The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations.

[Jovialis]

His facial structure (based on his actual skull) looks like a typical Greek person to me, even if he had blonde hair and blue eyes. In the re-face video, he has Brad Pitt's skin ***mentation, and blonde hair, yet he still looks typically Greek.

 

[bicicleur 2]

It would seem so, but that is very far north. As I've said previously in this thread, as they moved south the steppe percentage became lower and lower.

As I also speculated upthread (and provided data for the changes between the EBA and MBA in Greece), the coming of the steppe heavy "proto-Greeks", far from bringing civilization, almost completely destroyed EBA Greece, bringing poverty and decline, probably disease too; settlements abandoned, poor grave goods etc.

It's been the same story everywhere.

Other than the domesticated horse, their language, their "sky" gods, and a hugely militaristic and aggressive bent to society, they brought nothing of value except the domesticated horse.

The authors are naïve if they think there has been 90% survival since the Log samples. Even if the Slavs didn't have the impact people have speculated (which I always tended to doubt), they must have had some, even if the overall similarity in terms of very ancient samples is the same as LOG samples. You have to have samples in every period, so you can see the proximate populations involved.

what destruction?
what proto-Greek?

the dating of Logkas samples suggests they are proto-Mycenian, not proto-Greek

and re proto-Greek invasion, if there was one, we don't know wether they are the cause or the consequence of the bronze age collpase

 

[Philjames100]

Of course this is a computer generated image. What is your point?

Angela keeps mentioning 'a portrait found in the Griffin warrior tomb' and referring to this computer generated image as if it is that portrait.

 

[Philjames100]

His facial structure (based on his actual skull) looks like a typical Greek person to me.

Not that surprising:

"due to the poor condition of the skull, Houlton was unable to accurately reconstruct the area around the eyes and nose. Instead, the team used average face templates of 50 modern Greek males that were 25 to 35 years old."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3839092/The-face-Bronze-Age-fighter-revealed-Scientists-reconstruct-face-Griffin-Warrior-elite-group-3-500-years-ago.html

 

[Angela]

what destruction?
what proto-Greek?

the dating of Logkas samples suggests they are proto-Mycenian, not proto-Greek

and re proto-Greek invasion, if there was one, we don't know wether they are the cause or the consequence of the bronze age collpase

Who's talking about the "Bronze Age Collapse" at the end of the Bronze Age?

Perhaps you should re-read the thread from the beginning. This is the collapse between the Early and Middle Bronze Age. The arrival of the steppe admixed people brought down the Early Bronze Age. There's a long quote about it upthread.

Also, "of course" they're the ancestors of the Mycenaeans. However, it seems that by the time they got to the Peloponnese, they didn't have much steppe to contribute to them.

 

[Angela]

Angela keeps mentioning 'a portrait found in the Griffin warrior tomb' and referring to this computer generated image as if it is that portrait.

What point is it exactly that you're trying to make?

You think the Mycenaeans were blonde and blue-eyed? Sorry, that ship has sailed.

We have alleles for them and they were dark haired, dark eyed and not particularly light skinned.

Now we have markers for EBA and MBA, including a person with a lot of steppe, presumably among the early generations who admixed with steppe people, and what do you we find? We find black hair, dark eyes, and for skin ***mentation we find dark to very dark.

Now, maybe there's been some error. However, if these people really don't have SLC45A2 derived, they are not going to be fair skinned. PERIOD.

Maybe you should take a look at the Wilde paper about the ***mentation among Catacomb people, who were "darker than any modern Europeans".

Or are you a believer in that fantasist Eurogenes' idea that the proto-Greeks came straight from Poland and just hopped over all the intervening area to land in Greece? More blond cowboys of the steppe nonsense? The only reason those steppe people way to the east had some fairish people among them is because they picked up those genes in Europe.

