The genetic origin of Daunians

[Jovialis]

I would accept that bet, even 1.000 and more � if being real, because will never, ever, be the explanation. There was a series of immigrations after that time, starting with the Greek colonisation, the slave trade, free and slave workers in the Latifundia, general migration from the Greek speaking Hellenistic world. This will explain it.
And in the end you will see that modern Southern Italians being somewhat shifted North again from Late Antiquity to High Medieval times, because of Northern and Balkan migrants, as few as they might have been, but still significant. The MENA shift will peak in very Late Imperial times, not any time before or afterwards.

And yes, the situation will be different for different parts of Italia, because not all regions had the same agricultural and economic system, not all had the same source of flow of slaves, the same ratio of free vs. unfree, of locals vs. migrants. Every region, even in the South, might be looked at on its own, with later balancing and homogenisation effects erasing some of the regional differences.



Good to see you agree now
Yes, it will be South Eastern Urnfield groups from the Channelled Ware horizon, especially Belegis II-Gava (I would link Incrusted Ware to it also, which is even more clearly correlated with E-V13) which spread E-V13 primarily, with the core group being Daco-Thracian, but various Pannonian-Illyrian groups being heavily influenced too. However, if you look at how they migrated Southward, its noticeable, even from the purely archaeological standpoint, that the Channelled Ware groups did not reach and have the same impact further South, which is especially true in the Western Balkans. So areas like the Vojvodina were an early hub and centre on the Balkans, but South from there, they had not the impact initially and even more, they didn't reach the coastal regions of the Adriatic, but stayed rather inland, along the river systems and especially the Danube.
The expansion of E-V13 South was happening, imho, actually earlier to the East, where they quickly rushed to the Aegean, whereas in the West, we deal with slow and secondary expansions, from the direct North, from areas like Vojvodina. Even if it was not Belegis-Gava, but an even later migration, which I don't think, but which is possible, they usually followed the same path. The Dalmatian coast was not the first to be reached by expansions following the more Northern river systems usually.

What's even more, being in search for a reason for the settlement in Italia, a good reason is usually being unable to colonise territories closer on land and being blocked or even under pressure by the neighbours. The usual shifts in the region went, usually, from North -> South. There are exceptions to those rule, but usually, that was the direction it was going.

Check this article and the map on p. 175, which shows how the related groups expanded very roughly, with their centres:
http://www.austriaca.at/0xc1aa5576 0x002debf3.pdf

I think these new results won't close the case, but they make any alternative to the Northern Urnfield spread even more likely than they already were.

Well you are already wrong about Latifundia, because as Vagnari showed, they were composed of locals.

 

[Riverman]

Well you are already wrong about Latifundia, because as Vagnari showed, they were composed of locals.

Some food for thought:

For a study of social and economic questions an assessment of population is indispensable. It must make a difference to our picture of the agrarian troubles that vexed the late Republic, whether we take Italy to have been densely or thinly settled. Although debate continues on the causes, chronology, and extent of the ?second-century crisis? in Italy, a consensus has developed on its main symptom: the free peasantry, numbers already depleted by the burdens of military service, was displaced from the land by imported slaves and so continued to decline, a development which contributed significantly to the troubles of the succeeding century. Underpinning this consensus is widespread acceptance of what might be called the ?Beloch-Brunt? model of the demographic history of Italy in this period. This model suggests that between the late third century (Polybius' account of the numbers of Romans and Italians under arms in 225 B.C. permits an estimate of the total population) and the late first century (Augustus' first census of Roman citizens in 28 B.C., the first truly reliable one since the enfranchisement of the Italians) the free population had declined from about four and a half million people to about four million.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275698411_The_Transformation_of_Italy_225-28_BC

he latifundia and the growing urban centers were mutually supportive in that the large farms could supply the necessary food surplus cheaply, and their efficiency drove small farmers out of business and into the growing ranks of the poor plebeian (landless) class in the cities, thereby increasing the demand for food from the latifundia (Morley 2001). The use of slave labor on the latifundia led to unsuccessful insurrections by slaves in three Servile Wars in southern Italy and on Sicily during the years 135-132, 104-100, and 73-71 BCE.

