The Picenes will be dealt with a in a seperate paper I quoted, so we should get some Picene DNA with that total sampling. In any case there will be dozens of Italic and Etruscan samples from different sites and papers (many already pusblished) to allow us some conclusions on the Iron Age base for the alter Roman and Migration Period shifts.
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Genetic study The Genetic Legacy of the Roman Imperial Rule in northern Italy
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Pax Augusta
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Rereading the abstract, one cannot fail to notice the typical error of calling Villanovans as if they were a people or an ethnic group. Villanovians are not a people, as archaeologists have argued for over 50 years, a people called Villanovians never existed because it is the name of an Etruscan material culture, from the (modern) name of a village near Bologna. These are elementary concepts that every scholar dealing with these issues should know. It is no coincidence that even the author of this paper is a geneticist with studies in biology and no academic background in archaeology, history, anthropology... It is misleading and wrong to present them as two separate groups, it is an error that survives today especially in pseudoarchaeology texts.
Again, it would be better to talk of the Adriatic coast of central Italy or Central-Eastern Italy rather than Central Italy. Because the Piceni if on the one hand are thought to have been an Osco-Umbrian-speaking, hence Italic, population, on the other hand in their ethnogenesis there are some specificities, likely concerning only them, due to contacts with the Balkan world. Of course I cannot know if these contact with the Balkans will show in their genomes.
That's the good think about this paper, it shows that this Balkan influences show, since they wrote about Balkan migrants. I just wonder whether they were Illyrians (J-L283), Daco-Thracians (E-V13), a mix or another source population. Also quite intriguing is that they write about Northern European (Celtic? Germanic? Lusatian?) influences.
In any case, the Proto-Villanovans are closest to the Alpine-Middle Danubian and Eastern (Lusatian, Kyjatice, Gáva) Urnfielders, both in ceramic, weaponry and burial rites. Like the Naue II slashing swords are earliest recorded in all these groups (Proto-Villanovans, Middle Danubians, Gáva) roughly about the same time. Experts can't even tell with certainty which was the earliest, original source region.
Such connections don't have to result in genetic influences, and if they did, rather between the respective neighbours (Proto-Villanovans <-> Middle Danubian Urnfielders <-> Gáva Eastern Urnfielders).
All three participated in the Sea Peoples and the invasion of the Balkans-Greece in different regions of the South East.
But Villanovan is indeed a more complex pattern, whereas I think that Proto-Villanovans might be ethnolinguistically closest to the Veneti, rather than local Italic and Etruscans.
Pax Augusta
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You too are making the mistake that survives among hobbyists and amateur scholars, because it is based on the belief, disproved by archaeologists for decades, that a material culture always corresponds to a cohesive and homogeneous ethno-linguistic group. This is obviously not the case.
The Villanovan is not a more complex pattern, this was a concept in vogue in the 1950s, cyclically revived by Orientalists and Indo-Europeanists siding with the thesis of the Eastern origin of the Etruscans. The Iron Age Villanovan culture is simply the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization.
There is a reason why Protovillanovan and Villanovan share the same name, because the Villanovan was discovered in the second half of the 1800s and was so named because the first excavations took place at Villanova, near Bologna. Then in the 1930s the Protovillanovan was discovered, believing at first that it was simply an earlier phase of the later Iron Age Villanovan culture, and only later it did become clear that Protovillanovan is a supranational material culture that existed in most of Italy, while the Villanovan is closely related only to the Etruscans. Several times archaeologists have considered changing the names but it has not been done, and this continues to this day to confuse the enthusiasts.
On the ancient Veneti I am awaiting a genetic study. Because on the one hand the ancient Venetic language is cosidered close to Latin, and on the other hand there are deep connections not yet fully clarified from the beginning between Veneti and Etruscans, not to mention the Rhaetians who stand nearby. Since the Etruscans and Latins shared so much material culture in Protohistory and were even similar genetically, who could the Veneti have been? Veneti who then, like the Rhaetians, received important Celtic influences.
I am not thinking that material culture and ethnicity are always connected, but to put it that way: Mote often than not.
Especially if a new archaeological complex with foreign features to the region appears. And that's, without a doubt, the case with Proto-Villanovans.
The Alpine and Middle Danubian Urnfielders were largely derived from the preceding Tumulus culture which in turn can be described as Italo-Celtic Centum speakers at its core.
I think the Veneti were part of that and how close they were to Italics or Celts is up to debate.
