# Population Genetics > Autosomal Genetics >  Population History of Sardinia

## Angela

Chiang et al:
"Population history of the Sardinian people inferred from whole-genome sequencing"

See:
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/07/092148

"The population of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia has made important contributions to genome-wide association studies of traits and diseases. The history of the Sardinian population has also been the focus of much research, and in recent ancient DNA (aDNA) studies, Sardinia has provided unique insight into the peopling of Europe and the spread of agriculture. In this study, we analyze whole-genome sequences of 3,514 Sardinians to address hypotheses regarding the founding of Sardinia and its relation to the peopling of Europe, including examining fine-scale substructure, population size history, and signals of admixture. We find* the population of the mountainous Gennargentu region shows elevated genetic isolation with higher levels of ancestry associated with mainland Neolithic farmers and depleted ancestry associated with more recent Bronze Age Steppe migrations on the mainland.* Notably, the Gennargentu region *also has elevated levels of pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry and increased affinity to Basque populations.* Further,* allele sharing with pre-Neolithic and Neolithic mainland populations is larger on the X chromosome compared to the autosome, providing evidence for a sex-biased demographic history in Sardinia.* These results give new insight to the demography of ancestral Sardinians and help further the understanding of sharing of disease risk alleles between Sardinia and mainland populations."

Nice to get confirmation from whole genomes for what some of us have been saying for years, i.e. that there is structure in Sardinia. 

I'm less sure what they mean about this hunter-gatherer ancestry in the isolated mountain areas. The "consensus" has been that the signs of European pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers in the archaeology was from occasional visits, not long term settlement which would have significantly impacted the genetics of the island (although I argued against that at one time). 

Lately, I've been of the opinion that the "Neolithic" substratum is actually from migration from Old Europe. 

By the way, they're basically talking about the area around Ogliastra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOegu2jgJcY

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## Angela

Some interesting bits:

" PCA shows a *one-dimensional isolation-by-distance configuration around the Mediterranean, from North Africa through the Near East and then towards Iberia* (Novembre and Stephens 2008, Henn et al. 2012, Botigue et al. 2013, Paschou et al. 2014) (Figure 4A,). *The effective migration surface shows the Mediterranean Sea as having low effective migration (Figure 4B), isolating Sardinia"from neighboring mainland populations, with stronger isolation between Sardinia and North Africa than mainland Europe* (Figure 4B).

I tried to explain how difficult it is to go directly from the mainland to Sardinia and even more so from North Africa to Sardinia because of the air and sea currents, but it was heavy going. Maybe women are presumed to know nothing about navigation. Now here is the proof in genetics.

"As an alternative visualization of pan-Mediterranean population structure, an analysis using the ADMIXTURE software inferred four ancestral components, with* one component associated primarily with Sardinians and Southern Europeans (“red”), and remaining components corresponding to North African (“blue”), Middle East and Caucasus (“purple”), and Northern Europeans (“green”)* (Figure 4C; see Figure S3 for results at other values of K). The *Arzana individuals contained 100% of this red component and Sardinians from Cagliari contained 93% of this red component."*

"e sharing with admixed Latino populations may reflect variants shared between Sardinian ancestors and ancestral European sources to admixed Latino populations (e.g. Iberian populations)."

"*Due to its smaller long-term effective population size (Figure 5A), Sardinia is expected to have undergone accelerated rates of genetic drift. To correct for this when measuring similarity to other mainland populations, we used “shared drift” outgroup-f3 statistics* (Raghavan et al. 2014), which are robust to population-specific drift. Using this metric, we find the *Basque are the most similar to Sardinia, even more so than neighboring mainland Italian populations such as Tuscany and Bergamo* (Figure S6A, S6B). This relationship is corroborated by* identityby-descent (“IBD”) tract length sharing, where among mainland European populations, French Basque showed the highest median length of shared segments (1.525 cM) with Arzana."

*We also tested the affinity between Sardinians and Basque with the D-statistics of the form D(Outgroup, Sardinia; Bergamo or Tuscan, Basque)...We find that Sardinia consistently showed increased sharing with the Basque populations compared to mainland Italians...In contrast, sharing with other Spanish samples in our dataset was generally weaker and not significant ( |Z| < 3.5; Figure S6C), suggesting the shared drift with the Basque is not mediated through Spanish ancestry."

This might be an indication that there were once French Basque like populations throughout southern France which then moved into Sardinia. While it's true, as I said, that it's difficult to reach Sardinia from the mainland, the route from southern France/northeast Spain to Sardinia isn't too bad. The other "relatively" easy trip is by sea from Greece, southern Italy, Sicily etc.

They do a much better job than Hellenthal at explaining any "recent" admixture in Sardinia. There is no indication of it in mainland, central Sardinia. One test failed to disclose any even in areas like Cagliari, the capitol, but one did find some. 

"h previous reports (Moorjani et al. 2011, Loh et al. 2013, Hellenthal et al. 2014). For example, Cagliari individuals demonstrated ~7% of a non-Sardinian (“purple”) component that is found in substantial fraction among extant individuals from Southern Europe, Middle East, Caucasus, and North Africa. To assess this in detail we used the f3-test for admixture (Patterson et al. 2012) and found none of the Sardinian populations showed any evidence of admixture. In contrast, mainland Europeans, particularly Southern Europeans, show evidence of admixture from Near East and sub-Saharan Africa (Figure S8). Because f3-based tests for admixture may lose power when applied to populations that have experienced extensive drift post-admixture (Patterson et al. 2012), we also used a complementary LD-based approach (ALDER, Loh et al. 2013) to test each Sardinian population for admixture. Using this approach, a number of Sardinian populations, particularly those outside of Ogliastra, are inferred to be admixed (Table 1, Table S4). The inferred source populations are typically a mainland Eurasian population and a sub-Saharan African population. The admixture proportions range from 0.9% to 4% of sub-Saharan ancestry by the f4 ratio test (Patterson et al. 2012) (Table 1, Table S4) with estimated admixture dates of approximately 59-109 generations."

"found the best proxy for African admixture is sub-Saharan African populations, rather than Mediterranean North African populations, and we inferred the date of admixture as approximately 1,800-3,000 years ago (assuming 30 years per generation).

I differ with them in the following to the extent that I don't think that there was large scale migration from the Near East with the Arab invasions, although there was some.

"lack of a strong signal of North African autosomal admixture may be due to inadequate coverage of modern North African diversity in our reference sample. Alternatively, it may be due to a poor representation of ancestral North Africans. Present-day North African ancestry reflects large-scale recent gene flow during the Arab expansion (~1,400 years ago (Henn et al. 2012)). The sub-Saharan African admixture observed in the non-Ogliastra samples could be mediated through an early influx of migrants from North Africa prior to the Arab expansion, for example during the eras of trade relations and occupations from the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans (~700 B.C.- ~200 B.C.;"

"both ancient Neolithic farmer ancestry and pre-Neolithic ancestry are enriched in the Gennargentu-region. First, we find that shared drift with Neolithic farmers and with pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers is significantly correlated with the proportion of “Gennargentu-region” ancestral component estimated from ADMIXTURE analysis, while shared drift with Steppe pastoralists has a weak negative correlation with Gennargentu-region ancestry (Figure 6B). Second, using supervised estimation of ancestry proportion based on aDNA (Haak et al. 2015), we estimate higher levels of Neolithic and preNeolithic ancestries in the Gennargentu region and higher levels of Steppe Pastoralist ancestry outside the region (Figure S10)"

"Intriguingly, on average, we find a higher proportion of the Gennargentu-region ancestry (“red” component in Figure S11) on the X-chromosome (37%) than on the autosome (30%, P < 1e-6 by permutation). As the Gennargentu-region ancestry is correlated with more ancient, Neolithic or pre-Neolithic ancestries rather than Bronze Age ancestries (Figure 6B), this finding suggests sex-biased processes in which more females than males carried the non-Steppe ancestries."

"*These results demonstrate that sex-biased process occurred in the founding of Sardinia, which is above and beyond any putative sex-biased processes on the mainland."

*I have some skepticism about this:
"Our analysis of crosscoalescent rates suggest the population lineage ancestral to modern-day Sardinia was effectively isolated from the mainland European populations approximately 330 generations ago. This estimate should be treated with caution, but corresponds to approximately 9,900 years ago assuming a generation time of 30 years and mutation rate of 1.25x10-8 per basepair per generation."

