Sardinians are not Southern Europeans; they're genetically unique with a high north-European maternal component and the world's highest frequencies of I-M26 (40%).
Wait up a second......the Lydians of turkey were once known as Mysians/Moesians....what a minute; the Mysians are similar to Georgian Meshketi/Moscheti, the thracians COULdN'T have been related to Dacians or I2a people's; they were bloody pelasgians as well
Again regarding autosomal comparison of Thracians with Sardinians I think that ancient Thracians might appear closer to Sardinians autosomally if they lack the north-european admixture (from slavs, germanics), because the Sardinians did not undergo bronze-age and later admixtures from north-europeans. That's why I'm sure Sardinians are the less admixted true south-europeans, more preserved from the neolithic. But I believe Thracians had more "Caucasus" admixture than Sardinians have. Also Ötzi had a little bit more of it than Sardinians so Thracians could have had even more.
Well Herodotus ended up being right on the Etruscans and Livy was a excellent historian; not everything historians said was nonsense.
That part i posted about on page1/post#16
Strabo - Book VII/III
the Mysi, these also being Thracians and identical with the people who are now called Moesi; from these Mysi sprang also the Mysi who now live between the Lydians and the Phrygians and Trojans. And the Phrygians themselves are Brigians, a Thracian tribe, as are also the Mygdonians, the Bebricians, the Medobithynians, the Bithynians, and the Thynians, and, I think, also the Mariandynians. These peoples, to be sure, have all utterly quitted Europe, but the Mysi have remained there.
Several tribes of the Indo-European Thracians swarmed into Anatolia (from Europe) after the collapse of the Indo-European Hittite Empire; The Getae and Mysi(Moesi) def. remained in Europe (Thrace east of Scordisci and Triballi and beyond the Danube) as recorded by the ancient scholars;
Maybe that individual was of a subjugated remnant population of the pre-Indo-European Gumelnita-Karanovo VI-Varna complex; Which would correspond with its Neolithic Ötzi links and the broader Neolithic expansions into Europe (especially Balkans and Alpine area)
Gök4 was as far north as south Sweden but still with very strong Mediterranid links and her strong related ancestry to modern-day Sardinians - seems that these Neolithic peoples were from a common stock;
With the modern-day Sardinians being still closest to them due to their isolation and modern-day Finns and Estonian closer to hunter-gatherers; And both Sardinians and Finns also cluster in a world of their own (isolated) in comparison to other modern-day European pops - These two aspects show that they are still left behind and of a very Old European stock;
Sardinians and Gök4 have 0% North-Euro.
I think "Sardinian" has to be read in a wider sense, meaning generic south-european-like. I rather tend to agree here with davidski's comment and also with the reader's comments:
http://polishgenes.blogspot.de/2013/10/ancient-dna-from-prehistoric-bulgaria.html
Thank you for that link.
I took a look at the European specific PCA's for all five ancient European samples. (four from ancient Bulgaria, and one from ancient Denmark)
They can be found on page six of the Supplementary Data section here:
http://download.cell.com/AJHG/mmcs/journals/0002-9297/PIIS000292971300459X.mmc1.pdf
I think they have to be used with caution. In the case of the Danish sample, it rather contradicts the post capture global PCA plot, as in the global plot, the Danish sample is near Finland...here, the Danish sample plots right at the beginning of the "Southern European" section.
In terms of the ancient Bulgarian samples, it's difficult to draw conclusions; I don't see a definitive narrative, either in terms of age or culture or class.
1) Sample P192-1, a Thracian culture sample found in a pit sanctuary, 800-500 B.C. and the mtDNA is U3b
2) Sample T2G2, a Thracian culture sample dated to virtually the same time frame (850-700 B.C.) and found in a tumulous burial. The mtDNA is HV.
3) Sample K8, a slightly younger (450-400 B.C.) Iron Age sample, also found in a tumulous burial. No mtDNA determination could be made.
4) Sample V2, the sample which appears in the global plot, is one thousand years older and dates to the Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 B.C.). It is an inhumation, flat burial. No mtDNA determination could be made.
Looking at the European specific PCA's, the P-192-1 Thracian Iron Age sample lands in the Tuscan plot.
The plot for the T2G2 Thracian Iron Age sample lacks a lot of definition, probably partly because they were unable to extract as many snps as they did from the other remains, but he seems to land right where the Tuscan, GB and CEU samples meet.
V2, which is the much older Bronze Age sample shown in the global PCA plot, is a little further away, but is right next to where the Southern European clusters begin. This would correlate pretty well with the probably more accurate V2 global plot, where, if you increase the size of the image, you can see that he plots right over GB, Iberian and Tuscan samples.
The K8 sample is the only one that doesn't fit the overall Southern European "look" of the other samples. It seems more "Northeastern" and plots in the middle of the GB and CEU samples.
I was expecting the Bronze Age sample to perhaps be more "North-Eastern" in orientation, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If I were going to guess, perhaps the K8 sample is from an intrusive, later Iron Age Culture...there's a difference of about 300 years if we stretch the dates a little.
Or perhaps it's down to geographical sub-structuring and these attempts to pin a specific yDNA and mtDNA to certain specific cultures is not going to be informative at this relatively late date in European history. ( P192-1 and T2g2 are in the south, V2 is in the northwest, and K8 seems to be from the central eastern portion of Bulgaria.)
Also, as I mentioned above, I don't know how seriously to take these European specific PCA's, as the Danish sample is as close to the Tuscan cluster as some of the ancient Bulgarians.
The global PCA plot in the main body of the text (Table 3) is probably more accurate, and that plots the V2 Bronze Age sample right over on top of what looks like the Iberian samples, some Tuscan samples, and some GB samples. I wish they had provided global plots for all of the ancient Bulgarian samples.
See:
http://images.cell.com/images/EdImages/AJHG/ajhg1537.pdf
Ed. Sorry, double post.
Another thought with regard to these results for the Iron Age Bulgarian... if indeed we ever get to see it in a paper...cultural influences don't always have to indicate migration and admixture.
a lot of different genetic markers point to a roughly 'mediterranean' origin for Bulgarians, more on the sardinian side than on the caucasian one, I think - very meager influence of steppic peoples, either I-Eans or Turcs... the classical anthropological surveys (old science) showed some pockets with surely more slav blood around Sofia: cultural and political center of power & diffusion?; the same kinds of pockets are found in S-Romania too, isolated in different general context -