# Population Genetics > Autosomal Genetics >  The Genetic history of Crete

## Angela

Very interesting:

See:
Petros Drineas et al

*"Genetic history of the population of Crete"*


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/ahg.12328

"*Abstract*

The medieval history of several populations often suffers from scarcity of contemporary records resulting in contradictory and sometimes biased interpretations by historians. This is the situation with the population of the island of Crete, which remained relatively undisturbed until the Middle Ages when multiple wars, invasions, and occupations by foreigners took place. Historians have considered the effects of the occupation of Crete by the Arabs (in the 9th and 10th centuries C.E.) and the Venetians (in the 13th to the 17th centuries C.E.) to the local population. To obtain insights on such effects from a genetic perspective, we studied representative samples from 17 Cretan districts using the Illumina 1 million or 2.5 million arrays and compared the Cretans to the populations of origin of the medieval conquerors and settlers. Highlights of our findings include (1) small genetic contributions from the Arab occupation to the extant Cretan population, (2) low genetic contribution of the Venetians to the extant Cretan population, and (3) evidence of a genetic relationship among the Cretans and Central, Northern, and Eastern Europeans, which could be explained by the settlement in the island of northern origin tribes during the medieval period. Our results show how the interaction between genetics and the historical record can help shed light on the historical record."

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## Johane Derite



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## Angela

"These Neolithic settlers and subsequent waves of Neolithic migrants (Broodbank & Strasser, 1991; Cherry, 1981; Nowicki, 2008; Weinberg, 1965) established the first advanced European civilization, the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Crete from 3000 to about 1450 B.C.E. (Evans, 1921). The island was subsequently conquered by the Myceneans of mainland Greece (Bennet, 2011; Chadwick, 1976; deFidio, 2008) who ruled from around 1450 to 1100 B.C.E. Homer (1650) describes Crete as a populous island with 90 cities inhabited by several tribes: the Achaeans, who correspond to the people now called Myceneans (Bennet, 2011; Schofield, 2007); the Pelasgians who were the pre‐Hellenic population of the Helladic space (Herodotus, 1999; Strabo, 2006); the Eteocretans (Cretans of the old stock); the Kydonians; and the Dorians (Strabo, 2006). Eteocretans and Kydonians were considered to be autochthonous Cretans while the other tribes originated from Greece (Strabo, 2006). "

"Following the Hellenistic period during which there is no record of population migrations to Crete, the island was conquered in 69 B.C.E. by the Romans (Sanders, 1982). The almost 400 years of Roman occupation was followed by about 500 years of relatively peaceful rule by the Byzantines (Tsougarakis, 1988) until Crete fell in 827 C.E. to Arab exiles from Andalusia (Brooks, 1913; Christides, 1984; Detorakis, 2015; Vassiliev, 1980). The Arab Emirate of Crete was frequently raided the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, but after 134 years of Arab rule, the island was recaptured in 961 C.E. by the Byzantines (Norwich, 1998; Vassiliev, 1980). The 243 years of the second Byzantine rule ended when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Francs and the Venetians of the Fourth Crusade. The Venetians purchased the island in 1204 C.E. from the crusader Boniface of Montferrat; they ruled Crete for 465 years and established a feudal system that provoked several revolutions of the population (Detorakis, 2015; Xanthoudidis, 1939). From 1645 to 1669, Ottomans and Venetians fought for 24 years over Crete and the island was captured by the Ottomans who ruled for 267 years during which the Cretans revolted several times (Detorakis, 2015). The island gained its autonomy in 1889 and was unified with Greece in 1913."

_Finally someone who is doing the sampling correctly.

_"We focused on the rural population of Crete. The participants were males or females 70 years or older (range of ages 70 to 94 years) who had paternal and maternal grandparents originating from villages located in the same district of Crete. With this approach, we reconstructed the rural population of Crete at the time of birth of the grandparents of the participants (i.e., the population of the period 1850 to 1880)."

"Genetic differentiation of the Cretan populations. (a) Results of principal component analysis (PCA) analysis of the 17 Cretan subpopulations. Notice that the individuals of the study are not distributed randomly but they form clusters distinguishing several subpopulations. Also notice that the eastern and the western subpopulations are placed on the opposite sites of the graph."

"The east‐to‐west gradient could represent ancient population settlement patterns. It is known that the Minoan settlements concentrated in central and eastern Crete (Branigan, 1970) while the Myceneans (likely of Peloponnesean origin) dominated the central and the western parts of the island (deFidio, 2008). The Kydonians inhabited western Crete and the Eteocretans inhabited southern (Strabo, 2006) and eastern Crete (Duhoux, 1982). Eastern Crete received waves of new immigrants from the Anatolian coast through the Dodecanese in the Final Neolithic/Early Minoan (around 3,500 to 3,000 B.C.E.) (Nowicki, 2002, 2008). It was thus possible that the east‐to‐west gradient reflected these old population distributions that had been preserved by the geography of the island. Compatible with population movements between Crete, Peloponnese, and Dodecanese are the findings of IBD analysis (Figure S5) showing high IBD sharing between Peloponnese and west Crete and similarly high between Dodecanese and east Crete. Another explanation of the east‐to‐the west gradient, supported by the Cretan mountainous geography, is isolation by distance. Future analyses might help clarify this issue."

"To explore the genetic relationships between Cretans and the European and Near Eastern populations, we employed IBD analysis and PCA. In IBD analysis, our primary measure of relatedness was mean pairwise IBD, that is, the average amount of detected IBD (in segments >2 cM) shared between individuals in two populations (Tables S3 and S4). The heat map in Figure 3a shows the average amount of IBD shared between individuals in Crete, Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East. All three regions of Crete are most strongly related to Europe. Bootstrap analyses confirm that the Crete–Europe relationship is significantly stronger than either Crete–Caucasus or Crete–Near East (Figure S6)."

Sorry, the IBD analysis seems pretty useless to me. The most recent migrations are the ones that are going to show up, i.e. from the Slavic migrations filtering down and forward. The older ones which represent the majority of the population are too broken up by time and recombination to show up.

The PCA is more informative,

"In contrast to the IBD data, PCA comparisons of Crete with the European populations distinguish the Cretans from Central, Northern, and Eastern Europeans (Figures 4a and S11a). PCA plots specifically show a clear separation of the Cretans from the Polish, Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarussians (Figures 4b and S11b). They are also clearly distinguished from Western and Northwestern Europe (Figures 4a and S11b). ADMIXTURE plots confirm the PCA findings (Figures S12 and S13)."

Now this is very interesting. Maybe they were listening to our complaints about the Peloponnese paper.

If someone knows how to get a bigger and clearer picture of these I'd really appreciate it.



It's pretty clear regardless. Cretans, Sicilians, and the people of the Peloponnese being very close. One part of the Sicilian population overlaps a bit with them, but a lot of them are equally close to the people of the Peloponnese.

Crete and various cities of Sicily, including PALERMO. 



Cretans and the Ashkenazim:

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## Johane Derite

Also interesting, within Crete, Sfakia, Anoyia, and Lassithi Plateu stand out as having among the highest IBDs, whilst having low IBD with each other.

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## Angela

> Also interesting, within Crete, Sfakia, Anoyia, and Lassithi Plateu stand out as having among the highest IBDs, whilst having low IBD with each other.


I haven't yet read their explanation for it, but imo, isolation, isolation, isolation is usually the reason. It's why the internal plateau Sardinians don't plot near anyone else. 

I'm convinced that's why I have such high matches to ancients, but low matches even to modern Italians of largely the same latitude and longitude. I'm at 3.6 with a late "Roman" in Hungary, but my closest matches to Bergamo and Toscana are 5 and 6. 

Mountains and high plateaus are not good for mixing, or islands, for that matter.

I'm more interested in the PCAs in my prior post.

