The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army

[Kuivamaa]

no leak
just a fealing
and that could be the case indeed
there are going to be in this paper:
102 remains from mainland greece , crete, greek islands from neolithic to the iron age periods
probably half or close to half wil be males
so the odds are that we are going to see at least some r1b

Once again Classical and Hellenistic eras seem out of scope. I wonder why researches do not seem as interested in analyzing these periods as the earliest eras. That being said more samples are always welcome and will paint a clearer picture of IA and earlier.

 

[kingjohn]

i saw in anthrogenica this abstract
( should be interesting paper so baltic cases autosomaly speaking were not a rare thing
appear not only in himera sicily but also calabria )

From Coast to Coast - Evidence for Baltic soldiers in the Classical period Mediterranean

A. Mittnik1,2,3, F. Mollo4, M. Lucci5, A. Nava6, A. Coppa2,6,7, L. J. Reitsema8, B. Kyle9, D. Caramelli10, R. Pinhasi11, D. Reich2,3,12,13
1Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 2Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America, 3Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States of America, 4Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations, University of Messina, Messina, Italy, 5Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 6Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Arts, Entertainment, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 7Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 8Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States of America, 9Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, United States of America, 10Department of Biology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 11Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 12Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, United States of America, 13Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, United States of America



Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the 1st millennium BCE. By the 5th century BCE Greeks from the Aegean and Phoenicians from the Levant had expanded across the Mediterranean, and established many coastal trade posts and colonies. Conflicts over commercial and territorial dominance often culminated in military altercations, which became another vector that mediated long-distance interactions. Both Punic and Greek armies were known to recruit mercenaries from regions famed for particular skills, such as mounted archers from Scythia, Balearic slingers, or peltasts from Thrace.
This paper discusses the archaeological evidence for continental-scale individual movement for the purpose of warfare, shown in the case of the battle of Himera, a Greek colony in Sicily, in which a Greek alliance successfully defended the city against a Carthaginian attack in 480 BCE. In an interdisciplinary approach, historically contextualizing ancient DNA and stable isotope data, we find among the combatants buried in several mass graves of Himera’s necropolis many with origins as far away as the Caucasus, the Eurasian Steppes and even the Baltic region, beyond the periphery of the classical Greek world. The distant origins of these soldiers and the manner of their burial suggest the presence of foreign mercenaries at Himera, contrasting historical accounts which only mention Greek allies from elsewhere in Sicily. We present a second case study, the 7th-4th century BCE necropolis of Tortora in Calabria, Southern Italy, which contains tombs believed to be those of mercenaries. Genetic analyses reveal ancestral origins in the Baltic for one of the interred.
These findings highlight the importance of examining warfare as a catalyst for cultural contact, and open – next to the often-cited amber trade route – another avenue to consider for the exchange of people, ideas and items between the Baltic region and Southern Europe.



p.s
maybe we will see some other N and r1a types in these remains
from uniparental prespective

 

[real expert]

i saw in anthrogenica this abstract
( should be interesting paper so baltic cases autosomaly speaking were not a rare thing
appear not only in himera sicily but also calabria )

From Coast to Coast - Evidence for Baltic soldiers in the Classical period Mediterranean

A. Mittnik1,2,3, F. Mollo4, M. Lucci5, A. Nava6, A. Coppa2,6,7, L. J. Reitsema8, B. Kyle9, D. Caramelli10, R. Pinhasi11, D. Reich2,3,12,13
1Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 2Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America, 3Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States of America, 4Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations, University of Messina, Messina, Italy, 5Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 6Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Arts, Entertainment, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 7Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 8Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States of America, 9Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, United States of America, 10Department of Biology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 11Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 12Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, United States of America, 13Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, United States of America



Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the 1st millennium BCE. By the 5th century BCE Greeks from the Aegean and Phoenicians from the Levant had expanded across the Mediterranean, and established many coastal trade posts and colonies. Conflicts over commercial and territorial dominance often culminated in military altercations, which became another vector that mediated long-distance interactions. Both Punic and Greek armies were known to recruit mercenaries from regions famed for particular skills, such as mounted archers from Scythia, Balearic slingers, or peltasts from Thrace.
This paper discusses the archaeological evidence for continental-scale individual movement for the purpose of warfare, shown in the case of the battle of Himera, a Greek colony in Sicily, in which a Greek alliance successfully defended the city against a Carthaginian attack in 480 BCE. In an interdisciplinary approach, historically contextualizing ancient DNA and stable isotope data, we find among the combatants buried in several mass graves of Himera’s necropolis many with origins as far away as the Caucasus, the Eurasian Steppes and even the Baltic region, beyond the periphery of the classical Greek world. The distant origins of these soldiers and the manner of their burial suggest the presence of foreign mercenaries at Himera, contrasting historical accounts which only mention Greek allies from elsewhere in Sicily. We present a second case study, the 7th-4th century BCE necropolis of Tortora in Calabria, Southern Italy, which contains tombs believed to be those of mercenaries. Genetic analyses reveal ancestral origins in the Baltic for one of the interred.
These findings highlight the importance of examining warfare as a catalyst for cultural contact, and open – next to the often-cited amber trade route – another avenue to consider for the exchange of people, ideas and items between the Baltic region and Southern Europe.



p.s
maybe we will see some other N and r1a types in these remains
from uniparental prespective

The abstract sounds interesting. And these findings could change the widely held idea that ancient Greeks had little to no cultural interaction with Northern Europeans. Thanks.

