Sunday, November 10, 2019

Etruscans, Latins, Romans and others


I've just added coordinates for more than 100 ancient genomes from the recently published Antonio et al. ancient Rome paper to the Global25 datasheets. Look for the population and individual codes listed here. Same links as always:

Global25 datasheet ancient scaled

Global25 pop averages ancient scaled

Global25 datasheet ancient

Global25 pop averages ancient

Thus far I've only managed to check a handful of the coordinates, so please let me know if you spot any issues. Below is a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) featuring the Etruscan and Italic speakers. I ran the PCA with an online tool specifically designed for Global25 coordinates freely available here.


Can we say anything useful about the origins of the Etruscan and early Italic populations thanks to these new genomes? Also, to reiterate my question from the last blog post, what are the genetic differences exactly between the Etruscans, early Latins, Romans and present-day Italians? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Update 13/11/2019: Here's another, similar PCA. This one, however, is based on genotype data, and it also highlights many more of the samples from the Antonio et al. paper. Considering these results, I'm tempted to say that the present-day Italian gene pool largely formed in the Iron Age, and that it was only augmented by population movements during later periods. The relevant datasheet is available here.


Update 13/11/2019: It seems to me that the two Latini-associated outliers show significant ancestry from the Levant, which possibly means that they're in part of Phoenician origin. These qpAdm models speak for themselves:

ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA_o
ITA_Proto-Villanovan 0.547±0.081
Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2 0.453±0.081
chisq 7.573
tail prob 0.87027
Full output

ITA_Prenestini_tribe_IA_o
ITA_Proto-Villanovan 0.679±0.068
Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2 0.321±0.068
chisq 7.222
tail prob 0.89033
Full output

The Proto-Villanovan singleton is also a key part of the models. Dating to the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition, she appears to be of western Balkan origin. Moreover, her steppe ancestry is probably derived directly from the Yamnaya horizon.

ITA_Proto-Villanovan
HRV_Vucedol 0.677±0.031
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara 0.323±0.031
chisq 10.397
tail prob 0.661174
Full output

The cluster made up of four early Italic speakers can be modeled with minor Proto-Villanovan-related ancestry, but, perhaps crucially, it doesn't need to be. Indeed, judging by the qpAdm output below, it's possible that almost all of its steppe ancestry came from the Bell Beaker complex, and, thus, the Corded Ware culture complex before that.

ITA_Italic_IA
Bell_Beaker_Mittelelbe-Saale 0.480±0.055
ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA 0.411±0.042
ITA_Proto-Villanovan 0.109±0.084
chisq 10.294
tail prob 0.590205
Full output

Two out of the three available Etruscans look very similar to the Italic speakers in the above PCA plots, and yet they show a lot more Proto-Villanovan-related ancestry in my qpAdm run. The statistical fit is also relatively poor, perhaps suggesting that something important is missing.

ITA_Etruscan
Bell_Beaker_Mittelelbe-Saale 0.186±0.081
ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA 0.283±0.064
ITA_Proto-Villanovan 0.531±0.126
chisq 17.175
tail prob 0.143143
Full output

Interestingly, the Etruscan outlier with significant North African admixture (proxied in my run by MAR_LN) doesn't need to be modeled with any Bell Beaker ancestry.

ITA_Etruscan_o
ITA_Proto-Villanovan 0.675±0.057
MAR_LN 0.325±0.057
chisq 14.864
tail prob 0.315912
Full output

Update 17/11/2019: The spatial maps below show how three groups of ancient Romans (from the Imperial, Late Antiquity and Medieval periods) compare to present-day West Eurasian populations in terms of their Global25 coordinates. The hotter the color, the higher the similarity. More here.




See also...

Getting the most out of the Global25

669 comments:

  1. I always get confused by this, but apparently the Iron Age Villanovan culture was proto-Etruscan, while the Late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture wasn't, and may have been proto-Italic instead.

    Useful to keep in mind.

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  2. Two Etruscans out of three plot close to Villanovan sample. And only two Latin samples out of six plot close to Villanovan.

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  3. Below you will see some results I got with a simple model. These Etruscan speakers have a good chunk of steppe ancestry.


    Target, Distance, Anatolia_Barcin_N, RUS_Srubnaya_MLBA, Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps, TKM_Gonur1_BA, Levant_PPNB

    ITA_Etruscan, 0.02732055, 53.2, 46.6, 0.0, 0.0, 0.2

    ITA_Rome_Imperial, 0.01028251, 29.0, 16.6, 26.2, 7.0, 21.2

    ITA_Rome_Late_Antiquity, 0.01193792, 38.6, 36.6, 11.0, 1.8, 12.0

    ITA_Rome_MA,0.01428464,36.4,43.4,8.2,0.4,11.6

    ITA_Rome_Renaissance, 0.02862957, 34.8, 65.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.2

    ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA, 0.04093890, 54.2, 45.4, 0.0, 0.0, 0.4

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  4. Definitely appreciate you getting these into the G25 so quickly, Dave. These are going to be fun to pick apart and should keep the AG crowd busy for months to come.

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  5. @ Davidski
    P-V is slightly more Mycenean / Anat shifted, whilst Villanovan is more west European

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  6. Awesome work !
    Davidski, would it be possible for you to plot the Imperial Roman samples in the Levant-Med PCA which shows genetic drift? Should be extremely interesting.
    I'm talking about the one which include Western Jews, Levantines, Near Easterners, Italians, Greeks and Iberians.

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  7. There's movement in Neolithic Italy. The Bulk are mainstream European farmers similar to Balkan farmers & Barcin Anatolia. But, one early neolithic farmer looks 100% Iberian and all of the Chalcolithic samples have a lot of Iberian/Western European farmer.

    Also, two Neolithic samples have 25% ancestry from something similar to Minoans from East Med. But overall I'm not seeing the "IranN" ancestry in Italy farmers claimed by the paper.

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  8. Latins, Etruscans are 24-28% "Yamnaya." They fit well as 45% Bell Beaker Central Europe. The majority of the Latins carried R1b M269. MAJORITY had R1b M269.

    Latins/Italics are 50% Bell Beaker. This is obviously where they got their Indo European language from. I declare the Bell beaker=Basque theory DEAD.

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  9. @Samuel Andrews
    ''Latins/Italics are 50% Bell Beaker. This is obviously where they got their Indo European language from. I declare the Bell beaker=Basque theory DEAD''

    It doesn't help that Etruscans are 45-50% Bell Beakers as well. Or that the Proto-Villanovan (Proto-Italic ??) shows an Anatolia shift, while the Villanovan (proto-Etruscan) doesn't.

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  10. @mad

    The Proto-Villanovan shows a Balkan shift. The reasons for this are explained in the Antonio et al. supp info on page 36.

    Anatolia is far away compared to the Adriatic coast of what is now Croatia.

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  11. @Erikl86

    Davidski, would it be possible for you to plot the Imperial Roman samples in the Levant-Med PCA which shows genetic drift?

    Yep, but it might take a day or so.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @Davidski
    ''The Proto-Villanovan shows a Balkan shift.''

    What does that say about the homeland of proto-Italics (and possibly even proto-Celts?)? What do the Etruscans' results say about the language of Bell Beakers? What is your take on that?

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  13. @mad,
    "It doesn't help that Etruscans are 45-50% Bell Beakers as well. Or that the Proto-Villanovan (Proto-Italic ??) shows an Anatolia shift, while the Villanovan (proto-Etruscan) doesn't."

    Not everyone in Italy adopted the language from the newcomers from the North. It's that simple.

    Are you suggesting, Etruscan derives from R1b M269+ Beaker folk? If so, where are the Etruscan-related languages in Western Europe? None.

    Celtic has been said to be related to Italic. Which makes sense. Because, unpublished Y DNA from the earliest known Celtic speakers are almost all R1b M269. They and Italics belong to the same branch: R1b U152>L2.

    Also, if Indo European language in Italy isn't from R1b M269+ people then where is it from? So, if you look at all that the answer is pretty obvious.

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  14. This whole Bell Beaker R1b p312=Basque was obviosuly bull shit from the beginning. Corded Ware, Bell beaker represent the main Indo Europeanization of Europe.

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  15. R1b U152 linked together the Celts & Italics. Both, Indo European. The fact Latins were something like 50% Bell beaker and mostly R1b P312+ is a really big deal. Once, we have DNA from Hallstatt culture will show the deep connection between the Italic tribes (including Latins) & Celtic tribes.

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  16. The Urnfield phenomenon is not the same as Bell Beakers, even if they might have been genetically similar. Keep that in mind.
    There were quite obviously different waves of people coming in and the post-BB from the transalpine regions were surely not fundamentally different from earlier BB. But they might have picked up ancestry from East of the Alps on the move.
    Whether this was just picked up or there was a direct migration from the East Mediterranean of significance, not just individuals, that would be interesting to know for the BA and early IA/pre-Roman period.
    Especially for the Etruscan question.

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  17. I didn't notice anything too strange in Italian Neolithic.
    Can be modelled Barcin 95%; WHG 5%
    WHG raises over time to 18% in Remedello.

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  18. ITA_Proto-Villanovan:RMPR1

    https://i.postimg.cc/k4hXZ1tz/screenshot-38.png

    14.8 Corded_Ware_DEU
    11.2 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_MLBA

    Not BB but CWC and Krasnoyarsk. Interesting. Maybe there are links with Lusatian culture?

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  19. @Samuel Andrews

    Is Italo-Celtic related to proto-Germanic? What is the linguist consensus? If they are shown to be particularly related, that might prove you're in the right direction (Rhenish Beakers speaking Italo-Celto-Germanic).

    ReplyDelete
  20. @Erikl86

    Actually, here's the Med PCA datasheet with most of the Romans. The results are kind of messy and I can't plot them right now.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=13qfNtKMzqWzcEzoi__7zhIPNtqbYlBOa

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  21. @Eastpole: Would be interesting if true, relates to Urnfield. However, in your comparison appear later populations. That's not good to compare with that much younger populations.

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  22. @Bob Floy

    ''So, Latins and Etruscans really were practically identical.''

    Bar the outliers, the Etruscans look more similar to North Italians, while the Latins slightly more similar to Iberians. So the Etruscans look like they have a minor Balkan shift compared to Latins, a shift which is significant in the Proto-Villanovan (Proto-Italic?) sample, but absent in the Villanovan (proto-Etruscan) sample.

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  23. R1 listed as belonging to the Proto-VIllanovan culture, dated 930 - 839 calBCE. She has 2nd highest degree of Steppe ancestry in Iron age samples and mtDNA U5a2b.

    R435 has the most Steppe and he clusters the closest of all Iron Age samples to Iberian_BA in their PCA F.S18

    In Fig S18 from the paper 10/11 iron age samples plot closest to Iberians. 437 and 475 being closer SE_Iberians and Mcenean Greeks, 8/11 clustering towards Iberia_IA but solidly in NE_Iberia 6-8CE.

    Only R850 with Y-HG T plots between Myceanean Greeks and Anatolia_MLBA.






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  24. It's really weird that the Iron Age Italians prefer Yamnaya over all these Beaker or CWC groups as a 2 way fit with Copper Age Italians.

    It seems to imply that the Steppe group which brought M269 to Italy branched off before the group that led to the Lech Valley Beakers. Giving Italians a less diluted form of Steppe.

    There were Copper Age Italian like groups (Hungarian Beaker) mixing with Yamnaya in the Carpathian Basin.

    But what it probably is a reflection of is a migration of this Bronze Age Croatian like group represented by R437 bringing additional Steppe from the Balkans after the initial Beaker groups. The J2b Croatian had a lot of Steppe and R437 shows that on the PCA.

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  25. @ Davidski

    That's right, David.

    The Proto-Villanovan culture is a Late Bronze culture present throughout Italy from the Alps to eastern Sicily, which is considered Proto-Italic but not exclusively Italic. In the sense that almost all subsequent cultures of the Iron Age of Italy derive from Proto-Villanovan culture, both Iron Age Italic (Latin, Osco-Umbrians) and non-Italic cultures (Veneti, Etruscans). Especially in the past, even the Culture of Golasecca (which is typical of north-west Italy from which derive the Celts who speak a lepontic language) was believed to be derived from the Proto-Villanovan culture.

    While the Villanovan culture is an Iron Age culture that is the first phase of the Etruscans, the beginning of the Etruscan civilization, according to what is now the most accepted Etruscan chronology by scholars.

    The misunderstanding between the two names was born because the Villanovan culture associated to the Etruscans was the first to be discovered by archaeologists around the middle of the 1800s. When in the 1930s archeologists also discovered settlements of Protovillanovan culture, at first they thought that it was only an earlier phase of Villanovan culture. Only later they understood that the Protovillanovan culture was instead the previous phase of many other cultures present in Italy, including the Italic ones, but the name was never changed, and this has contributed to creating confusion.

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  26. According to Wiki, proto-Villanovan is from Urnfield, which then splits into Villanovan (? Etruscan); Este (? Venetic); Latial (~ Latium) ?

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  27. The Villanova sample (mt K1a4) has just Protovillanova and local CA/BA (like R4 K1a+195, R1014,...) mix. And nothing more.