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## Angela

I wish they had included South Italian samples rather than just Sicilian samples. See, I'm never satisfied. :)

"Both PCA and ADMIXTURE point to the strong genetic similarities between Cretans and Southern Europeans, especially the Sicilians ...These results might reflect the common genetic history of Crete and Sicily rather than gene flow between the two islands. Sicily was heavily colonized by Greeks starting in the eight century BC (Freeman, 1891; Thucydides, 1986). Dorian Greeks colonized the South and the Southeast coast of Sicily while the Ionian Greeks colonized the North and Northeast coast. Sicily continued to be Hellenized in medieval times but under the Norman domination the usage of the Greek language was discouraged and it was eventually replaced by Italian. Southern Italy was also colonized by Ionian, Achaean, and Dorian Greeks, and these colonies, together with Sicily, composed the Greek‐dominated part of Italy, which the Latin speakers called Magna Graecia (Burry, 1963; Ceserani, 2012). The PCA (Figure 4a and 4c) and ADMIXTURE (Figure S15) data show that the historic bonds between Greece (including Crete) and Sicily were not simply cultural but genetic as well. The above findings were broadly confirmed by our ChromoPainter/FineSTRUCTURE analysis (Figure S16a and S16b)."

"In the PCA of Crete vs Europe, the Cretans overlap with three populations: the Peloponneseans, the Sicilians and the Ashkenazi Jews (see Figures 4a, S17, and S18). Southern European and Mediterranean ancestry of the Ashkenazi Jews has also been demonstrated before (Atzmon et al., 2010; Behar et al., 2010; Bauchet et al., 2007; Price et al., 2008; Seldin et al., 2006; Tian et al., 2008). Furthermore, we find in both PCA and ADMIXTURE analysis, that the Ashkenazi are more similar to the Cretans than to the two Levantine Semitic populations. One possible explanation is that this relation might reveal a common Mediterranean ancestry that the Cretan and Ashkenazi populations share."

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## bigsnake49

It all makes sense given what we know from history. Male dominated conquests (Arab, Venetian) rarely make a significant dent into the genetic makeup of the local populations.

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## Angela

"*The genetic effects of the Arab occupation*Religious strife and a failed revolution in Arabic Andalusia in the beginning of the 9th century resulted in the exile of a large segment of the population of the area of Cordoba (Dozy, 1913). About 15,000 exiles settled in Morocco (Dozy, 1913; Levi‐Provencal, 1938; Ostrogorsky, 1969) and 12,000, in 827 CE, conquered Crete, established there a piratical state and ruled the island for 134 years (Christides, 1984; Ostrogorsky, 1969; Vassiliev, 1980). Historians refer to that period of Cretan history as “Arab occupation” although the majority of the conquerors were indigenous Andalusians whose ancestors had converted to Islam (Christides, 1984; Dozy, 1913); the term “Arab occupation” will also be used here. The Andalusians were joined by North African Arabs (Cannard, 1986; Dozy, 1913; McVean, 2009) and Moslems from the Near East settled in the island during the 134 years of the Arab rule. To obtain insights on the effects of the Arab occupation we compared the Cretans with Andalusians, North African and Near Eastern populations."

For this I think ancient dna showing a real transect through time would be very helpful.

"ADMIXTURE analysis for the Cretans and the Andalusians, North Africans, Near Eastern populations, and the Venetians. Results are shown for _K equal to four, five, and six hypothetical ancestral populations. (a) A possible shared component can be observed between the Andalusian and the Cretans, especially the western populations (Kissamos, Kandanos), especially for K equal to six. (b) The North African populations are genetically distinct from the Cretans, except for a small amount of shared ancestry between Tunisians and the Anoyia subpopulation for K equal to six. (c) A possible shared component can be observed between the Near East to the Cretans for K equal to four or five. (d) Cretans and the Venetian populations appear completely distinct with only very minor shared ancestry. We can also observe a possible shared component between the Italian populations and the Cretan subpopulations [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]"

_"The Byzantines slaughtered or enslaved the Andalusians and the Arabs and perhaps many converts to Islam. The Arab fourteen century historian Nuwayri estimates that 200,000 Moslems perished in Crete (Gaspar, 1904), but this number is considered an exaggeration (Christides, 1984). The extinction of Andalusians, Arabs and Moslems should have created a population void in the island. There is a five words‐long sentence in the book of Leo the Deacon (Talbot & Sullivan, 2005), the contemporary historian who recorded the re‐capture of Crete by the Byzantines, which indicates that the Byzantines tried to fill this void with new settlers. Leo writes that after the extermination of the Arabs, Nicephorus Phokas, settled in Crete “Romans and Armenians and men from other tribes” (Talbot & Sullivan, 2005). The meaning of this statement has been debated; does it refer to the settlement of veterans from the army of Nicephorus Phokas, an event of minor population significance? Or, it refers to settlement to Crete of Byzantine populations from other areas of the Empire, an event that could have had a major impact on the structure of the Cretan population. Re‐settlements of large population groups for political and strategic reasons have been frequently practiced by the Byzantine administration (Charanis, 1961). By “Romans” Leo refers to all the populations of the Byzantine Empire which at that period extended from the Balkans to Syria; we can only speculate what the population origin of these “Romans and other tribes” would have been. Settlements of Armenians most likely occurred and have left traces recognized today in the names of villages (Tomadakis, 1939). Comparison of Cretans and Armenians by PCA and ADMIXTURE showed a clear separation of the two populations (Figures S23 and S24). Armenians shared with the Cretans the lowest proportion of pairs with IBD and mean pairwise IBD (0.20 cM) of all populations of Tables S3and S4. We conclude that there is no evidence for significant Armenian ancestry in the Cretan rural population."

"Historians have attempted to analyze the population effects of the Arab occupation of Crete on the basis of a relatively inadequate written record. Except for the campaign of the Byzantine general Nicephorus Phocas to Crete (which has been recorded in detail), little written record exists on the 134 years of Arab occupation. It has been suggested that the Arab occupation had a dramatic effect on the composition of the Cretan population (Sefakas, 1939; Treadgold, 1988). During the Arab rule, the Christian population of the island was largely converted to Islam while Arabs settled in Crete and Cretans sought refuge in lands under the control of the Byzantines. Arab sources have claimed that the whole Christian population of the island was expelled and replaced by Muslims. Comments in Byzantine sources (Bekkerus, 1840; Ceserani, 2012; Panayotakis, 1960; Talbot & Sullivan, 2005) point to population changes but they might refer to changes in religion rather than ethnicity. Opposing views have been presented by historians who claim that the very scant archaeological record left behind by the Arabs (Miles, 1964), the very small number of Arabic toponyms in the island (Detorakis, 2015; Tomadakis, 1960–1961), and the lack of Arabic additions to the Cretan dialect are all evidence of a rather limited impact of Arab occupation on the population of Crete (Christides, 1984; Tomadakis, 1960–1961)."

"A similar controversy exists on the impact of the 435 years of the Venetian rule. The Venetians were accomplished bureaucrats and left a good record of their administration of the colony. According to those sources, approximately 2,000 feudalists initially colonized Crete in the 13th century. However, many other Venetian and Italian merchants, soldiers, and artisans settled in the urban centers (McKee, 2000) later. Even though marriages between Venetians and Cretans were initially discouraged, there is considerable evidence for admixture between Latins and Cretans (McKee, 1993, 2000; Maltezou, 1995). The cultural and physical admixture was so extensive that even the notion of Greek ethnicity of the Cretans of that era has been challenged (McKee, 2000). Other historians, however, have argued that in spite of the extensive cultural impact, the influence of the Venetians was mostly on the populations of the major cities (Gasparis, 1998, 2005; Tomadakis, 1960–1961) and that the foreigners who came to Crete did not penetrate into the countryside until much later and, even then, on a limited scale (Gasparis, 1998, 2005)."

" Our statistical analyses included PCA, ADMIXTURE, IBD, ALDER, and the ChromoPainter/FineSTRUCTURE pipeline. All results from those statistical tools seem to be (broadly) in agreement. That being said, overinterpretation of statistical analyses is a common pitfall (especially when it comes to the ADMIXTURE and PCA) and further analyses using larger sample sizes, more sophisticated statistical tools, and ancient DNA might shed further light on the historical controversies surrounding Crete.
The genetic impact of the Andalusian and the Near Eastern Arabs seems minimal; similarly, the genetic contribution of the Venetians to Cretans is low Tables S6–S8. This might be explained by the geography of Crete, which has many poorly accessible regions, as well as its agricultural and pastoral economy, which is sustained by a large number of small villages and hamlets spread all over the island. The Arab and Venetian conquerors settled mostly in the coastal urban centers and left the rural population intact."