Rome was without rivals in the Mediterranean region at a time when most cultural and commercial centers were much smaller with populations of around 20,000 to 50,000, with some cities reaching hundreds of thousands (e.g., Alexandria). Morley (2001) has estimated that from 175 to 28 BCE, the total population of Italy increased from 4.5 to 12 million people, with a free (nonslave) urban count of 400,000 to 1.5-1.6 million. The fraction of the population working on farms may have been as high as 14% by 28 BCE (up from approximately 8% in 225 BCE)

With silver flowing into Rome from defeated Carthage as war indemnity beginning in 241 BCE, and with foodstuffs from two other conquered islands, Sardinia and Corsica, Rome began the transition from small farms owned and worked by peasant families on the Italian peninsula to the latifundia dependent on slavery. This transition occurred first in southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and then in the northernmost, coastal region of North Africa with a Mediterranean climate and soils. The latifundia emerged from the confiscation and consolidation (legal and illegal) of the small holdings previously owned and farmed by peasant families (agronomic enterprises that may have become unprofitable or fallen into disuse during the wars when the young men were conscripted). The latifundia were also established by distribution of conquered lands, described above, as a much coveted prize for military service and as a key investment of the patrician class in Rome. They were often parceled out in units of 2?200 iugera (approximately 0.5?50 ha), depending on the new owner?s years of military service or status in the Roman elite.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...eal_of_Order_Based_on_Wheat_Grapes_and_Olives

 

[Jovialis]

Also, I find your overconfidence to be brazen. There are differences of opinion outside of the jerk circle of sophistry that holds that opinion.

 

[Jovialis]

Some food for thought:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275698411_The_Transformation_of_Italy_225-28_BC
https://www.researchgate.net/public...eal_of_Order_Based_on_Wheat_Grapes_and_Olives

Here's food for thought, Vagnari was based on aDNA, in the region we are discussing. These citations you put forward are useless. They're not based on aDNA, what could you hope to accomplish with this?

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

I would accept that bet, even 1.000 and more � if being real, because will never, ever, be the explanation. There was a series of immigrations after that time, starting with the Greek colonisation, the slave trade, free and slave workers in the Latifundia, general migration from the Greek speaking Hellenistic world. This will explain it.
And in the end you will see that modern Southern Italians being somewhat shifted North again from Late Antiquity to High Medieval times, because of Northern and Balkan migrants, as few as they might have been, but still significant. The MENA shift will peak in very Late Imperial times, not any time before or afterwards.

And yes, the situation will be different for different parts of Italia, because not all regions had the same agricultural and economic system, not all had the same source of flow of slaves, the same ratio of free vs. unfree, of locals vs. migrants. Every region, even in the South, might be looked at on its own, with later balancing and homogenisation effects erasing some of the regional differences.

I knew that the awkwardness of talking about "east shift" when one refers to an upward translation in a PCA because the samples the shifted ones are pulled towards are geographically from east Europe would confuse some that would start talking of this "east shift" as the signal of a Near Eastern gene flow, that is what you'd expect from the reasons you've brought, but that would translate into a rightward translation in the PCA, that is towards the MENA groups, but what we see is an upward translation.
The Italic peoples of Italy were more "west-med" that modern Italians, in the sense they were more downward shifted than them, but the Daunian samples are roughly as much rightshifted as today north Apulians and a few as south Italians, and a few samples from Italy have a rather upward shifted position compared to the bulk of the samples from their regions, so it cmay mean that the gene flow that upward shifted Italians had been trickling down in Italy from SE europe since ancient times, though of course only future studies will tell.
Besides that remark, the haplos and the admixture models do not really back up that scenario of significant steady genetic shifts due to migrants from around the mediterranean and from northern Europe.

 

[Riverman]

Here's food for thought, Vagnari was based on aDNA, in the region we are discussing. These citations you put forward are useless.

I tried to find some sources on the matter and came across this one:

According to Tracy Prowse, assistant professor of Anthropology, and the lead author on the study, the isotopic evidence indicates that about 20% of the sample analyzed to-date was not born in the area around Vagnari. The mtDNA is another line of evidence that indicates at least one individual was of East Asian descent.

