E-V13 entered Greece with Illyrians and Dorian invasions

[alan]

I wonder if instead of looking to direction links to Sintashta etc to explain some Greek links to Indo-Iranian, we should maybe look at Greeks being in contact at some time and culture upstream of Sintashta etc. Fatyanovo is as far back as that chain can be chased without hitting the problem of the origin of Fatyanovo. The old entries you see on Wiki etc linking Fatyanovo to being some sort of offshoot of Middle Dnieper has not been substantiated. Indeed the most up to date attempts to date both these cultures seem to indicate that Fatyanovo is older than Middle Dnieper. Papers I looked at recently pointed to Fatyanovo having links both south in that direction and west towards the east and south Baltic CW but didnt exactly come down on anything certain regarding an origin point. Fatyanovo is less steppe and more mixed with farmer DNA - making it kind of similar to beaker and later CW. Im wondering about this because the origins of Greek could ultimately be down to a group that were ancestral to Fatyanovo. The centum nature of Greek strongly suggests a neighbour not a direct offshoot of the latter as does (IMO) the likelihood that the steppe culture they ultimately derived from was likely a Z2103 dominated one, not an R1a or L51 dominated ones. So perhaps the distant ancestors of the Greeks were a Z2103 heavy group to the south of the CW ancestor of the Fatyanovo group c. 2800BC. Certainly it is hard to see the ancestors of the Greeks being in the CW zone c. 2800BC. I wonder if they could be from a Yamnaya type group who were effected linguistically by contact with CW people from the same part of the CW horizon that sent out the offshoot that formed Fatyanovo. who migrated towards Ukraine. There are some interesting contact points between CW groups coming south-eastwards from Poland and Yamnaya Groups in the Rivers between the east flank of the Carpathians and the Dnieper.

[alan]

One major confounding thing about tracking down the ancestry of the Greeks is they did a hell of a lot of networking and trading with people they had no ethnic or linguistic links. So, portable material culture and anything that can arrive purely by trade links and friendly relations becomes unreliable indicators of origin or affinity. Usually I think when you have that situation, you need to strip away as much of the portable material culture and just look at the baseline traits like subsistence, settlement patterns, indicators of the structure of the society and burial traditions. Even that is not infallible but it is probably the best approach. I often see the chariot cited as a key indicator but the truth is the chariot spread throughout Euroasia and crossed many linguistic and cultural borders without (in a lot of cases) changing the language or displacing peoples. I suspect the chariot could have been spread very easily by small numbers of fighting men and craftsmen employed by local kings of many ethnicities, followed by those skills being absorbed and copied afterwards. Mycenaean Greece had trade contacts with areas where the chariot was known. Its easy to envisage the chariot, the skills and the crafts making their way to Greece without a change in people or language. The shaft grave existed in pre-Mycenean Greece too. The thing about face masks is a very tenuous parallel too.

Most importantly, it would be a big surprise if the Greek language turned out to have been initially spread by a Z93 type R1a group. It seems much more likely that the Greeks language arose among a Z2103 group IMO. There is of course at least one centum group who featured Z2103 - the Afansievo group (assuming they were Tocharians) and some of the other Balkans groups might have been. The greeks were not saetimised so that is a curious thing when you consider alleged language similarities with Indo-Iranian etc. So, maybe that indicates the roots of the Greeks lay close to but not within the ultimate root of the Fatyanovo-Abashevo etc type cultural chain and had moved outside the zone where/when satemisation occurred. Satemisation must have occurred fairly early for it to have effected both the ancestors of the Balto-Slavic people and Info-Iranians as well as some Balkans originated groups like Albanians (Dacians??) and Armenians. It looks to me like the Albanians and Armenians must have lain between the Greeks and that CW derived chain of R1a dominated cultures who headed east into Asia. I tend to weigh this all up and feel that the pre-proto-Greeks were likely somewhere like Ukraine c. 3000BC and by 2800BC they were in the Balkans or south Carpathians kind of area. I suspect that they were in the western half of the Balkans to the north of Greece by 2500BC or so and in parts of western Greece by 2200BC.

I see two pre-adaptions of importance to making a success of living in Greece. Firstly experience of life in a fairly mountainous and fairy dry part of Europe. Secondly some maritime ability would be very useful in much of Greece except the north-central part. An rugged hilly environment is of course present in a lot of the Balkans north of Greece and the Carpatians too. Maritime skills would of course be present in areas north of Greece like the Adriatic Balkans or the western coast of the Black sea in eastern Bulgaria and eastern Romania. It seems to me that the ancestors of the Albanians (who I believe lived in Dacia) and the ancestors of the Armenians lived east of the ancestors of the Greeks, forming a buffer between them and groups further east of the Slavic and Indo-Iranian types. I am pretty sure the Balto-Slavic homeland is going to transpire to be in the middle Dnieper to Pripit area of NW Ukraine and southern Belarus - the Dnieper route beyond them giving contact c. 2750BC with the Fatyanovo groups to the north. Both are R1a satem groups of course and both with eastern CW links. It seems likely to me that the ancestors of the Greeks, Armenians and Albanians were further south and more likely Yamnaya derived. So a location for the Albanians and Armenians after 3000BC seems likely to have been the west end of the steppes perhaps between the Lower half of the Dnieper and Lower half of the Dniester ( or even the serit) with CW derived groups just upstream of them and in contact. Greeks seem likely to me to have been a directly to the west of them in the Balkans or south Carpathians area.

