Genetic study Studying genetic and cultural admixture of Phoenicians in Sicily

Francesco · Feb 2, 2023

Link to the conference

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ExCYSxUd3aE

kingdavid · Feb 2, 2023

Nice francesco thanks for sharing

That should be interesting paper
I wonder if we will see the same haplogroups: (j2b, j2a, r1b) that we saw in iron age tunisia kerkouane site
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.13.483276v3
In the other phoenician sites across mediterranean ( sardinia, sicily , spain)

Angela · Feb 3, 2023

I only had time to listen to the first presenters, who discussed dna in the context of PCAs. The rest all seemed to be about culture, diet etc.

Basically, most of the people buried in the Phoenician settlements were standard issue Central Mediterraneans, with only 1 "Levantine" like sample, and one with a few percent of North African.

In other words, as I always predicted, there are very few Phoenicians in Phoenician settlements, because they were establishing trading marts not colonies, unlike the Greeks.

It's important to pay attention to the history and culture of the people we're discussing, and not go fantasizing in order to make some point that will fit your agenda. One path leads to good predictions, the other...not.

Jovialis · Feb 3, 2023

@1:12:00

There's an eupedia map in the slide.

Francesco · Feb 3, 2023

I'm wondering if the Sicily BA+IA cluster they projected on the PCA is made of the same Sicani samples from the Himera paper or it's made of new unpublished samples. It seems to plot a little bit differently than the Sicani one, so maybe they used samples from Siculi and Elimni tribes, but I can't really tell from that PCA.

kingdavid · Feb 3, 2023

Jovialis · Feb 3, 2023

Thanks Kingjohn, I just posted the PCA too, but you beat me to it.

kingdavid · Feb 4, 2023

I now read in twitter
There is a rumor ( about the future paper from above)
At least 1 of the 2 samples
From carthage was r1b-v88

And there are case/cases of e-m78>v12 in akhziv 13 samples
Will see this paper should be very cool thats for sure:cool-v:

traveller · Feb 4, 2023

There were a substantial number of North Africans at every site, including the Levant.

This could mean they were an integral part of the Phoenician network, much more so than Europeans and Levantines (some Levantines discovered at both Sardinia and Sicily, though, and there are many people that plot between Europeans and Africans)

Mmiikkii · Feb 4, 2023

traveller said:
There were a substantial number of North Africans at every site, including the Levant.
This could mean they were an integral part of the Phoenician network, much more so than Levantines

There were magrebis in Punic sites
Question, are we talking about the colonies of the Phoenicians? Plantation economy like British India? They're an assimilated people?...
What do we know about the relationship of Cananites and locals?

Also, I wonder if it's in this time when the E1b1b-m81 clade expanded...
Or is it Numidian or something

Cato · Feb 4, 2023

The IA Sicilians are from Polizello,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizzello_archaeological_site?wprov=sfla1

Moden Sardinians seems intermediate between Nuragic BA and these Sicilian Iron Age individuals or something similar, far away from the Punic era samples, despite that in many books about the History of Sardinia some scholars talk about vast migrations from North Africa since prehistory lol

kingdavid · Feb 4, 2023

Mmiikkii said:
There were magrebis in Punic sites
Question, are we talking about the colonies of the Phoenicians? Plantation economy like British India? They're an assimilated people?...
What do we know about the relationship of Cananites and locals?
Also, I wonder if it's in this time when the E1b1b-m81 clade expanded...
Or is it Numidian or something

i am to
this future paper
also include : some new mesolithic and neolithic samples from tunisia ( see yellow Tunisia M/N )

i hope we will see some pre-e-m81 branch
like we saw in morocco neolithic remains
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1800851115
about the southern european phoenician sites from this future research
who knows i do not except that much after the preview paper: tunisia iron age remains
but we will see
if some punic remains were e-m81 or e-L19>pf2431

Angela · Feb 4, 2023

traveller said:
There were a substantial number of North Africans at every site, including the Levant.

This could mean they were an integral part of the Phoenician network, much more so than Europeans and Levantines (some Levantines discovered at both Sardinia and Sicily, though, and there are many people that plot between Europeans and Africans)

According to the authors there was a "discontinuity" between the Phoenician and Punic "eras". It makes complete sense given the Phoenicians were just setting up trading centers, and then the history of the Levant. The North Africans took it over, as I've pointed out before.

It's interesting that the majority of the "mixed" samples, i.e. half-European and half-North African were from Sardinia. Again, that makes sense. To my knowledge it was the only place in Europe where the Phoenicians set up plantations for growing crops etc. Sardinia might have served the same function as Cape Town served for the Dutch, i.e. a half-way point to supply their ships. The men posted there would have stayed for perhaps decades, meaning, as in Cape Town, that there was admixture with the locals.

Another thing which should be kept in mind is that these samples don't represent all of Sardinia or all of Sicily or Iberia. These are samples from specific "Phoenician" settlements, which can be seen in the graphics presented.

For example, the Iron Age sample for Sicily comes from the center of Sicily and is quite different.

Angela · Feb 4, 2023

Mmiikkii said:
There were magrebis in Punic sites
Question, are we talking about the colonies of the Phoenicians? Plantation economy like British India? They're an assimilated people?...
What do we know about the relationship of Cananites and locals?
Also, I wonder if it's in this time when the E1b1b-m81 clade expanded...
Or is it Numidian or something

What we know is that there were extremely few Canaanite/Phoenicians in the Phoenician/Punic sites, for reasons I explained in another post.