"These preliminary isotopic and mtDNA data provide tantalizing evidence that some of the people who lived and died at Vagnari were foreigners, and that they may have come to Vagnari from beyond the borders of the Roman Empire," says Prowse. "This research addresses broader issues relating to globalization, human mobility, identity, and diversity in Roman Italy."

Based on her work in the region, she thinks the East Asian man, who lived sometime between the first to second centuries AD?the early Roman Empire?was a slave or worker on the site. His surviving grave goods consist of a single pot (which archaeologists used to date the burial). What's more, his burial was disturbed in antiquity and someone was buried on top of him.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/595537

Also:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ic_origins_at_the_site_of_Vagnari_South_Italy

Are there any larger scale autosomal results from Vagnari, or do you mean something else?

 

[Jovialis]

I tried to find some sources on the matter and came across this one:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/595537
Also:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ic_origins_at_the_site_of_Vagnari_South_Italy
Are there any larger scale autosomal results from Vagnari, or do you mean something else?

Yes I know the study, they came to the conclusion they were mostly local. The authors found it contradicts the idea of mass importation of slaves that replace the natives. Also, the existence of an East Asian in Puglia during the Imperial era actually works against your argument, since Puglia doesn't have east Asian autosomal or haplogroups. Slaves lived a short and brutal life for the most part.

 

[Jovialis]

View attachment 12833
I knew that the awkwardness of talking about "east shift" when one refers to an upward translation in a PCA because the samples the shifted ones are pulled towards are geographically from east Europe would confuse some that would start talking of this "east shift" as the signal of a Near Eastern gene flow, that is what you'd expect from the reasons you've brought, but that would translate into a rightward translation in the PCA, that is towards the MENA groups, but what we see is an upward translation.
The Italic peoples of Italy were more "west-med" that modern Italians, in the sense they were more downward shifted than them, but the Daunian samples are roughly as much rightshifted as today north Apulians and a few as south Italians, and a few samples from Italy have a rather upward shifted position compared to the bulk of the samples from their regions, so it cmay mean that the gene flow that upward shifted Italians had been trickling down in Italy from SE europe since ancient times, though of course only future studies will tell.
Besides that remark, the haplos and the admixture models do not really back up that scenario of significant steady genetic shifts due to migrants from around the mediterranean and from northern Europe.

Indeed, it seems that people don't know the difference between east and south. The shift is East towards the Caucasus region. Not the levant or north Africa. As far as I know the Romans didn't import millions of slaves using a time machine from the Paleolithic Caucasus right to Puglia. Thus I believe the CHG was already present from a pre-Italic, pre-roman era, from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, brought by later farmers.

 

[Riverman]

Yes I know the study, they came to the conclusion they were mostly local. The authors found it contradicts the idea of mass importation of slaves that replace the natives. Also, the existence of an East Asian in Puglia during the Imperial era actually works against your argument, since Puglia doesn't have east Asian autosomal or haplogroups. Slaves lived a short and brutal life for the most part.

For the most part, yes. But on the long run and especially considering the female side, this left an impression. You can't conclude from such a single, minor study alone of course and I would never just dismiss the actual, primary historical accounts, which speak for themselves in my opinion. But we all will see, with more data coming in. This is just a first small step, but big enough to be much more sure about what took place, since we already have other lines of evidence and the Imperial Roman study.

 

[torzio]

Distribution of Daunian pottery in Croatia and Slovenia, its influence along the Amber Route to Central Europe............Barresi, Lucilla


This PhD thesis deals with Daunian pottery produced in Daunia (South Italy) during the Iron Age and its distribution in Croatia and Slovenia. A systematic analysis of the pottery stored in museums has been made for Histria, Dolenjska and Notranjska. Thanks to this approach, not only it has been possible to identify the sites where this pottery was found, but also to define its style and typology, to specify its chronology, to provide for a quantitative analysis of the findings and produce maps of distribution. As regards Daunian pottery from Liburnia and Central Dalmatia, only published findings have been analyzed mainly from the point of view their style, typology and chronology. Results of the study enabled to clarify the nature of the relations between Daunia and the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, the flows of distribution of the Daunian geometric pottery and to evaluate the impact of its presence on local communities.

