Saturday, January 13, 2024
Romans and Slavs in the Balkans (Olalde et al. 2023)
It's always amusing to see some random Jovan or Dimitar arguing online that Slavic speakers have been in the Balkans since at least the Neolithic.
Obviously, Slavic peoples only turned up in the Balkans during the early Middle Ages. It's just that their linguistic and genetic impact on the region was so profound that it may seem like they've been there forever.
A new paper at Cell by Olalde et al. makes this point well. See here.
That's not to say, however, that it's an ideal effort. The paper's qpAdm mixture models probably could've been more precise and realistic. Genes of the Ancients has a useful discussion on the topic here.
Interestingly, Olalde et al. admit that they can't detect much, if any, admixture from the Italian Peninsula in the Balkans, even in samples dating to the Roman period. And yet, this doesn't stop them from accepting that the Roman Empire had a massive cultural and demographic impact on the Balkans.
I also assume that, by extension, they don't deny that Latin was introduced into the Balkans from the Italian Peninsula.
That is, Latin spread into the Balkans without any noticeable genetic tracer dye, and it eventually gave rise to modern Romanian spoken by millions of people today in the eastern Balkans. This might be a useful data point to keep in mind when discussing the spread of Indo-European languages into Anatolia.
See also...
Dear Iosif, about that ~2%
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615 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 615 of 615@rob
"I told you hanging on LameArchiver with your loser friends JDean, Jaaski, & pussylesquevil isn't good for your cognition & honesty."
This, exactly, and why I gave up on that forum. It's overrun by non-scientists.
There are certain fundamental misunderstandings of ancient DNA testing which are endemic to the Anthrogenica/GenArchivist clique, and lead to many erroneous conclusions by the most active posters there, who apparently try to infect this forum as well.
1) They neglect to consider that most ancient lineages go extinct, and the percentage of lineages that go extinct increases with the passage of time. So, for example, if all known modern R1b-P312 members belong to one of 3 main subclades X, Y, and Z, they will incorrectly assume that any particular ancient sample must also belong to one of those 3 subclades, disregarding the possibility that the ancient sample actually belongs to subclade W. This leads to misguided confusion such as, "why haven't we found any L21 in early Bell Beaker samples? We know British R1B-P312 is nearly all L21."
2) These people don't comprehend that the DNA testing usually used for ancient DNA only tests for specific SNPs that are known from testing of modern individuals. So when an ancient DNA samples is listed as R1b-P312, for example, they wrongly conclude that this means R1b-P312 is the terminal SNP, not realizing that any such sample is almost certainly R1b-P312>X>X>X>X>X..., where the X's are unknown SNPs from an extinct lineage. This results in misinterpretation of the data, such as "ancient sample Z must have lived shortly after P312, because he's not L21".
3) They habitually treat the center of the SNP mutation rate estimates as a precise date, because they don't understand what a confidence interval means for MRCA estimates and radiocarbon dating. This leads to ridiculously precise statements such as, "We know that ancient samples X must have lived between 2650 and 2600 BCE."
4) They routinely neglect to consider the archaeological visibility and sampling rates. For example, if the first member of a particular subclade or culture actually arrived at a place in 2700 BCE, and that population grew gradually over a couple hundred years, the archaeological cross section may be sub-detectable until the population had grown to a few thousand, and we happen to dig up one of those samples from lets say 2550 BCE. The Anthrogenica/GenArchivist crowd apparently has the idea that the earliest sample we happen to dig up while building a parking lot actually represents the very first member of that haplogroup or culture, and we were lucky enough to have some random construction worker hit that solitary man with his shovel.
The people who pass as experts in Anthrogenica/GenArchivist know a fair amount about culture and archaeology, but can't survive in any forum involving math and quantitative science, and their conclusions are consequently nearly always wrong.
@Rob
I think Isparta may have some, but the Balkan EBA/ChL signal (and with it a hint of Steppe) that Yassitepe seems to have doesn't appear as present in the Isparta sample. It's just one sample though.
There is also probably pre-IE neolithic Balkan geneflow into Anatolia that confounds some of the sample profiles (see ulu117 late ChL sample from Koptekin).
Regardless, the one EBA Yassitepe sample plotting precisely in the middle of what are very likely Carians in the subgeometric set is more convincing to me than any other (genetic) data point.
@ Ethan
I understand what you're saying, but I think a better approach for the complex case of Anatolian L. is to consider all evidence of links between southeast Europe, the steppe and Anatolia, rather than isolated individuals.
@ brunoDlarceny said...
There is nonsense, partisanism and ignorance everywhere, even within institutions. You needn't have to be Einstein to be able to enjoy & discuss scientific data; but it's an issue when forum admins and (self-professed) thread experts are at the core of promulgating said nonsense or blatantly ignoring evidence that doesn't sit with them. Anyhow, there are far worse things in the world than a bit a mis-guided echo chamber.
