# Population Genetics > Autosomal Genetics >  Mediterranean migration layers in Sicily and southern Italy

## Angela

Sarno, Boattini et al (interestingly, also Pagani and Spencer Wells)


*Ancient and recent admixture layers in Sicily and Southern Italy trace multiple migration routes along the Mediterranean*


See:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01802-4

Enough with the modern dna. Why don't they get hold of some of the teeth in all those ancient samples in Italy and partner with the Reich Lab or someone of equal stature?

Are they talking about Greek? Do Pagani and Wells know something about the Mycenaeans? It would be extraordinary if the warrior PIE culture par excellence turned out to be mostly Anatolian CHG!

This was obviously written before the Mathiesen et al paper on S. E. Europe. There was clearly CHG already in the Balkans in the LN/Chalcolithic and therefore perhaps in Italy as well, as I've always maintained. This is the problem with using modern instead of ancient dna.

I'll have to read the whole paper carefully at some point, including the citations and the source of the samples, to see if they read that Greek paper and used the same Peloponnesus samples. 

"The Mediterranean shores stretching between Sicily, Southern Italy and the Southern Balkans witnessed a long series of migration processes and cultural exchanges. Accordingly, present-day population diversity is composed by multiple genetic layers, which make the deciphering of different ancestral and historical contributes particularly challenging. We address this issue by genotyping 511 samples from 23 populations of Sicily, Southern Italy, Greece and Albania with the Illumina GenoChip Array, also including new samples from Albanian- and Greek-speaking ethno-linguistic minorities of Southern Italy. Our results reveal a shared Mediterranean genetic continuity, extending from Sicily to Cyprus, where Southern Italian populations appear genetically closer to Greek-speaking islands than to continental Greece. Besides a predominant Neolithic background, we identify traces of Post-Neolithic Levantine- and Caucasus-related ancestries, compatible with maritime Bronze-Age migrations. We argue that these results may have important implications in the cultural history of Europe, such as in the diffusion of some Indo-European languages. Instead, recent historical expansions from North-Eastern Europe account for the observed differentiation of present-day continental Southern Balkan groups. Patterns of IBD-sharing directly reconnect Albanian-speaking Arbereshe with a recent Balkan-source origin, while Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy cluster with their Italian-speaking neighbours suggesting a long-term history of presence in Southern Italy."

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## davef

I read bits and pieces, looking forward to reading more later. This looks very interesting

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## Angela

As I suspected they didn't get a chance to read Mathiesen et al which shows CHG already in the Balkans in the Late Neolithic/Chal, and they didn't read the paper on the genetics of the Peloponnesus by George Stamatoyannopoulos.(no citations)

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/e...35616.full.pdf

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v...hg201718a.html

They do have Peloponnesus samples which they collected themselves, but they're all from one spot in Achaea, somewhere called Tripotama. With all the diversity we saw in the other paper, how is that helpful? 

Oh well, I'll read it thoroughly when I get a chance, but I'm not expecting much.

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## Hauteville

Greek speaking Southern Pugliesi are genetically almost identical with locals non Greek speaking. Grecanici of Calabria are a bit different from local Calabresi. Arbereshe are quite different instead. I wanna see results of Gallo-romance speaking of Sicily and Basilicata...

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## Angela

So we know the locations:

Calabrian Greek:



Griko of the Salento


They're apparently saying they're indistinguishable from the surrounding people,so not descended from Byzantine Greeks.



Bova:


I wonder if that's where Raoul Bova's Calabrian half came from? :)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...02-4/figures/1

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## Hauteville

"We will refer to the former as Salentino Greeks 
(GRI_SAL) and to the latter as Calabrian Greeks (GRI_BOV and GRI_CAL). In particular (see also 
Fig. 1), since the sampling of Calabrian Greeks has involved two different areas of the Bovesia, we 
will use the acronym GRI_BOV to refer to those individuals specifically collected in the 
municipality of Bova (including Bova Marina), while GRI_CAL encompasses individuals sampled 
from the other Greek-speaking villages laying in the Aspromonte mountainous area of Bovesia (i.e. 
Roghudi, Gallician, Roccaforte del Greco and Condofuri)."

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## Angela

Arbereshe speaking areas of Italy:

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## Angela

I take it back, partly. They do have some ancient samples ; just not any ancient* Italian* samples, which is what we need.

Anyway, here's their PCA of Southern Italians, Sicilians, Greeks, Albanians, European Jews. Keep in mind all the Peloponnesus samples are from that one spot in Achaia. This is also only a PCA. Click to enlarge.

(see post number 9 for the graphic)

Do the Ashkenazim look the closest to Crete? 

Can someone get a clearer graphic?

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## Hauteville

This one?

upload immagini

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## Angela

> This one?
> 
> upload immagini


Thank-you. I think it needs to be flipped over to the left, though, doesn't it, so east and west are in the right place?

In addition to the problem with the Peloponnesus Greeks, it seems to me that depending on the Southern Italian group chosen, some are equidistant to Crete and the mainland. Others may be closer to the mainland. Of course, I don't know what some of those circles represent.

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## Aaron1981

While CHG and Iran_Neolithic are ultimately related, we knew there is some substructure here from the old Dienekes calculators, but they should not be confused. CHG is north European shifted and based on 13,000 skeletons from the Caucasus. Iran_Neolithic is based on far younger genomes, and within Europe is mostly isolated to Italy(esp South), the Balkans, and to a lesser extent eastern Europe. This late Bronze Age migration brought "Iran_Neolithic" to SEE, whether or not it was Indo European is another matter.

Recall how Italians and Greeks were getting much higher "West Asian" on the old Dienekes calculators? Recall how Iran_Neolithic appeared in the Bronze Age Levant?

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## Angela

> While CHG and Iran_Neolithic are ultimately related, we knew there is some substructure here from the old Dienekes calculators, but they should not be confused. CHG is north European shifted and based on 13,000 skeletons from the Caucasus. Iran_Neolithic is based on far younger genomes, and within Europe is mostly isolated to Italy(esp South), the Balkans, and to a lesser extent eastern Europe. This late Bronze Age migration brought "Iran_Neolithic" to SEE, whether or not it was Indo European is another matter.
> 
> Recall how Italians and Greeks were getting much higher "West Asian" on the old Dienekes calculators? Recall how Iran_Neolithic appeared in the Bronze Age Levant?


Did you perhaps mean to post this in the S. E. Europe thread?

Anyway, I always had respect for Dienekes' work, still do, but calculators based on modern, drifted populations are not the way to go to answer questions about population genetics, although Dienekes' gave some good clues for future research, unlike many others. In fact, I think he created them for that purpose.

I just posted this on the other thread; it's sort of where I am at this point.

"@ LeBrok, Bicicleur,

We were talking about the composition of Yamnaya:


"Iosif Lazaridis (Broad) said...
It's great to see the data already being analyzed and I hope it will be useful in your analyses!

I just wanted to leave a brief comment that the model of Steppe_EMBA as a mixture of EHG+CHG is rejected (Table S7.11), while that of EHG+Iran_ChL is not. Note that in Table S7.11 we are modeling Steppe_EMBA and the references with respect to 13 outgroup populations (the set O9ALNW), not all of which are included in the TreeMix graph. 

It is possible for some models to succeed with a particular set of outgroups (both EHG+CHG and EHG+Iran_ChL are feasible with only the O9 set of outgroups; Table S7.10), but for some of them to be rejected when additional outgroups are introduced (Table S7.11). As we mention further down, that doesn't mean there is no CHG-related ancestry in Steppe_EMBA as we can model it as a 3-way mixture involving CHG as one of the sources. What it does mean, however, is that CHG+EHG cannot be the only sources, as this model is rejected (Table S7.11). A further test of our overall model is that when we withhold Iran_ChL as a source, and infer mixture proportions by intersecting the EHG->Steppe_EMBA and Levant_N+Levant_BA clines (p. 134), we get fairly reasonable agreement (mixture proportions).

*We try to be cautious in our interpretation of the admixture models, because of three factors: (i) we don't know the geographical extent of populations like "CHG" or "Iran_ChL" so admixture from Iran_ChL does not imply admixture from geographical Iran or CHG from the geographical Caucasus, (ii) we do not have samples from many places and it's very likely that slightly different mixtures than the sampled populations existed elsewhere, (iii) it is possible that the actual history of admixture may be more complex than the simplest parsimonious models identified by the analysis.

Overall, our admixture analysis rejects several possible models (such as EHG+CHG) and thus puts constraints on what may have happened, and also proposes some models that are more resilient to rejection (such as EHG+Iran_ChL+CHG). But, by no means should these be regarded as the final word or unique solutions, but rather as one possible way that the data can be modeled."* 

I don't think they've found the specific population (s), or they hadn't at that time.
In the subject paper Mathiesen uses CHG + Iran Neolithic as the formulation for the group that moved into Anatolia and then into the Balkans in the Chalcolithic and then even more so in the Bronze Age. Now that may be the population only for this migration westward. The Reich Lab formulation for the group that mixed with the EHG to create Yamnaya may still be where Lazaridis left it, may be closer to this Mathiesen formulation, or may have changed based on samples they've discovered but not released. I just don't know. 

Ed.  Just X out the paragraph above. Mathiesen is saying the combination that went into the Balkans is the same as what went onto the steppe.

"In eastern Europe we document the appearance of CHG/Iranian Neolithic ancestry north of the Black Sea, and its eventual extension as far north as the Baltic. In some ways, this expansion parallels the expansion of Anatolian farmer ancestry into western Europe although it is less dramatic, and several thousand years later. These expansions set up the two, largely separate, populations in western and eastern Europe that would come together in the Final Neolithic and Early Bronze Age to form the ancestry of present-day Europe."

I would think Lazaridis would agree, but we'll have to wait for his new paper. Maybe they've found a new and slightly different Iranian farmer population.

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## LeBrok

> While CHG and Iran_Neolithic are ultimately related, we knew there is some substructure here from the old Dienekes calculators, but they should not be confused. CHG is north European shifted and based on 13,000 skeletons from the Caucasus. Iran_Neolithic is based on far younger genomes, and within Europe is mostly isolated to Italy(esp South), the Balkans, and to a lesser extent eastern Europe. This late Bronze Age migration brought "Iran_Neolithic" to SEE, whether or not it was Indo European is another matter.
> 
> Recall how Italians and Greeks were getting much higher "West Asian" on the old Dienekes calculators? Recall how Iran_Neolithic appeared in the Bronze Age Levant?


I think the same. Here is how I modeled Modern Italian few month ago. Just don't ask me why NW Italian, lol, I don't remember. To model South Italian obviously we would need more Anatolian/Armenian BA.


0.3


0.5


0.2







Remedello Average

F999933
BR2, J-M67
M536324
I1658

Modeled Italian

Modern NW Italian




Hungary, Ludas-Varjú-dűlő,
3.3kya

Armenia EBA

Composition




Run time


Run time
 15.13

Run time
 8.22

Run time


Run time


S-Indian
 -

S-Indian
 -

S-Indian
 0.27

S-Indian
 0.05

S-Indian
 -

Baloch
 -

Baloch
 3.15

Baloch
 25.53

Baloch
 6.68

Baloch
 6.00

Caucasian
 11.03

Caucasian
 14.73

Caucasian
 56.75

Caucasian
 22.02

Caucasian
 20.00

NE-Euro
 21.25

NE-Euro
 46.18

NE-Euro
 4.79

NE-Euro
 30.42

NE-Euro
 33.00

SE-Asian
 0.61

SE-Asian
 0.20

SE-Asian
 -

SE-Asian
 0.28

SE-Asian
 0.61

Siberian
 -

Siberian
 -

Siberian
 -

Siberian
 -

Siberian
 -

NE-Asian
 -

NE-Asian
 -

NE-Asian
 -

NE-Asian
 -

NE-Asian
 -

Papuan
 -

Papuan
 0.18

Papuan
 -

Papuan
 0.09

Papuan
 -

American
 -

American
 -

American
 -

American
 -

American
 -

Beringian
 -

Beringian
 -

Beringian
 -

Beringian
 -

Beringian
 -

Mediterranean
 60.61

Mediterranean
 31.73

Mediterranean
 5.88

Mediterranean
 35.22

Mediterranean
 34.00

SW-Asian
 5.50

SW-Asian
 3.33

SW-Asian
 6.45

SW-Asian
 4.60

SW-Asian
 6.00

San
 -

San
 -

San
 -

San
 -

San
 -

E-African
 -

E-African
 -

E-African
 -

E-African
 -

E-African
 -

Pygmy
 0.08

Pygmy
 -

Pygmy
 -

Pygmy
 0.03

Pygmy
 -

W-African
 0.92

W-African
 0.48

W-African
 0.33

W-African
 0.58

W-African
 -




And lets keep in mind that BR2 is already is modeled (by me) as EEF/WHG/and 15% Armenian BA.

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## davef

Greek Islanders are surprisingly distant from South Italians...weird. I've always felt that South Italians and Greek Islanders are pretty much the same.

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## Hauteville

> Greek Islanders are surprisingly distant from South Italians...weird. I've always felt that South Italians and Greek Islanders are pretty much the same.


There are of course some differences. We drift more western for more Sardinian-like admix, Greek islanders are more eastern for more Caucasian-like admix.

invia immagini

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## Hauteville

> Thank-you. I think it needs to be flipped over to the left, though, doesn't it, so east and west are in the right place?
> 
> In addition to the problem with the Peloponnesus Greeks, it seems to me that depending on the Southern Italian group chosen, some are equidistant to Crete and the mainland. Others may be closer to the mainland. Of course, I don't know what some of those circles represent.


Afaik the Peloponnese samples are only from Achaia and other from Geno 2.0. We need the samples of Stamatoyannopoulos and I wanna see samples from Campania (i.e Salerno, Napoli province) and Malta other than Gallo-Italics of Sicily and Basilicata, to have a clear genetic cline of Southern Italy and surroundings areas (Malta was part of Sicily for loads of centuries so I consider them a bunch of people with Southern Italian affinities as you know). Palermitan samples are from the Madonie which is a montainous area, not Palermitan citizens who are descendent of all Sicilians and mainland Italians.

PS: what do you think about the fact that Griko of Puglia (Salento) are a Southern Italian group while Greek-speaking Calabrese are a distinct group even from the local people of Reggio Calabria province?Isolation or what?

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## Monsieur

I'm very disappointed for two reasons:1) The study used Greek samples from GENO 2.0, who are almost all Greek Americans with self reported ancestries. No serious control has been made on those samples. That's extremely unreliable and inaccurate. Only the GRK cluster from Thessaly of Hellenthal et al is reliable. 2) The authors argue that modern South Italians have additional recent Levantine ancestry, assuming that modern Sardinians from the HGDP panel are a good proxy for Neolitich farmers. There is a problem though: Sardinians have quite a lot of additional WHG related ancestry not present in Anatolian farmers, who were much more Basal Eurasian rich and so Levantine like than any EEF. So there is no need to assume any "recent" MENA influence, beside the tiny (~4%) North African admixture present only in Sicily as for Sazzini et al.

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## Hauteville

It seems a Bronze Age introgression, not recent/historic.




> Besides a predominant Neolithic background, we identify traces of Post-Neolithic Levantine- and Caucasus-related ancestries, compatible with maritime Bronze-Age migrations.

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## Pax Augusta

> Greek Islanders are surprisingly distant from South Italians...weird. I've always felt that South Italians and Greek Islanders are pretty much the same.


They are not, why should they be pretty much the same? They have never been.

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## Pax Augusta

> I'm very disappointed for two reasons:1) The study used Greek samples from GENO 2.0, who are almost all Greek Americans with self reported ancestries. No serious control has been made on those samples. That's extremely unreliable and inaccurate. Only the GRK cluster from Thessaly of Hellenthal et al is reliable. 2) The authors argue that modern South Italians have additional recent Levantine ancestry, assuming that modern Sardinians from the HGDP panel are a good proxy for Neolitich farmers. There is a problem though: Sardinians have quite a lot of additional WHG related ancestry not present in Anatolian farmers, who were much more Basal Eurasian rich and so Levantine like than any EEF. So there is no need to assume any "recent" MENA influence, beside the tiny (~4%) North African admixture present only in Sicily as for Sazzini et al.


Not to mention that Sardinians from the HGDP panel hardly represent a true modern-day Sardinian average.

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## Monsieur

The authors also seem to have a poor understanding of georgraphy. According to the SUPP tables, they have included the Greek samples of Behar et al 2013, who are from Thessaly and Central Greece, in their Northern Greek cluster, alongside the self-reported "Greek" customers of GENO 2.0. Their "Peloponnesus" cluster is made of only samples from GENO 2.0, and that would explain why it is so different from actual Greek Peloponnesians of Paschou et al 2014 and Stamatoyannopoulos et al 2017.

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## Angela

> Afaik the Peloponnese samples are only from Achaia and other from Geno 2.0. We need the samples of Stamatoyannopoulos and I wanna see samples from Campania (i.e Salerno, Napoli province) and Malta other than Gallo-Italics of Sicily and Basilicata, to have a clear genetic cline of Southern Italy and surroundings areas (Malta was part of Sicily for loads of centuries so I consider them a bunch of people with Southern Italian affinities as you know). Palermitan samples are from the Madonie which is a montainous area, not Palermitan citizens who are descendent of all Sicilians and mainland Italians.
> 
> PS: what do you think about the fact that Griko of Puglia (Salento) are a Southern Italian group while Greek-speaking Calabrese are a distinct group even from the local people of Reggio Calabria province?Isolation or what?


The paper attempts to explain it as a function of extreme drift because of isolation. I'm not familiar with the Bovesia at all. Is it all that isolated?

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## oreo_cookie

Here is the admixture chart. From this, you can clearly see that Crete is by far the closest Greek sample to the Sicilian samples, the difference being slightly higher Caucasus and slightly lower Near Eastern (compare Crete to the Palermitan sample two bars over for instance). Also, Trapani seems an outlier for Sicily, with more "European" like admixture and the lowest affinity to the Caucasus. 

The Dodecanese sample (Greek_AEI) has even higher Caucasus and even lower Near Eastern.



Here is another PCA where the Greek islands/South Italy relationship is more obvious.







> The paper attempts to explain it as a function of extreme drift because of isolation. I'm not familiar with the Bovesia at all. Is it all that isolated?




Geographically no, but the Griko have fiercely held onto their culture and language and have thus remained a closed community, though they have been abandoning Greek and shifting to Italian especially among the younger generations. The genetic drift is likely caused in part by cultural preservation and not marrying out, rather than geography.

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## Angela

I have to take a look at the rest of the paper later today. However, if their samples and assumptions are questionable, then it calls the results into some question.

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## oreo_cookie

I looked at the samples and I didn't see too much strange except I question not having a southern Peloponnesian sample like Mani/Laconia in there. Based on other studies results, if that was in there it would show a smoother continuum from mainland Greece to South Italy and islands, while right now the transition looks abrupt and broken. Also would have been nice to have the North Aegean or Cyclades islands in there, as far as I know they're always left out and the Dodecanese is used to represent the entire Aegean other than Crete. 

My guess is if Mani and the North Aegean were sampled, there would be a clearer continuum from northern Greece to South Italy/Crete and eventually the Dodecanese. 

I also would have liked to know specifically where in Enna the sample came from, to know if it is from a Lombard area or not, as this would hint as to whether Sicilian Lombards are actually genetically Lombard, or only culturally and linguistically so. As far as the issue someone mentioned above with the Palermitan sample, I don't see why. They sampled a rural area of Palermo province that has not received so much migration from the rest of the island or from the mainland, wouldn't this be a good thing?

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## LeBrok

Here is a comparison of Greeks to South Italians in GedMatch Harappa World. There is quite a difference between Greek Islanders and Mainlanders. (Surprisingly they don't like mixing ;). Anyway the closest to South Italians are Mixed Greeks, which is shown as Greek mean. South Italians and Sicilians are almost identical so I didn't bother to differentiate.

HarappaWorld GedMatch
Number of Samples
S-Indian
Baloch
Caucasian
NE-Euro
SE-Asian
Siberian
NE-Asian
Papuan
American
Beringian
Mediterranean
SW-Asian
San
E-African
Pygmy
W-African

Greek, mainland
3
 -
 6
 32
 25
-
-
-
-
-
-
 26
 11
-
-
-
-

Greek, Islands
5
 -
 9
 38
 14
-
-
 1
-
-
-
 23
 14
-
-
-
-




















Greeek, Mean
8
 -
 8
 35
 19
-
-
-
-
-
-
 25
 12
-
-
-
-

Italy, South
5
-
 8
 32
 17
-
-
-
-
-
-
 27
 13
-
 1
-
-



We can see that there is not a huge difference between Greek Mean and South Italian. Greeks have definitely more Anatolian Bronze/Iran Ch/CHG with higher Caucasian and Lower Med. Which is logical being closer to the source. This makes S Italians being more EEF. Also we can see Slavic migration/WHG/Steppe influence in higher NE Euro in Greece, especially Mainland Greece.

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## oreo_cookie

> Here is a comparison of Greeks to South Italians in GedMatch Harappa World. There is quite a difference between Greek Islanders and Mainlanders. (Surprisingly they don't like mixing ;). Anyway the closest to South Italians are Mixed Greeks, which is shown as Greek mean. South Italians and Sicilians are almost identical so I didn't bother to differentiate.


