Misleading Genetic Distance Claim

July 22, 2020

Raveane et al. (2019) show that genes mirror geography, but then they make a misleading claim implying that genetic distances (Fst) within Italy are as great as those "across the whole of Europe". To Nordicists who wrongly believe that only their corner of Europe is "fully European" and the others are "mixed", that kind of distance perpetuates the myth of racial differences between Northern and Southern Italians.

But we already know that all Italians cluster between Spaniards and Greeks, which would make "across Southern Europe" a more accurate statement. So what exactly are the authors talking about?

They base their claim on the finding that the median Fst between all of their Italian clusters is 0.0044, which is about the same as the median Fst between all of the European clusters (excluding outlier Finns), and higher than within any of the other countries examined (0.0001 to 0.002). They say that they got similar results after also excluding outlier Sardinians and Basques, but don't show the data.

However, they're still including the Northern Italian clusters from the small regions bordering France, Austria and Slovenia that have many outliers as well, which increases the genetic distances. If you just compare typical Northern Italians (from Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto) to deep Southern Italians (from Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily), Fst between them ranges from 0.001 to 0.0054, with a median of just 0.0024, and an average of 0.0029.

That's not too much higher than the maximum distances within the other examined countries, and it's a lot lower than truly cross-Europe Fst, which ranges from 0.005 to 0.011 between Iberia and Eastern Europe (med. 0.008, avg. 0.0077), and from 0.004 to 0.008 between Greece and Northern Europe (med. 0.005, avg. 0.0055).

It also happens to be the same as the Fst between Southwest (Spain) and Southeast (Greece) Europe (0.002 to 0.003, med. 0.003, avg. 0.0029), which is itself lower than the Fst between Northwest (Britain) and Northeast (Baltic) Europe (0.003 to 0.007, med. 0.005, avg. 0.0049).

[NOTE: The highest in their data is 0.02 between Finns and Basques, both of which I excluded from all the above calculations, along with other outliers like Orcadians and Mordovians.]

So even though genetic distances in Italy are somewhat high for a single country, they're not as extreme as implied, and they don't represent any kind of "racial" or other significant difference, but merely a normal cline that's entirely within Southern Europe and likely related to the ancient spread of Indo-European languages.

75 comments

Sarah Nikas said...

While I agree that the genetic distances in italy are greatly overexaggerated, I don't find it logical to exclude populations like friuliani or ladini from being a part of the italian genetic base. From what I've read in the few studies on such people, they are in fact genetically diverged from many of their surrounding populations due to extreme isolation, however they are also ultimately derived from italian populations and as a result are genetically closest to larger regional italian populations such as venetians.

FlyingDiscus said...

I've discored your blog a while ago and find it interesting, but you have an attitude that I think is kind of counterproductive and even pointless. By that that I mean: I see your articles talking about genetic differences with geograohy, IQ, pigmentation, height etc. And it can be perceived and felt while reading thesse articles that there is this constant underlying comparisson to some kind of external standard of what is considered to be good genetic, IQ, pigmentation, height etc. There is a certain striving for the standard that is, to put it bluntly, a little sad.

I know the point of the blog: "An underlying aim will be to refute falsehoods about Italians spread by Afrocentrists, Nordicists and Northern Italian supremacists, as well as the misinformation that these falsehoods have given rise to elsewhere in society, including among a subset of Italians obsessed with current notions of "whiteness"". But many articles, such as ""Dark" and "Swarthy" Italians Are Still Light" seem to be defensive and the very title takes it as a given that being light is good, and dark, bad, and goes on to defend italians from such "slanderous" accusations like it means anything. The underlying sentiment is something like "No, no, italians are not dark they are light and good just like you (supposed nordicist or whoever), please accept us and stop thinking we are bad."

And this is sad because, in intellectual terms, none of these physical differences matter when it comes to actually being a good people and doing something worthwhile. And in terms of morale, it kind of puts italians down and puts other people up by trying to be like them and accepting whaterver they have as good by default. And, really puts us below the dumbest of those people that would actually care about superficial things. To put playfully, if you came to Julius Caesar concernedabout some barbarian saying that italians are ugly and bad, he would respond: "If they are that stupid, they are just going to learn the hard way what really matters."

And if you read De Bello Gallico, they did.

Sarah Nikas said...

Reducing what italianthro is saying to "light good/dark bad" void of conext is rather slanderous in of itself. I appreciate his content greatly because it dispells slander such as those who claim italian to resemble arabs or north africans. Objectively italians are relatively light skinned and while perhaps not the fairest people in europe are still quite fair and entirely european looking. We have no desire to look like the lump sum average of nords or arabs and its insulting to us for people to say we should be "happy with being dark skinned" because sans some sort of deep tanning, we simply aren't.

Italiantho is writing simply to evidence and prove that italians are an accomplished european population and that is all - not some sort of low IQ arabs/moors like detractors claim.

"And this is sad because, in intellectual terms, none of these physical differences matter when it comes to actually being a good people and doing something worthwhile."

Well phenotypes are obviously strongly associated with regional genetics and genetics heavily influence aspects such as character traits and intellect so I wouldn't say that's true. Your average black african is not going to have the same IQ as your average light skinned englishman and this is just a statistical reality. Detractors can claim environment causes this, but the same is true when you analyze populations living in the same conditions, such as white vs black americans or white vs black south africans.

Now in terms of moral decency and free agency, that's a totally seperate question than one based in intelligence and accomplishment and not really relevent to the scope of the blog.

"And in terms of morale, it kind of puts italians down and puts other people up by trying to be like them and accepting whaterver they have as good by default."

Not sure where you're getting this from. Italianthro/racial reality has only described accurately what italians look like and what they've accomplished. If you fashion Italians as dark or black skinned then I think your beliefs as to what we look like are badly warped by a combination of jewish hollywood media, nordicists and afrocentricists. A light olive complexion is really about as dark as it gets without any tan and in reality most italians are fair. Only exception I've seen are people who've been badly sunburnt.

FlyingDiscus said...

I wasn't trying to reduce the content of this blog to that, but I do think there's this underlying sentiment that we're striving for a standard and defending ourselves against the very people who set it for us, which just gives them more credit. Of course I don't think it's overt in the writing of the articles, it's just a small but perceptible sentiment. I agree that the content in and of itself is quite interesting too.

I think what I'm trying to say is: Who cares about some guy who thinks we're moors? What if we were? Would that be even that bad? The only thing that matters is how we accomplished we are, not how we look or some minor personality difference. As far as I can tell, those arbitrary sterotypes exist mostly in the US, which isn't gonna be relevant forever. In other countries, such as that other big country with lots of italian imigration, those very concepts are totally alien.

On top of all that, in other places in the internet, I've seen people putting down southern europeans in general for actually defending themselves. One expressed a sentiment like: "Southern europeans are always scrambling to defend themselves whenever you criticize their countries, they are very collectivist and care about what others say of them instead of actually fixing their problems." So, you see, it's damned if do and dmned if you don't. And what's really happening is that all these detractors are just wanting to feel smug about themselves, which isn't very impressive or superior, and we shouldn't fall for that. It's a stupid fight.

Other than that, I agree with what said about IQ, phenotypes, accomplishments and the rest. I just think we should put our mental energy on things that really make a difference, not worry about nordicists and afrocentricists, they are just idiots in the internet. And "nosy" hollywood, well that's a rabbit hole I think should be avoided, just don't let it affect you and you shoulb be fine, plus, who cares about what happens in the US? It's one country, and every empire falls, just like Rome. If you actually live there, why not return to the homeland and help build it up again?

Also not saying this blog should stop or anything! I like it,just sharing my view on what is we should be caring about.

Palermo Trapani said...

As an American whose family immigrated from Sicily (1890-1903), I understand the context of this post. In the USA, pretty much from start, but definitely in the Post Civil War period to the Immigration act of 1922 which specifically was put in place to stop the large number of immigrants from Italy, Balkans, and Eastern Europe (Polish Catholics and Eastern European Jews), Racial/Ethnic categories are a product of 2 central themes, 1) Nordic-ism broadly defined and 2) English/Scottish/Anglo-Saxon culture as it relates to politics, norms and religion, which in this case is tied to the Protestant Church of England and Scottish Reformed Presbyterianism.

The "WASP" notion of American designations about race and ethnicity is related to Nordicism relative to what is the "Standard by which all European phenotypes are to be defined" but also WASP culture. So in that context, the WASP would see Scandinavians and say Central Europeans from say Northern France and Germany, etc as being part of the "standard of European phenotypes, they would not be tied to the Culture and religion of the British Isles (those savage Vikings from the North, those Germanic tribes always fighting, etc) everything is defined relative to "WASP" in the USA.