    The Villanova culture is an Italic culture, exactly.

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  28. Romulus,
    "It seems to imply that the Steppe group which brought M269 to Italy branched off before the group that led to the Lech Valley Beakers. Giving Italians a less diluted form of Steppe."

    What I'm seeing, is Latins perfer Bell Beaker from Germany & Czech.

    "There were Copper Age Italian like groups (Hungarian Beaker) mixing with Yamnaya in the Carpathian Basin."

    R1b P312+ isn't from Yamnaya. It's from Corded Ware. A R1b L51+ has been found in Corded Ware. It's unlikely there were groups with mostly Yamnaya/Kurgan ancestry in Central Europe in the Bronze age. The groups who went to Italy were already probably under 50% Yamnaya.

    ReplyDelete
  29. @Samuel: There was Yamnaya in Pannonia and there were later incursions from the steppe. So a lot is possible in theory if the patrilineages and genomic profiles allow it.

    There could have been even one group coming through the Alps, another from the East in and around Urnfield.
    The Eastern path would have taken up more Yamnaya and Eastern Mediterranean, the Alpine one probably still more BB.

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  30. @ Davidski
    It seems that non-outlier Italics are from BB Bavaria/ North Italian derived
    Their 'eastern' signal is different to that in Etruscans.
    In Italics, it is Anatolia Bronze Age derived. In Etruscans, otoh, it is mostly Balkan.
    Some Etruscans have BB ancestry, some might instead be mostly local Eneolithic + Balkan, with little BB.
    The proto-Villanovan is very Balkan; whilst the Villanovan seems different.

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  31. #Romulus, there are thousands of untested kurgan around Hungary. No results have been used to compare various theories.

    ReplyDelete

  32. It does not follow from the supposed presence of trade relations with Croatia that Protovillanov has any Balkan shift, because trade took place through the Picene region. Unless, of course, this indicates that Protovilanova, Picene and the Croatian place have a common origin north of these places.


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  33. @Samuel Andrews

    "What I'm seeing, is Latins perfer Bell Beaker from Germany & Czech.

    "There were Copper Age Italian like groups (Hungarian Beaker) mixing with Yamnaya in the Carpathian Basin."

    R1b P312+ isn't from Yamnaya. It's from Corded Ware. A R1b L51+ has been found in Corded Ware. It's unlikely there were groups with mostly Yamnaya/Kurgan ancestry in Central Europe in the Bronze age. The groups who went to Italy were already probably under 50% Yamnaya. "


    Do you consider Latins/Italics as Central or Southern Europeans?

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  34. Southern European because they lived in southern Europe & cluster closest to modern Southern Europeans. But, "Southernwestern European" is largely of "Northern European" Bell beaker origin.

    The high amount of Bell Beaker in Latins is key. I'm disappointed the authors of the paper didn't highlight it. It didn't come directly from Bell Beaker or whatever. But, whatever. It is a recent shared ancestor Latins had with all other Western Europeans in the Iron age.

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  35. Proto-Villanovan_RMPR1 might be ancestral to Picentes, an Italic tribe. Martinsicuro is in northern Abruzzo at the border with Marche. Picentes or Piceni spoke an Osco-Umbrian language.


    @ Rob

    Exactly, it's called "regionalisation" by Italian archelogists. From the Proto-Villanovan culture derive many of the facies of the Iron Age, including those three but not only those three.


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  36. It's strange that Italy_Bell_Beaker is a non-factor in any of the analysis.

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  37. The presence of the Balkan shift was not shown, opinions based on trade similarities do not count. But another one was shown, and I do not see any Balkan shift anywhere else.

    R1 RMPR_CA(3, 402376) Russia_Yamnaya_Samara (9, 400976) 0.650(0.027)
    0.350(0.027) p=0.239

    EastPole said...
    ITA_Proto-Villanovan:RMPR1

    https://i.postimg.cc/k4hXZ1tz/screenshot-38.png

    14.8 Corded_Ware_DEU
    11.2 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_MLBA

    Not BB but CWC and Krasnoyarsk. Interesting. Maybe there are links with Lusatian culture?

    November 11, 2019 at 2:15 AM

    Nin is in Croatia, it is the very north of the Balkans, what genetics was there was unknown to anyone, and all trade went through Picene.

    In fact, we need a real comparison with cultures like CWC/BBC/Unetice/Urnfield/Straubing/Lusitian/Hungarian ... samples

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  38. @ East Pole

    “Maybe there are links with (Villanovan-) Lusatian culture?”

    Yes I think it’s there; but need more samples
    Conversely; the Cloche urn horizon (?proto-Pomoranian culture) is through to have been influenced from Villanovan cremation

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  39. @Archi

    The presence of the Balkan shift was not shown, opinions based on trade similarities do not count.

    That sample has obvious Balkan ancestry you idiot.

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  40. @Samuel Andrews,

    I've read on one forum where an Italian complained about this study sampling coastal places only that for a fact are Etruscan and none of the mountainous regions that are Italic. He basically says that the Latin samples are not proper "Latin." What do you think?

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  41. Proto-Villanovan_RMPR1 might be ancestral to Picentes, an Italic tribe. Martinsicuro is in northern Abruzzo at the border with Marche. Picentes or Piceni spoke an Osco-Umbrian language.

    Martinsicuro was the ancient Truentum, which according to Pliny the elder was a harbour of the Liburnians in a South Picene territory. But this sample is older, late bronze age/early iron age, so it could be ancestral to the South Picene.

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  42. @ Wise dragon

    That Italian user is lying and trolling. Latin samples are obviously Latin.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Well Italics avoided the lowlands in some regions because of endemic plagues, especially Malaria.
    Beside slave trade, mass immigration from the East and low birth rates, negative selection in society, wars and persecution, the higher susceptibility to diseases might have contributed to the shift observable.

    Rome was built on the hills originally for a reason. So preferred many Italics the higher altitude. Its just logical to assume that the Southern European, Levantine and North African people were better adapted to the regions diseases and brought them into the country too.
    Like if you have immigration from a place X, people bring diseases to which they usually have a better resistence already. Very true for Malaria.
    In Britain the steppe people would have had the immunological advantage, in some parts of Italy, even less so the Near East and India rather not.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Modern studies prove the widespread presence of Malaria for Imperial Rome:
    https://www.wired.co.uk/article/malaria-roman-empire-remains

    The only relative protection is to move on higher altitudes. The poor quarters with "bad air" must have been hellholes.
    The more people, including slaves, from other Mediterranean regions would have come, the worse. At the same time thor newcomers would have had an immunological advantage in those cheap quarters and with bad hygiene and nutrition, because they were more used it by long lasting selection.
    The steppe people on the other hand were more mobile agro-pastoralists and definitely not adapted to an environment like the Eastern Mediterranean.

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  45. @zardos
    “@Eastpole: Would be interesting if true, relates to Urnfield. However, in your comparison appear later populations. That's not good to compare with that much younger populations.”

    Yes, I know. It was just a first trial.

    I removed younger samples and here are the results for ITA_Proto-Villanovan:RMPR1 not aggregated:

    https://i.postimg.cc/1X06LQMz/screenshot-39.png

    20.8 GRC_Peloponnese_N:I2937
    10.2 RUS_Krasnoyarsk_MLBA:I1856
    8.0 Corded_Ware_DEU:I1544
    7.4 Corded_Ware_DEU:I1534
    6.8 Bell_Beaker_England:I4951
    5.4 HUN_Starcevo_N:I0174
    5.0 HUN_Tiszapolgar_ECA:I2356
    4.6 BGR_MP_N:I3879
    4.0 HRV_IA:I3313

    Here are these samples on PCA:

    https://i.postimg.cc/MHMMSjwt/screenshot-40.png

    Interesting that HRV_IA:I3313 has a very similar genetic mix as Proto-Villanovan:

    https://i.postimg.cc/CMQQYZk8/screenshot-41.png

    21.8 GRC_Minoan_Lassithi:I0073
    10.0 Corded_Ware_DEU:I1538
    9.4 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA:I1008
    7.6 HUN_Tisza_LN:I2358
    7.2 BGR_C:I0781

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  46. I3313 if really being a Liburnian, these had similar origins as Italics and probably took the same Eastern Alpine path I spoke about.

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  47. Is I3313 a male and if so which lineage?

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  48. Here are all samples in 23&me format.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_a8Fb60NXeCP4L3C6W2tDsdgl-DdQ_fD

    Key to samples: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15At5SwMLXEsaYLkiqFj4DDV7MYmtfznf

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  49. @Samuel Andrews said...Once, we have DNA from Hallstatt culture will show the deep connection between the Italic tribes (including Latins) & Celtic tribes.

    We already do:

    U152+ L2+ FGC4183+
    Sample: DA111
    Region: Lovosice, Czech Republic
    Radiocarbon 14C date: 836-780 calBC
    Population label: Hallstatt-Bylany Culture
    Haplogroup: U152+ L2+ FGC4183+
    Study: Damgaard et al. 2018

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  50. Bylany is Eastern Hallstatt and probably not ideal for Celts. Yet if even the Eastern sphere fits, its unlikely the Western wont. Yet we had some surprises already and you can't be sure of continuity anywhere.

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  51. @David, the link between the Italian peninsula and the Danube is interesting when one considers the distribution of two-storied urns:

    http://r1b.org/imgs/Two-storied_Urns.jpg

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  52. Worth to mention some associated Eastern Hallstatt with a different people and saw Illyrian influences in particular, which, in turn, would relate to this potential Liburnian from Croatia.

    That's just for the region and roughly ethnicity, we have to consider social stratification and potential Thraco-Cimmerian influences especially in the upper ones of Hallstatt. As a possibility.

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  53. What do you need to add to Bylany or Unetice to get to the I3313 from Croatia or the Italics? Did anyone try?

    ReplyDelete
  54. As an aside, at some point L51+ (xL11) moved into Italy, perhaps with Latins from ancient Austria, or the northern Balkans, wherever the alleged Latins came from initially. It is also the likely source of the handful of Near Eastern L51+ results we see who have been publicly tested in places like Palestinian Territory and Yemen.

    Just thought I would throw this out there since L51+ (xL11) pops up quite frequently in modern Italians

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  55. *ETRUSCANS-

    1-They are practically identical to Latins (24-28% Yamnaya)
    2-Descend from BBs (45-50%)
    3-We have cases of Bbs in Parma with Iberian signal in its Autosomal DNA
    4-Italian Chalcolithic has a strong Iberian signal-
    5-Etruscans are a mixture of local Eneolithic + Balkans + BBS-
    6-Very similar to the Iron Age Iberians and Northern Italians
    7-They have more Balkan mix than Latins
    8-Obviously they were NOT Africans or Anatolians, nor Levantines-
    9-Its mitochondrial markers are typically western (WHG-EEF and Iberian)
    10-Heirs of the Villanovan culture that comes from UrnField Culture
    11-We only have a male marker and I think it comes from Illyria
    12-They spoke a non-Indo-European language-

    Also, keep in mind that Sam is an expert in declaring the end of the story without any reason to do so.

    It is essential to know more information about the Bronze Age in Italy (we do not have a single sample yet) and more data on the uniparental markers of the Etruscans, because they are also direct descendants of the BBs and therefore the doubts about the language spoken by the BB culture still exist

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  56. Can we claim then that Etruscans are basically almost identical to Italics, save for an extra layer of admixture stemming from migrants from the Balkan who were rich in EEF and must’ve spoken a farmer language? Is it from areas close to Lemnian? If so, would Etruscan be considered a Lengyel sourced language?

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  57. Gaska "*ETRUSCANS-

    1-They are practically identical to Latins (24-28% Yamnaya)
    2-Descend from BBs (45-50%)
    5-Etruscans are a mixture of local Eneolithic + Balkans + BBS-
    6-Very similar to the Iron Age Iberians and Northern Italians
    7-They have more Balkan mix than Latins
    8-Obviously they were NOT Africans or Anatolians, nor Levantines-
    9-Its mitochondrial markers are typically western (WHG-EEF and Iberian)
    10-Heirs of the Villanovan culture that comes from UrnField Culture
    11-We only have a male marker and I think it comes from Illyria
    12-They spoke a non-Indo-European language-"

    1. R475 is almost identical, yeah. When there are only three of them. R850 is also a sample.
    2. thus it is possible to name any other percent and anybody else.
    5. You can name any other combination. If you forget about R475.
    6. And we can say that Very unsimilar to the Iron Age Iberians and Northern Italians
    7. Can we say that they have not Balkan mix than Latins
    8. We will forgot further, the main thing is not to turn to R475 (and R850)
    9. They have typical mito for Europe and Anatolia
    10. Villanova are not their culture.
    11 This male marker is much closer to Nuragic Sardinia and without any steppe components, it was not there before the nuragas.
    12. Nobody knows the language of which group they spoke, but definitely not Basque. He had the strongest connections with Lydia.