There are some Sicilians, Calabrese, and people from southern Campania (Salerno) who score similarly to the Greek Islands averages above. If you made a southern Calabria/eastern Sicily sample this would occur, as well as SOME Palermitans.

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## spartan owl

> So we know the locations:
> 
> Calabrian Greek:
> 
> 
> 
> Griko of the Salento
> 
> 
> ...


calabria is a mountainous region so the isolation is both cultural and geografical.
This is proven by the fact that in calabria there are six major italian dialects plus grico plus arberese plus some occitan.
One other point that i want to make is that of course the griko of salento are indistinguishable from other salentines.
For what reason the byzantines would have to bring troops in great numbers from anatolia and not use the local population who were greek or latin speakers and they were loyal to the empire anyway.At least for the local peace keeping militia that should be the case.
And why are you viewing the empire as only as anatolian-greek and not as italian-greek as well?Griko salentines were as much byzantines as the constantinopolitans.

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## New Englander

> There are some Sicilians, Calabrese, and people from southern Campania (Salerno) who score similarly to the Greek Islands averages above. If you made a southern Calabria/eastern Sicily sample this would occur, as well as SOME Palermitans.


Can we get some Salerno samples?

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## Hauteville

> Can we get some Salerno samples?


I have a match with a guy of Scafati. If you want I can send you his kitnumber.

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## Azzurro

> I'm very disappointed for two reasons:1) The study used Greek samples from GENO 2.0, who are almost all Greek Americans with self reported ancestries. No serious control has been made on those samples. That's extremely unreliable and inaccurate. Only the GRK cluster from Thessaly of Hellenthal et al is reliable. 2) The authors argue that modern South Italians have additional recent Levantine ancestry, assuming that modern Sardinians from the HGDP panel are a good proxy for Neolitich farmers. There is a problem though: Sardinians have quite a lot of additional WHG related ancestry not present in Anatolian farmers, who were much more Basal Eurasian rich and so Levantine like than any EEF. So there is no need to assume any "recent" MENA influence, beside the tiny (~4%) North African admixture present only in Sicily as for Sazzini et al.


They do have some recent Levantine like ancestry, its not all Bronze Age, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean for over 500 years, not only slaves but even auxiliaries and merchants could have brought Levantine like ancestry, in addition there was also Jewish communities established in Italy since the late Republic era. Italy has the most diverse Y in all of Europe, its not a coincidence.

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## Angela

> It seems a Bronze Age introgression, not recent/historic.


We won't know the story until we get ancient dna from Italy, but from Mathiesen et al 2017 we know it began appearing in the Balkans in the Late Neolithic/ Chalcolithic, which anyone who knew anything about the archaeology would have suspected. We'll see if it's the same for Italy.

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## New Englander

> I have a match with a guy of Pagani. If you want I can send you his kitnumber.


Yes, if you can send me the kit number, I would appreciate it. That is my surname (Salerno), and my family came from the area. Id be curious to see if I matched as well.

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## Angela

> Here is the admixture chart. From this, you can clearly see that Crete is by far the closest Greek sample to the Sicilian samples, the difference being slightly higher Caucasus and slightly lower Near Eastern (compare Crete to the Palermitan sample two bars over for instance). Also, Trapani seems an outlier for Sicily, with more "European" like admixture and the lowest affinity to the Caucasus. 
> 
> The Dodecanese sample (Greek_AEI) has even higher Caucasus and even lower Near Eastern.
> 
> 
> 
> Here is another PCA where the Greek islands/South Italy relationship is more obvious.
> 
> 
> ...


From what I have read so far, the biggest difference between the Grecanico speakers and the Griko speakers is indeed the geographical isolation of the former. Now, if you can find an academic source that says otherwise I'd be very interested. What I don't find probative is broad generalizations based on no data. Unless perhaps, suddenly, a Griko speaker from the Salento moved to the right of you and a Grecanico speaker from Calabria moved to the left of you, and they explained to you in detail their linguistic and social history?

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## Angela

> calabria is a mountainous region so the isolation is both cultural and geografical.
> This is proven by the fact that in calabria there are six major italian dialects plus grico plus arberese plus some occitan.
> One other point that i want to make is that of course the griko of salento are indistinguishable from other salentines.
> For what reason the byzantines would have to bring troops in great numbers from anatolia and not use the local population who were greek or latin speakers and they were loyal to the empire anyway.At least for the local peace keeping militia that should be the case.
> *And why are you viewing the empire as only as anatolian-greek and not as italian-greek as well?Griko salentines were as much byzantines as the constantinopolitans.*


 I wasn't aware that I was.

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## Maciamo

I haven't read the paper yet, but I am quite disappointed by the poor resolution of the charts provided. Reading the paper in html version the images are so small that it's not possible to see any names. Why didn't they provide higher quality picture which could be opened in full screen? The only way to see anything is to check the supplementary information in PDF. But even then, zooming at the maximum, the names are still fuzzy. They should also have provided a list of the abbreviations used, so that readers don't have to search the paper for each one of them every time. It's definitely not a user-friendly paper. 

Unless I didn't check well, it seems that they didn't even bother providing Y-DNA results, which is a shame for a study of that scale. It would have been a great opportunity to study of fine-scale regional variations in Y-DNA within Greece and Albania in particular (since southern Italy has already been studied extensively).

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## Hauteville

> They do have some recent Levantine like ancestry, its not all Bronze Age, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean for over 500 years, not only slaves but even auxiliaries and merchants could have brought Levantine like ancestry, in addition there was also Jewish communities established in Italy since the late Republic era. Italy has the most diverse Y in all of Europe, its not a coincidence.


The study don't say nothing about recent admixture of Jews or Levantine Slaves. A total myth.

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## Hauteville

Enna samples cannot be from a Lombard-speaking town but from Enna city. This study also made a comparison with linguistic minorities of Southern Italy compared to local groups. They know that there are Gallo-Italic towns in Enna province (as well as Messina etc).

----------


## binx

> This is proven by the fact that in calabria there are six major italian dialects plus grico plus arberese plus some occitan.


The Occitans, are there still many in Calabria? 





> They do have some recent Levantine like ancestry, its not all Bronze Age, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean for over 500 years, not only slaves but even auxiliaries and merchants could have brought Levantine like ancestry, in addition there was also Jewish communities established in Italy since the late Republic era. Italy has the most diverse Y in all of Europe, its not a coincidence.



This sounds like the typical fairy tale about Italy based more on commonplace than on certain data. Italy is over-studied, if other countries were studied like Italy, they would show a diversity in Y-DNA not so different.

I think Italy has always been genetically a diverse country, it's hard to believe that slaves, auxiliaries, merchants and Jewish communities may have completely changed the genome of all Italy.

----------


## oreo_cookie

> Enna samples cannot be from a Lombard-speaking town but from Enna city. This study also made a comparison with linguistic minorities of Southern Italy compared to local groups. They know that there are Gallo-Italic towns in Enna province (as well as Messina etc).


This is what I think because the Enna sample is indistinguishable from the other Sicilians and Calabrese (except Trapani). They should have sampled Gallo-Italic speakers as well. 

They also could have gone to Corleone in Palermo province for that, too. It is a well known town and has Lombard roots.

----------


## Pax Augusta

> This is what I think because the Enna sample is indistinguishable from the other Sicilians and Calabrese (except Trapani). They should have sampled Gallo-Italic speakers as well. 
> 
> They also could have gone to Corleone in Palermo province for that, too. It is a well known town and has Lombard roots.



Only a Corleone neighborhood was Lombard, Corleone has never been a completely Lombard city. The same in Enna.

----------


## Pax Augusta

> The paper attempts to explain it as a function of extreme drift because of isolation. I'm not familiar with the Bovesia at all. Is it all that isolated?


Yes, it is. Aspromonte, as you can see, it's a mountainous sub-region.

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## Hauteville

> The Occitans, are there still many in Calabria?


They live only in one city of Calabria, the name is Guardia Piemontese.

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## spartan owl

> I wasn't aware that I was.


sorry but i thought you were because of this statement:They're apparently saying they're indistinguishable from the surrounding people,so not descended from Byzantine Greeks.
sorry again but i am biased because i know from personal experience that south italians even if they are fully embracing their ancient greek past tend to think byzantines more like conquerers rather than a part of their ancestry that they should be proud of.

----------


## Hauteville

> This is what I think because the Enna sample is indistinguishable from the other Sicilians and Calabrese (except Trapani). They should have sampled Gallo-Italic speakers as well. 
> 
> They also could have gone to Corleone in Palermo province for that, too. It is a well known town and has Lombard roots.


There are only Ennesi from the city, and Northern Italians in Enna did settled only as a soldiers. Lombard city are Piazza Armerina, Sperlinga, Novara di Sicilia, San Fratello who are not sampled. But they should be investigated as well in the future.

----------


## Hauteville

Greek_AEI seems not only from Dodecaneso. They are called Anatolian and Dodecanese Greeks. The point in the map is a northern position than Dodecanese, maybe they are a mix of Aegean Islanders.  :Good Job:

----------


## Angela

> The Occitans, are there still many in Calabria? 
> 
> This sounds like the typical fairy tale about Italy based more on commonplace than on certain data. Italy is over-studied, if other countries were studied like Italy, they would show a diversity in Y-DNA not so different.
> 
> I think Italy has always been genetically a diverse country, it's hard to believe that slaves, auxiliaries, merchants and Jewish communities may have completely changed the genome of all Italy.


There are, according to this, very few Occitan speakers left. It's predicted to disappear in a generation.

It was brought by Piemontese Waldensians.
https://www.uoc.edu/euromosaic/web/d.../an/i3/i3.html

As to your other comments, I very much agree. It's an unfortunate fact about this hobby and even discipline that it's riddled with racists and Nordicists of various stripes. There are whole sites full of them, They're always obsessed with slaves from Anatolia or the Levant or North Africa, but never mention the hundreds of thousands of Gauls, Germans, Britons, Pannonians and on and on. Nor do they ever explain how this correlates with the Italian cline. Did a memo go out to every slave trader in the Empire: Send all slaves to Italy; furthermore, all West Asian slaves go to Southern Italy, and all Northern and Central European slaves go north Of Rome? Just as an aside, Caesar captured so many Gauls that there was a glut on the market and prices plummeted. Still, it was enough to buy the masses and therefore ultimate power.

Coincidentally, Razib Khan has a blog post up with which I largely agree, and not because of any fellow feeling based on the fact that we're both Cavalli-Sforza nerds and read the same books. :) 

See:

"The Orantes Has Not Mixed Much With The Tiber"
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/05/17/the-...ith-the-tiber/

It's well worth reading, including the comments. Note that "North Italians" in his blog post as in the Sarno paper means basically Toscana and north.

----------


## Angela

> sorry but i thought you were because of this statement:They're apparently saying they're indistinguishable from the surrounding people,so not descended from Byzantine Greeks.
> sorry again but i am biased because i know from personal experience that south italians even if they are fully embracing their ancient greek past tend to think byzantines more like conquerers rather than a part of their ancestry that they should be proud of.


That may just be the people to whom you speak. :) My husband is southern Italian, was a Classics student at university, and has some ancestors who spoke Grecanico and were Greek Orthodox until a few centuries ago. He's proud of all of it. My region of Italy was part of the reconquest only for a short period of tlme, but in eastern Italy, like Ravenna, for example, the Empire left a rich patrimony.

The fact remains, however, that the Empire was, in some sense, a conquering state in Italy, even if the goal was to take Italy* back*. Foreign troops did get sent there. Of course, locals would also have joined to fight the Germans, and later the Saracens, as well as serving in the local militia.

Basically, it was different from the Classical Era when the city states, although settled from Greece, were independent and made decisions in their own self-interest. Belisarius and the highest civilian rulers were making decisions based on the good of the Empire as a whole, not the good of southern Italy. Taxation was ruinous, the administration not always good. Then, while I'm pretty sure the sentiment was, better to be part of the Empire than under the Lombards, The Gothic War devastated Italy more than the Germanic invasions...lots of taxation, lots of devastation, lots of carnage, and then left to the Langobardi and the Saracens. 

As to how people identified, I think it probably varied by area. In Liguria, only recaptured for a short time, and never Greek speaking, I think the identification was probably pretty shallow. In southern Italy where it lasted for along time and there were lot of Greek speakers, I' m sure it was deeper.

As to how close the people of Puglia and Calabria of that time (pre-and post Gothic War) were, genetically, to the people or Greece , I don't know. We need a dna.

----------


## Hauteville

Stefania Sarno send me a message about the samples. Ennesi are not of course Gallo-Italic (but soon Gallo-Italics and Franco-Provenzals should be sampled as well) and Greek Islanders are not only from Dodecaneso but a mix of Aegean Islanders. Here the complete text.

url immagine

----------


## Azzurro

> The study don't say nothing about recent admixture of Jews or Levantine Slaves. A total myth.


It's not a total myth, its a fact there is some recent Middle Eastern dna in Italians, the only myth is that it is all Bronze Age, its funny how Germanic dna can be viewed as recent but not Middle Eastern is that not hypocrisy?

----------


## Azzurro

> The Occitans, are there still many in Calabria? 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This sounds like the typical fairy tale about Italy based more on commonplace than on certain data. Italy is over-studied, if other countries were studied like Italy, they would show a diversity in Y-DNA not so different.
> 
> I think Italy has always been genetically a diverse country, it's hard to believe that slaves, auxiliaries, merchants and Jewish communities may have completely changed the genome of all Italy.


A typical fairy tale lol? Italy is not overstudied, in comparison to British Isles and Germans, Italians are really under sampled, and Germans and British Isles don't show the same diversity as Italy in terms of Y. I never said completely changed if you look at what I said in the quote that quoted me on I said some, that's a huge difference. Italy has been getting constant gene flow since the neolithic and it really only stopped after Renaissance. With little exceptions of Arbereshe and Molise Croat communities.

----------


## oreo_cookie

To those who think that the Near Eastern in southern Italy is all from the Bronze Age, explain why it (the red component) is higher in southern Italy, especially Sicily and Calabria, than in the Aegean islanders. If anything given that all of the populations, even mainland southern Balkanites, have roughly similar amounts of the Caucasian element but very different for the Near Eastern, suggests to me the former is part of the genetic base and the latter is a more recent, intrusive element.

----------


## Azzurro

> To those who think that the Near Eastern in southern Italy is all from the Bronze Age, explain why it (the red component) is higher in southern Italy, especially Sicily and Calabria, than in the Aegean islanders. If anything given that all of the populations, even mainland southern Balkanites, have roughly similar amounts of the Caucasian element but very different for the Near Eastern, suggests to me the former is part of the genetic base and the latter is a more recent, intrusive element.


Makes total sense what your saying, it matches with history and what we are seeing in Y diversity in Italy!! but hey it might be a "Myth" lol

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## Angela

> It's not a total myth, its a fact there is some recent Middle Eastern dna in Italians, the only myth is that it is all Bronze Age, its funny how Germanic dna can be viewed as recent but not Middle Eastern is that not hypocrisy?


Do you perhaps have a preview paper of the results from ancient Italian dna, results properly analyzed and interpreted, safely hidden underneath your pillow? Or do you have a crystal ball? Perhaps a time machine?


Plus, please do not resort to straw man arguments. Do you know what that is?

I don't see anyone here posting that there is *no* recent Middle Eastern dna in parts of Italy, depending on how you define "recent". I certainly never have. I don't subscribe to fantasies like those of our Iberian Nordicist former colleagues that you can have centuries of a folk migration by people who aren't poor refugees but who are the ruling power, and excise every last bit of that dna from your country by signing some expulsion orders. I wouldn't be surprised to find a perhaps 5% impact from the Saracens in Sicily and parts of the southern mainland, maybe a bit more. That might be enough to pull SSI a bit away from mainland Greece. We'll see. I assure you that the idea doesn't fill me with horror. Nor does it fill me with horror to think I have ancestry from Crete, quite the opposite in fact. The Minoans and the Etruscans are my favorite ancient civilizations.

Neither has anyone, including me, said it *all* came from the Bronze Age. You should read more carefully, and should be careful from whom you take instruction. Going to some people for population genetics information is like trying to get information about astronomy from an astrologer.

The fact remains that in addition to prior work done by academics on certain markers, we now have ancient dna from the Balkans showing that there was genetic flow from the Caucasus/Anatolia into that region beginning not in the Bronze Age but in the Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic. Did you not read the Mathiesen paper? Now that isn't proof the same exact thing happened in Italy, but considering what we know about migration flows in the Med, I'd say it's a good bet. However, we can't be sure about anything until we get the ancient dna.

I am warning both you and Sikelliot once and once only. Spamming of the same comment/opinion/straw man arguments over and over again without data will result in deletion of such posts and infractions. This thread is not going to turn into a repeat of the Greek paper one. You've made your points, such as they are; now move on.

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## Angela

> Stefania Sarno send me a message about the samples. Ennesi are not of course Gallo-Italic (but soon Gallo-Italics and Franco-Provenzals should be sampled as well) and Greek Islanders are not only from Dodecaneso but a mix of Aegean Islanders. Here the complete text.
> 
> url immagine


Thank you Hauteville.

What a pity this group partnered with Spencer Wells. He may be an expert on uniparental markers, but this autosomal analysis could largely have been done ten years ago. It's just like Dienekes' old calculator, only maybe worse. In fact, it's the Geno 2.0 version of autosomal dna, with all of that system's failings. That's also the problem with some of the samples; they're Geno 2.0 self reported ancestry samples, probably mostly from America.

We should be far beyond running modern drifted components through calculators or even applying d-stats to them.

It's actually embarassing.

----------


## oreo_cookie

> I am warning both you and Sikelliot once and once only. Spamming of the same comment/opinion/straw man arguments over and over again without data will result in deletion of such posts and infractions. This thread is not going to turn into a repeat of the Greek paper one. You've made your points, such as they are; now move on.


My opinions in this particular thread were stated once each, not repetitively.

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## Cato

Southern & Central Italy received Anatolian influences since the Chalcolitic..(ex. https://books.google.it/books?id=bvb...page&q&f=false) Gaudo, Rinaldone and other similar Copper Age cultures are traditionaly associated with warrior-shepherds coming from the East Med. of a different stock (tall, short heads..CHG?) compared to the locals (short, long heads..typical EEFs)




> Lo studio del materiale osteologico, frammentario e non sempre in un buon stato di
> conservazione, ha suggerito la presenza di un* substrato mediterranoide di tipo arcaico* quale
> testimonianza di vecchie popolazioni di *ascendenza paleo-mesolitica* già presenti su tutto il
> territorio italiano (Mallegni, 1985). In particolare si riscontra un’affinità con i neolitici della
> Liguria anche se nella Toscana centrale il fenomeno è mascherato dalla presenza di maggior
> *brachicefalia dovuta ad apporti genetici di popolazioni molto probabilmente dell’Italia
> meridionale* (Mallegni, 1985).

----------


## Pax Augusta

> Southern & Central Italy received Anatolian influences since the Chalcolitic..(ex. https://books.google.it/books?id=bvb...page&q&f=false) Gaudo, Rinaldone and other similar Copper Age cultures are traditionaly associated with warrior-shepherds coming from the East Med. of a different stock (tall, short heads..CHG?) compared to the locals (short, long heads..typical EEFs)


Gaudo and, especially, Rinaldone are traditionaly associated with Remedello (EEF), and then, afterwards, with newcomers, warrior-shepherds coming from the *Balkans* (Vucedol, according to Laviosa Zambotti, southern Balkans according to modern-day scholars), while Remedello differed because it had other influences from Western Europe. These newcomers from the Balkans could have been originally from the East Med/Aegean area, but they first settled in the Balkans.




> Among the main cultures of the early Aeneolithic Central Italy, the facies of Rinaldone shows many elements of correlations with the contemporaneous cultural assemblages of the nearby Balkan district. The aim of this paper is to re-assess the picture of chronological synchronisms, as well as the affinities of the pottery assemblage, of the early Aeneolithic Rinaldone culture, that has been matter of specific studies in the last five years (Cultraro 2001; Cazzella 2003). The new picture shows the close affinities among the early Aeneolithic cultures and the Late Chalcolithic Period of the Epirus and South Balkans, date in calibrated chronologies to the last part of the fourth Millennium B.C. (literal)


http://data.cnr.it/data/cnr/individuo/prodotto/ID185125

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## Azzurro

> Do you perhaps have a preview paper of the results from ancient Italian dna, results properly analyzed and interpreted, safely hidden underneath your pillow? Or do you have a crystal ball? Perhaps a time machine?
> 
> 
> Plus, please do not resort to straw man arguments. Do you know what that is?
> 
> I don't see anyone here posting that there is *no* recent Middle Eastern dna in parts of Italy, depending on how you define "recent". I certainly never have. I don't subscribe to fantasies like those of our Iberian Nordicist former colleagues that you can have centuries of a folk migration by people who aren't poor refugees but who are the ruling power, and excise every last bit of that dna from your country by signing some expulsion orders. I wouldn't be surprised to find a perhaps 5% impact from the Saracens in Sicily and parts of the southern mainland maybe more. We'll see. I assure you that the idea doesn't fill me with horror. Nor does it fill me with horror to think I have ancestry from Crete, quite the opposite in fact. The Minoans and the Etruscans are my favorite ancient civilization.
> 
> Neither has anyone, including me, said it *all* came from the Bronze Age. You should read more carefully, and should be careful from whom you take instruction. Going to some people for population genetics information is like trying to get information about astronomy from an astrologer.
> 
> ...


