Genetic study The arrival of the Near Eastern ancestry in Central Italy predates the onset of the Roman Empire

[Vitruvius]

Not to disrespect anyone or any nationality, I really don't feel any unique bond with Greece (definitely not more unique than the cultural bond I may feel with Spain for example, maybe also because my wife is Spanish, or even France). I feel much more at home in Barcelona than in Athens.

At the same time, I feel connected with Central and Southern Italy too, of course.

Again nothing against Greece and the Greeks, towards whom I have the utmost respect, but they are really not "in the radar" for me and for people with my background.

I don't think anyone interprets it as disrespect. You're free to feel how you like of course, but the reality does show that Italy and Greece has had quite close relation in the ancient world (both in terms of exchanging DNA and technological/cultural facets). I don't see any other nation which mimics this type of an event in Italian history afterwards. I'd even go on to argue that the assimilation of Magna Graecia is foundational in the genetic structure of southern and central Italy's current population. Probably less so for the north, however.

 

[Vitruvius]

To be honest, the Piedmontese sample on the G25 is from Val Borbera, in the far southeastern corner of Piedmont, and where I think they speak more Ligurian than Piedmontese (but I'm not sure about that). Thus, an area more similar to northern Ligurians and northwesterns Emilians than to Piedmontese in the Alps. While the Southern French on G25 is most likely a sample near the Spanish border.

The similarity between Italians and Greeks is due to various reasons, and it does not always mean that they have completely similar origins. The uniparental markers are only partly the same. As I know the thesis that modern Greeks, particularly continental Greeks, had medieval influences from the north, which are called Slavic but could well be something more generically Balkan, and are further north than Iron Age Greeks has not yet been fully disproved.

Many of you, though of Italian ancestry, were born and raised abroad. I was born and raised in Italy, and honestly today the relationship between Italy and Greece is almost inexistent, even the history of Italy and Greece is separated by many centuries. On TV you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Italian TV talks about something happening in Greece. Today there are more Italians living in Spain and Portugal than in Greece. Italy in recent decades has perhaps had more relations with Albania than with Greece.

Certainly Norway and Sweden have greater relations even today than Italy and Greece do. Identity is not something that is constructed on the basis of a DNA test. It may happen in the U.S., but it is unlikely to happen in Europe.

Ticinese people are certainly ethnically Italian, they are fully aware of this, but other than that they would never dream of switching to Italy they have lived in a multilingual and multi-ethnic context such as Switzerland for centuries.

Well, I don't particularly measure closeness of these populations based on how often they're mentioned on TV shows. I'm referring to an ancient context of national exchanges which gave birth to a modern genetic structure. The point on Val borbera is fair but if you have more northerly G25 samples from Piemonte, I'm still more than willing to run a comparison with the rest.

Genetic closeness is but one aspect of identity. It is not everything, nor definitive by itself, but it is a very important component which is given significant weight in most people's conception of belonging, conciously or unconciously.

 

[HereToLearn]

Sure, local adaptation is a reality, even if we assume two populations which start with an effectively identical population, but do you really think Italians and Greeks have such different appearances? It's not as if Italy and Greece are totally different climates with few similarities. Both are mountainous peninsulas that overstretch the North Mediterranean coupled with near surrounding islands.

I put it the other way around: not that they have such different appearances, rather to me they don't have such (uniquely) similar appearances.

Also I would say the climates of Italy are rather more diverse than Greece. Probably they would be similar if Italy stopped at Molise (or if Greece ended as far north as Slovenia). But sure similar climates can be found in any other European country sharing the same latitudes and morphology of course (hardly in only one though as Italy is so long).

 

[torzio]

i will state again.....no Greeks on the adriatic italian side

unless someone proves that the messapics on the salentine peninsula are greek or epitote.....then this chat on this thread is useless

trading outposts like corinthian Duress, albania counts little, especially since the romans took it circa 280bc

 

[Vallicanus]

i will state again.....no Greeks on the adriatic italian side

Ancona, on the central Adriatic coast?

 

[torzio]

we already discussed ancona ...see previous chat

 

[lynxbythetv]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1843658614466326914

Well if they were Greek and Greeks had assimilated into Roman rule then what happened to them. I mean it's one thing to promote this near eastern ancestry as Greek but if previous Greeks had assimilated and just became Italics then why would it vanish up North. I don't think their Greek and if they weren't slaves then we are looking at basically ethnic cleansing.

 

[lynxbythetv]

Someday maybe we'll understand why they push this narrative, as if they were trying to overstate non-European inputs (even "smuggling" them through the European Aegean direct input, in this specific case). Of course scientists don't live in a bubble and they also have a cultural formation and political leanings I guess...

Besides, it's not like Central Italians at that time were illiterate cavemen. If major migrations had occurred to Central Italy from all over the Mediterranean, to the point that 40% of Central Italy was inhabited by people coming from other regions of the Mediterranean, we would have written records of that.

Yeh we do. Slaves. That's why there's nothing written.

I wonder if it's perhaps more applicable too have a closer look at what the records say of slavery.