Hence Italians being on average having phenotypes that are more Mediterranean European, to me the most lovely women on the planet, and this is also part of the package, being tied to Papist Rome (those Catholics), and believe me this historically was part of it as well, there was this within European ethnic groups, the 1) WASP, 2) Scandinavian and other Central European Protestants (Lutherans, Reformed Congregationalist), and 3) ethnic groups that were part of the lets say Catholic groups, these would include yes Italians, but also Irish, Polish, peoples from the Balkans who were Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox and then 4) Eastern European Jewish groups.

Then of course non European ethnic groups would be well treated according to what the broader WASP power structure wanted relative which is not directly related to this thread.

So my response has always been I don't need to be defined relative to Northern Scandinavian Europeans, I am not Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish or Danish, nor I am I a WASP from England, Scotland or Wales, etc.

So I define me as an American of Italian ancestry. All the DNA analysis I have done supports this. My Ancestry test an autosomal test measuring I guess who you are closest to tday, 97% Italian 3% Middle East, the chart on my Italian report is Dark Yellow from Sicily up to what pretty much Umbria. On NAT GENO, a test trying to measure ancient DNA from 500 to 10,000 years ago, 71% Italic, 14% West-Med (Sardinian/Corsican), then 7% NW Europe and 8% Asia Minor, which ranges from Northern Levant to Caucus region (so broad measure there).

I uploaded my DNA to DNA.land and it is consistent with NATGENO (100% West Eurasian). Using MyTrueAncestry site, of the 127 ancient Romans in the Antonio et al 2019 paper, DEEP dive chroma analysis indicates I have DNA matches with 33 of those samples, Otzi the Iceman is a DEEP dive match (I am 59% higher than all matches to Otzi) and I share DNA matches with 6 of the Ancient Greeks in the Lazaridis et al 2017 study. My distances under 5 from MyTrueancestry are as follows

Ancient Greek + Roman (3.268)
Hellenic Roman + Roman (3.806)
Ancient Greek + Hellenic Roman (4.592)
Hellenic Roman + Thracian (4.796)

So at this point in my life, I am now in my 50's, I don't get into the gutter with the Trolls. I just post Genetic analysis results, as I did here, and tell them go to vahadou genetics and run there own DNA vs the Ancient Romans and Greeks. Then I wait, never to see them again. So I am European, yes, don't need the Northern Nordics or the British Isle WASP to tell me that, but I am a Southern European and yes genetically in continuity with the ancient Romans and Greeks, which deep, waayyyyyy way down (to borrow from Led Zepplin) ticks them off.

FlyingDiscus said...

Right...

Sarah Nikas said...

"but I do think there's this underlying sentiment that we're striving for a standard and defending ourselves against the very people who set it for us, which just gives them more credit."

Not sure how that gives them more credit. Passive silence which is interpreted as complacency and compliance is what gives them credit and implicit acceptance. It's those who don't publish data like this or speak out that become the problem.

"Who cares about some guy who thinks we're moors? What if we were? Would that be even that bad? The only thing that matters is how we accomplished we are, not how we look or some minor personality difference."

So, perhaps you're in the wrong place because some of us actually care about our ethnic identity and are proud to be of Italian heritage. I care when someone calls me a moor because I'm not one - not racially, not culturally, not religiously or linguistically. Italianthro is free to correct me if I'm wrong but my guess is that this blog is written by and for those of us who are proud of our heritage and background, not those of us who couldn't care less about identity, wish to live in a post racial world, and think nothing else matters but accomplishment. Sure, it's good to be accomplished but discovering a new element is not my identity - not by itself at least.

Btw, if you want to look at human accomplishment in terms of macro population groups a pretty thorough analysis was done on that by Charles Murray in "Human Accomplishment". North africans, and most populations of nonwestern stock, excluding ashkenazi jews, did not do so hot - meanwhile Italians placed as the 4th most accomplished population in Europe and did significantly better than those behind them (including all nordic proper populations).

"On top of all that, in other places in the internet, I've seen people putting down southern europeans in general for actually defending themselves."

Yes what a horrible crime we've committed. Seriously, if people are so unfathomably pathetic and weak that they claim defense of one's own identity as some sort of evil or vice then let them flounder in their own ineptitude. Maybe that's why Italians score among the highest in nationalistic attitudes while other countries praise their own replacement. The goal is not to appeal to people like this, the goal is to factually disprove slander to their detriment. If you want to play by their rules then you will of course, always lose, always be mocked and never be allowed to speak against it.

Sarah Nikas said...

"I just think we should put our mental energy on things that really make a difference, not worry about nordicists and afrocentricists, they are just idiots in the internet. And "nosy" hollywood, well that's a rabbit hole I think should be avoided, just don't let it affect you and you shoulb be fine, plus, who cares about what happens in the US? It's one country, and every empire falls, just like Rome. If you actually live there, why not return to the homeland and help build it up again?"

So, I think people have different aptitudes and talents. Someone like italianthro undoubtably does a great service in his ability to gather statistical data and do some of his own unbiased analysis on phenotypical averages. I don't think anyone is saying Italians need to stop innovating or accomplishing to focus solely on combatting slander. But I am 100% glad people like italianthro exist because not enough people stand up to it or are researched enough to reject the falsehoods attributed to us. Many are even gullible enough to believe them without any further investigation - which is really the saddest case. I've a hard time empathizing with someone who thinks they're an arab solely because a noridicist or hollywood movie told them so.

As for caring about what happens in the US, it wouldn't be such an issue if the US media didn't affect other countries to such a drastic extent. This is another sad reality to be quite frank. Whatever garbage airs on american television and movies invetibally finds its way across the world. And much of it, like "true romance" spreads these myths about italians being moors - others will just say there's no such thing as an italian race or ethnicity and therefore Italians have no right to maintain their border. It's aimed total corruption of our ancient 2700+ year old identity and nothing more. These are attacks and sadly few are willing to stand up and refute them.

The reality is our ethnicity/race has existed genetically since the iron age and our identity as italians has been acknowledged since the ancient greeks discovered the peninsula.

Sarah Nikas said...

Also, in regards to "returning to the homeland", I plan to and am actually working on it. Unlike a lot of the italian diaspora I don't have a mixed ethnic background. Truthfully the biggest barrier so far has been finances and language and I am working on both of those at a steady pace.

FlyingDiscus said...

"Passive silence which is interpreted as complacency and compliance is what gives them credit and implicit acceptance."

In my opinion, responding and not responding has the same effect, with the difference that the latter is less stressful. So we just disagree on this point.

"So, perhaps you're in the wrong place..."

Well, I do care about all that. I just think that we have to avoid the tendency to simply use ancestry as an excuse to stroke our own egos, while there are real problems to be solved, which would actually make us feel and be better. That ego stroking is basically what internet nordicists and others do, using other peoples as stepladders. People brag about accomplishments of others when, in fact, having a great ancestry doesn't make anyone better, being better, by living up to it, does. Feeling proud is good and all, but can be a crutch tha distracts from what matters in the moment. Of course, we can be accomplished in many ways.

"Btw, if you want to look at human accomplishment..."

Thanks for the reccomendation. I knew that that book existed and the gist of it, but never read it. When I read about this, I can't shake the feeling that it has been a historical coincidence of some kind. Maybe something like in the book Guns, Germs and Steel, maybe something else, but there are so many 'just so' stories that I don't think we can conclude anything relevant from that information about which peoples produce more accomplishment.

"So, I think people have different aptitudes and talents..."

Yeah, I can agree with this paragraph and the next. But I think that, in the face of people and the media saying and believing falsehoods, we should always focus mainly inshielding our minds, know the truth and spread it as we can in our families and communities, though actions and behaviors.

"Also, in regards to "returning to the homeland"..."

That's good to hear, birds of a feather flock together, and each country needs its best birds in these trying times (and which times aren't trying?). Maybe I'll do that some day as well.

Italianthro said...

@Sarah Nikas

There are well known recent non-Italian influences in the fringe regions near the border. Fiorito et al. (2016) give ethnic French admixture as the reason why their Aosta samples are outliers that don't cluster with core Northern Italians. And the same goes for ethnic German and ethnic Slavic influences in Trentino and Friuli.

Palermo Trapani said...

Sarah: I agree with what you wrote. As I noted, the American media and entertainment does have an impact on the world news cycle and even more so, the notions of what is the standard of Europeaness was largely a product of American WASP culture as I noted. I also agree Italiananthro's blog is a great service and is important to refute the pseudo science nonsense regardless of where it comes from, Northern European Nordicist, Black American Afro-centrist, Arab-Muslim apologist, etc that somehow modern Europe, Spain in particular, owes its civilization to the time they ruled it, or ruled part of Iberia for almost 800 years.

My point was rather than argue with those types of Trolls I noted above, I just post the DNA research and when they say anything back, which most of the time they run in silence, I just tell them well why don't you tell me your academic credentials and then go write your own paper and get it published and refute the papers that I linked. So at that point, the remaining trolls retreat and I hear no more from them

Marko Lavic said...