That's a very strong statement, I said some, I don't know what ancient Italian dna looks like, at the moment my guess its going to be mainly WHG like Iberian and French ancient samples (for neolithic).

By recent I mean post Bronze Age, Iron Age/Antquity some additional later during the Medieval ages. Why should it fill you with horror? Many great civilizations came from the East, and I like the Etruscans and Minoans as well, I want to know the truth and follow the data.

Angela it is not you who is the problem, you follow the data and are very well educated in History, your very reasonable.

It is someone on this board who is an actual racist and has an entire website promoting his and the few that think like him ideas (I don't know how many from that site are here), which is what I don't like, they attack many ethnicities and brush off any dna input that came post Bronze Age for the majority, its just not right and fallacious. The truth is what is important, whatever the truth is, that is what should be followed.

Yes I read the paper, I found it excellent, I think the upcoming West Asian Bronze Age paper will be important as well, I totally agree with you that ancient dna will solve most debates topics, until then we can speculate with the information we are presented with.

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## New Englander

I modeled my Italian ancestry using Eurogenes 15K Euro_test_v2 by using the formula Me = 4/(2X)+ (Sephardi + Irish) = Italian score.
I than factored out "Irish" as 25% of the total score and got this (It+J)

Conclusions are that My Italian brings more West Med, West Asian, and Atlantic, with very minimal North Sea, while my Jewish ancestry is mixed with Eastern European, but has a much higher Red Sea score. Eastern European is not accounted for in Jewish proxy, so it distorts the Italian results. This would also mean MENA admixture will be slightly higher than calculated for (Italian). 

Results (Italian) (It + J) rounded to nearest 10th.

East med (30) (31)
Atlantic (16) (15)
West med (18) (17)
West Asian (17) (16)
North Sea (-0.255) (2)
East Euro (9) (7)
Baltic (5) (4)
Red Sea (4) (6)
South Asian (2) (2)

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## A. Papadimitriou

> That's a very strong statement, I said some, I don't know what ancient Italian dna looks like, at the moment my guess its going to be mainly WHG like Iberian and French ancient samples (for neolithic).
> 
> By recent I mean post Bronze Age, Iron Age/Antquity some additional later during the Medieval ages. Why should it fill you with horror? Many great civilizations came from the East, and I like the Etruscans and Minoans as well, I want to know the truth and follow the data.
> 
> Angela it is not you who is the problem, you follow the data and are very well educated in History, your very reasonable.
> 
> It is someone on this board who is an actual racist and has an entire website promoting his and the few that think like him ideas (I don't know how many from that site are here), which is what I don't like, they attack many ethnicities and brush off any dna input that came post Bronze Age for the majority, its just not right and fallacious. The truth is what is important, whatever the truth is, that is what should be followed.
> 
> Yes I read the paper, I found it excellent, I think the upcoming West Asian Bronze Age paper will be important as well, I totally agree with you that ancient dna will solve most debates topics, until then we can speculate with the information we are presented with.


Actually there's no evidence that the Etruscans came from the East. They could have come from Central Europe for example.
What data did you follow?

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## Monsieur

> To those who think that the Near Eastern in southern Italy is all from the Bronze Age, explain why it (the red component) is higher in southern Italy, especially Sicily and Calabria, than in the Aegean islanders. If anything given that all of the populations, even mainland southern Balkanites, have roughly similar amounts of the Caucasian element but very different for the Near Eastern, suggests to me the former is part of the genetic base and the latter is a more recent, intrusive element.


You are focusing too much on this very inaccurate study with a ridicolous sampling. There are several studies who had the decency of sampling actual Greeks from Greece and show a widely different scenario.

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## Angela

> Azzurro:That's a very strong statement, I said some, I don't know what ancient Italian dna looks like, at the moment my guess its going to be mainly WHG like Iberian and French ancient samples (for neolithic).


Iberian and French? ancient Neolithic samples, or those from the Balkans, for that matter, are absolutely not mainly WHG. In the early Neolithic Balkans, the farmers from Anatolia had picked up only about 1-2% WHG. In the Central European LBK a little more. By the Middle Neolithic in Spain WHG only reached 25% in the population. The Remedello samples from northern Italy, which already show cultural influence from the steppe, have less than that and *no* steppe genetic influences. 

The only other ancient sample we have from Italy (other than Mesolithic), is a Bell Beaker sample from Parma. Autosomally, that sample seems to be either Northern Italian like(Bergamo), or perhaps Southern French like, or Iberian like. At any rate, certainly not anything very "steppe" like or Northern European like. Now, I know there has been additional gene flow in Italy, but precisely how much and when I don't know. At first glance it doesn't seem that the change has been very drastic in Parma, although Emilia plots south of Bergamo. What we need is ancient dna from Polada, Terramare, Villanova, Gaudo, Rinaldone, the Ligurians, the Latins, the Umbrians, the Italic tribes of the south, the tribes of Sicily, the Greek settlers of the south, the Etruscans, the Veneti, the Langobardi, the Byzantines, and the locals pre-and-post the Germanic invasions, the Gothic War, and the Saracens.

We have none of those: nothing from around Rome, nothing from southern Italy, nothing from Sicily. We have lots of modern uniparental data, which has often led population geneticists astray in other areas, but even that is often not very resolved for non-R1b lineages.

We won't get all of those, but without a good bit of it we won't really know what happened.

How, just to give a few examples, can we know that Roman slavery totally changed or even very significantly changed the autosomal signature of Southern Italians when we don't have a single sample of, say, a poor person from before the Republican Era for comparison.

Who, with any sense, or knowledge of the relevant history or archaeology, or even uniparental 
markers, would believe that fool on Eurogenes today, who is either a sock or a reinforcement from Stormfront or sites like it, when he says that the entire population of my father's Po Valley was liquidated and replaced by Lombards! Emilia is 60% R1b U-152. We don't know much about the Lombards, but given where they came from I'll be very surprised if it turns out they were a majority U-152 population. We do know that they spoke a Germanic language, and we speak a Gallo-Romance language. I mean, did this guy leave academics behind at 12, and learn history from a Stormfront coloring book?

I could go on and on, but I hope I've said enough so you understand that there are a lot of charlatans around promoting baseless, unproven, and often deliberate distortions of fact not solely out of ignorance, although there's a lot of that, but out of sick, twisted, personal and racist agendas. 

One word of advice: don't believe anything written on sites like forum biodiversity or theapricity until you've checked it from all possible angles yourself.

I really recommend Razib Khan's article, and you can find lots of threads on all sorts of Italian genetics issues through our search engine.

Ed. I just heard that someone on Eurogenes said southern Italians are darker and more "exotic" than Sardinians! SARDINIANS!!!!!!!!!! Honestly, do some people never leave their own countries? They live under a rock? You can't make this freaking stuff up.

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## davef

> They are not, why should they be pretty much the same? They have never been.


You're right, and LeBrok's chart further supports that Greek Islanders are different. I thought they were the same, but I was ignorant. I'll admit that.

----------


## harena

> *To those who think that the Near Eastern in southern Italy is all from the Bronze Age*, explain why it (the red component) is higher in southern Italy, especially Sicily and Calabria, than in the Aegean islanders. If anything given that all of the populations, even mainland southern Balkanites, have roughly similar amounts of the Caucasian element but very different for the Near Eastern, suggests to me the former is part of the genetic base and the latter is a more recent, intrusive element.


Why not? Maybe Aegeans received further CHG-rich gene flow from Western Anatolia at some point. Their inflated CHG compared to both Southern Italy and Greece/Balkans could be responsible for their shrunken near-eastern component, which would otherwise fall in line nicely with Southern Italians.
Actually Crete already looks comparable in near-eastern affinity to several SI samples (e.g. Trapani, Matera, Lecce, etc.), and this with all its extra Caucasus-related stuff. 
However this is just one of the possible scenarios and I have no strong opinion about this anyway; also making this kind of broad assumptions based on modern populations with their complex history and background is rather silly and inconclusive. We simply need more ancient genomes to get the full picture.

----------


## Diomedes

So you guys say that mainland Greeks are different from those in the islands? What is the difference exactly and what is the origin of each group?

Also, you need to recall that Greece has among the roughest terrains in Europe and people tended to marry within their local societies.

----------


## Hauteville

Principe, there are not genetic evidences of recent MENA ancestors in Italy.

From the new Sarno paper:
"Besides a predominant Neolithic background, we identify traces of Post-Neolithic Levantine- and Caucasus-related ancestries, compatible with maritime Bronze-Age migrations."


And Sarno 2014:
"Together with the Berber E-M81, the occurrence of the Near-Eastern J1-M267 in Southern-European populations has been linked to population movements from the Near East through North-Africa, and particularly as a marker of the Islamic expansion over Southern-Europe (started approximately in the 8th century AD and lasted for more than 500 years). Fisher exact tests based on HGs frequencies have revealed the presence of haplogroup J1-M267 at significantly higher frequencies in both North-Africa and the Levant than in Sicily and Southern Italy (both P-values<0.001). However, the estimated age for Sicilian and Southern-Italian J1 haplotypes refers to the end of the Bronze Age (32611345 YBP), thus suggesting more ancient contributions from the East. Nevertheless, our time estimate does not necessarily coincide with the time of arrival of J1 in SSI; in fact a pre-existing differentiation could potentially backdate the time estimate here obtained.
...
However, sub-lineages of haplogroup J2 have been also associated with the Neolithic colonization of mainland Greece, Crete and Southern Italy [52], and our TMRCA estimates for J2-subhaplogroups (ranging from 32711157 YBP to 37671332 YBP) cannot exclude an earlier arrival of at least some of the J2 chromosomes in Sicily and Southern-Italy during Neolithic times."


And Graham and Coop 2013:
"A notable exception is that nearly all populations showed no significant heterogeneity of numbers of common ancestors with Italian samples, suggesting that most common ancestors shared with Italy lived longer ago than the time that structure within modern-day countries formed.
...
There is relatively little common ancestry shared between the Italian peninsula and other locations, and what there is seems to derive mostly from longer ago than 2,500 ya. An exception is that Italy and the neighboring Balkan populations share small but significant numbers of common ancestors in the last 1,500 years, as seen in Figures S16 and S17S17."

----------


## harena

> *To those who think that the Near Eastern in southern Italy is all from the Bronze Age*, explain why it (the red component) is higher in southern Italy, especially Sicily and Calabria, than in the Aegean islanders. If anything given that all of the populations, even mainland southern Balkanites, have roughly similar amounts of the Caucasian element but very different for the Near Eastern, suggests to me the former is part of the genetic base and the latter is a more recent, intrusive element.



Why not? Maybe Aegeans received further CHG-rich gene flow from Western Anatolia at some point. Their somewhat inflated CHG compared to both Southern Italy and Greece/Balkans could be responsible for their shrunken near-eastern component, which would otherwise fall in line nicely with Southern Italians.
Actually Crete already looks on par in near-east affinity with several SI samples (e.g. Trapani, Matera, Lecce, etc.) despite its extra Caucasus-related input.
However this is just one of the possible scenarios and I have no strong opinion about this either way; also making this kind of broad assumptions based on modern populations with their multiple layers/complex unattested (for the most part) background is silly and ultimately inconclusive. We simply need more ancient genomes to get the full picture.

----------


## LeBrok

> So you guys say that mainland Greeks are different from those in the islands? What is the difference exactly and what is the origin of each group?
> 
> Also, you need to recall that Greece has among the roughest terrains in Europe and people tended to marry within their local societies.


Here is what I have. We can see 3 distinct populations in Greece, Mainland, Islanders and Cyprus. 

My hypothesis is that Greek Islanders represent Greek populations before Slavic and others from North migrated to Greece Mainland. Before that Greece mainland was looking similar to today's Islanders. Cyprus might represent even more ancient Levant Neolithic Farmer population, mixed with BA from Anatolia.

More Caucasian and SW Asian, the more Near Eastern/Anatolian Influence. More NE Euro represents Steppe and Slavic invasions. More Med represents EEF influence. Baloch is from Iran/Armenia or Steppe.

Europeans
# of samples
S-Indian
Baloch
Caucasian
NE-Euro
SE-Asian
Siberian
NE-Asian
Papuan
American
Beringian
Mediterranean
SW-Asian
San
E-African
Pygmy
W-African


Greek, mainland
3
0
6
32
25
0
0
0
0
0
0
26
11
0
0
0
0
100

Greek, Islands, East
5
0
9
38
14
0
0
1
0
0
0
23
14
0
0
0
0
100

Cyprus
4
1
10
44
6
1
0
0
0
0
0
20
17
0
0
0
0
100

----------


## LeBrok

> Here is what I have. We can see 3 distinct populations in Greece, Mainland, Islanders and Cyprus. 
> 
> My hypothesis is that Greek Islanders represent Greek populations before Slavic and others from North migrated to Greece Mainland. Before that Greece mainland was looking similar to today's Islanders. Cyprus might represent even more ancient Levant Neolithic Farmer population, mixed with BA from Anatolia.
> 
> More Caucasian and SW Asian, the more Near Eastern/Anatolian Influence. More NE Euro represents Steppe and Slavic invasions. More Med represents EEF influence. Baloch is from Iran/Armenia or Steppe.
> 
> Europeans
> # of samples
> S-Indian
> ...


I have only 3 Greek Mainland samples. We need more, especially from Greek Makedonia and Peloponnese. If someone has ancestry from this area PM me your GedMatch kit number, please. :)

----------


## Pax Augusta

> I have only 3 Greek Mainland samples. We need more, especially from Greek Makedonia and Peloponnese. If someone has ancestry from this area PM me your GedMatch kit number, please. :)


An American-Greek guy, he is fully Greek, both his parents are from Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece.

----------


## oreo_cookie

> Why not? Maybe Aegeans received further CHG-rich gene flow from Western Anatolia at some point. Their somewhat inflated CHG compared to both Southern Italy and Greece/Balkans could be responsible for their shrunken near-eastern component, which would otherwise fall in line nicely with Southern Italians.


I could see this being the case and the genetics certainly suggest it, but when would that migration have happened, exactly? Keep in mind also that the Aegean islands sample has Cypriot-levels of Caucasian but nowhere near their Near Eastern. As for what LeBrok said, I highly doubt mainland Greece was ever quite like that sample, and for this to be true, Greeks on the mainland would have to have a much larger Slavic component than what seems likely. 

As for Crete, if you look at the individual admixture chart (rather than the averages) you see a few interesting things. Trapani is even more distinct from the rest of Sicily, than Crete is from the rest of Sicily, and the Cretans may be closer to the Sicilians/Calabrese than to the Aegean islanders in the other components even factoring in the Caucasus influence being slightly higher. But some of the Sicilians have almost none of the blue European component (see a few bars from Catania, Ragusa, and Palermo) which is also true of the Aegean islands sample but not the Cretan one.

----------


## Azzurro

> Iberian and French? ancient Neolithic samples, or those from the Balkans, for that matter, are absolutely not mainly WHG. In the early Neolithic Balkans, the farmers from Anatolia had picked up only about 1-2% WHG. In the Central European LBK a little more. By the Middle Neolithic in Spain WHG only reached 25% in the population. The Remedello samples from northern Italy, which already show cultural influence from the steppe, have less than that and *no* steppe genetic influences. 
> 
> The only other ancient sample we have from Italy (other than Mesolithic), is a Bell Beaker sample from Parma. Autosomally, that sample seems to be either Northern Italian like(Bergamo), or perhaps Southern French like, or Iberian like. At any rate, certainly not anything very "steppe" like or Northern European like. Now, I know there has been additional gene flow in Italy, but precisely how much and when I don't know. At first glance it doesn't seem that the change has been very drastic in Parma, although Emilia plots south of Bergamo. What we need is ancient dna from Polada, Terramare, Villanova, Gaudo, Rinaldone, the Ligurians, the Latins, the Umbrians, the Italic tribes of the south, the tribes of Sicily, the Greek settlers of the south, the Etruscans, the Veneti, the Langobardi, the Byzantines, and the locals pre-and-post the Germanic invasions, the Gothic War, and the Saracens.
> 
> We have none of those: nothing from around Rome, nothing from southern Italy, nothing from Sicily. We have lots of modern uniparental data, which has often led population geneticists astray in other areas, but even that is often not very resolved for non-R1b lineages.
> 
> We won't get all of those, but without a good bit of it we won't really know what happened.
> 
> How, just to give a few examples, can we know that Roman slavery totally changed or even very significantly changed the autosomal signature of Southern Italians when we don't have a single sample of, say, a poor person from before the Republican Era for comparison.
> ...


Eurogenes is filled with many crazies, I like to going on that site for the papers and get a good chuckle at the comments, Sardegna as you know as well is probably the best representation of Neolithic Europeans, crazy comments about Sardinia should just be ignored.

I listened to your suggestion and read the recent Razib Khan article, it was a very good read. He brought up many good points, and he is unbiased, which is a good thing. It still doesn't change my opinion that there was some gene flow (we cannot know forsure how much) during the Roman Period. When I talk about gene flow during this period it is not only restricted to Southern Italy, but the entire Peninsula and Sicily.

I think your statement about the charlatans, racist agendas and the rest of the sentence, is well said, I have noticed from the start that there is many people with obvious agendas, hai detto bene Angela.

In terms of your advice, I base most of my ideas off of what I noticed and my personal research, but my main interest is and always was Y dna, I am less knowledgeable in autosomal, in terms of the Caucasian autosomal I would think majority is due to Copper and Bronze Age Migrations, some is later. The one thing that so far no one has given in my opinion is the high East Mediterranean found in Southern Italians and Sicilians, the levels of which it is found suggest some post Bronze Age gene flow from the area. I am not going to base it off my results when I look at Eurogenes K36 spreadsheet for all populations I am 5-6% higher than the average Italian which makes me an outlier in this aspect, but the average Southern Italian and Sicilian are getting East Med% the same as Greek Islanders, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. You see what I am talking about there is something to it.

I would never believe a comment that suggests that the Lombards replaced the population of the Po Valley, U152 is clearly an Italic line.

The argument at least I make is that there was some gene flow from Roman slavery and it is not specific only to the East Mediterranean, though to answer your question or statement that you mentioned with West Asian and Levantine slaves were only specifically brought to Southern Italy as an argument by some on other forums, I don't think it was only restricted to this area, there is 2 reasons for me one is logical and the other is an example that it could have happened and why Southern Italy. At the time Southern Italy was still vastly Greek speaking, it would make sense for slave owners of the South to get Greek speaking slaves and the East Med, Anatolia, Egypt and Greece/Aegean were Greek speaking in the sense it was like a lingua franca. The second point which I even made on Anthrogenica is take the example of the first Serville War, the leader of the Slave revolt was Eunus a Syrian slave and his partner was Cleon a slave from Cilicia, so we know that Eastern Mediterranean slaves were present at least during this period, how much? We cannot know. Was it only restricted to Southern Italy, definitely not.

You forgot one and its the Castelluccio Culture. Yes getting various ancient samples from Italy from different cultures and civilizations will be the best way to fully know what actually happened.

In terms of when I said Iberian and French I also meant to say in terms of Y, I would think neolithic Italy would have been I2, G2a and T1a. It would be curious now to see how similar or how different was Copper Age Italy to Copper Age Balkans.

----------


## Azzurro

> Principe, there are not genetic evidences of recent MENA ancestors in Italy.
> 
> From the new Sarno paper:
> "Besides a predominant Neolithic background, we identify traces of Post-Neolithic Levantine- and Caucasus-related ancestries, compatible with maritime Bronze-Age migrations."
> 
> 
> And Sarno 2014:
> "Together with the Berber E-M81, the occurrence of the Near-Eastern J1-M267 in Southern-European populations has been linked to population movements from the Near East through North-Africa, and particularly as a marker of the Islamic expansion over Southern-Europe (started approximately in the 8th century AD and lasted for more than 500 years). Fisher exact tests based on HGs frequencies have revealed the presence of haplogroup J1-M267 at significantly higher frequencies in both North-Africa and the Levant than in Sicily and Southern Italy (both P-values<0.001). However, the estimated age for Sicilian and Southern-Italian J1 haplotypes refers to the end of the Bronze Age (3261�1345 YBP), thus suggesting more ancient contributions from the East. Nevertheless, our time estimate does not necessarily coincide with the time of arrival of J1 in SSI; in fact a pre-existing differentiation could potentially backdate the time estimate here obtained.
> ...
> ...


First off I am Azzurro on Eupedia, on Anthrogenica I am Principe. Secondly that Sarno 2014 is not really a good one use or quote in this case, he uses str's to estimate entire haplogroups which is not going to be accurate, there is many subclades of E, J1 and J2, and Italy has almost all of them, varying from being either vary rare to somewhat popular, if you want an accurate Y age estimate I suggest looking at snp's to make a decent argument, and even at that only ngs testing will be the best method. All three haplogroups that you quoted are too diverse to even suggest a possible estimate, in fact impossible.

----------


## Azzurro

> Actually there's no evidence that the Etruscans came from the East. They could have come from Central Europe for example.
> What data did you follow?


