer to pass themselves off as Middle Easterners/North Africans, with the hope of thus climbing up at least a few positions in that group, in their imaginary ranking of advanced and civilized peoples.
On the other hand, an interested, insistent and effective local left-wing political campaign of self-denigrating and anti-nationalism completes everything else.

Agreed. Any ethnic Italian who likens himself to a Syrian, Egyptian, German, Nord or Celt is a deranged individual, regardless of reason and I say this with close friends from many of these backgrounds and without disdain for individuals of such origin. I tire of the obsession so many have with trying to characterize Italians as anything but Italian and this relates back to my debate on the Picenes. Here you have a totally Italic tribe descended from exclusively Italic material cultures which genetically reflects itself identically to northern Italians today and yet some are still intent on trying to claim them as Illyrians based off bronze age migratory speculations and cross adriatic trade contacts. It's simply so absurd at this point that it feels childish.

The Italians are an incredibly accomplished people on a technological and scientific level who continuously produced a culture powerful enough to dominate most of Europe between direct Roman occupation and later Catholic theological influence. Even divided, the Italian city states have typically remained at the cutting edge of innovation and forward thinking throughout the renaissance. Were it not for the Italian led Renaissance we would not have the scientific Revolution. Were it not for the scientific revolution we would not have the industrial revolution. For one to imagine that Italy isn't "high enough" on some imaginary modern european pecking order list, be it economically or intellectually, is asinine and a problem that can only be conjured by the most historically illiterate of individuals.

If given the oppurtunity I would not change my ethnic group for the world. I am proud to come from such an accomplished people and it's my hope that my own accomplishments throughout my own life can live up to the reputations of the great men which the Italian nation has produced in both times of ancient past and present.

 

[Luso]

I am proud to have some Roman heritage. Some Italians' sentiment of wanting to be everything but Italian is odd to me, but from what I've observed, it seems only found in online dwellings. So, it is probably just a local minority that is more obsessed with genetics but for the wrong reasons, for example, explaining phenotype differences. That doesn't only happen with Italians on these types of forums, though it happens with many south Europeans bc we are fringe to MENA, and for many, it is an online war to prove “Europeanes.” Newsflash: Romans, aka the ancestors of Italians, fabricated a large part of what it is to be European in the first place.

 

[HereToLearn]

So, it is probably just a local minority that is more obsessed with genetics but for the wrong reasons, for example, explaining phenotype differences. That doesn't only happen with Italians on these types of forums, though it happens with many south Europeans bc we are fringe to MENA, and for many, it is an online war to prove “Europeanes.”

Yeah, we are lucky that this forum is an oasis in that sense! That's probably because there are a lot of very knowledgeable people here, both at history and genetics, and trolls get caught at once.

 

[MOESAN]

I'm not a specialist of Italian "dialects" or "regional languages"; I think that at some level every language is a dialect, it depends on the language we choose as reference in past. We are almost all of us in Europe speaking kind of a dialect of Indo-European + some diverse loanwords from other families of language.
I'm pushed to consider that the basis of your regional languages is in vulgar latin. Now, speaking of standard Italian, I suppose it has been enriched by classical Latin words in some way as well as by some regional languages terms. I suppose too that in some proportion, regional languages have been enriched too by some standard terms, at a low level.
Same question: a lot of people in France believes that regional dialects are rather late deformations of the ancient Île-de-France/Orléanais language when in reality they come directly from Vulgar Latin or through a Romance stage not very differentiated, for their core at least, so centuries earlier.
In Spain, the regional languages are to be distinguished from Andalusian vernacular which is kind of a "patois" (French meaning), so a local evolution of standard Castillan. But I think too it's sometimes hard to put strict borders between levels of languages of any sort.

 

[norbert]

As has been explained by others in this thread, the Eastern admixture among Italians is not Middle Eastern. Eastern Mediterranean means Greek in this case. These migrants brought additional ANF-like and CHG-like admixture, not Levantine, North African or MENA in general. Some Italians may have that kind of ancestry which shouldn't be all too surprising considering geography and Roman openness and assimilatory appeal. But this does not reflect the overall genetic make-up of the Italian people.