[Hawk]

There is a new Syrian E-L618.

This just reinforces that the Mushabians who introduced microburin technology and potentially the idea of proto-farming from Mesolithic Egypt were likely E-L618.

A part of this group formed the Cardium Pottery maritime farmers.

[rafc]

One major confounding thing about tracking down the ancestry of the Greeks is they did a hell of a lot of networking and trading with people they had no ethnic or linguistic links. So, portable material culture and anything that can arrive purely by trade links and friendly relations becomes unreliable indicators of origin or affinity. Usually I think when you have that situation, you need to strip away as much of the portable material culture and just look at the baseline traits like subsistence, settlement patterns, indicators of the structure of the society and burial traditions. Even that is not infallible but it is probably the best approach. I often see the chariot cited as a key indicator but the truth is the chariot spread throughout Euroasia and crossed many linguistic and cultural borders without (in a lot of cases) changing the language or displacing peoples. I suspect the chariot could have been spread very easily by small numbers of fighting men and craftsmen employed by local kings of many ethnicities, followed by those skills being absorbed and copied afterwards. Mycenaean Greece had trade contacts with areas where the chariot was known. Its easy to envisage the chariot, the skills and the crafts making their way to Greece without a change in people or language. The shaft grave existed in pre-Mycenean Greece too. The thing about face masks is a very tenuous parallel too.

I agree, people are always looking for parallels between Mycenaean Greece and other groups to track down ancestry, but most parallels can simply be the result of exchange of prestige goods. Looking for such origins only makes sense if the Greeks arrived right before the Mycenaean age. If they arrived 500 years before, than any similarity to another group in the Mycenaean age is flimsy proof.

I suspect that they were in the western half of the Balkans to the north of Greece by 2500BC or so and in parts of western Greece by 2200BC.

I have also come to suspect this period. Based on the Sitagroi data it does seem likely Greek speakers might have been there by 2700/2600BC (clearly a new populaton with simpeler houses and pottery)

I see two pre-adaptions of importance to making a success of living in Greece. Firstly experience of life in a fairly mountainous and fairy dry part of Europe. Secondly some maritime ability would be very useful in much of Greece except the north-central part. An rugged hilly environment is of course present in a lot of the Balkans north of Greece and the Carpatians too. Maritime skills would of course be present in areas north of Greece like the Adriatic Balkans or the western coast of the Black sea in eastern Bulgaria and eastern Romania. It seems to me that the ancestors of the Albanians (who I believe lived in Dacia) and the ancestors of the Armenians lived east of the ancestors of the Greeks, forming a buffer between them and groups further east of the Slavic and Indo-Iranian types. I am pretty sure the Balto-Slavic homeland is going to transpire to be in the middle Dnieper to Pripit area of NW Ukraine and southern Belarus - the Dnieper route beyond them giving contact c. 2750BC with the Fatyanovo groups to the north. Both are R1a satem groups of course and both with eastern CW links. It seems likely to me that the ancestors of the Greeks, Armenians and Albanians were further south and more likely Yamnaya derived. So a location for the Albanians and Armenians after 3000BC seems likely to have been the west end of the steppes perhaps between the Lower half of the Dnieper and Lower half of the Dniester ( or even the serit) with CW derived groups just upstream of them and in contact. Greeks seem likely to me to have been a directly to the west of them in the Balkans or south Carpathians area.

In the second half of the 4th millenium BC most of southeastern-Europe was resettled by groups who belonged to the Baden complex. It's not clear if this implies they shared a genetic origin, but the Baden samples that were tested had indigenous Y-haplogroups and no Steppe admixture. If the people that settled at Sitagroï in 2700/2600BC were Greek speakers, it seems to me there is only one option. They must have been descendants of the Yamnaya people moving into the Danube-valley. I think the Yamnaya there gradually took over elements from the lifestyle of the local population and lost there pure nomadic character, changing more to a mobile, pastoral society that did build houses. It would make sense for them to imitate they houses they could see. These were the typical Balkanian Apsidal houses that they would later build in Greece. I think this mixed population was the one showing up in Sitagroï at 2700/2600BC, probably spreading along the Axios valley to the northwest. Only in a second step did they move southwards, after a period in which there were already some contacts (which explains some traits showing up in Greece even before EHIIb/EHIII. You could wonder how much of non-IE influence on things like religion were actually picked up before they went into Greece rather than in Greece, as is commonly assumed.