This is not the place to discuss Etruscans origins as it is off topic to the subject, if you want to know my opinion go on Anthrogenica and go on the J2 in Southern Italy thread. My main arguments deal with religious customs and language.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> This is not the place to discuss Etruscans origins as it is off topic to the subject, if you want to know my opinion go on Anthrogenica and go on the J2 in Southern Italy thread. My main arguments deal with religious customs and language.


No, I'm not interested. Unless you have data.

Let's see though what we know about the Germanic etc slaves, though.

See Historia Langobardorum, Book I, first paragraph:
*Ab hac ergo populosa Germania saepe innumerabiles captivorum turmae abductae meridianis populis pretio distrahuntur. 

*Concerning Greece I have that, from Treatise about Two Sarmatias:
*Tandem supervenerunt Gotthi, qui et Getae vocantur, quorum captivi a Graecis et comicis eorum Geta et a Dacia Dauus et Dacus, tanquam slavi et servi tenti et nuncupati fuerunt.*

----------


## Azzurro

> No, I'm not interested. Unless you have data.
> 
> Let's see though what we know about the Germanic etc slaves, though.
> 
> See Historia Langobardorum, Book I, first paragraph:
> *Ab hac ergo populosa Germania saepe innumerabiles captivorum turmae abductae meridianis populis pretio distrahuntur. 
> 
> *Concerning Greece I have that, from Treatise about Two Sarmatias:
> *Tandem supervenerunt Gotthi, qui et Getae vocantur, quorum captivi a Graecis et comicis eorum Geta et a Dacia Dauus et Dacus, tanquam slavi et servi tenti et nuncupati fuerunt.*


Why do you ask if your not interested?

----------


## MarkoZ

> I could see this being the case and the genetics certainly suggest it, but when would that migration have happened, exactly? Keep in mind also that the Aegean islands sample has Cypriot-levels of Caucasian but nowhere near their Near Eastern. As for what LeBrok said, I highly doubt mainland Greece was ever quite like that sample, and for this to be true, Greeks on the mainland would have to have a much larger Slavic component than what seems likely. 
> 
> As for Crete, if you look at the individual admixture chart (rather than the averages) you see a few interesting things. Trapani is even more distinct from the rest of Sicily, than Crete is from the rest of Sicily, and the Cretans may be closer to the Sicilians/Calabrese than to the Aegean islanders in the other components even factoring in the Caucasus influence being slightly higher. But some of the Sicilians have almost none of the blue European component (see a few bars from Catania, Ragusa, and Palermo) which is also true of the Aegean islands sample but not the Cretan one.


I wouldn't take this ADMIXTURE analysis too literally. At such low K, the major West Eurasian components are bound to overlap to a great extent. The 'Sardinian' probably absorbs large chunks of both the European and the Near Eastern components depending on the population tested. Similar problems exist with regard to the Caucasus component.

ADMIXTURE 'learns' these clusters because Sardinians are peripheral to the European genetic landscape. Mordvins - the most European group in this analysis - are at least equally peripheral.

----------


## Angela

Azzurro:

I'm not trying to be condescending or unkind, but I would suggest you do some intensive reading on the history of Rome, particularly as it applies to the Italian peninsula, as you suggest things which don't make much sense given what we know.

Many of the slaves sent to southern Italy went to the vast agricultural latifundia or to the mines. The life span was extremely short: you didn't live long enough to get manumitted and pass on your genes. These enterprises were mostly owned by Roman senators, and the owners and factors would have spoken Latin, as would most of the population of Sicily and Southern Italy and even places like isolated Sardinia, no matter what language they spoke at home. Speaking Latin or even Greek would have been immaterial. They selected for brawn, not language. Slaves were present in infection rich urban centers as well, and their nutrition and living conditions would have been sub-par. There would have been some children born to the owners, but the mothers would have been of varied ethnicities as well as right from the Italian peninsula, as would all slaves: conquered Italics, my own Ligures, Greek speakers from the south, poor people selling themselves into slavery, abandoned infants, of which there were many. There are no accepted numbers for any of this.

To base a theory on the ethnicity of one slave leader or two is not very sensible, is it? Spartacus may have been been Illyrian; so what? This is starting to sound a lot like special pleading and the selective presentation of data. You're also doing a bit of that straw man thing again. I never said there was *no* gene flow from slaves. I asked whether it was sensible to believe, in the absence of ancient dna, that it significantly changed the autosomal dna, and why no one ever discusses all those German and Gallic and Italian peninsula etc. slaves. For the sake of your reputation I would advise you not to adopt these methods, whether or not they are used by your friends.

Razib Khan comes to some of these conclusions not only because he's a good geneticist, imo, but because he has an admirable grasp of the Roman Era and of European history for a non-historian.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> Why do you ask if your not interested?


I didn't ask your opinion about Etruscans.

----------


## harena

> The argument at least I make is that there was some gene flow from Roman slavery and it is not specific only to the East Mediterranean, though to answer your question or statement that you mentioned with West Asian and Levantine slaves were only specifically brought to Southern Italy as an argument by some on other forums, I don't think it was only restricted to this area, there is 2 reasons for me one is logical and the other is an example that it could have happened and why Southern Italy. At the time Southern Italy was still vastly Greek speaking, it would make sense for slave owners of the South to get Greek speaking slaves and the East Med, Anatolia, Egypt and Greece/Aegean were Greek speaking in the sense it was like a lingua franca. The second point which I even made on Anthrogenica is take the example of the first Serville War, the leader of the Slave revolt was Eunus a Syrian slave and his partner was Cleon a slave from Cilicia, so we know that Eastern Mediterranean slaves were present at least during this period, how much? We cannot know. Was it only restricted to Southern Italy, definitely not.



Under this scenario, I would expect Rome and nearby urban areas of Central Italy to be among the most affected (sheer demand) parts of Italy but that doesn't seem the case. And in term of proximity/logistics wouldn't North Africa make much more sense for Southern Italy rather than East Med?

----------


## Sile

> Actually there's no evidence that the Etruscans came from the East. They could have come from Central Europe for example.
> What data did you follow?


last year chat from scholars on the etruscans is that the are a branch of the Umbrians

----------


## Azzurro

> Azzurro:
> 
> I'm not trying to be condescending or unkind, but I would suggest you do some intensive reading on the history of Rome, particularly as it applies to the Italian peninsula, as you suggest things which don't make much sense given what we know.
> 
> Many of the slaves sent to southern Italy went to the vast agricultural latifundia or to the mines. The life span was extremely short: you didn't live long enough to get manumitted and pass on your genes. These enterprises were mostly owned by Roman senators, and the owners and factors would have spoken Latin, as would most of the population of Sicily and Southern Italy and even places like isolated Sardinia, no matter what language they spoke at home. Speaking Latin or even Greek would have been immaterial. They selected for brawn, not language. Slaves were present in infection rich urban centers as well, and their nutrition and living conditions would have been sub-par. There would have been some children born to the owners, but the mothers would have been of varied ethnicities as well as right from the Italian peninsula, as would all slaves: conquered Italics, my own Ligures, Greek speakers from the south, poor people selling themselves into slavery, abandoned infants, of which there were many. There are no accepted numbers for any of this.
> 
> To base a theory on the ethnicity of one slave leader or two is not very sensible, is it? Spartacus may have been been Illyrian; so what? This is starting to sound a lot like special pleading and the selective presentation of data. You're also doing a bit of that straw man thing again. I never said there was *no* gene flow from slaves. I asked whether it was sensible to believe, in the absence of ancient dna, that it significantly changed the autosomal dna, and why no one ever discusses all those German and Gallic and Italian peninsula etc. slaves. For the sake of your reputation I would advise you not to adopt these methods, whether or not they are used by your friends.
> 
> Razib Khan comes to some of these conclusions not only because he's a good geneticist, imo, but because he has an admirable grasp of the Roman Era and of European history for a non-historian.


Angela, I will take your suggestion and learn more about Roman history. Its not only slaves either there is retired Auxiliaries and Navy men. I guess will have to wait for some ancient Italian dna to fully know what happened, they should be interesting. I guess we are on different clines of the spectrum in the idea of Italian dna, whatever it turns out to be, I'll be looking forward in knowing the history of my ancestors.

----------


## Azzurro

> I didn't ask your opinion about Etruscans.


Merci ah, so don't quote me then if you just want to attack.

----------


## Apsurdistan

The Etruscans might have been a proto Slavic related people.

----------


## Azzurro

> The Etruscans were probaby a proto Slavic related people.


No they weren't, their language was completely unrelated to Indo-European or Indo-Iranian, the Etruscans were a mix of Villanovans and Middle Eastern peoples who were related to the Hurrians.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> No they weren't, their language was completely unrelated to Indo-European or Indo-Iranian, the Etruscans were a mix of Villanovans *and Middle Eastern peoples who were related to the Hurrians*.


You are presenting your assumptions as facts. At least make an argument with clear premises and conclusion.

----------


## Azzurro

> You are presenting your assumptions as facts. At least make an argument with clear premises and conclusion.


Alright, the Etruscans practiced Haruspicy, the religious ceremony of liver inspection, this was originally practiced by the Sumerians, then picked up by the Hurrians, the Hurrians also introduced it to the various Anatolian peoples. People will argue that they learnt of it when when trading with the Greeks, but as you know as Greek, they didn't not practice Haruspicy, meaning there is a more direct contact. The Etruscan language still not placed under a larger family aside from Tyrsenian does show some connections with Alarodian languages spoken by Nakh peoples (Chechens and Ingush), this theory has been mentioned a few times, an author who writes this is Ed Robertson, Hurrian is believed to be an Alarodian language, so now we have a religious aspect practiced by Hurrians and also a possible connection with language. In the Tuscan samples that were posted on Yfull, some of the R1b, J2a and G suggest a further link with Armenian populations.

----------


## Angela

> Angela, I will take your suggestion and learn more about Roman history. Its not only slaves either there is retired Auxiliaries and Navy men. I guess will have to wait for some ancient Italian dna to fully know what happened, they should be interesting. I guess we are on different clines of the spectrum in the idea of Italian dna, whatever it turns out to be, I'll be looking forward in knowing the history of my ancestors.


I_ tend_ to think that the impact wasn't major based on logic and everything I know about Roman history, but this is a murky area with not all that much data to go on, so I'm perfectly prepared to accept what the genetic data shows. I'm not emotionally invested in either outcome.

What I find intriguing is that an Italian-Canadian from a Southern Italian background with an admitted lack of knowledge of Roman history would so vehemently and uncritically espouse the theory that most of his ancestors were not only slaves (all humans undoubtedly have ancestors who were slaves of one group or another), but specifically only slaves from the Near East. Since you're southern Italian yourself it can't be that sick Nordicism which wants to paint Southern Europeans as "the other", and, in the immortal words of a prominent blogger "kick them out of Europe". What imbecility...we created Europe.* That's undoubtedly why they attack us the most. We prove everything they say is a lie. 

Do you have a particular attachment to that part of the world, or sense of kinship? There's nothing wrong with that or any other personal bias. It's just that we should all strive, in so far as humanly possible, to be objective. I'm sure you agree.

Ed. That was hyperbole. I'm not that nationalistic. I thought I would just delete it, but that wouldn' be honest.

----------


## Apsurdistan

> No they weren't, their language was completely unrelated to Indo-European or Indo-Iranian, the Etruscans were a mix of Villanovans and Middle Eastern peoples who were related to the Hurrians.


I just thought the name they called themselves Raseni sounds Slavic. So I just threw it out there to see how people respond. I like to ***** a little bit so what.

----------


## Angela

I wrote this 3 years ago; nothing has really changed that much since. This is about the Etruscan mtDna that has been analyzed.

"I think that the kinds of distinctions he's [ Barbujani-in an Italian speech ]drawing are sort of lost on a lot of hobbyists. As he points out, what the ancient samples he tested tell us, looked at one way, is that *of the 27 sequences, 5 were indeed found in Anatolia, but 7 were found in Germany, and only 2 may be found in modernTuscany. So just looking at the results in this way would see a higher correspondence to Germany than to Toscana.* (In other interviews and publications *he points out that at the level of resolution that they did, and the age of the mtDna lineages, it's impossible to tell if they arrived in Europe in the late Bronze/Iron Age or in the Neolithic thousands of years earlier. )*

They then seem to have looked at upstream lineages and compared modern lineages to them through a Bayesian analysis. They found that *of the three ancient Etruscan cities of the League where they thought there was the most likelihood of finding Etruscan dna, i.e. Cosentino, Murlo, and Volterra, only in Cosentino was there are indication of population continuity. So, as he says, although the Tuscans may be the closest population to the ancient* *Etruscans, most of them are not descended from the Etruscans by any measure that they tested, which is mtDna.*

I think this may be l*ike the situation discovered in the recent paper about the Lombards in Piemonte . In a few small communities where there was a founder effect, a small group who went to the area and whose descendents basically never moved anywhere else and intermarried only among themselves, you can find some traces of these ancient peoples, but other than that, there is no trace of them.* 

Given that there is absolutely no record archaeologically of a mass migration into Tuscany around 800 BC, I have my doubts that the common people were anything but Villanovans. Perhaps the upper classes were mixed with newer arriving migrants. Certainly, the civilization shows rapid signs of sophistication in every area, perhaps most particularly in metallurgy. Those people and any unique genetic signature they carried were rapidly absorbed by the Romans, however, along with their culture and accomplishments. The language disappeared.

Of course, this may all change with more fine scale resolution and dating of mtDna lineages, or with ydna analysis, or even better, with a good enough sample for a sophisticated analysis of their autosomes. So far, thought, this is what we have."

My comment can be found here:

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/30476-A-Genome-Wide-Study-of-Modern-Day-Tuscans-Revisiting-Herodotus-s-Theory-on-the-Origi?highlight=Etruscans

----------


## Angela

Also in that thread from me:

"Here are some gems of generalization from the paper:

"however, almost all the studies agree that there is a proportion of their mtDNA pool that could be traced to somewhere in the Middle East, thus testifying to an ancient connection between both regions."

I have news for these guys: so does the mtDna of 80% of Europeans.

Then they resurrect this old chestnut: _both humans and cattle reached Etruria from the Eastern Mediterranean area by sea. Hence the Eastern origin of Etruscans, first claimed by the classic historians Herodotus and Thucydides, receives strong independent support” 

__Yes, plants, cattle, sheep, goats, and the knowledge of what to do with them all came from the eastern Mediterranean. That doesn't prove that a specific breed came in 800 BC!

As to ancient Etruscan mtDna see:
Silvia Ghirotto et al 2013
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...l.pone.0055519
See the discussion at the Dienekes site:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/02...tto-et-al.html
As a knowledgeable poster explained, the Etruscan mtDna in this large sample is a mixture of U5 and J. Looks like admixture betwee Neolithic and Mesolithic peoples to me...

Also, these guys should know by now that without resolution of mtDna on a very detailed subclade level, and some agreement on mutation rates, it's impossible to use mtDna to track migration flows precisely.

As for the Armenian connection...

Of course there's more "Caucasus" like ancestry in Tuscans than in northern Italians, but the question is, when did this Caucasus like ancestry arrive in Europe? I'll buy Metal Ages...Oetzi had a little bit already, but this doesn't prove that a specific migration in 800 BC brought it!

Also, there's more in southern Italians yet, and more in Greeks. There's the same amount in Balkan people. Were they all settled in the first millennium BC by people from Anatolia? 

Take a look at the "Caucasus" proportion in these groups as per the Dienekes K-12b analysis"
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...hl=en_US#gid=0
Northern Italians: 22.9
Romanians: 28.4
Tuscans: 30.5
Bulgarians: 30.7
Southern Italians/Sicilians: 36.5
Greeks: 37.4

Do I think it's possible that there was a late movement from Anatolia (first millenium BC) into Central Italy? Yes, I do; it's just that neither ancient or modern mtdna, is going to prove it, and especially not at the level of resolution which currently exists. A comparision of the full genomes of modern Tuscans to other modern populations doesn't prove it either. Who says this isn't Neolithic era? We need a high quality Etruscan genome and the genome of prior inhabitants from the same area.

I do think that there's generally something to be said for an additional Bronze Age gene flow (and later) into Italy not only from the north, but also from the south east. 

I saw a speculation on Anthrogenica this morning about the proto-Indo-Europeans possibly carrying a lot of "Anatolian" like or "Near Eastern" like ancestry. (The mtDna of the Yamnaya people looks totally "Neolithic" from the evidence of that thesis. Perhaps the full genomes will show something different, but then that would mean that they left all their own women at home, or they didn't like them very much.) 

__It would certainly be interesting if Dienekes was onto something back in the day when he speculated that the proto-Indo-Europeans had their origin in the Armenian Highlands. Perhaps they remained more "Anatolian" like or Caucasus like in the southern regions, even if in the more northern areas they were different."

_There might have been an elite migration from the Aegean given the sophistication of Etruscan metallurgy and indeed of all aspects of their culture, including their art in comparison to what was present in Europe at that time.

"As for admixture analyses, I am no longer enamored of them, despite the fact that I used one upthread. :) Even before Lazaridis et al, it was clear that they obscure ancient genetic flows as much or perhaps more than they elucidate them. They are just geographical "poolings" to steal a term that I very much like. Or perhaps they are like artifacts of the algorithm in a way...

I definitely have said, and I believe, that J2 in Italy is late Neolithic at the earliest, and probably Bronze Age or later. Other than the_ proposed_ direct flow from Anatolia for the Etruscans, it would have been mediated through the Greeks, imo, or at least I don't know of any other possible source in terms of Tuscany, other than by way of the Balkans."

I would add I think Crete might have something to do with it.

This was 3 years ago. The only new thing is this PCW from an as yet unpublished paper:

----------


## oreo_cookie

> The Etruscans were probaby a proto Slavic related people.


This makes absolutely no sense. Whether they were Middle Eastern or not is one thing, but there is no evidence they were related to Slavs at all. Their closest linguistic relatives lived both in the Alps and on the North Aegean island Lemnos.

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## Hauteville

> Why not? Maybe Aegeans received further CHG-rich gene flow from Western Anatolia at some point. Their inflated CHG compared to both Southern Italy and Greece/Balkans could be responsible for their shrunken near-eastern component, which would otherwise fall in line nicely with Southern Italians.
> Actually Crete already looks comparable in near-eastern affinity to several SI samples (e.g. Trapani, Matera, Lecce, etc.), and this with all its extra Caucasus-related stuff. 
> However this is just one of the possible scenarios and I have no strong opinion about this anyway; also making this kind of broad assumptions based on modern populations with their complex history and background is rather silly and inconclusive. We simply need more ancient genomes to get the full picture.


Yes, take a look on the complete admixture analysis and not only in K4

caricare immagini

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## harena

> Yes, take a look on the complete admixture analysis and not only in K4



Ok, it doesn't look like Italians got much influx if at all from neareastern slaves, especially in the north like Azzurro claimed. Red component at k10 is nil here.
Southern Italy, Iberia and Greeks might still have some, though at least for S. Italy and Greece nothing you wouldn't expect given their position hence not necessarily related to slaves/post-Roman influx.
If Italy ever got input from slaves, I reckon they would have been overwhelmingly Illyrian/Thracian. Purple component peaking in Albania looks evenly distributed across the peninsula including the North (signal looking almost as strong as in Serbia) while it drops like a rock in France.
I'm wondering if all this could be somehow related to the Etruscans/Raeti, does anyone know where the N. Italian reference sample is from? If from Tuscany or North Italy proper like Triveneto/Piedmont/Lombardy?

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## Azzurro

> I_ tend_ to think that the impact wasn't major based on logic and everything I know about Roman history, but this is a murky area with not all that much data to go on, so I'm perfectly prepared to accept what the genetic data shows. I'm not emotionally invested in either outcome.
> 
> What I find intriguing is that an Italian-Canadian from a Southern Italian background with an admitted lack of knowledge of Roman history would so vehemently and uncritically espouse the theory that most of his ancestors were not only slaves (all humans undoubtedly have ancestors who were slaves of one group or another), but specifically only slaves from the Near East. Since you're southern Italian yourself it can't be that sick Nordicism which wants to paint Southern Europeans as "the other", and, in the immortal words of a prominent blogger "kick them out of Europe". What imbecility...we created Europe.* That's undoubtedly why they attack us the most. We prove everything they say is a lie. 
> 
> Do you have a particular attachment to that part of the world, or sense of kinship? There's nothing wrong with that or any other personal bias. It's just that we should all strive, in so far as humanly possible, to be objective. I'm sure you agree.
> 
> Ed. That was hyperbole. I'm not that nationalistic. I thought I would just delete it, but that wouldn' be honest.


I have taken courses on Roman history and watched several documentaries, Mary Beard's documentaries I find are really good personally, but I am not as knowledge as let's say you are or some others. I loath Nordicism and White Supremacists, I am far from a racist, I am open to all. I have friends of different backgrounds and faiths.

Yes I do, for one I have Converso Jewish heritage on both sides of the family, and I grew up not only with people of Italian descent but of different backgrounds, I always felt a special bond with Lebanese people, to me we are very similar, I find more in common with Lebanese than French, but maybe that's me. I guess I would be a Pan-Mediterraneanist for me I see similarity in all Mediterranean peoples whether they are from Southern Europe, North Africa or the Levant, I don't believe in this genetic barrier of the "Mediterranean" as some wish to be true, I think we all have some of eachother's dna.

