Preview: Upcoming Ancient Greek Transect (Mesolithic to Medieval) from Biomuse.

[Jovialis]

The distinction between olive-tan and red-tan, and likewise olive-pale and red-pale is interesting and important here in terms of skin-tone imo.

I wonder which component(s) make for the difference. I wonder if CHG might be the factor here, or if it just boils down to mutations.

That is an interesting distinction, because I find that my face and hands are reddish sometimes.

 

[Angela]

Actually just the opposite. First of all there's no such thing as "Neolithic Greeks." Neolithic farmers spread throughout Europe from Anatolia beginning in the 7th Millennium bce (first entering what is today Greece) and were not necessarily "dark" or "olive" (whatever that means) skinned but actually introduced a light skinned allele into Europe inhabited by "darker" skinned Hunter Gatherers. Indo European (Steppe Pastoralists) were most likely of a similar complexion to the farmer population.

I'm afraid you're a bit confused.

There is indeed, as Jovialis pointed out, a cluster labelled "Neolithic Greeks", who were very similar to but slightly different from EEF. Someone would have to check, because I'm no longer clear on the details, as to the precise difference. It might have been less or no WHG because Greece didn't have many if any of them, the first significant settlement being north of Greece proper at the fishing center at the Gates.

Also, the vast majority of Neolithic Greeks and the first EEF carried only one of the two major depigmentation snps (24A5, not 42A5). There are a few Anatolian farmers who had blue eyes etc. but they were vastly outnumbered. So, while the early Neolithic farmers of Greece and the rest of Europe would likely have been "lighter" than the WHG who carried neither of them, they certainly would have been at least olive skinned if not darker.

I'll say it again because apparently it needs repeating. Only when there was a combination of the two major snps, some other more minor ones, plus blue eyes in some cases, the latter snp also playing some part in skin de-pigmentation, do we get anything resembling modern European pigmentation, and their percentage of the population was quite a bit lower even 3,000 years ago, it taking time to rise in frequency not only within the initial group, but to spread throughout Europe. Migration played a part, but so did evolution. If you lived in a place like Ireland, where it's either overcast or raining all the time, selection for pale skin would be very adaptive. You'd have to be mad to want that kind of skin in most areas fronting the Mediterranean. Trust me, I know.

Look at the people who went to the British Isles for example. They are now a by-word for "fair" people, but if you go back to the original paper, many of them had brown eyes, many had dark hair etc. That phenotype still exists in Britain. Some of it came perhaps from the Southern French migration we have learned took place, but some doubtless from the original Beakers, or even from the few Neolithic people who survived.

As for the Prince of the Lilies, he may have been that pale, or maybe as a young Prince he wasn't out in the baking sun very much and it was artistic convention. Some Myceneans were relatively fair, but only some, and I would think Minoans might even be darker. Anyway, I don't care. Don't you think it's time to call a halt to this adoration of the kind of phenotype Goebels delighted in putting on posters? The sickness of that is that it was the brainchild of a completely Southern European, even Jewish looking man who was mercilessly teased by his young German friends for his looks.

 

[Angela]

^^That being said, saying they are "dark like Arabs" is rather dubious, because there are Arabs who are quite light skinned too. They're heterogenous in terms of skin color, like Europeans, mostly southern Europeans.

This isn't shocking considering Middle Easterners and Southern Europeans share a lot of the same ancestral populations.

People don't even know what Arab "means". Technically it would be only people of the Arabian peninsula. The people of the Levant have some Arabic blood from the Muslim invasions which imposed Islam and the Arabic language and deposited some Arabic tribes amongst them, but the majority ancestry is still Levantine, and that is especially true for people like the Druze and the Lebanese who kept their religions and so didn't intermarry.

Yes, it's rare to see really fair Middle Easterners, but the rulers of Syria, as members of a religious isolate, look pretty Southern European to me. Same goes for a lot of the Druze and even some Lebanese.

He looks Spanish to me more than anything else:

As for the Turks, they're Anatolian and about 20-25% well, Turk, so nothing Arabic about them at all.