Here they address the point I raised about the uncertainty as to where the WHG ancestry was added:
. That pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer and Neolithic farmer ancestry are enriched in this region of isolation suggests that the early populations of Sardinia were an admixture of the two ancestries, rather than the pre-Neolithic ancestry arriving via later migrations from the mainland. However, it remains to be seen whether this admixture principally occurred on the island or on the mainland prior to a Neolithic era influx to the island."

"The high frequency of particular Y-chromosome haplogroups (particularly I2a1a2 and R1b1a2) that are not commonly affiliated with Neolithic ancestry is one challenge to a model in which Sardinian principally has Neolithic ancestry."

I don't see the problem with the above. We already know of I2a1a2 samples from the mainland which are typically European farmer. They apparently represent absorbed male hunter-gatherer lines.

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## bix

There appear to be strong links between pre-Nuragic Sardinia and Southern France via the obsidian trade; it could all boil down to 'economics' in the end. Those trade networks and associations could, and probably did endure long enough to usher in a whole lot more--other interested parties, like "Beaker Folk."

Fanciful speculation, but I wonder if Arturo Issel was right about the Ligures.

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## Boreas

Can we call them pureist Med people?

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## srdceleva

for the most part sardinians jus look like italians to me though, i cant see a difference really in Looks, but I dont know to many sardinian though to base that off of. I only think of Franco columbu the Body building compatriot of Arnold schwarzenneger when i think of sardinians :). and I wonder if previously sardianians had spoken a similar language to basque before they becae italicized, now that woud be interesing to prove.

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## Cato

it's not that difficult to reach Sardinia from Central Italy through Corsica,; archaeology suggest that the Mesolithic, Cardial and part of the Bell Beakers settlers came there from Tuscany. In the supp info. Yamnaya ancestry runs from 0% in some Ogliastra villages to ~10% in the North and the South-West of the island.

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## berun

No surprise the conservative results of the mountain area (Gennargentu, Nuoro), as it realy seems an island inside the island. But to take the Sardinian DNA as mostly unmixed i'm not so sure when looking at its history (Bell Beakers from the continent, shardana from the Aegean? lybi from Africa...).

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## Angela

> for the most part sardinians jus look like italians to me though, i cant see a difference really in Looks, but I dont know to many sardinian though to base that off of. I only think of Franco columbu the Body building compatriot of Arnold schwarzenneger when i think of sardinians :). and I wonder if previously sardianians had spoken a similar language to basque before they becae italicized, now that woud be interesing to prove.


Italians have a lot of "Med" so obviously there's going to be some overlap, with some mainland Italians looking like Sardinians.

However, there's a lot of variety in Italy which just doesn't exist in Sardinia, in pigmentation for one thing, but also in body type, head type, facial features etc.

I just posted this video in another thread, but it also illustrates what I'm talking about. These are Italians too, and they don't look at all Sardinian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBevfffdqVA

The man in the last picture I posted above is a type that would be unusual in Italy.

The people to whom the Sardinians are most related are the French Basques, and there is indeed a Basque look in some of them. 

@Berun,
The point the authors are making is that those "other" influences did not penetrate into the internal Massif. Of course, all Sardinians are more related to one another than to anyone else.

@Bix,
I have great respect for Arturo Issel, but I think he was totally wrong about that, although given the Paleolithic finds in Liguria, I know what might have been affecting his opinion. No one in Europe is within the range of variation of even Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, much less the Paleolithic ones. EEF is a different story, which is the point of the paper. People overlapping with the EEF do still exist, in Sardinia.

@Cato,
Could you please provide some written sources for that as it pertains to Mesolithic and Cardial?

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## bix

> I have great respect for Arturo Issel, but I think he was totally wrong about that, although given the Paleolithic finds in Liguria, I know what might have been affecting his opinion. No one in Europe is within the range of variation of even Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, much less the Paleolithic ones. EEF is a different story, which is the point of the paper. People overlapping with the EEF do still exist, in Sardinia.


Certainly, I agree. I had something the authors said near the end of the discussion section in mind where they said:

"one might consider a model in which a yet unsampled sub-population during the Neolithic carried high proportions of the I2a1a haplogroup.

I think a population somewhere around the Rhone, or around the Gulf of Lion would be a good prospect. I read somewhere, but I can't recall where that ancient Ligures were far more widespread--they seem like an interesting lot, with some rather unorthodox sailing skills, vexing to the Romans. They were surely a well admixed with a long list of different groups by the time the Romans came around. 

This subject has some genealogical pertinence to me, wondering how my particular brand of I-M26 got to the western Alps.

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## Angela

> Certainly, I agree. I had something the authors said near the end of the discussion section in mind where they said:
> 
> "one might consider a model in which a yet unsampled sub-population during the Neolithic carried high proportions of the I2a1a haplogroup.
> 
> I think a population somewhere around the Rhone, or around the Gulf of Lion would be a good prospect. I read somewhere, but I can't recall where that ancient Ligures were far more widespread--they seem like an interesting lot, with some rather unorthodox sailing skills, vexing to the Romans. They were surely a well admixed with a long list of different groups by the time the Romans came around. 
> 
> This subject has some genealogical pertinence to me, wondering how my particular brand of I-M26 got to the western Alps.


Sorry, Bix, I misunderstood. Yes, I too have read the theories where the Ligures were once a much more widely spread population, which goes along with the theory that they were an early group of Indo-European speakers. Certainly, they existed outside the boundaries of modern day Liguria, living, we are told, north of Massalia, and into northeastern Spain, although progressively more mixed with Iberians as they got further south. If they were Indo-European speakers they would have already been admixed by the time they were in Central Europe and would then have admixed with farmers again further south. 

I too have a lot of interest in them, because depending on where you draw the lines, a lot of my ancestry comes from them. Unfortunately, all we have is some comments in ancient history, and some speculations based on a few bits of their language.

Have you taken a look at the Wiki article? It's not bad as a summary. I will say that the description of their character in the ancient sources rings true to me: sparely built and lean, but very strong physically and mentally. It was also said of them that their women worked and fought as hard as their men, and that's also true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligures

In terms of the Ligures of the modern era the hypothesis has also been that there were migrations from Gallic speaking populations in the historical era, which is why they were sometimes referred to as Celt-Ligurians.

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## Angela

@Cato,
I ask because of the discussion on this thread. 
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...t=sea+currents

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## Angela

@Boreas,
I'd say the European Neolithic farmer, with a chunk of WHG picked up in Europe. I do think something approaching it has been labeled "Mediterranean" in some admixture runs, but in my opinion if you want to know how much of some ancient group is in you the comparison should be with the ancient genome.

For example, there's more of that "cluster" in southern Europeans, including Iberians who border the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean, than there is in Turks and Levantines who also border the Mediterranean.

Take a look at this Gamba et al graphic. Look at the overlap between the Sardinians and not only the Early Neolithic Europeans like the Hungarian Neolithic sample, but Otzi and even Copper Age central Europe. This is why I think it may not be accurate to imagine this as a situation where there were hunter-gatherers on the island and then Neolithic people from the mainland arrived. The authors themselves argue against assuming this is correct. It could have been an already admixed group from the mainland, perhaps the French coast, but also, as I once argued, perhaps from the southeast, and even later. I don't think this subclade of I2a1 is particularly "old" is it? On the other hand, there's the Basque affinity to consider. I wish they had done more comparison with samples like CO1.*

In comparing this study with prior ones we've all looked at for a long time, we have to keep in mind that these samples are not the ones chosen by Cavalli-Sforza and used subsequently. The authors got verbal information from Piazza as to where those were taken, and although a lot of them were from this isolated region there were some from peripheral groups as well. There's a lot of overlap, but they're not precisely the same. I'd like to see some of the studies redone with these Massif samples to see if there are any changes at all.

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## Angela

I just saw these on anthrogenica on the thread for the new Sardinian paper. It was posted by Gravetto Danubian. I like most of his posts a lot. I hope he doesn’t mind my reproducing them here.