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## Azzurro

> I just thought the name they called themselves Raseni sounds Slavic. So I just threw it out there to see how people respond. I like to ***** a little bit so what.


There's no issue with that, but check before you state something, because some people do get offended by comments of that nature. Can I ask how does Raseni sound Slavic? You know that the Etruscans predate the Slavs by 1000 years.

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## Angela

> I have taken courses on Roman history and watched several documentaries, Mary Beard's documentaries I find are really good personally, but I am not as knowledge as let's say you are or some others. I loath Nordicism and White Supremacists, I am far from a racist, I am open to all. I have friends of different backgrounds and faiths.
> 
> Yes I do, for one I have Converso Jewish heritage on both sides of the family, and I grew up not only with people of Italian descent but of different backgrounds, I always felt a special bond with Lebanese people, to me we are very similar, I find more in common with Lebanese than French, but maybe that's me. I guess I would be a Pan-Mediterraneanist for me I see similarity in all Mediterranean peoples whether they are from Southern Europe, North Africa or the Levant, I don't believe in this genetic barrier of the "Mediterranean" as some wish to be true, I think we all have some of eachother's dna.


All either commendable or your own private business, but it shouldn't influence your analysis of data, as, imo, it clearly does.

I'd get my money back from those teachers of Roman history if I were you.

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## Azzurro

> All either commendable or your own private business, but it shouldn't influence your analysis of data, as, imo it clearly does.


It probably does, but all Mediterranean peoples do share some dna, of course to varying degree, some little and some more.

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## Angela

> Ok, it doesn't look like Italians got much influx if at all from neareastern slaves, especially in the north like Azzurro claimed. Red component at k10 is nil here.
> Southern Italy, Iberia and Greeks might still have some, though at least for S. Italy and Greece nothing you wouldn't expect given their position hence not necessarily related to slaves/post-Roman influx.
> If Italy ever got input from slaves, I reckon they would have been overwhelmingly Illyrian/Thracian. Purple component peaking in Albania looks evenly distributed across the peninsula including the North (signal looking almost as strong as in Serbia) while it drops like a rock in France.
> I'm wondering if all this could be somehow related to the Etruscans/Raeti, does anyone know where the N. Italian reference sample is from? If from Tuscany or North Italy proper like Triveneto/Piedmont/Lombardy?


When Sikelliot/Oreo Cookie first posted that screen shot of the Admixture analysis I hadn't yet read the full paper in detail; I just thought it showed what an abysmal job they'd done. 

I still think this is just a glorified Admixture calculator based on drifted modern populations, but if you're going to cite it, it's clearly dishonest to use a K=4 run.

@ Sikelliot/Oreo Cookie,

The next time you try to mislead readers here by deliberate distortion and selective presentation of data there will be *severe* consequences.* GET MY DRIFT?*

I have neither the time nor the inclination to check every damn thing you post, so be warned.

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## New Englander

If we are arguing that Italians were white, than turned darker in the past 2000 years than that is incorrect. Italians if anything, have become more central European like over the last few millennium, just looks at R1b, and the amount of Frankish, Spanish, and Ostrogoth rule.

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## binx

> There are, according to this, very few Occitan speakers left. It's predicted to disappear in a generation.
> 
> It was brought by Piemontese Waldensians.
> https://www.uoc.edu/euromosaic/web/document/occita/an/i3/i3.html




Thanks!




> As to your other comments, I very much agree. It's an unfortunate fact about this hobby and even discipline that it's riddled with racists and Nordicists of various stripes. There are whole sites full of them, They're always obsessed with slaves from Anatolia or the Levant or North Africa, but never mention the hundreds of thousands of Gauls, Germans, Britons, Pannonians and on and on. Nor do they ever explain how this correlates with the Italian cline. Did a memo go out to every slave trader in the Empire: Send all slaves to Italy; furthermore, all West Asian slaves go to Southern Italy, and all Northern and Central European slaves go north Of Rome? Just as an aside, Caesar captured so many Gauls that there was a glut on the market and prices plummeted.


I believe that unfortunately certain obsessions always end up ruining certain discussions.





> A typical fairy tale lol? Italy is not overstudied, in comparison to British Isles and Germans, Italians are really under sampled, and Germans and British Isles don't show the same diversity as Italy in terms of Y. I never said completely changed if you look at what I said in the quote that quoted me on I said some, that's a huge difference. Italy has been getting constant gene flow since the neolithic and it really only stopped after Renaissance. With little exceptions of Arbereshe and Molise Croat communities.


Lol? 




> Yes I do, for one I have Converso Jewish heritage on both sides of the family, and I grew up not only with people of Italian descent but of different backgrounds, I always felt a special bond with Lebanese people, to me we are very similar, I find more in common with Lebanese than French, but maybe that's me. I guess I would be a Pan-Mediterraneanist for me I see similarity in all Mediterranean peoples whether they are from Southern Europe, North Africa or the Levant, I don't believe in this genetic barrier of the "Mediterranean" as some wish to be true, I think we all have some of eachother's dna.


Never heard an Italian claiming he finds more in common with Lebanese than French, quite the opposite. Yes, I think that's just you. And maybe few others.

You're a Pan-Mediterraneanist who lives in the New World, this explains everything.

Mediterraneanism and Nordicism are two sides of the same coin.




> It probably does, but all Mediterranean peoples do share some dna, of course to varying degree, some little and some more.


All human beings do share some dna.





> If we are arguing that Italians were white, than turned darker in the past 2000 years than that is incorrect. Italians if anything, have become more central European like over the last few millennium, just looks at R1b, and the amount of Frankish, Spanish, and Ostrogoth rule.


Was the discussion really on this? The white American issue? And what is the connection between Frankish, Spanish, and Ostrogoth rule and what you're talking about? 

There are days that I feel really lucky not to be born and raised in the United States. Today is one of these. You Americans are all so absorbed in this racialism and you all live in such a ghettoed society that is difficult sometimes to distinguish an American liberal from an American conservative racist.

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## New Englander

What is the connection between Frankish, Spanish, and Ostrogoth rule and what you're talking about?

Read the history of Naples. Now, I would not dismiss the arrival of MENA admixture onto Italy during the past few millennium, just that it was less than the Indo European influence. Now, isolated locations in the south may have retained more Neolithic DNA, than gained some additional MENA like admixture in more recent times.

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## Azzurro

> Thanks!
> 
> 
> 
> I believe that unfortunately certain obsessions always end up ruining certain discussions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Explain how Nordicism and Mediterraneanism are the same thing? If anything living in the New World exposes people more to other cultures, daily life is surrounded by a plethora of different cultures, living in a Cosmopolitan society has its advantages. And good stay in your crumbling Europe.

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## Azzurro

> If we are arguing that Italians were white, than turned darker in the past 2000 years than that is incorrect. Italians if anything, have become more central European like over the last few millennium, just looks at R1b, and the amount of Frankish, Spanish, and Ostrogoth rule.


Majority of R1b in Italy is U152 which is Italic and has been there awhile. DF27, L21 and U106 came in through various people, maybe DF27 is old too and found in the ancient Ligures. Anyways all the other R1b's combined don't even equal a quarter of U152.

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## Sile

> This makes absolutely no sense. Whether they were Middle Eastern or not is one thing, but there is no evidence they were related to Slavs at all. Their closest linguistic relatives lived both in the Alps and on the North Aegean island Lemnos.


One needs to clear their head in trying to think that the people we have on the map today where there in the ancient times..........this is all wrong.

If the etruscans came from germany and we know it was early iron-age that they where first recorded, then at this time in early iron age germany, the germans only lived in north-germany and denmark ..........central germany and south Germany had Gallic people, we find this in the 'royal capital" of the gallics near frankfurt, we also later have La tene and Halstatt being created by gallic/celts from Germany...............so If the etruscans did come from germany then they are more likely a gallic people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glauberg


In regards to the stelae in Lemnos.........this was made 400 years after the etruscans are noted in italy, so more likey , it could be done by etruscan traders in the aegean.

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## Angela

> If we are arguing that Italians were white, than turned darker in the past 2000 years than that is incorrect. Italians if anything, have become more central European like over the last few millennium, just looks at R1b, and the amount of Frankish, Spanish, and Ostrogoth rule.


First thing, please don't bring that racist anthrofora drivel here. You've been warned. 

Second thing, I don't even know what the heck you're talking about. What do the changing definitions of "whiteness" in America have to do with an academic discussion about European genetics? William Penn wasn't sure he should let Germans from the Palatine into the Pennsylvania colony because they were too dusky. You believe he would have thought the Spanish were "white"? The original settlers were largely British Protestants who had enslaved SSA people. They defined "whiteness" in those terms.

I also have no idea where you have heard that Spanish and French political rule would have had a genetic impact in Italy. When will people get the fact that a few soldiers and civilian administrators would not significantly impact the genetics of a densely populated region? You need folk migrations, or absent that, some combination of disease and/or coming into a de-populated area.

The verdict is still out on the Goths, but all indications are that it was a small elite migration.

Please people, read papers, not anthrofora nonsense.

See:

Ralph and Coop, cited by Razib Khan a few days ago:
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology...l.pbio.1001555




> Read the history of Naples. Now, I would not dismiss the arrival of MENA admixture onto Italy during the past few millennium, just that it was less than the Indo European influence. Now, isolated locations in the south may have retained more Neolithic DNA, than gained some additional MENA like admixture in more recent times.


These are generalized assumptions devoid of fact. See above.

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## binx

> Explain how Nordicism and Mediterraneanism are the same thing? If anything living in the New World exposes people more to other cultures, daily life is surrounded by a plethora of different cultures, living in a Cosmopolitan society has its advantages.


Nordicism and Mediterraneanism are like Nazism/Fascism and Communism. Apparently divided by different ideas and ideals, isms end up using the same methods but the victim is always the same: the truth. Living in a Cosmopolitan society should turn you into a Cosmopolitan, not into a Mediterraneanist. Btw I think you're not really living in a Cosmopolitan society but rather in a ghettoized society and you're not really exposed to other cultures in their natural habitat but rather to an artificial projection in a place other than the original one, like in a zoological garden. For this reason, people try to identify with a part rather than with the other. To feel stronger, because group identity makes it overcome the pain of ghettoisation. But all this has more to do with personal identity issues than with archeology, genetics, anthropology, history.

This is obviously just my opinion.

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## patrician

It appears that the south-eastern quadrant of europe (Greece and Balkans) was the beachhead in the spread of agriculture into europe from it's source in the Levant region off the eastern mediterranean coast. In my opinion with the Y-DNA and MTDNA composition of early neolithic europeans and neolithic northwest anatolians, the entire neolithic package seems to demonstrate northeastern Syrian/ southeastern Turkish affinities.

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## Angela

It would be great if someone were able to get a graphic of the whole admixture chart on here that is legible...just for ease of use.

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## patrician

I'll be able to post graphs in a few posts hopefully.

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## Azzurro

> Nordicism and Mediterraneanism are like Nazism/Fascism and Communism. Apparently divided by different ideas and ideals, isms end up using the same methods but the victim is always the same: the truth. Living in a Cosmopolitan society should turn you into a Cosmopolitan, not into a Mediterraneanist. Btw I think you're not really living in a Cosmopolitan society but rather in a ghettoized society and you're not really exposed to other cultures in their natural habitat but rather to an artificial projection in a place other than the original one, like in a zoological garden. For this reason, people try to identify with a part rather than with the other. To feel stronger, because group identity makes it overcome the pain of ghettoisation. But all this has more to do with personal identity issues than with archeology, genetics, anthropology, history.
> 
> This is obviously just my opinion.


Your entitled to your opinion.

I completely disagree with you on every level but that's my opinion.

I didn't know I lived under rock, you think people don't travel and experience the world? I'm a Mediterraneanist because that is what my ultra ethnicity is. I am open to other cultures like I said before. This ghettoized society thing that your holding on to is not really a valid point, there is many foreign born migrants to get the scope of things. Natural habitat and artificial projection? What is this an add for the Nature channel? Yes because I have no idea about archaeology, genetics, anthropology and history lol, I'm an Ancient History and Archeaology Major, there is and has always been constant contact in the Mediterranean whether you like it or not. That's why Roman and Greek Myth courses are added in the Mediterranean Myth class which includes also Phoenician myths, Egyptian myths, Sumerian/Babylonian myths, and they yes both Roman and Greek are not included in European Pagan Myth courses which talks about the Germanic religion, Celtic myths,etc...

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## binx

> I'm a Mediterraneanist because that is what my ultra ethnicity is..


This has to do with your personal identity and_ social Identity_, you're also Jewish, I've read. Try to ask to Italians if they share your ideas and they are Mediterraneanist like you. Asking them it has to do with your ethnicity.

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## Azzurro

> This has to do with your personal identity and_ social Identity_, you're also Jewish, I've read. Try to ask to Italians if they share your ideas and they are Mediterraneanist like you. Asking them it has to do with your ethnicity.


There are some, those who have a similar background to me, Mediterraneanism is quite popular, not sure about Italians in Italy, but I'm sure there are. Italy is a Mediterranean country.

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## MOESAN

> It appears that the south-eastern quadrant of europe (Greece and Balkans) was the beachhead in the spread of agriculture into europe from it's source in the Levant region off the eastern mediterranean coast. In my opinion with the Y-DNA and MTDNA composition of early neolithic europeans and neolithic northwest anatolians, the entire neolithic package seems to demonstrate northeastern Syrian/ southeastern Turkish affinities.


It seems the most of European first neolithic (Balkans, Danube) people had closer affinities to the people of a certain period of Catal Höyük than to people of other Anatolia places, as, BI, Cayonu which was localized more easternly...kind of a bottlenecked pop, from what I red - but certainly later moves took place too, with less localized points of departure towards Europe- and it appears some more southern places could have been the point of departure of other colonisers (farmers) maybe in the earliest times (Pelopponese?); more maritime than terrestrial routes in this last case -

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## Apsurdistan

> There's no issue with that, but check before you state something, because some people do get offended by comments of that nature. Can I ask how does Raseni sound Slavic? You know that the Etruscans predate the Slavs by 1000 years.


I said proto-Slavic, Slavic is just a name to describe a linguistic group and it's not that old. The Slavs call other Slavs Sloveni, slovo translates to "letter". Raseni sounds like Rascia or in Serbian Raška the current name for that province today in southwest Serbia, Ottoman name is Sanđak. Stara 
Raška- Old Rascia the oldest Serbian province. Rascia is also similar to what Russians call Russia, Ra-see-ya.

So that's why. But I'm not claiming I know anything about these ancient people I might be totally wrong.

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## LeBrok

> I said proto-Slavic, Slavic is just a name to describe a linguistic group and it's not that old. The Slavs call other Slavs Sloveni, *slovo translates to "letter"*.


Maybe in Bosniak language?

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## harena

> There are some, those who have a similar background to me, Mediterraneanism is quite popular, not sure about Italians in Italy, but I'm sure there are. *Italy is a Mediterranean country.*


And? 

So now a Frenchman from Languedoc, who's 10x closer to a Belgian or a Swiss, is supposed to feel some special kinship with someone from Benghazi because "Med Bros"? Honestly I don't get your thought process..

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## binx

> Italy is a Mediterranean country.


I would say not entirely.

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## Apsurdistan

> Maybe in Bosniak language?


Serbian, Croatian too.
Google translate says pismo for ALL Slavic languages for "letter", I'm not talking about that kind of letter I ment as in alphabet letter A, letter B etc that's what slovo means in Serb-Bos-Cro. But slovo in Polak, Russian, Czech, Slovakian translates to "word". Bulgarian is not it's Duma and Macedonian Zbor for word. 
We call other Slavs Sloveni I don't know what other Slavs call Slavs.

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## Azzurro

> And? 
> 
> So now a Frenchman from Languedoc, who's 10x closer to a Belgian or a Swiss, is supposed to feel some special kinship with someone from Benghazi because "Med Bros"? Honestly I don't get your thought process..


Sure if they want to embrace the Mediterranean inside them, as they say una faccia una razza.

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## Azzurro

> I would say not entirely.


True but majority of Italy is Mediterranean, so the area Alps is technically not.

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## Azzurro

> I said proto-Slavic, Slavic is just a name to describe a linguistic group and it's not that old. The Slavs call other Slavs Sloveni, slovo translates to "letter". Raseni sounds like Rascia or in Serbian Raška the current name for that province today in southwest Serbia, Ottoman name is Sanđak. Stara 
> Raška- Old Rascia the oldest Serbian province. Rascia is also similar to what Russians call Russia, Ra-see-ya.
> 
> So that's why. But I'm not claiming I know anything about these ancient people I might be totally wrong.


Very interesting, I did not know that's how Russians call Russia, thanks, you learn something new everyday.

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## harena

> Sure if they want to embrace the Mediterranean inside them, as they say una faccia una razza.


Go tell Rémi Gaillard and Laurent Blanc, all they apparently need after all is a full beard and a monthly supply of shisha tobacco to fit in right away in Damietta right?




> True but majority of Italy is Mediterranean, so the area Alps is technically not.


Ironically sunkissed Southern French are probably less of a Med face than us in Northern Italy, but whatever..

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## LeBrok

> Serbian, Croatian too.
> Google translate says pismo for ALL Slavic languages for "letter", I'm not talking about that kind of letter I ment as in alphabet letter A, letter B etc that's what slovo means in Serb-Bos-Cro. But slovo in Polak, Russian, Czech, Slovakian translates to "word". Bulgarian is not it's Duma and Macedonian Zbor for word. 
> We call other Slavs Sloveni I don't know what other Slavs call Slavs.


 All Slavs call other Slavs, Slavs - "Sloveni or Slovianie" or similar. The general meaning of "Slav" is a speaker of common language, people of "same words". Likewise with same loginc, slavic name for strangers, non Slavic, was Nemce/Niemcy. Meaning the "ones who don't speak". Used mostly for Germanic tribes, and still in use for Germans. All Slavs call Roman speaker "Vlahy, Wlochy", I'm not sure why though.

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## Apsurdistan

> All Slavs call other Slavs, Slavs - "Sloveni or Slovianie" or similar. The general meaning of "Slav" is a speaker of common language, people of "same words". Likewise with same loginc, slavic name for strangers, non Slavic, was Nemce/Niemcy. Meaning the "ones who don't speak". Used mostly for Germanic tribes, and still in use for Germans. All Slavs call Roman speaker "Vlahy, Wlochy", I'm not sure why though.


All I know about Vlah is that's what Bosniaks the older generations or rural slang term is used to call Christians. We call Romanians Rumuni, Albanians Albanci or Šiptari, Greeks Grci, Italians Italiani.
And Slav doesn't mean anything other than westernized Sloven. But Slava means celebration or glory. Slavuj is some type of bird don't know which one exactly. Slavonija is eastern Croatia. Can't think of any other slav in our language... slab or slabo means weak. Lav means Lion.
This has all become completely off topic.

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## Angela

I've lived among Italian-Americans for a couple of decades now, and I've been in this amateur community for ten years. In all that time I've only met three people of part Italian ancestry(never a full Italian) who subscribe to these kinds of views, views that you normally find on Skadi, forumbiodiversity, theapricity, etc., blogs that are home to self-described racists and nordicists of various stripes and sometimes unexpected countries; at least they were open about their beliefs until pretty recently. The fact that one of the founders of theapricity was sent to prison for militant "white" supremacy undoubtedly led to some discretion, as well as the fact that the FBI and various European organizations are constantly monitoring them. It's time that those of us who have been around for a while acknowledge the huge elephant in the room, if for no other reason than that newbies should know what sites they can trust. 

As I said, in only three people who self-identify as part-Italian have I ever heard these views expressed: Oreo-Cookie/Sikeliot, who is the chief moderator at theapricity and very active at forum biodiversity as Tauromenion, and lately Azzurro/Principe and New Englander. The opinions expressed, and the specific proofs presented, sometimes even the expressions used, were so similar to those of Sikeliot that I thought the latter two were just his sock accounts. I can be excused for that, I think, as he has apparently acknowledged he has many sock accounts at theapricity. There are probably only four people posting there. :) 

They assure me that isn't the case, so it may be that they have just been spending too much time on sites like that, or their perspective may be personal, or based on mixed ancestry, which those of us who have been around a long time and have had personal communications with him absolutely know is the case with Sikeliot. In his case any kind of “Med-centrism” is a cover and a smokescreen. I'll leave it at that. Nobody should have their personal laundry aired in public.

What I think newbies have to understand is that there are not altogether mentally stable people who sometimes use ideologies like this to work out their personal traumas in rather bizarre ways. How else to explain self-hating Jews who join Nazi organizations? Sometimes, it's a sense of national inferiority which they try to redress by obsessing on what some of their ancestors did 6,000 years ago. Sometimes they are young people with very little academic grounding in these disciplines who have been brainwashed by these sites.

Regardless, this kind of thinking is fringe at its best even when it’s honest, and undeserving of all this attention. Italians, including Italian-Americans, identify by region and as Italians, then as European. As I jestingly said above, how could we not: we helped create it. We also fought for it when the Ottomans and the Saracens raided and enslaved and invaded. I assure you that Andrea Doria felt no brotherly fellow feeling for the Ottoman Turk. 

