Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean

[Erikl86]

So this really means Sicily was at least partially "Greek" as early as many of the Aegean islands were, and we should challenge conventional history that calls Siculi, Elymians "indigenous" but not Greeks, when this means Greeks may have arrived before these populations.

Perhaps, but certainly not East Med, which the Aegeans were even before the arrival of the Mycenaeans which Hellenized places like Crete.

Mycenaeans are mostly Minoan, with an additional Steppe ancestry. Originally, Sicily was inhabited by West Mediterranean people. I have no idea if by the time the Greeks started colonizing Sicily as part of what we call Magna Graecia, if any Sicilian spoke Greek. IMO, the culture and languages of the Siculi, Elymians and Sicani ruled Sicily.

[Claudio]

Ok so you understand then that I didn't realize that the Late Bronze Age corresponds to Magna Grecia settlement. And I do see a shift in the Middle Bronze Age that brings Sicilians away from Sardinians and toward Aegean peoples. So with that you agree with the rest of what I said? Mycenaeans were more EEF/West Med shifted than modern Sicilians are, and to get from Mycenaeans to modern Sicilians you need 1) more Steppe input, likely brought from further north in Italy and 2) Phoenician and North African input.

Levantine input is not strong in mainland Greeks, which means that even if there was no Slavic input in Greece, I think we would still see differences between them and Sicilians/Cretans/Jews, no?

Sicilian Bell Beaker also has a significant Iranian shift, too. But none of these (Mycenaeans or early Sicilians) had Levantine input, which I believe is needed to contextualize these people in modern terms. Not sure how the Steppe nor North African influence Sicilian plotting.

“1) more Steppe input,likely brought from further north in Italy and 2) Phoenician and North African input.”
If your making a comparison to modern Sicilians then regarding 2) it seems to me you are completely ignoring the later Levantine/North African input from the Islamic era Admixture Population replacement & déplacement that you had previously accepted.

[Björnsson]

It's just bizarre that once the Roman Republic becomes an empire, suddenly the genomes happen to look similar to some aggregate of the new colonies and whatever existed in Iron Age Rome before hand. This would also be explained by the fact major cities are often hubs for immigrants, very similar to major cities today in 1st world countries. That said, you could still be right, but the significant eastern influence didn't seem to be quite so pronounced in the earlier Iron and Neolithic periods around the city of Rome. Why would that be, unless it was due to the fact it wasn't pronounced overall?

It's obvious that the expansion of Magna Græcia coincided with an Etruscan synthesis, Latium being the medium between them. This is the source of all Roman inheritance from Hellenistic culture, as well as indigenous Italian background, beginning with the Kingdom itself, whether or not it is based primarily off of Aeneas or Romulus and Remus. Rome was naturally poised to expansion in both directions.

[Sikeliot]

“1) more Steppe input,likely brought from further north in Italy and 2) Phoenician and North African input.”
If your making a comparison to modern Sicilians then regarding 2) it seems to me you are completely ignoring the later Levantine/North African input from the Islamic era Admixture Population replacement & déplacement that you had previously accepted.

Levantines are Canaanites even if they arrived under Arab rule. They’re Arabized. I definitely accept Arab era NA input also.

[Sikeliot]

Perhaps, but certainly not East Med, which the Aegeans were even before the arrival of the Mycenaeans which Hellenized places like Crete.

Mycenaeans are mostly Minoan, with an additional Steppe ancestry. Originally, Sicily was inhabited by West Mediterranean people. I have no idea if by the time the Greeks started colonizing Sicily as part of what we call Magna Graecia, if any Sicilian spoke Greek. IMO, the culture and languages of the Siculi, Elymians and Sicani ruled Sicily.

So these groups had become Aegean mixed by the time Magna Graecia happens is your point.

[Ajeje Brazorf]

How do you interpret this Fig., as a series of population mixtures or a series of replacements?:

The population sub-structure of the Iron Age is penalized by two factors:

- has been put together with the Late Republican age, which was a period of great migration
- consists of too few samples

Moreover, it is unlikely that the Iron Age was 10% North African as shown in the picture, when in the end these North African contributions are 4% in the Imperial age and seem not to exist in Late Antiquity. A single North African-admixed Iron Age sample, together with very few local samples, will give a distorted image in percentages.

[Assiette mix]

Yeah, Razib's thesis fails to explain why:

a) Iron Age Romans cluster with South French/Spaniards/North Italians while modern Romans are very close to South Italians

b) The latitude at which Near Eastern ancestry begins to rapidly increase in modern Italy is NOT around Rome.... but rather ~300km further north, around Florence

What population is giving these high amounts of Iran_N/CHG related ancestry in the IA? 850, 437 seem to have 30-40% .