The claims that the OP complains about are not coming from "nordicists" alone but also from deluded, self-hating Middle Easterners (Turks, Lebanese, Iranians and others) who think they can pass as Italians or Greeks. I'll be visiting Naples and Sicily next month and I'm sure I'll be able to see the difference between a local and someone from North Africa or the Levante.

 

[HereToLearn]

Some Italians may have that kind of ancestry which shouldn't be all too surprising considering geography and Roman openness and assimilatory appeal. But this does not reflect the overall genetic make-up of the Italian people.

Roman openness and geography work both ways though: Italy northernmost parts may be regarded as geographical Central Europe but the OP is rightly complaining that on these forums those with an anti-italian agenda use geography EXCLUSIVELY to explain Levantine or NA influences, when in fact Italy's southern parts are just as "southern" as any other southern Euro country.

The claims that the OP complains about are not coming from "nordicists" alone but also from deluded, self-hating Middle Easterners (Turks, Lebanese, Iranians and others) who think they can pass as Italians or Greeks. I'll be visiting Naples and Sicily next month and I'm sure I'll be able to see the difference between a local and someone from North Africa or the Levante.

There's also some inter-southern European trolling to be honest (not in this forum).

 

[HereToLearn]

The genuine Valdostans are genetically closer to Provencal French than to Italian Piedmontese.

Many Southern Italians, notably Calabrians , settled in the Aosta valley after Italian unification.

Are there any studies about genetics of the French in the Nice and Menton general areas too?

 

[Vallicanus]

Are there any studies about genetics of the French in the Nice and Menton general areas too?

I haven't seen any.

 

[Vallicanus]

If you could please refer me to graphics or plots indicating this, that would be great. Not to doubt what you say, I just find this subject matter interesting, thanks.

According to the G25 calculator used by Illustrative DNA the closest match to the Aosta Valley is French Occitan (Provence) @1.024 followed by Swiss French @1.350.

The nearest Italian regions are a little more distant...Trentino-Alto Adige @2.035; Friuli Venezia Giulia @2.193 and Veneto @2.278.

 

[torzio]

@MOESAN

I think it is far easier in france than in Italy to determine where linguistic origins set a foothold
France has L'Oil language which is a Gallic Frankish mix
then you have L'Oc language which is a gallic Latin mix
Then you have Brittany and a bit of Basque in the south west

In italy it is very different ................italy even have an Isogloss divide which is the La Spezia-Rimini line ..........where the north italians have a gallic mix and the others below the line have a dalmatian mix , which is why its called Italo-Dalmatian

La Spezia–Rimini Line - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The La Spezia-Rimini Line: Where Italian Varieties Collide — JP Linguistics - French, Italian, Spanish Classes in NYC

Where in the boot is your favorite dialect?

www.jplinguistics.com

 

[Vallicanus]

The terms Western Romance and Eastern Romance are more commonly used.

Italy south of the La Spezia-Rimini line and Romanian are considered East Romance together with the extinct Dalmatian Romance language ( replaced by Serbo-Croat, a South Slavonic language).

 

[Pax Augusta]

yes, the Italian category in 23ndme has central Italy as its reference so it is logical that a Tuscan scores 95%> Italian. I also saw Sicilians scoring almost completely Italian while some published results reached 25% of Western Asia and North Africa. so I was asking for general clarification and if it is true that Italians are 50-60% Middle Eastern and North African as many say

---

Actually it is not so clear in 23andme what the Italian category is based on, I don't remember exactly but 2/3 years ago there was a change, and the subdivision of 23andme is not as useful as in the past.