French: (It would be nice to see French Southwest)

French_East
"Bell_Beaker_Czech" 39.35
"Armenia_EBA" 24.25
"Baalberge_MN" 17.65
"Hungary_HG" 7.5
"Jordan_EBA" 6.1

Italian_Tuscan (It would be interesting to see the other Italians as well.)
"Bell_Beaker_Czech" 31.3
"Armenia_EBA" 29.05
"Baalberge_MN" 17.85
"LBK_EN" 13.7
"Jordan_EBA" 5.35

Spanish (I think this is the half Catalan sample.)
"Bell_Beaker_Czech" 37.95
"Armenia_EBA" 17.9
"Baalberge_MN" 14.35
"Jordan_EBA" 10.45
"Israel_Natufian" 5.55


Now take a look at Basques and Sardinians
Basque_French
"Bell_Beaker_Czech" 38.4
"Baalberge_MN" 26.85
"Remedello_BA" 17.7
"Armenia_EBA" 6.3
"LaBrana1" 5.6

Sardinian
"Baalberge_MN" 28
"Remedello_BA" 25.3
"Armenia_EBA" 15.9
"Anatolia_Neolithic" 10.5
"Iberia_Chalcolithic" 10
"Jordan_EBA" 6.7

(I’m assuming this is the standard Sardinian sample, not the one used in the Chiang Sardinian paper. The standard one includes some samples outside of the isolated massif samples, although they’re not the majority.) 

My take away is that given the Czech Bell Beaker numbers, which is a stand in the group moving into Europe with steppe ancestry (although it’s not perfect), the Sardinians don’t have any. Everyone else in Europe has a “West Asian” component, but the Basques have very little of it. 

So, the question is when did it arrive and with whom" One clue is that it’s at 19% in the British and 29% in Tuscans. So, could we conclude that at least around 19% must have been in Europe for a long time? I'm aware that these clusters are different from run to run, but dodecad found "West Asian" already in Otzi in the Copper Age, so perhaps there were slightly different migrations in the late Copper Age. Assuming that's correct, where did the other 10 points come from and when? We really need more ancient dna from Italy, Greece, the Aegean etc.

Oh, this is the result for Kent in England, which has the most Bell Beaker.
English_Kent
"Bell_Beaker_Czech" 55.95
"Armenia_EBA" 19.2
"Baalberge_MN" 13.85
"Hungary_HG" 4.25
"LaBrana1" 4.05

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## Cato

> @Cato,
> I ask because of the discussion on this thread. 
> http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...t=sea+currents


I've missed this post, sorry

regarding Mesolithic : http://eprints.uniss.it/6328/1/Melis_P_Approdo_della_costa_di.pdf

_Ad epoca preneolitica, circa 9.000 anni fa (data calibrata), dovrebbe datarsi anche un primo episodio di colonizzazione dell'Isola ad opera di genti arrivate in Corsica e Sardegna dopo un'impegnativa navigazione, portatrici di caratteri culturali mesolitici ascrivibili al cosiddetto epipaleolitico indifferenziato della penisola italiana e recentemente riconosciuti nella zona di Perfugas e Laerru, nella Sardegna settentrionale.

_Another paper about Mesolithic Sardinia and Corsica is_ Fabio Martini, Carlo Tozzi, Il mesolitico in Sardegna_ (there is a PDF online_)

sardegnacorsica.png


_Neolithic:https://web.archive.org/web/20130927...eolitico_4.pdf
_
Notevoli affinità con il repertorio formale della Sardegna e della Corsica (stile di Basi) hanno originato la definizione di stile di “Basi-Pienza” e inducono a ipotizzare una colonizzazione di queste isole maggiori da parte di comunità stanziate nell’Italia tirrenica, attraverso l’Arcipelago Toscano. L’esistenza di contatti è, del resto, confermata dalla presenza di ossidiana sarda dal Monte Arci negli assemblage litici della ceramica impressa tirrenica. 

_apparently a new paper with aDNA from Sardinia will be published soon_
https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web...7&id=170122074

_From Neolithic to Bronze Age they found relative stability, so probably they are talking about EEF with maybe a bit of steppe admxiture in Copper/Bronze Age. (?)  :Thinking:

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## Angela

> I've missed this post, sorry
> 
> regarding Mesolithic : http://eprints.uniss.it/6328/1/Melis_P_Approdo_della_costa_di.pdf
> 
> _Ad epoca preneolitica, circa 9.000 anni fa (data calibrata), dovrebbe datarsi anche un primo episodio di colonizzazione dell'Isola ad opera di genti arrivate in Corsica e Sardegna dopo un'impegnativa navigazione, portatrici di caratteri culturali mesolitici ascrivibili al cosiddetto epipaleolitico indifferenziato della penisola italiana e recentemente riconosciuti nella zona di Perfugas e Laerru, nella Sardegna settentrionale.
> 
> _Another paper about Mesolithic Sardinia and Corsica is_ Fabio Martini, Carlo Tozzi, Il mesolitico in Sardegna_ (there is a PDF online_)
> 
> sardegnacorsica.png
> ...


Grazie. Yes, the obsidian tells us a lot. I had a long running argument with Jean Manco about the old sites on Sardinia. She always maintained they were only temporary sites, not settlements. Maybe, maybe not.

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## bicicleur

but the dating is a bit tricky
somewhere in the EN

it is not the mesolithic as Sardegna was virtualy uninhabited before Cardial Ware

only few scarce settlements that were probably inhabited not more than a few generations maximum

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep42869

The earliest presence of humans is still under debate. Some authors likely date it back to the end of the Middle Pleistocene, on the base of lithic artifacts typology, attributed to the Lower Paleolithic20,21,22. Nonetheless, neither human remains nor absolute-dated contextual evidence support this hypothesis. However, clues of human settlements arose only from the end of the Upper Pleistocene23,24, with single human remains discovered out of context and dated back to 20,000 years ago just on the base of stratigraphic correlations25. The first evidence of Holocene frequentation of the island are scattered in a few rock-shelters and caves, exclusively on the inside of a 20 km coast belt26. After this poorly-documented phase, with around 500 years hiatus of archaeological evidence, with the advent of the agriculture, the population of the island increased in size.

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## Cato

> it is not the mesolithic as Sardegna was virtualy uninhabited before Cardial Ware
> only few scarce settlements that were probably inhabited not more than a few generations maximum


hmm i don't know, some Sardianian population like Gairo are +20% circa extra WHG compared to EEF

chiangsupp.png

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## alexfritz

not sure if already posted but this is an entire book on pre-history sardinia/(mediterranean)
http://members.peak.org/~obsidian/pdf/tykot_1995.pdf

concerning the genetics, can it be said that modern sardinians are more close(shared drift) towards 'farmers' of the kum6<ötzi/remedello type than to EN/Cardial CB13/TOR types? meaning a superseding by an add 4th mil wave from anatolia(<italy?<balkans?) as described in kilinc et al, a new wave of metallurgical skilled farmers which coincide with ozieri and the late5th/4th mil emerging copper production/network and slim-mother idols of an akin cyclade/anatolian type (in contrast to previous fat-mother bonu ighinu); though from what i have seen the sardinian copper network was most active during the 2nd mil (~1500bc) bronze age as the main source for all of italy and a source/part of a network as far as scandinavia;

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## Angela

^^Jean Manco speculated long ago on dna forums that the majority of Sardinia's genetic make up stems from a migration from the Balkans of metallurgists. I agreed with her then and I still think it's a decent option.

The reason that they look so much like the Early Farmers genetically is that the people in the Balkans during the Copper Age probably weren't that different from the Early Farmers. It would explain why Otzi plots with them, and Copper Age Baden isn't so very different either.

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## alexfritz

could have also been a direct migration from anatolia (copper driven) since the CBMP was east/steppe-belt oriented and collapsed during the late 5th early 4th; kumtepe itself is a site of copper objects and more important processing and deposit[troas] but it is not solely metallurgical based, per aDNA the new wave is marked by the shared alleles/drift with CHG driven westward by tepecik (not present in previous bonckulu or contemporary barcin) > kumtepe and known >italy (ötzi/remedello) who belonged to a copper network (production/innovation) of tuscany; balkan_Chl in qpAdm mathieson et al do have ~6%CHG and the VBQ change is marked by an extensive trans-alpine trade (adige<eisack<inn) where characteristics like crouched (single-grave) burials and type-arrowheads are also later part of the remedello horizon; in toto either a direct metallurgical/copper driven migration antolia>sardinia (pos sardinia>tuscany) or via balkan>italy/(lunigiana)>sardinia but maybe even a mash up of carpathian_farmers and anatolian_metallurgists (via <tuscany<sardinia) in north_italy at least; a VBQ burials
http://www.academia.edu/1456884/Test...e_antropologia

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## Angela

I know you guys love this idea, but there's no way of knowing yet.

Given the copper prospecting in the Alps it's just as likely that Otzi is the result of migrations from the Balkans. 

In fact, although people not really familiar with Italian pre-history don't seem to understand it, a vast amount of gene flow entered Italy from across the Adriatic. 

