Affinity of Ancient and Modern Italians

July 5, 2012

Ancient DNA analysis reveals that Ötzi the Iceman clusters with modern Southern Europeans and closest to Italians (the orange "Europe S" dots in the plots below), especially those from the island of Sardinia. Other Italians pull away toward Southeastern and Central Europe consistent with geography and some post-Neolithic gene flow from those areas (e.g. Italics, Greeks, Etruscans, Celts), but despite that and centuries of history, they're still very similar to their prehistoric ancestor.

The first analysis was to determine if the Iceman's autosomal DNA shows an affinity to any specific population or if he remains an outlier among contemporary samples. We intersected...his genome with the population reference sample consisting of more than 1,300 Europeans...125 individuals from seven North African populations ranging from Egypt to Morocco...and 20 Qatari samples from the Arabian Peninsula. When plotting the Iceman's genotype along the first two major axes of variation in Principal Component space (PC1 versus PC2), PC1 is driven by a north-to-south gradient differentiating North Africans from Europeans, and PC2 aligns individuals along north-to-south gradient within Europe (Fig. 3a). The Iceman clusters nearest to southern European samples, suggesting no greater genetic affinity with the North African or Middle Eastern components of variation than present day southern Europeans (Fig. 3a).


When considering only European populations, however, we observe that the Iceman clusters closest with five outlier contemporary samples from south-western Europe. In particular, the Iceman abuts the Italian samples originating from geographically isolated regions such as Sardinia (Fig. 3b). Analysis of a larger set of samples, including Sardinians from HGDP across a smaller subset of SNPs, further supports the clustering of the Iceman with samples from Sardinia based on autosomal SNPs (Fig. 3f). [...] The affinity of the Iceman's genome to modern Sardinian groups may reflect relatively recent common ancestry between the ancient Sardinian and Alpine populations, possibly due to the diffusion of Neolithic peoples.


Keller et al. "New insights into the Tyrolean Iceman's origin and phenotype as inferred by whole-genome sequencing". Nature Communications, 2012.

4 comments

louise said...

Try to explain that to those American film directors who thought that the Roman Empire worked like the British Colonies... AHAHAH in the American movies the Romans look like Germans and the slaves are Blacks!!! Why cannot they accept that the Romans were caucasian with brown hair: see their drawnings (the real ones). Also, the Romans considered blue eyes as a bad thing (they thought it was related to a bad sight). The slaves were the peoples from the lands that were conquered, and Africa has never been part of the Roman Empire, get over it! See for instance here, where I live. In Aosta and surroundings there were the Salassi and the Celts before the Romans arrived. Most of the natives were sold as slaves and the new population eventually consisted in Romans.
No wonder most of us have brown hair... We all share the Roman blood. Why are there idiots who does not understand that this is a real national identity?!

louise said...

Good to know we are still the same!!!

It is a shame that immigrants keep coming as in any other Western country. Nowadays Italy is no exception: there are a lot of immigrants (although Indians', Middle Easterns', Africans' etc... lives are not as decent as in the other countries, where they have always been a substancial presence, see France and England for instance)

Crimson Guard said...

Back in November 2011 they posted this:

"The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk—somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. "

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/11/iceman-autopsy/hall-text

Average Joe said...

No wonder most of us have brown hair... We all share the Roman blood

Actually a lot of Europeans have brown hair. It is not a uniquely Roman trait nor is it proof of Roman ancestry.