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Thursday, November 7, 2019

What's the difference between ancient Romans and present-day Italians?


The first paper on the genomics of ancient Romans was finally published today at Science [LINK]. It's behind a paywall, but the supplementary info is freely available here. Below is a quick summary of the results courtesy of the accompanying Ancient Rome Data Explorer.



I'm told that the genotype data from the paper will be online within a day or so at the Pritchard Lab website here. I'll have a lot more to say about ancient Romans and present-day Italians after I get my hands on it.

See also...

Etruscans, Latins, Romans and others

300 comments:

1 – 200 of 300   Newer›   Newest»
Hugh Capet said...

Interesting study. These Imperial Romans are closer to EEF than present-day Italians. What do you think accounts for this? I reckon it has something to do with the Germanic migrations having a significant genetic impact on Italians. Thanks for sharing, David.

AWood said...

Frankly, that wouldn't have been my first thought, although I should probably read the paper first. It would seem that the Roman founders were EEF + Steppe and rich in R1b. The Imperial period near or at the height of the expansion which incorporated large swathes of the Levant and western Asia, seem to shift the autosomes to the south and east. This can also be demonstated by the increase of Y J1/J2. The decline of Rome and the depopulation of the cities is likely the cause of the rebound of local Latin ancestry. Gaulish and Germanic invasions having such a large impact on Rome doesn't make any sense, and as we've seen from the Iron Age, the Latins were obviously from central Europe.

claravallensis said...

I don't seem to find anything about it in the paper, but just by the PCA alone it would seem that the Beakers from Parma, at least those with significant steppe, seem to come quite close to these iron age Italics.

Samuel Andrews said...

Paper Title. "Ancient Rome: a genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean"

"Mediterranean" isn't a location where people live. It is a sea, that separates Europe, Asia, Africa.

What they should say, is Ancient Rome was a crossroads between Europe & the Near East. But, really there was only migration from Near East into Italy not migration from all over the Europe into Italy.

Richard Rocca said...

Here you go Gaska:

PF6309 R1b1a2
PF6311 R1b1a2
FGC21059 R1b1a2
FGC20975 R1b1a2
FGC20982 R1b1a2
PF6332 R1b1a2
PF6339 R1b1a2
PF6289 R1b1a2
FGC21014 R1b1a2b
FGC21010 R1b1a2b1
FGC21027 R1b1a2b1
FGC21029 R1b1a2b1
FGC21041 R1b1a2b1

So like you said, another solidly R-V88 hunter-gatherer sample.

Rob said...

Although lacking the exact samples from 2000-800 BC, there must have been a large demic movement from central Europe through Italy (steppe / EEF , R1b-M269 rich), and most likely from west-central Europe (Rhone-Piedmont axis)

One other thing w.r.t. to the extra IranN / CHG in Italian Neolithic, they suggest - ''These findings point to different or additional source populations involved in the Neolithic transition in Italy compared to central and western Europe.''

Not sure if additional, more than perhaps Italian Cardial groups come from a 'more basal' population from central Anatolia, whilst Barcin groups & LBK derivatives are more reduced + added impact of hunter-gatherers around Maramara

Rob said...

Further from G-W perspective, the Iron Age Latins could be types as local EEF + Yamnaya but some require additional 'eastern' ancestry; whislt such is lacking in the Etruscan set (although one woman has notable African ancestry)
Hence the difference between Etruscans & the Latins is eastern ancestry appearing in the latter, perhaps mediated via west Balkans. It would be curious if further sampling from central Italy produced J2b2 to solidify this link

Ric Hern said...

So did R1b V88 maybe enter Northern Africa from Sicily during the Neolithic ? Less than 200 km as the crow flies...

Bob Floy said...

R1a in imperial Rome?!?

Rob said...

Was the Etruscan J2b2 ?

@ Ric
Perhaps Iberia was the route

Ric Hern said...

@ Rob

Yes indeed. Looking at the Sea Current from West to East it surely only became possible to reach North Africa from Sicily when Sailboats appeared...

Ric Hern said...

Interesting in that map is the Basque who are the nearest to the Hunter Gatherer Population....

Ric Hern said...

Basque basically between Hunter Gatherers (WHG) and Sardinians...

Samuel Andrews said...

@Ric Hern,
"So did R1b V88 maybe enter Northern Africa from Sicily during the Neolithic ? Less than 200 km as the crow flies..."

Neolithic North Africans have about 40% Southern European farmer ancestry. This ancestry lacks signifcant WHG component. SO, it probably doesn't come from Spain. Sicily is a good canidate.

The African pops with high frequencies of R1b V88 do have small but real European ancestry. By European I mean Neolithic Southern Europe. SO, yeah should be able to explain the R1b V88 in Sahara desert.

Samuel Andrews said...

Berbers of North Africa are about 30% Southern European. This ancestry has been there since the Neolithic so 6,000 years. The Black nomad pops in Sahara desert have European mtDNA H1, European Y DNA R1b V88. Overall, Neolithic European ancestry is small but is real in them.

Let's see if the political correct media ever reports on this.

Samuel Andrews said...

I agreewith @Awood. Looks like Roman samples dating 200-400ad are a resurgence of local Italian population after a lots of immigrants arrived from the Near East.

Matt said...

claravallensis said: "@AWood Weren't those from the other study that should be coming? That with the leaked PCA. Or maybe they sharing these samples, not sure."

Indeed, the "leaked PCA" (if genuine) gives 5 Etruscans, none with any Phoenician/North African* influence https://imgur.com/a/7rQg1Vf . If genuine then the Etruscan R1b and I is still on its way.

*Does R475 find in a necropolis at a coastal Etruscan settlement indicate that some of her ancestors were likely to be Phoenician traders / seafarerers?

Anonymous said...

From all this work, two conclusions

1. the Indo-Europeans did not come to Italy earlier than the Protovillanova culture, in the Neolithic/Eneolithic/Bronze Age they were not present in Italy.

2. Arrival of Etruscans from (through) Carthage is confirmed, it is visible autosomalously. Apparently, their arrival from Western Anatolia and Lemnos is also true.

The rest is trivial in these data.



EastPole said...

When I look a mosaic plot showing the haplotype cluster membership which reveals population genetic structure I wonder which population introduced which religion:

https://i.postimg.cc/3NLF2n22/Rome-Religions.jpg

Rob said...

“Arrival of Etruscans from (through) Carthage is confirmed”

Does that theory exist ? And if so does one outlier female prove it ?

Samuel Andrews said...

Once this new Italian ancient DNA is added to G25 PCA we can get a VERY GOOD IDEA what happened. It'll be interesting.

@Archi,
"2. Arrival of Etruscans from (through) Carthage is confirmed, it is visible autosomalously. Apparently, their arrival from Western Anatolia and Lemnos is also true."

Plz, stop being of troll or just leave this blog. You know this is not true, you're just trying to annoy people. Those North African admixed Etruscans are due to contacts with Carthage. But, Etruscans are not from Carthage. That's fucking insane if you know the rudimentary basics of history.

"1. the Indo-Europeans did not come to Italy earlier than the Protovillanova culture, in the Neolithic/Eneolithic/Bronze Age they were not present in Italy."

They have too few samples from Italy dating between 2000 and 1000 BC to be sure of that. By, 900 BC, Italic tribes look homogenous mix between Italian farmers & Indo Europeans. SO, the Indo Europeans probably arrived earlier than 900 BC.

mono said...

Archi

You don't understand genetics. Protovillanova was a Etruscan culture from Urnfield. That is why they have steppe ancestry.

Samuel Andrews said...

Historians need to be on top of this. They need to listen to real experts such as honestly lots of the posters on this blog. Abstract terms like Iran Neolithic don't describe what's going on. That's really as deep as the "experts" go. I think we can isolate where this admixture is coming from to specific part of the Near East.

This is significant for Roman history. You can't the leftist dominate the discussion with stuff like "Roman was diverse & tolerant." Why were lots of people from probably Anatolia and also some parts of Levant migrating into Italy? What were they doing there? What events caused it to happen?

Samuel Andrews said...

This paper makes NO mention of Bell Beaker or Urnfield cultures. That's a huge mistake. In the supp info they mention Bell Beaker carried 99% R1b M269. But, they don't suggest Bell beaker descendants went to Italy.

They just say "Steppe-related" people went to Italy in Bronze age. We know exactly who they were. They had been living deep in Europe for over 1,000 years before they went into Central Italy. They were no longer "Steppe-related" people but had become Central Europeans.

Anonymous said...

The data confirms that Etruscany arrived through Carthage, so the historical sources do not lie. One of the three Etruscans has a distinct Moroccan signal, and others have it in a weaker form, in Fig.S9 it is visible. They have an increased CHG/Iran component, which is typical for the Minoans. Etruscan J-M12 differs sharply from the previous Italic R1b-M269.

Villanova is a part of Urnfield cultures, thus all academic theories about appearance of Italics in Italy only from Urnfield cultures are fully confirmed.


@mono "Protovillanova was a Etruscan culture from Urnfield."

No, Nobody wrote that Proto-Villanova is an Etruscan culture. On the contrary, it is sharply denied always.

mono said...

Villanova culture formed in the core regions of Proto Villanova.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanovan_culture

J2b was already present in Sardinia and Croatia earlier with 0% percent of African admixture.

mono said...

Kind amazing that You know about Lemnian being related to Etruscan but You didn't remember about Rhaetians.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhaetian_language

I guess You understand that Rhaetians coming from Africa would be an insane suggestion.

Anonymous said...


In the Eneolithic/Bronze Age, 11 samples were tested, almost twice as many as in the Iron Age of Italics (7). R1b-M269 in the Eneolithic/Bronze = 0, in the Iron Age of Italics = 5.

Samuel Andrews said...

The paper suggests the resurgence of European ancestry and reduction of NEar Eastern admix starting in Late antiquity and ending in the Middle Ages is due to migration into Italy from Central Europe.

That's very unlikely. As, this is probably just the resurgence of local Iron age Italy ancestry which never disappeared.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi,
"In the Eneolithic/Bronze Age, 11 samples were tested, almost twice as many as in the Iron Age of Italics (7). R1b-M269 in the Eneolithic/Bronze = 0, in the Iron Age of Italics = 5."