Take a look at the distribution on eupedia maps of J2. Note that it's just as high if not higher on the east coast of central Italy as it is in southern Italy.

Plus, Greece, Albania, etc. all have more "Caucasus" than Italy, even southern Italy in any decent calculator.

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## bicicleur

> hmm i don't know, some Sardianian population like Gairo are +20% circa extra WHG compared to EEF
> 
> chiangsupp.png


that extra WHG could have come from anywhere
some think I2-M26 expanded from Iberia

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## Angela

> that extra WHG could have come from anywhere
> some think I2-M26 expanded from Iberia


Why not also some from later on from the Balkans?

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## bix

Maybe let's split the difference and call it Southern France (I-M26-wise). 

My particular brand of M26 seems to be closer to Spaniards. There's a paper trail tracing us dudes all the way back to Berne in 1524. Where they were before that could be anyone's guess, but given my, and my father's propensity to sit on the couch I can't imagine they'd moved far beforehand.

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## Cato

Why not from Italy? Weren't Remedello I-M26 and Sardinian like genetically? I'm not saying that Sardinians derive directly from Remedello but that both populations came from an ancient population that once lived in North-Central (and South?) Italy. 




> that extra WHG could have come from anywhere
> some think I2-M26 expanded from Iberia


maybe, but for me is more plausible that some WHG survived in the interior of the island...neolithic sites are in fact much more diffused in the coasts of Sardinia than in the inland mountains. The same is true for the Copper Age cultures (Bell Beaker).

the new paper probably will answer these questions..

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## Cato

> Sardinians are 10% Yamnaya? Where did you read this?


Chiang et al, "Population history of the Sardinian people inferred from whole-genome sequencing", supp info.

See my post here (17-12-2017 14:59)

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...a?goto=newpost

Actually is more like 5-10% depending on the area, in Ogliastra however is 0-1% except in in Ilbono (7%)

the distribuition of R1b also decrease depending on the territory examined, from 20-25% in the west, south and north to 4% in the Gennargentu

So in Sardinia, as in Spain, R1b and steppe admixture seems related (still i don't believe that R1b came from the steppe)

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## Pygmalion

> Chiang et al, "Population history of the Sardinian people inferred from whole-genome sequencing", supp info.
> 
> See my post here (17-12-2017 14:59)
> 
> https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...a?goto=newpost
> 
> Actually is more like 5-10% depending on the area, in Ogliastra however is 0-1% except in in Ilbono (7%)
> 
> the distribuition of R1b also decrease depending on the territory examined, from 20-25% in the west, south and north to 4% in the Gennargentu
> ...


That's still very low considering Romans killed/deported 80,000 rebels in one of their wars against the Sardinians, I still don't understand how can Sardinians be so similar to Neolithic Europeans considering how many bloody wars and rebellions there were there against the Romans.

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## Cato

> That's still very low considering Romans killed/deported 80,000 rebels in one of their wars against the Sardinians, I still don't understand how can Sardinians be so similar to Neolithic Europeans considering how many bloody wars and rebellions there were there against the Romans.


IMO R1b and "yamnaya" admixture in Sardinia is more Bell Beaker than Roman. I believe that already Bonnanaro samples will show R1b-U152 and steppe admixture... will see

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## Angela

> That's still very low considering Romans killed/deported 80,000 rebels in one of their wars against the Sardinians, I still don't understand how can Sardinians be so similar to Neolithic Europeans considering how many bloody wars and rebellions there were there against the Romans.


The Romans were cost effective, practical conquerors, not overly influenced by emotion, except perhaps in the case of the Carthaginians. Why would they waste resources on some shepherds holed up on an inhospitable plain like the area around Ogliastra.

They probably also inflated the "kill" number, like the U.S. in Vietnam. I doubt they completely decimated the Celt-Ligures and the Apuani either. According to Luigi Cavalli Sforza they retreated to the northern Apennines and the Apuan Alps, from which some of them then returned later.

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## Ailchu

> The Romans were cost effective, practical conquerors, not overly influenced by emotion, except perhaps in the case of the Carthaginians. Why would they waste resources on some shepherds holed up on an inhospitable plain like the area around Ogliastra.
> 
> They probably also inflated the "kill" number, like the U.S. in Vietnam. I doubt they completely decimated the Celt-Ligures and the Apuani either. According to Luigi Cavalli Sforza they retreated to the northern Apennines and the Apuan Alps, from which some of them then returned later.


the kill numbers maybe but i wouldn't be so sure about the enslaved or deported numbers. they were kept low because otherwise the conquerors would have had to pay additional taxes. and back then noone conquered someone for emotional reasons for no reason. and the romans were not more practical or impractical conquereors than others. but when someone hurt their pride they got quite emotional. and they also never held back when someone did question their sovereignty.

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## Angela

> the kill numbers maybe but i wouldn't be so sure about* the enslaved or deported numbers. they were kept low because otherwise the conquerors would have had to pay additional taxes*.


I don't understand what you're saying there.

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## Ailchu

i ment to say that when a roman leader captured like 1000 slaves he maybe only captured 500 officially because they had to pay taxes for every captured and sold slave.

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## davef

> i ment to say that when a roman leader captured like 1000 slaves he only captured 500 officially because they had to pay taxes for every captured and sold slave.


A single leader had to pay that much? For each of the 500 slaves?

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## Angela

> i ment to say that when a roman leader captured like 1000 slaves he only captured 500 officially because they had to pay taxes for every captured and sold slave.


Please provide some documentation for that, and explain how that would mean it would be better not to inflate the number of slaves taken.

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## MOESAN

> The Romans were cost effective, practical conquerors, not overly influenced by emotion, except perhaps in the case of the Carthaginians. Why would they waste resources on some shepherds holed up on an inhospitable plain like the area around Ogliastra.
> 
> They probably also inflated the "kill" number, like the U.S. in Vietnam. I doubt they completely decimated the Celt-Ligures and the Apuani either. According to Luigi Cavalli Sforza they retreated to the northern Apennines and the Apuan Alps, from which some of them then returned later.


Agree with you. Caesar, it seems, inflated a bit the number of "his" vanquished people; and Sardinia, a stone surrounded by sea, has never been the land for huge demographic colonization, as its today population seem still showing; so, crossings, mixing, but not at a high scale. 
Celts in Eastern Andalusia? I dont think so. THis region had surely a denser pop than a lot of other regions of Spain, with long tradition of evolved cultures, among them CHA and BA El Argar I suppose come from East Mediterranea and not Steppes via North.
apart and answering other posts:
Mozarab is a linguistic term (not the best it's true) and was a latin dialect of central and southern Iberia under Muslims controle; it had some intermediary Ibero-latin traits but for I know had not the peculiarities shared by Galician and Portuguese; it conserved the initial F- as other Iberian dialects at the exception of Castillan (H-) but it is not a typical trait - I can go deeper in details if someone wants but it is not the very thread and others can surely do the same as me. Today Andaluse seems a Castillan dialect spoken by different people, with very different phonetic habits - 
For Urnfields, I don't know for Spain but in other parts of Western Europe it has implied pops moves and increase in demic densities, with some anthropologic traces from Northern-Central Europe in France Rhône region by example. Only Celts, not sure, I don't know. We can suppose they were Celtic speaking in Iberia, at least the elites, spite we can also suppose other Celts were arrived in Northern Spain already before them. Maybe a wave of archaic Celtic speakers, like in Ireland? Unsteady ground without proof.
According to some scholars, Iberic language would have had some Basque- or Aquitan-like loanwords as well as some Celtic loanwords.For me it could have been absent at first in Andalusia/Murcia... ATW a not negligeable number of words seem of a common origin in Basque and Iberic and general phonetical tendancies link both, with a slight opposition to Aquitanian; I wonder if the Iberic basis would not have been a far cousin of Aquitano-Basque or "Gasco-Aquitanian", with modern Basque being a Gasco-Aquitanian imported more recently into South the Pyrenees, and submitted there to common phonetic habits proper to some ancient Iberia folks and a bit different from the North Pyrenees habits?
I would be glad to can date the first apparition of the lineages of DF27 in Iberia; when and where?

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## davef

> i ment to say that when a roman leader captured like 1000 slaves he maybe only captured 500 officially because they had to pay taxes for every captured and sold slave.