The remaining analysis is about IBD and shows how and when it reached Crete.

Not the last word; we need ancient dna for that, and I'm not a big fan of some of these tools they used for the IBD analysis, but a good effort nonetheless, I think.

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## hrvclv



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## hrvclv

(Enlarge for a better view)

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## Tutkun Arnaut

> It all makes sense given what we know from history. Male dominated conquests (Arab, Venetian) rarely make a significant dent into the genetic makeup of the local populations.


What about Turks in Greece? is there any way to detect Turkish genes in Greek population. (mainland).?

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## bigsnake49

> What about Turks in Greece? is there any way to detect Turkish genes in Greek population. (mainland).?


Not all of the refugees during the 1922-23 exchange of populations were genetically Greek. Some of the Pontic and Capadoccian Greeks were Anatolian locals that got Hellenized or kept their Eastern Orthodox religion. If I had to guess I would say very very few were actually genetically Turkic. On the other hand the majority of the refugees that emigrated to Turkey were locals that got Islamized. So I expect to find quite a lot of genetically Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Slavs in Turkey.

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## Tutkun Arnaut

> Not all of the refugees during the 1922-23 exchange of populations were genetically Greek. Some of the Pontic and Capadoccian Greeks were Anatolian locals that got Hellenized or kept their Eastern Orthodox religion. If I had to guess I would say very very few were actually genetically Turkic. On the other hand the majority of the refugees that emigrated to Turkey were locals that got Islamized. So I expect to find quite a lot of genetically Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Slavs in Turkey.


there is no way of telling the percentage of Turkish contribution! I am curious because there is no way Turks did not leave there genes in Albania, Greece and other countries

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## Johane Derite

So Sfakia has lowest Near East, lowest shared Italian ancestry, lowest shared Andalusian ancestry, lowest shared Slavic ancestry.


Some quotes from the suplement paper:

" It is worth noting that the *Andalusian ancestry* in Kissamos, Kandanos,* Sfakia*, and *Anoyia* is extremely limited and it appears that these populations had an even smaller number of inter-marriages than the other Cretan subpopulations that we analyzed."

"There is a low level of gene flow from Slavic populations to all the Cretan subpopulations that can be observed for K between two and four. For values of K between five and eight, the gene flow seems to be lesser in the subpopulations of *Sfakia*, *Lassithi*, and *Anoyia*."

"We note that the subpopulation of *Sfakia* shows the *lowest* signal of shared ancestry with *Near Eastern populations*."

" For all values of K, a small amount of shared ancestry appears between the *Cretans* and the *Italian* populations. Some gene flow can be observed for values of K larger than four. For values of K larger than five, this genetic flow becomes minimal in the subpopulations of *Sfakia, Lassithi,* and* Anoyia* and becomes more concentrated in the central populations."

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## bigsnake49

> there is no way of telling the percentage of Turkish contribution! I am curious because there is no way Turks did not leave there genes in Albania, Greece and other countries


Turks, whether Islamized locals or brought from Anatolia stayed in their own communities and did not intermix with others. Same way the Armenians stayed withinin their own community and the Jews did. Now there is still approximately 120,000 Turks in Western Thrace that were never exchanged. I am not aware of any large scale DNA studies to trace their genetic ancestry. My guess is that they're locals that got Islamized or brought over from Anatolia.

You have to distinguish between people in the eastern part of Turkey that are Turkic in origin and local Anatolians that have no Turkic DNA. They are Turks because they live in the country of Turkey, they speak Turkish and are Muslims but they are genetically Anatolians.

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## bigsnake49

> So Sfakia has lowest Near East, lowest shared Italian ancestry, lowest shared Andalusian ancestry, lowest shared Slavic ancestry.
> 
> 
> Some quotes from the suplement paper:
> 
> " It is worth noting that the *Andalusian ancestry* in Kissamos, Kandanos,* Sfakia*, and *Anoyia* is extremely limited and it appears that these populations had an even smaller number of inter-marriages than the other Cretan subpopulations that we analyzed."
> 
> "There is a low level of gene flow from Slavic populations to all the Cretan subpopulations that can be observed for K between two and four. For values of K between five and eight, the gene flow seems to be lesser in the subpopulations of *Sfakia*, *Lassithi*, and *Anoyia*."
> 
> ...


Sfakia is a very isolated area up in the mountains of Crete. It is said that they were never never conquered by any of the invaders including the Germans. If there was any isolated population Sfakia is it.

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## Angela

I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift. 

As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding: 

By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another. 

It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile. 

Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.

From what I've read there was no such thing as "civil marriage"; marriages were performed by a holy man or teacher of that particular faith. A Christian and a Muslim couldn't marry without one of them converting or at least the ceremony being performed by either a Christian priest or a Muslim officiate. 

So, if anything, I think there is Balkan ancestry in Ottoman Turks, but I don't see how it could have happened the other way around, except perhaps where whole groups converted to Islam, as many Albanians did. I don't know if in that case intermarriage did occur between Albanian Muslims and Muslims from Turkey, and if it did whether they went into exile back to Turkey or not.

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## Yetos

> I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift. 
> 
> As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding: 
> 
> By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another. 
> 
> It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile. 
> 
> Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.
> ...


It was called 'milliet' 
a clear distinguish

there were many kinds of 'milliet'.
with different obligations to the empire.
but most were sub groups of the main 2 
the 'Rum milliet' christians, divided acoording language families etc etc
the 'Turk milliet' Muslims according the Ottoman faith
also divided in sub milliet according Heresy language etc.

so for example Ibrahim Pargali who was Rum speaker but 'Turk milliet' married Souleiman magnificent sister

Sub 'Milliet' had difeerent taxation, 
for example A Rum speaker and Rum milliet village was forced to 'blood taxation' meaning forced to provide most first male children as yanissaries.
a Turk speaker but Rum 'milliet' was not forced in blood taxation, but in other forms of taxes,
a non Turk speaker but Turk 'milliet' could serve at army even in very high positions.
a Turk speaker, Turk milliet but heretical, could not reach high ranks, 
etc

that stoped around 1850-55

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## torzio

> So Sfakia has lowest Near East, lowest shared Italian ancestry, lowest shared Andalusian ancestry, lowest shared Slavic ancestry.
> 
> 
> Some quotes from the suplement paper:
> 
> " It is worth noting that the *Andalusian ancestry* in Kissamos, Kandanos,* Sfakia*, and *Anoyia* is extremely limited and it appears that these populations had an even smaller number of inter-marriages than the other Cretan subpopulations that we analyzed."
> 
> "There is a low level of gene flow from Slavic populations to all the Cretan subpopulations that can be observed for K between two and four. For values of K between five and eight, the gene flow seems to be lesser in the subpopulations of *Sfakia*, *Lassithi*, and *Anoyia*."
> 
> ...


https://www.researchgate.net/publica...ghland_plateau

Lassithi has a very high venetian ydna due to replacing the populuce completly

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## davef

Nice study but they could've used Minoan samples since Crete was the Minoan homeland.

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## Salento

> Nice study but they could've used Minoan samples since Crete was the Minoan homeland.


I thought the same thing at first, maybe the Minoan samples are considered a basic part of the default genetic makeup of the Cretans, and they decided not to include them. 

Probably because they're also talking about the Middle-Ages/Medieval-Period and the Minoans would’ve been *off-topic* :)

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## berun

if you write an article named The Genetic history of Crete and you don't use Minoan DNA you are out of any reputation, I can't understand how many population DNA studies are published. It's all it pitable.

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## hrvclv

> if you write an article named The Genetic history of Crete and you don't use Minoan DNA you are out of any reputation, I can't understand how many population DNA studies are published. It's all it pitable.


Granted. But, as Salento pointed out above, when the first line of your paper runs "The *medieval* history of several populations often suffers from scarcity of contemporary records", it's hard to imagine why Minoan DNA should be referred to, except as implicit background reference.