They date to 3500-900 BC. Anyways, what you say makes sense to me Urnfield expansion marks expansion of Italic languages. I was wrong. You happy.

Anonymous said...

@mono

We know even less about the Rhaetians than about the Etruscans and the Lemnians, their connection with the Etruscan language is pure speculation, any linguist will tell you this.

Gaska said...

@Richard Rocca

Is a pity that you have not been so successful finding L51 in the steppes and have had to give up your beloved Yamnaya culture. Yesterday you said that the Iberians are looking for R1b-M269 and you know that that is no longer necessary because we have ATP3 confirmed by the same geneticists who told me about northern Russia-L51. If we believe them in one thing we must believe them in all, your opinion in this regard has zero credibility.

Regarding the Italian paper, everybody have to read it calmly because there are interesting things, although as other guys said it is a shame that we don't have anything new from the BB culture or the bronze age. We still cannot connect the northern Italian BBs with the Etruscans. We already knew that J is one of the Etruscan lineages and the two cases of this uniparental marker in the Italian Neolithic are interesting because there may be a genetic continuity between that time and the Iron Age. There are still papers to publish and it is soon to draw conclusions because the rumors speak clearly of U152. Of course, to say that Etruscans are Carthaginians is a pointless joke


The story of V88 is increasingly interesting, because it appears from the Mesolithic in Ukraine, Balkans, Germany, Italy and Spain with abundant samples, and then mysteriously disappears from the European genetic registry (except in Sardinia-Sicily) - Migration to Africa seems possible both from Sicily and from Iberia or even the Balkans following land routes, but it seems that it is the only European male lineage that later appears in Africa, of course it is a mystery, because, in North Africa, female European markers are very abundant

mono said...

Bell Beaker was not present all over Italy. So it is not surprising that in some Eneolithic/BA sites You will not find M269. Urnfield was the second wave of M269 and some other haplotypes from North that pushed the first BB wave of M269s further south.

Later in Iron Age You find Italic speakers in the Central and South but NOT in the North Italy were You find Etruscans, Rhaetians and Celts.
Look at this map and learn the basics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iron_Age_Italy.svg

Rob said...

@ mono
According to urnfield scenario, how did Lemnian reach the Aegean. From Italy ?

mono said...

Rob

Lemnian could have reached Aegean as a group of mercenaries or pirates. Etruscans are well known for their pirating activities.
Alternative scenario is that Lemnian moved there from ?west? Balkanes prior Etrusco-Rhaetians mixed with steppe people. Ancient DNA from Lemnos is needed to clarify that issue.

Anonymous said...

@ Gaska "We still cannot connect the northern Italian BBs with the Etruscans. Of course, to say that Etruscans are Carthaginians is a pointless joke"

50 years ago, for saying that the Indo-Europeans of the Eastern European Steppe would be stripped of their scientific degrees.)
Nobody connected BB with Etruscans in the scientific world.

@mono Learn the basics. Etruscans have been tested in the same area as the Italics. The Villanova is the Italic culture, not the BBC, it does not come from the BBC in any way. The Steppe component in the Italic zone appeared only in the Iron Age.

Rob said...

@ mono
If I1 turns up in Etruscans; then Villanova link is possible
yeah given their Tyrrhenian maritime influence; they might have made it to Lemnos. A few important colonists is probably all it takes

Anonymous said...


And I must say that the Raethic language could be just a branch of the arrived the Etruscan language (Rasna > Raeth).

Leron said...

Etruscans would have been mixed just like the Latins. However, the paper gives further indication that the affinities setting then apart from Latins comes from a general southern direction and also from the east. We knew this from some of the direct Phoenician and Greek influences in their culture and language. As for the Anatolian question; knowing Anatolia has a long coast touching Syria to the Caucasus region, Etruscan’s eastern ancestors could have been traveling along the coast. Hence giving the Greeks the impression of them having “come from Anatolia”. Or more precisely, by way of the Anatolian coast. Cyprus might be a good starting point to look into.

Anonymous said...

@Rob " Tyrrhenian maritime influence; they might have made it to Lemnos."

The Tyrrhenian Sea at the West of the Italian Peninsula, and Lemnos is an extreme Eastern Mediterranean Sea.


After appearance of the genetic data unequivocally confirming the historical certificate on occurrence of Etruscans in Italy, for preaching of alternative versions it is necessary not simply speculations, as alternative could be, and concrete facts of refutation and proofs of the hypotheses.



Wise dragon said...

@ Archi " Arrival of Etruscans from (through) Carthage is confirmed, it is visible autosomalously. Apparently, their arrival from Western Anatolia and Lemnos is also true."

Keep in mind the 3 of the 4 Etruscans were females and one with significant Iberomaurusian admixture, was a female too. So they could be foreign females that came via Carthage. Actually, this study demonstrated that there are no significant differences between Etruscans and Latins. Hence it's not confirmed that the Etruscans came from Troy, Western Anatolia or Lemnos. As far as I know that there is another study with R1b and Ia Etruscans.

Besides it is unlikely that CHG/Iran Neo folks came straight from Iran/South Caucasus to Italy. It was mixed in with Anatolian Neolithic anyway.

Anonymous said...

@Wise dragon "Keep in mind the 3 of the 4 Etruscans"

There are only 3 Etruscans there. All Etruscans have a Moroccan component, including a man.

"Actually, this study demonstrated that there are no significant differences between Etruscans and Latins. Hence it's not confirmed that the Etruscans came from Troy, Western Anatolia or Lemnos."

This is not true, this study refutes your statement. Learn to read and analyze.

Gaska said...


@ mono is right, the influence of BB culture in mainland Italy is limited to certain regions (especially in the north of the peninsula). Parma's samples (BBC) are clearly R1b-M269, they come from Iberia and had little steppe ancestry. Regarding the Etruscans, everyone can see that plots near the iberians / basques and this can only be because they share uniparental markers-

@ Archi

Evidently no one can connect archeologically the BB culture with the Etruscans, they are like night and day. But you do not understand that the connection can be genetic through uniparental markers-In Iberia the Iberians/Basques and Tartessians after 2,000 years barely maintain cultural connections with the BB except in two fundamental aspects, the language and some customs in burials, but at the same time we see an obvious genetic continuity (R1b-P312/Df27). That is what I think happened in northern Italy, although it is also true that since we do not know data about the Bronze Age, those P312 lineages of northern Italy could extinguish and other lineages like U152 would enter thanks to the influence of the Urnfield culture (1300–750 BC) and pass through the Villanovan culture to the Etruscans

Very interesting is the entry of CHG in Italy, it seems to be a case similar to the Greek Neolithic, and may have implications when it comes to the ability to distinguish this autosomal component in the chalcolithic of Western Europe.

Simon_W said...

Judging from the animated series of PCA plots, the bulk of the Iron Age and Republican Romans plot inbetween modern Spaniards and Greeks, rather than between Spaniards and North Italians, although the latter is also a close approximation.

Amazing how this part of the PCA looks emptied already in the Imperial Age! Now the bulk is like South Italians and Cypriots, with many showing even stronger Near Eastern affinity.

In late antiquity the more Near Eastern individuals are fused away, and the bulk is South Italian- and Cypriot-like simpliciter. Although there are already a number of North Italian-like people there.

In the Medieval and early Modern era the picture is similar, a strong South Italian-like cluster and many North Italian- and even French-like people.

Seems like the present-day Romans are mostly a mix of South Italian- and Cypriot-like people from the Imperial Age on the one hand and from North Italian- and French-like people from the late Antiquity and Middle Ages. But hardly from the Iron Age and Republican Romans. That's quite amazing.

Simon_W said...

Striking how in the "leaked" PCA posted by Matt the Etruscans are somewhat shifted towards Sardinians, compared to modern Italians and Iberians. That's a clear hint that their language is derived from an EEF population.

Anonymous said...

@Gaska On the north of Italians Etruscans didn't live, but Ligurians lived there in BB area.

Not Etruscans, but Ligurians!

Wise dragon said...

@ mono "J2b was already present in Sardinia and Croatia earlier with 0% percent of African admixture. "

I think J2b was already in Italy due to the Anatolian Neolithic. Keep in mind the one Etruscan with the strong Iberomaurasian mix was a female like the 2 other ones. So probably these Etruscans were not native but married into the Etruscan people. Just saying. However, people have to keep in mind that these Imperial "Romans" from this study are very likely not native nor the founders of Rome but migrants. Interesting to find out that the early Romans, Republican Romans were very Northern Italian like and rich in R1b. It's too bad that the patricians of Rome practiced cremation.

Anonymous said...


J2b does not appear in (E)Neolithic Europe until the Etruscans, in general, it is distributed only in Iran/Lebanon/Middle East, for the first time it appears in Europe only in the Late Bronze Age in Croatia.

Davidski said...

@Wise dragon

I think J2b was already in Italy due to the Anatolian Neolithic.

That's very unlikely. There are some surprises in stall in regards to J2b.

It's not a steppe lineage, but it's a marker that was incorporated into the early Indo-European expansions near the steppe somewhere.

Rob said...

@ SimonW
How do you think this fits into the BB - Polada-Terramare progression ?

Gaska said...

@archi, davidski, wise dragon..

I think the Etruscan sample is J2b2-L283 and this lineage has never been found in Middle Eastern DNA, the oldest J2b2-L283 sample is the one from MBA North Caucasus and then it appears in MBA Croatia, The Croatian result would suggest that it is a Proto-Illyrian-The LBA Nuragic culture L283 samples lacked steppe ancestry, but they also lacked Iranian or CHG ancestry, so their autosomal profile looks like that of a typical Sardinian. The Etruscans are an absolutely Italic people in the sense that they are originally from the Italian peninsula and obviously did not speak an IE language

The obvious conclusion is that the Illyrians (IE people) shared lineages with Sardinia and mainland Italy (NON IE peoples). That Etruscan J2b may perfectly be an emigrant or Illyrian slave, but in any case it has nothing to do with migrations from Anatolia, Africa, or Levant- The influence of the Middle East in southern Italy is evident but it never reached the north/center of the peninsula until Imperial times. The Levantinists have always tried to kidnap Italy but Italian genetics is very similar to that of the rest of Europe until the Roman Empire appeared.