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  58. Etruscan samples unlike ITA_Proto-Villanovan:RMPR1, which probably came from Balkans, show preferences for Bell Beakers:

    ITA_Etruscan:RMPR473

    https://i.postimg.cc/wjQMhCdQ/screenshot-42.png

    17.4 Bell_Beaker_ITA:I2478
    12.4 HUN_Starcevo_N:I1876
    9.2 England_IA:I0160
    8.6 Iberia_East_IA:I12879
    8.0 HUN_Tisza_LN:I2358
    7.4 GRC_Peloponnese_N:I3709
    7.0 KAZ_Kairan_MLBA:I4568
    5.8 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA:I1008
    4.4 DNK_BA:RISE276
    4.2 ITA_Remedello_BA:RISE489
    3.8 HUN_Vinca_MN:I1887
    3.6 Iberia_N:mur
    2.6 UKR_N_o:I3719
    1.6 GRC_Mycenaean:I9033
    1.2 AUT_LBK_N:I5206
    1.2 Bell_Beaker_CHE:I5759



    ITA_Etruscan:RMPR474b

    https://i.postimg.cc/L53wy34w/screenshot-43.png

    13.2 DEU_LBK_N:I0046
    8.8 UKR_Trypillia:I2110
    6.8 Anatolia_Barcin_N:I0727
    6.8 Bell_Beaker_England:I5513
    5.8 Bell_Beaker_Bavaria:I5521
    5.8 DEU_LBK_N:I2029
    5.4 Anatolia_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA_low_res:MA2208
    5.0 DNK_BA:RISE276
    4.6 Bell_Beaker_ITA:I2478
    4.4 CZE_EBA:I7196
    3.8 Corded_Ware_DEU:I1538
    3.8 DEU_Welzin_BA:WEZ35-2
    3.8 UKR_Srubnaya_MLBA:MJ08
    3.2 Iberia_East_IA:I3327
    3.0 Bell_Beaker_Bavaria:I3590

    ReplyDelete
  59. Having a brief explore, here are some graphics using the Global 25 scaled data and PCA and LDA, where I've tried to use only proximate populations:

    https://imgur.com/a/AtECiCs

    It looks like Kamen-Kalehoyuk_MLBA(66%ish)+Roman Region IA(33%ish) is close for most Imperial Era. A population slightly more CHG than Kamen_Kalehoyuka_LBA but not nearly as CHG as ARM_LBA would probably work better though.

    Combinations of Mycenaeans and Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2+Levant_LBA_Roman don't quite near as good as Kamen-Kalehoyuk_MLBA, but maybe fit some some Imperial Era. Asia Minor looks better than Greece or Greek colonies (Empuries2), though Greece may have been "Asia-Minor"ized by this time.

    ReplyDelete
  60. I3313 is the Iron age sample from Jazinka Cave 805-761 calBCE that forms a clade with R437, it isn't the Bronze Age Croatian (with J2b) I4331. I got that confused.

    ReplyDelete
  61. The greatest part of this paper is the proof of the existence of the Aeneads among the Latins. It's evidence that the Aeneid isn't purely fiction but has a basis in reality. It makes sense that people from a large bronze age city like Troy would be instrumental in turning Rome into something similar. Seemingly they were the difference maker for the Latins in the Italian peninsula that resulted in them dominating the region and beyond. How poetic that descendants of Trojans would be the ones to finally usurp the Greeks as the dominant force in the Mediterranean 1000 years after the fall of Troy.

    ReplyDelete
  62. @Davidski @zardos @Samuel Andrews I just came across an old thread from 2015, in which Barcin Anatolian Farmers are calculated to contain up to 20% WHG, and it goes on to claim that the WHG (or “EuroHG” as some posters nicknamed it) was due to extensive admixture from Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian etc HG population.

    Is this theory still valid? Because nowadays I see the “Barcin” reference to refer to samples which are almost (95%) ANF/EEF?

    http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/06/first-look-at-ancient-genome-from.html?m=1

    ReplyDelete
  63. Quote: “Davidski June 22, 2015 at 6:44 PM
    I think what we're seeing here is the result of a more Near Eastern population than this Barcin sample mixing with European-like foragers around the Sea of Marmara, and/or maybe migrations/backflow from Europe to Anatolia, to create these types of Anatolian farmers.

    I don't think the farmers in Jordan or Syria will show any WHG. But I could be wrong, and they might show a bit.”

    @Davidski Does *that* explain the heterogeneity on the mtDNA spectrum found amongst Neolithic Farmer populations, that @Gaska and myself were bringing up in the thread?

    ReplyDelete

  64. The most interesting thing is that in Ardea labeled as Latini originally lived not Latini, but Rutuli, whose ethnic origin is not established, they could be Etruscans, Umbrians or Ligurians, or some mixture of them. And only later it was captured by the Romans.



    ReplyDelete

  65. Hence, samples R850 and R851 are not Latini, but Rutuli. R850 can be Pelasgian, and R851 Umbrian.

    ReplyDelete
  66. @Archi

    How low does a person's IQ need to be to look at a 75% Anatolian sample and think it's Indigenous Pelasgian Italian?

    ReplyDelete
  67. The new mesolithic samples are interesting, both in the paper and in G25 they seem to plot as the most extreme WHGs so far. Villabruna itself can be modeled quite successfully as ~7% Pinarbasi_HG, ~86% Continenza_HG and ~7% Karelia_HG with distance under 2%. WHG itself models similarly with error under 2.5%.

    ReplyDelete
  68. Yep, nice catch.

    These Mesolithic samples looked fine in the PCA, but very strange the first time I tried to model their ancestry, then I realized that they're probably not mixed, but rather ancestral to other European hunter-gatherers.

    ReplyDelete
  69. I always thought it would be the Etruscans which are the true Aeneads and the Romans which got so much from them, just claimed the story of their mythical origin for themselves.
    Or the same Eastern agent worked on both, Etruscans and Italics without having any bigger genetic impact.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Italy was an important refugium in the ICE Age, so it might have played an important part in the spread of WHG ancestry indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  71. Yeah, the idea WHG originated in the Middle East never made sense. Somehwere in Europe such as Italy makes more sense.

    ReplyDelete
  72. Do I get this correctly? Some models, such as the original ones from the paper, and also those run by Matt, speak in favour of an Anatolian_BA (CHG-enhanced) element in the genesis of Etruscans and IA_Italics, while others seem to favour a BB descent instead. Could someone try to clarify this, possibly by treating each sample separately? E.g., "Italic" R1021, 7th cBC, is according to the SuppMats coming from a site half-way between Rome and Naples characterised by "Italic archaeological findings and Pelasgic walls, characteristic of the people of the Bronze Age Aegean" - IOW: We may be dealing with an outpost of Magna Graecia rather than a typical "Italic" assemblage.

    Linguists have long been puzzled by Anatolian - ItaloCeltic isoglosses such as the passive marked by infixed -tu-. A parsimonious explanation could be that Italo-Celtic represents an originally Anatolian language (probably Luvic rather than Hittite-like) which entered during the MBA and was later overformed by some kind of Illyro-Germanic that came in with the Urnfield expansion.

    As to Etruscan-HurroUrartean connections: A genetic relation isn't yet universally accepted, but seems to enjoy increasing support. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarodian_languages:
    "The term "Alarodian languages" was revived by I.M. Diakonoff for the proposed language family that unites the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian languages.(..)
    The inclusion of Etruscan and the related Tyrsenian languages has also been proposed, first by Orel and Starostin in 1990, on the basis of sound correspondences.[13] Facchetti has argued that there is a "curious" set of isoglosses between Etruscan and Hurrian[14], while Pliev proposed instead that Etruscan had a Nakh substrate.[15] In 2006, Robertson developed the hypothesis for including Tyrsenian further by presenting reconstructions of common ancestral forms of the numerals, and proposed cases of apparent sound correspondences between Etruscan and Nakh, with discussion also of Hurro-Urartian, Lemnian and the various Dagestanian branches.[16]
    ".
    Apparently, Gamkrelidze/Ivanov 1990 have stressed particular closeness between NE Caucasian and Etruscan. A Fournet, while sceptical about a HU-NEC genetic relation, speaks out in favour of Tyrrhenian-HU relatedness (see my comments to the previous post). Kozyrski e.a. 2015 (http://www.aiscience.org/journal/j3l) came up with a number of fresh Etruscan-NEC (&HU) isoglosses.
    Last but not least, V.V. Ivanow "Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European" glosses over various HU/NEC - Etruscan connections, e.g. as concerns the plural on -(a)r shared by HU, NEC and Etruscan, Etruscan eis-er/ais-e/ar vs. Hurr. e-en-za-a-ri "gods", HU *pur(r)a "slave, servant" also present in Etruscan (plus Latin puer "boy", w/o satisfying IE etymology), and the etymological relation between the Etruscan toponym Mantua and the Urartian Mantupa.
    https://pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf

    Last but not least, a couple of Austrian archeologists have related the Taurus (S. Anatolia) to the Tauern (E. Alps) massives (c.f. the Taurisci in IA N. Italy). Note in this context Etruscan tul, Chechen t'o "stone" [albeit the t<->r sound shift would require explaination].

    ReplyDelete
  73. Correction to my previous post: I mistook the Taurisci, who actually settled around the Tauern massive in Austria, for the NE Italian Taurini, who lent there name to the city of Turin.

    ReplyDelete
  74. @ FrankN

    So what you are basically saying is that Italic and Celtic originated in Anatolia to try and make the Hurro-Urartian thing work...?

    ReplyDelete
  75. @Frank

    You can have a look how each of these samples behaves. Use the coordinates provided here...

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSzKKknFGcOgfyA76q9PD7B-n-MJs7L8/view?usp=sharing

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bPt1Xqy0HwXpJFcug3vaC3MBqFTMvj5A/view?usp=sharing

    And the tools here.

    https://vahaduo.github.io/g25views/#

    https://vahaduo.github.io/vahaduo/

    ReplyDelete
  76. I ran the samples on vahaduo, if anyone is interested.
    https://imgur.com/a/RQYK1p7

    @FrankN
    What separates NEC/former NEC speakers(Azeris)/former Urartian speakers(Armenians) from other Caucasians(Kartvelians/NWC) is Iran_N ancestry, the former have a lot of Iran_N, while latter either 0 or very little. (See https://imgur.com/a/vtEnW7V)
    To me NEC and HU seems like a language that was spread to the Caucasus from the Zagros with the arrival of Leyla Tepe culture (who had burial rites that were seen in Hajji Firuz (see https://imgur.com/a/Oxv1Tsx)
    Although it is possible that HU/NEC were Anatolian languages that were introduced by Shulaveri Shomu Culture. But I find it more likely that SSC were NWC speakers, since there are apparently some similarities between NWC languages and Hattic. The Darkveti Meshoko sample (who I think was ancestral to Dolmen culture) from NWC could be modeled as half CHG half Anatolia_C, I think the Anatolian signal is from SSC, and the reason why there's a proposed linguistic connection between NWC and Hattic.
    Now As for Anatolia_BA, while the Hurrians were expanding to Anatolia during the Bronze Age, wouldn't Hurrians still be largely on the Eastern side of Anatolia, while Central, Northern and possibly Western (depending on BA era) Anatolians would be largely Hattic speakers?
    Also it were the Etruscan outliers that showed atypical, non native admixture. I'm not sure what's the deal with them, but couldn't they simply be slaves or mercenaries?

    ReplyDelete
  77. "Also it were the Etruscan outliers that showed atypical, non native admixture. I'm not sure what's the deal with them, but couldn't they simply be slaves or mercenaries?"
    I confused Etruscan outliers with Latin outliers. While the Etruscan outlier did have a foreign element, it wasn't Caucasian but North African connected.

    ReplyDelete
  78. @claravallensis & Davidski

    "Villabruna itself can be modeled quite successfully as ~7% Pinarbasi_HG, ~86% Continenza_HG and ~7% Karelia_HG with distance under 2%. WHG itself models similarly with error under 2.5%."

    "These Mesolithic samples looked fine in the PCA, but very strange the first time I tried to model their ancestry, then I realized that they're probably not mixed, but rather ancestral to other European hunter-gatherers."

    That's interesting. Are they also closer to Gravettians? When I have the time I might want to see how they themselves would do as mixture of Gravettians and/or Magdalenians. To check if, and how much WHG is the product of a local mixture in a refuge.

    ReplyDelete
  79. I suppose, by the way, that Pinarbasi_HG is a good stand in for Dzudzuana. Lazaridis had a model representing Villabruna as roughly half Dzudzuana, a third Gravettian and the rest EHG.

    ReplyDelete
  80. Ric: "So what you are basically saying is that Italic and Celtic originated in Anatolia to try and make the Hurro-Urartian thing work...?"

    Not quite. What I am saying that linguists have for long known about a specific closeness between Anatolian and Italo-Celtic, w.o. so far being able to explain the reason for this closeness. An EBA migration out of Anatolia into Italy would provide a sensible explanation.