The original "Indo-Europeans" about whom so many of you are all gaga, who created the language and synthesized a new culture, were about 40% CHG/Iran Neo. Have you looked at the ***mentation markers for those latter people? How the heck could the majority of the original "Indo-Europeans" have been fair? I even vaguely remember a mention of an "Indo-European" warriors' remains found in Poland and the surprise of the scientists that he was so much darker than modern Poles.

If the ***mentation results of this paper so upset you, perhaps you should e-mail the authors and see if it is possible there was some error. I seriously suggest that you don't use the tone you use to me when addressing them. That is, if you really want the truth of the matter.

 

[Jovialis]

Not that surprising:

"due to the poor condition of the skull, Houlton was unable to accurately reconstruct the area around the eyes and nose. Instead, the team used average face templates of 50 modern Greek males that were 25 to 35 years old."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3839092/The-face-Bronze-Age-fighter-revealed-Scientists-reconstruct-face-Griffin-Warrior-elite-group-3-500-years-ago.html

Even then, modern Greeks are probably lighter in ***mentation, than the ancients.

 

[blevins13]

I have fairly close relatives with that Surname, more distant ... Antonio Conte (former soccer player, coached Italy, now AC Milan).

FC Inter, it seems you have no idea about soccer and Conte.


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[blevins13]

Who's talking about the "Bronze Age Collapse" at the end of the Bronze Age?

Perhaps you should re-read the thread from the beginning. This is the collapse between the Early and Middle Bronze Age. The arrival of the steppe admixed people brought down the Early Bronze Age. There's a long quote about it upthread.

Also, "of course" they're the ancestors of the Mycenaeans. However, it seems that by the time they got to the Peloponnese, they didn't have much steppe to contribute to them.

“Of course” they are, even they are different genetically they still are.....


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[blevins13]

LBA Myceneans: Armenia versus Steppe-like gene flow

The last phase of the BA is associated with a Late Helladic culture termed Mycenaean. Around 1,200 BCE, the Mycenaean civilization began to decline, the palaces were destroyed, the system of writing (Linear B) was abandoned, and their arts and crafts ceased. The causes of their decline are disputed (e.g., climatic change, invasions) (Middleton, 2020). Lazaridis et al., 2017 showed that Mycenaeans were quite distinct from present-day populations, but it remained unclear how they relate to EBA populations.
Despite cultural similarity with the Helladic-Logkas-MBA individuals, analyses suggest that the Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA were quite distinct genetically, occupying a position in-between the Logkas and the EBA Aegean and the Minoan-Lasithi-MBA in MDS (Figure 2). Unlike the Logkas individuals, they carry a lower European-HG-like component in ADMIXTURE (Figure 3) and do not share significantly more alleles with Iran_N/CHG or EHG compared to Anatolia_N in the D-statistics (Figure S6). However, like the Helladic-Logkas-MBA, they share more alleles with Steppe_EMBA. Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA had previously been shown to be consistent with a qpWave/qpAdm model that either involved BA Steppe- or Armenian-related populations (Lazaridis et al., 2017). We recapitulated this result and we additionaly found that Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA data are also consisent with a model involving an EBA Aegean and Anatolia_N as source populations (Table 3). In contrast, the Helladic-Logkas-MBA require a Steppe-like source and cannot be explained with a simple model involving an Armenian-like source (Tables 3, S3, and S5).
There are further alternative explanations consistent with the data. First, the Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA could be the descendants of populations closely related to the MBA Logkas population and to an EBA Aegean population—a 2-way admixture between populations related to Helladic-Logkas-MBA (∼21%–36%) and the Minoan_Odigitria_EMBA and Minoan_Lasithi_MBA (∼64%–79%). Similarly, a 2-way admixture between the Helladic-Logkas-MBA Log04 individual (∼34%–36%) and EBA Aegeans (∼64%–66%) could not be rejected (Table S3). Second, populations related to Armenia BA may have contributed to the Aegeans in a geographically localized fashion during the LBA or earlier (Table S5). This scenario was proposed in the archaeological literature (Drews, 1988) and would imply that the Mycenaeans would not have left much trace in individuals from later generations.


