Greek Discussion Thread

[23abc]

I opened this thread for discussion about Greeks. I noticed that there are a few threads around about specific topics about Greeks, but not one which is filled with miscellaneous ones. Feel free to post anything about Greeks in here.



I will start in this first post by posting some things which I found interesting.

There is a little known feature on vahaduo (https://vahaduo.github.io/vahaduo/) that I learnt about recently. The distance tab contains modes which allow direct comparison of two target samples. The results of these modes can provide interesting insight into the differences between two target samples in a nice format.

Let us take a look at Turkish_Trabzon vs. Armenian_Hemsheni.



What this output seems to tell me is that there are two main reasons why they are not exactly identical:

1. Pontians share more of some ancestral component which is also found in Empuries, Calabrians, other Greeks and even Sicily_LBA. I wonder what that component is?
2. Pontians share less of some ancestral component which is found in the ancient Caucasus populations and Georgian Imer.

A reasonable explanation for these two trends is that Pontians and Hemsheni are nearly identical except the former clearly has more ancient Greek admixture, most likely similar to that of the Empuries sample.

How about Greek_Kos vs. Greek_Crete?



Like last time, it's showing us the two main reasons why they are different:

1. Greeks from Kos have more of an affinity to ancient Anatolians and modern Levantines than Cretans.
2. Cretans have more affinity to populations with Slavo-baltic admixture than Greeks from Kos.

These trends are obviously the result of the Slavic migrations into the Balkans having less of an impact into the Dodecanese. Possibly some recent Anatolian movement towards the Dodecanese too, of course, but can be explained by Dodecanese always having more Anatolian than the rest of Greece.

Finally, let us take a look at myself compared to Greek_Kos.



In this case, it is a bit harder to understand the output but here are my thoughts on it. Firstly, I have additional Iranian/Caucasus admixture from the unknown ancestry of my mother. This causes me to have more affinity towards Iran/Maykop than Kos and also reduces my Neolithic Farmer admixture, making me more distant to ancient Europeans like Mycenaeans and Sardinians compared to Kos.

Actually, in cases like this, where it may be harder to understand what's happening, there's another mode worth exploring. It compares using a ratio instead of an absolute difference.



So compared to Kos, the main difference is indeed that I share some sort of ancestry found in Eastern Anatolia and less to the East Med.



Hopefully you didn't find reading this a complete waste of time. You can post your thoughts here, or show your own examples and give your own interpretation to the output. Or you can post about something else, as long as it is in some way related to Greeks.

[dosas]

screencapture-vahaduo-github-io-vahaduo-1604603663186.png

Greek Trabzon VS Turkish Trabzon: the first is looking towards the Caucausus, the second towards the East Med, very interesting little fact that also correlates to known historical ethnographic sources, Eastern Pontus Greek were mainly a mountainous folk, is this a possible explanation to their Caucasian shift?

[oz]

This might be off topic because it's not about genetics. Our name for you "Grk" is like the first part of the word "grkljan" or "grlo" which means throat. I wonder if there's something to that? Like the opposite of how we call Germans "Njemci" which means mute/can't speak/dumb, which is pretty funny that we still call them that to this day.

[dosas]

This might be off topic because it's not about genetics. Our name for you "Grk" is like the first part of the word "grkljan" or "grlo" which means throat. I wonder if there's something to that? Like the opposite of how we call Germans "Njemci" which means mute/can't speak/dumb, which is pretty funny that we still call them that to this day.

Many vowels in the language phonetics, maybe?

[oz]

Many vowels in the language phonetics, maybe?

I don't know if it's only coincidental. For example "tur" is one of our words for butt... I doubt we got that from the word Turk lol. The word "fin" means nice, good, fine, does it have a connection with Fins who we call Finci? I just wonder if these linguistic coincidences actually mean anything. Maybe sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

[dosas]

Using the ancients list and comparing Greek and Turkish Trabzon.

screencapture-vahaduo-github-io-vahaduo-1604646345112.png


Greek Trabzon looks Caucasian shifted, compared to its counterpart, whereas Turkish Trabzon looks, again, like it's shifting towards the Levant.