 

[Jovialis]

Well if they were Greek and Greeks had assimilated into Roman rule then what happened to them. I mean it's one thing to promote this near eastern ancestry as Greek but if previous Greeks had assimilated and just became Italics then why would it vanish up North. I don't think their Greek and if they weren't slaves then we are looking at basically ethnic cleansing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1857532559833575571

 

[Vitruvius]

Well if they were Greek and Greeks had assimilated into Roman rule then what happened to them. I mean it's one thing to promote this near eastern ancestry as Greek but if previous Greeks had assimilated and just became Italics then why would it vanish up North. I don't think their Greek and if they weren't slaves then we are looking at basically ethnic cleansing.

Because Northern Italy is geographically furthest from Magna Graecia and was also the most densely populated part of Italy in the ancient world. It's not that Magna Graecian descendents didn't make it there - it's that they were dilulted much more heavily in favor of local Northern Italic ancestry.

 

[torzio]

there are people here who do not know the difference between settlememt towns and pure trading town

all towns in albania where corinthian greek trading towns

Taranto was a settlement greek Argos town

marseilles...greek settlement town

Ancona , a greek trade town dominated by picenes

Issa (Viz)..a liburnian settlent town with greek traders

Iader (zadar)...a liburnian town with No traders

 

[Vallicanus]

Ancona , a greek trade town dominated by picenes

Ancona retained its own coinage with images of the Greek deity Aphrodite and the Greek language into Roman times.

Nothing very Picene about that.

Unlike the western Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, the eastern Adriatic coast of Italy had few good landing places apart from Apulia for seafarers like the Greeks.

 

[Vallicanus]

Delete

 

[torzio]

The bustling port city of Ancona, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, seems to have begun life as a small settlement of the Italic Picentes, perhaps dating back to the 8th or 9th century BCE. It grew in importance, but, around 380 BCE a contingent of exiles from Syracuse,

Ancona was picene , a italic populace......it had greek traders from 380Bc, it was never Greek created, like some sicilians greek cities

stop using wikiledia

i will not repond to your anti italian bias anymore

 

[Vallicanus]

The very name Ancona comes from the Greek word "Ankon" meaning "elbow" after the shape of the surrounding territory.

 

[Balkaniika]

Hi! Im sorry to disturb you guys on this thread but im new to this and have a question about Ancestry of a specific people, so if anyone would like to help me out please send me a direct message, it would be very easy for you i assume. Thank you

 

[Vitruvius]

The bustling port city of Ancona, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, seems to have begun life as a small settlement of the Italic Picentes, perhaps dating back to the 8th or 9th century BCE. It grew in importance, but, around 380 BCE a contingent of exiles from Syracuse,

Ancona was picene , a italic populace......it had greek traders from 380Bc, it was never Greek created, like some sicilians greek cities

stop using wikiledia

i will not repond to your anti italian bias anymore

I'm highly doubting Vallicanus of all people has a drop of anti-Italian bias at all in his soul for goodness sake. I also highly doubt the Germans look at the closely related Celts who they certainly historically mingled with in such types of disdain. What happened between Greece and Italy is not exactly out of the norm as far as european populations go. They are not terribly exotic peoples, albeit they were foreigners to Italy in the iron age.

Torzio, being north-east Italian there is a high likelihood that you may have absolutely 0% Greek input, and an almost certainty that it is close to zero if not, but to argue that no Italians on the full span of the adriatic coast have any greek input is very outlandish. This is even outside of the entire Ancona topic. While both are certainly Italian, Apulia's genetic heritage is not fully identical to a place like Veneto. I don't see why this is contentious.

 

[HereToLearn]

I could be ignorant about this, I don't know how Southern Italians, born in Southern Italy, feel about Greece. If I may though, although I agree with Vitruvius here, I think I feel (with apparently less emotional attachment) what torzio feels about that matter.

After this I'm not elaborating further as I'm already off topic and I've pointed it out before. I don't think torzio has any disdain for Greece, but objectively to Northern Italians it may feel puzzling and sometimes even tiring to see their country ("their", as Italy is as much Northern Italian as Southern Italian) always paired with Greece on these forums. To them Greece is in fact a bit exotic, I use the term "exotic" in the best possible way of course, I promise not as a by-word for "non-European" as too often happens on anthrofora (it seems absurd to even need to verbalize this, but Greece is of course not a iota less "European" than Italy, or Belgium, or Slovakia or whatever). Hell in my genetic composition there may well be ancient or medieval Greeks and I'm totally happy and comfortable with that!

That being said, there could be a "disconnect" with a good part of the country when Southern Italians understandably and legitimately bring up a special relation (genetical, cultural or even emotional) with Greeks, and I know where that comes from. But please don't see malice in that.

 

[Tautalus]

In a 2020 survey, a YouGov study asked, among other things, which countries European citizens from a given country were most willing to help in the event of a crisis. In this study, the citizens of Italy were more willing to help Greece and then Spain. The Greeks were more willing to help Cyprus and then Italy.
I don't know in which regions of Italy the study was carried out, but it shows a significant connection between the citizens of both countries.
​

https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/31167-what-should-eu-be​

 

[HereToLearn]

It's very interesting and also what you say about the region where it was taken is correct. But I don't know how that translates in feeling of cultural proximity. Seeing that Germany would help Portugal before Sweden is an example, the unilaterally idiosyncratic relation of Italy with France is also apparent here, or the Germany vs. UK rivalry: that seems to come down to "sympathy" and it can yield very interesting results highlighting certain dynamics.

In fact, knowing my countrymen, the Italians' love for Spain and Greece comes from holidaying in the Balearics and the Greeks isles I bet rather than romantic or high ideas of solidarity among akin peoples.