 

[torzio]

i saw in anthrogenica this abstract
( should be interesting paper so baltic cases autosomaly speaking were not a rare thing
appear not only in himera sicily but also calabria )
From Coast to Coast - Evidence for Baltic soldiers in the Classical period Mediterranean

A. Mittnik1,2,3, F. Mollo4, M. Lucci5, A. Nava6, A. Coppa2,6,7, L. J. Reitsema8, B. Kyle9, D. Caramelli10, R. Pinhasi11, D. Reich2,3,12,13
1Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 2Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America, 3Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States of America, 4Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations, University of Messina, Messina, Italy, 5Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 6Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Arts, Entertainment, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 7Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 8Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States of America, 9Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, United States of America, 10Department of Biology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 11Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 12Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, United States of America, 13Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, United States of America
Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the 1st millennium BCE. By the 5th century BCE Greeks from the Aegean and Phoenicians from the Levant had expanded across the Mediterranean, and established many coastal trade posts and colonies. Conflicts over commercial and territorial dominance often culminated in military altercations, which became another vector that mediated long-distance interactions. Both Punic and Greek armies were known to recruit mercenaries from regions famed for particular skills, such as mounted archers from Scythia, Balearic slingers, or peltasts from Thrace.
This paper discusses the archaeological evidence for continental-scale individual movement for the purpose of warfare, shown in the case of the battle of Himera, a Greek colony in Sicily, in which a Greek alliance successfully defended the city against a Carthaginian attack in 480 BCE. In an interdisciplinary approach, historically contextualizing ancient DNA and stable isotope data, we find among the combatants buried in several mass graves of Himera’s necropolis many with origins as far away as the Caucasus, the Eurasian Steppes and even the Baltic region, beyond the periphery of the classical Greek world. The distant origins of these soldiers and the manner of their burial suggest the presence of foreign mercenaries at Himera, contrasting historical accounts which only mention Greek allies from elsewhere in Sicily. We present a second case study, the 7th-4th century BCE necropolis of Tortora in Calabria, Southern Italy, which contains tombs believed to be those of mercenaries. Genetic analyses reveal ancestral origins in the Baltic for one of the interred.
These findings highlight the importance of examining warfare as a catalyst for cultural contact, and open – next to the often-cited amber trade route – another avenue to consider for the exchange of people, ideas and items between the Baltic region and Southern Europe.
p.s
maybe we will see some other N and r1a types in these remains
from uniparental prespective

IIRC a N ydna has been found in either Krk or Cres islands in the adriatic sea...BC times

or

maybe even from the amber-baltic to adriatic sea trade which began circa 2000BC

 

[ihype02]

We are lucky that ancient Greeks colonized Southern Italy otherwise we wouldn't see a Classical Greek sample until 2025.

 

[Iulius]

I could be modeled as mostly Classical Age Greek colonists from Sicily, as well as mercenaries that would have shifted them "north" and "east".

 

[Iulius]

Here's an excerpt from the study I had analyzed by Genei AI:

The study generated two types of sequencing libraries from the ancient remains, filtered for quality and kept only those with at least 10,000 covered SNPs. From this, they were able to determine which individuals were buried in the 480 BCE and 409 BCE battles. They found that all of the soldiers were male and seven of the civilian individuals were male and the other five were female. In addition, they generated new genotyping data for 96 modern-day Italians, Greeks, and Cretans. Principal components were computed on the newly generated data, which indicated a separation of individuals into distinct genetic clusters. These patterns are consistent with the evolution of the human species as a whole. The composition of the population of Himera appears to be influenced by a large-scale influx of Dorians after a political takeover by the Agrigentine tyrant, Theron. Additionally, the soldiers of the 480 BCE and 409 BCE battles had diverse ancestry, reflecting different genetic histories.

 

[Francesco]

Here's an excerpt from the study I had analyzed by Genei AI:

Interesting, expecially the detail about the Dorian colonization: several samples from the himerian civilians (the one who fall along the contemporary eastern mediterranean continuum) do indeed plot very close to the Early Iron Age sample we have from Messenia, which was a Dorian speaking region. This could be a coincidence, of course.