 

[torzio]

maybe e-v13 was more in inland albania in that time
and not in coastal albania from where it could spread easily to south italy
just a thought

E-V13 has always appeared as more thracian than anything else ...........associated with the Ghegs of ancient dardani and the Odyssian thracians of modern Bulgaria

and not the other 3 thracian regions of Moesia, Getae and Dacia

 

[kingdavid]

mtdna that was found :

ORD001- H5C
ORD004- U8B1B1
ORD006- H+ 16291T
ORD009-H5C
ORD010-X2i
ORD011-H1E
ORD014-I5A2+16086C
ORD019-T2E
SAL001-H1+16189!
SAL003- K1A2A
SAL007-K1A+195T!
SAL010-U5A1
SAL011-U5B1
SG1001-U3A
SGR002-U5B1D1
SGR003-H1+16311T!

 

[torzio]

These viking paper samples from Foggia looked like they could have come from all over Italy, I recall. The two presented here look like a holdover from the dwindling C5 cohort that existed in a minority of samples in late Antiquity, in the Rome paper. At any rate, medieval Foggia had people from all over the peninsula. However, I think it is clear C6 was the majority. As it is today, and as I speculate was since in the Iron Age, and possibly before.

...one of the samples in the paper is a lombard from 6th century AD ...............this is your "viking"

 

[torzio]

I'd bet the pre-Italic, pre-Iapygian people, if sampled, would be higher in CHG, and be responsible for the Daunians' eastern shift. I speculate this group's influence came to the forefront during the Imperial era, since they probably made up the majority. I think it is foolish to assume that C7 was the native stock in the south, considering Puglia was a historical port of entry from the Neolithic, and it is a no brainer why CHG would be high there considering Greece_N.

Daunians have Nadin-Gradine culture from Liburnia and also Cetina culture from modern Split area in south Croatia ( Dalmatia )

https://www.archaeological.org/fieldwork/nadin-gradina-archaeological-project-croatia/

 

[torzio]

It can be a possibility but I do not like ad hoc postulates and as for now we're still in the dark as to what caused the "east shift" (what I've called "AEE shift" to indicate the upwards translation in the PCA), and untill nothing better comes I think the better representative for local central-southern inhabitants of Italy are those samples from this study that have been suggested as "locals" incorporated into the Daunian culture. Upcoming papers about osco-umbrian Italics would settle the question I reckon



To be honest the bulk of the iron age samples from Latium are "west shifted" compared to north Italians, in a place in between north Italian, south French and Iberians, and today's north Italians, judging from the 22 samples from north east Italy, seem too "east shifted", as north Apulians (though they are also a bit "south shifted") are compared to the bulk of the Daunians.
I believe that by "Imperial samples" they meant those few that, at least on a PCA, cluster with modern south Italians and middle age Romans.


To be precise they used "amhara_NAF" as a proxy for "sea people", though it makes no sense to me, and it just vaguely indicates a Greece_N like signal as far as I can tell.

The paper does state they ...............We extracted DNA from 34 human skeletal remains .............maybe they took a age-range or the best of the samples and maybe the rest will be reveal in time, who know?

We only know the Daunians are mentioned from circa 1100Bc .............imported and traded goods with Liburnia ( islands of Vis and Hvar ) and started making their own pottery circa 440BC .............there was no greeks in their area/lands and the closest Greek city was modern Taranto

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

Indeed, it seems that people don't know the difference between east and south. The shift is East towards the Caucasus region. Not the levant or north Africa. As far as I know the Romans didn't import millions of slaves using a time machine from the Paleolithic Caucasus right to Puglia. Thus I believe the CHG was already present from a pre-Italic, pre-roman era, from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, brought by later farmers.