I am of Croatian descent, and I find resources like this blog (and Racial Reality) invaluable. I will not have my ancestry detracted by Nordicist fools. Falsehoods that are frankly embarrassing at this point continue to be peddled with impunity online and offline, both by the ignorant and by individuals with vested interests.

This is not about accepting the standards of others. This is about truth and maintaining our own standards. I am a European. My ancestors have been Europeans for thousands of years. I am not a Turk, and the Balkans are not populated with swarthy, low-IQ swindlers. I do not care to be Northern European, nor to be accepted as such. The mere suggestion is laughable. I do, however, care about disparaging statements about my people and culture based on tenuous arguments.

Nordicists (and, to a lesser extent, Afrocentrists) promote myths to glorify themselves at the expense of others. I despise Southern Europeans who simply accept such assertions at face value and denigrate their own genetic legacies. How pathetic!

The only way to stop the nonsense is to combat it with facts and reason, and to the detriment of Northern European supremacists. Let their laughter get stuck in their throats. The scientific evidence has piled up over the past two decades, and none of it supports Nordicist fantasies.

Onur Dincer said...

@Marko Lavic

Indeed, this whole concept of lumping together all the Southern Europeans on a genetic basis is silly to begin with as they do not even all genetically cluster together. Peoples like the Croatians, Slovenians, Bosniaks and Serbs, for instance, cluster with the French rather than with the other the Southern Europeans. As for the Turks, even the Turks of the Balkans cluster in the Balkans rather than Anatolia. So much for the Nordicist backbiting on the Balkans (the Balkans is a misleading term created by August Zeune, a German geographer, based on his mistaken belief that the Balkan Mountains stretch from the Black Sea to the Adriatic).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9n4j3PQ81RcU0FkYXhLSl9UeVU/view?usp=sharing

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur:

But France itself as a North to South Cline as well, the French in the Southern half of France cluster closer with Northern Italians and Iberians

Kilinc et al 2016 is a paper that has a really nice plot with Ancient Anatolian Neolithic EEF farmers and modern populations. You can see the Southern European Cluster here and Southern French clearly plotting in the Southern European Cluster with Spaniards the most Northern in the Southern Cluster, then Italians from North, Central, South-Sicily in that same cluster. Albanians and Greeks in the Southern European Cluster as ell. Croatians as you note or in the Cluster close to French as you say but not that far from Italian North (proxied for in this study with sample from Bergamo, Lombardy). Those other populations were not plotted in this paper's PCA.


https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30850-8

Marko Lavic said...

@Onur Dincer

Yes, Turks are often portrayed as completely alien "Arabs," when in reality many western Turks are clearly part of the Mediterranean genetic continuum. Whatever genetic overlap exists between people of the Balkans and Anatolian Turks is most likely due to gene flow from ancient migrations.

I do find it a little hard to believe that Croatians cluster with the French instead of other Southern Europeans, given geographic proximity and historical records of migration. Granted, Southeastern Europeans constitute their own distinct genetic cluster. Palermo Trapani is correct. Croatians are not very distant from Northern Italians.

Onur Dincer said...

@Marko and Palermo

The French of course have a genetic cline, but so do the Western Balkan Slavs. Just as there is a north-south genetic cline from Northern France to Southern France, there is a north-south genetic cline from Slovenia and Croatia to Serbia and Montenegro. Overall, the French and the Western Balkan Slavs have similar levels of Northern European affinity.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qxwfOqG-e-ZW883Em72T9wp_HzvYKKs6/view?usp=sharing

Of note, the Greeks in this analysis are Balkan Greeks while the Turks are Anatolian Turks.

The situation in the Balkans is easily explained by the fact that the Balkans in general has more Proto-Slavic ancestry than Iberia and Italy have Proto-Germanic ancestry, which is clear not just from the autosomes but also from the haplogroups.

Italianthro said...

Kushniarevich et al. (2015) has the most samples for Balkan/South Slavic groups. They don't really cluster with the French but between West/East Slavs and Greeks just like you'd expect (look at Figure 2A).

Onur Dincer said...

@Italianthro

You are right. But bear in mind that I used the verb "cluster" in a relative sense. My point was that the Western Balkan Slavs and the French have similar levels of Northern European and Southern European affinities albeit varying in a north to south cline within themselves. They cluster on PCAs that do not reflect the Western and Eastern European differences (as in my first link) and align on PC1 on PCAs that reflect the Western and Eastern European differences (as in my second link and your link). The Western Balkans Slavs and the French have similar levels of Anatolia Neolithic ancestry with a correlation between their north to south clines, but they differ in their EMBA steppe/WHG ratio reflecting the Eastern and Western European differences there:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gLbvAKiJS9QdVpd-X3_DWxm17WG6rYDM/view?usp=sharing

1worldtoday said...

Contact me under Lena Lucina1 on Facebook. I want to see if you can debate someone with university qualifications and studied history on a professional level.

Onur Dincer said...

@1worldtoday

Are not you the half Levantine Arab and half English woman telling everyone that you are Greek on Facebook? Italianthro has done a great service in demolishing the Nordicist and Afrocentrist myths through exploring all the relevant scientific literature for years and that is enough for these purposes, no one needs an academic background to do that.

Sarah Nikas said...

@italianthro

The study you reference doesn't even sample populations from trentino or friuli, so I'm not sure where you got that from. For those that have like here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3658181/, it was found that while said populations were somewhat divergent due to elevated levels of inbreeding, only one out of the 5 italian speaking villages studied, San Martino del Caso, was thought to be notably mixed with slavic poplations in friuli. I think it's worth noting that Udine, a major italian city geographically lies quite close to the slovenian border. The rest culustered closest to the Northern italian sample. As for Aosta, you could be right on that. I've also yet to see any study done on Trentino, however.

1worldtoday said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1worldtoday said...

@Onur Dicer Please explain to everyone what a 'Levantine Arab' is?!? Since I don't fall under the category of being a Armenoid /Assyroid like most modern people of the Levant that speak Arabic do.

The irony is if you have ancestry from pre historic coastal Levant you're not an Arab ( Armenoids/Semities come from the Caucasus ) that population most likely descended from Neolithic farmers. For arguments sake that also flourished in the Aegean population coastlines too during the Bronze Age, I am / It is to do with EEF nothing about being especially 'Greek'. These pioneers were farming all over Near Eastern coastlines before they arrived in South Europe. Especially strong in ancient Greek Mycenaean early samples too. In fact, some earlier Minoan samples were up to 70 percent Anatolian. Are you one of those funny people who think South Europeans evolved from South Europe? Even North Europeans have higher ANE and that's from Eurasia in a honest sense.

''He debunks nordicists.'' Yes, by comparing Sicilians to Iberians and Jews to Italians, very patriotic.

Are you a Turk from Turkey from that idiotic group Races Of Man? If so, why don't you lecture us all here as to what it means to be Turkish, including the fact that you are not by any means a homogeneous nation, despite the fact that the average Turkish male is 7 to 14 percent Mongolic/Siberian like 99.9 percent of Turkish people are and how racially pure that is to attack/slander someone's ethnicity.

Especially if that someone descends from people who built and structured European/Near Eastern culture not destroyed/raped/pillaged South Eastern Europe, like Turkish people did during their tyrannical rule. I have a academic background on history.

Sarah Nikas said...

@Palermo

And I've watched the same trolls attempt to bend or misrepresent the same studies to try to validate their beliefs. When showing how closely related modern italians are to ancient romans, I've had people peretend the republican samples were the only "real" romans and claim they clustered with "french", thereby "proving" italians are just "racially mixed mutts", meanwhile apparantly the principate romans were "already mongrelized" and "responsible for the decline of the empire", despite the fact that nearly half of the territorial gains were made during this era and great men like caesar, augustus and germanicus would've been bearing such ancestry.

It's ridiculous. These people simply worship their own dna and hate us for ever having the audacity to build a civilization that was outwardly superior to their own at the time. They will always hate us and will always bend the truth to push lies to defame us. I've no problem with those who simply have a preference for their own culture and genetics, but I'm not the kind of person to lackadaisically ignore disparaging lies out of fear of their disapproval of all things. That's just the behavior of a weak, consenting and passive person - a person who doesn't care enough about their identity to bother to defend it. I don't advocate that the topic should become an obsession, but I do advocate for italians and southern europeans as a whole to have enough of a degee of dignity and self respect to stick up for themselves and their ancestors.

Sarah Nikas said...

@1world

People have referred to levantines as arabs since antiquity. While as an average they may not be genetically arab-proper in the strictest sense of the name, it's somewhat of akin to referring to greeks or slavs as "westerners" from a non european view. Consider Phillip the Arab who was born in the province of "Arabia Petraea", which certainly constituted the geographical levant - one conquered from proper beduoin arabs by the Romans.

Anyways, I'm not sure where you got this idea that modern levantines have any notable degree of ancestry from armenia or that armenians are somehow equatable to assyria. The genetics of all these people quite different other than maybe an assyrian to levant comparison.