[Riverman]

There is a new Syrian E-L618.

This just reinforces that the Mushabians who introduced microburin technology and potentially the idea of proto-farming from Mesolithic Egypt were likely E-L618.

A part of this group formed the Cardium Pottery maritime farmers.

Good to know. I think it doesn't prove a North East African origin, though that's a likely scenario, but it makes Nile Valley and/or the Southern Levante/Near East the place of origin. Which one exclusively or more so, we will see. In any case, whereever it came from, it makes the route through the Levante and then the Eastern Mediterranean and/or Anatolia the most likely and it connects, like it was always the most likely scenario, Natufians with the spread of the E1b, including the ancestors of E-V13. So we can largely concentrate on Natufian origins to get a better picture. And to assess that, we either need ancient DNA from the Nile Valley, Southern Near East, Yemen and Saudia Arabia, or even Palestine-Syria, the Levante, from pre-Natufian populations. If, for example, in Palestine and Syria, the pre-Natufian inhabitants were quite different, it would strengthen an origin from either the Nile Valley or Southern Arabia. If one region is more problematic, one can exclude the others. In any case we need more samples, like always.

But every such find makes any other route than through the Levante much less likely, that's the takeaway for me.

[Hawk]

Good to know. I think it doesn't prove a North East African origin, though that's a likely scenario, but it makes Nile Valley and/or the Southern Levante/Near East the place of origin. Which one exclusively or more so, we will see. In any case, whereever it came from, it makes the route through the Levante and then the Eastern Mediterranean and/or Anatolia the most likely and it connects, like it was always the most likely scenario, Natufians with the spread of the E1b, including the ancestors of E-V13. So we can largely concentrate on Natufian origins to get a better picture. And to assess that, we either need ancient DNA from the Nile Valley, Southern Near East, Yemen and Saudia Arabia, or even Palestine-Syria, the Levante, from pre-Natufian populations. If, for example, in Palestine and Syria, the pre-Natufian inhabitants were quite different, it would strengthen an origin from either the Nile Valley or Southern Arabia. If one region is more problematic, one can exclude the others. In any case we need more samples, like always.

But every such find makes any other route than through the Levante much less likely, that's the takeaway for me.

In my opinion the Natufian E-M123 were the Ramonian Levantines while various E-M78 clades the most prominent being E-L618 were the Mushabian newcomers bringing with them

proto-farming idea, microburin technology and Proto Afro-Asiatic language.

We know from ages that Cardial farmers were different from others in having Natufian-like/Iberomarusian-like affinities. Their starting point was Turkey/Syria border, so PPNB area most likely.

[Hawk]

Just found out some details about the Glasinac Culture, the people who beared this culture were known as Autariate one of the three most powerfull Illyrian tribes which much probably were Urnfield/Hallstatt descended.



They burned their dead on tumuli.

They had items with typical Urnfield avian theme.

[Hawk]

Again, interesting.

The other very powerful Illyrian tribe Ardiae have a name derived from ardea/herons a sea bird. Again sea birds are the main East-Urnfield recurring theme.

[Aspar]

Funny how people are still discussing Illyrians and Doric Greeks when till date, the only relevant E-V13 samples before the common era are those associated with the Eastern Balkan. Let's not forget that much of the modern Greeks E-V13 might not be of ancient Greek extraction at all. To back up this I will cite the ancient Greek historian Strabo:

Moreover, the barbarian origin of some is indicated by their names—Cecrops, Godrus, Aïclus, Cothus, Drymas, and Crinacus. And even to the present day the Thracians, Illyrians, and Epeirotes live on the flanks of the Greeks (though this was still more the case formerly than now); indeed most of the country that at the present time is indisputably Greece is held by the barbarians—Macedonia and certain parts of Thessaly by the Thracians, and the parts above Acarnania and Aetolia by the Thesproti, the Cassopaei, the Amphilochi, the Molossi, and the Athamanes—Epeirotic tribes.

So it seems that during the time Strabo lived, many tribes of Thracian and Illyrian extraction moved deep into Greek lands. Of course, during this time, the vast control of the Balkan lands was under Roman control.

I'm still on opinion that E-V13 hasn't got anything to do with ancient Greeks and if any would be found at all, that would rather indicate a non-Greek input in some Greek tribes.

[rafc]

I'm still on opinion that E-V13 hasn't got anything to do with ancient Greeks and if any would be found at all, that would rather indicate a non-Greek input in some Greek tribes.

I think that is basically what is being argued, that V13 was not originally Greek, hence mostly absent in Greece before the Iron age, but that they mixed on the northern fringes and went southwards with Northwest-Greek tribes.

If you believe V13 has nothing to do with ancient Greeks, how do you explain high V13 presence in Sicily and Southern Italy, but also on islands like Creta and Cyprus? You see this as a result of later migrations or by a different vector than Greek colonisation?