FrankN said...

Gaska - You might be interested in the Supplements Table S11: Their best two-way model for CItal_CA is 0.618 C_Ital_Neo, 0.382 Iberia_NE_Neo (p=0.607).

Otherwise, I came across two interesting issues relating to Etruscan:

1.) Etruscan (& Lemnian) display Suffixaufnahme (case stacking), a rare grammatical feature that in W. Eurasia is otherwise only known from Hurro-Urartean, Old Georgian (ca. 6th c CE), and a few NE Caucasian languages. For the absence of Suffixaufnahme in other Kartvelian languages, and its disappearance from from Modern Georgian, the presence in Old Georgian is generally regarded as deriven from language contact with (Hurro-)Urartean. The NEC languages with Suffixaufnahme are spoken in regions with substantial Georgian population.

2.) Digging a bit deeper, I came across A. Fournet's "Tentative Etymological Glossary of Etruscan"."
https://diachronica.pagesperso-orange.fr/TMCJ_vol_3.2_Fournet_Etruscan.pdf
The abstract states innocently "It is shown that the Etruscan vocabulary is made up of Hurro-Urartean cognates, together with Indo-European and Semitic loanwords", but in fact he comes up with pretty solid evidence for a genetic relation between Etruscan and Hurro-Urartean, including reconstructing regular sound shifts between the two (e.g. "d"->"l", also known from Latin), and explaining a few puzzling Etruscan grammatical "irregularities" from Hurrian.

Intriguingly, some of the Hurrian-Etruscan isoglosses identified by Fournet are Hurrian borrowings from Akkadian, e.g. Akk karāru "to lay (foundations)"->Hurr. kirarni "base, foundation"-> Etr. cerine "sacred place, building ?"; Akk. abaru "strong"->Hurr. ebri "lord, king" -> Etr. purth(ne) "a kind of magistrate, dictator". Fournet concludes that "[These] Akkadian loanwords (..) tend to show that Etruscan cannot have settled in Italy very long ago". OTOH "The date of the common proto-language [of Etruscan and Lemnian] which can be called Proto-Tyrsenic can probably be fixed to the last quarter of the second millennium BCE according to Rix (2008: 142)". Taken together, if Tyrsenic was really an offspring of Hurro-Urartean, it most likely entered Italy during the MBA, and might in fact have been the Vector of the archeologically observed "orientalisation" of that period.

The new paper doesn't cover the BA (no sample dates between 2.300-900 BC), and provides only a handful of Etruscan samples that further more are not from their homeland, i.e. Tuscany, but a city just 20 km north of Rome. Moreover, we so far don't have any Hurrian aDNA for comparison. As such, it is probably still too early to confirm or reject Fournet's theory based on aDNA. Nevertheless, the f3 stats in Table S13 show significant pre-IA admixture signals by sources such as Armenia_LBA or Armenia_CA, and the IA outlier R850 is modelled as one-way mix of Anatolia_C (Tab. S18). As such, the current paper seems to lend at least some credibility to Fournet's linguistic considerations.

Richard Rocca said...

@Gaska, this Italian sample with 13 positive R-V88 calls also has a false positive for a single R-M269 equivalent called PF6441. We are fortunate that, unlike the ATP3 garbage sample, this sample is a very quality sample. It is also negative for 13 M269 level SNPs. Obviously you still haven't learned enough about genetics to stop embarrassing yourself.

Gaska said...

@Rocca

You can keep fooling yourself for as long as you want, and keep looking for L51 in the steppes for as long as you need, meanwhile someone in Anthrogenica may pay attention to you, but outside there, you only represent a pathetic attempt to keep alive a theory that has long debunked- Your credibility is ZERO, surely in other places they will thank you for the effort made, but outside your circle of friends and followers nobody takes you seriously.

Anonymous said...

@Gaska "I think the Etruscan sample is J2b2-L283"

I don't think that's true. Nobody tested on J2b2 in Lebanon. J2b is probably a local non-Indo-European population absorbed by the Louwians, and which the Louwians have spread to the Ionian Sea, as Herodotus claims.

Etruscans, as reported by all the evidence is not the Italian people, it is the aliens, the aliens they consider and all the archaeologists and historians. Now genetics clearly indicates this. This J2b was not an Illyrian, it is delusional to consider him an Illyrian, they were never there and slaves from there in Etruria were never there. Pseudoscientific fantasies will not save any fantasies.

I believe only in historical evidence, historians, archaeologists, genetic data, and not someone's false-scientific fantasies,

@FrankN s "The new paper doesn't cover the BA (no sample dates between 2.300-900 BC)"

This is not correct, the data have BA period, eleven samples. They simply did not include them in the main text for some reason.

Wise dragon said...

@ Gaska "The influence of the Middle East in southern Italy is evident but it never reached the north/center of the peninsula until Imperial times. The Levantinists have always tried to kidnap Italy but Italian genetics is very similar to that of the rest of Europe until the Roman Empire appeared."

You have definitely valid points. When reading the comments from anthrogenica on this study, it appears that many want to Levantize the original ancient Romans or to make them look East med like. The so-called "imperial Romans" are very likely not Italic Romans and don't represent the Italics, Latins nor the overall the natives from the Italian peninsula anyway. The Latins, early Romans were Bell Beaker like folks. The burial context is very important for knowing which people you are dealing with. I also find it strange that they used Iberomaurusian as a reference group for the admixture of one Etruscan female.

claravallensis said...

"Their best two-way model for CItal_CA is 0.618 C_Ital_Neo, 0.382 Iberia_NE_Neo (p=0.607)."
That is quite satisfying to hear, playing around with Sardinians on G25 I always found a combination of Iberia_N and Remedello_BA to work the best for their farmer ancestry.

Wise dragon said...

@Archi, "Etruscans, as reported by all the evidence is not the Italian people, it is the aliens, the aliens they consider and all the archaeologists and historians. Now genetics clearly indicates this. This J2b was not an Illyrian, it is delusional to consider him an Illyrian, they were never there and slaves from there in Etruria were never there. Pseudoscientific fantasies will not save any fantasies."

We have to wait for the study with the R1b and I1 Etruscans and then we can debate the origin of the Etruscans in depth. However, there is a theory that says that only the Etruscan elite was from Troy, Anatolia, etc. and not the Etruscan commoners or the bulk of them. This study has lots of weaknesses
.

Richard Rocca said...

Gaska, not only is your knowledge of DNA poor, but so is your self awareness. The people on this site in private tell me all the time to not engage with you because you are a troll that keeps repeating the same impossibilities over and over.

Anonymous said...


I don't understand you, it's clear that Etruscany went through Carthage, that their homeland is connected to Western Anatolia or the Minoans (higher CHG/Iran). Herodotus clearly writes about the spread of the Trojans even before the war to the Ionian Sea (J2b), and after it all sources report that Etruscany (J2b) came from under Troy through Carthage (Marrocan component). There is nothing impossible here, remember that the Seas Peoples attacked Egypt from Peloponnesus and Crete even earlier!

Prior to the arrival of the Etruscans there lived Italics, who could remain of course as a substrate of the Etruscans.

Genetic data confirm all this, we should be glad! Here somebody connected Etruscans with BBs, which nobody has ever done, because it is impossible, and everybody believed him.

Why deny the obvious?

Anonymous said...

@ Romulus

Did you read the paper?

"An Etruscan individual (R475) car-ries significant African ancestry identified by f-statistics (|Z-score|>3; fig. S23) and can be modeled with ~53% ancestry from Late Neolithic Moroccan (table S19)."

Did you see the Fig. S9?

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

Archi from your comments about the autosomal affinity of the Etruscans vs Latins I get the impression you didn't read the paper, as you're making statements that aren't in line with theirs at all. I posted the paper's findings for you.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

1 Etruscan female has North African Affinity. 2 Latins don't have Steppe ancestry.

Arza said...

Where are all that Wielbark-like and Chernyakhiv-like East Germanics?
Why the arrow in the Late Antiquity period suggests movement of people from the Atlantic Façade, not from Eastern Europe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period#/media/File:Invasions_of_the_Roman_Empire_1.png

Strange.

Gaska said...


@wise dragon

Anthrogenica has long since become an echo chamber where Kurganists and Levantinists have turned their theories into dogmas on which no one dares to disagree for fear of being banned-The result is that they themselves are pleased to hear their boring theories again and again insulting all those who find dangerous or simply refuse to adopt established dogmas. They are simply not interested in the truth. One of the best examples is Mr Rocca who boasts of unbiased and yet lives obsessed with his anti -iberism.

@Rocca- HA HA HA, When you find L51 in the Yamnaya culture then you can recover lost credibility, meanwhile worry about your genetic issues, that are many and very worrying for your interests

Cuando vengas a España recuerda explicarnos a todos tus teorías acerca de ATP3, vas a seguir haciendo el ridículo-

Anonymous said...

@ Romulus You certainly haven't read the article, you haven't seen her data. You have absolutely not understood anything. All of Etruscany have a Moroccan component, but one woman's is over the top. In this case, the presence of elevated Moroccan and CHG/Iran components is much more important than the average temperature in the hospital in the resemblance of modern Italians to the Etruscans and the ancient Latins. They both have the same origin - they are of Indo-European origin - 1. Luwians 2. Urnfield culture.

Richard Rocca said...

Gaska, remind us again which culture L51 is going to show up in in Western Europe?

Vladimir said...

@ Archie. and who are the Italians? There until Latins there is only I, G, J, H, R1b-V88. Which of them are Italians?

Arza said...

10-dimensional PCA (taken from the visualizer):

https://pastebin.com/BhuZnK6W

Rather not suitable for modelling, but you can check distances or make plots in PAST.

Gaska said...

