Genetic study Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors

Hawk said:
I find it surprising that the only Y-DNA which ties Phoenician sites from Levant and other Western Mediterranean sites is E-V22. Other one with clear connections is Y-DNA J1a. So, it falsifies the statement of what the paper claims.

I get it that they were quite admixed, Punics were primarily traders and sailors, they were not known for being a primarily martial culture, they were relying on mercenaries, so expectedly on their sites you will find diverse people, but a pattern is still there.
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There is also the issue if all the sites are correctly labeled and based on what I have seen in many cases I doubt it.
 
WHGuy said:
But I believe we also see some Levantine haplogroups represented in the study. Obviously the Punic world was very cosmopolitan, by ancient standards, and certainly there is a long and persistent history of Greek merchant activity in the area. It is hard to believe that the Punic culture exists without any genetic component being provided by Levantine peoples.
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To be clear, I am not defending the study's conclusions. I have been pointing out for years that genetic studies are full of errors and excesses, and when geneticists try to make their case, they sometimes manipulate the available data (data dredging, cherry-picking...) to make their conclusions seem unquestionable. Furthermore, we often see forced conclusions to make the results of a study seem more important and sensational than they actually are.

The models chosen in this study are somewhat bizarre, I agree. But there are also PCAs that may support the study's conclusions (for me, PCAs remain more reliable than certain statistical models for reconstructing the ancestry of a sample). Based on the numerous samples from Punic archaeological contexts, the idea that Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution to Punic settlements is not so bizarre, however. A trend we have seen in previous studies. Of course, new findings could confirm or scale back some of the conclusions of this study. Not least because, if I am not mistaken, the samples are from 600 B.C. onward, and perhaps these movements of Phoenicians from the Levant westward were simply earlier than these dates.

This study is based on ancient DNA, which is still objective data. At least there is an improvement over Pierre Zalloua's 2008 bogus study that claimed that haplogroup J-M172 (J2) was a “Phoenician signature.”
 
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I noticed these 2 individuals are J2a1a. So these Punic Sicilians are a mix of North African and native Sicilians/Italics(Genetically not linguistically)? Looks like it.

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Here's a nice phylogenetic tree:

1745723714239.png


Italy_Sicily_Mazara?_Punic_Early:I22232__BC_?__Cov_27.23%,0.059188,0.152329,0.001886,-0.070737,0.030159,-0.019243,-0.012691,0.003923,0.043973,0.042825,-0.001624,0.004346,-0.006838,-0.021882,0.002443,-0.016971,-0.013951,0.001014,-0.013575,0.001501,-0.00549,-0.016817,0.001109,0.008555,-0.002155

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From Iran to the the north Mediterranean lands and then to the south:


Carthage.jpg


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The information given about the provenance of each sample is also very poor, only a very small and somewhat cryptic caption in the supplementary tables is given, and some of the papers in the bibliography are seemingly unavailable anywhere. The archaeologists who worked with the genetists and co-authored this paper could've tried to write more than a small paragraph for each site, but this is a problem which is common to most ancient DNA studies to be fair.
 
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WHGuy said:
But I believe we also see some Levantine haplogroups represented in the study. Obviously the Punic world was very cosmopolitan, by ancient standards, and certainly there is a long and persistent history of Greek merchant activity in the area. It is hard to believe that the Punic culture exists without any genetic component being provided by Levantine peoples.
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No significant autosomal ancestry. Y-Dna yes it is Phoenician/Levantine but not the autosomal.
 
Pygmalion said:
The information given about the provenance of each sample is also very poor, only a very small and somewhat cryptic caption in the supplementary tables is given, and some of the papers in the bibliography are seemingly unavailable anywhere. The archaeologists who worked with the genetists and co-authored this paper could've tried to write more than a small paragraph for each site, but this is a problem which is common to most ancient DNA studies to be fair.
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Looks like they tried to submit it without archaeological context. This is from the reviews the journal published the reviews along with the article
image.png
 
Pax Augusta said:
there is significant Y-DNA diversity.