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## Boreas

> What about Turks in Greece? is there any way to detect Turkish genes in Greek population. (mainland).?


Turks in Greece should show Turkic (Central Asian-Siberian / East Asian) results. The Turks in Bulgaria show that. One of sample is my dad.

His Turkic percent 50% percent less than West Anatolian my mom. But his percent still double/triple than any other Balkan nations

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## Boreas

> Not all of the refugees during the 1922-23 exchange of populations were genetically Greek. Some of the Pontic and Capadoccian Greeks were Anatolian locals that got Hellenized or kept their Eastern Orthodox religion. If I had to guess I would say very very few were actually genetically Turkic. On the other hand the majority of the refugees that emigrated to Turkey were locals that got Islamized. So I expect to find quite a lot of genetically Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Slavs in Turkey.


@Big Snake or any other guys, in Pontus Region-Turkey some of the Greeks accepted Islam and stayed in Turkey. Is there any source for Cretean Muslims? Became Chrisitanzied and stayed in Crete?

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## Tutkun Arnaut

> Turks in Greece should show Turkic (Central Asian-Siberian / East Asian) results. The Turks in Bulgaria show that. One of sample is my dad.
> 
> His Turkic percent 50% percent less than West Anatolian my mom. But his percent still double/triple than any other Balkan nations


I think Western Turks were always genetically closer to southern Balkans than to Eastern Turkey. Its my opinion, nothing scientific

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## Boreas

> I think Western Turks were always genetically closer to southern Balkans than to Eastern Turkey. Its my opinion, nothing scientific


Turks are mixed ball, so the only way to find who is a Turk (I am not talking about Turkic) is finding between 4-5% till 10-15% East Asian structure is in people of Balkans and Neareast.

Yes, you are right. West Turks in Anatolia is more close to Balkans than averange Kurdish or Turkish from the East. But also West Turks have more East Asian structure than East.

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## berun

> Granted. But, as Salento pointed out above, when the first line of your paper runs "The *medieval* history of several populations often suffers from scarcity of contemporary records", it's hard to imagine why Minoan DNA should be referred to, except as implicit background reference.


well, if they want to check migratory medieval impacts on DNA, the best is to run ancient DNA as a kind of departure base, even if the Minoan samples would not be the better as Dorian, Roman and Anatolian DNA might be added.

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## Angela

*Iosif Lazaridis*‏ @iosif_lazaridis 22h22 hours ago



This work started before we published the first genome-wide data from Bronze Age Crete (doi: 10.1038/nature23310) which showed that the Minoan population of the island did not yet have the affinity to Central/Eastern Europe which contributes some ancestry of present-day Cretans.

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## kingjohn

i cluster with Cretans in some eurogenes calculators second population for me after ashkenazi in that order 
some of them score *10% baltic in eurogenes k13* like me 
that is the main element that push my total autosomal genome to resemble cretans more than sicilians :)
thanks for sharing angela nice study :)

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## Angela

It's good to finally put to rest the whole question of the relationship between Sicilians/Peloponnesians/Cretans. 

As I tried to explain over and over again, a lot of the misunderstanding had to do with the fact that comparisons were being made with Greeks from around Thessaloniki (old Salonika). 

By using Peloponnesians, who, after all, provided a lot of the migration to Southern Italy and Sicily, we can see the overlap with Sicilians, and we can also see the overlap with Crete, meaning there is not in fact this huge divide between mainland Greece and Crete. 

I also find it amusing that after hundreds of thousands of posts on how different Sicilians from different parts of the island were from one another, they all nestle quite nicely within the Cretan cluster. :)

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## bigsnake49

> @Big Snake or any other guys, in Pontus Region-Turkey some of the Greeks accepted Islam and stayed in Turkey. Is there any source for Cretean Muslims? Became Chrisitanzied and stayed in Crete?


No Cretan Turks, either locals that converted to Islam or imported from Anatolia migrated to Turkey.

It was very hard if not impossible for a Muslim to convert to Christianity under the Ottoman Empire. Converting to Islam was incentivized by lower taxes, serving in the army, gathering of kids and converting them to Islam. Converting back was totally discouraged under penalty of death.

Now if some Cretan Muslims stayed behind in Greece and then converted to Christianity, that was definitely allowed under Greek laws. I am not aware of any large numbers of conversions though.

----------


## bigsnake49

> I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift. 
> 
> As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding: 
> 
> By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another. 
> 
> It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile. 
> 
> Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.
> ...


Very well put Angela, see Yetos' post for more details.

----------


## bigsnake49

> Turks in Greece should show Turkic (Central Asian-Siberian / East Asian) results. The Turks in Bulgaria show that. One of sample is my dad.
> 
> His Turkic percent 50% percent less than West Anatolian my mom. But his percent still double/triple than any other Balkan nations


It depends on where the Turks still remaining in Greece came from. Were they from deep Anatolia that has a higher Turkic genetic content or from Western Anatolia that has lower Turkic content or locals that got Islamized or all three combined. I am not aware of any large scale genetic studies of the Turks in Western Thrace but would love to be directed to one.

----------


## Boreas

> Now if some Cretan Muslims stayed behind in Greece and then converted to Christianity, that was definitely allowed under Greek laws. I am not aware of any large numbers of conversions though.


Yeah this is what I am asking. Greek Kingdom rule during the population exchange period. Turks who didn't want to their own village.

----------


## Boreas

Who was settled mostly the placed where were left by Cretean Turks? Greeks from Pontus?

----------


## bigsnake49

> Who was settled mostly the placed where were left by Cretean Turks? Greeks from Pontus?


I will have to investigate it. I had seen a study somewhere and I should have bookmarked it. If I remember correctly the numbers were pretty low. 10-20,000 sounds about right.

----------


## berun

> *Iosif Lazaridis*‏ @iosif_lazaridis 22h22 hours ago
> 
> 
> 
> This work started before we published the first genome-wide data from Bronze Age Crete (doi: 10.1038/nature23310) which showed that the Minoan population of the island did not yet have the affinity to Central/Eastern Europe which contributes some ancestry of present-day Cretans.


so basicaly the authors are yet anchored in XX century? it sounds to me like an excuse, a work two years old can be processed quickly after acceptation of the paper, or even they could stop publication. I would prefer to deal with lack of knowledge than with children like reactions.

----------


## matadworf

> I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift. 
> 
> As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding: 
> 
> By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another. 
> 
> It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile. 
> 
> Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.
> ...


There are Turks (and even Anatolian Greeks) who suggest that there is a genetic Turkish imprint on the mainland. Most mainland Greeks (including my own family) lived in isolated communities and had no genetic interaction with invading populations (including Turks). If you look at the autosmal results of mainland Greeks there is nothing to suggest even a remote connection.

----------


## matadworf

> I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift. 
> 
> As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding: 
> 
> By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another. 
> 
> It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile. 
> 
> Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.
> ...





> It's good to finally put to rest the whole question of the relationship between Sicilians/Peloponnesians/Cretans. 
> 
> As I tried to explain over and over again, a lot of the misunderstanding had to do with the fact that comparisons were being made with Greeks from around Thessaloniki (old Salonika). 
> 
> By using Peloponnesians, who, after all, provided a lot of the migration to Southern Italy and Sicily, we can see the overlap with Sicilians, and we can also see the overlap with Crete, meaning there is not in fact this huge divide between mainland Greece and Crete. 
> 
> I also find it amusing that after hundreds of thousands of posts on how different Sicilians from different parts of the island were from one another, they all nestle quite nicely within the Cretan cluster. :)


Yes but what separates Peloponnesians from Cretans is the minor Slavic genetic imprint (Slavic incursions of the 6th and 7th Century) with the exception of deep Mani and isolated Tskanonian regions of Aracadia.