That doesn’t mean that, other than our own fringe racists, we don’t acknowledge the great debt that Europe owes the people of the east for many of the great advancements which have made civilization possible. Nor does this mean that, again, other than the minority among us who are racists, we have a problem with having less WHG/EHG than someone from Sweden or Ireland or Poland. Anyone in this day and age who thinks that “European-ness” depends on whether 50% of your ancestors were here 13,000 years ago versus 20%-30% has a screw loose or is too stupid for these kinds of discussions.

@Binx,
Don't judge all Americans by the nutjobs on these sites. Any American who would say the things said or implied on many of these sites about southern Europeans, Jews, and on and on would become a social pariah. 

Now, we’ve been off topic long enough. Back to the paper.

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## New Englander

Wasn't trying to be racist. I was just being lazy. Should have said Paleolithic, neolithic, Indo-European, ect. What I was saying is that Italy has experienced waves of immigration both from the rest of Europe and the Middle East over the past couple thousand years. This is true, even over the last few hundred years, but the amount of Indo-European mixture, and Northern/Central European influence might have outweighed the other influences over that time period. The exception may be isolated communities in the south. So say there was no movement from the rest of Europe or the Middle East over the last couple hounded years is mind boggling. Now how much was it? I guess we need ancient samples to see what the population was like. But again, those samples may be considered regional, and time period matters.

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## A. Papadimitriou

> All I know about Vlah is that's what Bosniaks the older generations or rural slang term is used to call Christians. We call Romanians Rumuni, Albanians Albanci or Šiptari, Greeks Grci, Italians Italiani.
> And Slav doesn't mean anything other than westernized Sloven. *But Slava means celebration or glory.* Slavuj is some type of bird don't know which one exactly. Slavonija is eastern Croatia. Can't think of any other slav in our language... slab or slabo means weak. Lav means Lion.
> This has all become completely off topic.


When Konstantinos Oikonomos (1780-1857) wrote about Slavic he tried to connect the ethnonym with ancient greek 'kleos' = glory (so it would be from **slàva*). And in Sanskrit _śrávas =_“fame, honor”
The reconstructed PIE root is *klew = hear supposedly but they say that *slysati, *slusati come from it too. I personally believe the name was connected with the meaning 'fame, glory, honor'. Either way the terms are thought to be related.

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## Milan.M

..............

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## Apsurdistan

I don't know what you mean with Klew but Kleveta = slander. Kletva = curse. Gatati = fortune telling.

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## Ralphie Boy

It makes complete sense that continental Greeks are pulled closer to Albanians, because of the historical Albanian population movements into Greece. Maybe the connection goes both ways to some degree, as ancient Greek people had settlements in modern Albania. 

I am very curious about how much male haplogroups E-V13 and J2b will be found in Classical era Greece and south Balkans.

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## Milan.M

[QUOTE=Apsurdistan;509148]I don't know what you mean with Klew but Kleveta = slander. Kletva = curse. Gatati = fortune telling.[/QUOTE

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## LABERIA

> It makes complete sense that continental Greeks are pulled closer to Albanians, because of the historical Albanian population movements into Greece. Maybe the connection goes both ways to some degree, as ancient Greek people had settlements in modern Albania. 
> 
> I am very curious about how much male haplogroups E-V13 and J2b will be found in Classical era Greece and south Balkans.


The influence of ancient greeks in genetic terms was insignificant. The ancient greeks were a small, lucky and genius group of tribes. 
They were small, compared with the other nations of antiquity like Celts, Thracians, Illyrians, etc. 
They were lucky, because they settled in a specific place, the southern part of Greek Peninsula. And this helped them to be in contact with other ancient civilisations. For example they took from the Phoenicians the alphabet. 
And they were genius, because as we know the civilisation of modern Europe is based in greek and of course roman civilisation.

----------


## Yetos

> The influence of ancient greeks in genetic terms was insignificant. The ancient greeks were a small, lucky and genius group of tribes. 
> They were small, compared with the other nations of antiquity like Celts, Thracians, Illyrians, etc. 
> They were lucky, because they settled in a specific place, the southern part of Greek Peninsula. And this helped them to be in contact with other ancient civilisations. For example they took from the Phoenicians the alphabet. 
> And they were genius, because as we know the civilisation of modern Europe is based in greek and of course roman civilisation.



@ Laberia

History teach us that Greek had their own Alphabetos before adopt Phoenician
they had Linear A and B
and Cymae Alphabet
the today known as Latin Alphabet is an invention of Greeks
it true name is *Euboean Greek Alphabetos*

the adoption of Phoenician is another story

----------


## Ralphie Boy

> The influence of ancient greeks in genetic terms was insignificant. The ancient greeks were a small, lucky and genius group of tribes. 
> They were small, compared with the other nations of antiquity like Celts, Thracians, Illyrians, etc. 
> They were lucky, because they settled in a specific place, the southern part of Greek Peninsula. And this helped them to be in contact with other ancient civilisations. For example they took from the Phoenicians the alphabet. 
> And they were genius, because as we know the civilisation of modern Europe is based in greek and of course roman civilisation.


By the time of the Classical Age, Greeks were a huge group of people, living in many places, like Anatolian coasts, Magna Grecia and around the Black Sea. They were not a small people, genetically. 

As far as continental Greeks and this study, I agree that it's limited to a few locations and doesn't look at other continental spots like the Tsakonian region. In that respect, the study is missing important information. However, I believe on the whole that continental Greece is shifted more northward than Italy/Sicily, Crete and Aegean Islands like the Dodecanese. They probably took in influences from the southern Balkans and of course, medieval Slavs. 

I don't believe that medieval invasions replaced everyone in continental Greece, or that Greeks were gone by the time the Slavs came. The country is too big for that, and it has too many regions. I believe that can easily be seen just by people's appearances.

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## Azzurro

The true racist Italians are those of Italicroots and Gioiello, to think that me or Sikeliot or New Englander is racist is actually ridiculous.

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## Pax Augusta

> The true racist Italians are those of Italicroots and Gioiello, to think that me or Sikeliot or New Englander is racist is actually ridiculous.


If you think that Gioiello is a racist, we do belong to a different ethnicity.

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## Azzurro

> If you think that Gioiello is a racist, we do belong to a different ethnicity.


I find him big time racist and insulting, he is absolutely the worst in my opinion. His refugia theory is not true, and he attacks everyone.

----------


## Pax Augusta

> I find him big time racist and insulting, he is absolutely the worst in my opinion. His refugia theory is not true, and *he attacks everyone*.


Which is exactly what you're doing.

----------


## Azzurro

> Which is exactly what you're doing.


No definitely not, who did I attack??? Gioiello is on a different level, he is as bad as those Nordicists.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> I find him big time racist and insulting, he is absolutely the worst in my opinion. His refugia theory is not true, and he attacks everyone.


They can prove him wrong with ancient samples.

(Either way, your theories aren't accepted either. I didn't comment because a distant connection is possible, but what you said about Hurrians is certainly debateable)

----------


## Azzurro

> They can prove him wrong with ancient samples.
> 
> (Either way, your theories aren't accepted either. I didn't comment because a distant connection is possible, but what you said about Hurrians is certainly debateable)


They are not accepted here, and again just because I have my own theories doesn't make them absolute truth, I can be right or wrong, and side note the Greeks have a large gene flow to Southern Italy too, the largest of non Italic peoples. There is certain Y lines which I believe could have only came in through Greeks like J2a-M319 and a lineage of J2a-M92 (its looking like PF7412 related lineages). They peak in areas where Greeks settled, and I manually Nevgen predicted the Y of Griko peoples in Salento and J2a-M319 and J2a-M92 were by far the most common J2a's amongst them.

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## oreo_cookie

> The fact that one of the founders of theapricity was sent to prison for militant "white" supremacy undoubtedly led to some discretion, as well as the fact that the FBI and various European organizations are constantly monitoring them.


I am not going to address the rest of your post as I am leaving the forum (this is my last post), but this is not true. No one of any position of power on the forum has ever been as you described, and I think you've mixed up Apricity with the website "Skadi" which was a Nordicist forum and very racist. Apricity is now very mainstream for an anthroforum just like Forumbiodiversity, and over half of its users are not European... a lot of people from all over the Muslim world, Latin Americans of every race, and other people of color post on, and are perfectly accepted on, Apricity.

With that said I wish you all well, and absolve you of my presence.  :Good Job:

----------


## binx

> Apricity is now very mainstream for an anthroforum just like Forumbiodiversity, and over half of its users are not European... a lot of people from all over the Muslim world, Latin Americans of every race, and other people of color post on, and are perfectly accepted on, Apricity.


In Apricity it's all about for years the usual discussion: who are the swarthiest Europeans? Who is more MENA-looking? Who is more European-looking?

There, any discussion of genetics, anthropology, history, is ultimately linked to this.

Apricity is a masked version of Skadi, where Nordicist ideas are spread in the name of free speech, liberalism and lookism. 

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...-group-and-why. 

Rank the Southern European regions in terms of most/least MENA influence.

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...MENA-influence

I do not know how much you all are really aware of what you are doing.

----------


## harena

> Apricity is a masked version of Skadi, where Nordicist ideas are spread in the name of free speech, liberalism and lookism. 
> 
> http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...-group-and-why.


LOL I see a member in that thread going by the cringe name of MedBreeze who keeps spouting the same cheesy pan-Mediterraneanist tripe of Azzurro. I believe it's the same guy.
See also here:

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...n-your-country

----------


## Angela

Ok, enough. 

The important take away for newbies and the blissfully unaware at places like anthrogenica is that anything posted on these sites or by these people on any site, are all in the service of their racist/Nordicist ideology, which generally means using cherry-picked data and distorted interpretations of data, as we've seen on this very thread. Nothing posted by these people on any site can be taken at face value; the supposed source of the data must be thoroughly analyzed independently, which a lot of people either don't think of doing or don't know how to do.

An additional problem is that they assume false ethnicities and names for sock accounts all over the internet. Someone claiming to be Italian is not necessarily Italian. I've always had my doubts that Sikeliot is half-Sicilian American, especially given the fact that he posted for so long as, I think, Portuguese Princess. If he is Sicilian they should rename theapricity the "I hate my father thread." 

Likewise, four posters agreeing on something may be one person.

This is all information newbies need. Heck, I didn't know most of it for years, because I didn't even know about those sites. I didn't know about Skadi until this week.

One last point point. There are Italian Nordicists too, usually, although not always, Northern Italians. One has been repeatedly banned, including by me. As for those who have posted here quite a bit and still post, I don't know their personal beliefs. I can't look into anyone's mind. What I do know is that I am not aware of them posting any incorrect, cherry picked or dishonest information. In fact, their posts are usually very helpful. I know a lot about Italy and I check the papers in great detail. I detest dishonest people, and I give that sort of thing short shrift no matter who posts it. 

@ Oreo Cookie. So you've said twice before. Promises, promises.

So, this is in the nature of a public service announcement, which is why I allowed it even though it's a bit off topic. However, enough is enough. No more. BACK TO THE PAPER.

----------


## Angela

The, ahem, "experts" at anthrogenica (It seems Anthrogenica may become an outpost of theapricity.) keep trying to make points about settlement patterns in ancient Sicily in part by using data from Messina and Palermo. Perhaps, before pontificating they should learn a little bit about Italian history: Messina was hit by earthquakes in 1783, 1894 and most devastatingly in 1908. The entire city had to be rebuilt and resettled by people from all over the island and the mainland. Palermo is the capitol and has drawn people from all over the island, the mainland and abroad. It's like sampling in London, or San Francisco in 1960 and thinking it can tell you about settlement patterns in pre-earthquake S.F. 

Of course, Sikeliot knows this very well as I informed him of it on 23and me, here, and privately. So he's just being dishonest,again. I'm surprised, however, that the moderator hasn't caught these things.

----------


## LATGAL

> Apricity is now very mainstream


I think the internet has warped your idea of what is 'mainstream' a bit. This isn't to say that ethnic nationalism, racism and the like don't exist or aren't even very popular at times and places but...Maybe my problem is that I can't get as used to the I-was-just-joking-but-also-being-completely-serious-but-yeah-I-was-just-joking shitposting world.  :Grin: 

Sorry for the off-topic.  :Innocent:

----------


## Alpenjager

> I'll be able to post graphs in a few posts hopefully.


You should clear your private messages in order to receive new ones.

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## spartan owl

My first observation is that this is another research confirming the closeness of greek and s.italian population and that the EEF sardinia-like substratum brought the greek and italian population close even before the greek colonization. 
The second thing is about the middle easter influence in s.italy. A lot of people seemed puzzled about s.italy having a bigger middle eastern component than greece but according to my oppinion it is to be expected if you take a look at those two countries history as greece was never conquered by the saracens with the exception of crete.I agree anyway with angela that a conquest do not change drastically a countrys genetics but i do not see a valid reason why to expect higher influence in a country that was not.(there was of course the turkish occupation but turks are very different to levantines).The only hypothesis in that case would be that ancient greeks were more middle eastern than italians but it seems more likely that greek and italians were even more similar than today.On the other hand maybe just the mainland greeks were more slavisized-balkanized but in that case you should aspect that kind of results too.But i do not see the reason why should we focus only in that small portion of the s.italian ancestry anyway...
My last observation would be that the albanians seems to be more isolated and that becomes even more obvious to the ghegs as they have the biggest sardinian like ancestry and also have a really tiny middle eastern component but also small european like component.That means to my opinion that they were less affected by the events of balkanization and maybe even to the prior events.(the low middle eastern component make me belive that they were pretty different than greeks and romans and isolated even in ancient times) that becomes clear if you compare them with the neighbouring n.greece but even peloponnese have less sardinian and more european like component than the ghegs(it is not the same for the tosks at least for the european-like part).So i am keen to belive that tosks were influenced by the ancient greek colonization and the s albania greek minority rather than the opposite , or at least they followed parallel paths, but it was a two way influence, like it is usually in nature.That offcourse made the arbereshe that they were tosks more easy to blend geneticaly with the italians than if they were ghegs that probably would have more stark differences.
All this offcourse is just hypothesis untill we have ancient dna like angela said

----------


## Hauteville

Actually only Sicily was conquered by saracens for a short time, Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia never conquered by them (except Bari for a really short time) and those saracens were not levantines but berbers and arabized spaniards/portuguese. So the extra-levantine compared to mainland Greece came not from saracens.

----------


## spartan owl

> Actually only Sicily was conquered by saracens for a short time, Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia never conquered by them (except Bari for a really short time) and those saracens were not levantines but berbers and arabized spaniards/portuguese. So the extra-levantine compared to mainland Greece came not from saracens.


i must admit that you are right about that.So probably it was just the mainland greece that drifted towards north-east,but we can not really tell without ancient dna. The difference is not big in my opinion anyway(at least for the aegean), i was just saying that there is not reall reason to aspect bigger mena component in greece but i would not be shocked if it was either.

----------


## Monsieur

No the study samples self declared Greek American customers of GENO 2, not actual Greeks from Greece who have a signification recent MENA component from Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia,... see Stamatoyannopoulos et al.

----------


## Angela

> No the study samples self declared Greek American customers of GENO 2, not actual Greeks from Greece who have a signification recent MENA component from Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia,... see Stamatoyannopoulos et al.


Stop using terms that are totally inapplicable, like MENA, which includes North Africa. Also, stop misrepresenting the results of that study. I told Sikeliot what would happen if he once again engaged in the equivalent of academic fraud. The same applies to you my supposedly Neapolitan friend. It is you, Joey, isn't it? How many accounts have you opened over the years? Nice handle this time for a Neapolitan. Any chefs in the family?

----------


## New Englander

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...skeletons-dna/

I know this is old, but its still interesting.

----------


## Parapolitikos

> The influence of ancient greeks in genetic terms was insignificant. The ancient greeks were a small, lucky and genius group of tribes. 
> They were small, compared with the other nations of antiquity like Celts, Thracians, Illyrians, etc.


According to whom?
Classical Greece population(and colonies) was 7-10 millions at a time the entire Europe didn't have much more than 50 millions

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## Angela

Just ignore this kind of nonsense unsupported by any data. The ancient Greeks were numerous enough to found colonies all over the ancient world. Their problem was a *surplus* of people for their rocky homeland.

----------


## OkTex

My wife's family came to the States from Sicily in 1900...my research indicates that her family was originally Albanian and that there are several Albanian enclaves in Sicily that remain to this day, complete with their language, traditions etc. Would appreciate any discussion and history of this Albanian migration.

----------


## Pax Augusta

> My wife's family came to the States from Sicily in 1900...my research indicates that her family was originally Albanian and that there are several Albanian enclaves in Sicily that remain to this day, complete with their language, traditions etc. Would appreciate any discussion and history of this Albanian migration.


In Sicily there are few Arbereshe towns in comparison with Calabria who has the biggest number of Albanian towns in Italy. 

Which town of Sicily did your wife's ancestors come from?

----------


## OkTex

Santa Christina Gela...found lots of 1st cousin/2nd cousin marriages back in the day

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## Jovialis

Very interesting study.

According to my results, it said my first reference population was Greek, and my second was Tuscan. However, I find that to be odd, since it actually looks closer to Tuscan...



EDIT:

Perhaps, because my ancestors come specifically from the Ancient Greek colonies? My family is from central Puglia.

----------


## Angela

> Santa Christina Gela...found lots of 1st cousin/2nd cousin marriages back in the day


In case you didn't find it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cristina_Gela

There's always more info on the Italian version:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cristina_Gela

----------


## Salento

I'm from Southern Puglia.
Geno 2 NG Helix Results:
91% Italy & Southern Europe
5% Southwestern Europe
2% Eastern Europe 

1st Ref. Pop. Greek
2nd Ref. Pop. Tuscan (Italy)

----------


## Jovialis

> I'm from Southern Puglia.
> Geno 2 NG Helix Results:
> 91% Italy & Southern Europe
> 5% Southwestern Europe
> 2% Eastern Europe 
> 
> 1st Ref. Pop. Greek
> 2nd Ref. Pop. Tuscan (Italy)


Interesting results, similar to mine. I guess your southwestern Europe part comes from the when Puglia was part of the Spanish Empire. I would have guessed, I too might have had some ancestry from Iberia. Especially since some Spaniards have my grandmother's last name (so do some Frenchmen). But Iberia is actually the only place in Europe I don't have ancestry from. At any rate, its awesome you're 91% Italian; you beat me! :P

----------


## Salento

lol. My admixture is not very exciting.

----------


## Angela

It's highly unlikely these clusters have much to do with recent admixture, i.e. Spanish rule in various parts of Italy.

This test is looking at ancient admixture.

----------


## dominique_nuit

> This test is looking at ancient admixture.


Why do you say this? That is, I agree that Spanish rule likely had very little genetic impact on Italy. But do you know something about the Geno NG 2.0 test that leads you to say it "is looking at ancient admixture"?

----------


## Salento

Sephardic Jewish?

----------


## Seanp

> Sephardic Jewish?


The higher levels of Near Eastern admixture can be explained by the history of Southern Italy. There's been various ethnic groups which traded across the whole Mediterranean Sea (Carthagians, Phoenicians and other Sea related people).
The Y-dna of South Italians suggest a recent Jewish and Phoenician geneflow along with weaker Arab one based on the study of haplotype J1 in the Italian population. 




> Most of the J1 in Italy (especially in Sicily) is under YSC76, there's a certain amount of diversity even at this level though, at least two branches can be labeled Phoenician at this stage:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ZS6057, Palermo (matches in Lebanon and Aleppo).FGC8216 (including FGC8195), Palermo (matches a Lebanese "Sahely", this name literally means "from the coast" in Arabic), also found in individuals from Catania and Potenza. 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 While the majority of Jews were being expelled during the Middle Ages but a some Jews converted to Christianity. 
We also have to consider the long presence of Byzantine influence where a lot Greek merchants settled down in Italy and these people were come from various parts of the Byzantium. 

There's also a significant IBD sharing with North African populations which is very low between North Italians and North Africans but certainly high between Sicilians, Calabrians and North African populations. Some weak level of North African ancestry which is highly ENF (Same as Bedouin and Early Neolithic farmers from the Levant) can drift the South Italian genome slightly more Southern position. (Suggesting the Red component can be easily misread as Middle Eastern instead of North African ancestry)

My own opinion consider both pre historic and recent migrations which has shaped the genetic patterns of modern Greek and Italian populations. It's certainly undeniable there's a significant recent Indo European like or Mesolithic ancestry in Greece, which suggest the effect of long Slavic presence on the Mainland, while the Islanders show different patterns being shifted slightly closer to Southern Italians and the Caucasus (CHG related admixture)

----------


## Angela

Back from banishment and still the same old, same old. Have you any interests other than Italian genetics? You have no profound wisdom to impart on other subjects?

Until you provide sources for your claims I'm not even going to read them carefully.

While you're at it post accurate percentages for frequencies for modern Italian populations in regard to specific yDna lineages.

Oh, and is your flag now in accordance with your posting location? You remember that rule, correct?

----------


## Seanp

From a global perspecitve, both Southern Italians and Greek Islanders are close to one another. Mainland Greeks and Aberesche communities show a pull towards Balkans.

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## Angela

Same old, same old. Don't you have anything new? 

Keep it up and you'll get an infraction for spamming. Are we clear?