Sounds like tax fraud, I'm sure punishment for that was harsh back then

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## Pygmalion

> The Romans were cost effective, practical conquerors, not overly influenced by emotion, except perhaps in the case of the Carthaginians. Why would they waste resources on some shepherds holed up on an inhospitable plain like the area around Ogliastra.
> 
> They probably also inflated the "kill" number, like the U.S. in Vietnam. I doubt they completely decimated the Celt-Ligures and the Apuani either. According to Luigi Cavalli Sforza they retreated to the northern Apennines and the Apuan Alps, from which some of them then returned later.


I wasn't talking about Ogliastra specifically but about the areas like the plains and the coasts where I expected to find more mainland Italian or Southern Italian like people, except for the coastal cities of the South which were already pacified after the first Punic war, the cities of the Western coast like Tharros and Cornus rebelled against the Romans and suffered major losses, Cornus was sacked if I remember correctly, Quintus Ennius himself fought in Sardinia during the second punic war. Also it is the Romans themselves that report seven triumphs against the Sardinians from the first punic war all the way into the end of the second century bc, and Ogliastra doesn't have plains it's all mountains. Silius Italicus later on even mentioned the duel between the Sardinian rebel Hostus and Ennius in a mythical fashion, Sardinia was full of mines and fertile plains so I can see why they bothered, saying that it was just "a rock in the sea" while Cicero reports that the island was one of three "granary of Rome" is misguided. Also the numbers might be somewhat inflated by the Romans but they even created the expression "Sardi venales" to designate goods at a low price since after their campaigns there was an enormous number of Sardinian slaves flooding the slave market.

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## Angela

> I wasn't talking about Ogliastra specifically but about the areas like the plains and the coasts where I expected to find more mainland Italian or Southern Italian like people, except for the coastal cities of the South which were already pacified after the first Punic war, the cities of the Western coast like Tharros and Cornus rebelled against the Romans and suffered major losses, Cornus was sacked if I remember correctly, Quintus Ennius himself fought in Sardinia during the second punic war. Also it is the Romans themselves that report seven triumphs against the Sardinians from the first punic war all the way into the end of the second century bc, and Ogliastra doesn't have plains it's all mountains. Silius Italicus later on even mentioned the duel between the Sardinian rebel Hostus and Ennius in a mythical fashion, Sardinia was full of mines and fertile plains so I can see why they bothered, saying that it was just "a rock in the sea" while Cicero reports that the island was one of three "granary of Rome" is misguided. Also the numbers might be somewhat inflated by the Romans but they even created the expression "Sardi venales" to designate goods at a low price since after their campaigns there was an enormous number of Sardinian slaves flooding the slave market.


Sardinian genetics wouldn't change because Sardinians were enslaved and taken off the island. Sardinian genetics would change if there were a folk migration onto the island. It didn't happen. At most there was some gene flow filtering down from Corsica to the northern tip, where you get some change in ydna, and there was some Carthaginian impact in the southwestern area. That's it. So, in those areas, the Sardinians are a bit closer to other populations. Still, overall, even in those areas, while they may have some additional steppe or West Asian, they're still pretty EEF. There's no getting away from it: if you want genetically isolated populations with a lot of drift there's nothing like high mountain valleys and islands.

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## Cato

> Agree with you. Caesar, it seems, inflated a bit the number of "his" vanquished people; and Sardinia, a stone surrounded by sea, has never been the land for huge demographic colonization, as its today population seem still showing; so, crossings, mixing, but not at a high scale. 
> 
> I would be glad to can date the first apparition of the lineages of DF27 in Iberia; when and where?


It's not as rocky as Corsica, there are huge plains in the western part, the Campidano and Nurra (the areas with R1b and moderate steppe admixture)

DF27 in Iberia IMO must be of Bell Beaker origin because Basques have it and especcialy if it came from the north only Bell Beakers could have brought it becuase there werent Urnfields or Celts in the Basque country

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## Angela

> It's not as rocky as Corsica, there are huge plains in the western part, the Campidano and Nurra (the areas with R1b and moderate steppe admixture)
> 
> DF27 in Iberia IMO must be of Bell Beaker origin because Basques have it and especcialy if it came from the north only Bell Beakers could have brought it becuase there werent Urnfields or Celts in the Basque country
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


I don't mean to be rude, but it's irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether there were folk migrations to Sardinia in later periods which might have changed the overall genomics. The answer is that there were no such recorded movements.

I also don't know where you get the idea that Sardinia, coast or plateau, was such a paradise for agriculturalists. It's not the Po Valley. Sardinians were extremely poor shepherds for most of their history.

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## Pygmalion

> I don't mean to be rude, but it's irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether there were folk migrations to Sardinia in later periods which might have changed the overall genomics. The answer is that there were no such recorded movements.


What do you mean there weren't folk migrations? What about the Roman colonists like the Patulcenses Campani near Esterzili, the Romans who founded Turris Libisonis and Forum Traiani and some Roman colonists also founded a settlement near the already extant city of Caralis.

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## Angela

> What do you mean there weren't folk migrations? What about the Roman colonists like the Patulcenses Campani near Esterzili, the Romans who founded Turris Libisonis and Forum Traiani and some Roman colonists also founded a settlement near the already extant city of Caralis.


I don't understand what you don't get. A few settlements, like the ones by the Carthaginians, as another example, do not a folk migration make. Are you proposing that the Sardinians who aren't from Ogliastra are really Carthaginians? There's some evidence of that ancestry in the south, but not enough to drastically change their make up.

The proof is in the genetics. They are an isolated, drifted population, even the ones who don't come from Ogliastra. Period.

They are not a good example of people who are descendants of the Romans.

Also, as my edited post above says, I don't know where you get the idea that Sardinia was a mecca for settlement. It is not, as I also said, the Po Valley. For most of their history, since the Nuragic period, really, the Sardinians have been mostly extremely poor shepherds. 

Now, I think we've gone off-topic for long enough.

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## Pygmalion

> I don't understand what you don't get. A few settlements, like the ones by the Carthaginians, as another example, do not a folk migration make. Are you proposing that the Sardinians who aren't from Ogliastra are really Carthaginians? There's some evidence of that ancestry in the south, but not enough to drastically change their make up.
> 
> The proof is in the genetics. They are an isolated, drifted population, even the ones who don't come from Ogliastra. Period.
> 
> They are not a good example of people who are descendants of the Romans.
> 
> Also, as my edited post above says, I don't know where you get the idea that Sardinia was a mecca for settlement. It is not, as I also said, the Po Valley. For most of their history, since the Nuragic period, really, the Sardinians have been mostly extremely poor shepherds. 
> 
> Now, I think we've gone off-topic for long enough.


Ok sorry for the OT, though I disagree since even after the Nuragic period the plains were extensively exploited by farmers in Carthaginian and Roman times.

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## Angela

> Of course there were folk migrations after the Cardial settlers and they have changed in part the genomics of the people there, except Ogliastra..20-25 % of R1b and 10% circa of steppe admixture in most of the island is a good evidence of that. i've read also of an extra CHG component in Sardinians compared to EEF
> 
> i've never wrote that it's like the Po Valley, i've just said that it's less rocky than Corsica. And i repeat, Campidano in particular is a huge and fertile plain exploited by the Punics and the Romans..
> 
> End of the OT
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Sorry, you don't get to post again to have the last word. Ydna changes don't mean proportional AUTOSOMAL changes. You should know that by now.

From Chiang...

"Also, discrepancies between Y chromosome and autosomal SNPs can arise fromaccelerated genetic drift on the Y chromosome, sex-biased migrations, or natural selection."

One of the goals of the Chiang study was to investigate the discrepancy between y Dna and autosomal dna.

As I said repeatedly before this paper ever came out, it is easier to get to Sardinia from the mainland than from Africa, or at least it was for millennia, because of wind and sea currents:
"Also, discrepancies between Y chromosome and autosomal SNPs can arise fromaccelerated genetic drift on the Y chromosome, sex-biased migrations, or natural selection. from neighboring mainland populations, with stronger isolation between Sardinia and NorthAfrica than mainland Europe (Figure 4B)."

You brought up the Chiang et al study, but you don't seem to have read it all that carefully:

"The isolation of Sardinia is especially evident in patterns of rare allele sharing. Using adoubleton sharing statistic, we also find that sharing between Sardinia and other mainlandpopulations is small (normalized sharing ratio typically between 0.03 to 0.25), lower even thanthat between continental populations (e.g. approximately 0.3 to 0.7 between African and EastAsian samples) (Figure S4). Within Sardinia, Arzana again shows evidence of being moreisolated, with low sharing of alleles to the mainland (Figure S4)."

Arzana is from the even more isolated internal "Gennargentu" area from which most of the HGDP samples come.