Of course there are the King Husseins of Jordan, but he was a direct descendant of the Hashemites of Arabia.

 

[Jovialis]

People don't even know what Arab "means". Technically it would be only people of the Arabian peninsula. The people of the Levant have some Arabic blood from the Muslim invasions which imposed Islam and the Arabic language and deposited some Arabic tribes amongst them, but the majority ancestry is still Levantine, and that is especially true for people like the Druze and the Lebanese who kept their religions and so didn't intermarry.

Yes, it's rare to see really fair Middle Easterners, but the rulers of Syria, as members of a religious isolate, look pretty Southern European to me. Same goes for a lot of the Druze and even some Lebanese.

He looks Spanish to me more than anything else:

As for the Turks, they're Anatolian and about 20-25% well, Turk, so nothing Arabic about them at all.

Of course there are the King Husseins of Jordan, but he was a direct descendant of the Hashemites of Arabia.

When I was in Turkey, I remember seeing a lot of people who were pretty fair-skinned, including both of our guides.


The land itself looks very similar to Portugal, or Greece. I was in a forest at a carpet store near Kuşadasi where we had lunch and bought two Turkish rugs, the food was great.

 

[Jovialis]

I have to interject, there is such a thing as "Neolithic Greece" as a genetic construct in analysis, they are highly similar to Minoans (Mostly Anatolia_N + about 10-15% CHG). But this type of ancestry existed beyond Greece, which is evident in the affinity to neolithic Greece among Apulians.


This makes them markedly different from EEF, which is Anatolia_N + WHG, and characterizes the farmer populations of the Western Mediterranean.


Italy is the crossroads between these two types of Neolithic Farmer population. With Northern Italian having more of a WHG/Anatolia enriched substrate, and southern Italy with the CHG/Anatolia enriched substrate.

 

[Francesco]

@Jovialis, have you tried modeling the mycenean samples we have with your model? I think that might be interesting. When they will be published, you could try it on Iron Age Greeks as well.

 

[Dorian9]

You can not use moderns to prove the existence of a Minoan-like population in Italy thousand years ago though(leaving aside the fact that such model doesn't seem very historical) ,is there any ancient sample that proves it?

These ones look EEF and without Anatolian shifts

 

[torzio]

'nordic' is a type naming. If you speak of Scandnavian pops, the reality was in the 50's (before massive immigration) around 57% (Iceland) to 65% of hues comprised between whitish blond to golden-very-light-brown for people between 20 and 30 years age.
It's still very lighter as a national mean than any other pop, except Finnish Finns and Estonians. Some northern regions was a bit less often light, evidently, and in other countries (like the Netherlands and Germany) you could find some as light regions.
Surely around the 40's age the hues of hair are a bit darker. This darkening of hair - strongest between infancy to teenages -occurs for everybody (diverse brown, blackish brown too) and seems correlated to thickening of hair by constant cutting, it doesn't appear as strong for body hair and eyebrows. Surely other factors are at play too?...

Basically, hair colour is irrelevant to genetics .............does not count as hair changes in colour over ones lifetime.

I remember when people stated, that the "black irish " ( black hair and blue eyes ) where from the spanish armada sailors that washed up in ireland and then bred with local women..........hair colour is pointless in genetics

 

[Jovialis]

You can not use moderns to prove the existence of a Minoan-like population in Italy thousand years ago though(leaving aside the fact that such model doesn't seem very historical) ,is there any ancient sample that proves it?

These ones look EEF and without Anatolian shifts

what am I even looking at? The graphic cuts off.

If you understand pre-history, it makes perfect sense. You're emphasis on historical events are probably overblown for the most part.

Also, there's been plenty of studies that do exactly what I have done. I've been over this ad nauseum, there's a thread dedicated to it.

Actually, the main author from the study that uses this type of model upvoted my graphic. I thought that was pretty cool.

 

[Jovialis]

A similar model can be made for the Balkans.