2iKbJ2e.png


@kingdavid What do you think are the most exclusively Phoenician markers?
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i think e-v22 and j1a2

p.s
both were found in the levant Akhziv and in the majority of the Phoenician
colonies
 
bigsnake49 said:
No significant autosomal ancestry. Y-Dna yes it is Phoenician/Levantine but not the autosomal.
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I would think the Iranian Neolithic is probably partially contributed by Levantines, it is an integral component in Canaanite DNA.
 
also while majority of individuals are autosomal not pure Levantine
there is this outlier from late Punic Sardinia individual I22119 by his g25 values

Italy_Sardinia_Cabras_Punic_Late_oLevant:I22119__BC_?__Cov_40.92%,0.073985,0.144205,-0.055437,-0.093993,-0.011387,-0.023985,-0.00799,-0.001846,0.015544,-0.001093,0.013153,-0.009142,0.028246,-0.000963,-0.013301,-0.001061,0.011735,-0.00038,0.002514,-0.002001,0.004991,0.000371,-0.0053,-0.002771,-0.008622

he is closest to Lebanese orthodox Christian
he was Levantine from head to toe
how did he make it to late Punic Sardinia fascinating ;)


p.s
in the SuppTable3
he is dated to 361-177 bc
he is under y haplogroup j1
[td width="8em"]
​
[/td]​
 
kingdavid said:
also while majority of individuals are autosomal not pure Levantine
there is this outlier from late Punic Sardinia individual I22119 by his g25 values

Italy_Sardinia_Cabras_Punic_Late_oLevant:I22119__BC_?__Cov_40.92%,0.073985,0.144205,-0.055437,-0.093993,-0.011387,-0.023985,-0.00799,-0.001846,0.015544,-0.001093,0.013153,-0.009142,0.028246,-0.000963,-0.013301,-0.001061,0.011735,-0.00038,0.002514,-0.002001,0.004991,0.000371,-0.0053,-0.002771,-0.008622

he is closest to Lebanese orthodox Christian
he was Levantine from head to toe
how did he make it to late Punic Sardinia fascinating ;)


p.s
in the SuppTable3
he is dated to 361-177 bc
he is under y haplogroup j1


[td width="8em"]


[/td]​
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Not that strange since Levantine people were relatively common in the Western Mediterranean in the Roman period too, as DNA studies also have confirmed, and it's not like between the foundation of the first Phoenician colonies and the Roman period merchants stopped travelining completely between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. It would be more interesting to see if people with a Levantine profile were born locally, and if they had a higher status in Phoenician colonies compared to people with a non-Levantine profile, but as we've said the information this study gives about each sample is very limited.
 
In my opinion the title seems correct in regard to the dataset provided. It's clear now that we have an abundant quantity of Carthaginian proper samples that Punic individuals were not simply locals in the lands they inhabited but comprised their own distinct ethnic group which was about 70-80% derived from IA Sicilian ancestry (including native Italic with incoming Greek) and roughly 20-30% North African derived. Levantine influence was little to none where as Southern European ancestry dominated in all Punic settlements sampled, even in North Africa itself. Most interestingly the Carthage proper punic dataset seems to have even more Southern European ancestry than the Sardinian punic dataset. The Algeria IA individual is also an extremely important find as it begins to build a reference as to what non punic north africans resembled which on the PCA seems to plot over moderns.
 
Vitruvius said:
In my opinion the title seems correct in regard to the dataset provided. It's clear now that we have an abundant quantity of Carthaginian proper samples that Punic individuals were not simply locals in the lands they inhabited but comprised their own distinct ethnic group which was about 70-80% derived from IA Sicilian ancestry (including native Italic with incoming Greek) and roughly 20-30% North African derived. Levantine influence was little to none where as Southern European ancestry dominated in all Punic settlements sampled, even in North Africa itself. Most interestingly the Carthage proper punic dataset seems to have even more Southern European ancestry than the Sardinian punic dataset. The Algeria IA individual is also an extremely important find as it begins to build a reference as to what non punic north africans resembled which on the PCA seems to plot over moderns.
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That's likely mostly true for the Punic period, but I doubt that the pattern would be the same in the 9th-8th centuries BC when Carthage hadn't obtained its predominance yet. The Southern European component seems to be predominant in Sardinia too if we exclude the site of Villamar, and in fact in Motya almost all samples require some degree of North African ancestry whereas in Tharros samples from the earliest period do not.