    Otherwise, ItaloCeltic also has a lot in common with Germanic (albeit some phylogenies, e.g. the one proposed by D. Ringe, group Germanic with Albanian, others have Germanic clustering with Balto-Slavic). In this sense, the terminology "originated in [Anatolia]" is probably misplaced. We should rather think in terms of admixture and overforming, as also happened with English (Latin overforming Insular Celtic, to be overformed by first W., than N. Germanic, and ultimately heavily absorbing Franco-Norman, which in itself was a Gaulish-Latin-Germanic hybrid).

    IA Italy by ca. 500-400 BC, displayed a huge linguistic diversity, including
    - several fairly differentiated Italic languages falling into three different families (Osco-Umbrian, Latin-Faliscan, Venetic [phonetically Italic, grammatically probably a distinct language/family in its own right]);
    - Other IA, especially Celtic (Lepontic, possibly further Celtic language), Ancient Greek in S.Italy, plus possibly also Illyrian languages along the Adriatic coast;
    - Non-IE languages such as Etruscan, Rhaetic, Semitic (Punic), possibly Ligurian, Paleosardinian, and maybe a couple more.

    The Punic and Old Greek cases seem relatively clear, but otherwise this linguistic diversity is so far poorly understood. Even if we just focus on non-Greek IE languages: Their diversity is unlikely to have evolved from just a single introgression, e.g. Urnfield-related ca. 1.200 BC. One possibility would be that IE was already spoken in Italy since a long time, maybe EEF, or BB. Both scenarios are IMO unlikely: There is substantial linguistic evidence against EEF speaking IE, and the BB impact on Italy (aside from the questions on BB language thrown up in Iberia) was extremely limited, both archeologically and genetically.
    As such, I think the explaination for Italy's linguistic diversity during the middle IA lies in a series of IE introgressions from the MBA onwards, which brought several already fairly differentiated IE languages there (interactction with non-IE substrate, and Etruscan/ Semitic superstrate, provided for further differentiation). One obvious source is Urnfied via the E. Alps, a second one would be the (Pre-Proto-)Illyrian-speaking Balkans, but in addition to those two, Anatolia also looks linguistically promising.

    ReplyDelete
  81. The Mesolithic samples model quite well with "Iberia_Northwest_Meso". (https://imgur.com/a/T0OlybG)
    But Iberia_Northwest_Meso is still a very hard sample to model. Is it low covered?

    ReplyDelete
  82. @Frank N
    Yes Pr: Villanova are too late.
    we need pro-/Appenine culture samples to explain all the diverse external influences in mainland Italy. I don’t think it’s attributable to a single source - but probably various including Balkans; Aegean & direct with East Med
    Apparently; a Cypriot- Phoenician influence becomes apparent in north/ central Italy by LBA; as per female sample

    ReplyDelete
  83. The outlier from IA Ardea looks interesting:


    [1] "distance%=3.8939"

    ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA_o

    Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,60.6
    Yamnaya_Samara,13.5
    Natufian,11.8
    Barcin_N,11.1
    Ganj_Dareh_N,1.6
    Han,0.8
    WHG,0.6
    Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,0
    Morocco_Iberomaurusian,0
    Yoruba,0

    Predominantly Anatolia_BA with some Natufian! And there's even a slight Iranian shift, if this isn't noise. What's the date of this individual?

    ReplyDelete
  84. @ FrankN

    As far as I can remember the Italic and Celtic similarities to Hittite stretch only as far as certain Archaisms. So a late spread from Anatolia does not make sense for me because of the very limited overall similarities...

    As I see it Latino-Faliscan specifically is closer to Old Irish/Gaelic than any other Celtic Language group....

    ReplyDelete
  85. The outlier from Praeneste has also a lot of Anatolia_BA:

    [1] "distance%=1.6679"

    ITA_Prenestini_tribe_IA_o

    Barcin_N,37.6
    Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,25.1
    Yamnaya_Samara,17.6
    Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,16.9
    WHG,2.3
    Natufian,0.5
    Ganj_Dareh_N,0
    Morocco_Iberomaurusian,0
    Han,0
    Yoruba,0

    ReplyDelete
  86. Boville Ernica is in the old tribal territory of the Hernici BTW, an Oscan tribe, not Latin. Hence the "Ernica" in the name. But genetically I see no difference to the non-Anatolian admixed Latins.

    ReplyDelete
  87. @All

    I've updated the Global25 modern datasheets with lots of new French samples. As always, the links are here...

    https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/07/getting-most-out-of-global25_12.html

    ReplyDelete
  88. The majority of the non-Anatolian admixed Latins and Hernici have around 24% Steppe and around 11% WHG. That's quite a lot of WHG compared to modern Italians. Even Trentino-Alto Adige, which tops the WHG admixture chart of modern Italy has only 8.7% WHG.

    ReplyDelete
  89. I don't get a good fit with just Ice age samples and Pinarbasi, a distance of 17 with a third Aurignacian and two third vestonice. With El Miron added I get 100% El Miron, distance 9. Pinarbasi is never picked up. Add Villabruna and you (obviously) get 100% Villabruna, distance 3.8

    ReplyDelete
  90. The Etruscan outlier looks weird, as though he had North African admixture:

    [1] "distance%=2.954"

    ITA_Etruscan_o

    Barcin_N,65.6
    Yamnaya_Samara,14.7
    Morocco_Iberomaurusian,11.4
    WHG,6
    Yoruba,1.3
    Natufian,1
    Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,0
    Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,0
    Ganj_Dareh_N,0
    Han,0

    Can this be really possible? Or is there a quality problem with that sample?

    ReplyDelete
  91. The rest of the Etruscans doesn't have less Steppe admixture than the Italics, they just have a bit less WHG, but still more than most modern Italians. And there's no Anatolia_BA whatsoever in them:

    [1] "distance%=3.2144"

    ITA_Etruscan

    Barcin_N,63.1
    Yamnaya_Samara,28.5
    WHG,8.4
    Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,0
    Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,0
    Ganj_Dareh_N,0
    Natufian,0
    Morocco_Iberomaurusian,0
    Han,0
    Yoruba,0

    ReplyDelete
  92. Epoch
    I don’t think Pinarbasi is a good enough proxy for the Dzudzuana-like ancestry which refuges somewhere in M-L UP Europe

    ReplyDelete
  93. The Villanovan individual strongly resembles the Etruscans and the non-Anatolian admixed Italics, he just has a bit less Steppe and slightly more WHG, but there isn't much of a difference. Quite natural to assume an Etruscan ethnicity for this individual:

    [1] "distance%=2.834"

    ITA_Villanovan

    Barcin_N,65.7
    Yamnaya_Samara,21.4
    WHG,12.9
    Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,0
    Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,0
    Ganj_Dareh_N,0
    Natufian,0
    Morocco_Iberomaurusian,0
    Han,0
    Yoruba,0

    ReplyDelete
  94. I looked at the Imperial Roman samples. 48 samples are in G25 PCA These are my opinons......

    41 of 48 are over 50% Middle Eastern. On average, they are 66% Middle Eastern.

    Where in the Middle East did they come from????
    Asia Minor=22
    Syria=9
    Levant=4
    Mesopotamia=5

    ReplyDelete
  95. Holy shit, the Proto-Villanovan individual looks interesting and completely unexpected given my above models:

    [1] "distance%=3.487"

    ITA_Proto-Villanovan

    Barcin_N,59.2
    Yamnaya_Samara,37.9
    WHG,2.4
    Natufian,0.5
    Anatolia_EBA_Isparta,0
    Anatolia_EBA_Ovaoren,0
    Ganj_Dareh_N,0
    Morocco_Iberomaurusian,0
    Han,0
    Yoruba,0

    Lots of steppe admixture there, but only very low WHG!

    No way did the Proto-Villanovans come from central Europe!

    They must have had an origin in the western Balkans, as I had suggested drawing upon modern Italian DNA.

    ReplyDelete
  96. @Rob

    Yep, apparently it indeed isn't. And as El Miron can be modeled as half WHG, half GoyetQ2 (roughly) it's not a good proxy for clear cut Magdalenian ancestry either.

    ReplyDelete
  97. These was real Middle Eastern admixture in Roman-era Italy not the kind the ancient Greeks had. Ancient Greeks had Western Anatolia, EEF-rich, IranN-low, Levant-low kind of Mid East admixture.

    This new Mid East admix in Roman era Italy came from the "interior" Middle East not the Aegean/Western Anatolia.

    Meaning, they weren't all majority AnatoliaBA-like. They had complex ancestry which had significant doses from all over the ancient Middle East: Anatolia, Levant, Caucasus, Iran.

    Overall, Cyrpiots are the best modern references. Because Cypriots are mostly ANatolia-BA but also have significant recent Levant-BA and recent Mesoptamia like ancestry.

    ReplyDelete
  98. As the individual from Boville Ernica probably came from the Hernici we just have 5 Latins in the Global 25 sheet and 2 of them have heavy Anatolia_BA admixture. So can we really speak of outliers there? At any rate this makes a considerable Anatolia_BA admixture in the average, even though the other 3 have no Anatolia_BA at all. I have to check the date of these Anatolian admixed Latins.

    ReplyDelete
  99. The Prenestini outlier dates to 400-200 BC, that's not very early. But the outlier from Ardea dates to 800-500 BC, that's very early, clearly before Rome started any expansion. So already among the earliest Latins there were predominantly Anatolia_BA descended people. I'm reminded here of the myth of Aeneas.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Question. The sample R435 Latin, Prenestini Tribe, 600 - 200 BCE, Iron Age / Roman Republic is the closest to current Europeans? Thanks!

    Best regards

    ReplyDelete
  101. @Simon_W

    The North African admix in ITA_Etruscan_o:RMPR475b isn't due to low coverage, it's very real indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  102. @All

    Is it possible to find out whether the samples from the early Italic sites belonged to commoners or elites?

    ReplyDelete
  103. @Davidski, re: North African admixture

    Interesting, and completely unexpected.

    ReplyDelete
  104. I've found an interesting pattern that differentiates Latins, Hernici and Etruscans.

    The Latins are predominantly descended from Bronze Age central Europeans and have very low Proto-Villanovan admixture:

    [1] "distance%=1.9351"

    ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA

    DEU_Lech_EBA,42.9
    ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA,31.7
    ITA_Proto-Villanovan,15.3
    Bell_Beaker_ITA,10.1
    ITA_Monte_San_Biagio_CA,0

    [1] "distance%=2.2107"

    ITA_Prenestini_tribe_IA

    DEU_Lech_EBA,59.7
    Bell_Beaker_ITA,29.5
    ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA,10.8
    ITA_Monte_San_Biagio_CA,0
    ITA_Proto-Villanovan,0

    [1] "distance%=3.0169"

    ITA_Rome_Latini_IA

    DEU_Lech_EBA,53.4
    ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA,31.8
    ITA_Monte_San_Biagio_CA,12.8
    ITA_Proto-Villanovan,2
    Bell_Beaker_ITA,0

    The Hernici (Oscan speakers) are predominantly descended from North Italian Beakers:

    [1] "distance%=2.7929"

    ITA_Boville_Ernica_Latini_IA

    Bell_Beaker_ITA,61.6
    ITA_Proto-Villanovan,27.4
    DEU_Lech_EBA,11
    ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA,0
    ITA_Monte_San_Biagio_CA,0

    The Etruscans are predominantly descended from Proto-Villanovans:

    [1] "distance%=1.4734"

    ITA_Etruscan

    ITA_Proto-Villanovan,44.9
    DEU_Lech_EBA,29.5
    ITA_Grotta_Continenza_CA,25.6
    ITA_Monte_San_Biagio_CA,0
    Bell_Beaker_ITA,0

    So it looks like the puzzle is solved: The Etruscans are derived from the Villanovans which in turn were directly derived from the Proto-Villanovans. And the low WHG/considerable Steppe of the latter suggests an origin in the Western Balkans. Which in turn would offer a wonderful explanation for the existence of Lemnian in the northern Aegean: The Western Balkans is much closer to the Aegean than Etruria is.

    And the Oscans, maybe also the Umbrians appear to be derived from Italian Beakers, whereas the Latins came later with Bronze Age influence from central Europe.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Simon_W

    And that also explains J2b among Etruscans and in Sardinia.

    ReplyDelete
  106. @Simon_W
    “distance%=3.487…

    No way did the Proto-Villanovans come from central Europe!”

    Proto-Villanovans could come from Central/Eastern Europe and mixed with Balkan farmers in the Balkans:

    https://i.postimg.cc/V6fTwgmY/protovillanova2.jpg

    In my model the distance is 0.3197%:

    https://postimg.cc/LgXn1Gcd

    ReplyDelete
  107. Cluster analysis a la OG's favoured approach may be useful for these samples.

    Quick and dirty random K=5 cluster analysis of all the samples from this study, with some other localized populations that are close in time and space, largely what I've used for the above PCA:

    https://imgur.com/a/kRnbAyh

    Cluster 1 = Broadly Levant+Egypt
    2 = "European" (including Latins and most post-"Imperial" period)
    3= East Mediterranean? (inc. most present day "East Mediterranean" populations, few ancients)
    4= West Asian? (inc. MLBA Anatolian)
    5= Mycenaean+Minoan+Empuries, i.e. Greek (including colonists) and other EEF rich (Sardinian like sample might have got its own cluster if I'd had more Roman era Sardinian samples here).