@Archi

I repeat-
R474-Civitavecchia, Etruscan, Iron Age (650 BC)-J2b-L283>Z597>Y15058>CTS6190

That same lineage has been found in Croatia (proto-Illyrian) and in Perdasdefogu (Nuragic culture-Sardinia)-1,141 BC- I said that it is probably a haplogroup linked to Indo-European migrations because it has also been previously found in Northern Caucasus from where it passed to the Balkans and from there to the Italian Peninsula. It has never been found in Lebanon or the Middle East or in Carthage/North Africa/Egypt/Arabia or Anatolia. I do not understand why researchers have used Moroccan hunter- gatherers to model some ancestries but to think that Etruscans are Levantines do not make much sense. Among other things you only have an Etruscan ancient genome (1 male) and you know that there are some more waiting to be published apparently some of them U152- Then, we have to wait and see what happens-

FrankN said...

Gaska: "to think that Etruscans are Levantines do not make much sense." They certainly had intensive contact with Phoenicians - we have some Etruscan-Phoenician bilinguals. Tracing Punic influence does make sense, and - in the absence of aDNA from Carthago - Moroccan HGs are Maybe not too bad an idea [In the SupMats, they also have models with Guanche, which seem to work even better].

J2b--L283 "has never been found in Lebanon or the Middle East or in Carthage/North Africa/Egypt/Arabia or Anatolia." BA Anatolia isn't particularly well sampled, and IIRC we so far completely lack aDNA from the presumed Hurrian homeland in SE Turkey/N.Syria.

Aniasi said...

Agreed. The emptying of Rome meant that it was likely repopulated by peasants from nearby regions that better maintained an Iron Age genetic profile with less of the mixing seen in the largest city of the time.

Aniasi said...

Considering his botched and bizarre English, I don't think he actually understood it. He probably used Google translate.

Gaska said...

@FrankN

so you think the Etruscans are Levantines/Phoenicians?

Anonymous said...

Gaska said...
" @Archi

I repeat-
R474-Civitavecchia, Etruscan, Iron Age (650 BC)-J2b-L283>Z597>Y15058>CTS6190

That same lineage has been found in Croatia (proto-Illyrian) and in Perdasdefogu (Nuragic culture-Sardinia)-1,141 BC- I said that it is probably a haplogroup linked to Indo-European migrations because it has also been previously found in Northern Caucasus from where it passed to the Balkans and from there to the Italian Peninsula. It has never been found in Lebanon or the Middle East or in Carthage/North Africa/Egypt/Arabia or Anatolia. I do not understand why researchers have used Moroccan hunter- gatherers to model some ancestries but to think that Etruscans are Levantines do not make much sense."

Your allegations are not true. J2b was not an Indo-European line. It is nowhere to be found in Indo-Europized Europe. It came to Italy from Anatolia/Greek Islands through Carthage with Etruscany (maybe through Sardinia or Sardinia<Sea Peaples?), science says so. You can repeat your completely unsubstantiated statements as much as you like, but you are wrong, you are in complete contradiction with all the data.

You are mistaken.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

If you look at a map of U152 in Europe, its distribution does not match anything Roman. J2 on the other hand has good correlation. The absence of R1b in the Imperial samples is further evidence that U152 did not expand with the Romans. In the Iron Age Italy was heterogeneous. The Latins were a minority living on the border of a much larger Etruscan group, who ruled Rome in its beginning. According to the Latins themselves they arrived after the Etruscans as refugees from Troy. The two Latins with Anatolian admixture reflect that. Maybe Archi is right and the North African Etruscan is a reflection of that too.
What J2b is a representative of, I don't know, but it was J2a in the Mycenean Greek and the Empuries.

A Trojan origin of Latins is really only a problem for a bronze age italo-celtic language grouping, but DNA is empirical science and linguistics is speculation.

Is u152 a proto-Latin group? Its absence from any of the iron age samples would contradict that marker specifically. Wasn't it abundant in some Celts from an upcoming paper?

Leron said...

@Gaska

Most likely it’s coming from a Transcaucasian source. It’s found in coastal countries and north of the Caucasus. We are talking before Phoenicians and Luwians showed up.

Anonymous said...


See basis J-L283-Z600 - Turkey!
and more -> Lebanon, Albania, Italia, ...

J2b - hole Near East, not Europe! There are not Indo-Europaens or Caucasus.

Gaska said...

@Romulus

At least three samples-R437-R435 and R851-Prenestini-Latin Iron Age (650-300 BC) are U152-L2-

@Archi

is absurd to argue with you if you think J2b-L283 comes from Turkey or Lebanon is your problem

Anonymous said...

@Gaska "is absurd to argue with you" Right, it's absurd to argue with me because I'm always right, but you're always wrong, so you can't prove anything. I have proved everything, and the fact that you deny the obvious scientific facts are your problems.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

@Gaska

Thanks, the rest of my point still stands regardless. I was going by the tables from the supplemental material.

TLT said...

What was the range for the Yamnaya/steppe EMBA % in Iron age Italians? Mycenaeans were 10% to 15% based on what I know, how much higher was it for these people? If they are north Italian-like then I'd expect something like 26% or 27% Yamnaya like on average but I would still have no clue about the full range.

Anonymous said...


To make everybody understand why modern Italians are equally close to Etruscan and ancient Latins, because since the Roman Empire there has been a constant influx of people from North Africa and the Levant! That is perfectly seen on Fig. S9. This is what is written in the text.


Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

@TLT

Although we were able to
model eight of the 11 individuals as two-way
mixtures of Copper Age central Italians and
a Steppe-related population (~24 to 38%) using
qpAdm, this model was rejected for the other
three individuals

Anonymous said...

Romulus said...
"R1015 ... also has Armenian LBA ancestry. Maybe Armenians are Trojans too?"

Yes, it confirms once again that you cannot read.

"R1016 and R1015 can also be modeled as RMPR_CA + Anatolia_IA.SG, and R1016 (but not R1015) as RMPR_CA + Armenia_LBA"

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

It's really amazing that these Iron Age Latins pick Anatolia and Armenia over anything else, including Greek samples. How is it anything but a Trojan migration?

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

@Archi

Oh sorry I mixed up a small detail. Thanks for being such a gentleman about it.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

R1016 is an interesting sample. It's listed as R-M269, anyone looked for downstream SNPs on this one?

Leron said...

Armenian LBA coincides with proto-Urartian/Nairi, or at least tribes related to them. This type of ancestry must have already been in southeast Anatolia and Cyprus by that time.

Gabriel said...

@Simon_W

So where do you think Central Italians get their North Italian-like ancestry from, if not from a rebound of Iron Age ancestry?

Henrique Paes said...

We can conclude - as was already obvious - that the Romans were a southern European population on the Italian peninsula with additional affinities to the Middle East. Demystifying all those Nordic theories about them being 'different from modern southern Europeans'.

TLT said...

@Romulus:
>Although we were able to model eight of the 11 individuals as two-way mixtures of Copper Age central Italians and a Steppe-related population (~24 to 38%) using qpAdm, this model was rejected for the other three individuals
>Steppe-related

So is that 24% to 38% Yamnaya or 24% to 38% Bell Beaker?

Anonymous said...

Henrique Paes said... "the Romans were a southern European population"

Why would that be? See Fig. 4 and you'll realize that you're wrong.

Lukasz said...

@Gabriel
So where do you think Central Italians get their North Italian-like ancestry from, if not from a rebound of Iron Age ancestry?

--------------

If you mean late antiquity / early medeival era my post above is the answer. From Germanic tribes. Authors stated it few times very clearly...

claravallensis said...

So were the results from Ralph&Coop back in the day, dating the common ancestry with northern Europe mostly to earlier than 2000ybp, simply wrong? I'm not that much convinced either, especially also given the Y-DNA profile of central Italy. Also the models are two way ones, some Germanic input is definitely there and so are few Germanic lineages, but perhaps it's a combination of the two processes.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Lukaz,
"Before many peopel talked about possible repopulation from rural sources as main factor of early medieval "northern backshift". Tourns out to be bullshit, no mention in study about it. But this is interesting:"

That's because the authors don't know what they are talking about. Basically, what they propose is modern Italians are mix between Near Eastern immigrants in Roman era and North European immigrants in Middle Ages. That's insane. If that were true, we would already know.

The resurgence of European ancestry in late Rome, early Middle Ages is due to resurgence of local Italian ancestry after immigration from the Near East. The Iron age Italians weren't whipped out by Near Eastern immigrants in the early imperial Roman era. The imerial Roman samples don't represent everyone who lived in Centrl Italy in 200 AD. Iron age Italians' decendants still lived in large numbers. Then, by the late Roman empire they moved back in large numbers to Rome.

Anonymous said...

-end you've written nonsense that nobody understands

Samuel Andrews said...

There is one for sure Germanic person buried in Rome R106, 400-600 AD. He belonged to Y DNA R1b U106>Z302. Which is young lineage unique to Germany, Netherlands, England today. It was also the main lineage in Lombard samples. Which means R106 might be a Lombard.

That's an interesting find.

Samuel Andrews said...

332-406ad. So he can't be Lombard. Maybe he is a Frank because this lineage is high in the Netherlands.

Samuel Andrews said...

R104, 400-600ad, is Sardinian. He has Sardinian-specific Y DNA and Sardinian-specific mtDNA. He has no Steppe/Kurgan ancestry, no Near Eastern admix, is almost only Anatolian Neolithic.

The key is, there are very few samples from Rome ranging from 900 bc to 0 AD. This could have been the time in which Near Eastern immigration occurred.

An interesting question is, what was the ancestral abckground of the Republican Roman senators, of Ceasar's Roman legions, and so on. If they were of mostly recent Near Eastern background that's significant to history not a irrelevant factoid. Or, were they decended from Iron age Italians.

Lukasz said...

@Samuel Andrews

I stick to the study conclusions. I'm not in position to talk authors are idiots and they don't know what they are talking about.

And I'm not sure you are right about their statements.
For me they stated that whole city of Roma population declined (Oriental and non-Oriental) after Volkerwanderung and even quite small Lombard migration would affect autosomal makeup of Romans substantially.

Wise dragon said...