Magrebi is not a word I would use to describe the North Africans of this time period. The addition of a lot more SSA admixture as a result of the Arab slave trade changed the North Africans substantially, although there is variation on a north/south cline, and a few isolated tribes in the mountains weren't much affected.

From the reconstructions I've seen of North Africans of this era, I'd think Zinedine Zidane.

Ignore the nose; it's the most difficult feature to reconstruct, and I think the artist was 'grafting' a Semitic nose onto a North African skull.

AATXAJyO9dfxYS3sQTy8P3tCQx5CuzszwbINVCwBaw=s900-c-k-c0xffffffff-no-rj-mo

Zidane:

Angela · Feb 4, 2023

I find the Villaricos tomb from Iberia very interesting.

It repeats the pattern from the other paper we recently discussed in that these Greeks were endogamous, and practiced first cousin marriage. The same was probably true of the Catalunya sample which is still very similar to the Mycenaeans.

Yet, in Sicily (Himera) they did assimilate and inter-marry.

Fascinating.

kingdavid · Feb 4, 2023

Angela said:
According to the authors there was a "discontinuity" between the Phoenician and Punic "eras". It makes complete sense given the Phoenicians were just setting up trading centers, and then the history of the Levant. The North Africans took it over, as I've pointed out before.

It's interesting that the majority of the "mixed" samples, i.e. half-European and half-North African were from Sardinia. Again, that makes sense. To my knowledge it was the only place in Europe where the Phoenicians set up plantations for growing crops etc. Sardinia might have served the same function as Cape Town served for the Dutch, i.e. a half-way point to supply their ships. The men posted there would have stayed for perhaps decades, meaning, as in Cape Town, that there was admixture with the locals.

Another thing which should be kept in mind is that these samples don't represent all of Sardinia or all of Sicily or Iberia. These are samples from specific "Phoenician" settlements, which can be seen in the graphics presented.

For example, the Iron Age sample for Sicily comes from the center of Sicily and is quite different.

here is the 1 levantine sample it is from birgi west sicily ( dated later to roman time)
as you said angela most of them are predominantly of central med in ancestery
it does seem even without reading the paper
that the phoenicans mostly didn't stay behind like the greeks were in there colonies

Pygmalion · Feb 4, 2023

Cato said:
The IA Sicilians are from Polizello,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizzello_archaeological_site?wprov=sfla1

Moden Sardinians seems intermediate between Nuragic BA and these Sicilian Iron Age individuals or something similar, far away from the Punic era samples, despite that in many books about the History of Sardinia some scholars talk about vast migrations from North Africa since prehistory lol

To be fair those "modern Sardinian" samples are probably not representative of the whole island, they're probably the usual Ogliastra samples. I remember seeing some PCAs with the Sulcis_Iglesiente samples and they clustered almost on top of the Sicilian BA samples.

The new Sardinian samples should mostly come from the city of Tharros, since the other two places named on the chart are Monte Sirai and Villamar, with respectively 2 and 6 samples, therefore they're in all likelihood the Punic samples that have already been published, except maybe an additional one from Villamar. So I assume that the Nuragic-like sample comes from Tharros, while the other Tharros samples seem to be close to Greeks and Italics, while a few seem to have a significant degree of North African admixture like the Villamar samples, there's also one sample which seems to cluster with continental Europe, maybe France or N Spain, and one which clusters with Levantines, so overall we have the Monte Sirai samples, that both seem to share a Central Italian IA like profile, the ones from Villamar that all seem to have different degree of North African admixture, and the samples from Tharros, which are a bit all over the place, from a Nuragic-like one to a Levantine-ike one.

Jovialis · Feb 5, 2023

I'm watching The White Lotus season 2 that takes place in Sicily, on HBO Max. I'm on episode four. It is a good show, and funny.

Southpaw · Feb 6, 2023

kingjohn said:
I now read in twitter
There is a rumor ( about the future paper from above)
At least 1 of the 2 samples
From carthage was r1b-v88
And there are case/cases of e-m78>v12 in akhziv 13 samples
Will see this paper should be very cool thats for sure:cool-v:

Weird samples, R1b-V88 and E-V12. I am expecting a combination of J1 and E-M34 among Phoenicians as main Y-DNA's.

capisan · Feb 6, 2023

Angela said:
What we know is that there were extremely few Canaanite/Phoenicians in the Phoenician/Punic sites, for reasons I explained in another post.

Magrebi is not a word I would use to describe the North Africans of this time period. The addition of a lot more SSA admixture as a result of the Arab slave trade changed the North Africans substantially, although there is variation on a north/south cline, and a few isolated tribes in the mountains weren't much affected.

From the reconstructions I've seen of North Africans of this era, I'd think Zinedine Zidane.

Ignore the nose; it's the most difficult feature to reconstruct, and I think the artist was 'grafting' a Semitic nose onto a North African skull.

Zidane:

We have little Admixture DNA SSA
My origin side dad from west Anti-Atlas and Mom from west high Atlas

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Distance: 1.4732% / 0.01473184

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Genetic study Studying genetic and cultural admixture of Phoenicians in Sicily

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