[Sorcelow]

As you mentioned, Greeks from Kos show a strong genetic connection to BA Anatolian groups. In my opinion, it's likely that the Aegean islands always formed the bridge between Anatolian and Mycenaean like populations. Both are pretty close to each-other anyway, with the former having a higher share of CHG/IranN ancestry.

Target: Greek_Kos

Distance: 0.7373% / 0.00737258
33.6 TUR_Isparta_EBA
27.2 Levant_Beirut_ERoman
17.4 Iberia_Northeast_Empuries2
16.4 Yamnaya_BGR
5.4 HUN_Avar_Szolad

It would be interesting to see LBA/IA genomes from the Aegean. I hope the new paper on Greek genetics that people have been talking about is able to shed light on this region.

[dosas]

Btw, former Greek_Thrace gets its best fit with Yamnaya_BGR (scaled), among all other possible combos I've tried.

Target: Greek_Thrace_scaled
Distance: 3.1731% / 0.03173115
62.2 Yamnaya_BGR
34.4 TUR_Barcin_N
1.4 Papuan
1.2 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
0.6 WHG
0.2 RUS_Devils_Gate_Cave_N

[lacreme]

I compared my friend with his closest population which is Greek Izmir. What about him ? I suppose more Iran+Caucasus and less East Med+balkan compared to it ?

Distance ratio: ( AC / BC ) ↑
A: Chris_scaled
B: Greek_Izmir
C: ↴
0.95267289 ARM_Areni_C
0.96091927 IRN_Hajji_Firuz_IA
0.96116089 Iranian_Zoroastrian
0.96523366 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_Historic
0.96534791 UZB_Sappali_Tepe_BA_o
0.96553618 Kurdish
0.96560452 RUS_Maykop
0.96572360 Ezid
0.96599409 Iranian_Mazandarani
0.96714648 Roma_Porto
0.96801426 TKM_Gonur3_BA
0.96866805 Iranian_Fars
0.96877455 Iranian_Lor
0.96920678 IRN_Hajji_Firuz_BA
0.96963681 Levant_Megiddo_MLBA_o1
0.97047172 Parsi_Pakistan
0.97118610 Tajik_Yagnobi
0.97155562 Parsi_India
0.97175016 ARM_LBA
0.97178703 Iranian_Bandari
0.97185705 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.97193822 Roma_Granada
0.97272040 UZB_Bustan_BA
0.97300703 Balochi
0.97328257 Roma_Barcelona


Distance ratio: ( AC / BC ) ↓
A: Chris_scaled
B: Greek_Izmir
C: ↴
1.77741008 Greek_Peloponnese
1.44691341 Italian_Basilicata
1.41519340 Italian_Molise
1.34984581 IND_Roopkund_B
1.31209575 Italian_Apulia
1.25362208 Italian_Abruzzo
1.24134222 ITA_Tivoli_Renaissance
1.21844960 ITA_Rome_Late_Antiquity
1.19736035 Italian_Campania
1.18829161 ITA_Prenestini_tribe_IA_o
1.17815614 Italian_Marche
1.16016036 Sicilian_East
1.15461051 VK2020_ITA_Foggia_MA
1.15392653 Albanian
1.14112336 Italian_Lazio
1.14023527 Greek_Central_Macedonia
1.13925336 Italian_Calabria
1.13642758 ITA_Rome_MA
1.13148267 Italian_Umbria
1.12940633 Ashkenazi_Belarussia
1.11624683 BGR_IA
1.10928987 Italian_Tuscany
1.10551542 Greek_Thessaly
1.09321539 ITA_Collegno_MA_o1
1.08164984 Greek_Kos

[Johnny ola]

Good job mate.Dosas helped me as well with mines results.They making sense in everything.In comparison with my mother's results, is that i am more med and levant shifted(east med) while my mother is clearly more caucasus.When you delete the Caucasus input from the Greek_Trabzon(witch is Georgian like) you get something like Greek Central Anatolia or Greek_Kos/Crete.Its obvious that there is a cline from Trabzon/Pontus that goes to the islands witch seems associated with BA Anatolia.I am not sure if the east med pull in the Trabzon is Greek or Anatolian but it is very close with Kos/Crete etc.It is probably because these islands received a gene flow from west asia at some time.We should wait for samples thought,but even mainland Greeks if you delete their Slavic/Balkanic infleunce they get something like BA(not much) but still it is there.