@ Samuel Andrews,
"An interesting question is, what was the ancestral abckground of the Republican Roman senators, of Ceasar's Roman legions, and so on. If they were of mostly recent Near Eastern background that's significant to history not a irrelevant factoid. Or, were they decended from Iron age Italians. "

I don‘t think that the “imperial Romans“ that were tested in this study reflect the genetics of the original Romans or the patrician class or the bulk of the Italics. When looking closely at realistic Roman busts and the depicted physiognomy I always assumed that ancient Romans were North Italian or French-like. So apparently my gut feeling was right because early Romans/Latins according to this study are North Italian or French-like. I wouldn‘t be surprised if some Roman patricians were tested, to show some Celtic affinity and are like Central European Bell Beaker folk like. Some Roman portrait busts have a slight Slavic or Celtic vibe. I wonder why no Gaul remains were found or tested despite the fact that tons of Gauls were brought as war captives to Rome. However, the strong presence of Syrians, Greeks or Hellenized Anatolians in Rome was often lamented by the Roman poet like Juvenal or the philosopher Cicero.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Lukaz,
"I stick to the study conclusions. I'm not in position to talk authors are idiots and they don't know what they are talking about.And I'm not sure you are right about their statements.
"

That's fair. You can judge for yourself when this new ancient Roman DNA is released in the next few days.

Wise dragon said...

@ Samuel Andrews "what was the ancestral abckground....., of Ceasar's Roman legions, and so on." Caesar had elite German cavalry in his army when he defeated the Gauls. So in the Roman Republican army, there were already Celtic and Germanic mercenaries.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Wise dragon,
" "what was the ancestral abckground....., of Ceasar's Roman legions, and so on." Caesar had elite German cavalry in his army when he defeated the Gauls. So in the Roman Republican army, there were already Celtic and Germanic mercenaries."

Those cavalry were Auxiliary. Rome's main force were the legions. The legions were only madeup of Roman citizens. Up until 80ad, all of Rome's citizens came from Latium (were Latin). Up until about 200ad, all of Rome's citizens were from Italy.

So, the bulk of Ceasar's soldiers were from Italy. The question is did they decend from Iron age Italians or new immigrants from Near East.

claravallensis said...

If I'm not mistaken during the Gallic wars Caesar's legions originated largely in cisalpine Gaul, when northern Italy had been incorporated, one of the reason why during his dictatorship he granted northern Italians citizenship.

Rob said...

Interesting

Wise dragon said...

@ Samuel Andrews "So, the bulk of Ceasar's soldiers were from Italy. The question is did they decend from Iron age Italians or new immigrants from Near East. " Very interesting question. We have to take into account that in the times of the Republican Rome, it was pretty difficult to obtain Roman citizenship. So very few Non-native Romans had Roman citizenship. As far as I know, you had to be ethnic Roman/Latin to be a general or part of the Legions. So it's very likely that the Legions were of Iron Age Italian origin. I think that the recent Near Eastern immigrants were like the Germanic or Celtic tribe people just mercenaries, members of the auxiliary.

Rob said...

The few Bronze Age data aren’t included in analysis;’and aren’t carbon dates. Have a very broad time range 3000-900 BC

capra internetensis said...

The Bronze Age samples are all from Sardinia, are they any different than other Bronze Age Sardinians we already had?

Nice catch Krefter, R104 totally is Sardinian. I wonder how the heck D4j11 got to Rome. L4a2 is pretty far from home too.

Ryan said...

So presumably the Sardinian-shifted samples are Etruscans?

Davidski said...

@All

I'm deleting all comments related to the skin, hair and eye colors of Roman Emperors, as well as all comments with personal insults.

Also, please don't post copious amounts of copyrighted text here from the Roman study or any study, because that will have to go too.

Open Genomes said...

Here's a 3-D plot from the K10 PC data provided by the study.
Mouse over to see the sample IDs:

3-D PC 1-2-3 Plot from the K10 data from the Antonio (2019) Romans study

rozenblatt said...

Well, now it would be nice to have a large paper about Classical Greece and Anatolia. Have anyone heard about any such projects?

Katharós said...

The most unique aspect of the Roman Empire, to this day , is its everlasting vehemence and conviction to being “katholikos” universal and world-spanning. That being said, Rome was known to be pragmatic when it came to integrating and assimilating foreign concepts and people. In this regard, I see Roman continuity within today’s Latin Church, what is reflected by the Pontifex Maximus. And the concept of a Latin elite, is still alive within the Roman Catholic Church , regardless of the ethnic background of the clerus.

By the way, the only cult I’m aware of, that was not necessarily popular in Rome, was the cult of Elagabalus , which is still popular down in Arabia.

pnuadha said...

@Samuel

This is significant for Roman history. You can't the leftist dominate the discussion with stuff like "Roman was diverse & tolerant." Why were lots of people from probably Anatolia and also some parts of Levant migrating into Italy? What were they doing there? What events caused it to happen?

And Rome only became "diverse" after it was successful.

But you misunderstand the diversity propaganda. Its not about actual diversity; its about being non European. To them, the less European, the better. That's why it doesnt matter if "diversity" consists of one homogeneous group of newcomers. The Syrian/Anatolian elements of cosmopolitan Rome will be use to obfuscate who the Romans actually were.

@ Gaska


Is a pity that you have not been so successful finding L51 in the steppes and have had to give up your beloved Yamnaya culture. Yesterday you said that the Iberians are looking for R1b-M269 and you know that that is no longer necessary because we have ATP3 confirmed by the same geneticists who told me about northern Russia-L51.


Why are you bragging about this? If L51 came from northern Russia than Richards prediction was much closer than yours.

BTW, I thought your contacts told you that m269 was found in meso northern Russia. I didnt know they supposedly found L51 in northern Russia.

Davidski said...

There are cases of L51 in pre-publication data from the forest steppe and forest zone, but they're not certain, or at least much less so than the M269 from the forest, and might not see publication.

mono said...

There is no single MLBA sample from central Italy to know when exactly steppe ancestry reached that region. I think this issue will be addressed in other papers. And I am pretty sure we will see steppe ancestry in C Italy starting from MBA before any Urnfield existed.
Polada, Terramare are the key for understanding Italic people origin. Urnfield->Villanova is unrelated to Italics.
Anyway Urnfield is to young to be Italo-Celtic. The only suitable one is the BB.

Anonymous said...

Bronze Remedello Italy Remedello di Sotto [RISE486] 2134-1773 calBCE (3595±55 BP, ETH-12913) M I2a1a1

Polada, Terramare are not Italic peoples.



Rob said...

The terminal phase of Remedello is concurrent with late BB; and Polada

Anonymous said...

Beakers in Italy are only in parts that the Romans described as Ligurian. The Ligurians are definitely not Indo-Europeans, there are no two opinions about it.

Gaska said...

@pnuadha said- "Why are you bragging about this? If L51 came from northern Russia than Richards prediction was much closer than yours. BTW, I thought your contacts told you that m269 was found in meso northern Russia. I didnt know they supposedly found L51 in northern Russia.

Obviously I have only been told about M269 (far North) no L51, which could relate these hunters to the Baltics of the Narva culture- This is what many people have been saying in this and other forums for a long time.In any case, the situation of M269 so far from the steppes, can have important linguistic consequences

Richard's prediction (and that of the rest of his Kurganist friends) was to find L51 in the Yamnaya culture and they have absolutely failed in their attempt. I mean they have made a giant ridiculous, although now they try to disguise it

The fact that someone finds M269 in northern Russia could explain why some of their descendants are very abundant in Khvalynsk (R1b-V1636) or in Yamnaya (R1b-Z2103), and could help clarify the origin of L51.


Davidski said...

That Eneolithic site with M269 is technically in Central European Russia, in the Upper Volga region near Moscow. It's actually not that far from the forest steppe.

And there's no M269 in Khvalynsk, as far as I know.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski
"That Eneolithic site with M269 is technically in Central European Russia, in the Upper Volga region near Moscow."

Understand, the word Eneolithic is absolutely incomprehensible for this region. Because the Eneolithic is an undefined concept there (it is used only in relation to the Volosovo culture). You'd better tell us which culture it is: Upper Volga, Lyalovo or Volosovo. Or at least in the generally accepted configuration: Early, Middle, Late Neolithic.

Gaska said...

@Davidski said "not that far from the forest steppe"

And not that far from the Narva culture which is overwhelmingly R1b-p297
I guess we are both talking about the Ivánovo Oblast-
These hunters have nothing to do with the steppes, nor with the Kurgan cultures etc ... and their origin is not the south but the west even further north. We will see what happens, but if it is true that these samples are reliable, there will be little room for biased interpretations


Vladimir said...

He, in my opinion, spoke 4000BC, and it means Lyalovo and pit-comb ceramics

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

M269 in Comb Ceramic is significant

Janko Raven Johnson said...

@romulus

You counted 2 R1a-Z93s in imperial era in this paper in previous thread. I only count 1, sample R1548. What was the other?

Arch Hades said...

"Why would that be? See Fig. 4 and you'll realize that you're wrong."

What would you call a population that clusters in between modern N Italians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen on PCA? Central European?

Seems to me that Iron age Romans were closest to modern Romance speakers excluding Southern Italians. Everyone and their grandmother in the genome community knows Southern Italians are outliers not just for Europe but even Southern Europe.

Wise dragon said...

The media like they did with the Cheddar man is taking this study to cloud ancient Roman Europeanness and to promote diversity.
The title: Study reveals huge genetic diversity among ancient Romans, who had more in common with people from Greece, Syria and Lebanon than western Europeans
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7666029/New-study-reveals-incredible-genetic-diversity-ancient-Romans.html#comments.

Well if you go to certain areas in London or Paris today you will also find out that the residents there have more in common with South Asians, Nigerians/West Africans, Middle Easterns, etc than with the native French or Brits.

ǵenh said...


@ FrankN

The Hurrian-Etruscan linguistic connection is an old theory that is not considered credible by many linguists. Arnaud Fournet is an amateur scholar.

Arch Hades said...

@Wise Dragon. Yeah that's obviously multiculturalist nonsense. Not to mention very deceiving. They could at least say the Roman population at the time of the Roman Republic was Western European related most to present day Western European Romance speakers.

Now what this has to do with race and cultural change and decline is another topic all itself. Personally I think the Eastern Roman empire/Byzantium was both beautiful and awesome and yes it was populated by very 'East Mediterranean' like people.

claravallensis said...

The BAMs on ENA are finally here: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/ERP115266

Andrzejewski said...

Did our Proto-Indo-European ancestors in the Russian Steppe sacrifice and eat ritual dog’s and wolves?