Now in regards to the genetic history of the caucuses these people had their own divergent ancestry in the paleolithic and mesolithic that became mixed with anatolian ancestry only by the end of the neolithic. In principle, they have their own genetic origin unique to the region's precivilization. That however, is not to say that the levant derives most or even a lot of their ancestry from these populations, unless we want to talk about specifically cyprus which, while still retaining a good amount of levantine ancestry was heavily hellenized both culturally and genetically.

"Are you one of those funny people who think South Europeans evolved from South Europe?"
That sounds rather non-controversial and implitely obvious, so long as we're referring to ancient anatolia and the caucuses as "europe". The Caucuses have nearly always been a part of europe for as long as I can remember and anatolia had more in common culturally and genetically with the caucuses and the rest of europe than the levant, north africa, persia, or arabic peninsula.

Also, I've never seen or heard of italianthro comparing italians to jews. Usually his articles aim to do the opposite and contrast them - as ashkenazi jews are effectively a mixed race people, where as italians are not, even though the bidimensional simplicity of PCA charts tends to put them near each other.

Anyways, I know little about Onur's origins other than that (if I understand correctly) he claims to be a pontic or cappadocian greek and not a turk. I've actually seen some older genetic studies on cappadocian greeks and they don't have asiatic admixture like the rest of turkey does. As for how true his claim is - there is of course no way for us to verify that.

1worldtoday said...
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1worldtoday said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1worldtoday said...

He's not from Europe. In my autosomal I got South Europe plus EEF Anatolian. He can call me African for all I care. I identify with my autosomal result not what a culture or a religion tells me I must be.


Armenoid and Assyroid are sub races dominant in the modern Levant ethno-sense. I am mostly South Pontid+Alpine Med. The British/English part of me would be Borreby. It's got nothing to be with ''Armenians'' and not every Armenian is ''Armenoid''.


Exactly, Cypriots have more in common with pre histric Levant/Levantines as do other Lebanese and North Syrians would do. At least compared with the moderns. Cypriots are more ethnically Levantine as am I, compared to modern Levantines who mostly descend from end of Bronze Age early Iron Age Armenoid populations from the Caucasus. Especially Assyrians.



Anatolia pre Turkish is and was apart of Europe, both culturally and genetically as were early Anatolian farmers. I will always refer to Turkey as being pre Turkish and Turkey/ Istanbul as Constantinople. How is that for being a 'Greek brown noser?'.


He has in his group and several past threads ( the Ashkenazi Italian connection ) He is only hurting himself like the Sicilians are related to Iberians cr@p he used to pull


I'd like to see evidence of the fact he is a Pontian Greek the majority of Pontian Greeks are Christian and have Greek names. Not Muslim and have Turkish names ( this is not a bash my family are non practising Muslims )

My rant was directed towards Crimson aka Italiananthro and his ignorance. I did not direct it towards Onur. The only reason why Turks are immune to his nonsense is because he likes what they once did to Greeks. From memory he chucked many ethnic Greeks and even South Italians from his group for no reason and I can actually name them here if you want to.

Onur Dincer said...

@1worldtoday (Lena Lucina)

I care zilch about your ancestry or how you identify, I brought your ancestry and claims about your identity to the table because you called Italianthro "subhuman Ashkenazi piece of sh*t" on another thread:

https://italianthro.blogspot.com/2020/04/italy-is-over-2000-years-old.html?showComment=1597327198751#c3716975027989528790

I have said nothing negative about Levantines, yet you, as a half Levantine, have no difficulty calling a population with mixed Levantine and European ancestry (Ashkenazi Jews) like you "subhuman" and "piece of shit." Are you ashamed of your Levantine origins or having close genetic ties with the Jews?

I have never claimed Turks to be "pure" or even largely of Central Asian origin, and never made Ottoman propaganda. LOL! So your charges against me on that matter are totally misleading straw man arguments. You seem to have confused me with one of the Turks in RoM.

It seems you are uncomfortable with Italianthro's genetic comparisons of Italians with Jews and find that insulting (and we are talking about mere genetic comparisons, not equating them or trying to make them look similar), and despite being of half Levantine ancestry (I know Levantine Arabs are genetically distant from Arabian or true Arabs, I used the term "Levantine Arab" in more a cultural sense to refer to your father's Arabophone Levantine Muslim background)! You already had identity issues when I got to know you years ago on FB and still suffer from them. Many people were mocking you for that. I, on the other hand, just feel pity for you.

Which group do you mean? The majority of the people expelled from my group are Turks, you can ask the Pontian, Cappadocian and Cretan co-admin and mods of my group for verification, or the expelled Turks themselves as they created other groups after their expulsions.

Onur Dincer said...

He's not from Europe.

You are contradicting yourself.

Palermo Trapani said...

Sarah: Oh correct you are, Rome at the height of its Power was around 117 AD, during the Imperial period. And those Republicans don't cluster with the French, it drifts towards the French, in the Southern Part of France actually cluster with Southern Europeans, as you move North in France, obviously the cluster pulls more Northward due to English and Also more so the Norman/Scandanavian admixture. The Republican Romans actually cluster from Central Italy to Southern France with some drift towards Iberia, but at least 3 of those are Southern Shifted, R437 I remember plots right in modern Puglia if I recall correctly. I personally get genetic distances on every Dodecad (K7 K9, K12), MDLP16 and even Eurogenes K13 and K15, with updated population samples over at vahaduo.genetics of < 5, some in the 1 to 2 range.

Klinc et al 2016 which I think was linked earlier documents that I wrote above regarding Southern-Med French clustering with other Southern Europeans

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30850-8

Cheers Sarah, keep posting here, your posts are always a good read.

Sarah Nikas said...

@1world

If we're talking about strictly phenotypes, I don't really subscribe to the theory that definite ethnological ancestry can be accurately or precisely inferred based on such measures, alone so I guess that's that's the wrong tree to bark up with me. In terms of macro races I'd agree that you can usually infer by phenotype but far less so in regards to within race ethnicity.

I still disagree on any part of the levant descending from primarily the caucuses. If you want to post some studies claiming so I'm open to checking them out. From what I've read places like plaestine retain something like 96% of their natufian background and I've yet to see anything saying otherwise for the rest of the levant (sans cyprus).

In the case of cyprus I see them as roughly a 50/50 or maybe 60/40 mix between classical greek populations and anceint levantines. I've no idea what your ancestral background is, but if you're half english and half levantine I guess in theory you probably would have a similar amount of levantine ancestry to your average cypriot.

In regards to the iberian thing, I do recall it being tradition that one of the 3 ancient tribes of sicily had their origin in iberia. As for how true that is, who knows. The Romans claim they came from troy, and while they certainly had a lot of anatolian ancestry, they certainly weren't identical to the greek world circa 1200 BC. If anything, italians now are closer related to the greek world (and also greeks to the latin world) than ever before.

Dunno who this crimson fellow is but after looking him up he looks like he benches 300 lbs. I wouldn't screw with him, personally. If he is italianthro, hats off to him for staying in shape. As for Onur, he seems like a pretty good guy to me. We may not agree on 100% but I'd say we see mostly eye to eye in regards to geneaology and history.

Sarah Nikas said...

@Palermo:
Yes you're correct on that. Actually after looking at the PCA chart again, they don't even cluster near southern french, as the southern french position is found more westerly, near more distant spanish populations. Realistically they were closest to Northern italians and some were beginning to drift towards central and south italy even when strictly looking at the iron age. There were some spanish populations that were fairly close as well, but the overall trend is drifting towards and overlapping the modern position of italian populations as opposed to spanish or french. Interesting article btw, I hadn't seen that one before. And thanks for the compliment. Likewise to you. Cheers!

1worldtoday said...

@Onur stop using the words you are partly Levantine. I am not partly Levantine. I have ancestry from South Europe and Anatolia. Levantine Canaanite samples in Lebanese/ Syrians are from Anatolia Levantine Canaanite samples are from Assyrians in Jews.

I am not Assyrian. I won't let someone from Turkey tell me I am Assyrian and I have Jewish ancestors or I am ''like a Jew'' I asked you very clearly and consistently upload your genetic results. Instead, you continue to placate me and try to dodge the subject.