For me they are also interesting because they received more influence from Channelled Ware and the Thraco-Cimmerian horizon plus Eastern Hallstatt.
Therefore they are more likely than other Italians to have had some E-V13 than other people from the Italo-Etruscan sphere.
Especially if a new archaeological complex with foreign features to the region appears. And that's, without a doubt, the case with Proto-Villanovans.
The Alpine and Middle Danubian Urnfielders were largely derived from the preceding Tumulus culture which in turn can be described as Italo-Celtic Centum speakers at its core.
I think the Veneti were part of that and how close they were to Italics or Celts is up to debate.
For me they are also interesting because they received more influence from Channelled Ware and the Thraco-Cimmerian horizon plus Eastern Hallstatt.
Therefore they are more likely than other Italians to have had some E-V13 than other people from the Italo-Etruscan sphere.
Francesco
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I feel the biggest "stone guest" in discussing Italian ethnogenesis and, in particular, its eastmed shift, is the Greek contribution.
The imperial sample from Etruria look, indeed, like Greeks.
That being said, despite a 25% contribution from a near east source in Northern Italy looks a bit too high, considering the uniperental, it still looks more reasonable than the 50% contribution wich was postulated in the etruscan paper.
But the main problem still stands: how much of this east med shift was due to Greeks going up the peninsula rather than near Eastern immigrants? The uniparentals seems to point, mainly, to the first hypothesis.
The imperial sample from Etruria look, indeed, like Greeks.
That being said, despite a 25% contribution from a near east source in Northern Italy looks a bit too high, considering the uniperental, it still looks more reasonable than the 50% contribution wich was postulated in the etruscan paper.
But the main problem still stands: how much of this east med shift was due to Greeks going up the peninsula rather than near Eastern immigrants? The uniparentals seems to point, mainly, to the first hypothesis.
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There might have been a long term sex bias, because with uniparentals you primarily mean YDNA? The Greek issue is a problem because we now have early-classical Greek samples and those are Mycenaean-like. The Imperial shift is not towards Mycenaean Greek.
Francesco
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I mean both Y and Mitocondrial DNA. Neither of them point to a high genetic contribution from germanic or middle eastern sources. Some degree of it, of course, is absolutely likely.
Not all Greeks from Himera are mycenean-like: several of them are more shifted towards the contemporary eastern mediterranean continuum.
The ones that cluster with myceneans are from the 480 cluster and have some degree of Sicanian admixture (see supplementary material for reference. You can also check this post: https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/some-experiment-with-greeks-from-himera.44345/#post-669671). The 409 cluster have even higher Sicanian admixture.
So, I believe it's important to distinguish a Greek input, wich was pretty big in the south, from a later imperial shift towards the eastern mediterranean
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peloponnesian
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Can you cite a few of those texts other than the well-known excerpt from Juvenal's Satires? It's normal and expected that there would be different views on this issue in Ancient Rome, but Juvenal's piece is the only one I keep seeing. There's also this excerpt from Martial's Epigrams:
XXX. TO CAELIA.
You grant your favours, Caelia, to Parthians, to Germans, to Dacians; and despise not the homage of Cilicians and Cappadocians. To you journeys the Egyptian gallant from the city of Alexandria, and the swarthy Indian from the waters of the Eastern Ocean; nor do you shun the embraces of circumcised Jews; nor does the Alan, on his Sarmatic steed, pass by you. How comes it that, though a Roman girl, no attention on the part of a Roman citizen is agreeable to you?
Sounds like something you'd read in certain parts of the Internet today
Sounds like something you'd read in certain parts of the Internet today
peloponnesian
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Modern Y DNA distributions don't correlate 1:1 with past admixtures because in the meantime you can have founder effects, further gene flow from neighbouring regions who are autosomally similar but might have a different Y structure, etc.
On the Germanic question, one explanation could simply be that the Germanic groups that settled into Italy had already admixed with other peoples in the Balkans and/or the Alpine region and would not be very rich in I1. And clearly some of the people who moved from modern Austria or Switzerland would also carry R-U152 and other haplogroups that were already present in Iron Age Italians (J-L283, G-L497 for example). So you can't automatically assume all of these haplos in modern Italians are "native" since the Iron Age.
On the "Middle eastern sources", fist of all we don't have to imagine a direct emigration from the Middle East. Depending on the time period, a lot of these people would have come from Rome or other Imperial centers in Italy. And in the Late Antiquity, people with partly Near Eastern would be just Romans, without any quotes.