The Lazio samples on G25 dont look that different from Southern Italians at all, save for less Iran_N but I concur with what others said it seems lay populations from the South moved in, not from the North contrary to the paper.

I am not surprised that many Antiquity Romans were so Near Eastern shifted, their world was heavily connected with the Levant/Eastern Mediterranean far more than with Europe at this time. Also considering cities like Antioch ,Tarsus, Beirut were largely Greek speaking cities , culturally it would be quite similar (as classical Roman culture itself is heavily derived and adapted from Hellenic culture). In essence people moving from the Eastern Mediterranean were not going to have a culture shock when they moved to Rome.


{
"sample": "Italian_Lazio: PG28",
"fit": 3.7326,
"Anatolia_Barcin_N": 72.5,
"RUS_Karelia_HG": 14.17,
"IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N": 11.67,
"ITA_Villabruna": 1.67,
"closestDistances": [
"Anatolia_Barcin_N:I1


"sample": "Italian_Campania:NaN195ST",
"fit": 3.2083,
"Anatolia_Barcin_N": 72.5,
"IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N": 15.83,
"RUS_Karelia_HG": 11.67,
"ITA_Villabruna": 0,

Yes, that is indeed a Visigothic sample

Edit: Same 2-pop model with G25+nMonte using averages. The Gothic reference was calculated from the Visigothic ones, minus the obvious Basque-like individual:

[1] "distance%=1.4042"

Italian_Lazio

Roman_Imperial_proxy,71.6
Gothic,28.4

None of those samples are from peer reviewed papers, so it's just a pointless talk.

[Assiette mix]

Well is the Levantine admixture Natufian related? Remember the Sicilian Beaker genome we have is dated to like 2,000 BC. It's essentially mostly farmer + CHG..almost Minoan like. I think the populations of Southern Italy and Sicily were always extremely 'Southern'. Just now they are Anatolian farmer + CHG + Natufian where in 2,000 BC it was Anatolian Farmer + CHG. Again the Natufian element probably first arrived with the Phoenicians.

]

They are also 25-30% more Yamnaya like.

[1] distance%=5.3559 / distance=0.053559

Beaker_Sicily:I4930

Barcin_N 82.15
Yamnaya_Samara 8.8
Iran_N 6.9
WHG 2.15

[1] distance%=2.6726 / distance=0.026726

Sicilian_East

Barcin_N 50.25
Yamnaya_Samara 25.85
Levant_N 13.75
Iran_N 8.85
WHG 0.75
Yoruba 0.55

[1] distance%=2.6143 / distance=0.026143

Sicilian_West

Barcin_N 46.1
Yamnaya_Samara 24.65
Levant_N 15.6
Iran_N 8.8
WHG 4
Yoruba 0.85

[R.Rocca]

Finally we find the typical Yamnaya male lineage in sample R1016 which is positive for R-S20902, which is an R-Z2103 equivalent. This sample is dated to 900 - 700 BCE and, if I'm not mistaken, it's the most western ancient R-Z2103 sample to date (by far). This sample is very interesting because he is an Iron Age Latin living around the time when Rome was being founded. He would have spoken archaic Latin, obviously an IE language.

Imperial Roman sample R123 (77- 213 calCE) is also R-S20902.

[Nebuchadnezzar II]

A few comments:

Looks like the Iranian-like contribution in Italian Neolithic is not actually a mistake or mislabelling, but real. There seems to be quite a bit of complex substructure in EEF by now (Barcin more Levant_N and Iran_N compared to original Anatolia_N, Greece_N having a touch more Levant_N or even North African compared to Anatolia_N, and so on), this would probably take a bit more analysis to tease out all the patterns.

Can someone remind me how much Iran_N/CHG is in Anatolian_N? Figure S.12 in this paper's supplements shows several individuals with trace levels of Iran_N/CHG in between homogenous samples framed by black boxes and this Iranian component is found in variable amounts across the EEF samples of Greece, Spain&Iberia, Central Europe (and now Italy) but not at all in Britain. What gives? I know Feldman's paper showed minor admixture into Central Anatolians during the Early Holocene from CHG/Iran but did this reach Northwest Anatolia too or are we looking at multiple waves of farmer migrants accounting for this heterogeneity?

Screenshot 2019-11-09 at 01.44.49.png