Speculations Regarding Upcoming DNA Paper On Classical Era Greeks

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There appears to be a DNA paper coming in the next few months regarding burials from iron age Athens.

The abstract can be seen here.

Abstract:

Located on the southern coast of Attica in Greece, Phaleron served as one of the principal ports of Athens in ancient times. Excavations have revealed a burial ground comprising approximately 2,000 burials, spanning the late 8th to the 4th century BCE. This extensive cemetery offers insights into the burial practices, social structures and political changes in Athens at a pivotal moment for the rise of democracy and the associated social and political conflicts. With a wide variety of burial types from elaborate funerary monuments, to simple pit and jar burials, and ‘deviant’ burials of violent deaths, the site provides a unique opportunity to study the transition from the Geometric to the Archaic and Classical period in Athens through the study of the health, diet, lifestyles and genetics of the ancient population.
The exceptional data recovered from Phaleron has now been enlarged by new ancient DNA analysis. By applying state of the art, highly specific enrichment protocols, we have generated genome wide data from more than 100 individuals sampled from diverse burial contexts within a sector of the burial ground. Our analyses reveal a unprecedented rate of individuals with ‘non local’ ancestry showing no association with distinctive burial type features. In contrast to earlier Bronze Age Aegean sites, where ancestry outliers reflect population migration from Anatolia and later the Eurasian steppe, in Phaleron, the non local ancestry predominantly belongs to the broader Central and Eastern Mediterranean gene pool, but also Central Asia and Europe. In addition, when analyzing individuals with ancestry typical in the Aegean, we find genetic continuity since the Late Bronze Age suggesting that the transition still referred to sometimes as ‘Greek Dark Ages’ was not accompanied by major admixture events into the Aegean. Finally, to estimate relatedness, we employed the method Identical By Descent which indicated that the individuals were distantly and sporadically related, rather than being members of biological families. Combined with the evidence for continuing the practice of consanguineous endogamy although more moderately our analyses suggest that the Phaleron cemetery reflected a large and diverse population as well as local communities of extended families.
Click to expand...

Speculations

How much impact did these non-Greek populations have on Greek DNA during the classical era? Has there been any Greek sources that talk about these people? I would assume that ancient Greeks would've rioted over mixing with foreigners. Are there any Greek sources about an influx of foreigners settling into their land? From what I recall a while back, groups like the Scythians would come to Thrace and Anatolia in order to collect tribute every season. Perhaps they also went into Athens and served as mercenaries? It seems that at times, Greeks would use mercenaries in warfare (link).

I'm assuming the following:

Central Mediterranean gene pool = Italic people
Eastern Mediterranean gene pool = ??? This feels like a vague term. (Anatolians/Jews/Assyrians/Arabs/Armenians)?
Central Asia = Scythians???
Europe = Celts maybe?

From the statement: In addition, when analyzing individuals with ancestry typical in the Aegean, we find genetic continuity since the Late Bronze Age suggesting that the transition still referred to sometimes as ‘Greek Dark Ages’ was not accompanied by major admixture events into the Aegean...

I'm guessing that means that what can be considered the real Iron Age Greeks (non-foreigner/not mixed with foreigner) didn't differ much from Myceneans?

I saw online that Davidski had spoken regarding this upcoming paper.
 
I think I have pointed out before in this forum that sometime between Mycenaean era and classic Greece, there was a shift in burial practices, from burying to cremating that must have been imported or at the very least influenced by another adjacent population.

While we haven’t found E-V13 among Mycenaeans, it did pop up in classic era Himera samples. There is a high probability it is Thracian related and we do know that in classic age Athens, there were mixed weddings between Thracians and Greeks. Thucydides is a famous example, Thracian paternally, Greek maternally. There would be no riots because of mixing. It was a common practice even back then.

For central Asia, Scythians are also a safe bet. We do know that Anacharsis visited Athens in the 6th century BC,he surely wasn’t the only one.

Eastern med could also mean Cyprus. Greeks have had unbroken links with the region for 35 centuries so there is nothing surprising here. Admiral Kimon (son of famed Miltiades) was killed in action in Cyprus, trying to liberate the island from Persians.

Perhaps aDNA will show traces of all that.
 
"Central Mediterranean" is referring probably more specifically to Italy I agree. We would likely see a mention of Africa if that was not the case as north African ancestry is highly distinct. It is also possible it refers to Illyrian-like ancestry which was already found to some extent in LBA Greece. "Eastern Mediterranean" is probably referring to Anatolia and not so much the levant, so I interpret this as foreigners chiefly showing genetic origins in Italy, the Adriatic coast and Anatolia. The most obvious pattern I see is that these areas are a reflection of Greek mass colonization of Western Anatolia (during the Greek Dark ages) and Southern Italy (during the iron age). As the Greeks establish themselves in these two spheres of influence they integrate locals into their societies and there is a backflow of these types of genetics.

The part where they say, "In addition, when analyzing individuals with ancestry typical in the Aegean, we find genetic continuity since the Late Bronze Age suggesting that the transition still referred to sometimes as ‘Greek Dark Ages’ was not accompanied by major admixture events into the Aegean."