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## Jovialis

> Actually only Sicily was conquered by saracens for a short time, Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia never conquered by them (except Bari for a really short time) and those saracens were not levantines but berbers and arabized spaniards/portuguese. So the extra-levantine compared to mainland Greece came not from saracens.


My father's town, Altamura, was originally destroyed and depopulated by the Saracens. The area remained uninhabited for a couple centuries. In 1232, it was re-founded by Federico II. Thus, the original population there was wiped out; I'm related to the people who re-settled it.




> A couple of centuries after Altamura was looted by the Saracens, it started to be inhabited again as emperor Frederick II refounded the city (1232) and ordered the construction of the large Altamura Cathedral, which became one of the most venerated sanctuaries in Apulia. In 1248, under pressure from Frederick, Pope Innocent IV declared Altamura exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Bari, making it a "palatine church", that is the equivalent of a palace chapel..


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamura#The_new_city


My mother's town, Molfetta, remained as an independent sea-port, and was able to repel the Saracen assaults.




> The first official document that mentions the city dates to November 925; it documents a civitas denominated Melfi, situated on a peninsula named Sant'Andrea. The city developed under Byzantine dominion, and was later conquered by the Lombards, who included it in the Duchy of Benevento. The city repelled repeated assaults by the Saracens. As an independent seaport, Molfetta traded with other Mediterranean markets, including Venice, Alexandria, Constantinople, Syria, Amalfi and Ragusa.
> At the beginning of the 11th century the Normans arrived, and the autonomy that the city preserved helped foster its development as both a commercial port with the east, and as port of embarcation for pilgrims heading to the Holy Land. The Crusades permitted the city to assume a wider importance. Among the many pilgrims was Conrad of Bavaria, who was so enamoured of the city that he became venerated as San Corrado, the protecting saint of Molfetta. During the Angevin dominion the city succeeded in remaining autonomous. However, the arrival of the Aragonese kingdom to Southern Italy, spurred turbulent struggles between French, Spanish and Italians. These wars provoked death and destruction in the whole south of Italy: the Sack of Molfetta at the hands of the French, 18–19 July 1529, was an episode that stalled the economic rebirth of the city.


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

----------


## Angela

Almost all of the Mediterranean coastlines of Spain, France, and Italy were subject to Saracen and then Ottoman attack. That's why for so many hundreds of years the coastal areas were abandoned and people moved inland to fortified hill towns where they were safe.

In Liguria and coastal Toscana, all the watch towers are still there. They're called "Saraceni" towers. 

It wasn't only Muslim pirates either. Repeated sacking by Vikings and other northern groups caused the entire magnificent city of Luni to be abandoned, and its people, under their bishop, moved inland, founding many of the inland cities still occupied today.

Any significant genetic impact would have been on the home countries of the pirates, since any people unlucky enough not to get to the safety of the city walls were enslaved and taken back to home ports and slave marts. 

This one is in Alassio. They were manned by men who had to keep watch and send light flares to the inland towns that ships were approaching.



Luni:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luni,_Italy

It was sacked by Vikings who got into the walls by pretending to be Christians. Their idiot leader thought it was Rome. 

These are some of the towns they built inland:

----------


## Salento

Fortified Towers and Castles surround the cost at the end of hill of the Italian boot every 3 miles or so : Torre Chianca, San Cataldo, Torre Specchia, San Foca, Roca Vecchia, Torre Dell'Orso, Otranto, Porto Badisco, .....

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## New Englander

Is there any evidence of migrants from further east passing into Italy in order to take the journey to Ellis island? They would be integrated as "Italians", even though they were not. Just blend in as best you can until you get the America. Maybe even learn Italian. A lot of the original family names were Americanized anyway, so Its hard to know where they were from unless your family had church records. .

----------


## Angela

> Is there any evidence of migrants from further east passing into Italy in order to take the journey to Ellis island? They would be integrated as "Italians", even though they were not. Just blend in as best you can until you get the America. Maybe even learn Italian. A lot of the original family names were Americanized anyway, so Its hard to know where they were from unless your family had church records. .


I've never heard of anything like that. There were Arbereshe who came to America and their descendants just tell people they're Italian, which they are, and of course they spoke Italian. The ones I know just think it's a complication of Italian history which Americans would neither understand nor care about.

Then there's the Croatians who have done the same, and they're not Italian, and some of them spoke Italian only as a second language. They're usually Dalmatians or from Istria, areas which were ruled by Italians for a certain amount of time. They didn't do it to be allowed to get into the country though. It's usually so they can open Northern Italian restaurants and seem authentic. They tell people their sometimes authentic, sometimes fake Italian first names and just don't mention the Croatian surnames. I don't think it's quite honest, but I know a lot of them and they're nice people and the food is good so...

I think a few Jews did that as well. Didn't a geneticist find out through the dodecad runs that his supposedly Italian grandfather was actually Ashkenazi?

Then there are Italian Jews who people think are just generic Italian, but nobody was lying, i.e. Vittorio Gassman, or Modigliani etc.

----------


## Jovialis

I know a couple individuals that pretend to be Italian. They tell me casually too.

Edit: They didn't lie on immigration papers though. I think they're just italophiles.

----------


## Sile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xve-RuogSE8

check out Lidia from pula istria in regards to slav/italians

----------


## Angela

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xve-RuogSE8
> 
> check out Lidia form pula istria in regards to slav/italians


She has an Italian surname, actually, and Italian is her "native" language, or so she claims; it's her husband who had a Croatian surname. So, I suppose she's legitimate enough. He might have been mostly Italian for all I know. My first cousin married a Venetian who can trace his ancestry back 500 years, and his surname ends in "ich". You have to know the people and their history.

Her signature restaurant, Felidia, serves very good northern Italian food, but it is obscenely expensive. I've been there a few times when a client insisted, but never if it's on my dime.

The restaurants her sons have opened are absolutely disgusting, the epitome of tourist rip offs. I never complain in restaurants: if the food is bad I just don't go there again. However, I made an exception for Becco on the West Side. Considering that her son runs it I thought it would be safe to order pasta that had a tomato based sauce on it. I was wrong: the sauce was absolutely tasteless except for the acidity, which was overpowering. I called the waiter over, told him I wouldn't eat it and we wouldn't be paying for it, and if the "chef" and "manager" wanted to know why I'd be happy to tell them. I left the waiter a tip, because of course none of it was his fault, and we left. I left a terrible review on every blog I could find, but to no avail. The stupid Middle America tourists still flock to it and give good reviews.

For any Italians coming to New York, beware: find a blog written by Italians living in New York and use their recommendations. Under no circumstances trust American reviews uncritically.

----------


## Pax Augusta

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xve-RuogSE8
> 
> check out Lidia from pula istria in regards to slav/italians


Her name is Lidia Matticchio, she is Istrian Italian from Pola, but being you confuse Trentini with South Tyroleans, how could you know the difference between Istrian Italians and Slavs? :)





> She has an Italian surname, actually, and Italian is her "native" language, or so she claims; it's her husband who had a Croatian surname.



Actually Bastianich comes from a common Italian surname, Bastiani. Ich was a common suffix among Istrian Italians, the Slavs have usually -ic instead of -ich. His son Joe Bastianich is quite popular in Italy and he speaks a good Italian and he identifies only as Italian.

----------


## Sile

> Her name is Lidia Matticchio, she is Istrian Italian from Pola, but being you confuse Trentini with South Tyroleans, how could you know the difference between Istrian Italians and Slavs? :)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Actually Bastianich comes from a common Italian surname, Bastiani. Ich was a common suffix among Istrian Italians, the Slavs have usually -ic instead of -ich. His son Joe Bastianich is quite popular in Italy and he speaks a good Italian and he identifies only as Italian.


Are you being silly?...........you are the confused one

All south-Tyrol is under Italy ...........and south-tyrol is part of trentino region. Places like Bolzano and Merano are under Italy In South-tyrol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrol%E2%80%93South_Tyrol%E2%80%93Trentino_Euroreg ion




On the other matter ...Bastiani comes from the christian name Bastian and in italian form it is Sebastiano

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## davef

> She has an Italian surname, actually, and Italian is her "native" language, or so she claims; it's her husband who had a Croatian surname. So, I suppose she's legitimate enough. He might have been mostly Italian for all I know. My first cousin married a Venetian who can trace his ancestry back 500 years, and his surname ends in "ich". You have to know the people and their history.
> 
> Her signature restaurant, Felidia, serves very good northern Italian food, but it is obscenely expensive. I've been there a few times when a client insisted, but never if it's on my dime.
> 
> The restaurants her sons have opened are absolutely disgusting, the epitome of tourist rip offs. I never complain in restaurants: if the food is bad I just don't go there again. However, I made an exception for Becco on the West Side. Considering that her son runs it I thought it would be safe to order pasta that had a tomato based sauce on it. I was wrong: the sauce was absolutely tasteless except for the acidity, which was overpowering. I called the waiter over, told him I wouldn't eat it and we wouldn't be paying for it, and if the "chef" and "manager" wanted to know why I'd be happy to tell them. I left the waiter a tip, because of course none of it was his fault, and we left. I left a terrible review on every blog I could find, but to no avail. The stupid Middle America tourists still flock to it and give good reviews.
> 
> For any Italians coming to New York, beware: find a blog written by Italians living in New York and use their recommendations. Under no circumstances trust American reviews uncritically.


 Oh, I remember her! My dad is a big fan of her's.... every now and then I used to hear her show from another room (he would see em all-Giada's everyday Italian, and other famous italian cooking shows that escape my mind). 
He even owns one of her books.

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## davef

@Angela
My taste isn't any different from someone from let's say Idaho (likely next to no Italians in that state)...but then again I'm far from a connosciour (can't spell...lol). When given a plate of pasta, my brain says: there's pasta, there's sauce, good enough, let's eat! 
Same can be said for dominoes pizza or (anticipating you throwing something at me after reading what comes next)...Olive Garden *ducks, runs for safety* ;).

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## Angela

> @Angela
> My taste isn't any different from someone from let's say Idaho (likely next to no Italians in that state)...but then again I'm far from a connosciour (can't spell...lol). When given a plate of pasta, my brain says: there's pasta, there's sauce, good enough, let's eat! 
> Same can be said for dominoes pizza or (anticipating you throwing something at me after reading what comes next)...Olive Garden *ducks, runs for safety* ;).


Indeed, you'd better run! :) How could anyone with a drop of Italian blood in their veins eat that junk?

Seriously, don't eat that drek. Not only will it ruin your palate, but it's not healthy either; it's all full of chemicals.

Her cook books are quite good. I have one as well. Or, if you don't have the patience to read them or need to see them done, she has you tube videos as well.

Now, we should get back on topic.

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## Seanp

The majority of people living in South Tyrol are of Austrian heritage. I used to work with an Austrian man who collected individual petitions to reopen a discussion on the political borders of Tyrol and possibly make it to the EU court of justice.

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## Sile

> The majority of people living in South Tyrol are of Austrian heritage. I used to work with an Austrian man who collected individual petitions to reopen a discussion on the political borders of Tyrol and possibly make it to the EU court of justice.


the genetic studies all show that the italians and austrians in this area have the same ancient haplogroups and subclades .............the only difference is the language .......maybe in a hundred years or so , we can call them English as that is what they will be speaking!

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## Cato

> Gaudo and, especially, Rinaldone are traditionaly associated with Remedello (EEF), and then, afterwards, with newcomers, warrior-shepherds coming from the *Balkans* (Vucedol, according to Laviosa Zambotti, southern Balkans according to modern-day scholars), while Remedello differed because it had other influences from Western Europe. These newcomers from the Balkans could have been originally from the East Med/Aegean area, but they first settled in the Balkans.
> 
> 
> 
> http://data.cnr.it/data/cnr/individuo/prodotto/ID185125


Ok, but why afterwards ? Gaudo and Rinaldone (Remedello appear more autochthonous) are intrusive and different since their beginning from the Italian neolithic cultures. I agree that most of their population was local (EEF), but my guess is that the new brachy types that from the south reached the center of the peninsula were at least in part CHG. Mallegni described the brachy type of Gaudo as "Syrian looking" (unfortunately i have lost the PDF, it was a chapter of this book _Dal bronzo al ferro_. _Sulla possibile origine anatolica degli etruschi)_.

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## Jovialis

Check out this article Dr. Spencer Wells shared yesterday on Facebook. It's in regards to the population of mainland Greece. Apparently, during the Middle ages, there was a genetic divergence that occurred.




> The scientists were not expecting to find that the people in the Greek islands appear genetically closer to southern Italians than to the people in continental Greece. 
> Meanwhile, the mainland Greeks, including the Peloponnese in southern Greece, had become slightly differentiated. They clustered with populations from the southern Balkans, including Kosovo and Albania.


read more: http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.798089

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## Angela

> Check out this article Dr. Spencer Wells shared yesterday on Facebook. It's in regards to the population of mainland Greece. Apparently, during the Middle ages, there was a genetic divergence that occurred.
> 
> read more: http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.798089


If they're proven correct by ancient dna, that might mean that the classical Greeks were closer to Island Greeks than to modern mainland Greece, except, perhaps, for people from the southern Peloponnese. I could then add another "I told you so" to my list, and Nordicists would take another hit. :)

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## Pax Augusta

> If they're proven correct by ancient dna, that might mean that the classical Greeks were closer to Island Greeks than to modern mainland Greece, except, perhaps, for people from the southern Peloponnese. I could then add another "I told you so" to my list, and Nordicists would take another hit. :)


That article is citing the Sarno's paper. So as it seems nothing new.

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## Yetos

personally I would like to have a statistic result from Aspromonte Italy
to compare it with mainland Greece

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## Angela

> personally I would like to have a statistic result from Aspromonte Italy
> to compare it with mainland Greece


Me too. It's isolated enough that you'd think it would preserve ancient signatures. They'd better get busy and find those 80 and 90 year olds who trace all their ancestry to those areas.



For more detail:
https://peppecaridi2.files.wordpress...spromonte2.png

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## Angela

Hold on, we have the genomes from there. I must have had a brain freeze. 

See Sarno et al:
https://static-content.springer.com/...MOESM1_ESM.pdf

They're so isolated and drifted that they really don't cluster with anyone, although the closest is other Southern Italians. It remains to be seen how they compare to ancient Greeks from the mainland. In terms of Calabria, I'd want to see Achaean results from the Peloponnese before the arrival of the Slavs.

Calabria Greca:This is a nice article on the towns.

Galliciano on the edge of the Aspromonte:
http://www.calabriatheotheritaly.com...iano-calabria/

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## Yetos

> Galliciano on the edge of the Aspromonte:
> http://www.calabriatheotheritaly.com...iano-calabria/


Correct 
Galliciano is a move not from antique.
but just before the entrance of Slavs.
it is a clear north mainland Greece, medieval times,
and is before Crusades, and same time with Slavs
a 'devastation' forced to avoid the incoming S Slavs.
from an open almost defenceless valley,
not a closed of fortified mountain

so a comparison of Aspromonte with some mainland Greek specially Makedonia
can give us a idea on how was the genetics of population at East Roman times before the medieval changes,
off course we must notice that it would have Greco-Roman mixed population genetics
and not pure Greek before entrance of Romans

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## Angela

Yetos, we cross-posted. See post number 195.

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## Yetos

it seems from Figure S7 

that Galliciano and Bovista (generally Aspromonte is away from all).

that is odd for me.  :Thinking:

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## Jovialis

Now the NG breakdown for Greeks makes sense to me. It is reflective of the mainland.

I would suspect a Greek from the islands to have a large southern European component, similar to mine. It also makes more sense as to why Greek is my first reference population. The results they posted as the standard is reflective of the mainland; not the Island Greeks.

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## Angela

> it seems from Figure S7 
> 
> that Galliciano and Bovista (generally Aspromonte is away from all).
> 
> that is odd for me.


That's what happens when there's so much drift through isolation. When the time comes, I still really want to see a comparison with the Greeks of the Classical Era through the Byzantine Era, anything before the arrival of the Slavic speakers.

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## Pax Augusta

> Of course there's more "Caucasus" like ancestry in Tuscans than in northern Italians, but the question is, when did this Caucasus like ancestry arrive in Europe? I'll buy Metal Ages...Oetzi had a little bit already, but this doesn't prove that a specific migration in 800 BC brought it!
> 
> Also, there's more in southern Italians yet, and more in Greeks. There's the same amount in Balkan people. Were they all settled in the first millennium BC by people from Anatolia?
> 
> Take a look at the "Caucasus" proportion in these groups as per the Dienekes K-12b analysis"
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...hl=en_US#gid=0
> Northern Italians: 22.9
> Romanians: 28.4
> Tuscans: 30.5
> ...


Sardinian: 20.9
Northern Italians: 22.9
Romanians: 28.4
*TSI 30 (Tuscans): 28.6*
Tuscans: 30.5
Bulgarians: 30.7
Southern Italians/Sicilians: 36.5
Greeks: 37.4


On Dienekes K-12b there is another Tuscan sample (TSI30 Metspalu) and it has 28.6 Caucasian, it's the Tuscan HGDP from Southern Tuscany with 30.5. TSI30 Metspalu is a sample of 21 persons from Central Tuscany, likely one of the many subsets of HapMap, while HGDP as known is a sample of 8 persons from Southern Tuscany.

Interestingly more you go north in Tuscany and more the Caucasus component decreases. Caucasus component is 23/24 in Lucchesi (North Tuscany) I've seen, in Lunigiana (Northwestern Tuscany) is around 22/23 like in North Italy. I've also seen also the results of some central Tuscans with 25/26% of Caucasian, even some southern Tuscan with 25%.

What does it mean? In Tuscany exists an internal cline and this Caucasian is stronger in the south of the region, and less strong in the north of the region, with Central Tuscany that seems intermediate between the two but leaning towards southern Tuscany. Like Cato has introduced, there was a possible Chalcolithic or Bronze Age migration from the southern Balkans/Epirus to South Italy that reached Central Italy and has increased the Caucasian-CHG component? If there was a late movement from Anatolia (first millenium BC) into Central Italy, this late movement did not have a significant genetic impact on the whole population. The increase of CHG is most likely due to a migration of the Chalcolithic period, which came through the Balkans into South Italy, and left traces not only in Italy but also in the Balkans, surely among the Albanians and the Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, and very likely more north of them.

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## Angela

> Sardinian: 20.9
> Northern Italians: 22.9
> Romanians: 28.4
> *TSI 30 (Tuscans): 28.6*
> Tuscans: 30.5
> Bulgarians: 30.7
> Southern Italians/Sicilians: 36.5
> Greeks: 37.4
> 
> ...


Thanks. I don't know how I missed the TSI sample. So, there seems to be even an internal cline in Tuscany. TSI is from around Firenze isn't it? 

When all this happened I don't know, and will wait for ancient dna to inform me, but it's clear that whenever it happened, it affected all of the Balkans as well.

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## Pax Augusta

> Thanks. I don't know how I missed the TSI sample. So, there seems to be even an internal cline in Tuscany.


For sure. And it's not just due to the strong presence of ancient Ligurians in northern Tuscany, but this cline in Tuscany is just compatible with everything else that has happened there.





> TSI is from around Firenze isn't it?


I was told by a researcher that it is probably from a little town south-east of Florence, in the Valdarno Superiore. TSI sample was collected around 2006/2007.





> When all this happened I don't know, and will wait for ancient dna to inform me, but it's clear that whenever it happened, it affected all of the Balkans as well.


Indeed. In Italy it arrived from the Balkans, from the other side of the Adriatic sea. On this, both archaeologists and anthropologists agree.

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## Pax Augusta

> Ok, but why afterwards ? Gaudo and Rinaldone (Remedello appear more autochthonous) are intrusive and different since their beginning from the Italian neolithic cultures. I agree that most of their population was local (EEF), but my guess is that the new brachy types that from the south reached the center of the peninsula were at least in part CHG. Mallegni described the brachy type of Gaudo as "Syrian looking" (unfortunately i have lost the PDF, it was a chapter of this book _Dal bronzo al ferro_. _Sulla possibile origine anatolica degli etruschi)_.


I do agree with you that these Calcholitic newcomers could have been particularly enriched with Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG), but it's a mistake to associate Rinaldone and Gaudo only with these newcomers. Anyway there's too much at stake, let's proceed in an orderly fashion. We have during the Eneolithic/Copper Age/Chalcolithic Remedello culture in North Italy (Lombardy), Rinaldone culture in Central Italy (Northern Lazio) and Gaudo culture in South Italy (Campania). According to Grifoni Cremonesi Tuscany in the early Neolithic is part of the large Western cultural area, while the contributions from southern Italy and middle-Adriatic cultural areas are scarce. This is also true for Lazio.




> La Toscana quindi, durante il Neolitico antico, fa parte di un’ampia area culturale decisamente rivolta verso occidente mentre scarsi sono gli apporti dalle aree culturali meridionali e medio-adriatiche.(...) Ben documentato è il momento successivo del neolitico, soprattutto nella Toscana settentrionale, con aspetti riferibili alla cultura di origine francese di Chassey e a quella della Lagozza dell’Italia settentrionale, che hanno un’ampia diffusione nell’Italia settentrionale e centrale.