A caucasus shift would be still a rightward shift to an extent, and though an Anatolian_IA-like gene flow could work well for central and south Italians (at least judging visually by the PCA: I know it is a very, VERY rough way but admixture models of Italians with Anatolia_IA do not work badly either), but it can't explain how north Italians got from their ancient average to today's average, so overall it seems that the shift was just an upward translation without a point of convergence.
The lack of a convergence point seems to me to suggest that the various gene flows came from pops that were just "east shifted" versions of the Italian peoples they migrated into, which seems to suggest that these gene flows came vaguely from around the Balkans.
This doesn't exclude some genetic inputs from other regions, and I know that my scenario is really vague, but I do not think one can draw more precise conclusions for now, but overall it debunks the usual line of reasoning that "Italians were west-med, now they are east-med, so you need a massive near eastern gene flow (Anatolian and the Levant) due to slaves and migration".
Whether it was mixing with the pre-IE inhabitants of Italy, rich in caucasus-related ancestry (honestly I do not think it is a plausible scenario), or successive gene flows that shaped Italians, what is relatively sure is that admixture models from official studies have Italians as a mixture of EEF, steppe, WHG and caucasus-related ancestry(ies), and all these components were present at least since the iron age in Italy, thus the often repeated mantra by hobbyists that all Italians were first north Italian-like, then there was a Near eastern and Greek massive gene flow and lastly a significant Germanic gene flow seems groundless.
I know it isn't good to talk about what others think about the paper instead of the paper instead but this one has given principally raw data and few explanations for them, as it is inevitable since it is the first archeogenetic paper with samples from south Italy.

 

[D.L.M]

They are different from Bronze Age Sicilians too.

 

[Angela]

I think it is important to note, there were people living in Puglia before Italics, Greeks, and Iapygians. Where is their representation in all of this? Maybe that's why the Daunians are south of IA_Latins/Etruscans and west of Central and South Italians. Because they mixed with the people who lived there before them. Perhaps they were C6, and overtime mixed further with C6 people as Rome united the regions.

As I said, they have no concept of the timeline of the arrival of various groups in the south. "Italics" were late; in some areas later than the Greeks. To understand Southern Italian genetics we need samples of the people who were NOT relatively recent migrants.

 

[Angela]

To be honest the bulk of the iron age samples from Latium are "west shifted" compared to north Italians, in a place in between north Italian, south French and Iberians, and today's north Italians, judging from the 22 samples from north east Italy, seem too "east shifted", as north Apulians (though they are also a bit "south shifted") are compared to the bulk of the Daunians.
I believe that by "Imperial samples" they meant those few that, at least on a PCA, cluster with modern south Italians and middle age Romans.


To be precise they used "amhara_NAF" as a proxy for "sea people", though it makes no sense to me, and it just vaguely indicates a Greece_N like signal as far as I can tell.

Thanks, but I read the Antonio et al paper numerous times, and discussed it at length in the dedicated threads. I have no idea whether you're aware of that because you used a different name then or you're indeed a new member.

I've also read this paper, even if people commenting on other sites have not, and I know perfectly well that they use Amhara NAF as a proxy for sea people, one of the most bizarre conclusions I've ever seen in an ancient dna paper.

At any rate, my point was that even on their OWN PCA, ancient Romans cluster with modern North Italians. To repeat myself they talk about Italians as if we're all the same, and we're emphatically not. These authors are very careless with language, and someone should have given them a summary of ancient Southern Italian history.

 

[Riverman]

E-V13 has always appeared as more thracian than anything else ...........associated with the Ghegs of ancient dardani and the Odyssian thracians of modern Bulgaria

and not the other 3 thracian regions of Moesia, Getae and Dacia

But probably that's rather because the Getae and Dacians got more from the later Northern migrations, especially the Iranian side of things. On the other hand related groups marched into Pannonia and the Western Balkans, but just didn't penetrate all regions equally and in some places seem to have been just fused and incorporated into more local, as well as later people.

They also spread with the Thraco-Cimmerian horizon and Hallstatt which grew out of it, from there making it into Celts as a minority element. The point is, the Daco-Thracian ethnolinguistic group seems to be the only one dominated by E-V13, being the original and main group associated, but soon after this group emerged, branches did assimilate into other people at the LBA-EIA transition, primarily associated with iron working. E-V13 really is closest associated with the first more developed iron processing technologies from the Carpathian basin, visible in major fortresses like Teleac for example.
But unlike in Thrace, in other regions they didn't cause a linguistic shift.

The Cetina theory is, imho, more dead than alive for the origin of E-V13. And E-V13 is an important marker for Southern Italy too, because considering the earlier composition, as well as the later migrations, the options are rather limited and it clearly has to come from the Balkans-Greece for the most part, Central Europe in the migration period as a small addition. So it won't be present in Southern Italy in significant numbers if at all until the Greek colonisation started, probably even later.