    K=5 is fairly and choice of populations is fairly arbitrary (although not totally!), so let me know if you guys find anything different.

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  108. Obviously there is one thing which Anatolian, Italo-Celtic, Germanic and Etruscans could have in common and that is the relationship to the Balkan-Danubian BA complex.
    We talked about it last time with the different layers of TCC, Cernavoda, GAC, Cotofeni, Usatovo, Western Yamnaya, Baden etc.

    So there is no need for any big scale direct migration from Asia minor, but Western Asia minor was colonised by this complex, including Troy.
    They also influenced Unetice, which might have been Proto-Germanic and were part of the Urnfield formation.

    This complex seems to have been a tendency towards a similar culture, mixture of ancestries, but with distinct and constantly changing elites. In A situation like in the Balkan-Danubian complex it is highly likely we have different ethnolinguistic groups, because the elites were quite different, coming from very different backgrounds but tried to stay on top in the system.
    So one formation could have spoken the GAC idiom, another that from Usatovo and yet another from an earlier steppe incursion or in Baden a different late Neolithic idiom.
    Yet they would all be in a cultural and genetic exchange network.

    This would make much more sense than assuming BB had, even with my "slave sons in their own" and dependent substrate theory, spoken 4 or more languages in a rather geographically limited sphere.
    These were culturally steppified elites coming mostly from the Balkan-Danubian network to Italy and they came in waves and tribal groups which spoke different languages.
    With some back flow and considering the network extended to Anatolia, some pure Anatolian slaves or experts would be easy to explain as well.
    The Anatolian speakers came from this complex in any case, probably Etruscans and Italics too and Celts and Germanics were at least influenced during Unetice and Urnfield in particular.

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  109. @Simon_W

    Etruscan were allied with the Punic states. There are even bilingual inscriptions (Etruscian language with Phoenician combined) found in Italy.

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  110. The tyrant from Syracuse and the Punics allied up with Celts too. Punic traders were everywhere.

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  111. @romulus Do you have an IQ looking for the minus infinity?
    --------


    The path Αἰνείας through genetics.

    1. After leaving Troy, he arrived at Αἰνεία in Thrace. This is one starting point for the invasion of the Sea Peoples into Anatolia. By Herodotus there before the war lived Teukroi, that is Trojans.
    Neolithic Bulgaria Malak Preslavets [I0700 / MP5] 1d_rel_I1108 5800-5400 calBCE M T1a1a T2e

    2. After leaving Thrace, he went to Crete. From it Sea Peoples Teukroi TJKR, Tursenoi TRS, Sardana SRDN, Pelasgian PLST made attacks on Egypt and Palestine.
    Bronze Canaanite Lebanon Sidon [burial 63] 1600 BC M J2b
    Iron Etruscan Italy Civitavecchia, La Mattonara, T. 4 [R474] 700 - 600 BCE M J2b2a

    After that, the Nuragic Sardinians appear J2b2a1, which was not in Sardinia before. In Sardinia there was no steppe component and Αἰνείας did not swim into it, but the Nuragic culture is close to the Etruscan culture.

    3. Then he goes to the Ionic Sea to which the Teukroi spread before the war by Herodotus and in Ἀμβρᾰκία-Δωδώνη meets the Trojans.
    Bronze Croatia Veliki Vanik [I4331 / VV1] 1631-1521 calBCE (3305±20 BP, PSUAMS-2257) M J2b2a

    4. Then he sails to Sicily, from where he gets to Carthage because of the storm.
    From where two Etruria samples have the Moroccan component.
    Iron Etruscan Italy Civitavecchia, La Mattonara, T. 6A [R475] 700 - 600 BCE F T2b32


    5. Arriving in Italy (Troas(>rasna) > Etruria=Turrhenia/Tursci>Tusci), he is at war with Rutuli of Ardea, Rutuli are not Latin. Interesting name of Rutulian king: Turn.
    Iron Rutuli Italy Ardea, T101 II, L. petrous, 2.5.2018 [R850] outlier 800 - 500 BCE M T1a1a T2c1f with the high Iran component and the Marrocan component



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  112. This path https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Aeneae_exsilia.svg/1920px-Aeneae_exsilia.svg.png


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  113. @Archi: If people migrate and make new alliances and contacts, even found colonies, we might expect some backflow and exchange too. I think with small sample sizes it is hard to tell it apart.

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  114. @zardos I mean, there is evidence that the legend of Aeneas is not based on nothing, before there were only many of its archaeological evidence, and now there are genetic evidence. Of course, the legend is a myth, it should not be taken literally, but the reasons for this path were real.
    Aeneas came from the tribe of Dardanus, on the coast of Latium, too, there is a Dardanium, and according to legend, Aeneas founded many cities where he left the Trojans unable to continue the journey.

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  115. I wouldn't be too quick to declare Proto-Villanovans as migrating from Central Europe. I'd imagine that Central Europe would have had R1a and U106 throughout the Iron Age, and would have made their way into Italics and/or Etruscans and we don't see that. That the lone Proto-Villanovan sample is shifted toward the Balkans has more to do with geographical proximity. I'm sure that Paleo-Venetics, which spoken a likely Italic language closest to Latin, would have been even more Balkan/Central European shifted and would still have been largely U152 Bell Beaker derived.

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  116. It seems to me that we don’t know which impact newly arriving tribes actually had. But we will deal with related groups mixing in rather than very different people replacIng each other like in CW and even more so classic BB.
    Every group must be looked at independently. And do not forget BB-related people were North of the Alps too and even though I think Unetice did replace BB in sone regions, especially the elite, the cultural sphere might have actually pushed and spread BB ancestry in other places. They did not disappear but fuse and ho new ways.
    But a direct local continuity in Northern Italy is highly unlikely considering the events in Central Europe and on the Balkans, thats where we have to look at for the new impulses.

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  117. Its hard to claim definitive conclusions when we have one or 2 saples from Villanova.
    But again, i highlight that things go back to a much deeper time
    It seems that BB or post-BB transformed Italy demographically, but the genesis of the Italic Bronze Age is without a doubt due to Aegeo-Balkan influences arriving from south to north , east to west.
    In the Late Bronze Age, the power centre shifts to Etruria, because the previously held contacts with the Aegean collapsed (due to the general climate of LBA collapses)
    Etruria was able to rise amidst all this because of it contacts with the Nuraghi, which were one of the few powers which were able to maintain their trans-Mediterranean contacts amidst the said collapses, via Cyprus. So Eturiria links with Sardinia, then Cyrpus & beyond

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  118. @ Simon_W

    As for ITA_Etruscan_o:RMPR475b with north African admixture, it comes from a necropolis near Civitavecchia, province of Rome, in southern Etruria that was involved in trade with Sardinia, and in Sardinia there were both the Nuragics and the Phoenicians. This necropolis is also close to Pyrgy (modern Santa Severa/Santa Marinella, province of Rome), another Etruscan port, where the Pyrgi plaques, written in both Etruscan and Phoenician languages, were found. No Phoenician settlements have been found in Etruria, but some Phoenician presence, even mediated by the Nuragics, right there in the southern coast of Etruria have been hypothesized. Another possibility of contact between Etruscans and Phoenicians is in the Etruscan settlements in southern Italy, I refer to the Phoenician presence on the island of Ischia, in Campania. So it is less strange than one might think, even if it was probably not very common.

    I do agree with you. Quite natural to assume an Etruscan ethnicity for ITA_Villanovan:RMPR1015. In fact they should have labeled it directly as Etruscan in my opinion. As archaeology has stated several times, Villanovan is the name of the early Etruscan material culture, not to be confused with Protovillanovan, which is a geographically more extensive earlier culture. Among other things, this Villanovan sample (R1015) shows a certain degree of kinship with one of the Etruscans (R473) found in Civitavecchia.

    ITA_Proto-Villanovan:RMPR1 was found in a necropolis on the Adriatic coast, on the border between Abruzzo and Marche. This is the territory of the Piceni, an Italic tribe of Osco-Umbrian language. So this Proto-Villanovan sample is not ancestral to the Latins but rather to the Osco-Umbrian populations. Specifically for the Piceni, at the basis of their ethnogenesis during the Iron Age is recognized the confluence of different cultures of the late Bronze Age: the proto-Villanovan, the Apennine (phase called Sub-Apennine), and those of the trans-Adriatic populations. Contacts with the Balkan world are already documented in the Apennine culture.

    The Proto-Villanovan culture is very complex, scholars have never agreed on the places of origin because it is possible that the places of origin were different. There are precisely several hypotheses ranging from central Europe to some peripheral urnfield culture of the north-western Balkans. In the Protovillanovan culture of the Etruscan world there are aspects that have parallels with Central Europe and other aspects that are instead shared with the Italo-Adriatic world and therefore more with the Balkans.

    For the outliers in the Latin world, we must consider that around 700 BC the Orientalizing period began, and the Orientalizing period involved not only the Etruscans, as many mistakenly believe, but also the Latins and the Italic populations of the Osco-Umbrian language. So, without disturbing the various legends and myths of Trojan origin (attested after 500 BC, not before), it is possible to assume that there were a handful of foreigners here and there also in the Latin world of the Iron Age. Consider that linguists still do not know whether the oldest inscription found in the Latium vetus (VIII cen. BC, Osteria dell'Osa, Gabii) is written in Latin or Greek (the inscription consists of a single word).

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  119. The Villanova culture is an Italic culture, not an Etruscan culture. The Etruscan culture is the Etruscan culture, it began to influence the Villanova culture at the final stage of the Villanova culture. That's what archaeology says.

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  120. My reading of the Iron Age samples: you have the 3 outliers: the North African-shifted Etruscan, the Aegean-shifted Prenestini Latin outlier, and the Canaanite-shifted Ardea Latin outlier.

    The lack of coverage 1700-700 BC is crucial. I believe the Tyrhennian Sea might have been swarming with Libyan pirates, Aegean raiders, Sea Peoples etc around the time of the Bronze Age Collapse. So coastal Italy might have been extremely heterogeneous during MLBA before, and one of these East Med populations might have brought the Etruscan language before admixing with locals.

    Besides those 3 outliers, 75-100% of the ancestry of the main Etruscan and Latin clusters can be modeled as a 3-way collision of:

    Beaker_France + HRV_IA + Remedello_BA

    In other words, Italic speakers (Beaker_France best proxy) ran into Illyrian migrants and Sardinian-like EEF farmer remnants in North/Central Italy. Latins gradually assimilated the remnants of those East Med/N African MLBA coastal populations, but the Etruscan language survived in one group that admixed with Latins & Illyrians

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  121. Simon_W - If Latins and Oscans have separate origins, that would call into question Italic as a language family wouldn't it?

    Unless they represent a second wave of Italic expansion I guess - on to a stronger Bell Beaker substrate?

    If the Etruscans are of eastern (either Balkan or Anatolian origin) then they would have to be from a pretty old, pre-CHG pre-steppe layer of ancestry it looks like based on that PCA, no? IE wouldn't CHG admixture pull them in the direction of the Latins on the PCA?

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  122. Rob, not all of Italy. The Northern Italian Early Bronze Age Polada Culture is very clearly a Bell Beaker continuation with many similarities to Central Europe.

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  123. @Ryen

    Etruscany in all genealogies originates from the Trojan region, i.e. from the border of Anatolia and the Balkans and the Greek Islands. At that time Indo-Europeans of Luwians with later Lydia and Lycian peoples lived there. Since the Luwians were Indo-Europeans, they also had a steppe component and apparently ~resembled CWC, hence Etruscany was also similar to them with some admixtures.

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  124. Etruscans not related to Villanova? Luwians resemble CWC? Are you high on something?

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  125. Richard Rocca said...
    "Etruscans not related to Villanova? Luwians resemble CWC? Are you high on something?"

    Your logic is asleep, maybe drunk? Villanova was an Umbrian substratum for Etruscan culture from that Etruscan were taken women as described in the Abduction of Sabine Women and the cities of which were captured Etruscany, as described by Pliny.

    CWC component = Stepp + EEF components.

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  126. @Richard Rocca

    Do you think Italian Beakers are the source of Italics?

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  127. The simplest explanation is often the best , Occam's Razor, and in this case that would be: Italics arrived with the Proto Villanova culture from the North East and Etruscans represent the previous population.

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  128. Occam's razor says there wasn't a single migration on earth, all autochthons.

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  129. I would for the time being suggest some caution as concerns the "Etruscan" samples. The locations in question may rather have been assigned to Etruscans on political than on linguistic grounds. After all, Rome was also an "Etruscan" city until they kicked out "Etruscan" Tarquinius Superbus in 509 BC. Let's wait for aDNA from Tuscany, where there (hopefully) is some more certainty that not only the political elite, but also commoners actually spoke Etrurian.