My results through my 'Levantine' side.
Target: Rabbit_Hole_Mom
Distance: 1.1993% / 1.19925081 | ADC: 0.25x
34.2 R68_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
26.8 R76_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
14.0 Sidon_BA_ERS1790729_
13.0 R1550_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
5.4 R1543_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
3.6 R42_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318741481_Continuity_and_Admixture_in_the_Last_Five_Millennia_of_Levantine_History_from_Ancient_Canaanite_and_Present-Day_Lebanese_Genome_Sequences

we sequenced five whole genomes from ∼3,700-year-old individuals from the city of Sidon, a major Canaanite city-state on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We also sequenced the genomes of 99 individuals from present-day Lebanon to catalog modern Levantine genetic diversity. We find that a Bronze Age Canaanite-related ancestry was widespread in the region, shared among urban populations inhabiting the coast (Sidon) and inland populations (Jordan) who likely lived in farming societies or were pastoral nomads. This Canaanite-related ancestry derived from mixture between local Neolithic populations and eastern migrants genetically related to Chalcolithic Iranians. We estimate, using linkage-disequilibrium decay patterns, that admixture occurred 6,600-3,550 years ago, coinciding with recorded massive population movements in Mesopotamia during the mid-Holocene. We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. In addition, we find Eurasian ancestry in the Lebanese not present in Bronze Age or earlier Levantines. We estimate that this Eurasian ancestry arrived in the Levant around 3,750-2,170 years ago during a period of successive conquests by distant populations.




1worldtoday said...

and foundthat Sidon_BA shared more alleles with the Lebanesethan with most other present-day Levantines (Figure S7),supporting local population continuity as observed inSidon’s archaeological records. When we substituted pre-sent-day Near Easterners with a panel of 150 present-daypopulations available in the Human Origins dataset, wefound that only Sardinians and Italian_North sharedsignificantly more alleles with Sidon_BA compared withthe Lebanese (Figure S8). Sardinians are known to have re-tained a large proportion of ancestry from Early Europeanfarmers (EEFs) and therefore the increased affinity toSidon_BA could be related to a shared Neolithic ancestry.We computed f4(Lebanese, Sardinian/Italian_North;Sidon_BA, Levant_N) and found no evidence of increasedaffinity of Sardinians or Italian_North to Sidon_BA afterthe Neolithic (both Z-scores are positive). We next wantedto explore whether the increased affinity of Sidon_BA tothe Lebanese could also be observed when analyzing func-tionally important regions of the genome that are less sus-ceptible to genetic drift.

There is the proof shared ancestry in Near Easterners ( Levantine Neolithic ) and Europeans during Neolithic. Including Italians and Sardinians. So now you're going to have a really HARD time trying to convince the people here that someone who descends from Early European farmers is ''in fact not European''

Again, show your results and stop spamming this forum trying to tell people I am an Arab or Jew. It's just something that my political opponent says against me when I know I have won the argument.

You are not from Europe, you are from Turkey you are a mixed Eurasian person who refuses to get a dna test result and upload the results. Because you are scared you are mixed race. End of story. I won't comment here further again.

Onur Dincer said...

@Sarah Nikas

I still disagree on any part of the levant descending from primarily the caucuses. If you want to post some studies claiming so I'm open to checking them out. From what I've read places like plaestine retain something like 96% of their natufian background and I've yet to see anything saying otherwise for the rest of the levant (sans cyprus).

Let's check out the Neolithic population affinities of the modern Levantine populations using various ancient populations from the Neolithic and similar eras (will use the modern Yoruba and Paniya to represent the Sub-Saharan and South Asian ancestries respectively). But first, let's see the population affinities of the Levant Neolithic population:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L2oiBGJgTQNJzs_gKjSfwNsM1e5qX4DP/view?usp=sharing

As can be seen, the Levant Neolithic population is only half Natufian-like in ancestry, its other half is Anatolia Neolithic-like. We know from the ancient and modern genetic analyses that the Natufians did not make a notable direct genetic impact to the post-Neolithic populations, and it was instead predominantly through the Levant Neolithic population that the Levant ancestry spread to the post-Neolithic populations, so with already half Anatolia Neolithic-like ancestry from the Levantine part. Let's keep this in mind in the subsequent analysis results, in which I use the Levant Neolithic population to represent the Neolithic Levantine genetic input.

We can now look at the genetic results of the post-Neolithic Levantine populations:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NFIYu-XNVsTHZ5V1FtYe_j4rRmA9VQ60/view?usp=sharing

And now the modern Levantine populations:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CmaSJ84gtNyWK3MXUpUR9OJCx_dguHbW/view?usp=sharing

Now, let's compare with the results of the ancient and modern Northern Mediterranean populations (beginning from the Neolithic times):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a5byEejcptHST6X2L6Exb60uGXnyI6tZYI7HWG-EkkE/edit?ouid=116198029371052031452&usp=sheets_home&ths=true

Yes, one thing is apparent immediately: ancient and modern Levantine populations show much higher Levant Neolithic ancestry that the ancient and modern Northern Mediterranean populations. But the Cypriots, being geographically intermediate between the Northern Mediterranean and the Levant, are genetically intermediate too and show much higher Levant Neolithic ancestry than the other Northern Mediterranean populations and lower Levant Neolithic ancestry than the other Levantine populations, that is why I added the Cypriots to both the Levantine and Northern Mediterranean population lists.

The modern Levantine populations are not majority Levant Neolithic-like in ancestry, let alone Natufian-like, almost all post-Chalcolithic Levantine populations have significant Anatolia Neolithic (independent from the one they have in their Levant Neolithic ancestry), Iran Neolithic and CHG ancestries and almost all modern Levantines have some steppe ancestry too, so your statement of 96% Natufian ancestry in modern Palestinians is certainly not correct. The modern Palestinian and Jordanian Muslims have the highest Levant Neolithic ancestry among the modern Levantine populations: about 56-60% on average, which makes about 23-30% Natufian ancestry, very far from 96%. And these two populations are the modern Levantine populations with the highest Levant Neolithic input, and that is to do with the impact of the Muslim Arab migrations from Arabia during the Middle Ages, the other modern Levantine populations show much lower Levant Neolithic input than them: from an average of 20% in the Cypriots to that of 41% in Palestinian Christians, which makes about 10% to 20% average Natufian ancestry.

Onur Dincer said...

continued:

@Sarah Nikas

In the case of cyprus I see them as roughly a 50/50 or maybe 60/40 mix between classical greek populations and anceint levantines. I've no idea what your ancestral background is, but if you're half english and half levantine I guess in theory you probably would have a similar amount of levantine ancestry to your average cypriot.

We do not have any ancient DNA results from Cyprus, so it is difficulty to estimate how the modern Cypriot genetics formed. As for Lena's genetic makeup, let's now make a comparison for her too:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RSKUlh1wUfEidQbyNJU9iEngxPfmab7Z/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FUT6LdgcCtuxD389F02aVThHiboD7Paf/view?usp=sharing

The average of the Lebanese Muslim and English averages should be roughly like Lena’s own results given her background. When we compare it with the Cypriot average, we see that it almost triples the steppe ancestry of the Cypriots, has much lower Anatolia Neolithic ancestry than the Cypriots and also lower Levant Neolithic, Iran Neolithic and CHG ancestries than the Cypriots, certainly nowhere near the Cypriot results, she is clearly much more Northern European-influenced than the Cypriots are due to her half English ancestry.

In regards to the iberian thing, I do recall it being tradition that one of the 3 ancient tribes of sicily had their origin in iberia. As for how true that is, who knows. The Romans claim they came from troy, and while they certainly had a lot of anatolian ancestry, they certainly weren't identical to the greek world circa 1200 BC. If anything, italians now are closer related to the greek world (and also greeks to the latin world) than ever before.

Indeed, most Italians lacked post-Neolithic Anatolian ancestry until the imperial Roman times according to the ancient and modern genetic results:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a5byEejcptHST6X2L6Exb60uGXnyI6tZYI7HWG-EkkE/edit#gid=0

Most modern Italians have some post-Neolithic Anatolian ancestry (highest in the south, decreases towards the north, lacking in Sardinians) as they have some Central Anatolian Neolithic-like ancestry (Tepecik Ciftlik) while most pre-imperial Italians lacked it and instead showed only Western Anatolian Neolithic-like ancestry (Barcin) as Anatolian ancestry. Note that the ancient populations denoted with an “o” next to their population label are the outlier samples, so they are the exceptions.

Dunno who this crimson fellow is but after looking him up he looks like he benches 300 lbs. I wouldn't screw with him, personally. If he is italianthro, hats off to him for staying in shape. As for Onur, he seems like a pretty good guy to me. We may not agree on 100% but I'd say we see mostly eye to eye in regards to geneaology and history.

Thanks for your kind words. I share most of your concerns and historical and political vision and have a Northern Mediterranean focus like you. As for Crimson Guard, I think he is not Italianthro/Racial Reality, but a big fan of his views. I may be wrong on this, but that is how I know.

1worldtoday said...




I didn't mention strictly phenotype. You measure your cranial features as to what cats you would fall into. I cranial features especially forehead shape match that of the Pontic Caspian races aka Pontus is IE Anatolia.



I didn't say that. During Neolithic the Canaanite samples were from Anatolia and related to EEF. This declined after Neolithic/Bronze Age.


I don't like using the word Levantine I prefer to describe it what it is a basic South European Anatolian/EEF mix. But yes it's close to Cyprus I am closer to Greek Cypriots than Turkish in my autosomal, but I understand the Turkish samples back then would not be Mongolic. The link is above regarding Levantine _BA or if you want Sidon_BA samples it's a good read, I suggest you read it if you want to learn.