The relations between the areas of Remedello and Rinaldone are very ancient, so that the copper for the ax of Otzi comes from the area where Rinaldone flourished, but It is equally true that from a certain point onwards Rinaldone had more contacts with Gaudo rather than with Remedello, and Gaudo was influenced by other southern Italian cultures like Laterza.

You lost the pdf, but fortunately I own the whole book "Dal bronzo al ferro. Sulla possibile origine anatolica". Some chapters are extremely questionable and quite airy-fairy, it's enough to read the first chapter where Chiarelli speaks about the Tuscan gorgia as an example of Etruscan legacy, just as only amateur scholars can do. Even children know that the gorgia in Tuscany is more widespread in the less typical Etruscan areas and less widespread in the more traditional Etruscan ones. How can be an Etruscan legacy? The Etruscan expansion in Tuscany started from northern Lazio and southern Tuscany, where the gorgia is non-existent. While other chapters are less vague and unrealistic, but the whole book is too much influenced by the publication of the 2004-2007 studies, and it is clearly obsolete with the conclusions of more recent studies, such as that of Ghirotto.

To begin with these intrusive CHG-like brachy newcomers aren't the Etruscans. Etruscan civilization flourishes two millennia later. At the most these newcomers are responsible for intensifying the relationship with the Balkans and any Aegean-Balkan-Anatolian connection.

These newcomers arrived from the southern Balkans and Epirus to South Italy, likely in an Apulian culture like Laterza, and from there to Gaudo and probably in the rest of southern Italy. From Gaudo they lately arrived to Central Italy. 

If they are responsible for bringing an extra input of CHG, this extra CHG is still stronger today in Southern Italy than in rest of Italy. The distribution of this extra input of CHG follows the Italian cline, and Greeks have more CHG ancestry than the Italians.

Mallegni doesn't say that the brachy type of Gaudo are "Syrian looking", anthropologically it does not mean anything, he says that the cranial type and body structure of newcomers in Gaudo's culture remind the forms found also in Anatolia, Syria and Cyprus. And he describes them as high skull cramps, flat skull contours on the occiput, high body structure, robust body, well-developed musculature of the lower limbs (because they presumably walked long distances on foot). Mallegni is not describing a typical farmer, but the rading hordes of nomadic and belligerent warrior-shepherds with a superior copper technology that "who would have subjugated the local Neolitich population", adding that that they arrived in Italy from the other side of the Adriatic sea.

In a 1972 study, Mallegni analyzed some of Rinaldone's burials in central Italy (southern Tuscany and Lazio) and southern Italy (Gaudo in Campania). He argued that in the central Italian burials the average of these brachy newcomers was 15%, with 85% that were more typical dolichos EEF or mesaticephalic. While at Paestum, Gaudo's burials, the percentage of brachyphalic newcomers was 38%.

This 1972 study was resumed in recent times by Mallegni himself, in a book published in 2007. His conclusions seem more cautious, because new investigative techniques question the conclusions about the skeletal material analyzed in 1972. Ultimately, Mallegni says that the Tuscans burials are more similar to the rest of Eneolithic central-northern Italian burials and they don't have any resemblance with the Eneolithic Gaudo burials, if not very scarce. Mallegni adds that is currently thought that the Gaudo culture groups moved along the Italian peninsula reaching roughly the Lazio-Abruzzo territories. But those are sporadic presences and their presence is not strong like in the Campania territories. Perhaps their migrations to central Italy were stopped by the arrival of new populations during the Bronze Age. Are these new populations arrived in the Bronze Age the proto-Villanovians?





> In conclusione si osserva che nel suo complesso il gruppo di Grotta San Giuseppe si inquadra abbastanza bene, per i dati metrici cranici, nella serie eneolitica dell’Italia centro-settentrionale; non presenta invece nessuna somiglianza con gli eneolitici del Gaudo, se non scarsissime. Attualmente si pensa che i gruppi a cultura Gaudo abbiano risalito l’Italia arrivando grossomodo nei territori laziali-abruzzesi. Vi sono presenze sporadiche e non la ricchezza della loro presenza dei territori campani. Forse l’arrivo durante l’Età del Bronzo di nuove popolazioni ha fermato questa loro tendenza. (...) Si può quindi concludere che verosimilmente i gruppi di Ponte San Pietro, della Valle della Fiora e di Grotta San Giuseppe appartenevano ad una stessa popolazione, che dalle aree costiere della Toscana e dell’alto Lazio si irradiò anche verso l’Arcipelago Toscano.

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## Johane Derite

Something that is also troubling with this data is that in the spreadsheet listing the samples, their Gheg samples are stated to come from "southern albania" and Tosk from "northern albania"



I'm not sure if this is just a typo or mistake in the spreadsheet, or if they literally tested only ghegs from the south and tosks from the north ( which is the opposite of gheg and tosk distribution)

I'm also not sure if this typo is just in the spreadsheet, or if it extends to the tables and data until the end. Very unclear

I tried to contact the authors but wasn't able to as I dont have a Nature subscription/account

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## Pax Augusta

> I'm not sure if this is just a typo or mistake in the spreadsheet, or if they literally tested only ghegs from the south and tosks from the north ( which is the opposite of gheg and tosk distribution)
> I'm also not sure if this typo is just in the spreadsheet, or if it extends to the tables and data until the end. Very unclear
> I tried to contact the authors but wasn't able to as I dont have a Nature subscription/account


I think a typo in the spreadsheet.

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## ihype02

Very interesting study.

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## Cato

> I do agree with you that these Calcholitic newcomers could have been particularly enriched with Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG), but it's a mistake to associate Rinaldone and Gaudo only with these newcomers.


I agree, like i said in the previous post it seems that most of their population was local, EEF type of people i think...



> Mallegni doesn't say that the brachy type of Gaudo are "Syrian looking", anthropologically it does not mean anything, he says that the cranial type and body structure of newcomers in Gaudo's culture remind the forms found also in Anatolia, Syria and Cyprus.


I've lost it many years ago so i don't remember exactly what he wrote, i suppose that this physical type correspond to the old Armenoid or Dinaric type 

Some, like Coon, associated this same population with the later Bell Beaker but genetic don't seems to agree

All your post was interesting..thanks for the reply

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## Cato

> To begin with these intrusive CHG-like brachy newcomers aren't the Etruscans. Etruscan civilization flourishes two millennia later. At the most these newcomers are responsible for intensifying the relationship with the Balkans and any Aegean-Balkan-Anatolian connection.


The other day i was thinking what if the language of the Etruscans came from the Rinaldone culture? If the Armenian hypothesis is true then these eastern immigrants/prospectors of the Copper Age could well be Indoeuropeans, maybe of the Anatolian branch, but i understand that it's a "remote" hypothesis




> Perhaps their migrations to central Italy were stopped by the arrival of new populations during the Bronze Age. Are these new populations arrived in the Bronze Age the proto-Villanovians?


Before Proto-Villanova Tuscany was reached by other cultures from the North, Bell Beaker and Polada, in part..i think that Proto-Villanova, Chiusi-Cetona facies to be precise (their material culture was very similar to that of the Terramare), replaced or mixed with the much later Apennine folks..

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## Sile

> Something that is also troubling with this data is that in the spreadsheet listing the samples, their Gheg samples are stated to come from "southern albania" and Tosk from "northern albania"
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if this is just a typo or mistake in the spreadsheet, or if they literally tested only ghegs from the south and tosks from the north ( which is the opposite of gheg and tosk distribution)
> 
> I'm also not sure if this typo is just in the spreadsheet, or if it extends to the tables and data until the end. Very unclear
> 
> I tried to contact the authors but wasn't able to as I dont have a Nature subscription/account


My albanian work colleague comes from a town between the 2 lakes on your linguistic map and his wife from Tirana, they stated to me that they clearly speak the same language , but do not understand Kosovo albanian or greek albanian.....................maybe its because they are young ( not yet 40 )

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## Sile

I wonder how much of these italian slave practices changed italian admixture
http://www.academia.edu/217551/Domes...aissance_Italy
It seems while the northern italian states ceased , Sicily and Palermo kept moving forward

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## Johane Derite

> My albanian work colleague comes from a town between the 2 lakes on your linguistic map and his wife from Tirana, they stated to me that they clearly speak the same language , but do not understand Kosovo albanian or greek albanian.....................maybe its because they are young ( not yet 40 )


The Standard Albanian that is currently taught in Albanian schools in Kosovo and Albania is the one that was created in 1972 under Enver Hoxhas stalinist government.
The Gheg dialect was unfairly neglected due to Ghegs either being in Kosovo under yugoslavia or in isolated mountains in the north(with exceptions that like shkodra). 
Many gheg linguists like ernest koliqi etc were not even allowed to be present at the congress. 

Before the 72' standard the Elbasan dialect was the official standard and in my opinion it was much fairer to both dialects. The dialects can differ quite a bit but 
any properly educated person shouldn't have much issues although its not easy to say how many of those are produced. 

I personally have trouble with Arvanitic tosk.

How different do they sound to you? 

Here is a recording map of dialects in Albania: http://dialects.albanianlanguage.net/AL/
Here is a dialect map of Kosovo: http://dialects.albanianlanguage.net/KS/
Greece: http://dialects.albanianlanguage.net/GR/

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## ihype02

> This one?
> 
> upload immagini


For what does Grk_Grec and Grk_Gren stand for?

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## ihype02

^Nevermind I should have paid more attetion to the study. It refers to central Greece.

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## Hauteville

Arbereshe towns in Sicily, some of them were only partly Arbereshe.

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## Pax Augusta

> I've lost it many years ago so i don't remember exactly what he wrote, i suppose that this physical type correspond to the old Armenoid or Dinaric type



Of course Mallegni didn't use such terms. It is just your guess. Mallegni only says that they are brachycephalic. And in any case, also the Baskid phenotype is in origin a strongly dinaricized brachycephalic. The fact that it later mixed with the atlanto-med is another story. 





> Some, like Coon, associated this same population with the later Bell Beaker but genetic don't seems to agree All your post was interesting..thanks for the reply


Coon associating this population with the later Bell Beaker shows how much these texts of physical anthropology are in many cases obsolete and outdated.

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## Cato

> Of course Mallegni didn't use such terms. It is just your guess. Mallegni only says that they are brachycephalic.


Not my guess...Biasutti (Razze e popoli della terra Vol. Europa ed Asia) describe them as similar to the "Adriatic type" (Dinaric) but more "southern". He call this type "Campanian type" and connects it to the Eneolithic Gaudo Culture.

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## Pax Augusta

> Not my guess...Biasutti (Razze e popoli della terra Vol. Europa ed Asia) describe them as similar to the "Adriatic type" (Dinaric) but more "southern". He call this type "Campanian type" and connects it to the Eneolithic Gaudo Culture.


Thanks, Cato. Can you scan the Biasutti's page? Or just go more in detail?

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## Cato

I will post a scan of the chapter...but in the next weeks, al momento no ce l'ho a portata di mano

Utilizzando Tapatalk

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## Cato

As promised..

Attachment 10153Attachment 10154

Utilizzando Tapatalk

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## Salento

> As promised..
> 
> Attachment 10153Attachment 10154
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


 Le razze e i popoli della terra (Renato Biasutti)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renato_Biasutti

Italiani:

“ .... Nella pianura romagnola ha il suo centro caratteristico, il suo più marcato dominio, il tipo brachicefalico planoccipi tale, che abbiamo identificato con la razza Adriatica. Alla forma italiana della razza manca però il predominio dell'alta statura e vi sono divergenze notevoli anche nei caratteri fisionomici e sembra pertanto giustificato il farle un posto a parte, come sottovarietà Padana. La statura oscilla intorno a valori medi, la corporatura è robusta, ma senza eccesso di sviluppo nel tronco, il colore dei capelli e degli occhi tende ai toni più scuri, mentre la pelle è assai bianca. La faccia è in generale assai lunga, in ogni modo ben profilata, con naso alto e sottile, bocca piccola, mandibola robusta e mento alto. Sono però meno frequenti che nella forma Dinàrica della Balcània, il naso adunco o aquilino, i pomelli un po' alti, gli orecchi divaricati, gli occhi troppo ravvicinati. Il tipo è nel complesso raggentilito, pur conservando una impronta energica e volitiva : nella graduatoria estetica dei tipi regionali italiani questa forma padana occupa indubbiamente uno dei primi posti.

Da quanto si è detto sulla distribuzione del tipo cefalico che è proprio alla razza, sappiamo che essa occupa ampi territori dell'Italia settentrionale insieme alla razza alpina. I prodotti ibridi sono quindi pure assai numerosi ed essi hanno una non piccola parte nel tipo medio prevalente in tutta la pianura padano-veneta e in molti distretti alpini.
Ben riconoscibile è pure la presenza del tipo adriatico nelle Marche e in Toscana: i tratti duri e incisivi di molti toscani del Rinascimento ne portano una netta impronta come, per contro, la molle, calda e un po' pingue bellezza delle donne nella pittura veneziana dello stesso tempo, porta, anche col frequente color biondo dei capelli, qualche non dubbia traccia di una parentela alpina. All'estremo confine nord-orientale del territorio italiano annuncia la sua presenza anche la razza Baltica.

Qualche difficoltà presenta la posizione sistematica dei brachicefali dell'Italia meridionale, dall'Abruzzo marittimo in giù. La forma cefalica si accosta al tipo adriatico, ma i tratti fisionomici sono diversi, di marca più meridionale: anche nelle proporzioni del corpo si nota nelle varie province del Mezzogiorno una notevole frequenza di forme a tronco molto sviluppato e gambe corte che vanno attribuite ai brachimorfi locali. Nella pianura napoletana e nelle vicine isole questo elemento ha spesso il naso assai forte, talvolta aquilino, e gli occhi un po' a fior di testa e differisce al massimo dal tipo Mediterraneo locale, dalla pelle bruna, i capelli ricciuti, i tratti fini e le membra agili e snelle.

È stata espressa da alcuni studiosi l'opinione che si possa trattare di un sedimento di antica derivazione esterna, proveniente dal Mediterraneo orientale o dalle sue isole: in tal caso, di probabile affinità armenoide. Ma se passaggio vi fu, esso in ogni caso dovè avvenire in tempi preistorici assai remoti (eneolitici?) e quindi lo sviluppo e la formazione degli attuali gruppi brachioidi, dai primi germi depositati, è avvenuto in modo autonomo. Al tipo regionale che ne è derivato si può dare il nome di Campano.
La questione non potrebbe essere risolta senza una revisione del materiale scheletrico preistorico finora illustrato — non molto abbondante per le età più antiche — e, specialmente, senza nuove scoperte. B. Lundman, in uno scritto già ricordato, ritiene che i navigatori del Mediterraneo orientale, portatori e cercatori di metalli, abbiano contribuito a depositare un particolare tipo brachicefalico anche sul versante tirrenico della penisola italiana: tipo affine, dunque, all'armenoide, in una varietà cui egli vorrebbe dare il nome di « litoroide » di assai dubbia convenienza, dato la facile confusione che si creerebbe con la forma « litoranea » della razza mediterranea. Ma Lundman sembra riferirsi essenzialmente agli Etruschi di Toscana e della Campania. La deposizione in discorso dev'essere invece molto più antica, perchè se ne trovano chiare tracce nei crani eneolitici esumati in vari luoghi della nostra penisola; ad esempio, in quelli tratti dalla necropoli eneolitica di Paestum, illustrata da P. Graziosi. Due almeno dei numerosi brachicefali della serie sono di chiaro tipo armenoide nel cranio cerebrale, a fronte larga e declive, altezza massima spostata all'indietro e occipite piatto. L'elemento dolicomorfo associato, che è presente in non esagerata maggioranza, ha cranio lungo e basso, ossatura rozza, rilievi sopraorbitari marcati, pomelli forti, naso e, soprattutto, mento prominenti. Un gruppo, comunque, già misto, di media statura (163 cm.), che Graziosi non esita a definire « non mediterraneo », ed è, in realtà, anche nel componente dolicomorfo, poco simile alle forme mediterranee attualmente prevalenti nella penisola italiana.

Si può notare che non si è rilevato alcun riflesso della presenza degli alloglotti insulari e peninsulari, dovuti a colonie antiche o recenti, di cui si è parlato all'inizio di questo capitolo. Il fatto, alquanto inaspettato, venne considerato anche da Livi. Inatteso soprattutto nel caso delle colonie albanesi, che avrebbero dovuto portare anche in Italia la statura elevata e la forte brachicefalia che distingue gli Albanesi dell'Albania, mentre i caratteri antropometrici dei gruppi di origine albanese non differiscono affatto da quelli dei vicini villaggi italiani. O non vi era dunque alcuna sostanziale diversità di tipo, al tempo della loro introduzione, o vi è stata una trasformazione (per miscela o per convergenza) verso il tipo locale. Lo stesso fenomeno sembra essersi verificato nelle numerose colonie piemontesi e lombarde sparse nella Sicilia e in Calabria. ...”

Ho deciso di non tradurlo in Inglese. Se sbaglio una virgola, può essere che scoppia un “48”.
È meglio che lo traduca qualcun’altro. :) 

I’m not translating in English, it is a bit complex, and if I make a mistake there’s the possibility to be taken out of context or start a controversy. :)

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## Cato

Se volete posto anche il resto del capitolo, quelle erano le ultime due pagine. Ho anche qualcosa di più aggiornato (2008) sull'antropologia dei gruppi calcolitici.

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## Pax Augusta

> As promised..
> 
> 
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk



Thanks for sharing. Basically Biasutti discredits Lundman. Biasutti says that this brachycephalic type present in southern Italy, from Abruzzo to further south Italy, has nothing to do with the Etruscans because the presence of this Campanian type is much older, this type is attested in the Eneolithic necropolis of Paestum (Gaudo culture).

This is compatible with what we said before, with a migration from the Balkans to southern Italy, particularly in the culture of Laterza in Apulia, of a brachycephalic type coming from the eastern Mediterranean. And from Apulia to the rest of South Italy, up to the southern extremities of Abruzzo and Lazio.

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## Salento

> Se volete posto anche il resto del capitolo, quelle erano le ultime due pagine. Ho anche qualcosa di più aggiornato (2008) sull'antropologia dei gruppi calcolitici.
> 
> Utilizzando Tapatalk


Fosse per me, quante più informazioni abbiamo, meglio è. 
Siccome è un progetto laborioso e ti costerà sicuramente del tempo, Io aspetterei per l’opinione di Pax Augusta (Moderatore).

The more the better, but it takes time and Work.
Personally I would wait for the opinion of Pax Augusta (Moderator)

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## Cato

Ok, se ci sono problemi rimuovete pure.

Ok, if there are problem delete it (copyright etc..)

Attachment 10156Attachment 10157Attachment 10158Attachment 10159Attachment 10160

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## Cato

other pagesAttachment 10161Attachment 10162Attachment 10163Attachment 10164Attachment 10165

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## Cato

other pagesAttachment 10166Attachment 10167Attachment 10168Attachment 10169Attachment 10170

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## Cato

other pagesAttachment 10171Attachment 10172Attachment 10173Attachment 10174Attachment 10175

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## Cato

other pagesAttachment 10176Attachment 10177Attachment 10178Attachment 10179Attachment 10180

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## Cato

last oneAttachment 10182

Some are not very clear, sorry

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## Sile

> Fosse per me, quante più informazioni abbiamo, meglio è. 
> Siccome è un progetto laborioso e ti costerà sicuramente del tempo, Io aspetterei per l’opinione di Pax Augusta (Moderatore).
> 
> The more the better, but it takes time and Work.
> Personally I would wait for the opinion of Pax Augusta (Moderator)


 You could be thracian and from varna or cris cultures
.
https://indo-european.eu/tag/iapygian/
.


Iron Age southern Italians likely descended from early to late Neolithic farmers from Anatolia and possibly as far East as the Caucasus, and from migrants arriving from eastern Europe around the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age. These findings support previous hypotheses that the ancestors of the Iapygians may have originated in the eastern Balkan region, or derive shared ancestry with a common source population from eastern Europe.

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## Salento

> You could be thracian and from varna or cris cultures.
> .
> https://indo-european.eu/tag/iapygian/
> 
> Iron Age southern Italians likely descended from early to late Neolithic farmers from Anatolia and possibly as far East as the Caucasus, and from migrants arriving from eastern Europe around the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age. These findings support previous hypotheses that the ancestors of the Iapygians may have originated in the eastern Balkan region, or derive shared ancestry with a common source population from eastern Europe.


I can see a probable Haplo connection, but for the rest: I’ll add your hypothesis with the others.
(Maybe you’re right).
I say so because of the infinite at times aggressive arguing of the Balkans related threads. Proving, disproving, and contradicting Papers and Theories that are posted.
Eventually a clearer theoretical prediction will emerge, (I hope), but no yet.
Thanks for Sharing. :)

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## ihype02

> This one?
> 
> upload immagini


The picture has been taken down. Can you re-upload it, if you don't mind, please?

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## DarknessC

Don’t Sicilians have high Caucasian and mixture ?

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## Jovialis

> Don’t Sicilians have high Caucasian and mixture ?


Only about as much as the German Corded Ware, but less than their progenitors; the Yamnaya.

"Mixture"? That's a silly comment, all people are a mixture. :Rolleyes: 

https://journals.plos.org/plosgeneti...l.pgen.1006852

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## ihype02

Got this from the PDF format of the paper.

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