Also, "This relationship is corroborated by identity by-descent(“IBD”) tract length sharing, where among mainland European populations, FrenchBasque showed the highest median length of shared segments (1.525 cM) with Arzana." 

Not Romans, or Tuscans, or Piemontese despite the politics, and no, there was no Basque migration during recorded history. This is ANCIENT NEOLITHIC ERA similarity.

So, as I said, even the less isolated areas show no signal of extensive mixing with anyone else.

PART of Sardinia may have been fertile at one time. FOR MOST OF ITS HISTORY, MOST of Sardinia has been fit only for sheep. 

NOW the discussion is closed. If you want to continue it, just pm me and I will move these posts over to the thread on the Chiang paper. In fact, I may do so anyway to clean up this thread.

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## Cato

So is this table relevant or not ? I'm just asking, as i said several times i'm not an expert



> Attachment 9537


PS. Per quanto riguarda il messaggio privato offensivo che ho ricevuto e a cui non posso rispondere..mi spiace, mi confondi con qualcun altro..veramente, dico sul serio  :Thinking:  Cosa avrei scritto di così osceno? Basta aprire google earth per rendersi conto delle zone di pianura e di montagna e la tabella di Chiang qui sopra si trova nei supplementi, mica me la sono inventata io...mah
Comunque visto che "imbarazzo gli altri italiani" non posterò mai più, perchè è la seconda volta che subisco accuse infondate e farneticanti..

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## davef

I don't quite see how capturing Sardinians and taking them to Rome would impact their gene pool. If they mixed, they would've had to have gone back to sardinia to impact the gene pool, and there would have to be a lot of them. Just a thought

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## Ygorcs

> I wasn't talking about Ogliastra specifically but about the areas like the plains and the coasts where I expected to find more mainland Italian or Southern Italian like people, except for the coastal cities of the South which were already pacified after the first Punic war, the cities of the Western coast like Tharros and Cornus rebelled against the Romans and suffered major losses, Cornus was sacked if I remember correctly, Quintus Ennius himself fought in Sardinia during the second punic war. Also it is the Romans themselves that report seven triumphs against the Sardinians from the first punic war all the way into the end of the second century bc, and Ogliastra doesn't have plains it's all mountains. Silius Italicus later on even mentioned the duel between the Sardinian rebel Hostus and Ennius in a mythical fashion, Sardinia was full of mines and fertile plains so I can see why they bothered, saying that it was just "a rock in the sea" while Cicero reports that the island was one of three "granary of Rome" is misguided. Also the numbers might be somewhat inflated by the Romans but they even created the expression "Sardi venales" to designate goods at a low price since after their campaigns there was an enormous number of Sardinian slaves flooding the slave market.


I do not think the number of casualties alone is that important if there were no signs of subsequent mass migration into Sardinia. Instead, much like Romans did in Egypt or in Syria, they seemed to have ruled the newly conquered territory, not effectively colonized it. 

Even if the number of people Romans killed and enslaved for eventual international traffic was not very inflated (my hunch is that, yes, they were), that immediately caused a decline in the local population, but does not necessarily imply a relevant genetic replacement if the mainlanders remained a small political, military and bureaucratic elite, with most of the imperial strength exerted on Sardinians at distance. 

If they had killed 80,000 men, but, for instance, 240,000 men (including kids) still survived - almost genocidal proportions (1/3), which is quite unlikely -, and later some 4,000 Italian men (not an insignificant number for an island like Sardinia, so this is a moderate estimate) established in Sardinia for good (not just serving a few years at the military or governmental structure there), the ultimate genetic impact of that horrid slaughter would've still been minimal, less than 1.7%.

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## Pygmalion

I'm not denying the results I'm just saying that I expected the Sardinians to be more shifted towards the Levant like Sicily due to all the thriving Phoenician and especially Carthaginian settlements.

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## Angela

> So is this table relevant or not ? I'm just asking, as i said several times i'm not an expert


This table proves my points beautifully. 

LESS THAN 10% steppe ancestry even in the coastal areas which would have gotten inflow from "foreign" migrations. Lower than virtually any European population.

As for the WHG percentages, we've know for years that the Sardinians harbored some. As the years passed, farmer populations absorbed some WHG. 

As another poster has pointed out, admixture would be found because of gene flow INTO the island, not Sardinians moving OFF the island, voluntarily or not.

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## Cato

7-10% of steppe implies that at least 1/4 of their ancestry is post-neolithic, no? where is the mistake?

Scusa ma perchè mi accusi di cose inesistenti? mah buon proseguimento

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## Jovialis

> I'm not denying the results I'm just saying that I expected the Sardinians to be more shifted towards the Levant like Sicily due to all the thriving Phoenician and especially Carthaginian settlements.


Is this statement by you some kind of attempt at t-rolling?

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## Angela

> 7-10% of steppe implies that at least 1/4 of their ancestry is post-neolithic, no? where is the mistake?
> 
> Scusa ma perchè mi accusi di cose inesistenti? mah buon proseguimento


You still don't understand. I never said that there was NO impact from the mainland, Carthaginians, etc. I said it was MINIMAL, even in the areas most open to foreign intrusion. That's WHY all Sardinians are an isolated, drifted, population that comes closest to "Old Europe", before the steppe invasions. That's the basic conclusion of Chiang et al.

Ed. @Pygmalion,

As I've been trying to explain, a few largely male settlements are not going to have a huge impact on the overall genome. It's true though that some Yoruba like alleles show up in southern areas impacted by the Carthaginians, which makes sense now that we know that there was SSA in some North Africans even before the Arab slave trade of the early Middle Ages.

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## Pygmalion

> Is this statement by you some kind of attempt at t-rolling?


No, what gave you this impression?

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## Cato

> You still don't understand. I never said that there was NO impact from the mainland, Carthaginians, etc. I said it was MINIMAL, even in the areas most open to foreign intrusion. That's WHY all Sardinians are an isolated, drifted, population that comes closest to "Old Europe", before the steppe invasions. That's the basic conclusion of Chiang et al.


E io quando avrei scritto che questo infllusso genico post neolitico sui Sardi fu di grandi proporzioni ?? MAI! mai scritto ne pensato so benissimo che sono i più vicini agli agricoltori neolitici e non vedo nessun problema...e con questo chiudo, frequentavo solo questo forum in ogni caso, ti sei fatta strane idee..

Utilizzando Tapatalk

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## Angela

> E io quando avrei scritto che questo infllusso genico post neolitico sui Sardi fu di grandi proporzioni ?? MAI! mai scritto ne pensato so benissimo che sono i più vicini agli agricoltori neolitici e non vedo nessun problema...e con questo chiudo, frequentavo solo questo forum in ogni caso, ti sei fatta strane idee..
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Then we're in agreement.

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## Ailchu

> Sounds like tax fraud, I'm sure punishment for that was harsh back then


i read about this in a discussion about caesars de bello gallico. he had to pay a certain percentage of everything he earned during the war back to the roman state. and slaves were no exception.

sadly i coudln't find this anymore. but instead i found this. here the author also thinks that slavery numbers were exagerated however he thinks that they still are not representing the whole extent of slavery.
https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdf...del/050704.pdf

"
 We must bear in mind that while particular reports may well be exaggerated,
they nevertheless cumulatively understate the actual scale of slave-
making: tallies are provided in a haphazard fashion,
 focusing on the most notable events but 
neglecting minor operations or even entire theaters"

and slavery was pretty much one of the major reasons for romes conquests.

"Warfare and the enslavement of captives among third parties sustained most of the major ‘slave societies’ in world history – th
e Greek Aegean in antiquity, Islamic societies in 
the Middle East, and the colonial plantations systems of the Americas and South Africa in the 
modern period.
Nevertheless, from a world historical perspective, Roman slave society stands out for the 
crucial importance of the 
direct
 link between Roman campaigning and slaving: to a much greater 
extent than other slave-rich systems, Roman elit
es relied on their own military forces to procure a 
captive labor force."

so i wouldn't underestimate these numbers. but yes it's questionable how this should have affected the gene pool of conquered regions.