I don't know if that's his real pictures ( Crimson ) I was directing this towards him and his treatment of past users.

8/17/2020 10:46 AM

1worldtoday said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1worldtoday said...

Thanks for your kind words. I share most of your concerns and historical and political vision and have a Northern Mediterranean focus like you. As for Crimson Guard, I think he is not Italianthro/Racial Reality, but a big fan of his views. I may be wrong on this, but that is how I know.

8/17/2020 1:54 PM

Why do you have a Northern Mediterranean focus and she didn't mention the North Mediterranean?

Onur Dincer said...

@Lena

stop using the words you are partly Levantine. I am not partly Levantine. I have ancestry from South Europe and Anatolia. Levantine Canaanite samples in Lebanese/ Syrians are from Anatolia Levantine Canaanite samples are from Assyrians in Jews.

I am not Assyrian. I won't let someone from Turkey tell me I am Assyrian and I have Jewish ancestors or I am ''like a Jew'' I asked you very clearly and consistently upload your genetic results. Instead, you continue to placate me and try to dodge the subject.

My results through my 'Levantine' side.
Target: Rabbit_Hole_Mom
Distance: 1.1993% / 1.19925081 | ADC: 0.25x
34.2 R68_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
26.8 R76_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
14.0 Sidon_BA_ERS1790729_
13.0 R1550_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
5.4 R1543_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
3.6 R42_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318741481_Continuity_and_Admixture_in_the_Last_Five_Millennia_of_Levantine_History_from_Ancient_Canaanite_and_Present-Day_Lebanese_Genome_Sequences


I have posted all the post-Neolithic Levantine ancient and modern genetic results in my comments above, they are there to check. Levant Neolithic + Anatolia Neolithic makes majority of their ancestry. Calling you half Levantine does not mean you are half Levant Neolithic or Natufian as I already have explained in my comments. When I call you half Levantine I mean the modern Levant, not the Neolithic Levant, stop behaving as if I treat you as half Neolithic Levantine. Also, I have never called you Assyrian. You are full of straw man arguments.

1worldtoday said...

My results through my 'Levantine' side.
Target: Rabbit_Hole_Mom
Distance: 1.1993% / 1.19925081 | ADC: 0.25x
34.2 R68_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
26.8 R76_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
14.0 Sidon_BA_ERS1790729_
13.0 R1550_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
5.4 R1543_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
3.6 R42_Lazio_Rome_Roman_Imperial
The shared ancestry with Near Easterners and Europeans is the Sidon_BA from Neolithic farmers. That sample is from Siva in Turkey ( even Levantine samples originally come from the Levant ) . Siva is Barcin which was where the Hittites had their empire in Anatolia.

So we can conclude that Near Easterners like Cypriots and ancient Levantines get their ancestry from EEF from Anatolia in this case Siva in Turkey.

Then we can also conclude that EEF also increased in Neolithic especially in places like Sardinia and Iberia and declined after the Bronze Age.

1worldtoday said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1worldtoday said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1worldtoday said...

I have posted all the post-Neolithic Levantine ancient and modern genetic results in my comments above, they are there to check. Levant Neolithic + Anatolia Neolithic makes majority of their ancestry. Calling you half Levantine does not mean you are half Levant Neolithic or Natufian as I already have explained in my comments. When I call you half Levantine I mean the modern Levant, not the Neolithic Levant, stop behaving as if I treat you as half Neolithic Levantine. Also, I have never called you Assyrian. You are full of straw man arguments.

8/17/2020 2:08 PM


These markers declined after the Bronze Age. They don't reflect on modern day samples apart from people who match ancient samples anything from 3,700 years ago to 4,000 . That's where you've pulled the short straw in this argument.

Now, have you ever done a heritage test if so what's your result. Because you seem to want to tell me about countries you have never been to nor or in the position to tell someone about.

Onur Dincer said...

@Lena

Again, show your results and stop spamming this forum trying to tell people I am an Arab or Jew. It's just something that my political opponent says against me when I know I have won the argument.

You are not from Europe, you are from Turkey you are a mixed Eurasian person who refuses to get a dna test result and upload the results. Because you are scared you are mixed race. End of story. I won't comment here further again.


Like I said, I care zilch about your ancestry or how you identify. Also I care zilch about how you identify me. I have already done my and my close relatives' genetic tests and know well the results, also I know my half Anatolian (paternal side) and half Balkan (maternal side) genealogy up to several generations back and need no one to tell me about my origins or my genealogy. Besides, the issue here is not my or your ancestry, it is your claims about Italianthro.

Onur Dincer said...

@Lena

These markers declined after the Bronze Age. They don't reflect on modern day samples apart from people who match ancient samples anything from 3,700 years ago to 4,000 . That's where you've pulled the short straw in this argument.

Now, have you ever done a heritage test if so what's your result. Because you seem to want to tell me about countries you have never been to nor or in the position to tell someone about.


I have already shared the modern Levantine results. Here again:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CmaSJ84gtNyWK3MXUpUR9OJCx_dguHbW/view

Post-Neolithic ancient Levantine results again:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NFIYu-XNVsTHZ5V1FtYe_j4rRmA9VQ60/view

Ancient and modern Northern Mediterranean results again:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a5byEejcptHST6X2L6Exb60uGXnyI6tZYI7HWG-EkkE/edit#gid=0

1worldtoday said...

Yep and I said to you some modern samples match ancient ones which is apart of the Eastern Mediterrenrean since all Europeans would descend from EEF to varying degrees.

Turkey in pre historic times was apart of the ''Eastern Mediterranean'' this includes the inhabitants

same deal as Cyprus/the ''Levant'' at least in ancient times.

To entertain that Turks are Northern or apart of a Northern Mediterranean is ridiculous.

Onur Dincer said...

@Lena

To entertain that Turks are Northern or apart of a Northern Mediterranean is ridiculous.

I included all the available ancient and modern Northern Mediterranean populations in my Northern Mediterranean genetic analysis. Besides, Turks are still mostly of pre-Turkish Anatolian and/or Balkan ancestry.

1worldtoday said...

@Onur let's see I have not seen your results. There is no such thing as North Mediterranean

The Balkans isn't apart of the North Mediterranean

It's South East Europe

That's mostly the Aegean sea, Adriatic sea etc.

Onur Dincer said...

@Lena

let's see I have not seen your results.

Why are you so obsessed with my results? Do I ask you about your results?

There is no such thing as North Mediterranean

The Balkans isn't apart of the North Mediterranean

It's South East Europe

That's mostly the Aegean sea, Adriatic sea etc.


I used "Northern Mediterranean" to mean Southern Europe + Anatolia + Cyprus.

Onur Dincer said...

I included all the available ancient and modern Northern Mediterranean populations in my Northern Mediterranean genetic analysis.

Except Jews and Gypsies and the low coverage ancient genomes.

Onur Dincer said...

By the way, I do not find the term "Levant" insulting the least bit. Its name comes from our Byzantine Empire's Diocese of the East.

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

Of course, it would be better if we return to the more ancient version "Orient." The Levant and Egypt were the most prosperous and civilized regions of the Byzantine Empire prior to the Islamic conquests.

Onur Dincer said...

Watch starting from 2:40:00:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74QUyXvm1Yw

Italianthro said...

@Sarah Nikas

>>> only one out of the 5 italian speaking villages studied, San Martino del Caso, was thought to be notably mixed with slavic poplations in friuli

Yes those are the kinds of outliers I'm talking about. You can see them (as well as some from Aosta and Trentino) in Raveane's PCA. They're shifted away from other Northern Italians towards Slavs, French and Germans.

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur:

I think the statement or comparison of Barcin, vs. Tepcik vs. Kumtepe and looking at Republican vs. Imperial Romans is not accurate.

Kılınc et al 2016 looked at the various Anatolian Neolithic source populations (TepecikÇiftlik, Barcın, Boncuklu and Kumtepe) and there was clearly ancestry in Central and Northern Italy from other Anatolian sources besides Barcin. The authors analyze those 4 Anatolian populations and find both Otzi the Iceman and the Remedello ancient Samples are genetically similar to Kumtepe first and then secondly they are close to Tepecik. They also share more Caucus Hunter Gather (CHG) than than the other Neolithic populations (Boncuklu and Barcin) and they suggest that this ancestry might have arrived before the Chalcolithic, thus Neolithic. So in the Raveane et al 2019 paper, which found CHG ancestry showing up from the Northern regions to South, higher in the South, suggest this ancestry was there at least by the time of Otzi/Remedello, if not before, but seems to have survived in higher rates as one moves from North to South. If SCentralIaly1 includes Lazio (Rome) and I think it does, it is quite high in Rome and NCentral, which would include Tuscany shows significant CHG ancestry as well.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30850-8

So I guess based on Iceman/Remedello samples already showing affinity with Kumtepe, Tepecik, which is over 2,000 years before Republican Rome, the higher levels of Barcin today might reflect more recent events. Not that all those sources plot in different area codes, Figure 2 from the paper linked above shows all 4 sources plot well within a macro Southern European cluster.