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[blevins13]

As a result, the genomic data could support both dominant linguistic theories explaining the emergence of Proto-Greek and the evolution of Indo-European languages (Gray et al., 2011). Namely, that these languages either originated in Anatolia (Renfrew, 1972, Renfrew, 1989, Renfrew, 2000) (correlating with the Anatolian and Caucasus-like genetic ancestries) or they originated in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region (Anthony, 2010) (correlating with the Steppe-like ancestry). Future Mesolithic to BA genomes from Armenia and the Caucasus regions in general could help to further pinpoint the origins and the mode of gene flow into the Aegean and to better integrate the genomic data with the existing archaeological and linguistic evidence.


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[real expert]

Let's back track a bit.

We have a portrait found in the tomb of the elite "Griffin Man" Mycenaean Warrior. We can see he's rather dark; however, there's no way of telling whether that's a tan or his actual complexion, i.e. did he have a Raoul Bova type "winter" complexion. I tend to doubt he was that light given how long ago it was and that selection for skin color has continued, but I really don't know.

We also have representations of the Egyptians of themselves in relation to "Kushites", whom they depict as black, themselves, whom they depict as dark brown, and people from the Middle East, who look rather olive skinned to me. So, I think it's highly unlikely that Bronze Age Greeks were as dark as Egyptians. One should never take the color of mummies to mean anything at all, even if you're sure of the provenance of the picture. All sorts of totally bogus pictures are floating around on the internet.

In a way, however, that's a bit irrelevant in this context. The real question is first, whether there was an error in the calculations. Second, what does "dark" or "very dark" mean in terms of Hirisplex 6.

I referred to it upthread, but didn't provide the link. I apologize. Here it is below. Go to page 17 for the skin samples.

https://hirisplex.erasmusmc.nl/pdf/hirisplex.erasmusmc.nl.pdf

Given that the sample from Crete is SLC24A5 homogeneous, and SLC45A2 heterogeneous, it's difficult for me to believe that this sample was in the darkest category.

However, in my experience Hirisplex works, so I'm befuddled.

I'm well aware of the fact, that people especially centrists do present doctored images for misleading gullible folks. That said, this predynastic mummy, called Ginger was examined and classified by Egyptologists/physical anthropologists. His skin apart from the areas that were dried up and discolored, was really that light. Besides, I asked some who saw him in real at the British Museum, and they also said that he was light. The reason why I brought up this mummy was to illustrate that we have the strange situation where a predynastic individual from Upper Egypt is much lighter than the BA Aegans. It is incomprehensible why researchers haven’t sequenced DNA from this Gebelein predynastic mummy yet. They tested him with CT scanning, radiocarbon dating and infrared imaging, only to talk about him having the earliest tattoos. On the whole, there are six naturally mummified predynastic bodies that could be tested for their genetic makeup. Furthermore, Ramses II was forensically examined, and he had likely light skin, too. From Wiki:

The mummy was forensically tested by Professor Pierre-Fernand Ceccaldi, the chief forensic scientist at the Criminal Identification Laboratory of Paris. Professor Ceccaldi determined that: "Hair, astonishingly preserved, showed some complementary data — especially about ***mentation: Ramesses II was a ginger haired 'cymnotriche leucoderma'." The description given here refers to a fair-skinned person with wavy ginger hair.Subsequent microscopic inspection of the roots of Ramesses II's hair proved that the king's hair originally was red, which suggests that he came from a family of redheads……...

Let's discuss the Griffin Warrior and his recreated looks.
Was his DNA tested and his skin color predicted, probably not. I read an article about the Griffin Warrior and his reconstructed skull. Due to the poor condition of the skull, Houlton, a specialist in reconstruction, was unable to accurately reconstruct the area around the eyes and nose. There was evident deterioration of the bones across the mid-face, affecting the nasal region and inner eye details. Hence, the expert gauged the look of the facial features, such as the eyes and mouth, by the underlying skull. That sound pretty much like making an educated guess in terms of the mouth, the eyes and nose of the Griffin warrior.The thing is, that the authors here attribute the very dark complexion of the Aegans to their genes and not to tanning. I visited Greece several times, I saw the same people who look reddish brown in the summer turning quite white when they stop going to the beach and stayed indoors a lot. From my observation Cypriot Greeks are even for Greek standard swarthy.