----------


## td120

It might be offtopic as it concerns mainly the town dwellers but I found this paper very interesting also with the picture of the interactions between the locals and the new elite and change of ethnic (and confessional) affiliations:


INHERITED STATUS AND SLAVERY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY AND VENETIAN CRETE*
Author(s): Sally McKee Source: Past & Present, No. 182 (Feb., 2004), pp. 31-53 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society





> It stands to reason,
> also, that female slaves as sexual partners and the children they
> produced were more widespread than even the considerable
> numbers in the records indicate. The evidence from Venetian
> Crete tends strongly to suggest not only that men maintained
> long-term relationships with servile women, but that they had
> even longer ones with the children produced by such unions. As
> noted before, illegitimate children by slave women show up as
> beneficiaries in wills and as active parties in notarial documents.
> ...



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



> At the highest and lowest levels of society, there were those
> whose claims to be Latin threatened to blur the boundaries
> established by the authorities. At the highest, recognition as a
> Latin meant access to wealth. At the lowest level, it meant free-
> dom. Their claims, therefore, needed substantiation. For the
> people of the middling social rank living in the city of Candia,
> no great advantage accrued from claiming to be Latin. And so
> it comes as no surprise that, on that social level, discerning the
> ancestry of the skilled and unskilled labourers of Candia in the
> ...


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



> Because there were both sanctioned (by marriage) and
> unsanctioned (concubinage) unions between the members of
> the different communities at all levels of society, determining
> who was or was not Latin became a problem that had to be
> solved through the imposition of standards of proof. Most
> people fell relatively easily into one community or the other,
> depending on their families' social rank and political allegiance.
> The increasing number of illegitimate children of mixed par-
> entage, however, meant that a growing proportion of the popu-
> ...


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



> Three types of legal status existed in Venetian Crete. The
> unfree peasantry, who resided in and toiled upon the great agri-
> cultural estates throughout the island, constituted the villeins,
> who were Greek-speaking adherents of the Eastern Church
> whose ancestors had once served Byzantine masters under the
> label of paroikoi. Slave status applied to those men and women
> who had been brought by merchants to the island, where they
> were bought either by residents in the colony or by merchants
> from elsewhere to be exported elsewhere. In the first half of the
> ...



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



> But conversion to the Roman rite did not suffice to win a slave
> or a villein's freedom. Claiming to be the child of a Latin
> father, however, did. The colonial administration's attempts to
> devise standards of establishing Latin ancestry came far too late
> to be effective or meaningful, since the population had been
> sexually mixing from the colony's birth in spite of ban on 
> marriages between Latins and Greeks. The important point is
> that such standards were devised only because the lines be-
> tween the two ancestral groups were becoming blurred at the
> ...






> ...But other evidence, like the case involving 
> Pietro Porco's sons makes clear that at some point in the first
> decades of the fourteenth cen-
> tury free status began to descend automatically to the children
> Latin men had by slave women. In 1271 Bellamore Rosso, a resi-
> dent of Candia, had drawn up an instrument of manumission for
> his son Bonaventura by his slave woman Bona.
> Within thirty years, the situation had changed. Among the
> approximately eight hundred wills that survive from the four-
> ...


Something from the paper torzio gave in his post: 



> Based on the age of the R1b-associated Y-STR variation for the Crete-without-Lasithi-Plateau population,the genetic affinity between R1b haplogroups from North Italy and Crete might be the imprints of an Italian geneflow before the end of the Minoan civilization and/or more recent migrations during the Roman and Venetian ruling periods. Finally, it is possible that the more recent age for the R1b-associated Y-STR variation in the Lasithi Plateau population as compared with the estimate for the rest of eastern Crete could have resulted from population bottle-necks in the mountain plain. Alternatively, these lineages might have been introduced to the Lasithi highland plain long after their presence in other regions of the island...


https://www.researchgate.net/publica...ghland_plateau


I could not find concrete numbers on the proportion of slaves on Crete during the centuries of Venetian rule. Some other papers report serious numbers of slaves on Mallorca (up to 36% at some point) but I could not find any specific data for Crete (and the paper describes mainly city dwellers).

----------


## bigsnake49

> It might be offtopic as it concerns mainly the town dwellers but I found this paper very interesting also with the picture of the interactions between the locals and the new elite and change of ethnic (and confessional) affiliations:
> 
> 
> INHERITED STATUS AND SLAVERY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY AND VENETIAN CRETE*
> Author(s): Sally McKee Source: Past & Present, No. 182 (Feb., 2004), pp. 31-53 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


All that is good, but does she mention how many Venetians were there vs how many locals? Crete is a big island!

----------


## Angela

> Yes but what separates Peloponnesians from Cretans is the minor Slavic genetic imprint (Slavic incursions of the 6th and 7th Century) with the exception of deep Mani and isolated Tskanonian regions of Aracadia.


Sorry, matadworf, I'm not completely sure what you mean. According to the authors of this paper, that minor Central European/Slavic genetic imprint also made its way to Crete, except for the mentioned very isolated areas.

----------


## bigsnake49

Also people have to understand statistics that tell you have let's say 13.2% Iberian does not mean that your ancestors come from Iberia. It just means that in K15, since they only have 15 populations in the database, the best fit to those 15 populations is that you share 13.2% of your genome with Iberians. Not that you do, just that SNP by SNP, the program calculates the closest fit among those 15 population. So in 13.2% of the SNPs, the closest fit was that of the Iberians. I don't worry that a Catalan pirate may have raped a long ago grandmother of mine.

----------


## matadworf

But where is the genetic Slavic element in Crete coming from? Mainland Greece? I don't believe there was actual Slavic settlement.

----------


## Jovialis

> "These Neolithic settlers and subsequent waves of Neolithic migrants (Broodbank & Strasser, 1991; Cherry, 1981; Nowicki, 2008; Weinberg, 1965) established the first advanced European civilization, the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Crete from 3000 to about 1450 B.C.E. (Evans, 1921). The island was subsequently conquered by the Myceneans of mainland Greece (Bennet, 2011; Chadwick, 1976; deFidio, 2008) who ruled from around 1450 to 1100 B.C.E. Homer (1650) describes Crete as a populous island with 90 cities inhabited by several tribes: the Achaeans, who correspond to the people now called Myceneans (Bennet, 2011; Schofield, 2007); the Pelasgians who were the pre‐Hellenic population of the Helladic space (Herodotus, 1999; Strabo, 2006); the Eteocretans (Cretans of the old stock); the Kydonians; and the Dorians (Strabo, 2006). Eteocretans and Kydonians were considered to be autochthonous Cretans while the other tribes originated from Greece (Strabo, 2006). "
> "Following the Hellenistic period during which there is no record of population migrations to Crete, the island was conquered in 69 B.C.E. by the Romans (Sanders, 1982). The almost 400 years of Roman occupation was followed by about 500 years of relatively peaceful rule by the Byzantines (Tsougarakis, 1988) until Crete fell in 827 C.E. to Arab exiles from Andalusia (Brooks, 1913; Christides, 1984; Detorakis, 2015; Vassiliev, 1980). The Arab Emirate of Crete was frequently raided the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, but after 134 years of Arab rule, the island was recaptured in 961 C.E. by the Byzantines (Norwich, 1998; Vassiliev, 1980). The 243 years of the second Byzantine rule ended when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Francs and the Venetians of the Fourth Crusade. The Venetians purchased the island in 1204 C.E. from the crusader Boniface of Montferrat; they ruled Crete for 465 years and established a feudal system that provoked several revolutions of the population (Detorakis, 2015; Xanthoudidis, 1939). From 1645 to 1669, Ottomans and Venetians fought for 24 years over Crete and the island was captured by the Ottomans who ruled for 267 years during which the Cretans revolted several times (Detorakis, 2015). The island gained its autonomy in 1889 and was unified with Greece in 1913."
> _Finally someone who is doing the sampling correctly.
> _"We focused on the rural population of Crete. The participants were males or females 70 years or older (range of ages 70 to 94 years) who had paternal and maternal grandparents originating from villages located in the same district of Crete. With this approach, we reconstructed the rural population of Crete at the time of birth of the grandparents of the participants (i.e., the population of the period 1850 to 1880)."
> "Genetic differentiation of the Cretan populations. (a) Results of principal component analysis (PCA) analysis of the 17 Cretan subpopulations. Notice that the individuals of the study are not distributed randomly but they form clusters distinguishing several subpopulations. Also notice that the eastern and the western subpopulations are placed on the opposite sites of the graph."
> "The east‐to‐west gradient could represent ancient population settlement patterns. It is known that the Minoan settlements concentrated in central and eastern Crete (Branigan, 1970) while the Myceneans (likely of Peloponnesean origin) dominated the central and the western parts of the island (deFidio, 2008). The Kydonians inhabited western Crete and the Eteocretans inhabited southern (Strabo, 2006) and eastern Crete (Duhoux, 1982). Eastern Crete received waves of new immigrants from the Anatolian coast through the Dodecanese in the Final Neolithic/Early Minoan (around 3,500 to 3,000 B.C.E.) (Nowicki, 2002, 2008). It was thus possible that the east‐to‐west gradient reflected these old population distributions that had been preserved by the geography of the island. Compatible with population movements between Crete, Peloponnese, and Dodecanese are the findings of IBD analysis (Figure S5) showing high IBD sharing between Peloponnese and west Crete and similarly high between Dodecanese and east Crete. Another explanation of the east‐to‐the west gradient, supported by the Cretan mountainous geography, is isolation by distance. Future analyses might help clarify this issue."
> "To explore the genetic relationships between Cretans and the European and Near Eastern populations, we employed IBD analysis and PCA. In IBD analysis, our primary measure of relatedness was mean pairwise IBD, that is, the average amount of detected IBD (in segments >2 cM) shared between individuals in two populations (Tables S3 and S4). The heat map in Figure 3a shows the average amount of IBD shared between individuals in Crete, Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East. All three regions of Crete are most strongly related to Europe. Bootstrap analyses confirm that the Crete–Europe relationship is significantly stronger than either Crete–Caucasus or Crete–Near East (Figure S6)."
> Sorry, the IBD analysis seems pretty useless to me. The most recent migrations are the ones that are going to show up, i.e. from the Slavic migrations filtering down and forward. The older ones which represent the majority of the population are too broken up by time and recombination to show up.
> The PCA is more informative,
> ...