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ancient-russian-men-sacrificed-ate-dogs-rite-passage-into-adulthood-1634470

Quote: “In a new paper now published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, researchers describe canid bones discovered at the settlement of Krasnosamarskoe in the Russian steppes, which they say may provide the first evidence that these ceremonies really existed. The bones were excavated during the years 1999 to 2001 and researchers dated them back to 3,700 to 3,900 years ago.”

——————

3,900 -3,700 years ago in the Russian Steppe, they must’ve been a CWC-derived culture: Poltava, Sintashta, Catacomb, Srubnaya or another IE culture descendant of Corded Ware in Eastern Europe, possibly directly ancestral to Scythians, Cimmerians and Sarmatians.

@Davidski What is your take on these finding?

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

The fact that they found Luwian inscriptions at Troy VII which is also in Luwian territory means there is about a 0% chance they were Etruscans.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

@Janko Raven Johnson said...

I was wrong, I thought R111's R-PF7589 was an R1a SNP but I guess it is R1b Z2118.

Vladimir said...

Our ancestors 400 years ago people were burned at the stake, accusing them of witchcraft. What they could have done 5,000 years ago can only make you shudder

Anonymous said...

There were many nations living in Troas. It is also established that the Etruscan language had a very strong Indo-European influence not related to the Italiс influence. The Etruscan language is very similar to the Lycian language, and repeats its processes. Although Lycian is Indo-European, it has changed so much that its texts are also very poorly deciphered. Etruscan is similar to the Lycian-Anatolian(non-IE) Creole.

Anonymous said...

You don't have to understand Troy literally as a city in the Homeric sense. We are talking about the relocation from Troas, i.e. from the entire Anatolia during the Bronze Age catastrophe as a result of the campaigns of the Sea Peoples, which led to the fact that central Anatolia was completely uninhabited.

Chad said...

Gothic invasion culminated in the sack of Rome in 410AD. Franks have nothing to do with this period.

Henrique Paes said...

@Archi

Absolutely everything shows that the Romans were a southern European population with predominantly European farmer DNA and moderate amounts of steppe DNA. Anyone who denies something so obvious is in a deep state of denial.

Anonymous said...

@Henrique Paes "Romans"

You confuse the Roman Empire with Latin (/Republican) Rome. You are writing a completely incorrect statement about some abstract Romans, because you have no understanding of what you are writing about.

Henrique Paes said...

@Archi

With 'Romans' I am referring to every period of the Roman empire - within the Italian peninsula - before the western fall. In the Republican period there was more steppe-related DNA, but nothing out of the ordinary for central southern Europe. I was just trying to say that the Latins were far from Nordic and certainly had a lot of farmer, Iranian, and even North African DNA due to mixing with the Etruscans. As the animated gif shows, most of the time they were between southern Italians and northern Italians. They were never Nordic.

Anonymous said...

@Henrique Paes "the Romans were a southern European population with predominantly European farmer DNA and moderate amounts of steppe DNA. Anyone who denies something so obvious is in a deep state of denial."

You do not understand that what you have described is not a southern European population, but a late CWC/BBC-like population (it's no southern European), to which the Latin (Republican) Romans belonged. And you don't understand it, so you deny it, and you don't know what you're thinking.

Henrique Paes said...

@Archi

You are hiding in semantics. You know I'm talking about the current southern European population - which also has moderate amounts of steppe DNA. Republican Latinos are genetically grouped closely with modern populations of southern Europe. They were obviously not 100% farmers, but they are certainly more genetically related to southern European peoples today.

claravallensis said...

Bah, these early Italics aren't much different from iron age Iberians and thus Basques, are Basques also not southern Europeans? They are not simply BBC-like people, they are BBC-like plus non trivial local Sardinian-like copper age ancestry. Most of them in the two way models are above 70% copper-age Italy-like, which is way above the amount of farmer ancestry the typical central European beaker had, and they are not southern European?

Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi,
"CWC/BBC-like population (it's no southern European), to which the Latin (Republican) Romans belonged"
Stop trolling. I think David should ban you.

The Iron age Latin & Etruscan samples cluster closely to modern Spanish & Northern Italians. They were Southern Europeans!

I am going to bet once the data is released we'll see that modern Italians mostly descend from them but also have significant Near Eastern ancestry.

Henrique Paes said...

@Archi

When I say that they were a southern European population I am considering the genetic situation of southern Europe after the Indo-European expansion to southern Europe. Southern Europe was no longer 100% WHG + EEF in that context. That is; I am saying that the Romans - within the Italian peninsula - are genetically more similar to southern Europeans today. I am telling facts.

Henrique Paes said...

@Archi


I never said that Latinos didn't have any Indo-European DNA, just said they had similar amounts to southern Europe today. You misunderstand and then say I'm "trolling' when I'm telling facts.

Henrique Paes said...

@Samuel Andrews

Thanks for understanding what I meant. I compared Latinos with people in southern Europe today, I didn't compare them to pure farmers

Wise dragon said...

@Samuel Andrews,
"The Iron age Latin & Etruscan samples cluster closely to modern Spanish & Northern Italians. They were Southern Europeans! "

Iron age Latins also cluster to French. To which Spaniards do Iron Age Latins closely cluster to- to the Basques, Andalusians or Galicians? Correct me if I‘m wrong, didn‘t you say that Italics/Latins are similar to Central Europeans? However, I think that North Italians are the closest relatives to the original Romans. I know local North Italians and they don‘t look like the swarthy East Med type.

Wise dragon said...

@Henrique Paes " I was just trying to say that the Latins were far from Nordic and certainly had a lot of farmer, Iranian, and even North African DNA due to mixing with the Etruscans. As the animated gif shows, most of the time they were between southern Italians and northern Italians. They were never Nordic."


The Iron age Latins/Romans were West Mediterraneans not East Meds with up to 40% Steppe mix. The one Etruscan woman with the North African mix is an outlier and was probably half Carthaginian. Actually, nobody in Europe thinks that Romans were Nordic on the contrary. Only some mislead people from the USA who are very vocal on the internet claim that Romans were Nordic people.

Henrique Paes said...

@Wise Dragon
The initial impact of steppe DNA in southern Europe is not sustained as Indo-Europeans reproduce with the total population. Overwhelmingly, Latinos and Romans formed what is today a typical southern European population with a predominance of farmer DNA.

Henrique Paes said...

The current southern European population closest to the French is the Iberian. The Latinos of the republic were a bit south of modern Iberians and between the Iberians and northern Italy. Northern Italy only appears a little more shifted to the 'center' of Europe because of the Caucasian DNA that pushes them a little further into the eastern Mediterranean. While the Iberian and French side is more towards the Sardinian.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Wise Dragon,
"Iron age Latins also cluster to French. To which Spaniards do Iron Age Latins closely cluster to- to the Basques, Andalusians or Galicians? Correct me if I‘m wrong, didn‘t you say that Italics/Latins are similar to Central Europeans? "

The PCA published by the study isn't the best. We should wait till the ancient DNA is published and added to this blog's PCAs. It's probably people from Southern France who the Latins cluster near in the study's PCA.

Southern French btw are southern European. They cluster win two places: with Spanish Basque or very close to Northern Italy. Even, Northern France is more Southern European-like than Northern European-like.

"However, I think that North Italians are the closest relatives to the original Romans."

Agreed. Media, academia will ignore this. They will only talk about how imperial Romans are mostly Near Eastern in ancestry. They will ignore the fact the Latins and Etruscans were totally a European populations and therefore the Republican Romans probably were as well.

They will also ignore that late Roman empire samples show a comeback in local Italian ancestry. The narrative given by the study, is this was due to immigration from various parts of Europe in the empire which is not true.

FrankN said...

@genh: "The Hurrian-Etruscan linguistic connection is an old theory that is not considered credible by many linguists. Arnaud Fournet is an amateur scholar."

Is he? My feeling was that it when it comes to Hurrian, his works are quite well respected and often cited, but I might be wrong in this respect.

Can you point me to a substantiated crticism of Fournet's Etruscan paper? I know that A. Kassian has delivered quite a blow to Fournet/Bomhard's earlier attempt to qualify Hurrian as IE-related, IMO rightly so (the morphology is very different, and any isoglosses/shared vocabulary can - and in fact have been by many researchers - be explained by millenia of co-existence and language contact in and around Anatolia). The message seems to have come through - that Etruscan paper doesn't even mention a possibility of genetic relation between IE and HU.

However, at least as per Wikipedia, there seemingly never has been any serious examination of possible HU-Tyrsenian genetic relations after the late 19th century and prior to Fournets "Etymological Glossary of Etruscan".

I lack sufficient knowledge about both Etruscan and Hurro-Urartean, and ultimately also the linguistic expertise, for independent judgement. What I have grabbed, however, is that

(a) Suffixaufnahme is a very specific, and defining, feature of the Hurro-Urartean language family that has been used by a number of renowned historical linguists to trace the influence of HU on other Near Eastern languages.

(b) Suffixaufnahme is an anomaly that has been extensively discussed in theoretical linguistics, as it puts in question Chomsky's axioms on Universal Grammar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar
For a theoretical discussion, see e.g.
http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/mkracht/html/suffixaufnahme.pdf
"The preceding discussion centered around the extreme form of suffixaufnahme. The theoretical results showed that such languages cannot be generated by many grammar formalisms." [emphasis is mine].
You can Google for more of that, and will easily find further academic papers coming to similar conclusions. Again, judging them is beyond my expertise and qualification. However, apparently we are not just talking about some random morphological uniqueness of Hurro-Urartean, but a grammatical feature that requires very specific circumstances, so far not fully understood by theoretical linguistics, to develop.

That observation - Hurro-Urartean and Tyrsenian (Etruscan) sharing an obvious morphological anomaly, which from a theoretical standpoint seems to be extremely unlikely to have arisen independently - was my starting point. I took it from there, and ended up with Fournet, who added icing to the cake. Whether Fournet did so by being a a trained or just an amateur conditioner is a actually of secondary relevance to me. The main thing is the cake - Suffixaufnahme.

I concede that I haven't made that point clear enough in my previous postings. As such, I appreciate your intervention.