What to say? I made my thesis (800 pages) on “Estetica e filosofia in Galvano della Volpe dall’idealismo al marxismo”. It was a true PhD thesis, but for a right wing atheist there was no place in my country after WWII, so I passed 40 years as a teacher in the Liceo of Italian, Latin, History anf Geography, but, if that thesis will be known sometime, it will demonstrate that I used the reason, at the highest level, of course from my point of view as it is discounted. I used my reason also in genetics as a “citizen scientist”, and I recognized the same reason to Jaakko beyond that he is right or wrong about his position. Could I say the same about Rich S? I don’t. 1) the presence of tiny upstream subclades somewhere don’t demonstrate anything about the origin of something. If I had reasoned like him, I never foresaw Villabruna many years before that, by chance and probably beyond their desires, the Harvardians, malgré eux, did find it. 2) Frequently between the formation of a hg and the separation of the survived haplotypes of to-day descendants pass many hundreds or thousands of years. 3) It is fundamental to know the agendas and who funds the “researchers” of Rich S, and I spoke a lot about that. 4) What happens during the develop of history is the “ totality” as Hegel wrote within everything finds its true meaning.
Related to some of the discussion here.
Archaeology, Language, and the Question of Sámi Ethnogenesis, by Sevstaed & Olsen
It is certainly a step in the right direction in its exploration of how language, material culture and demography/ DNA are linked rather than models based on a flimsy philosophical pedestal.
Comment on the article Archaeology, Language, and the Question of Sámi Ethnogenesis
(Minerva Piha, Mikko K. Heikkilä, and Jaakko Häkkinen)
https://www.academia.edu/114870366/Comment_on_the_article_Archaeology_Language_and_the_Question_of_S%C3%A1mi_Ethnogenesis
We correct some major misunderstandings made by Svestad and Olsen concerning the methodology of historical linguistics and its relation to archaeology. Many same mistakes are made also by those who believe they can see language from the DNA.
@Rich
"Have you seen FTDNA's Globetrekker lately? It has R1b originating in Uzbekistan. I think it was probably farther north than that, but that's not too bad."
Anyone who references FTDNA's Globetrekker has absolutely zero credibility as a rational researcher. It's obvious that FTDNA's methodology for generating these maps is simply:
1. Set a handful of boundary conditions on the map based on a few ancient DNA samples.
2. Interpolate the location of all the intervening SNPs along a speculative path between those two data points, based on the estimated time per SNP.
The model is absolutely ridiculous, in no way representative of the real behavior of people, cultures, and haplogroup dispersion. With trade networks, a haplogroup can easily cross Europe in a single generation, and plant a subclade colony on the opposite side. Finding SNP X at point A and SNP Z at point B tells one very little about where SNP Y occurred.
The reality is that trade networks scatter haplogroups very widely within a very short time, which is why autosomal admixture is a much better method of determining where a particular individual may be from, because it is a composite of many ancestral contributing lineages, rather than a very narrow sampling of only one particular ancestral lineage that may have individually been very mobile.
These FTDNA plots are worthless, and anyone who references them as a data point is an absolute hack.
@ Jaako
“We correct some”
Tbh you didn’t even address the article, it reads as an ugly paper. Typically deflective, and with no genuine insight into understanding historical linguistics and population anthropology
Soon you’ll be “correcting” a lot of papers who see the evidence; & eventually resign yourself to lecturing the disoriented like jdean on FraudArchiver who’ll just clap blindly at anything
@ Bruno
“ Anyone who references FTDNA's Globetrekker has absolutely zero credibility as a rational researcher. “
Yes poor RichS is pretending it constitutes a credible form of research, when it’s the lazy man’s approach.
In reality, there is a deep ignorance of facts: all Stone Age samples derived for L754 occur west of the Urals, the earliest appearance in Siberia is in chalcolithic Botai (~4000 bc) and regions around Omsk. In fact, there’s not a single R1b-P343 of any kind in Siberian Stone Age individuals , who are all Q and C.
Yet the blind & deaf believe that R1b-M73 arrived from Siberia in 10000 bc :)
Stupidity and dishonesty lies at the core of FraudArchiver, but their theories are irrelevant beyond a case study of disoriented boomers.
Does anybody know a god psychiatrist? Rob needs professional help.
@ Jaako
If you keep chanting 'you can't see language from the DNA'' to yourself, it'll be yourself who needs electroconvulsive therapy.
So maybe your central tenets were all wrong, but nobody cares, because you’re irrelevant.
So instead of being a sinister, beady-eyed weasel, move along & find a new hobby.
The Saami article by the Norwegian team was awesome. More credible than 'phantom language expansions' which have nothing to suport them .
Jaerl, nice trolling! There are no phantom languages - you just cannot see language from the archaeological data. Please try to read and understand our response. I'm sure the archaeologists are doing that and learning from their mistakes.
@ Jaakko Häkkinen said...
''Jaerl, nice trolling! There are no phantom languages - you just cannot see language from the archaeological data. Please try to read and understand our response. I'm sure the archaeologists are doing that and learning from their mistakes.'
I actually get the impression that you're the troll. Keep licking your own wounds.
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