Balkan - here vs. 23

[wombatofthenorth]

I haven't really looked into it but I hear that many say the Balkan hear is doled out very differently than at 23 and wrong here.... but what if the DNA.LAND stuff makes more sense?

At 23 someone has a half 100% Romanian ancestor who tests as 30% Balkan on 23 but a perfect 52% at DNA.LAND.

Granted I haven't looked into it so perhaps the DNA.LAND Balkan is often just crazy or very different in it's own way on average though.

But someone else on 23 brought up an interesting point "I don't understand, Slovenia on 23andMe is not same blue like Balkan. It is in East Europe. Why?"

Why indeed if they do that. That doesn't seem to match stuff I had just been reading.

I looked into it and it seems they do and what they do is apparently:
Eastern European (Belarusians, Czechs, Hungarians, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Ukrainian)

Balkan (Albanian, Bosnian and Herzegovinian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Macedonian, Maltese, Montenegrin, Romanian, Serbian)

This would appear to be entirely contrary to a study published 9/2/15 on PLOS where they say that the South Slavic/non-far southern Balkan countries have a closer genetic match to each other than to West/East/North Slavic or Baltic groups and much closer than to Albanians and Greeks. It says that while some divides are a soft gradient (such as Czechs with directly over the border Germans) that others are much harder walls (such as Polish people with just over the border Germans or Polish groups within Germany such as Sorbs with their surrounding Germans or such as between South Slavic people with Macedonians and Greeks).

So why are Slovenians and Hungarians mixed into their Eastern European (Baltic plus West/East/North Slavic) group and why are Albanians and Greeks put into the same Balkan category as many in the South Slavic group?

Maybe this is why it is unstable at times between Eastern European and Balkan and between South Slavic Balkan and Greek Balkan and doesn't always work so well.

According to the study I read they should have grouped them as:
--------------------------
1. Eastern European:
based upon three sub categories
West Slavic - Polish, Sorbs, Czechs, Slovakians
East Slavic - Belorussians, Ukrainians, North Russians, Central Russians, Southern Russians (with apparently Belorussians, Ukrainians and South Russians the closest matching)
Baltic - Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians (although the Estonians have a merge into Finland and much closer ties to Finland than the two Baltic speaking Baltic countries they do still have an overall considerably closer autosomal tie to to the Baltic speaking Baltic countries; interestingly all three Baltic nations, going by Y DNA only are tied together and with the Finns much more than to any of the Slavic groups)
-------------------------
2. Balkan (made up of South Slavic and a few non-Slavic speakers who are autosomally fully related to the South Slavic speakers- see a few posts back for explanation):
Slovenians, Croatians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Montenegrians, Serbians, Hungarians, Romanians and probably Macedonians
-------------------
And Albanians and Greeks into a not sure what to call it Greek? Greek/Greek Balkan? Greek/Albanian? Southern Balkan? group of their own that apparently would be as from the South Slavic Group as the Broadly Northwestern European group is from the Eastern European group above and that they are farther from the South Slavic Group than the South Slavic Group is from the Eastern European Group.
--------------

[wombatofthenorth]

Hmm actually I see there here they seem to use Abanians, Bulgarians and Greeks as major defining points for their Balkan category so it seems like their category is weird too, just in a different way than 23 and would be likely to pick up and cross with some Southern Europeans and other stuff. The study above had specifically suggested that Albanian and Greek be split out from Balkan and into their own Southern Balkan category if you wanted Balkan and Eastern European to run consistently.

[Sikeliot]

If anyone should not be considered genetically Balkan, it is Croatians, who are closer to Central European Slavs or at least significantly shifted northward.

I would indeed separate out Albanian and Greek, but since they plot only close to one another (too much NE European affinity to be grouped with Italy, too little to be grouped with Balkan Slavs), I would call it "South Balkan".

I'd do it this way:


- Croatians get bumped from the Balkan cluster altogether.
- Serbs, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Bulgarians are "Balkan Slavic"
- Albanians and Greeks get renamed "South Balkan"

[Illyro-Vlach]

If anyone should not be considered genetically Balkan, it is Croatians, who are closer to Central European Slavs or at least significantly shifted northward.

I would indeed separate out Albanian and Greek, but since they plot only close to one another (too much NE European affinity to be grouped with Italy, too little to be grouped with Balkan Slavs), I would call it "South Balkan".

I'd do it this way:


- Croatians get bumped from the Balkan cluster altogether.
- Serbs, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Bulgarians are "Balkan Slavic"
- Albanians and Greeks get renamed "South Balkan"

100% Croatian here going back for several generations. I'm quite Balkan. Take a look.

[Constantine]

Yeah it never made sense to me either. Greeks (and Albos) need to get their own category. They are the most aboriginal, the "atomic substrata," if you will, to the Balkans and are invaluable for research.

There's a _reason_ they always pop up near Tuscans on the various calculators....

[Shaikorth]

This is a complicated issue. If unlinked loci are used, like in DNAland, Balkan based on Greeks and Albanians can overlap with an Italian cluster based on Tuscans etc. because they have similar proportions of ancestral components and that will mess with results.
23andMe's method is for more recent ancestry and doesn't do that so easily. Their Italian reference might have been more southern too, I'm not 100% certain about that.

 

[Volat]

After seeing numerous charts from 23andme , DNA.land and results from personal projects I would categories genome of Slavs as such

Southern group – Macedonians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniaks, most of Croats.
Central group – Croats of northern districts, Slovenes, Slovaks, Czechs, west Ukrainians, south-east Poles.
Northern group – central & eastern Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Poles.
Marginal groups such as Pomors of Archangel region (northern Russia), Terek Cossacks (Caucasus) and others.

Non-Slavic neighbours show genetic similarities to each Slavic group with some exceptions.

[kingjohn]

dear shaikroth
so dna land method goes farther back in time ?
because they used unlinked snp ? how do you know that they used unlinked snp ?
best regards
adam

[Shaikorth]

dear shaikroth
so dna land method goes farther back in time ?
because they used unlinked snp ? how do you know that they used unlinked snp ?
best regards
adam

I assume so because they tell it's STRUCTURE-based in the FAQ.

We use Dr. Joe Pickrell's Ancestry program, which is an implementation of the supervised STRUCTURE model with a custom reference panel.

[Morges]

Balkan's DNA.Land is bigger than Balkan's 23andme, at least for many Italians. For example one friend of mine scores 31% Balkan on DNA.Land but on 23andme he is only 5%, on the other hand on 23andme he scores 92% Italian while on DNA.Land he scores 0% but surely absorbed into Mediterranean Islander (more than 50% for him) who is really a Southern Italian/Maltese component more than other. I guess is also question of Balkan's samples and down time more ancient than 23andme.