 

[real expert]

Even then, modern Greeks are probably lighter in ***mentation, than the ancients.

That's because modern Greeks are not that swarthy as people pretend them to be. The same goes for Italians or Spaniards. That said, if the phenotype prediction from this study is 100% correct, that would make BA Greeks a lot darker than regular Middle Easterners or North Africans. If I remember correctly there was a phenotype prediction for individuals from the Roman paper here, and they turned out not be particularly swarthy.

 

[Angela]

The Egyptians pictured males as dark brown (tanned, no doubt), and women as medium brown. They pictured themselves as lighter than Kushites and darker than Levantines.

I think we can trust them to know what they themselves looked like in comparison to people like Greeks. I also think we can trust the Greeks to know what they looked like, and they SAID they were lighter than Egyptians, but not as light as Eastern Europeans.

One sample's ***mentation, derived from who knows what admixture, is not relevant.

Here we have a number of samples. The only question is whether the findings are accurate. Given the Catacomb samples probably provide evidence for the ***mentation of the steppe groups arriving in Greece, perhaps they really were that dark.

I have a feeling there's something wrong with the analysis but that's all it is.

Now, I'm weary of talking about ***mentation.

Anyone that interested should contact the authors. End of story as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Philjames100]

What point is it exactly that you're trying to make?

My point is you keep referring to this computer generated image as if it's 'a portrait found in the Griffin Warrior tomb', which it obviously isn't, which is why I asked you which portrait you were referring to.

 

[Philjames100]

That said, this predynastic mummy, called Ginger was examined and classified by Egyptologists/physical anthropologists. His skin apart from the areas that were dried up and discolored, was really that light.

Do you have any more information on this examination and classification by Egyptologists/physical anthropologists?

 

[Archetype0ne]

LBA Myceneans: Armenia versus Steppe-like gene flow

The last phase of the BA is associated with a Late Helladic culture termed Mycenaean. Around 1,200 BCE, the Mycenaean civilization began to decline, the palaces were destroyed, the system of writing (Linear B) was abandoned, and their arts and crafts ceased. The causes of their decline are disputed (e.g., climatic change, invasions) (Middleton, 2020). Lazaridis et al., 2017 showed that Mycenaeans were quite distinct from present-day populations, but it remained unclear how they relate to EBA populations.
Despite cultural similarity with the Helladic-Logkas-MBA individuals, analyses suggest that the Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA were quite distinct genetically, occupying a position in-between the Logkas and the EBA Aegean and the Minoan-Lasithi-MBA in MDS (Figure 2). Unlike the Logkas individuals, they carry a lower European-HG-like component in ADMIXTURE (Figure 3) and do not share significantly more alleles with Iran_N/CHG or EHG compared to Anatolia_N in the D-statistics (Figure S6). However, like the Helladic-Logkas-MBA, they share more alleles with Steppe_EMBA. Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA had previously been shown to be consistent with a qpWave/qpAdm model that either involved BA Steppe- or Armenian-related populations (Lazaridis et al., 2017). We recapitulated this result and we additionaly found that Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA data are also consisent with a model involving an EBA Aegean and Anatolia_N as source populations (Table 3). In contrast, the Helladic-Logkas-MBA require a Steppe-like source and cannot be explained with a simple model involving an Armenian-like source (Tables 3, S3, and S5).
There are further alternative explanations consistent with the data. First, the Mycenaean-Peloponnese-LBA could be the descendants of populations closely related to the MBA Logkas population and to an EBA Aegean population—a 2-way admixture between populations related to Helladic-Logkas-MBA (∼21%–36%) and the Minoan_Odigitria_EMBA and Minoan_Lasithi_MBA (∼64%–79%). Similarly, a 2-way admixture between the Helladic-Logkas-MBA Log04 individual (∼34%–36%) and EBA Aegeans (∼64%–66%) could not be rejected (Table S3). Second, populations related to Armenia BA may have contributed to the Aegeans in a geographically localized fashion during the LBA or earlier (Table S5). This scenario was proposed in the archaeological literature (Drews, 1988) and would imply that the Mycenaeans would not have left much trace in individuals from later generations.