But anyway, if we want to do a ballpark estimate of the the impact of the "East Med" cluster on the Y frequencies, you'd have to add up various branches of J2a and G2a (J-L70, J-M92, G-M406, G-L13 and others), most of haplogroups J1, L and T, E-M84, some E-V13 (since we've seen by now a number of samples carrying E-V13 but having the classic Cypriot/Dodecanesian profile), R-Z93. For R1b, not all of it should be automatically assumed to be of recent European origin, for exaple if you go to R-Z2103 on yfull and CTRL+F for 'ITA', you'll see that a big chunk is of BA Caucasian or Middle Eastern origin.
Francesco
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Yes I agree there isn't a 1:1 correlation.
Still, I believe it's an element to be taken into account, expecially if we combine both the Y and the Mt DNA, since one of the two usually (not always) get passed on. t
To put it banally, if in a region we have many Y and Mt DNA branches from the Aegean and not so many from further east, one could reasonably assume that the Greek colonization played a bigger demographic role. Of course, it's not a smoking gun, as you correctly noticed, since other elements could have played a role in the distribution of the Y branches, but a solid clue nonetheless.
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Agree on every point and want to stress that the "Northern European admixture" might even include French-German (Frankish) DNA and like you said Central and South Eastern European lineages.
We have to consider that not just Southern-South Eastern Europe changed in the meantime, since the Roman era, but the Levante and Near East did change and shift themselves as well.
Pax Augusta
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yes but the calculation is on an hypothetical Northern European DNA. So if it is central Europeans it means the value will exceed 20 percent.
The migration/gene flow level will exceed 20 %, but the direct Northern European not. Like if a modern Italian has one Southern German parent, he will get more Northern European DNA than the average Italian, but not as much as if the parent would have been Swedish. Say the gene flow is 50 %, the Northern European Scandinavian-like just 20-30 percent.
Pax Augusta
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It doesn't change anything I said.
Pax Augusta
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The big issue is who the Greeks are genetically in the Iron Age. Because if it is clear who the Etruscans and Latins were, the Greeks is not at all clear. Considering that Greek communities settled in Anatolia, Levant, North Africa from very early times, this complicates everything.
Francesco
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Exactly. Understanding the Greek profile in the IA will be crucial in understanding not only the Greek ethnogenesis itself, but the italian one as well. I suspect they will be pretty similar to BA Greeks, but not quite the same.
felipefanfarao
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As I should say, more italic IA DNA doesn't mean that West Asian Hellenistic settlers weren't present on North Italy at imperial era, in fact Italy was homogeneous cause Middle classes came from those, I m certainly that less than south but all them came from High Ranks, Local Elites + Patricians (Imperials Elites with more Iron Age Italics profile) , cause mostly Italians simple died without any descendant.
felipefanfarao
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Roman LA had more Italic IA profile, cause he had 2 million people during Imperial Golden Age, then became less than 20 thousands after Justinian Wars and Plague.
I doubt migration explain more Italic Like DNA , probably Patricians and High Classes had more relation to Italics IA and they had more descendency, in case of North Italy there were less Settlers from West Asian Hellenistic profile /East Med and they probably had less Aegean Influence since the beginning, being more Urnfield Proto Italo Celtic.
Cisalpines weren't too distant to Early Italics, it came from Gollaseca and Cagrenate, less than Bellovesus mythical invasion, as well as Etruscan highly populated that area before Bellovesus invasion, probably had more population than Celtic migrators.
IMO similar to Southeast Gaul and Austrian La Tene profile, doubt Northern than it(just few outliers).
British profile from Lagonbards era might been Saxons , thousands of them came with Lagonbards, as well as Germanic-Celtic mixed profiles that could emulated then. People jump into conclusion too much.
I doubt migration explain more Italic Like DNA , probably Patricians and High Classes had more relation to Italics IA and they had more descendency, in case of North Italy there were less Settlers from West Asian Hellenistic profile /East Med and they probably had less Aegean Influence since the beginning, being more Urnfield Proto Italo Celtic.
Cisalpines weren't too distant to Early Italics, it came from Gollaseca and Cagrenate, less than Bellovesus mythical invasion, as well as Etruscan highly populated that area before Bellovesus invasion, probably had more population than Celtic migrators.
IMO similar to Southeast Gaul and Austrian La Tene profile, doubt Northern than it(just few outliers).
British profile from Lagonbards era might been Saxons , thousands of them came with Lagonbards, as well as Germanic-Celtic mixed profiles that could emulated then. People jump into conclusion too much.