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## Pygmalion

Well, of course I wasn't arguing against the data, I agree with you. Sardinians are the closest population to Early European farmers, I was pointing out that from reading about the history of Sardinia without being aware of the current archaeogenetic studies one might get a completely different idea about the DNA of modern Sardinians. But I don't get what you meant by saying that since the Nuragic period Sardinians were mostly extremely poor shepherds. That's not what happened, agriculture improved noticeably during the the Nuragic period, with the introduction of viticulture, of two field crop rotation, of new exotic fruits like melons and mulberries, the cultivation of oats, wheat and barley, and of several legumes, the consumption of beer, wine and even distilled beverages, the finds of both wine and oil presses, the bread ovens, the votive statuettes being portrayed in many instances during the act of offering bread to the Gods; all these things suggest that agriculture played a big part in the Nuragic economy. The fact that during during the early iron age (9-8th century bc) the Nuragic Sardinians were the only population among those living West of Greece to export their food towards other regions (Iberia, North Africa, Etruria) in the form of big amphorae and drinking vessels containing wine, oil and other edible goods, doesn't go well with the idea that the they were mostly extremely poor shepherds, this means they at least by that period they had a food surplus. Even ignoring all of these finds, the fact alone that they were able to create several thousand stone monuments including a 12 meter high dome, a 27 meters high tower, temples built with elegant ashlar masonry, infrastructure such as roads, hydraulic engineering (drainage systems, a fountain, ritual pools, an aqueduct, cisterns, 30 meter deep wells), several hundred bronze statuettes and a good deal of life size stone statues, all this implies that the Nuragics couldn't have lived on extremely poor shepherds alone, agriculture was important to them, of course their agriculture wasn't even remotely close to that of the contemporary Near Eastern urban societies and not even to that of those of Greece, but still it was able to support an advanced society so extremely poor shepherds seems like an understatement to me.

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## Angela

> Well, of course I wasn't arguing against the data, I agree with you. Sardinians are the closest population to Early European farmers, I was pointing out that from reading about the history of Sardinia without being aware of the current archaeogenetic studies one might get a completely different idea about the DNA of modern Sardinians. But I don't get what you meant by saying that since the Nuragic period Sardinians were mostly extremely poor shepherds. That's not what happened, agriculture improved noticeably during the the Nuragic period, with the introduction of viticulture, of two field crop rotation, of new exotic fruits like melons and mulberries, the cultivation of oats, wheat and barley, and of several legumes, the consumption of beer, wine and even distilled beverages, the finds of both wine and oil presses, the bread ovens, the votive statuettes being portrayed in many instances during the act of offering bread to the Gods; all these things suggest that agriculture played a big part in the Nuragic economy. The fact that during during the early iron age (9-8th century bc) the Nuragic Sardinians were the only population among those living West of Greece to export their food towards other regions (Iberia, North Africa, Etruria) in the form of big amphorae and drinking vessels containing wine, oil and other edible goods, doesn't go well with the idea that the they were mostly extremely poor shepherds, this means they at least by that period they had a food surplus. Even ignoring all of these finds, the fact alone that they were able to create several thousand stone monuments including a 12 meter high dome, a 27 meters high tower, temples built with elegant ashlar masonry, infrastructure such as roads, hydraulic engineering (drainage systems, a fountain, ritual pools, an aqueduct, cisterns, 30 meter deep wells), several hundred bronze statuettes and a good deal of life size stone statues, all this implies that the Nuragics couldn't have lived on extremely poor shepherds alone, agriculture was important to them, of course their agriculture wasn't even remotely close to that of the contemporary Near Eastern urban societies and not even to that of those of Greece, but still it was able to support an advanced society so extremely poor shepherds seems like an understatement to me.


Do you get that you're agreeing with me not only about what ancient dna shows but about the cultural comment?

I said AFTER the Nuragic period, did I not? 

Perhaps you're of Sardinian ancestry and took my comment as some sort of insult? I assure you it was not. The south was mired in poverty too, partly because foreign invaders usually just saw these lands as milk cows and invested absolutely nothing in them, partly as a result that included in that was a total disregard for stewarding the land, and the ecological damage was extreme.

The common people in my own ancestral areas were poverty stricken since the fall of Rome. Recent archaeological work undertaken by Bryan Ward-Perkins, among others, shows that the standard of living around Luni, i.e. eastern Liguria/Toscana, didn't once again approach what it was under Rome until the very end of the 19th century. In my father's area it took even longer. They were at the top of the totem pole there, but most people were extremely poor until well into the 20th century. 

It's an unfortunate reality which I very much regret.

https://books.google.com/books/about...d=dPig9bm268sC

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## Pygmalion

> Do you get that you're agreeing with me not only about what ancient dna shows but about the cultural comment?
> I said AFTER the Nuragic period, did I not? 
> Perhaps you're of Sardinian ancestry and took my comment as some sort of insult? I assure you it was not. The south was mired in poverty too, partly because foreign invaders usually just saw these lands as milk cows and invested absolutely nothing in them, partly as a result that included in that was a total disregard for stewarding the land, and the ecological damage was extreme.
> The common people in my own ancestral areas were poverty stricken since the fall of Rome. Recent archaeological work undertaken by Bryan Ward-Perkins, among others, shows that the standard of living around Luni, i.e. eastern Liguria/Toscana, didn't once again approach what it was under Rome until the very end of the 19th century. In my father's area it took even longer. They were at the top of the totem pole there, but most people were extremely poor until well into the 20th century. 
> It's an unfortunate reality which I very much regret.


Sorry I misinterpreted your comment, I just wanted to clarify because many people aren't familiar with Sardinian prehistory and one might get the wrong idea. Of course Sardinia was very poor compared to the rest of Europe during the last two thousand years, and already by the time of the Roman empire it wasn't certainly a wealthy province as it was mostly rural and malaria stricken.

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## Angela

We've been discussing the Roman input into Sardinia. There may have been some, but I would bet none on the plateau from which the Sardinian academic pop gen samples come. 

Check out this map of the Roman administrative divisions before the incorporation of Liguria. That Sardinian region was left strictly alone.

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## Pygmalion

Yes, that's Ogliastra plus Barbagia, they were inhabited by highland populations who rebelled often and were known to plunder both other Sardinians and the people living in continental Italy, especially the inhabitants of Pisa.

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## Pygmalion

I wonder why Francalacci keeps pushing this story about Sardinians descending predominantly from Mesolithic Europeans because of their Y DNA when it is clear that most of their genome comes from Neolithic Anatolians. He's spreading misinformation in his interviews. He's also said that Oetzi came from the Caucasus because he had G2a.

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## Angela

> I wonder why Francalacci keeps pushing this story about Sardinians descending predominantly from Mesolithic Europeans because of their Y DNA when it is clear that most of their genome comes from Neolithic Anatolians. He's spreading misinformation in his interviews. He's also said that Oetzi came from the Caucasus because he had G2a.


That's really unfortunate if he's doing that because it's totally incorrect. Someone should really send him a list of papers and ask if he's read them.

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## Pax Augusta

Is this study still a pre-print? Has been this paper published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal?




> I wonder why Francalacci keeps pushing this story about Sardinians descending predominantly from Mesolithic Europeans because of their Y DNA when it is clear that most of their genome comes from Neolithic Anatolians. He's spreading misinformation in his interviews. He's also said that Oetzi came from the Caucasus because he had G2a.


Did he really say that? Well, not a surprise. Some Italian geneticist have a certain tradition of unfortunate statements.

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## ihype02

> We've been discussing the Roman input into Sardinia. There may have been some, but I would bet none on the plateau from which the Sardinian academic pop gen samples come. 
> 
> Check out this map of the Roman administrative divisions before the incorporation of Liguria. That Sardinian region was left strictly alone.


Messina (or Messana) was a Roman colony. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messina#History

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## Angela

> Messina (or Messana) was a Roman colony. 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messina#History


Messina has nothing to do with Sardinia. Why would you post about it here?

Furthermore, it was NOT a colony of Rome, as your own link makes clear. It was a colony of Greece allied with Rome.

You continue with your nonsense, t-rolling posts and you'll get infractions. Am I clear?

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## ihype02

> Messina has nothing to do with Sardinia. Why would you post about it here?
> 
> Furthermore, it was NOT a colony of Rome, as your own link makes clear. It was a colony of Greece allied with Rome.
> 
> You continue with your nonsense, t-rolling posts and you'll get infractions. Am I clear?


 Romans recolonised Zancle and renamed it Messina.
And yes I understand I went off topic.

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## Cato

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0215-8

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## Angela

> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0215-8
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


I appreciate the effort, but quite a few of our members would prefer to quote what they remember of ancient authors than do the rigorous work of reading and attempting to understand modern genetics papers.

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## berun

As per example myself, I have serious problems as I like to verify DNA data along historical infos. I'm traveling so I have not access to my PC but Y DNA shows some amounts of J's and African E's... but let genetists go alone without historians to check how much they can amaze us.