Onur Dincer said...

@Palermo

The Anatolia Neolithic ancestry in the European Neolithic farmers is overwhelmingly Barcin Neolithic-like, Barcin Neolithic represents their Anatolia Neolithic ancestry the best and they require no other Anatolia Neolithic source. This situation continues into the Chalcolithic and Bronze ages too, so Remedello and Otzi also derive their Anatolia Neolithic ancestry from a Barcin Neolithic-like source. See my Old Europe run:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19eBRHGhIURMWnSUBIEQAbFTTppKaHo9OP58qbiF7E5A/edit#gid=0

Some of those European populations show Boncuklu Neolithic too, but that is to do with the fact that Boncuklu N has more WHG mix than Barcin N and can thus sometimes be confused with Barcin N-like and WHG mixes:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tzPnpXNvXdKNXwO0sSpvjzE0-6VQ9CTF/view?usp=sharing

As you can see here, Tepecik N and Kumtepe N clearly have more eastern West Asian mixes than Barcin N. And since in my previous run Tepecik N and/or more eastern West Asian sources such as CHG, Iran N and Levant N only begin to appear in most of Italians beginning from the imperial Roman times, whatever post-Neolithic migration to Italy there was from West Asia should be very limited until the imperial Roman times. After the imperial Roman times, the Eastern Mediterranean (the Balkan parts as well) immigration to Italy seems to have slowed down and thus the Eastern Mediterraneans were largely absorbed but still they leaved some genetic legacy peaking in Southern Italy. Those immigrants were largely from the regions with strong Greek cultural influence such as the Balkans and Anatolia according to the genetic results, agreeing with the historical and archaeological records from those times. But that does not mean the Greek regions did not receive immigrants from Italy during the same times and even during the Late Middle Ages, we can see Italian influence on their haplogroups for instance.

You mentioned Remedello BA, Remedello BA is not so close genetically to Kumtepe N, but closer to Barcin N:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KCgXFCS_j2V8t9AmmK189WdNyDVWiKPi/view?usp=sharing

The closer distance to Boncuklu N is due to the elevated WHG mix in Boncuklu N that I mentioned.

Onur Dincer said...

Sorry, my spreadsheet in the first link in my last post was not shared with the public, now I have shared it and it should be accessible to everyone now.

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur: Ok thanks for the clarification. But Otzi was around 5,500 years ago, and I think he is more related to one of the other sources, I think. So did I interpret the Kulinc et al 2016 paper incorrectly. How different are all those Anatolian populations from each other, yes, they might have some slight differences in admixture, but they all seem to plot in Southern Europe or with Southern Europeans.

Onur Dincer said...

@Palermo

You are welcome. Even the PCA of Kilinc et al. 2016 points to the more eastern West Asian mix of Tepecik-Ciftlik, Mentese and Kumtepe. But this Global25-based PCA is much more detailed:

https://vahaduo.github.io/g25views/#WestEurasia

The PCA results confirm my analysis results: Among the Anatolian Neolithic genomes Tepecik-Ciftlik, Mentese and Kumtepe clearly have the eastern pull (Global25 does not include the Menetese samples), and among the "Old Europe" samples the ones like Krepost Neolithic and Peloponnesian Neolithic clearly show it while the rest (including Remedello BA and Otzi) generally lack it, which are all in accordance with my Old Europe analysis results. Otzi is not among the Global25 samples, but you can see him on the Kilinc et al. PCA and he does not show the eastern pull as you see there.

The Kilinc et al. paper is from 2016, so some inaccuracies in the interpretation of their results are normal, we know better now.

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur: I don't have my G25 Coordinates and as a general rule, while I use the Dodecad K7, 9, and 12 (probably my favorite), MDLP16 and Eurogenes K13 and K15, I tend to defer to published papers. So let me get this straight, the G25 analysis you ran is in line with Kilinc et al 2016. Here is a simple Distance calculation I did using Eurogenes K13 Ancient from vahadou. Here are the source populations I used, of course I was the target.

Bon002_Anatolia_N_Boncuklu.SG_10078_ybp,Boncuklu002,Chalcolithic_Age_Anatolian_Barcinhoyuk_Turkey_3943_BC,Tep002_Anatolia_N_Tepecik_Ciftlik.SG_8585_ybp,Tep002_Tepecik_Ciftlik_level_5_c_6500_BCE_8500_BP_,Tep003_Anatolia_N_Tepecik_Ciftlik.SG_8505_ybp,
Tep004_Anatolia_N_Tepecik_Ciftlik.SG_8295_ybp, Tepecik002_Tepecik002_,
R11_Abruzzo_Mesolithic_Hunter-Gatherer_Italy, R15_Abruzzo_Mesolithic_Hunter-Gatherer_Italy,
R7_Abruzzo_Mesolithic_Hunter-Gatherer_Italy, SharakhalsunSteppeMaykop_SA6004_,
Sholpan_(CentralSteppe_EMBA)_Yamnaya_, KEB_4_(Morocco_5000_BP_keb.4_Morocco_378003650y.old,
LevantBA_M291439_,LevantPPNB_I0867_Israel_730006750,


Target: PalermoTrapani
Distance: 2.5517% / 2.55172381 | ADC: 0.25x
48.4 Chalcolithic_Age_Anatolian_Barcinhoyuk_Turkey_3943_BC
19.2 Tep002_Tepecik_Ciftlik_level_5_c_6500_BCE_8500_BP_
15.8 R11_Abruzzo_Mesolithic_Hunter-Gatherer_Italy
15.2 Tepecik002_Tepecik002_
1.4 LevantBA_M291439_

So a couple of things, there was either 2 migrations of Neolithic Anatolian Farmers that gave rise to the Early European Farmers that while clustering in the general same space (Kilinc et al 2016), might have had different source populations at the margin, maybe the Tepecik had some Caucus Hunter Gather and/or Iran_Neolithic admixture consistent with your G25 showing more West Asian mix. Does this sound plausible?

Anyway, I get a pretty good distance just playing around with the source populations I listed above. Any thoughts you might have, I would appreciate.

Cheers, PT

Onur Dincer said...

@Palermo

I have a question first. I did not understand why you used Barcin Chalcolithic rather than Barcin Neolithic in your own analysis. Was it a mistake or intentional? They are genetically quite different populations as you can see here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a5byEejcptHST6X2L6Exb60uGXnyI6tZYI7HWG-EkkE/edit#gid=0

Post-Neolithic Anatolia in general is genetically quite different from Neolithic and Mesolithic Anatolia, migrations from more eastern parts of West Asia changed Anatolian genetics significantly during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic transition. More on that here:

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867420305092

Palermo Trapani said...

Well there was no Barcin in that Source data, it was the closest I could get in Eurogenes K13 source data over at Vahadou genetics site. Let me see what happens in one of the others that has the Barcin Neolithic samples.

Palermo Trapani said...

Dodecad 12B has Barcin, but when I include Kumtepe, that seems to pick up my Anatolian Neolithic source ancestry. So at least for me, The Kumtepe and Tepecik seem to work more so than the Barcin.

Target: PalermoTrapani
Distance: 2.9604% / 2.96042588 | ADC: 0.25x
66.6 Kumtepe006_Anatolian
14.2 I0357_SVP5_Yamnaya_Lopatino_I_Sok_River_Samara_Russia_3090-2910_calBCE
8.0 Kumtepe004_Anatolian
6.6 I1687_Natufian_Nat13_Raqefet_Cave_Israel
2.6 R15_Mesolithic_Grotta_Continenza
2.0 R11_Mesolithic_Grotta_Continenza


Here is the data sources I used for Dodecad 12B

Anatolia_N_Bar31_Barcin,
Anatolia_N_Bar8_Barcin,
I0231_SVP3_Yamnaya_Ekaterinovka_Southern_Steppe_Samara_Russia_2910-2875_calBCE,
I0357_SVP5_Yamnaya_Lopatino_I_Sok_River_Samara_Russia_3090-2910_calBCE,
I0370_SVP10_Yamnaya_Ishkinovka_I_Eastern_Orenburg_Pre-Ural_steppe_Samara_3500-2700_BCE_Russia,
R11_Mesolithic_Grotta_Continenza,
R15_Mesolithic_Grotta_Continenza,
R7_Mesolithic_Grotta_Continenza,
I1685_Natufian_Nat4_Raqefet_Cave_Israel,
I1687_Natufian_Nat13_Raqefet_Cave_Israel,
I1690_Natufian_Nat6_Raqefet_Cave_Israel,
I1944_GD14B_Ganj_Dareh_Iran_Neolithic,
I1945_GD16_Ganj_Dareh_Iran_Neolithic,
I1949_GD37_Ganj_Dareh_Iran_Neolithic,
I1951_GD39_Ganj_Dareh_Iran_Neolithic,
I2318_Peloponnese_Neolithic,
I2521_Balkans_Neolithic,
I2526_Balkans_Neolithic,
I2532_Balkans_Neolithic,
I2533_Balkans_Neolithic,
Kumtepe004_Anatolian,
Kumtepe006_Anatolian,