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As a result, the genomic data could support both dominant linguistic theories explaining the emergence of Proto-Greek and the evolution of Indo-European languages (Gray et al., 2011). Namely, that these languages either originated in Anatolia (Renfrew, 1972, Renfrew, 1989, Renfrew, 2000) (correlating with the Anatolian and Caucasus-like genetic ancestries) or they originated in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region (Anthony, 2010) (correlating with the Steppe-like ancestry). Future Mesolithic to BA genomes from Armenia and the Caucasus regions in general could help to further pinpoint the origins and the mode of gene flow into the Aegean and to better integrate the genomic data with the existing archaeological and linguistic evidence.


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These passages resonate with my current worldview of that period on another level. Albeit I am on the Anthony camp on this, and I think these movements didn't only affect the Aegean IE populations of this period, but had an impact all the way to Northern Balkans/Pannonia and likely even Eastern Austria.

We now have DNA PCA analysis as circumstantial evidence, ancient DNA burials as hard evidence, and computer models relating to linguistics supporting such a theory.

Now the issue is interpreting this data correctly, having had to study L283 for myself due to the personal reason of being of this clade, I am satisfactorily convinced as to the when, where from, what path, and where to, of the movements of one of these early-mid BA IE populations. Wish I was more familar/read on the material cultures of the period, to get an idea of who these people were at the time.

 

[real expert]

The Egyptians pictured males as dark brown (tanned, no doubt), and women as medium brown. They pictured themselves as lighter than Kushites and darker than Levantines.

I think we can trust them to know what they themselves looked like in comparison to people like Greeks. I also think we can trust the Greeks to know what they looked like, and they SAID they were lighter than Egyptians, but not as light as Eastern Europeans.

One sample's ***mentation, derived from who knows what admixture, is not relevant.

Here we have a number of samples. The only question is whether the findings are accurate. Given the Catacomb samples probably provide evidence for the ***mentation of the steppe groups arriving in Greece, perhaps they really were that dark.

I have a feeling there's something wrong with the analysis but that's all it is.

Now, I'm weary of talking about ***mentation.

Anyone that interested should contact the authors. End of story as far as I'm concerned.

I actually agree with most what you've said, but you sometimes misunderstand what I try to bring across. Why you, me and others here, are befuddled is the fact, that the skin color prediction doesn't match the accounts of Ancient Greeks about their coloration. Nobody here would be surprised about this result if the Ancient Greeks would claim they were as dark as the Ethiopians or compared themselves to them. Ancient Greeks saw super pale Northern Europeans, moderately dark Egyptians and extremely dark Ethiopians. Hence, they were well aware of all the shades and hues of all kinds of people. They took dark to very dark, and pale to very pale people as an example, to stress their intermediate complexion. Plus, the Greeks talked about their females and Barbarians being pale/white. So, I'm discussing with you and others here because I try to connect the dots, thus make sense out the fact, that there is a discrepancy between the self-description of the Ancient Greeks in terms of their complexion and the result from this study.

 

[Cato]

Why is the word pig censored? "***mentation"

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[Philjames100]

Any idea why these results seem to be different to the PCA and other results?

Figure S4 Genetic affinities between BA Aegeans compared to other present-day Eurasian populations.

For each case, we show the geographic distribution of f3 (warmer colors represent greater sharing between populations X and Y).

Beside each map, we plot the f3 values for the 15 populations that are most closely related to each of the populations in Y.