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## Cato

the new samples are avaiable, it would be interesting to know how they behave in the PCA compared to HGDP from Ogliastra 

IMO they are halfway between Ogliastra and Spanish Italians

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## davef

What's a Spanish Italian?

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## Cato

Spanish AND Italians 

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## Cato

from a new paper

PgmNr 2719/T: Investigating Sardinian population history with ancient DNA"
"...To gain further insight, we analyze genome-wide capture data (~1.2 millions SNPs) of 26 ancient Sardinians spanning the Neolithic, Copper Age, and Bronze Age, including individuals from Sardinia's Nuragic culture. Merging this novel data with 998 previously studied aDNA samples from across Europe and throughout the last ten millennia, we are able to place the ancient Sardinian samples into the broader context of the peopling of Europe. We confirm that ancient Sardinian samples show a strong affinity to early Neolithic samples and a near complete absence of the “Steppe” ancestry associated with Bronze Age expansions on the mainland. Interestingly, we also detect elevated affinities with pre-Neolithic peoples of Europe...."

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## Cato

the news is that they have found some steppe in nuragic sardinians (i suppose), probably less than 10%, despite they spoke a non indoeuropean language

and I M26 is mesolithic sardinian??? or they simply had extra WHG

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## Angela

> the news is that they have found some steppe in nuragic sardinians (i suppose), probably less than 10%, despite they spoke a non indoeuropean language
> 
> and I M26 is mesolithic sardinian??? or they simply had extra WHG
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Sorry,where are you getting 10%?

"*a near complete absence of the “Steppe” ancestry* associated with Bronze Age expansions on the mainland"

Also, as to the I-M26, if the blurb is correct, they don't have any Mesolithic samples; the earliest are from the Neolithic. So, all they could say, I think, is that it's a y lineage absorbed by Neolithic farmers, yes?

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## Cato

i said less than 10% it could be 2-3% i don't know

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> the news is that they have found some steppe in nuragic sardinians (i suppose), probably less than 10%, despite they spoke a non indoeuropean language
> 
> and I M26 is mesolithic sardinian??? or they simply had extra WHG
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Where is this news?

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## Cato

read the abstract, they say near complete abscence, so they have found something

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## Angela

The paper hasn't been published yet. Somebody got a hold of the abstract of a paper that got presented at a conference.

Near complete absence of steppe is near complete absence. In this case, the ancient dna supports what academics concluded by looking at the autosomal dna of the isolate population living in the Barbagia of Sardinia: they are our best modern proxy for the pre-Indo-European people of southern Europe.

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## halfalp

Near complete absence probably means related shared ancestry with steppe. I have hard time to imagine steppe dna in a nugaric context.

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## Cato

i don't because before them there were Beakers

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## halfalp

> i don't because before them there were Beakers
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Sardinia was Beaker before the Nugaric Civilization? Is it confirmed?

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## Cato

of course

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## Cato

if steppe in nuragics is 3% ex. then modern Sardinians from the coast with 9-10% steppe have a "lot" of ancestry from the Romans and other medieval colonists, somenthing like 20-30%

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## Angela

> if steppe in nuragics is 3% ex. then modern Sardinians from the coast with 9-10% steppe have a "lot" of ancestry from the Romans and other medieval colonists, somenthing like 20-30%
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Why limit it to Romans and medieval colonists? It's been a rather steady flow hasn't it?

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## Cato

Punics likely decreased it,...i forgot the piemontese rule

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## halfalp

Sardinia was conquered by Vandals at some point wich were accompanied by Alans, a steppic tribe, it could have played a role.

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## Angela

> Sardinia was conquered by Vandals at some point wich were accompanied by Alans, a steppic tribe, it could have played a role.


Sorry. Too quick on the draw.

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## Angela

> Sardinia was conquered by Vandals at some point wich were accompanied by Alans, a steppic tribe, it could have played a role.


A conquering horde passing through rarely has much impact. Look at the Hungarians. Even the Langobards didn't have a huge impact, and they were a folk migration.

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## Cato

there were some Vandal settlement on the island, for example a guy named Walderich, a landowner, asked to the Pope to return in Sardinia after the Byzantine conquest

I don't know if the few R1a there match with that of the Vandals, in any case at best their autosomal contribuition must be 1-2% 

Also probably the Byzantine enrolled Lombard soldiers to stay on the island

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## Wanderer

> A conquering horde passing through rarely has much impact. Look at the Hungarians. Even the Langobards didn't have a huge impact, and they were a folk migration.


The vandals didnt inhabit sardinia too long neither I think

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## Pygmalion

> there were some Vandal settlement on the island, for example a guy named Walderich, a landowner, asked to the Pope to return in Sardinia after the Byzantine conquest
> 
> I don't know if the few R1a there match with that of the Vandals, in any case at best their autosomal contribuition must be 1-2% 
> 
> Also probably the Byzantine enrolled Lombard soldiers to stay on the island
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


They did? I know for sure that during the byzantine period the Lombards tried to invade the island multiple times, and the byzantine fleet managed to sink the Lombards' when the Lombards tried to invade the island. There's a epigraph from Porto Torres/Turris Libisonis commemorating that victory over the invading barbarians, there's also a letter from the pope to the bishop of Cagliari where he warns him to prepare the defenses of the city to withstand the lombard invasion.

The Byzantines had a lasting influence in Sardinia, to the point that many institutions of the sardinian giudicati originated from those of the byzantine empire.
Even when the byzantine left the island in the 8th century AD we know from a series of written texts that there were still direct contacts between Sardinia and the Byzantines, one of the texts of the book of ceremonies of emperor Costantine VII is dedicated to the chants that the Sardinians serving as gaurdsmen in the palace of Byzantium would sing to the byzantine emperor after his victories, another text from the book of cerimoniis mentions the archon of Sardinia, to whom the emperor would give a diploma with a golden bull, and we know from another text that around 1010 AD a group of Sardinians lamented the fact that the pope had introduced the use of unleavened bread to the patriarch of Byzantium at Hagia Sophia. On the other side of the sea in Sardinia we have a series of greek documents dating to the 10th century AD and the early 11th century AD where the local rulers, though often bearing indigenous dynastic names (Nispella, Torbeno, Torchitorio, Salusio) also bore the byzantine titles of archon and protospatharios to legitimate their position.

http://veprints.unica.it/1021/1/PhD_..._Orr%C3%B9.pdf

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## Cato

The fibulae of the byzantine garrisons in Sardinia had germanic and avar ornaments not greek

https://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/10...ie-opt-sec.pdf

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## halfalp

> A conquering horde passing through rarely has much impact. Look at the Hungarians. Even the Langobards didn't have a huge impact, and they were a folk migration.


I didn't believe that much to what i say to be fair.

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## Aaron1981

I don't really know the history of Sardinia, but were the Beakers there related to the Mediterranean type or the Corded type? That would make a big difference.

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## uguns90

If the Barbagia population has little if any Bronze Age steppes, it is not only the closest population to pre-IE Southern Europe but also among the last population in the Mediterranean basin to have been "spared from" these newcomers as even neighbouring Berbers as well as Levantines have minor steppes ancestry.
The insular situation and the terrain seem to be again at play in isolating Sardinians from migrations despite being in a rather central location.

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## Angela

> If the Barbagia population has little if any Bronze Age steppes, it is not only the closest population to pre-IE Southern Europe but also among the last population in the Mediterranean basin to have been "spared from" these newcomers as even neighbouring Berbers as well as Levantines have minor steppes ancestry.
> The insular situation and the terrain seem to be again at play in isolating Sardinians from migrations despite being in a rather central location.


Well, upthread it was put at 3% in the Barbagia, and maybe 9-10% elsewhere. Those are indeed low numbers, but I don't know how much Berbers and Levantines have. 

There wasn't much worth risking your life for up there. The "natives" were practising "guerilla" tactics before the word was created. 

I was probably too "stingy" in my wording. They're not just the closest population to pre-IE Southern Europe but Central Europe as well, and even Britain.

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## Cato

error delete

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## Cato

> I don't really know the history of Sardinia, but were the Beakers there related to the Mediterranean type or the Corded type? That would make a big difference.


Both Maritime and Central European

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beak...ia?wprov=sfla1

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## edulofter

Jump to Modern and contemporary history - According to an 1882 census realised by the French engineer Leon Goüine, in the south-western Sardinian mines worked 10.000 miners, one third of which coming from the Italian mainland; most of them settled in Iglesias and frazioni .

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