My oldest relative at the moment is the Vucedol I3499 individual, with a small fragment of cM 1.95 DNA. I think I understood what culture refers to, but I ask if the nomenclature that classifies it as proto-Thracian/Illyrian is correct or if it is intentionally generic and somewhat ambiguous.
From time to time MTY seems to me very (or too) "elastic" with the denominations: in the same way another of my "relatives" among the specimens of Collegno has become from simple "Frank" also a "Nordic Central Lombard"...
Personally, I take them with a big grain of salt. Scythian Moldova is a good example. I sincerely doubt he is a full "Scythian". For me to get a 25.4 cm. "match", I bet the person had a whole bunch of Southeastern Balkan type farmer. Also, with that large cM "match", why is the genetic distance so much greater than with some other samples? I do realize they're measuring different things, but it's just odd, and someone unfamiliar with all this might get confused.
In some cases it's downright misleading. My husband still gets a match with an "Ostrogoth" on the Black Sea, as do I, but weaker. Now, he was a chieftain, with very rich grave goods if I remember correctly, so, yes, an Ostrogoth culturally, but the Goths must have been a very inclusive group, because autosomally he's like an Anatolian Greek.
Or, take my closest match, with a distance of 3.64. Very close indeed. It's sample SZ43, however, so taken from Szolad in Hungary. I think I get that close a distance because that sample falls on a PCA between Bergamo and Toscana, and so do I, roughly. So, you might say...Emilian.
Is that really indicative of my genetic relationship to actual Etruscans and Republican Era Romans? Were those people in Szolad actually from "Italy", as a result of the fact that it was under Byzantine control for awhile, or were there just a lot of people relatively like me genetically all over not only Italy but the Balkans, Hungary, and Spain too given all my matches there, before subsequent migrations to those areas, migrations which my ancestors missed? Hungary, for example, experienced a lot of migration from Germany in the Middle Ages, if my memory serves. I guess I may soon know. My second closest sample in terms of genetic distance, 4.5, is from Piemonte, near Collegno, but from a slightly later period. That one makes sense geographically, at least.
My oldest is still an "Illyrian", 1600 BC on the ancestral timeline graphic, but on the "ancestral timelapse maps" for the Neolithic, I get a hit for 2275 BC. Is that the Vucedol one? Then, I have Beaker Sicily 2200 BC.
I don't know why the results are different. Also, my Illyrian "matches" vary from 1600 to 1200 BC.
etrified: 
:startled:
