Could Western Jews (Ash. and Seph.) descend from Aegeans and Levantine admixture?

[alexfritz]

there seems to have been intermixing (empuries) in the roman period as two redstars pull towards the aegean_ba cluster, in contrast to the previous samples who seem to be the native iberians of the orig greek settlement, much like the modern spanish cluster yet per fig2 C(+D) central/east-med ancestry is only found in later periods in this region rather anywhere else in iberia; the redstar in the aegean_ba cluster, based on the infos from last month, could be indeed an italic roman yet uniparental marker(s) for the empuries samples are difficult to find, didnt find them incl supp; overall awesome to have some anatolian(phokaia) greek samples as thats def the journey for magna graecia;

[Erikl86]

From Olalde et al.'s paper on the genomic history of Iberia:

In the historical period, our transect begins with 24 individuals from the 5th century BCE to the 6th century CE from the Greek colony of Empúries in the northeast (19) who fall into two main ancestry groups (Fig. 1, C and D, and fig. S8): one similar to Bronze Age individuals from the Aegean, and the other similar to Iron Age Iberians such as those from the nearby nonGreek site of Ullastret, confirming historical sources indicating that this town was inhabited by a multiethnic population (19). The impact of mobility from the central/eastern Mediterranean during the Classical period is also evident in 10 individuals from the 7th to 8th century CE site of L'Esquerda in the northeast, who show a shift from the Iron Age population in the direction of present-day Italians and Greeks (Fig.1D) that accounts for approximately one-quarter of their ancestry (Fig. 2C and table S17). The same shift is also observed in present-day Iberians outside the Basque area and is plausibly a consequence of the Roman presence in the peninsula, which had a profound cultural impact and, according to our data, a substantial genetic impact too.




The Greeks of classical antiquity clearly were no different from the Mycenaeans. This definitely disproves the preposterous and outdated view of a mythical Dorian "invasion" which would've disposed of the previous Eastern Mediterranean inhabitants of Late Bronze Age Greece. This has many important implications for present-day Eastern Mediterraneans (Jews included, naturally), it really looks like we're headed towards a hair-splitting scenario in Southern Italy where the Greeks definitely ended up being a majority over a vast area unlike in Empúries, the Greek input might be hard to distinguish from the Italic input.

Excellent point.

If you mean by Greek/Italic input, that this is a result of the fact that significant amount of S. Italian ancestry derives from ancient Greeks, not that the original pre-Greek settlement Italian population was Greek-like, then I agree - more and more recent studies seem to confirm just this.

But you know me... I always employ Occam's razor, and to me it makes more sense that Jews got this East Mediterranean admixture in, well - the East Mediterranean, close to where they originated, than only in Italy. But indeed, this makes the distinction between the two ancestries extremely difficult.

At least one angle of this thread's premise seem to be about to finally verified to be correct - that what makes S. Italians and Aegean Greeks plot closely together is their shared Greek ancestry, the former thanks to the mass settlement by the latter. I think this also at least partially elevates the chances that Western Jews plot with those two as a result of similar prominent ancestry (but as a result of different circumstances). Of course, I based my assumption here not just on genetics, but on the huge, vast, historical and archaeological evidence of adoption of Judaism by East Mediterranean Hellenistic populations, as has been brought to light extensively here in this thread in previous pages.

[Agamemnon]

there seems to have been intermixing in the roman period as two redstars are pull towards the aegean_ba cluster, in contrast to the previous samples who seem to be the native iberians of the orig greek settlement, much like the modern spanish cluster yet per fig2 C(+D) central/east-med ancestry is only found in later periods in this region rather anywhere else in iberia; the redstar in the aegean_ba cluster, based on the infos from last month, could be indeed an italic roman yet uniparental marker(s) for the empuries samples are difficult to find, didnt find them incl supp;

My thoughts exactly.

[Erikl86]

Btw, another issue which has been debated extensively in this thread and on other threads - the Levantine input in Sicilians and S. Italians, which the talk from last month (was it last month?) seem to have verified to have appeared in Italy sporadically roughly around Late Iron Age (but not before):

All analyzed individuals felloutside the genetic variation of preceding IberianIron Age populations (Fig. 1, C and D, and fig.S3) and harbored ancestry from both SouthernEuropean and North African populations (Fig.2D), as well as additional Levantine-relatedancestry that could potentially reflect ancestryfrom Jewish groups (21). These results demonstrate that by the Roman period, southern Iberiahad experienced a major influx of North Africanancestry, probably related to the well-knownmobility patterns during the Roman Empire(22) or to the earlier Phoenician-Punic presence (23); the latter is also supported by theobservation of the Phoenician-associated Ychromosome J2

If post-BA ancestry was carried by the Phoenicians all the way to Iberia, then I think it's yet another confirmation that post-BA Levantine ancestry among Sicilians comes from...

[LTG]

The Greeks of classical antiquity clearly were no different from the Mycenaeans. This definitely disproves the preposterous and outdated view of a mythical Dorian "invasion" which would've disposed of the previous Eastern Mediterranean inhabitants of Late Bronze Age Greece. This has many important implications for present-day Eastern Mediterraneans (Jews included, naturally), it really looks like we're headed towards a hair-splitting scenario in Southern Italy where the Greeks definitely ended up being a majority over a vast area unlike in Empúries, the Greek input might be hard to distinguish from the Italic input.

This does not definitely disprove that theory. You are operating under the assumption that the proposed Dorian invaders were quite distinct from the Mycenaean people in the first place, which does not really make much sense to me considering their proposed homeland lies within the borders of modern Greece. If you are open to the idea that Greek invaders in Southern Italy may be hard to distinguish from the original Italic inhabitants then I see no reason why this line of thinking cannot be extended to Greece itself. The Mycenaean samples can be used as a suitable base to model Bulgarians, Albanians, North Macedonians and many other Balkan ethnic groups so they are not necessarily Eastern Mediterranean to their genetic core, but rather a good all purpose Southeast European reference. It is quite possible that at one point that geographic region was relatively uniform genetically so invasions would not necessarily change the genetic landscape so much as the sociopolitical landscape. That is my two cents anyway.

[Agamemnon]

More from the supplement:

The past 2500 years in northeast Iberia

Many of our individuals with working genome-wide data from northeast Iberia and dated to the past ~2500 years were excavated from the site of Empúries, the most important Greek colony in the Iberian Peninsula and later occupied by the Romans. In PCA (Fig. 1C-D), most of the individuals from Empúries form two clusters: one (which we call Empúries1) plotting close to the Iron Age Iberia cluster that includes samples from the nearby site of Ullastret and the other (which we call Empúries2) plotting close to Bronze Age samples from the eastern Mediterranean such as the Mycenaean samples from Greece (167). The presence of two genetically distinct populations is further supported by different patterns of FST estimated with present-day populations (Fig. S8) and by Y-chromosome haplogroup composition (Table S4). Empúries2 was least differentiated from populations from the central and eastern Mediterranean region and was dominated by Y-chromosome haplogroup J, present in high frequencies precisely in those regions, whereas Empúries1 was least differentiated from western European populations and contained only R1b lineages, similar to the Bronze and Iron Age populations from Iberia. We find the two clusters in the three periods of the site for which we have genetic data: the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman periods. This demonstrates that the ancient town of Empúries was inhabited by local Iberians as well as by colonists from the Eastern Mediterranean, which agrees with historical sources and archaeological evidence.

We confirm the eastern Mediterranean origin of the second cluster of individuals (Empuries2) using qpAdm and the following outgroup set:

Outgroup set: Mota, Ust_Ishim, Kostenki14, GoyetQ116-1, Vestonice16, MA1, El
Mirón, EHG, Iran_N, Israel_Natufian, Morocco_Iberomaurusian, Anatolia_N,
Steppe_EBA, Iberia_EN, LBK_EN, Iberia_CA, Globular_Amphora_Poland, Iberia_BA,
Iberia_IA, Mycenaean, Minoan_Lasithi

Using this setup, all the 1-way models failed (P-value<3.69E-14) except for the Mycenaeans (P-value==8.81E-01), indicating that Empuries2 and the Mycenaean samples form a clade with respect to the rest of the groups in the populations set to the limits of our resolution. This result is perhaps not surprising given that the available Mycenaean samples from southern Greece lived only ~700 years before the founding of Empúries by Greeks from Phocaea ~575 BCE, according to historical sources.

The Phocaeans also founded Massalia (present-day Marseille in Provence) and Elea (present-day Velia in Campania) in addition to Emporion (Empuries).

This does not definitely disprove that theory. You are operating under the assumption that the proposed Dorian invaders were quite distinct from the Mycenaean people in the first place, which does not really make much sense to me considering their proposed homeland lies within the borders of modern Greece. If you are open to the idea that Greek invaders in Southern Italy may be hard to distinguish from the original Italic inhabitants then I see no reason why this line of thinking cannot be extended to Greece itself. The Mycenaean samples can be used as a suitable base to model Bulgarians, Albanians, North Macedonians and many other Balkan ethnic groups so they are not necessarily Eastern Mediterranean to their genetic core, but rather a good all purpose Southeast European reference. It is quite possible that at one point that geographic region was relatively uniform genetically so invasions would not necessarily change the genetic landscape so much as the sociopolitical landscape. That is my two cents anyway.

It actually does, as the working assumption of the theory is that the Greeks of classical antiquity were not Mycenaean-like (although it is rarely said explicitely, that's the only reason the theory is even brought up in the world of ancient genomics). As for the model of an invasion, it is in my opinion a tenuous model if we are to explain the dialectal diversity of ancient Greek. Mycenaean Greek was an essentially administrative language known only through the prism of Linear B, it is likely that outside the palace-centered society of Mycenaean Greece the precursors of Doric, Aeolic, Attic and Ionic were already in existence, some probably within Mycenaean territory already. The survival of Achaean in Arcadia and Cyprus does suggest that Mycenaean Greek was internally replaced by the dialects I mentioned. While Doric seems to be of northern origin, it is an open secret that there is no trace of a Dorian "invasion", in fact it's doubtful the Dorians can even be identified in an archeological context to begin with. The process through which Doric became so widespread is obscure, an invasion certainly does not fit the evidence so far.

In either case, there is no parallel with the situation in Southern Italy as at the end of the day, we are still dealing with Greeks who spoke early dialects of Ancient Greek, and not two distinct language families.

[Michalis Moriopoulos]

Incredible paper. I'm still digesting it. Can't wait for the samples to be released publicly.

Btw, another issue which has been debated extensively in this thread and on other threads - the Levantine input in Sicilians and S. Italians

You can add Aegean Greeks, too. I would be very curious to see if any of those samples clustering in the Aegean Bronze Age box have Levantine ancestry. It seems possible that they don't if they're that close to Mycenaeans. As you know, I have hypothesized that there may have been differences between mainland Greece and the islands as far back as the Iron Age, with Phoenician gene flow coming into the islands early on but skipping the mainland. But if the seemingly Mycenaean-like samples from Iberia lack Levantine ancestry yet are most likely are descended of Phocaean colonists from Anatolia, then I have to wonder if my theory of early Phoenician gene flow into Greece is tenable. Of course, maybe Western Anatolian Greeks were not like Aegean Greeks until later, as it has been mentioned before that Anatolia experienced gene flow from the Aegean islands much later in history.

[Govan]

Unfortunately I was about to tell those Phoceans came from whats now Izmir (which you Greeks call Smyrna) in Anatolia.

[alexfritz]

in the supp they even have an Fst heatmap p83 based on the empuries groups with group 2 shining the brightest red in modern day central/east med country; also the seven page paper has a nice description of it all connecting their central/east med to greaco/roman and its effects on post(6-8thCE) roman NEiberians p2
The impact of mobility from the central/eastern Mediterranean during the Classical period is also evident in 10 individuals from the 7th to 8th century CE site of L'Esquerda in the northeast, who show a shift from the Iron Age population in the direction of present-day Italians and Greeks (Fig.1D) that accounts for approximately one-quarter of their ancestry (Fig. 2C and table S17). The same shift is also observed in present-day Iberians outside the Basque area and is plausibly a consequence of the Roman presence in the peninsula

based on that the two redstars, specially the ~equidistant one, look alot like that effect as well; as it seems by the data nowadays sofar greaco/roman might indeed be the same schmontz altogether

[Erikl86]

More from the supplement:



It actually does, as the working assumption of the theory is that the Greeks of classical antiquity were not Mycenaean-like (although it is rarely said explicitely, that's the only reason the theory is even brought up in the world of ancient genomics). As for the model of an invasion, it is in my opinion a tenuous model if we are to explain the dialectal diversity of ancient Greek. Mycenaean Greek was an essentially administrative language known only through the prism of Linear B, it is likely that outside the palace-centered society of Mycenaean Greece the precursors of Doric, Aeolic, Attic and Ionic were already in existence, some probably within Mycenaean territory already. The survival of Achaean in Arcadia and Cyprus does suggest that Mycenaean Greek was internally replaced by the dialects I mentioned. While Doric seems to be of northern origin, it is an open secret that there is no trace of a Dorian "invasion", in fact it's doubtful the Dorians can even be identified in an archeological context to begin with. The process through which Doric became so widespread is obscure, an invasion certainly does not fit the evidence so far.

In either case, there is no parallel with the situation in Southern Italy as at the end of the day, we are still dealing with Greeks who spoke early dialects of Ancient Greek, and not two distinct language families.

It's not only this, but just to remind all of you that contemporary Sicilians and S. Italians actually plot closer autosomally to the Mycenaean samples than modern day Aegean Greeks. If indeed classical period Aegeans/Greeks were pretty much similar to the Mycenaean samples, it's yet another huge boost for the predominant Greek ancestry of S. Italians/Sicilians, while Greeks in mainland Greece (and in a lesser degree - in the Aegeans) have been removed further away because the Slavic-like admixture (which exist also among Greek islanders, although to a much, much lower degree) shifted them further away, then say the South European Italic and Levantine admixtures the S. Italians and Sicilians received. Just a thought.