    Otherwise, that HRV-IA I1331 sample has been found not too far away from the area of the IA Liburnians.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liburnian_language:
    "Following studies of the onomastics of the Roman province of Dalmatia, Géza Alföldy has suggested that the Liburni and Histri belonged to the Venetic language area.[4][5] In particular, some Liburnian anthroponyms show strong Venetic affinities, a few similar names and common roots, such as Vols-, Volt-, and Host- (< PIE *ghos-ti-, "stranger, guest, host"). Liburnian and Venetic names sometimes also share suffixes in common, such as -icus and -ocus.
    (..)
    Other toponymical and onomastic similarities have been found between Liburnia and other regions of both Illyria and Asia Minor, especially Lycia, Lydia, Caria, Pisidia, Isauria, Pamphylia, Lycaonia and Cilicia, as well as similarities in elements of social organization, such as matriarchy/ginecocracy (gynaikokratia) and the numerical organization of territory. These are also features of the wider Adriatic region, especially Etruria, Messapia and southern Italy.[10] (..)
    The old toponym Liburnum in Liguria may also link the Liburnian name to the Etruscans,[12][13] as well as the proposed Tyrsenian language family.
    "

    Right- that's the linguists' story, that to some extent matches, and to some extent not, what aDNA now starts to reveal. To grab the full story, we'll need lots of MLBA aDNA.

    Rob: "Etruria was able to rise amidst all this because of it contacts with the Nuraghi, which were one of the few powers which were able to maintain their trans-Mediterranean contacts amidst the said collapses, via Cyprus. "
    I don't think that is the full story. Etruria's rise also has to do with control of Italy's richest iron ore deposits, especially those on Elba (and in addition also sophisticated iron smithing and Welding craftsmanship). See for details
    https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/itineraries/itinerary/MetallurgyTuscany.html

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  130. @ FrankN

    Copy and paste from Wikipedia I don't think it helps much. Do you really know what "may also link the Liburnian name to the Etruscans" means?

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  131. Otherwise, I think it could make sense to evaluate the Imperial Era samples separately for each site. Most likely, Imperial Rome displayed some linguistic segregation, i.e. had its Levantine, Gaulish, Germanic, Iberian etc. quarters, the same way you find a Chinatown or Little Italy in New York, and substantially Turkish, Polish or Russian quarters in modern Berlin. If, accidentally, samples came from a local graveyard serving a specific immigrant community, they could result in significantly biased results.

    More specifically, the following sites have been archeologically connected to villas and may predominantly contain slaves:
    - ANAS (Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strada), 100 - 300 CE Individuals: R66, R67, R68, R69, R70, R71, R72, R73
    - Centocelle Necropolis, Rome (Suburbium), 1 CE - 400 CE Individuals: R50, R49, R51, R47

    The following site is connected to Rome's main trading port, for which an international community is to be expected:
    - Isola Sacra necropolis, 1 CE - 400 CE Individuals: R42, R39, R37, R38, R40, R41, R43, R44, R45

    Necropoli from urban Rome (possibly affected by ethnolinguistic segregation):
    - Via Paisiello Necropolis, 1 CE - 200 CE, Individuals: R111, R113, R114, R115, R116, R131
    - Viale Rossini Necropolis; 1 CE - 200 CE, Individuals: R75, R76, R78, R80, R81

    Early Christian burials, w. evidence of poor nutritional status (and the spread of Christianity in Rome might initially have built upon "Levantine" traditions):
    - Marcellino & Pietro, 136 calCE - 500 CE, Individuals: R132, R130, R133, R134, R136, R137

    Apparently typical small-town cemetaries/ necropoli, as such potentially indicative for the genetic structure in Rome's countryside:
    - Casale del Dolce, 1 CE - 400 CE, Individuals: R123, R125, R126, R128
    - Civitanova Marche, 27 BCE - 300 CE, Individuals: R835, R836
    - Mazzano Romano, Necropolis of Monte Agnese; 1 CE - 400 CE, Individuals: R1543, R1544, R1545
    - Monterotondo, 26 BCE - 300 CE, Individuals: R1551, R1547, R1548, R1549, R1550

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  132. @mad "Is Italo-Celtic related to proto-Germanic? What is the linguist consensus?"

    The linguistic consensus is that there is no particularly close linguistic relationship between Italo-Celtic and proto-Germanic, perhaps having just one split in common after Proto-Indo-European with each other. They are on the same side of the Centum-Satem isogloss but that is about it.

    Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such as Italo-Celtic, Graeco-Armenian, Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic, but all of these including Italo-Celtic are actively disputed at the preset (although Italo-Celtic was previously uncontested). The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages.

    Germanic is sometimes associated with Corded Ware contra Italo-Celtic which is sometimes associated with Bell Beaker.

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  133. The Liburnians are clearly Illyrians and being part of the Eastern Hallstatt cultural sphere.

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  134. Very good point Frank, fully agreed. What can you say about those with a more likely Italic origin in later imperial times?

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  135. Also worth noting that the Etruscans were something of a pilot wave, in the most convincing account to my mind, migrating from Central Europe to the south to Northern Italy with Indo-Europeans on their heels, arriving at most a couple of centuries earlier. Archaeology points to their arrival and the main brunt of Indo-European arrival to Italy coming after rather than before Bronze Age collapse.

    But for the known and attested linguistic differences, Etruscans could have easily been confused for one more Italic community. They survived where other non-Indo-European linguistic communities did, in part, by adopting the technologies and key cultural edges held by the competing linguistically Italic peoples. There were linguistic and religious distinctions, but the borrowed a lot technologically from the Indo-Europeans in addition to having similar genetic makeup.

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  136. ǵenh: " Do you really know what "may also link the Liburnian name to the Etruscans" means?"
    Yep. It's usually one of the weaker and quite speculative elements of linguistic reasoning, along the "Taurus Mts." <> Taurini/ Taurisci lines, unless supported by a more in-depth analysis, as e.g. provided by V.V. Ivanow (see above) for connecting Italian Mantua to Hurro-Urartian toponymy. [On that line: The fact that we find Marsi both near Rome, and in the E. Sauerland (around Marsberg and Volkmarsen) is intriguing, but of course in itself far from proving that Latins originated near N. Hesse - most likely, they didn't!]
    Still, I think it may interest some readers here what kind of theories flow around, and Wikipedia (and its links) are not the worst starting point for further research. I am not shy of posting my opinion. If I leave a quote uncommented, that might tell you something as well ...

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  137. @Andrew: What you correctly describe points exactly to the Balkan-Danubian complex imho. Because there too we can see that even those which still might have had a non-IE elite and language adapted to the IE ways like in a Domino game even before the major IE groups appeared in some regions. Yet, as a rule, these were at the root of the development and "on their heels".

    Like you had for some regions a succession of cultures in which one was more IE than the one before.
    Like Baden Cotofeni Usatovo Noua.

    Same with Germanic movements later. First classic Celts, then Belgae, mixed tribes and finally Germanic proper.

    Or the Hunnic-Turkic expansion in the migration period. Oftentimes there is one group pushing and you get a chain reaction. In a lot of cases the originally pushing group was outside of our historical knowledge, but they caused one wave after another trying to evade them.

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  138. The consensus among linguists is that the German-Italo-Celtic group forms a close link between themselves and opposes other languages, clearly different from them. German is closely linked to part of Italics and Illyrian. Read Porzig and other linguists. Actually, the whole group of Western languages consists of German, Italian, Celtic and Illyrian; there are no other languages but the little-known like Lusitanian, and there is no connection to the isoglosse of the centum-satem, these languages are closely connected lexically and morphologically. Because of the greater connection of Germanic with the part of Italian than those with Celtic, the Italo-Celtic group has been contested for a long time. The reason is that here the languages were not divided by tree model, but had a lot of long-term cross-links and many languages died out. Germanic, on the other hand, had later connections with Balto-Slavic languages.

    To attribute CWC to the Germans, and the BBC to the Italo-Celts is a total marginal. It is impossible to derive Etruscan from Central Europe at all.

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  139. Another attempt at using cluster analysis to try and break the Roman Imperial and Roman Late Antiquity into more manageable analyzable chunks: https://imgur.com/a/c72SzLl

    Clusters arranged 1-7 in order of roughly decreasing "Northern" affinity. (Albeit cluster 5 has a North African affinity).

    Y does show some change in haplogroups along with cluster membership, though not deterministically. (People who know their y might have a better idea on what is happening here. Though one question, does the R1a subtype R-F1345 have some association with Ashkenazi Jewish "Levites" today? If so, that would possibly be consistent with the cluster membership of the individual with it, in one of the slightly more southern than average clusters).

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  140. Matt - that's interesting. Most of the Imperial Era samples from Crypta Balbi (downtown Rome), which I forgot in my previous list of Imperial Era sites since it also contained IA/ Republic Era samples, seem to cluster close to IA Italics/"Etruscans" (maybe with some pull towards Empuries, i.e. Magna Graecia). Apparently, whatever demographic shifts occured in Imperial Rome, they hardly affected the elite in downtown Rome!

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  141. @Matt
    Per I think it was Principe on Anthro, the R1a-F1345 sample (R1548) was positive for downstream F1019, which is down different branch from CTS6/Y2619 Ashkenazi Levites.

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  142. @FrankN," Matt - that's interesting. Most of the Imperial Era samples from Crypta Balbi (downtown Rome), "

    What is the burial context? Are these people merchants, slaves, mercenaries or just normal migrants? Were they wealthy or rather poor or underprivileged people? Were levant samples found that cluster to modern Eastern or Western Jewish people? I wonder why there were no Gallic samples from the Republic Roman times, found. I read in many history books that Julius Ceasar had almost one 1 Million Gauls as war captives and many were deported to Rome. I also heard of another study from Reich? with Etruscan very strange I1 and R1b. Do you have any information about this study and does this study have some Latin samples too?

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  143. Wise Dragon: "What is the burial context [of Crypta Balbi]?"
    For the location, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_Balbus

    From the SuppMats, p.34:
    "During the excavations some areas have been identified that have received funerary depositions of burials referable to the centuries of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. "

    Essentially, the only thing we can tell from published sources is that we are dealing with the very centre of Rome here.

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  144. @ R. Rocca

    ''Rob, not all of Italy. The Northern Italian Early Bronze Age Polada Culture is very clearly a Bell Beaker continuation with many similarities to Central Europe.''

    Yes, as I wrote - BB imparted a demographic transformation through much of Italy. Culturally, BB was instrumental in North & west Italy; the trans-Adriatic/ trans-central Mediterranean Cetina phenomenon was centred on Apulia, Sicily, but also Vnetia , Garda..

    Still, even if Polada demographically represents a continuation of BB culture, its not a straight cultural evolution, there is change & transformation.

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  145. Rob, Riccardo: From what I have read, Polada has rather little in common with BB.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polada_culture states:
    "There are some commonalities with the previous Bell Beaker Culture including the usage of the bow and a certain mastery in metallurgy.[5] Apart from that, the Polada culture does not correspond to the Beaker culture nor to the previous Remedello culture. According to Barfield the appearance of Polada facies is connected to the movement of new populations coming from southern Germany and from Switzerland.[6]"

    Polada's pile-dwelling buildings certainly find better parallels in pre-BB (pre-Steppe) cultures around the Alps - from the Swiss lakes to the Ljubljana marshes - than in BB settlements as e.g. attested in the Lech valley.

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  146. Tried Etruscan outlier R475 in scaled G25. She fits well as half Etruscan, half some unsampled North African. She doesn't have a very high proportion of Levantine ancestry.

    For instance: 52% Etruscan, 23% C Iberia Afr CA, 13% Emporion, 12% Morocco LN, no Levantine - distance 2.1678%

    Kind of early to be Cyrenaican, but maybe some kind of Greco-Libyan? Doesn't really look like I'd expect for a Carthaginian of Phoenician extraction.

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  147. @capra internetensis "Tried Etruscan outlier R475 in scaled G25. She fits well as half Etruscan, half some unsampled North African. She doesn't have a very high proportion of Levantine ancestry.

    For instance: 52% Etruscan, 23% C Iberia Afr CA, 13% Emporion, 12% Morocco LN, no Levantine - distance 2.1678%

    Kind of early to be Cyrenaican, but maybe some kind of Greco-Libyan? Doesn't really look like I'd expect for a Carthaginian of Phoenician extraction. "

    It's very possible that only the elite of the Punics/Carthaginians was of Phoenician origin, so Levantine like while the bulk of the Cathegenians was rather Northern African Berber- like. I'm not sure but the Phoenicians didn't leave much genetic imprint on their North African colonies.

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  148. @ Frank
    Sure; the “know how” of Pile-dwellings might have been acquired from pre-BB alpine inhabitants; or it could be cultural convergence
    Hence Polada people will be mixtures of BB and Alpine Eneolithics; transformed to their new environments / Era

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  149. To Gaska and Andrzejewski and others positing a Balkan origin for Etruscans - if anything this seems to suggest the opposite. Etruscans are pulled away from the Balkans, not towards the Balkans on the PCA.

    Can I throw something crazy out here for people to comment on - what about a west-to-east movement? IE Sardinians->Sea Peoples->Etruscans and Lemnians.

    Thoughts? David, how do these samples compare to the Sea Peoples samples from Palestine?

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  150. Marcus Licinius Crassus = the typical brachycephalic Bell Beaker skull shape we hear so much about?