Indeed, I think I would be overlapping with Peloponnese. On 23andme, it is also where I have an affinity:

----------


## torzio

> All that is good, but does she mention how many Venetians were there vs how many locals? Crete is a big island!


The populace was not big from records from the medieval period, so I do not understand what is the issue here

when venetians took the island after 1204, they state only 110,000 was the cretan populace, they then placed 10000 venetian families on the island ( only place outside of italy and istria where venetian families where allowed to colonise ) , then the last venetian census says

in 1669, after an unsuccessful attempt to break the siege. Francesco Morosini, the Venetian commander, started negotiations with Fazil Ahmet Pacha, the Grand Vizier who was leading the Ottoman army in person. The 23 year war had strained the resources of both Venice and the Ottoman Empire, so an acceptable agreement was welcome by both parties. The Venetians were allowed to leave Candia without being attacked during this phase. With them most of the population left and many Cretan families settled on Corfu, Zante and Cefalonia, the largest Ionian Islands. 


The last Venetian census, in 1644, showed a Cretan population of 257,066.
In 1671, according to the ﬁrst Ottoman census, the total Christian population was 133,370;
by 1693 it had dropped to 91,230.
The Christian population of Crete certainly declined.Is this drop in Christian population the result of war and the departure of the Venetians, or is it the effect of Christian conversion to Islam? One traveler estimated that, within a few years of the conquest, 60% of the Cretan population had converted to Islam.

Another gave the population in1679 as 80,000: 50,000 Christians and 30,000 Muslims.

so from 1644 a populace of 257066 to war for 23 years, to cretans departure after 1669 to a populace of 133370 ..................thats 125000 cretans died and departed for the ionion islands

----------


## torzio

> But where is the genetic Slavic element in Crete coming from? Mainland Greece? I don't believe there was actual Slavic settlement.


Venetians sent croats from zara (zagreb) to crete and also slavs from the venetian pelopennese capital nafplion

----------


## td120

> But where is the genetic Slavic element in Crete coming from? Mainland Greece? I don't believe there was actual Slavic settlement.




Peter Charanis :
https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/Bal...File/5113/5142





> The Slavs then who settled in the Greek lands, settled there during the
> reign of Maurice in the 80’s of the sixth century. More Slavs may have come
> later, but their coming cannot be precisely documented. The Slavs settled in
> Macedonia, in Thessaly, in Epirus, in central Greece, the Peloponnese, and
> even in Crete. Their settlements were denser in the western regions than they
> were in the eastern regions of Greece. They failed to enter the eastern Peloponnese, 
> and while some did establish themselves in Attica and Boeotia, they were
> apparently not too many...


http://www.archaeology.ru/Download/S..._srednevek.pdf





> Источники
> позволяют полагать, что славянское население проживало также на островах Эгейского и
> Средиземного морей - Крите, Эвбее, Фасосе, Корфу, Самосе, Эгине, Теносе, Левкосе и других (10]




Paper by a Crete native :
https://www.academia.edu/26796209/Sl..._-_Athens_2016


https://www.andromedabooks.gr/product.asp?catid=37400


I hope it will be translated to English and uploaded or available for sale soon.

----------


## matadworf

I guess that's why Messinia has the highest Slavic input in all of the Peloponnese based on the Stamatoyannoupolos paper.

----------


## matadworf

> I don't know how much more clearly the authors could have put it. Those three areas show less influence from anyone. It's isolation and then drift. 
> 
> As for the "there must be Turkish" blood in Greece, Albania and other countries", bigsnake I'm sure knows better than I do, so if I go wrong, he may, of course, correct me, but this is my understanding: 
> 
> By the time of the Ottoman take over, they were Muslim, and the inhabitants were Christian of one variety or another. 
> 
> It boggles the imagination that an Ottoman family would allow their daughters to abjure their faith, turn apostate, and go marry a Christian Greek and live in that community. If a Christian Greek male wished to marry a Muslim girl, he would need to convert, be circumcised, and become part of the Ottoman community, and when they left he and his progeny would be part of the group going into exile. 
> 
> Now, I think a Christian girl could become a wife or concubine to a Turk, and could then even keep her Christian faith, but her children would then become part of the Ottoman society.
> ...





> Indeed, I think I would be overlapping with Peloponnese. On 23andme, it is also where I have an affinity:


Actually it's Mani and Tsakonia that are close to Crete autosmally. The rest of the Peloponnese is much closer to Thessaly, Epirus (actually all of mainland Greece with the exception of Eastern Macedonia and Tharace) and Southern Albania. My roots are fully in the Peloponnese and I cluster with Thessalians, Southern Albanians and/or Central Italians (Central Med) rather than those on the more Eastern end of the Med spectrum.

----------


## Jovialis

> Actually it's Mani and Tsakonia that are close to Crete autosmally. The rest of the Peloponnese is much closer to Thessaly, Epirus (actually all of mainland Greece with the exception of Eastern Macedonia and Tharace) and Southern Albania. My roots are fully in the Peloponnese and I cluster with Thessalians, Southern Albanians and/or Central Italians (Central Med) rather than those on the more Eastern end of the Med spectrum.


South-Central Italians in Lazio fall into the cluster that is shown as Peloponnese. It bridges Tuscans and Sicily.

----------


## Jovialis

Take a look at the modern Greek samples, there is Thessaloniki. Albanians cluster with Thessaloniki too:




The Armenoi_Crete sample seems to fall into the "Peloponnese" cluster as well.

----------


## Angela

> Actually it's Mani and Tsakonia that are close to Crete autosmally. The rest of the Peloponnese is much closer to Thessaly, Epirus (actually all of mainland Greece with the exception of Eastern Macedonia and Tharace) and Southern Albania. My roots are fully in the Peloponnese and I cluster with Thessalians, Southern Albanians and/or Central Italians (Central Med) rather than those on the more Eastern end of the Med spectrum.


Something better about being more "West Med"? 