As such, when it comes to both HU and Tyrsenian sharing a morphological feature that is

Anonymous said...

@Henrique Paes Iron Romans were farther away from modern Central Italians (and other south population) and closer to modern French/Polish/Norweigian. Modern Spanish is BBC+Italians+Goths, N.Italians is Iron Romans+BBC+Celtics+Austrians.

Wise dragon said...

@Samuel Andrews

"Agreed. Media, academia will ignore this. They will only talk about how imperial Romans are mostly Near Eastern in ancestry. They will ignore the fact the Latins and Etruscans were totally a European populations and therefore the Republican Romans probably were as well. "

Yep just read daily mail and the headline: Study reveals huge genetic diversity among ancient Romans, who had more in common with people from Greece, Syria and Lebanon than western European: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7666029/New-study-reveals-incredible-genetic-diversity-ancient-Romans.html

The field of anthropology, especially when it's about ancient DNA is dominated by scientists and their leftwing bias and PC narrative. We could see that with the Cheddar man where the media and the involved researchers misled the public. They pretended that the alleged dark skin of the Cheddar man makes him more related to Africans or other Non-white immigrants than the native white Brits. Which of course was not the case at all since the Cheddar man was genetically as far removed from Africans or other Non-Europeans as it can get. The same manipulative game will be played with this study on ancient Roman DNA. Just because the ancient Romans were not Scandinavian- like that doesn't make them less European. This comment from dailymail ;"Shhhh this will insult all the w supremacists who believe their race are the ones responsible for everything noteworthy in the world. Fake News ! /s", reflects what you and I try to make clear. The media and the PC brigade want to disconnect Europeans from their heritage and history. What connection do modern Syrians or Lebanese have with ancient Rome? - Almost zero. On the contrary, Europeans from North till South are still heirs of ancient Roman legacy, heritage, culture.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

I think I speak for many when I say I don't care about what the media is doing and commenting about it here just degrades the quality of discussion. We all like it when the broad institute commenters show up. Conflating Nationalism and Archaeogenetics just causes problems for Archaeogenetics, which we don't want to do. Take it to Anthrogenica.

claravallensis said...

Dailymail doesn't even deserve to be commented, lying and misrepresenting things is what they are best at. Let's stick to the topic.

ǵenh said...

@ FrankN

The works of Fournet respected by whom? Definitely not by the Etruscologists. Yes, you're right, you lack sufficient knowledge about both Etruscan and Hurro-Urartean. Today the theory that enjoys the most is that of the Tyrrhenian family (Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian), and the dominant position is the Etruscan was an EEF language, whether it came from the Aegean or was already present between Italy and the Alps. But no one believes in the theory of a connection with Hurro-Urartean languages as Fournet conceives it. Theories like Fournet's are very popular on the web but you don't find it in academic debate.

ǵenh said...

@Samuel Andrews

"Media, academia will ignore this. They will only talk about how imperial Romans are mostly Near Eastern in ancestry. They will ignore the fact the Latins and Etruscans were totally a European populations and therefore the Republican Romans probably were as well. "

I totally agree with you.

Rob said...

Genh
I think calling Etruscan an EEF language doesn’t exactly scream nuanced knowledge in population dynamics either

ǵenh said...

@ Rob

Just call it pre-Indo-European, if you prefer. Etruscans have been modelled RMPR_CA (EEF + WHG) + Steppe-related ancestry. Etruscan language is not considered Indo-European. You do the math.

FrankN said...

genh: "Theories like Fournet's are very popular on the web but you don't find it in academic debate."
Do I understand that correctly? You are unable to point me to any academic rebuttal of Fournet's theories, because it has either been ignored (as you suggest), or - well…

Otherwise: "The works of Fournet respected by whom?" Certainly A. Kassian, quite a name when it comes to Hurro-Urartean (albeit not Etruscan). A. Bomhard - whatever one thinks about his position on Nostratic, it`s certainly not mine, he surely has his name in academic linguistics - would also not have co-published with Fournet if he deemed him scientifically useless.

Anyway, this is not the place to judge one individual's qualification. I welcome any substantiated criticism on the matter itself, but brushing away arguments by just questionning someone's qualification is a no-go for me! If you have anything substantial to add, I am ready to listen. Otherwise I will from now on consider you as "mobber" on sophisticated level.

Rob said...

@ Genh

''just call it pre-Indo-European, if you prefer. Etruscans have been modelled RMPR_CA (EEF + WHG) + Steppe-related ancestry. ''

You've merely pointed out that, by the Roman Iron Age, Etruscans can be modelled as a cumulative mixture of EEF, WHG, and steppe (aside from the F. outlier).
This tells us nothing about where, when & how these ancestries coalesced, and from which component their language derives from
But i can tell you that its a very low likelihood that Etruscan is the language of the EEF -Cardial Impresso farmers of 5000 BC

''Etruscan language is not considered Indo-European''

I think we all know that

Mats Persson said...

"Mediterranean" can be used in a variety of contexts. You're right, but at the same time the title isn't wrong, it's ambiguous. It should have been appended with for instance "region" to be more clear.

Rob said...

@ FrankN

How would you propose that Hurro-Urartian offshoots reached Etruria ? What in the data supports this ..

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob "This tells us nothing about where, when & how these ancestries coalesced, and from which component their language derives from
But i can tell you that its a very low likelihood that Etruscan is the language of the EEF -Cardial Impresso farmers of 5000 BC"

Why do you think that the likelihood of Etruscan being the language of EEF farmer Cardial Pottery Culture of 5000BC is very low? Where do you think the language came from? Or Proto-Villanovans?

Rob said...


@ Andrezejewski

Because there is a 4000+ year gap between the Cardial Neolithic and Etruscans
If we look at Remedello & Rinaldone in c. 3500 BC North-central Italian Eneolithic; these guys might be from north of the Alps or Hungary (if their I2a1a1 is a clue). This brought extra WHG + non-local EEF.
Same with BB c. 2300 BC. Same with Villanova . Etc
So it’s not a matter of steppe people moving into a static set of regional EEF groups

claravallensis said...

In the paper copper age Italians are modeled as being ~60% local neolithic EEF but also ~40% copper age Iberian EEF, so even Iberia then could be a possibility.

Andrzejewski said...

@FrankN @genh @Rob "Today the theory that enjoys the most is that of the Tyrrhenian family (Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian), and the dominant position is the Etruscan was an EEF language, whether it came from the Aegean or was already present between Italy and the Alps"

What about Rhetian? Do you presume that Oetzi the Iceman spoke an EEF-based Alpine language ancestral to Rhetian?

The Tyrrhenian family sounds very real to me. I wouldn't be so surprised if Barcin, Cris-Sarcevo and LBK all spoke a "Tyrrhanian" like language.

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob "If we look at Remedello & Rinaldone in c. 3500 BC North-central Italian Eneolithic; these guys might be from north of the Alps or Hungary (if their I2a1a1 is a clue). This brought extra WHG + non-local EEF.
Same with BB c. 2300 BC. Same with Villanova . Etc "

Would you say that Etruscan might've arrived circa 3500BC with a CHG-rich population from West Asia?

Basques have an extremely high WHG proportion. Could it be said that the Basque language was a relic of some La Brana WHG language, or would it rather be a farmer one? Can we presume that Barcin/LBK languages and Cardial languages were originally from the same root (of an Anatolian language in modern day Turkey)? It's also noteworthy that Sardinians have 10% WHG and 10% non-Steppe-CHG in them, in addition to 60% Anatolian and 20% Steppe, and they are considered to be the closest to EEF. Should we say that Italians may have much more undetected and underestimated WHG and CHG, the latter perhaps mistaken as a more recently Eastern Med and Levantine ancestry?

Rob said...

@ Andrze

“Would you say that Etruscan might've arrived circa 3500BC with a CHG-rich population from West Asia? ”

It’s hard to make that conclusion when there is no support for such a migration per this aDNA
So instead; we have to make clever new understandings as to why Etruscans constructed a myth of Anatolian origin; instead of taking it as a historical truth (as per older historians).

“Could it be said that the Basque language was a relic of some La Brana WHG language”

No chance . la Brana hunter gatherers didn’t survive the Neolithic transition in Iberia

Leron said...

@Rob

It’s more likely that Etruscan came from a Transcaucasian superfamily rather than the Hurro-Urartian branch. This would be similar to the relation of Northeast Caucasian languages to HU, under an “Alarodian” family. There’s no reason why it couldn’t spread to Italy, if basically by sea. The jury is still out. Only need to wait for more samples in the areas of a hypothetical trajectory.

Andrzejewski said...

@Rob "No chance . la Brana hunter gatherers didn’t survive the Neolithic transition in Iberia"

So Basque language is an EEF language and not a WHG one then?

Rob said...

@ Leron

Where in this data set is there evidence for Etruscans having Caucasian affinities ?
Even with more data, any Caucasian/ West Asian origin would be of a very indirect nature.


@ Andrze

''So Basque language is an EEF language and not a WHG one then?''

In theory, Basque could be a ''WHG language'', but not from La Brana groups. But, as per above, it makes little direct sense to call it a EEF, or WHG language, given that its formation is likey to be from the Late Copper Age or even later & by this period such elements had long fused.

Ric Hern said...

@ Andrzejewski

I think Ötzi spoke a language related to whoever migrated up the Danube to Southern Germany, Austria and from there into Italy...

Ric Hern said...

@ Andrzejewski

Ötzi maybe a Lengyel Culture related Language or whoever introduced Copper Working into Lower Austria. However there seem to have been a very long time of separation between Cardial and LBK if both could trace the origin of their Languages to the same area there is still a plus/minus 3500 year gap between the Cultures...Roughly it could be like directly comparing English with Sanskrit or Hittite...

epoch said...

@Rob

"No chance . la Brana hunter gatherers didn’t survive the Neolithic transition in Iberia"

I thought the whole point of this paper was they did:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331750232_Survival_of_Late_Pleistocene_Hunter-Gatherer_Ancestry_in_the_Iberian_Peninsula/link/5c8fb2ef45851564fae64744/download

Anonymous said...

@Samuel Andrews
"It's probably people from Southern France who the Latins cluster near in the study's PCA."