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  151. So are modern Central Italians partially descended from a surge in Iron Age Italian ancestry, Germanic ancestry or something else?

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  152. @ Ryan
    Gaska says that Etruscans are predominantly Beaker derived
    I dont think the data we have can tell us everything as yet, as its mostly Imperial period.

    Frank, on the other hand, sees links between Etruscan & Hurro-Urartian. He suggests an out of West Asia movement, but I dont see why the H-U didnt come from north of the Caucasus, if the Hassanlu IA R1b-Z2013 is anything to go by. Some of the features are also shared by Vasconic, but nothign definitive can be said. Perhaps as more aDNA samples, the data might become more convincing one way or another, at least from the population persepctive

    (NB IF Tyrrhenian is from the north too, then Lemnian can be explained by the maritime expansion from Italy, as we saw in the Phillistine / Sea People samples )

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  153. @Rob said-"Gaska says that Etruscans are predominantly Beaker derived"

    Correct Rob, that's my opinion, although I recognize that the presence of an Illyrian marker in Etruria and also in the Nuragic culture complicates the explanation regarding the origin of the Etruscans. However, its autosomal DNA is 45-50% BB so I say we have to wait to see if the rumors of U152 in the Etruscans are true. If that were so, we would have R1b in Italy speaking IE and NO IE languages

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  154. Simon's explanation seems interesting to me, it is obvious that the Etruscans derived from the Villanovans, but I am not so sure that Protovillanovans have their origin in the Western Balkans - I think that the key to both Etruscans and Latins is the Italian Beakers of which We only have three samples in Parma. There are very large cemeteries in northern Italy that can help explain this situation. Olalde did it in Iberia demonstrating that all Bronze Age cultures are overwhelmingly descendants of BBs. I think that in Northern and Central Italy the same thing happened as in Iberia with the peculiarity of direct contacts with the Balkans and even with Anatolia

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  155. The main thing is to forget and not to remember that in Italy, in the zones of BBC, Pollada, lived Ligurians. The main thing is not to remember them, to close your eyes on them, they such are not popular. Etruscans are so popular, but Ligurians such are not popular.

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  156. Also important to note that the Ligurians were once much wider spread and were pushed to the coast by incoming Celts with which mixed tribes were founded.
    Unfortunately the linguistic relationship to other people seems to be a mystery because there is not enough material.

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  157. Messapic people od Italy are an Illyrina people linguistically. Language groups didn't get there without migration. So which haplos did they bring to italy?

    J2b2-283 and E-V13 we know from the Grugni 2018 paper on Italian Ydna correlates perfectly with messapic and illyrian migrations.

    Rmember, illyrians migrated across the adriatic, but around rome and north they quickly linguistically assimilated into italic or etruscan. (Linguist leonard palmer points this out in his book on latin language).

    Whereas in the south we know they kept their messapic language until 200BC.

    Now we also have Z2103 in rome. We can confidently say as a working hypothesis that these are from illyrians as J2b-L283, R1b-Z2103, and E-V13 are the three main paternal haplos of Albanians today, who are linguistically closest to Messapic.

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  158. In the Aeneid, the Dardanians migrated TO Italy.

    So, since we have a Dardanian tribe named "Galabri" in today Kosovo, and a Messapic tribe named "Kalabri" (from which calabria gets its name), we know this name comes from a migration from Illyria.

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  159. Worth to point out that in all regions influenced by BB we find non-IE languages first (Basque, Aquitanian, Ligurian, Etruscan) and IE only second, most likely associated with later migrations from North and East of the Alps, especially the Balkan-Danubian complex.

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  160. That Etruscan might be a newcomer too doesnt change the fact.

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  161. The Dardans lived in Troas, originally on the islands. If they are related to the Illyrian Dardanians, they just migrated to Illyria (Aeneas sailed to the border with Illyria and according to legend, he was leaving those who could not continue his journey; as well he met the Trojans there), but they do not come from there. J2b-L283, R1b-Z2103, and E-V13 there are not at the ancient I&R Romans. Etruscans have J2b-L283, but neighboring Nuragical Sardinians have it. Naturally, it cannot be tied to Illyrians.

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  162. Archi is perhaps the most consistently wrong commenter I have come to see on this blog.

    Sardinians l283 shows up post nuragic civilization.

    Likewise we also find in sardinia R1b-Pf7562, which in Europe is highest frequency and diversity in Albanians, and after that Armenians. Obviously it got there with the l283

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  163. The Dardanians in the Iliad have origins from the balkans. They are often blended with the Trojans, but are still kept as distinct people.

    At one point in the Iliad it even says the gods have ordained that the Trojans shall perish, while the Dardanians will survive.

    Anatolian Troy shows a movement from the balkans in the Archaeological record, that fits the mythical journey of Dardanus to Troy. The mysia - moesia, and phrygia - bryges correspondence also accentuates this balkan to troy movement.

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  164. I think we are talking about multiple waves of Indo-European migration (not exclusively related to R1b-P312) and Italy could be a good example. We only need ancient genomes (Bronze Age) to confirm it. This situation is different from that of the British Isles or Iberia where those new IE waves did not take place until the Iron Age.

    As Dita says the presence of R1b-Z2103 in Italy reinforces the idea of ​​the Balkan connection and a migration continued in time- Perhaps Latin is not as old in Italy as we believe.

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  165. Illyrians are a good candidate for the spread of these lineages though, especially E-V13. Its quite likely it entered IE groups in the Balkan-Danubian complex. Those influenced by it all seem to have it later at least, so Illyrians, Thracians and Greeks.
    Since E-v13 is fairly widespread in the IE world, an expansion from the early BA and from within the Balkan-Danubian complex seems to be most likely. In most groups as a minority element, but widespread nevertheless.

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  166. R1b-Z2103 is probably from Pannonian Yamnaya which fused with local dominated Baden (E-v13 was found in Neolithics from Pannonia and Croatia) and Corded Ware related groups like Cotofeni and Usatovo. That's exactly the context from which many IE groups, but especially Illyrians seem to stem from.

    J might have entered with general Anatolian influences and especially backflow from the more Cernavoda-Usatovo derived expansion which reached Troy and Western Asia minor.

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  167. Dita said...
    "Archi is perhaps the most consistently wrong commenter I have come to see on this blog.

    Sardinians l283 shows up post nuragic civilization."

    That's not true, you write mistakes. Sardinians J2b2a1 have 1200-1100BC Nuragic.

    "The Dardanians in the Iliad have origins from the balkans."

    This is not true either. Dardan lived on the island and moved to Troas where he founded the city of Dardan.

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  168. Rob

    Hasanlu IA do have some Balkanian ancestry. Notice I added Anatoloan MLBA and Sintashta to get rid off that Bulgarian IA but it is still there.

    Target: IRN_Hasanlu_IA
    Distance: 1.7711% / 0.01771134
    Aggregated
    28.4 IRN_Tepe_Hissar_C
    25.8 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Talin
    24.8 Levant_JOR_EBA
    9.4 BGR_IA
    7.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
    4.0 TKM_Gonur1_BA

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  169. @All

    Check out the new PCA plot in the update to my blog post.

    More updates on the way, probably.

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  170. Various non IE groups in BB territory can also mean that for many Neolithic communities the Y dna was not important for the language preservation.
    After all those Neolithic farmers were initially G2 rich then they became I2 rich and then R1b rich. Notice female lineages were not changing much.I mean do we have dramatic increase of U5 when WHG was increasing?
    Basques btw have very low number of steppic mitogenomes.

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  171. Women usually learn the language of their husbands in normal situations.

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  172. I meant L283 is not in Sardinia prior to the Nuragic civillization. Nuragic civillization appears 18th Century BC. The dalmatian L283 sample is 17th Century BC. The etruscan l283 is from the same branch as the 1000 year older dalmatian one. They have a shared tmrca of 20th century bc, meaning they have a very recent shared origin. Since the Dalmatian sample is nearer in time to the tmrca, we must assume it entered Italy from illyrian coast.

    There is absolutely no tradition of etruscans on illyrian coast, nor any archaeological tradition. Whereas there is a long tradition of illyrian migration to italy, illyrian assimilation into etruscan and italic groups, etc. As a working hypothesis it is clear which scenario is favoured.

    As part of my research on Dardanians I have literally read every single reference to Dardanians that are in Harvard's classics LOEB catalogue. Dardanus is said to have migrated to samothrace first, and then troy. Obviously he migrated ti samothrace from the balkans.

    This is just the myth, but here is the archaeology. In the archaeological layer of Troy, it is called Troy VII: "Balkanic Troy".

    https://youtu.be/Oh5Z_WkoXjI

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  173. @Aram: The only situation in which the sons of BB would have, under normal circumstances, have adopted the language of the mothers would have been if they were no full members of their fathers tribe, the father was absent from the family and they might even have tried to differentiate themselves from the fathers tribe and caste.
    That's why I commented on the Lech Valley with lower caste mixed sons from slaves or local concubines of BB fathers living in a legitimate and pure BB family. Or the impossibility of the mixed to become full members of the fathers tribe. So they could have actually chosen a new identity deliberately, including speech, in which they (the mixed) ruled on their own.

    @David: Everything combined, it looks to me modern Italians bounced back on the plot but are still not the same as the IA.
    Because of the Germanic and Northern Italian influences they ended up roughly were they were before, but because of a more extreme mixture with additional Northern European and Near Eastern admixture.

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  174. Dardan was born on Samothrace Island, according to Diodor.

    The beginning of the Nuragic culture is a very controversial issue, many archaeologists claim that it did not begin until 1200BC. The Nuragic culture is close to the Etruscan culture.

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  175. Dardanus came from Samothrace and was originally from Crete. Read Livy. The Trojans were originally from Crete and then moved to Samothrace before taking the kingship of Troy. It seems Samothrace was an stepping stone for Cretans who settled on the north Aegean mainlands (Teucrians, Sinti?, Kikones?).

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  176. The Cretan migration to Troy happened in 1460 BC which is the late Minoan period.

    Strabo about the Teucrians 13.1.48

    "When the Teucrians arrived from Crete (Callinus the elegiac poet was the first to hand down an account of these people, and many have followed him), they had an oracle which bade them to "stay on the spot where the earth-born should attack them"; and, he says the attack took place round Hamaxitus, for by night a great multitude of field-mice swarmed out of the ground and ate up all the leather in their arms and equipment; and the Teucrians remained there; and it was they who gave its name to Mt. Ida, naming it after the mountain in Crete.  [...]  Others say that a certain Teucer came from the deme of Troes, now called Xypeteones, in Attica, but that no Teucrians came from Crete. As a further sign of the close relationship of the Trojans with the people of Attica they record the fact the Erichthonius was one of the original founders on both tribes."

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  177. @Davidski

    So that means modern Central Italy is indeed higher in Iron Age Italian rather than Germanic-influenced as the paper argues?

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  178. @Gabriel
    Imho it's very much possible. I'm frankly not sure how powerful G25 can be at this minute level of resolution, but you can easily fit Marche or Lazio at around or under 1% error with even just 3 sources, Imperial, Etruscan/Latin and e.g Norwegian, and the Etruscan/Latin input seems larger.
    Marche for instance fits with 0.65% error as 54% Imperial, 32% Etruscan and 14% Norwegian. Lazio with 0.98% error as 61% Imperial, 29% Ardea Latins, 10% Norwegian.

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  179. A Hurro-Urartean -- Etruscan link could be interpreted as a relikt from common Yamnaya heritage. In this model Yamnaya spoke a non-IE language which Catacomb brought down the Caucasus to create H-U and the main Yamnaya westward movement created Bell Beakers, Etruscan and Basque.

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  180. I wonder what the impact of Alexander's empire was on the Greek's genetic makeup, maybe that's why these Imperial Romans look much more Near Eastern than Greek.

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  181. @Archi "Women usually learn the language of their husbands in normal situations."

    This is a hint or clue, but not a rule. It is often true, but is certainly not the only scenario.

    Male dominated Roman people who spoke Latin conquered Greece but the Eastern Roman Empire ended up being Greek speaking. The Romans were militarily superior, but there were enough local elites left in place who spoke Greek and had a more sophisticated culture at first, to trigger language shift.

    One plausible Basque scenario (which is unresolved) in which there is lots of BB type R1b and non-trivial steppe ancestry in ancient DNA is that the original pre-BB migrants were male dominated but too small in number and authority (perhaps merchants or craftsmen or priests at first) to cause language shift, after which subsequent pre-BB and BB migrants adopted the language adopted by the first wave. Another is that pre-BB and/or BB was non-IE while Corded Ware was IE, and that most of the BB folks underwent language shift at the hands of IE conquerers (like the Romans that defeated the Etruscans) after the demographic shift took place, even though genetically Corded Ware and BB look a lot alike - just like the Etruscans and the Latins do.

    Hungarian was very non-demic, but nonetheless led to language shift from IE to Uralic.

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  182. @andrew There were practically no Romans in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Romans hired the Germans themselves to serve in their army. Therefore they could not change anything at Greeks, and Roman legionaries did not marry local Greeks. The Greeks were very independent in the Roman Empire, and that is why the empire was divided into two parts early on.