Confirms to me that local ancestry will likely still be quite high proportionally. It would be hard to make this statement if these individuals represented a minority of the total sampling as that would in fact imply a major admixture event into the aegean.
 
Another thing I have noticed (and mentioned it here a few years ago ) was a pattern,visible when using amateur tools like G25 simulated data. Comparing LBA/IA/Classic age Greek samples vs my own data (100% Greek mainlander,50% from south Peloponnesus/50% from central Greece, I plot near the center for all Greeks) showed that the newer the (ancient) sample, the smaller the distance to me it had. Consistently.

Since the main difference of Greeks from antiquity to contemporary ones is the extra steppe found in the latter, I had assumed that there was a small but steady influx of steppe ancestry from LBA down to the 4th century BC. Something seems to be bleeding into the Greek population in that timeframe, and I always wondered if the switch in burial practices and the ancient myths about Dorians had anything to do with all that.
I expect this estimate to be put to test with the new data because while the Mycenaean genetic profile persisted all the way to classic times at the very least, we do know that newer samples with this profile don’t quite overlap with the Mycenaean ones on a PCA.
 
If supposedly there were migrations into Greece after the LBA, it does not mean that during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, these new elements have already been absorbed. It would be expected that Mycenaean-like Greeks still existed by that time, while other types had not been absorbed as yet. By the 5th century BC however, one would assume that typical Mycenaeans would be less frequent. Since they had more time to intermix. Also we should not negate that Attica was not Doric. So in the classical age the population there typically would be identical to Mycenaeans with Anatolian influence, given their connections. The mere fact that other elements were present in Attica means that in other parts of Greece could have been settled with tribes who were even less Mycenaean like.

In any case, some of the differences between modern Greeks and Mycenaeans can probably been ascribed to Iron Age, Classical and Hellenistic migrations or events.

But Mycenaeans have always been the bulk of the Greek population.
 
Dianatomia said:
If supposedly there were migrations into Greece after the LBA, it does not mean that during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, these new elements have already been absorbed. It would be expected that Mycenaean-like Greeks still existed by that time, while other types had not been absorbed as yet. By the 5th century BC however, one would assume that typical Mycenaeans would be less frequent. Since they had more time to intermix. Also we should not negate that Attica was not Doric. So in the classical age the population there typically would be identical to Mycenaeans with Anatolian influence, given their connections. The mere fact that other elements were present in Attica means that in other parts of Greece could have been settled with tribes who were even less Mycenaean like.

In any case, some of the differences between modern Greeks and Mycenaeans can probably been ascribed to Iron Age, Classical and Hellenistic migrations or events.

But Mycenaeans have always been the bulk of the Greek population.
Click to expand...
It’s not a matter of post LBA migrations necessarily. During the LBA we still have samples from Greece that have little to no steppe admixture (eg Griffin warrior). This means that the yamnaya influence wasn’t fully diffused yet at that point. By IA this doesn’t occur any longer, at least I don’t recall any samples without significant steppe admixture. Now, assuming there is no more steppe % introduced between LBA and IA, the most plausible scenario would be that IA Greek samples should show less steppe on average, due to dilution. But we don’t see that, rather the opposite and my guess had always been that there were some additions from up north. Might have been just a bunch of more primitive Greeks between Epirus and Haliacmon, that had a bit more yamnaya into them and less Aegean but otherwise very similar to the people further south. (Mycenaean wasn’t and isn’t something strictly defined in terms of admixture %, rather the fusion of yamnaya proto Greek speakers with local Aegean folk ). Or something else. I expect that the new data points will enlighten us. Thracians also didn’t necessarily migrate. I would bet it was more of a case of tribes getting assimilated into the Greek fold. They neighbored Greek cities (there was big Greek presence in the southern coast of Thrace) after all.

My whole point here is that I expect these results with great interest because we have a gap in our understanding of how classical Greece looked and therefore what exactly was the genetic starting point of the Hellenistic era where Greece got people coming in from east and north. I always found the modeling of modern Greeks as “Mycenaean+whatever Slavs brought in the Middle Ages” an oversimplification that hides a lot of nuance.
 
The Thracian wave with Channelled Ware was likely being pushed back to a large degree, since we see them coming in, but then they largely moved out again or were annihilated. The real question is how much of an actual, genetic assimilation there was in the early phase, when the ethnic Greeks adopted cremation.
Since the South Thracians were autosomally not very different from the Greeks, this could mean that they were nearly indistinguishably that way, and uniparentals, especially yDNA, is the main aspect to look out for. Basically how much E-V13 made it to Greece in the LBA-EIA will prove it either way.
 
While we love the 100 new samples, we must remember that Phaleron was a port city and thus attracts many non-locals. Isotope analysis should shed some light on local/non-local divide. Also we must not try to generalize to the rest of the country because well Phaleron is not a typical Greek City just like Ancient Rome and Ostia is typical of Italic cities.
 
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