First of all, is there something in the paper which specifically says that? Or is it just your own results from amateur calculators? Please don't tell me that Sikeliot told you so, the Sikeliot who insisted that the Greeks had no genetic input into southern Italy, and that instead it was a massive migration of people from the Levant. :)

If it's true I guess you should be going to Mani and Tsakonia to spend some time with the closest genetic descendants of the people who created the glory which was Greece, in addition to being such fierce fighters in defense of the Greeks of a more recent time. 

As for the people of Sicily, they have a bit of diversity. Some overlap with people of the Peloponnese, and some with the people of Crete. I wish they had included the Calabrians and the Pugliesi. Interesting that much of Crete actually extends further east toward the Levant than the Sicilians. I guess they got more of that massive wave of Levantines. :)

The Peloponnese, from the PCA, at least, is mostly south and east of the Tuscans, more Lazio, or even more, Abruzzo, as the most "northern" point of reference? Those two stray "Tuscan" samples are a bit odd. Either a great-grandparent from further south, or perhaps the sample is from the border area with Lazio. 

@Jovialis
Good post. Thanks also for reminding me that the Crete Armenoi sample lands in the Peloponnese. That's still my sole ancient IBD sample from MTA, even if the overall autosomal comparison is pretty distant.

----------


## RodneyMoore

Modern Greeks are descendants of Minoans and Mykiants. The DNA analysis of representatives of Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations proved their genetic relationship with each other, as well as with modern Greeks. It is shown that the Neolithic populations of Anatolia made the main contribution to the formation of the Minoans and Mycenaeans. The authors found in them a genetic component originating from the Caucasus and from Iran, and in the Mykene population - a small trace from Eastern Europe and Siberia.

----------


## Angela

Well, I don't know if I'd say 14%-34%? from the Slavic migrations, depending on the area, admittedly themselves mixed by the time they got to most of Greece, of course, can be called a "trace". Somebody can check the data in the paper on the genetics of the Peloponnese and this one for the precise numbers. The point remains even if I'm off a few percentage points. 

That's over and above the amount of "new" ancestry from the steppe during the Bronze Age, although that was probably mixed as well, and much smaller by comparison.

Greece got hammered during the Slavic migrations, "helped" if one could use such a word for such a horror, by the plague, if not during the coming of the actual Greek speakers.

What was the estimate the Greek researcher used for the similarity, on average, between Mycenaeans and modern Greeks? 75%? Some areas, in the north, obviously, would be less.

----------


## ihype02

> It's good to finally put to rest the whole question of the relationship between Sicilians/Peloponnesians/Cretans. 
> 
> As I tried to explain over and over again, a lot of the misunderstanding had to do with the fact that comparisons were being made with Greeks from around Thessaloniki (old Salonika). 
> 
> By using Peloponnesians, who, after all, provided a lot of the migration to Southern Italy and Sicily, we can see the overlap with Sicilians, and we can also see the overlap with Crete, meaning there is not in fact this huge divide between mainland Greece and Crete.


Maybe it also has to do with the dimensions that they pick to represent the populations in the PCA. Look at Armenians in this PCA and look at the Lazaridis they are way more shifted away from Cretans. Same with Tuscans who are closer in this PCA to Sicilians than they are in that of Lazaridis.

Peloponnesians are obviously the closests mainlanders to Sicilians genetically that is well known.

----------


## Jovialis

> Sicilians are not overlapping with the Peloponnesian Greeks. Sicilians have a significantly less amount of steppe component and also a significantly greater amount of middle eastern blending and less of western-type farmers. Sicilians are grouped together with Ashkenazi Jews. Perhaps this is related to Carthage. Not even the Cretans group together with the Peloponnesian Greeks. Yes, they are obviously related and close, but they definitely don't come together. It will be like saying that Tuscany are grouped with Trentinos. They are not far apart, but they are definitely not the same. To be quite clear: there is nothing better or worse about being more or less Western Mediterranean - I think it is important to remember this because some people are sensitive to the subject.


I think it is important to remember that you are a crypto-anti-semite that wants to associate jews with other ethnic groups that you dislike. You should remember, this isn't Anthrogenica, and you don't have inept moderators to get your back.

Time to go back to Anthrogenica, Ruderico.

You're going to tell us that they don't overlap with one, but do with the other, despite what the PCA clearly shows? Some Peloponnesians do overlap with Sicilians. No amount of sophistry, or ignorant inferences based on history is going to change that.

----------


## Angela

> I think it is important to remember that you are a crypto-anti-semite that wants to associate jews with other ethnic groups that you dislike. You should remember, this isn't Anthrogenica, and you don't have inept moderators to get your back.
> 
> Time to go back to Anthrogenica, Ruderico.


Ah, so that's who he really is? 

As Ruderico, when bested in an argument he had here with me he said he would never post here again. So he comes back under a new name? Isn't that against the rules at anthrogenica? :) It's also complete hypocrisy.

Did I ever mention that I got permanently banned from anthrogenica because I forgot my user name and password (it had been more than a year since I went there to read anything) and just tried to set up a new account? Mind you, I never, ever posted a word there, so I was clearly not trying to deceive anyone. 

At first I got a message saying if you forget your identification data contact us; don't just set up a new account. Next thing I know I get a message I'm permanently banned. I'm sure that was Ruderico.

I think at one point, after the twentieth time he had pointed out that as an Iberian he doesn't have a shred of North African or Jew in him, I made some comment about the strangeness of that. That was on this site. I guess he didn't like the implication. Too bad. He's definitely one of those Noridicist types, the kind who lives to point out he's not like the Sicilians and Southern Italians with their "Middle Eastern" ancestry. 

It's like the man doesn't read the papers or look at the graphs, or ignores them, not only with regard to Italians, but with regard to Iberians.

I don't think most of the supposed "Jews" on that thread are really Jewish; not all of them anyway. Most Jews I know would not be fighting to the death to prove they're mostly Greek, although of course there's a lot of Southern European in western Jews. 

Nor are the supposed "Italians" Italian. Claudio was obviously Sikeliot, for example. 

There's like maybe five legit, properly identified people over there, and the rest are all t-roll, sock accounts. What a descent into the abyss from the days of dna forums when archaeologists and actual intellectuals were in charge. 

It must be like what academia was like in Leninist and Stalinist Russia over there. Sure you can post, but only if you agree with us. If we don't like your facts and arguments, it's sophistry.

What a joke.

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## Jovialis

> Ah, so that's who he really is? 
> 
> As Ruderico, when bested in an argument he had here with me he said he would never post here again. So he comes back under a new name? Isn't that against the rules at anthrogenica? :) It's also complete hypocrisy.
> 
> Did I ever mention that I got permanently banned from anthrogenica because I forgot my user name and password (it had been more than a year since I went there to read anything) and just tried to set up a new account? Mind you, I never, ever posted a word there, so I was clearly not trying to deceive anyone. 
> 
> At first I got a message saying if you forget your identification data contact us; don't just set up a new account. Next thing I know I get a message I'm permanently banned. I'm sure that was Ruderico.
> 
> I think at one point, after the twentieth time he had pointed out that as an Iberian he doesn't have a shred of North African or Jew in him, I made some comment about the strangeness of that. That was on this site. I guess he didn't like the implication. Too bad. He's definitely one of those Noridicist types, the kind who lives to point out he's not like the Sicilians and Southern Italians with their "Middle Eastern" ancestry. 
> ...


Agamemnon is most likely Anglo-Jew as well, from the Aprcity.

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## Angela

> Agamemnon is most likely Anglo-Jew as well, from the Aprcity.


Goodness, after the thousands of posts he wrote with linguistics supporting model after model PROVING that the Tuscans were descended from a migration from Turkey in the first millennium BC a la Herodotus, and the papers showing he was disastrously wrong, I thought for sure he would have taken up a new hobby, or at least done what they always do over there, and change their names.

Ruderico was, of course, a big supporter of that hypothesis. Surprised? :)

I've never changed my name or identity. When I post I post as myself so there's no confusion. I also acknowledge each and every conclusion I ever reached, and even every hypothesis I ever proffered. Of course, I've never actually been proven wrong, probably, to be fair, because I never get too far ahead of the data, and if my hypothesis is a tentative one I say so.

Still, I like to believe I have the honesty and integrity to have admitted I was wrong about something major if that was proved to be the case.