The genetic structure of Italians is complex because of the cline, there is often even a cline in the same region, but it is clear that it has always attracted agendas of all kinds, and Italians are used to impose both racist ideas and migrationist ideas. It is enough to see how obsessed the Anglo-American world is with the history of ancient Rome. Depending on the method used, the non-European genetic contribution from historical era in Italians varies greatly, and can also be negligible.

In fact, the North African contribution is very low even in Sicily, so let alone in the rest of Italy. As for the Eastern Mediterranean contribution, it is often actually more ancient Greek rather than Levantine properly.

Are there any studies about genetics of the French in the Nice and Menton general areas too?

Obviously not. Assuming there is anyone left over there with all the local ancestors.

 

[Pax Augusta]

The terms Western Romance and Eastern Romance are more commonly used.

Italy south of the La Spezia-Rimini line and Romanian are considered East Romance together with the extinct Dalmatian Romance language ( replaced by Serbo-Croat, a South Slavonic language).

The terms Western Romance and Eastern Romance are commonly used because it is a simple concept and like all simple concepts become popular. But it is not a division free of problems.

It is a subdivision at the outset based on some isoglosses (so much so that other linguists speak of the Massa-Senigallia line), if I remember correctly, and it is not accepted by all linguists. Linguistics is anything but an exact science. Moreover, nineteenth-century ideas survive to this day, repeated to exhaustion even in more recent times, such as the idea that genes, peoples and languages are the same thing, an idea disproved precisely by ancient DNA.

Another idea from the 1800s that has survived to this day is the idea of language substrates, which is then reflected in the names of language families. But it is considered an idea that has never really been proven. It survives for convenience.

 

[Pax Augusta]

I recently read this post coming from the "23ndme" subreddit, which unfortunately I can't load the image but here is the link:https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/xOezWtMpyH

Looked at it quickly, and it is simply trolling passed off as something scientific, Apricity stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if some old Apricity acquaintance is behind that Reddit user (GlobalDNAProject ). Just see in the Keys the samples chosen, chosen to get certain results, and obviously based on the G25 which, as I have often said, does not have completely accurate samples for modern Italy. For various reasons, because there are still so many areas of Italy that are undersampled. If the standard model based on ancestral components of the same Davidsky is used with G25 the Italians come out with less Mena results. Of course it is undeniable that the contributions of Imperial Rome have not completely vanished, but that is not the problem, of course.

I disagree with a lot of things Vitruvius advocates, but he is right about one thing, that we must also consider the late Bronze Age migrations from the northern and western Balkans into Italy, although he then exaggerates by considering that profile as representative of all of Iron Age Italy, this we cannot know yet, but undeniably that profile also exists and having less WHG comes closer to modern Italians than that of Latins and Etruscans who represent a genetic profile older than at least a thousand years formed in Italy around 2000 BC, and it is possible, and this is perhaps more true for the Etruscans, at least that is what archaeologists claim, that even the Etruscans assimilated some of these more recent late Bronze Age migrations. Some Etruscan samples already demonstrate this. That said, there is still too much missing data for Iron Italy, including the Greeks from Magna Grecia, and these days only those with some agenda about Italy are in a hurry to draw conclusions.

 

[Luso]

Actually it is not so clear in 23andme what the Italian category is based on, I don't remember exactly but 2/3 years ago there was a change, and the subdivision of 23andme is not as useful as in the past.

The genetic structure of Italians is complex because of the cline, there is often even a cline in the same region, but it is clear that it has always attracted agendas of all kinds, and Italians are used to impose both racist ideas and migrationist ideas. It is enough to see how obsessed the Anglo-American world is with the history of ancient Rome. Depending on the method used, the non-European genetic contribution from historical era in Italians varies greatly, and can also be negligible.

In fact, the North African contribution is very low even in Sicily, so let alone in the rest of Italy. As for the Eastern Mediterranean contribution, it is often actually more ancient Greek rather than Levantine properly.



Obviously not. Assuming there is anyone left over there with all the local ancestors. and Iberians will forever be questioned by randoms in these spaces in terms of non-european influences.