You're wrong as usual. Southern French as well as Basque have nothing to do with it, on PCA Fig.4 it is clearly seen that there are ordinary French, this cluster belong to English/French cluster, not to Southern French and Basques.

Rob said...

@ Epoch

“I thought the whole point of this paper was they did:”

At best in a manner which is of negligible real effect. Some surviving El Miron ancestry could be from France
Again a litmus test- how many C1a lineages remain in Neolithic - Copper again Iberia ?

Anonymous said...

It is clear that the Basque language is not a WHG language, but whether it is an EEF or BBC language no one knows, because none of them is known.

J.S. said...

@Archi @ Samuel Andrews
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/07/24/712497.full.pdf
The Genetic History of France
Look at Figure 2( Pie charts indicating the proportion of individuals from the different “départements”
assigned to each cluster), and the Fst tables in the supplementary material.
Not all Southern French are closed to the Basque.

Anonymous said...

@J.S. said...

That's understandable. I pointed out to the shameful liar and the screaming troll Mamonth_Hunter with his numerous clones that they do not belong to and do not gravitate towards the cluster "S. France". My messages with references to Fig. 4A (C7) are constantly being erased. For some reason, his delirium and lies, the lies of his boorish clones, are welcome. He is constantly lying and disgraced.



Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi,
"You're wrong as usual. Southern French as well as Basque have nothing to do with it, on PCA Fig.4 it is clearly seen that there are ordinary French, this cluster belong to English/French cluster, not to Southern French and Basques."

I've taken a close look at French samples in G25 PCA. There's a main cluster. It is closer to Spain than to Britain. French don't cluster with English. Also, France Provence which is in Southeastern France is similar to Northern Italy. It doesn't cluster there but is close.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archi

Your conversation about southern French has been with Sam & Henrique, who are all different people. You're obviously drugged or demented, as several people have pointed out.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi, You're right ancient Latins don't cluster with Basque-like Southwest France. I should have been more specific to say I mean they probably cluster close to southeast France which is not far genetically from Northern Italy.

Anyways, it's clear ancient Latins clustered in Southwestern Europe in general not Northern Europe as you claimed. Any links, ancient latins have to Northern Europe is due to similarity between Southwest & Northwest Europe.

The Latins were of largely Urnfield/Bell Beaker origin who came to Italy from the North. This was an important part of their origins, it is where their language came from, but the authors of this paper sort of ignored it.

Anonymous said...

@Samuel Andrews

Cluster C7 (Iron & Republican Romans) is at "English"! It is very far from "S. France". Spain (also Romans) is no closer to it than English (not Romans) and far from "N. Spain". English and ordinary French (not "S. France"/"N. Spain") that southern Europeans) are not southern Europeans. Done.

Anonymous said...

@Samuel Andrews

I wrote that they (I&R Romans) are part of a "late CWC/BBC-like population", they are not southern Europeans and are not part of them. It is clear that they cluster with the English and French (and far Roman Spanish now), and therefore belong to North Europeans in dichotomy division, otherwise there is nothing left of this concept except the Saami.

Erikl86 said...

What is clear, is that while the Republic was indeed Roman, the Empire should be renamed into the Graeco-Roman Empire.

My belief is that after the Pyrrhic War ended with Roman victory, substantial amount of Magna Graecians were invited to migrate further up north. The genetic change we see didn't start in the Imperial era, it must have began before that, during the later Republican era.

Gaska said...

@Archi said- "It is clear that the Basque language is not a WHG language"

Have dated Euzkera with C14? How can you say that, if you are not a linguistic expert?.

@Claravallensis, Sam, Wise Dragon....

The Basques descend directly from the Iberian BBs and neither we nor the rest of Iberians have ever spoken IE languages. The Etruscan plots near the Iberians and therefore have neither African nor Anatolian origin- Regarding the paper we are commenting on

1-This paper is not the only one that exists about Italian Iron Age. All the previous ones I know (2 about the Etruscans, 1 about the Piceni and another about the Iapygians) show that at least in their mitochondrial markers these peoples are typically European, and that for example in Tuscany there is a relative genetic continuity between the Etruscan and the contemporary population
2-No serious researcher can only take the city of Rome as an example to assess the genetics of the entire Italian peninsula
3-The paper looks like a Levantine pamphlet that tries to send a message to Salvini and his immigration policies
4- Why they have not analyzed Bronze Age samples? It would have been the only way to clarify the origin of the Villanova and Etruscan cultures- I start to think that they didn't find what they were looking for
5- The genetic continuity in Italy is also evident, you have the example of J2a-L26 that appears in the Neolithic but also in Imperial times. Surely the Roman legionaries and settlers extended this haplogroup through Western Europe

And YES, it is true that especially Southern Italians are much more Levantine than the rest of Europeans, we Spaniards would be too, if we had not been so intolerant with the Moors, Arabs and Jews. That diversity makes Italy a particularly attractive and beloved country for Spaniards.


Anonymous said...

@Archi said "Have dated Euzkera with C14? How can you say that, if you are not a linguistic expert?"

There is a Sino-Caucasian theory of languages, on it Basque could not be WHG. And there are glottochronological calculations.
Too much has changed since the WHG, to keep the language for 10000 years, when such pressure from farmers and BB is simply impossible for this genetics.

Gaska said...

@Erik86

Graeco-Roman Empire?

That's not true, not even genetically speaking. The Greeks contributed culturally to the Empire but was not they who conquered Hispania, Gaul or Britain. Were Roman legionaries recruited in all the provinces who did it - Latins were not Levantine or African but Italian peoples who thanks to the Etruscans imposed themselves to the rest of Italians- The colonies of Magna Grecia were quickly assimilated-

Gaska said...

These conversations always end up with many people reviewing the origin of the Basque and looking for all kinds of fanciful explanations. After Olalde's work, all this makes no sense. P312 did not speak IE and genetic continuity in Iberia is an irrefutable proof.

I was waiting to see the results of the Etruscans because the rumors pointed to U152, I hope that these data appear in the next paper that has to be published and then we can discuss with more data on the table. By the way the two female markers of the Villanovan culture that have been published have previously been found in the BB culture and do not have their origin in the steppes but in the European Neolithic, which seems to show that that culture comes from the Urnfield culture and It opens the door to a Central European migration at the beginning of the Iron Age.

Anonymous said...

@Gaska "The Etruscan plots near the Iberians and therefore have neither African nor Anatolian origin"

It's not true, one of Etruscan people got into the African cluster at all, which is very close to Anatolia. All the others also have a Moroccan component, but not enough to be attributed to the African cluster.

Erikl86 said...

@Gaska

Indeed, the original inhabitants of Latium and all of Italy (including Sicily) were of West Mediterranean origin, so it seems from the last few studies which came out (incl. Fernandes et al. from the beginning of this year).

However, Greeks seem to have had substantial influence on Rome, and from this study it's quite obvious this influence wasn't just cultural, but genetic as well.

Or do you believe those Near Easterners which came to Rome weren't part of the Hellenistic world and didn't speak Koine Greek?

Also, it's quite clear Koine and Attic Greek were the languages of administration in the Eastern provinces, not Latin, and I must remind you that the last capital city of the united Roman Empire was Constantinople, not Rome.

So while the Republic was created and founded by mostly local inhabitants of Latium, by the 1st century BCE, when the Republic became an Empire, it's quite clear from this study that Romans (as in, the people of Rome) were in this period part of the East Mediterranean Continuum, no longer West Mediterraneans. This genetic change seem to have lasted nowadays in South Italy. If you remember from the leaked PCA, Samnites, which were the inhabitants of South Italy in ancient times, also plotted like Etruscans during the IA, which means the original inhabitants of South Italy weren't part of the East Mediterranean Continuum as contemporary Southern Italians are.

Also, I have no idea what was the genetic composition of the Roman legionnaires which subdued Gaul or Britannia. Neither do you. From this study, at least, it seems that if they were manned by people from 1st century BCE Lazio or Rome, they were genetically East Mediterranean.

Anonymous said...

@Gaska Study J2b2a origin https://yfull.com/tree/J-M241/

Anonymous said...

J2b2a-L283 can be called a Teukro-Tuscan marker.

Gaska said...

@Erikl86 "I have no idea what was the genetic composition of the Roman legionnaires which subdued Gaul or Britannia. Neither do you"

Unlike Gaul, the Romans took 200 years to conquer Hispania. The Iberians of the Mediterranean coast the Pyrenees and Andalusia were the first to join the Empire and contribute to the conquest of other regions- For example- Bronze of Ascoli (89 BC) - The Consul Cneo Pompeyo Estrabón, granted Roman citizenship to the Turma Salluitana under the “Lex Iulia de Civitate Latinis et Sociis Danda”, as a reward for the conquest of Ascoli in the framework of the Social War (91-88 BC) against the rebellious Picentini- This Cavalry Squadron in command of a Decurion, was formed by Iberian/Basque riders. Dozens of Hispanic military units (Celtiberians, Asturians, Vacceos, Vettones, Basques, Galaicos) participated in the conquest of Britain, Germania, Thrace etc.They are buried throughout Europe and undoubtedly contributed to extend certain linages throughout our continent.

@erikl86 said- "it's quite clear from this study that Romans (as in, the people of Rome) were in this period part of the East Mediterranean Continuum, no longer West Mediterranean"

How can you say that?-Thousands of Celtiberians, Turdetanians (Andalucia), Gauls, Brits, Germans etc migrated to Rome from the 1st century BC throughout the Imperial period- Politicians, Writers such as Seneca, Lucanus and Martial, Emperors such as Trajan and Hadrian, were born in the Roman province of Baetica (Andalucia) that is WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN

No one denies the cultural importance of the Greeks but trying to turn the Roman Empire into a kind of Greek/Levantine offshoot makes no sense. We also agree on the genetic influence of the Eastern Mediterranean in southern Italy but that does not mean that the Roman Empire ceases to be Western, either genetically or politically or culturally-

@Archi

That Etruscan is an outlier, trying to prove an African origin of the Etruscans is absurd. In Spain and Britain we have Bbs with African origin that have been qualified as outliers because they are unique cases in our prehistory and nobody in their right mind can say that BB culture has an African origin

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