    The origin of the Basque language is dark forest.

    Hungarian is the language of the royal court and spread through the matrimonial connections of the Hungarian royal courts of the 10th century.



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  183. @Andrew: BB did a near complete replacement of the whole male population in a relatively short period of time and with at least some women.
    That's really, really very different from virtually any example of conquerors adopting the language of the conquered you can come. Yet they were patrilocal, patriarchal and caste like people.
    So only outsiders and mixed ones raised by mothers not living with the father might have adopted a new identity on purpose. But this had zero to do with what the pre-BB wanted or their customs, because they were dead when the decision was made.

    @Claravallensis: 10 percent plus Norwegian-like would be quite significant already. I wouldnt expect any sort of larger scale replacement by Germanics in Central Italy, but two digits, that would be something already.
    Lombardy would be interesting for a comparison as one of the Germanic centers.

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  184. @Archi said-"The origin of the Basque language is dark forest"

    Could you elaborate on that please?

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  185. @zardos & Gabriel

    The Germanic and East Med admixtures were definitely important factors in the formation of the modern Italian gene pool, but I feel that they were overstated in the paper, which, in my mind, made it out as if there were a couple of total population replacements in the Italian Peninsula since the Bronze Age.

    I think it's obvious that modern Italians largely derive from the Iron Age and even Bronze Age peoples of the area just by looking at their Y-haplogroups.

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  186. “The Greeks were very independent in the Roman Empire, and that is why the empire was divided into two parts early on.”

    But when the empire split it was mostly for convenience. It was the Illyrian soldier-emperors who at that time ran the empire

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  187. @David: Concerning yDNA the distribution of haplogroup J seems to be quite extreme and the most Northern Italian and Germanic shifted provinces, like in the Alpine region, Lombardy and Piedmont, seem to have J2 in a comparatively low dosage. As if they had very little contacts to the more East Mediterrenean influenced regions or there was at least a partial replacement.

    Also I think it would be best to use the clearly Langobard samples from Collegno and Szolad as reference for the East Germanic influence:
    http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/09/avars-and-longobards.html
    And Medieval German for West Germanic.

    Also, my idea of the post-collapse Italian population history is, that you had still influx from Germany and France, but also from the Near East and North Africa - but also Scandinavian (Norman and German) in the South.

    But the main issue is that some provinces might have been almost dead and were repopulated from other provinces. This means no pure Germanic stream of settlers came to the most war torn and deserted provinces, but already mixed Northern Italians for the most part, majority wise of local (North) Italian stock. I think this should be considered in the models. Remnants from the local population with the high East Mediterranean proportion plus influx from already Germanic admixed Northern Italian provinces in places like Latium.

    Would be interesting to see where there is REGIONAL continuity plus/minus some Germanic etc. and where not. The provinces won't have been equally successful in the post-collapse repopulation and demographic rise.

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  188. I agree that there was no major population replacement but there were several events in early Roman history which must have had a significant impact on y chromosomal frequency.

    Hannibal seriously fucked them up:

    Within just three campaign seasons (20 months), Rome had lost one-fifth (150,000) of the entire population of male citizens over 17 years of age.

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  189. @Gaska

    "@Archi said-"The origin of the Basque language is dark forest"

    Could you elaborate on that please?"

    He means that the origin of Basque is mysterious, which it is.

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  190. @ David

    Thanks for the new PCA. Northern Italy: what a pity that lower Po Valley is undersampled and northern Italy is represented mostly by the Alpine and Prealpine areas.

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  191. @Romulus: The wars were horrible indeed and during the Punic wars many elite members died in battle. Hannibal counted their rings.
    But also think about later legionaries and their situation. It was difficult for a Roman legionary to found a family and even if married to see his wife regularly. Even if he survived and finally got his family, the full time in service meant to be abroad for about 16-25 years!
    And we see veterans called to arms even after their regular time in service once more (evocati), especially in the civil wars.

    Overall, while all this was bad, much worse were morals, materialism and low fertility on its own right plus the rampant diseases and bad living conditions in the cities. Yes, the Romans did a lot for hygiene, but it was still far from anything remotely modern. And don't forget, not just the immigrants came from the East, the diseases too. Most diseases came from the South or East regularly. Last but not least the endemic Malaria in Italy took a heavy toll on the Romans and people with Northern ancestry in general. Especially those living in bad quarters and low altitude, close to swampy and wet areas.

    Its worth to mention that Malaria was most deadly in the Southern and some Central provinces and most benign in the Northern ones.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3340992/

    Maps for climatic zones and diseases are always informative and oftentimes they correlate with human groupings, sometimes even with lineages. E.g. Subsaharan-Negroid ancestry corresponds very well, among other things, with highest endemic Malaria prevalence in Africa:
    https://www.gesundheitsindustrie-bw.de/application/files/cache/thumbnails/08c18fbcca44f8312d9589e905abc542.jpg

    For Italy you have a specific distribution as well:
    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Distribution-of-the-potential-malaria-vectors-and-regions-considered-at-risk-of-malaria_fig2_233876503

    Even at the first glance, comparing the high risk endemic Malaria regions with Italic tribes and Northern ancestry vs non-Italic ethnicities, haplogroup J2 and Eastern Mediterranean ancestry, you see a general pattern. This might be broken here and there, because that's for sure not the only thing to consider, but there is a pattern and this is more than chance.
    Also important: The frequency of sickle cell disease in Italy, widespread, but a center in the South. That is more widespread shows the distribution of East and South Mediterrenaen ancestry, but also the importance of Malaria resistence.
    https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Survey-of-sickle-cell-disease-in-Italy.-Russo-Mancuso-Romeo/92de23576c0cfd39092f61906fac8fc2642ab40a

    Because like the study I quoted before correctly stated, Malaria had a huge impact on Imperial Rome: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/malaria-roman-empire-remains

    And other diseases spread mostly from the East too and affected urban citizens the most. Germanics and more isolated rural populations were sometimes advantaged at that time, because of their more mobile way of life and the avoidance of urban centers. But for what was left of the Romans in the cities, diseases like the plague of Justinian can only have been truly devastating. The Normans in Sicily had a hard time most likely, the more interesting it is they still had a significant impact.

    For soem regions there will be very little continuity at all most likely. Others might have done much better and were important for the new settlements and urban centers.

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  192. @zardos said...

    And other diseases spread mostly from the East too and affected urban citizens the most. Germanics and more isolated rural populations were sometimes advantaged at that time, because of their more mobile way of life and the avoidance of urban centers. But for what was left of the Romans in the cities, diseases like the plague of Justinian can only have been truly devastating.

    It's an interesting example of history repeating itself, considering the recent data which suggests Neolithics met their demise to some degree in the same way. Only to be replaced by Beakers who would later suffer the same fate. Certainly there were later examples than the Romans too.

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  193. there is no need for plagues becoming the capital of an empire of nearly 100 million people trasformed rome in a magnet for inmigration across the mediterranean, if you add the masive numbers of slaves specially after the cartaginian conquest you have resolved the puzzle.
    also it was a common tactic to colonize the new conquered region with roman soldiers to secure the new gained region so while the capital exploded with middle easteners the provinces were being colonized by romans .

    more or less like paris today that 80% of new born have african or middle eastern origin

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  194. David, any chance of getting RISE471 into G25? If Urnfield had any genetic impact on Proto-Villanova, this Tumulus Culture sample (1691-1519 BC) from Southern Germany, who was also U152, would likely be the best proxy, even better than the Czech Hallstatt sample.

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  195. RISE471 is a low coverage, non-UDG treated sample. It shows pseudo-African ancestry in most tests.

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  196. Well, similar problems were one of the main causes for the demise of the crusader states and Europeans were not too keen to settle tropical regions for the same reason. Australia was more healthy for Europeans because the British didnt import Subsaharan slaves. Because the mosquitos spread the disease from humans! Therefore the greatest risk comes with infected humans.

    While Europeans had immunological disadvantages in the Near East and the tropics, they had advantages in America, South Africa, Australia and Sibiria. Because of the isolation of these people from the old world disease centers. They were hit very hard especially by smallpox.

    And the plague of Justinian too might have been the final nail in the coffin for Western Roman urban centers.
    Its not always the same side advantaged obviously. Malaria was worse for Northern agro-pastoralists, while the Mediterranean populations had a longer experience with it.
    With the plague it might have been the other way around.

    Of course predominantly steppe-like people could have adapted to Malaria too, but they would have needed time.
    If their demographic situation was bad already and better adapted Eastern Mediterraneans came in, they would have been replaced rather than given the time.

    In later times, without large scale immigration and already widespread immune variants local Italian subpopulations could adapt to Malaria without too much of an ancestral shift. Because its not as much about ancestry or physical traits, but your immune response. Yet if one group being exposed and forced to adapt for thousands of years, the other a newcomer to this, the advantage is clear.

    Southern Italians have the highest rate for SCD, but its almost everywhere on the peninsula. Would be interesting to check ancient samples too. My guess is the frequencies will be very different.

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  197. @end: Iberia and France had big Roman colonies. Let's see what impact Romans had there with more data from pre- to Roman times.
    In Iberia, even at the time of the bellum civile, whole legions could be mustered from local Roman citizens, many of which were veterans.

    Will be interesting to see whether some Iberian Roman cities became more Roman than Rome itself ancestry wise.

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  198. Arta: "A Hurro-Urartean -- Etruscan link could be interpreted as a relikt from common Yamnaya heritage. In this model Yamnaya spoke a non-IE language which Catacomb brought down the Caucasus to create H-U and the main Yamnaya westward movement created Bell Beakers, Etruscan and Basque. "

    The problem with this model is the Hurrian substrate in Sumerian identified by Starostin. IOW - Mesopotamia (Uruk/ Ubaid) was acc. to Starostin originally speaking HU, before the (pre-)proto Sumerians took over (from where? Persian Gulf?) around 3.100 BC. You would then either have to postulate some "out of Mesopotamia" migration to the Steppe, possibly via the Caucasus and the Elbrus Piedmont, during the 5th mBC, which ultimately takes you to OM's "Shulaveri-Shomu" theory, or at least towards postulating the Elbrus Piedmont Eneolithic as Ubaid-derived. Alternatively, you might postulate that Uruk was genetically a Steppe culture. The archeological problems of both approaches are obvious.

    IMO, the most parsimomious placement of the HU homeland is SE Anatolia/ N. Syria (the Khabur valley), where Hurrian presence has been attested from the beginnings of Near Eastern literacy. That would make (pre-proto-)HU a prime candidate for Eastern ANF language, and in all likelyhood also for the idiom spoken by at least Cardial Pottery related, "island-hopping" EEF.

    NW Anatolia, and the "Danubian" EEF expansion might be a different case. Barcin-like ancestry is to some extent already present in Iron Gates and Ukraine Mesolithic, and may partly represent UP/Mesolithic populations from the N. Aegaean LGM refuge. There is some indication, e.g. different pig mtDNA in NW-Anatolia / Danubian EEF compared to SE Anatolia, that Barcin-like ANF don't just represent colonisation out of E. Anatolia, but instead a more complex process of Neolithisation that incorporated considerable local HG components. That process might also have resulted in linguistic differences, more specifically a stronger representation of Hattic-like elements in the Barcin / Danubian EEF language [From the little we know about it, Hattic appears to rather have been a N. Anatolian language].

    Hattic, btw, was fundamentally different from HU. While HU was exclusively, and heavily, suffixing, Hattic contained a substantial element of pre-fixing (e.g. Hatt. pinu "child", le-pinu "children"); hence the presumed relation of NW Caucasian (also strongly pre-fixing) and to a lesser extent also partly (verbs) pre-fixing Kartvelian to Hattic. Speculatively, the replacement of gender and plural suffixes in some modern European languages, e.g. spoken French, by a preceding article might be regarded as faint reflex of a Hattic-like prefixing tradition.

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  199. Archi, Andrew: "Women usually learn the language of their husbands in normal situations."

    There are lots of examples that it could equally have gone the other way around (English has, for good reasons, "fatherland", but "mothertongue"), some of which I have reviewed here:
    https://adnaera.com/2018/10/18/is-male-driven-genetic-replacement-always-meaning-language-shift/

    Here is a non-exhaustive list of cases that worked the other way around:
    - Polynesian (https://www.shh.mpg.de/851473/genetic-replacement-despite-language-continuity-in-the-South-Pacific);
    - Malegassy (predominantly African, i.e. Bantoid yDNA, yet an Austronesian language);
    - Tsimshian (see discussion in my article above)
    - Ojibwe (predominantly European R1b, yet one of the healthiest Amerindian languages);
    - Garifuna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna_language);
    - Magyar (see Andrew's comment above) - IMO a political phenomenon, a successful attempt to create a distinct (linguistic) identity in order to withstand assimilation pressure from surrounding German- and Slavic-speaking states;
    - Semitic (Y-DNA J1, especially J1-P58, is considered a "Semitic" marker, yet it is of clearly Caucasian origin and only arrived in the Levante with the Kura-Araxes "Khirbet-Kerak" expansion around 3,000 BC).

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