Italians suffer the same fate as Iberians in both genetic spaces and places like Quora when it comes to being European. There is always an obsession regarding their north African and other MENA influences. And then on the other end the opposite, obsession (usually by the people of those nations) expressing their Germanic or Celtic origins almost in an attempt to cancel it out. Both are pretty ridiculous in their own regards.

 

[torzio]

@Vallicanus

looks like the old rhaetic sanzeno language was a link with etruscans, but the changee to rhaetic magre language which is associated more to the veneti.....check their alphabet on the net , sanzeno and magre

not sure if this is associated with the carni tribe who kicked the veneti out of SW noricum circe 400BC...to eventually stop at the friulian alps, now known as the carnian alps

they took up to 250BC to kick the japodes out of SE noricum, who where mining the iron noric mines at the time

 

[torzio]

i still state the etruscans, like the liguri and the sicels of sicily are indigenous of italy.....the link to rhaetic seems to be a trade and migration swap

the umbri iirc came into italy circa 2200BC via NE italy

something like the picture in the recent picene paper

 

[torzio]

i state again, adriatic italians, where mixing with liburnians, histrians, japodes and dalmatians prior to when the greeks entered the adriatic circa 600BC

 

[Vitruvius]

Looked at it quickly, and it is simply trolling passed off as something scientific, Apricity stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if some old Apricity acquaintance is behind that Reddit user (GlobalDNAProject ). Just see in the Keys the samples chosen, chosen to get certain results, and obviously based on the G25 which, as I have often said, does not have completely accurate samples for modern Italy. For various reasons, because there are still so many areas of Italy that are undersampled. If the standard model based on ancestral components of the same Davidsky is used with G25 the Italians come out with less Mena results. Of course it is undeniable that the contributions of Imperial Rome have not completely vanished, but that is not the problem, of course.

I disagree with a lot of things Vitruvius advocates, but he is right about one thing, that we must also consider the late Bronze Age migrations from the northern and western Balkans into Italy, although he then exaggerates by considering that profile as representative of all of Iron Age Italy, this we cannot know yet, but undeniably that profile also exists and having less WHG comes closer to modern Italians than that of Latins and Etruscans who represent a genetic profile older than at least a thousand years formed in Italy around 2000 BC, and it is possible, and this is perhaps more true for the Etruscans, at least that is what archaeologists claim, that even the Etruscans assimilated some of these more recent late Bronze Age migrations. Some Etruscan samples already demonstrate this. That said, there is still too much missing data for Iron Italy, including the Greeks from Magna Grecia, and these days only those with some agenda about Italy are in a hurry to draw conclusions.

My stance has been that the ProtoItalics migrated from the Carpathian Basin in the MBA westward through the Julian alps rather than from directly north or north west of the alps. This is represented by mass expansion of the Terramare demography and their close cultural ties which were maintained with a geography that roughly covers modern Hungary.

I've never advocated that Italy from north to south ever had a single profile, be it from the premigratory proto-italics or otherwise. There were others who lived in the peninsula prior to the MBA such as the Pian Sultano individuals who show rather direct and overlapping genetic profiles with both the iron age etruscans of tuscany and the latins. It is possible the significant language divide between these two populations may represent linguistic influential dominance of the proto-italic speakers in some areas vs a lack of influence in others. It's truthfully a curious phenomenon that will require a lot more sampling in the northern Italian MBA, LBA and Iron ages to draw firm conclusions on.

There were also variable levels of WHG to ANF from north to south with the north having a higher incidence of WHG. Even if protoitalic migrations affected all regions in equal proportion, you would not get an identical resulting profile throughout the peninsula.

 

[torzio]

it is very odd that the greeks took till the 6th century BC to enter the adriatic sea....liburnian sea power being too dominating from at least 1800BC until roman times of 300BC

even though the greeks where in southern france , corsica etc much earlier
maybe this is why admixture of greeks in adriatic italians is minimal especially north of modern apulia