Greek autosomal DNA from the Aegean and Asia Minor (Anatolia)

[Aquilifer]

How comes then that mainland Greeks are closely related to Southern Italians? Did they suffer from a slavic expansion, too?

In my opinion Anatolian Greeks could be just (predominantly) native Anatolians who were once (as it happened everywhere in the larger Eastern Mediterranean region for many centuries) hellenized (either in the times of the Greek colonies, or in the time of Alexander's Hellenistic Expansion or during the so called Byzantine times).

Hellenization did continuously take place, it's the quintessence of Hellenism since Alexander the Great.

In my opinion the close relationship of mainland Greeks to Albanians and Sicilians could imply that the "original" ancient (mainland) Greeks were more like these three peoples (but of course not the same). Although culturally, the Anatolian Greeks used to be pretty much more sophisticated than mainland Greeks for many many centuries, especially from the beginning of the Byzantine Empire till 1922.

Just my modest two cents...

No, southern Italians didn't suffer from a Slavic expansion but they likely received a small amount of input from invading Germanic tribes like Goths, Lombards, and Normans, but these had a lesser impact than the Slavic migrations into Greece I believe. The inter-relatedness of all three groups comes mostly from prehistoric movements IMO, chiefly from the Neolithic and Bronze Age eras. Having said that, there is also evidence of more recent genetic sharing between Italy and the Balkans:

There is relatively little common ancestry shared between the Italian peninsula and other locations, and what there is seems to derive mostly from longer ago than 2,500 ya. An exception is that Italy and the neighboring Balkan populations share small but significant numbers of common ancestors in the last 1,500 years, as seen in Figures S16 and S17S17. The rate of genetic common ancestry between pairs of Italian individuals seems to have been fairly constant for the past 2,500 years, which combined with significant structure within Italy suggests a constant exchange of migrants between coherent subpopulations.

[Chatzianastasoglou]

This must be from the time when Southern Italy was still "Greek Orthodox" and part of the Byzantine Empire (Syracuse was even the capital for some few years) so there was a strong interaction between both sides of the Ionian Sea. Then there also took place an Arbereshe immigration to Italy in the late middle ages. Any other ideas?

What's the Slavic/Eastern Europe percentage of Italians in average?

[Principe]

This must be from the time when Southern Italy was still "Greek Orthodox" and part of the Byzantine Empire (Syracuse was even the capital for some few years) so there was a strong interaction between both sides of the Ionian Sea. Then there also took place an Arbereshe immigration to Italy in the late middle ages. Any other ideas?

What's the Slavic/Eastern Europe percentage of Italians in average?

Chatzianastasoglou, actually there was very minor Slavic migration to Southern Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarians_in_Italy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molise_Croats

It is mostly restricted to the Molise region of Italy. I would think it is very minor as you can see 3 villages were settled by Bulgars and 18 Croat villages in Molise and Abruzzo.

[Amathusian]

@Principe

Interesting.. Was there any study ever conducted among people from this Molise region of Italy? I know there are several papers on the ancestry of Italians, especially on their paternal ancestry. Would be interesting to see the frequency of R1a in this region.

[Principe]

@Principe

Interesting.. Was there any study ever conducted among people from this Molise region of Italy? I know there are several papers on the ancestry of Italians, especially on their paternal ancestry. Would be interesting to see the frequency of R1a in this region.

Amathusian, to my best knowledge there isn't, Molise is the least populated region of Italy, and is very undersampled, by doing rough calculations the Molise Croats make roughly 5% of the population, to calculate for the Bulgar impact would be difficult since it happened in the early medieval period, I only found out about the Bulgar communities because my uncle by marriage is from one of those three towns, I read up on it and saw. In fact most Campobassans that I know are from more or less this area, they use a lot of 'ic' in their dialect. Maybe I should pursue my uncle to do a dna test who knows maybe he is R1a

[Amathusian]

Guys we have had some interesting discussions in this post.. Now with the release of myOrigins 2.0 by FTDNA, it would be very interesting if we all shared our updated results. You can see mine below:

Southeast Europe: 51%
Asia Minor: 32%
West Middle East (i.e. Levant): 16%

I am pretty sure Anatolian Greeks will be scoring close to 100% Asia Minor. Is that right?

Also interesting is that almost all Greek profiles I have seen score minor East European ancestry, in addition to their high Southeast European ancestry. I believe this is not the case for Sicilians / South Italians. Principe could you confirm?

Finally, the biggest upset in my opinion in this updated calculator is the presence of substantial Sephardic Jew ancestry in Eastern Mediterranean populations. This is a huge mix up. Would be interesting to see what you score for Sephardic. I score 0%, but I have friends who score up to 20%!!

[kingjohn]

in your friends case it is not real Sephardi ancestry
just shared snp with the Sephardi reference
that the "great" algorithm of ftdna read as Sephardi .....
the Sephardi reference that the use probably have significant east med component

in eupedia for a Macedonian score 17% that tell us that something is wrong here
but in Latin America Brazil Mexico and even Spain it self it is probably the real thing

regards
adam

[Chatzianastasoglou]

I'm 100% Southeast Europe now.

The same goes for my father (50% Anatolian Greek).

[Amathusian]

I'm 100% Southeast Europe now.

The same goes for my father (50% Anatolian Greek).

Really?? Amazing! So here goes one mystery.. Which population did FTDNA use for inferring Southeast European ancestry? The Greeks!

[Amathusian]

in your friends case it is not real Sephardi ancestry
just shared snp with the Sephardi reference
that the "great" algorithm of ftdna read as Sephardi .....
the Sephardi reference that the use probably have significant east med component

in eupedia for a Macedonian score 17% that tell us that something is wrong here
but in Latin America Brazil Mexico and even Spain it self it is probably the real thing

regards
adam

Totally agree! The connection of Sephardic Jews with East Mediterranean Europeans should be seriously investigated in a proper research study. I would be more than happy to participate in such a study!