Those are foreign words to most of the people over there. I don't know what the chief moderator is doing over there. He seems like a decent enough person. Maybe he's just a figurehead.

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## ihype02

> Agamemnon is most likely Anglo-Jew as well, from the Aprcity.


Just checked it, AngoJew has a different Y DNA from Agamemnon.

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## Joey37

I no longer post at Anthrogenica; the benefits are far outweighed by the humorless Hindutva fanatics whose self-importance is topped only by their inferiority complexes, particularly at the appearance of a certain y-chromosome haplogroup, at least at Eurogenes Vasistha is not the moderator. I believe Agamemnon is Jewish by male line, and his matrilineal descent is British, at any rate.

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## Parapolitikos

There is NO WAY a gene flow from Muslims to Christians could occur in an Islamic state.
Ottoman empire was an Islamic empire. It was epitome of an Islamic state, it was the caliphate and was ruled by the Islamic law which is very clear on these issues

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## ihype02

''In Table S5, we list the source populations that provided the strongest evidence of admixture (exponential amplitude and decay more than four standard errors higher than zero). A series of populations from western (CEU), northern (CEU, Estonian), and Eastern (Ukrainian, Russian) Europe produce admixture estimates of approximately* 17%–28% dating to the medieval period.''
*Roughly 20% Northern Slavic input in Cretans according to this scientific paper. Not that I believe it.

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## bigsnake49

The Byzantine emperors when they reconquered Crete supposedly slaughtered 200,000 Muslims although that figure is probably a bit excessive. But even 100,000 dead people had to be replaced so they moved some people from elsewhere in the empire. So where did they come from? Remember the emperors wanted people that paid taxes so they did not care about their ethnicity. They probably moved them from non-heretic Orthodox areas that spoke Greek.

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## Ralphie Boy

It is shown also in the Neolithic migration paper that Peloponnesians overlap a bit with Sicilians, in this case populations from central Peloponnese (Tripoli) and south Laconia.
38F27F27-7AEE-41EC-A34B-A374964C3DB7.jpg7955A9F8-2CBF-4DF0-AD86-7BA62C8869B8.jpg

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## ihype02

> It is shown also in the Neolithic migration paper that Peloponnesians overlap a bit with Sicilians, in this case populations from central Peloponnese (Tripoli) and south Laconia.
> 38F27F27-7AEE-41EC-A34B-A374964C3DB7.jpg7955A9F8-2CBF-4DF0-AD86-7BA62C8869B8.jpg


Southeast Laconians shift towards Sicilians while the northwestern ones are shifting towards Tuscans.
Maniots in GedMatch fall under "Central Greek" cluster. They come up as 90% Sicilian + 10% Ukrainian. While other Peloponnesians as 75% Sicilian + 25% Ukrainian.

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## ihype02

This PCA shows a strong overlap with Macedonia and Peloponnese.

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## matadworf

My grandmother was Tsakonian

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## matadworf

> Something better about being more "West Med"? 
> 
> 
> First of all, is there something in the paper which specifically says that? Or is it just your own results from amateur calculators? Please don't tell me that Sikeliot told you so, the Sikeliot who insisted that the Greeks had no genetic input into southern Italy, and that instead it was a massive migration of people from the Levant. :)
> 
> If it's true I guess you should be going to Mani and Tsakonia to spend some time with the closest genetic descendants of the people who created the glory which was Greece, in addition to being such fierce fighters in defense of the Greeks of a more recent time. 
> 
> As for the people of Sicily, they have a bit of diversity. Some overlap with people of the Peloponnese, and some with the people of Crete. I wish they had included the Calabrians and the Pugliesi. Interesting that much of Crete actually extends further east toward the Levant than the Sicilians. I guess they got more of that massive wave of Levantines. :)
> 
> ...


My maternal grandmother was Tsakonian from a village near Leonidion in the Parnon Mountains (Paleohori).

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## cybernautic

> It's good to finally put to rest the whole question of the relationship between Sicilians/Peloponnesians/Cretans. 
> 
> I also find it amusing that after hundreds of thousands of posts on how different Sicilians from different parts of the island were from one another, they all nestle quite nicely within the Cretan cluster. :)


Yup the mix of different people which made todays Cretans is very similar to Sicily

Similar ingredients and also many parallels in the history of both Islands

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## Archangel Michael

I was always wondering, do Greeks from mainland percieve Crete people any different from them?

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## matadworf

> I was always wondering, do Greeks from mainland percieve Crete people any different from them?


My experience in the US being around a few Cretans was that they viewed themselves distinct from mainlanders historically, culturally, etc. As a mainland Greek I was always aware and respectful of Cretan culture.

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## Mineiro25

> Ah, so that's who he really is? 
> 
> As Ruderico, when bested in an argument he had here with me he said he would never post here again. So he comes back under a new name? Isn't that against the rules at anthrogenica? :) It's also complete hypocrisy.
> 
> Did I ever mention that I got permanently banned from anthrogenica because I forgot my user name and password (it had been more than a year since I went there to read anything) and just tried to set up a new account? Mind you, I never, ever posted a word there, so I was clearly not trying to deceive anyone. 
> 
> At first I got a message saying if you forget your identification data contact us; don't just set up a new account. Next thing I know I get a message I'm permanently banned. I'm sure that was Ruderico.
> 
> I think at one point, after the twentieth time he had pointed out that as an Iberian he doesn't have a shred of North African or Jew in him, I made some comment about the strangeness of that. That was on this site. I guess he didn't like the implication. Too bad. He's definitely one of those Noridicist types, the kind who lives to point out he's not like the Sicilians and Southern Italians with their "Middle Eastern" ancestry. 
> ...


" I think at one point, after the twentieth time he had pointed out that as an Iberian he doesn't have a shred of North African or Jew in him, I made some comment about the strangeness of that. That was on this site. I guess he didn't like the implication. Too bad. He's definitely one of those Noridicist types, the kind who lives to point out he's not like the Sicilians and Southern Italians with their "Middle Eastern" ancestry. " 

I am not a fan of anthrogenica, but in Ruderico's biography he mentions something around 10% of Moroccan ancestry. In the time I spent in the Portuguese section of Antrogenica I followed many of his comments and nothing disparaging against Jews, North Africans or the Mediterranean in general, on the contrary.

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## ihype02

> *The populace was not big from records from the medieval period, so I do not understand what is the issue here
> when venetians took the island after 1204, they state only 110,000 was the cretan populace, they then placed 10000 venetian families on the island ( only place outside of italy and istria where venetian families where allowed to colonise ) , then the last venetian census says
> in 1669, after an unsuccessful attempt to break the siege.* Francesco Morosini, the Venetian commander, started negotiations with Fazil Ahmet Pacha, the Grand Vizier who was leading the Ottoman army in person. The 23 year war had strained the resources of both Venice and the Ottoman Empire, so an acceptable agreement was welcome by both parties. The Venetians were allowed to leave Candia without being attacked during this phase. With them most of the population left and many Cretan families settled on Corfu, Zante and Cefalonia, the largest Ionian Islands. 
> The last Venetian census, in 1644, showed a Cretan population of 257,066.
> In 1671, according to the ﬁrst Ottoman census, the total Christian population was 133,370;
> by 1693 it had dropped to 91,230.
> The Christian population of Crete certainly declined.Is this drop in Christian population the result of war and the departure of the Venetians, or is it the effect of Christian conversion to Islam? One traveler estimated that, within a few years of the conquest, 60% of the Cretan population had converted to Islam.
> Another gave the population in1679 as 80,000: 50,000 Christians and 30,000 Muslims.
> so from 1644 a populace of 257066 to war for 23 years, to cretans departure after 1669 to a populace of 133370 ..................thats 125000 cretans died and departed for the ionion islands


I think it says 10,000 Venetians not 10,000 Venetian families. That would mean 1 in 3 or at least 1 in 4 Cretan was a Venetian.

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## bigsnake49

Cretans have a distinct culture, cuisine, dialect and music than the mainland. Now there has been a lot of homogeneity lately so maybe I am talking about previous generation.

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