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur: The Barcin samples were in Eurogenes 13, Bar8 and Bar31 but doesn't change anything for me so I think some of the ancestry in the Kumtepe, Tepecik and Boncuklu could be CHG and Iran_Neolithic which Raveane et al 2019 documented showed up, in the case of the CHG, pretty much all over Italy, and the Iran_Neo type ancestry as well, in particular Rome to the South. I think the Antonio et al 2019 paper on ancient Rome also documents some Iran_Neo

So from the Antonio et al 2019 paper and I quote

"all of the Neolithic individuals that we studied carry a small amount of another component that is found at high levels in Neolithic Iranian farmers and Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) (Fig. 2B and fig. S9). This contrasts with contemporaneous central European and Iberian populations who carry farmer ancestry predominantly from northwestern Anatolia"

So there might have been 2 migrations of Neolithic Farmers from Anatolia but it appears that the ones that arrived in Lazio _Rome in Neolithic Italy already carried some Iran_Neo/CHG type ancestry.

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur: Just further clarification, what all this seems to me is that using these amateur calculators, one needs to be aware that the samples chosen by the creator of the amateur calculator may not be representative of the population you try to model. The Source data for other source populations might not have all the appropriate source populations to correct model the genetic admixture of a group of people. Like I said, I do not have my G25 coordinates so I have never ran my own DNA against the G25 Ancient or Modern samples.

I always go to the academic journal DNA results and plots. One paper by itself does not make it a done case but when a substantial body of papers find they same basic genetic structure of a people, then that becomes the standard of how I personally judge these amateur calculator results.

Over at Eupedia, where I go, many folks have run their own coordinates and I have seen some of the advisors there run comparisons of the various amateur calculators admixture and PCA plots to the Published papers and for modern Italians, the Dodecad 12B is the one that most approximates the published results. For example, the Antiono et al 2019 Figure 2 plots and the results from the Dodecad 12B calculator converge the closest.

Apparently, the rumor is that the G25 creator is throwing out all the modern Samples that are used to produce G25 distances and admixture. Don't know if that is true as again, I don't have my own personal G25 coordinates.

So in summary, when I see genetic distances, admixture results from an amateur calculator that are not in line with the extant published papers, I defer to the extant literature.

Sarah Nikas said...

@onur

Sorry, I was getting "96% natufian" confused with 93% canaanite, which are of course notably different time periods. In the study I was recollecting the canaanites were estimated to be heavily mixed with Caucuses like ancestry as well - though they didn't check for anatolian in the admixture synopsis, which incorrectly lumped natufian and anatolian ancestry as an equivalent. You are correct however in that it does seem modern levantines are heavily admixed - something I didn't realize until now. Quite incredible, really. Unlike the hunter gatherers, the natufians had early exposure to farming practices and yet, if what you say is true, less than half of the genome of the modern levant even descends from them. That's quite a degree of population turnover. Also sorry for the late reply - I've been really busy lately and haven't had a lot of time to backtrack where I'd read what I thought my claim came from.

So in that case I guess I was wrong in that a notable portion of levantine ancestry does originate from the caucuses, though I'm not sure if I'd go far enough to say "primarily" as lena mentioned. That seems like a stretch. Anyways, no problem. I agree that the unique geneaology and history of the northern med is a fascinating topic and one that's a bit more complex, though certainly not divorced from the rest of europe.

Sarah Nikas said...

Sorry, meant to say neolithic levant had early exposure to farming - not natufians. I guess I just meant to say I found it odd that the transition coincided with population replacement in the levant of all places.

Onur Dincer said...

@Palermo

Since you are Southern Italian, it is normal for you to show so abundant Tepecik N ancestry, it is already what I have found in my analyses on Southern Italians.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a5byEejcptHST6X2L6Exb60uGXnyI6tZYI7HWG-EkkE/edit#gid=0

About Kumtepe N, as can be seen in my analysis, Kumtepe N has some Iran N and CHG mix compared to Tepecik N and Barcin N. That is probably because it is from the Late Neolithic, and as per the Skourtanioti et al. 2020 paper, the major Iran N and CHG migration wave to Anatolia happened during the Late Neolithic.

Your citation from the Antonio et al. 2019 paper is about ADMIXTURE analysis results, not formal analysis results, no formal analysis on those Neolithic Italian samples has replicated the finding of CHG and Iran N admixture in them as far I can see and Global25, which in general aligns well with formal analysis results, does not replicate it either. Even the unsupervised ADMIXTURE analyses of that paper do not show more CHG and Iran N ancestry in the Italian Neolithic samples than the other European Neolithic samples, only their supervised ADMIXTURE analysis gives a result like that. As a master student on a genetics-related field, I can say that ADMIXTURE is a horrible analysis method in estimating ancestry proportions, professional geneticists no longer consider ADMIXTURE analyses and PCAs more than a rough guide for choosing the best source and outgroup populations in their formal analyses, many new population genetics papers do not even have ADMIXTURE analyses, PCAs + formal analyses are well sufficient in autosomal ancestry analyses for all intents and purposes, ADMIXTURE analyses are both unnecessary and create confusion for the amateur reader. GEDmatch calculators, being based on ADMIXTURE analyses, are similarly problematic and, expectedly, do not have the popularity they had only a few years ago as we now have Global25, which well replicates results of formal analyses.

The exclusion of samples taken from living individuals from the standard Global25 references will not diminish the performance of Global25 and their coordinates will still be usable as obviously they are already saved in many people's computers and Google drives, including mine. That decision was an unnecessary step if you ask me and only goes to show the perfectionism of the creator of Global25. More on the issue here:

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/08/housekeeping-stuff.html

Onur Dincer said...

@Sarah

No problem. Memory plays strange tricks sometimes. Unfortunately the excessive use of modern technology has made our memories weaker than our ancestors. But what I regret the most is the diminishing importance of rhetoric education in our schools. It was at the heart of our ancient and medieval education systems. We have so much to learn from Byzantine education for instance:

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

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

The Levant may have received some ancestry from the Caucasus, but it seems to have received much more ancestry from Anatolia and Mesopotamia/Iran since the Neolithic times, from its more immediate and more advanced neighbors. Natufians themselves show some genetic connections to North Africa, so there may be significant migrations to the Levant also from North Africa before the Neolithic, but I think those migrations between North Africa and the Levant were more bidirectional rather than predominantly from one of them. But the migrations between Anatolia and the Levant seem largely to have been from Anatolia to the Levant, the Neolithic migration from the Levant to Anatolia seem to be a relatively small one and the post-Neolithic migrations were also largely from Anatolia to the Levant.

See also:

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30509-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420305092%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Sarah Nikas said...

@onur I noticed your estimates totally or mostly exclude CHG admixture from its italian samples but it includes a small amount of neolithic iranian. That certainly can't be right, can it? Last I checked both greeks and italians have quite notable amounts of CHG. I've read studies that specifically tested for IN vs CHG in europe (and specifically italy) which have only found CHG with no IN via G statistics. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep31326

Also in regards to the levant, as far as I know there is little no discernable difference between iranian neolithic and caucuses hunter gatherer alleles in regards to admixture testing. To my knowledge very little IN exists in modern iranians today and if anything I can't really find anything discernable to seperate the two types of ancestry. If you have any comments about how they are seperated feel free to let me know. This is a topic I'm a bit fuzzy on in terms of the details but I see the ancestries conflated in nearly all studies.

And yes, I'm not known for having the best memory I suppose. I agree that modern technology plays an enormous role at weakening our attention spans and memories. Many skills which were once prized by societies such as tedious scribe work and advanced mathematics for engineering have been totally automated and sapped out of regular practice. Much has come to fill its place but I do worry we are going backwards in terms of refining ourselves through (the lack of) environmental stressors.

Sarah Nikas said...

*little to no discernable

Palermo Trapani said...

Onur: I have to respectively disagree about G25. It may be a good statistical technique, but I question the samples in terms of how they were selected. The fact is regardless of what you personally think about G25, I assume you are not an academic at a major Research University in the USA or Europe (if you are I stand corrected), the G25 when you use it to plot the 127 ancient Roman samples does not converge to what is reported in Figure 2 of the Antonio et al 2019 paper whereas the older Dodecad K7 and K12 replicate the plots dead on.

So while I respect your enthusiasm and defense of the G25 model, and again it may be a fine amateur tool, but it is still not used in any academic paper that I have read. So in the end, it is just another amateur model.

Sarah Nikas said...

*D-statistics