In the case of Iberia local ancestry doesn't seem that rare, see I8135, I27618, or I26844, which all require local Iberian ancestry according to the study's models. In Sardinia local ancestry does seem rare, according to the models they provide, only the low coverage sample I21987, and VIL011 require it, whereas I22125, a woman who plots between modern Sardinians and Nuragic Sardinians in their PCA, and according to G25 has almost 0 Steppe but significant WHG, and that seems to me as the only Punic Sardinian sample with an indigenous profile, is instead modeled by them as mostly Bronze age Sicilian + a minor Bronze Age Iberian component, which seems like a weird choice to me. On the other hand, while their models "find" native Sicilian ancesty everywhere, they ironically fail to find it in the native Sicilian sites of Polizzello and Montefalcone, where every individual can be modeled without Bronze Age Sicilian ancestry except for I13381, and, also ironically, they "find" two individuals from these native Sicilian sites, that, according to their models, can't be modeled without Nuragic ancestry: I1384 and I13393, which seems honestly perplexing to me since the site where they were buried, Polizzello, is right in the middle of Sicily, while the majority of Nuragic artifacts in Sicily come from sites not far from the coast, as one would expect, and they also come from older contexts than the samples in the study anyway, so these results appear really puzzling.
 
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Vitruvius said:
In my opinion the title seems correct in regard to the dataset provided. It's clear now that we have an abundant quantity of Carthaginian proper samples that Punic individuals were not simply locals in the lands they inhabited but comprised their own distinct ethnic group which was about 70-80% derived from IA Sicilian ancestry (including native Italic with incoming Greek) and roughly 20-30% North African derived. Levantine influence was little to none where as Southern European ancestry dominated in all Punic settlements sampled, even in North Africa itself. Most interestingly the Carthage proper punic dataset seems to have even more Southern European ancestry than the Sardinian punic dataset. The Algeria IA individual is also an extremely important find as it begins to build a reference as to what non punic north africans resembled which on the PCA seems to plot over moderns.
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Not entirely surprising as the Marcus study doesn't show significant population turnover in Sardinia before the Roman period.
 
WHGuy said:
Not entirely surprising as the Marcus study doesn't show significant population turnover in Sardinia before the Roman period.
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That study detects significant foreign admixture since the Punic period.
 
Pygmalion said:
Not that strange since Levantine people were relatively common in the Western Mediterranean in the Roman period too, as DNA studies also have confirmed, and it's not like between the foundation of the first Phoenician colonies and the Roman period merchants stopped travelining completely between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. It would be more interesting to see if people with a Levantine profile were born locally, and if they had a higher status in Phoenician colonies compared to people with a non-Levantine profile, but as we've said the information this study gives about each sample is very limited.
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still impressive i am aware that some people with Levantine autosomal profile existed at
the roman period rome ( moots paper)
and also in the last Pompeii paper there was 1 individual with Levantine profile which belonged to y haplogroup T
this I22119 case from the Punic paper
could be the oldest ancient dna remain outside of the levant with Levantine autosomal profile
the only other case that i know of which is dated bc
is individual Macedonian Hellenistic outlier

Macedonia_Classical_Hellenistic_o:I10392,0.095611,0.13405,-0.058077,-0.080104,-0.014464,-0.029284,-0.00047,-0.002538,-0.004704,0.01057,0.005034,-0.002248,0.017096,0.01156,-0.006107,0.006099,-0.00678,0,0.001508,0.004127,0.001872,0.002844,-0.008134,0.000482,-0.002515


his closest modern population is :
Lebanese Muslim from dinniyeh

source paper:

p.s
I10392 is also happen to belong to y haplogroup j1
 
Pygmalion said:
That study detects significant foreign admixture since the Punic period.
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Yes, but I don't think it showed massive turnover, basically the disappearance of Nuragic Y-DNA, prior to Roman rule. Maybe I am remembering that incorrectly.
 
kingdavid said:
still impressive i am aware that some people with Levantine autosomal profile existed at
the roman period rome ( moots paper)
and also in the last Pompeii paper there was 1 individual with Levantine profile which belonged to y haplogroup T
this I22119 case from the Punic paper
could be the oldest ancient dna remain outside of the levant with Levantine autosomal profile
the only other case that i know of which is dated bc
is individual Macedonian Hellenistic outlier

Macedonia_Classical_Hellenistic_o:I10392,0.095611,0.13405,-0.058077,-0.080104,-0.014464,-0.029284,-0.00047,-0.002538,-0.004704,0.01057,0.005034,-0.002248,0.017096,0.01156,-0.006107,0.006099,-0.00678,0,0.001508,0.004127,0.001872,0.002844,-0.008134,0.000482,-0.002515


his closest modern population is :
Lebanese Muslim from dinniyeh

source paper:

p.s
I10392 is also happen to belong to y haplogroup j1
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During the Roman period there were pretty significant Levantine, in general, and Jewish, in particular, communities throughout Roman North Africa and on the Italian peninsula itself.
 
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