You can see modern Greeks also get Minoan and steppe, but also corded ware and bolshvoy which is probably indicative of Slavic/Avar influence. But Also, Anatolian_BA influence indicative of more eastern influence.

Minoan is the substrate of the ancient Greeks, and CHG enriched Anatolian farmers are the substrate of the entire Balkans.

If you understood the prehistory of Southern Italy, it would be a no brainer as to why they also get Minoan. Why is that lost to you?

 

[Jovialis]

@Jovialis, have you tried modeling the mycenean samples we have with your model? I think that might be interesting. When they will be published, you could try it on Iron Age Greeks as well.

I have to look for the graphic, but I did do it before.

 

[bigsnake49]

A similar model can be made for the Balkans.

You can see modern Greeks also get Minoan and steppe, but also corded ware and bolshvoy which is probably indicative of Slavic/Avar influence. But Also, Anatolian_BA influence indicative of more eastern influence.

Minoan is the substrate of the ancient Greeks, and CHG enriched Anatolian farmers are the substrate of the entire Balkans.

If you understood the prehistory of Southern Italy, it would be a no brainer as to why they also get Minoan. Why is that lost to you?

Is it my failing color recognition that I see very small amounts of Bolshoy? I would have expected more from Greek Macedonia and Thrace and Turkish Macedonia and Thrace and Bulgarian Thrace, although for some reason there is more Bolshoy in the Turkish entrees in that graphic. Is that the Turkic element coming through or the Slavic?

 

[Francesco]

Is it my failing color recognition that I see very small amounts of Bolshoy? I would have expected more from Greek Macedonia and Thrace and Turkish Macedonia and Thrace and Bulgarian Thrace, although for some reason there is more Bolshoy in the Turkish entrees in that graphic. Is that the Turkic element coming through or the Slavic?

I assume it represents an east Asian admixture coming with the turkic element

 

[Jovialis]

I assume it represents an east Asian admixture coming with the turkic element

I think that is the case.

 

[PaleoRevenge]

Looks like there are more surprises down the road.

 

[peloponnesian]

Looks like there are more surprises down the road.

Is there any information about potential ancient DNA analysis of these skeletons? Not sure which surprises we should expect, it's a common view among archaeologists that the collapse mostly affected the palatial elites and the communities closely attached to the palatial system (and the genetic data we have so far support it in the sense that we see largely continuity from LBA to IA/archaic mainland Greece)

 

[PaleoRevenge]

Is there any information about potential ancient DNA analysis of these skeletons? Not sure which surprises we should expect, it's a common view among archaeologists that the collapse mostly affected the palatial elites and the communities closely attached to the palatial system (and the genetic data we have so far support it in the sense that we see largely continuity from LBA to IA/archaic mainland Greece)

This is from the website about the project:

Hotly debated ancient tales of migrations are tested for the first time using recent advances in genetic and isotopic methods that can measure human mobility. Combined with mortuary research, this will precisely define relations between personal mobility and status, gender, identity and health to explore social scenarios in which people moved between groups.

[h=4]The Fall is generously financed through a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (Grant #772753) held at the UCD School of Archaeology. Running from 2018 until 2023 and with a budget of nearly 2 million euros, we will be conducting exciting new research into population, settlement and material cultural histories of the Balkan Peninsula from ca. 1400-800 BC.[/h]

And this is a good clue of the countries being sampled:

http://www.thefall1200.eu/partners.html#fh5co-tab-feature-center1

Serbia, Croatia, south-western Romania (Museum of Arad), North Macedonia and Greece.

 

[peloponnesian]

This is from the website about the project:






And this is a good clue of the countries being sampled:

http://www.thefall1200.eu/partners.html#fh5co-tab-feature-center1

Serbia, Croatia, south-western Romania (Museum of Arad), North Macedonia and Greece.

That's exciting, thanks

 

[PaleoRevenge]

Another paper with samples from northern Greece.

 

[Friesday]

http://https//biomuse.eu/project/?lang=en doesn't work anymore.