Italian HO populations Divided by Province (SmartPCA)

[Vitruvius]

Just as an aside, looking at this PCA of Iron Age Italics, Etruscans, and Greeks; both Iron Age and the Classical era of Himera and Iapygians; I have to ask: does the ethnogenesis of modern Italians really require the narrative of mass immigration from Imperial Roman era Anatolia? It seems like these Iron Age and Classical era populations do a sufficient job of explaining the modern population on their own.

Part of this narrative was initially promoted by the authors of Antonio et al. 2019, focusing heavily on exotic inputs which they themselves admit essentially disappear by the end of the Western Roman Empire. Of course, this was used as fodder for Northern European and Middle Eastern ethnonationalists who incorrectly read the data by assuming "C7" was autosomal Central European. Then come the journalists who emphasize a sensationalist and inaccurate interpretation, seemingly based on misunderstanding the data and relying entirely on the conclusion and abstract. It is already openly admitted by leading individuals like Thomas Booth that they intentionally try to suppress "nationalistic" narratives in favor of inclusive ones.

All of these views hold fast to the narrative of mass immigration from both a pro- and anti-immigration agenda. Mass immigration did happen, but based on the evidence of subsequent eras, we see it didn't necessarily leave a lasting impact due to many reasons that I have discussed on this website ad nauseam.

I know PCA is a single tool and others like qpAdm are needed to help resolve such claims, but I cannot help but notice that Rome, and by extension Italians, are constantly used as a political football. We are not being studied; I sense we are being used to advance narratives tied to the history of Rome in relation to the modern world.

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You already know this but I've been long advocating that the vast majority of the genome of southern Italy to be a result of Magna Graecian input with perhaps some further augmentation from later Imperial era Greek sources from both Anatolia, Peloponnesian Greece and their adjacent islands.

I think it's quite realistic to say mass migration from Greece did occur between 800-400BC. I don't think it is possible to debate this given the wide scope of archaeological evidence for Magna Graecian city sizes. Greek historians documenting the Peloponnesian wars also agree that the number of Greeks within just the island of Sicily was daunting even relative to the Greek proper world.

Later Anatolian and further Greek input in the late republic/imperial era likely did occur and did also have a permanent impact but I don't believe this was through mass immigration, but more of a slower augmentation of Aegean ancestry. The then Romanized populations of southern Italy likely already derived the vast majority of their ancestry from Magna Graecians and did not need an excessive input from Anatolia or Greece proper to shift them further to a modern Dodecanese/S. Italian like average. It's impossible to know whether the later input was coming directly from Anatolia or Greece proper as their populations bordering the Aegean seemed to have converged into a single homogenous profile, but it's clear that all had been long since culturally hellenized.

We also have to anticipate the possibility of minor levels of Northern Italian input to Southern Italy during the middle ages. We've already seen some minor evidence for this in post moorish Sicily.

 

[Vitruvius]

Indeed, and perhaps centuries of genetic drift could help explain the "eastern" drift away from the west. Or perhaps more samples as well, as R1 Proto-Villanovan, as well as recent acknowledgement of trans-Adriatic inputs in Apulia demonstrate. I understand that professionals want to be accurate according to the data they have, but at the same time, they create this hyperfocus on their limited data, and create these possibly/likely inaccurate and obtuse deviations of history. Even my grandfather who was born in a cherry tree field in the 1920s ,and had limited education already knew Magna Graecia had a lasting impact on Italians. Moreover, even people like Gabriele D'Annunzio, of who Italian Fascism is downstream of, considered himself to be of both Roman and Ancient Greek heritage. Contrary to this strawman canard, that both Leftists, and foreign-Nationalists accuse Italians of believing they are "100% Romans". Then turn around with data that in a big way, indirectly vindicates the theories of a glorious and prestigious past, that even the progenitor of Fascism believed in, as if it is some kind of own against Italians. The old adage is true, there is no poverty like ignorance!

As with all things, the less knowledgable will place their focus on binary results, attempting to oversimplify history into a predetermined framework which it does not match. The reality of the ethnological history of Italy is functionally no different than the history any other major european country - some limited foreign migrations did occur during some periods, but it was not at all a globalized phenomenon like many wish it to be, nor was there absolute isolation as other seem to demand. The very assimilation of the Magna Graecian world was a process that took many hundreds of years. Not only was this process not invalidating of Roman ethnology, but as we know now it was a core - even central aspect of what the Roman/Italian ethnic group represented at the height of its power in the city of Rome and the rest of central Italy. It was unlikely universal to the full span of the peninsula but it was clearly dominant in representation and is to be accepted as a major part of Italian history.

Comparatively this type of process is little different than the arrival and mixing of the anglos or saxons to Brittania or the arrival of Germanics/Jastorf culture to the previously Celtic dominated borders of modern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A lesser known example is the backflow of migration from the British isles to Scandinavia during the Viking age, which has altered the autosomal norms of modern Scandinavians relative to their forerunners of the middle ages. We can also discuss what mixing took place between the arrival of the slavs with the central european like forerunners in Poland as well, or the colonizations from Greece and Italy that took place within Southern France.

Ethnicity is a dynamic, shifting, abstraction and its dispute of understanding is found in qualifying and quantifying the historic changes which did occur with precision, rather than with sloppy politically driven assumptions.

 

[Jovialis]

When we take Hellenistic North Macedonians, and LBA Chania (Dorians), in addition to the Greeks that overlap with modern Southern Italians, and plot west of them; I think it is tempting to assume this is the the true range of Ancient/Classical Greeks. Also interesting is that IA Bulgarians (Thracians) who plot with southern Italians, also still had outliers that maintained the old EBA Balkan cline (very high steppe); including one of the classical era North Macedonians. Moreover, we can see with other contemporaneous La Tene cultures also still spanned the old Bell Beakers cline from the BA.

 

[Jovialis]

You already know this but I've been long advocating that the vast majority of the genome of southern Italy to be a result of Magna Graecian input with perhaps some further augmentation from later Imperial era Greek sources from both Anatolia, Peloponnesian Greece and their adjacent islands.

I think it's quite realistic to say mass migration from Greece did occur between 800-400BC. I don't think it is possible to debate this given the wide scope of archaeological evidence for Magna Graecian city sizes. Greek historians documenting the Peloponnesian wars also agree that the number of Greeks within just the island of Sicily was daunting even relative to the Greek proper world.

Later Anatolian and further Greek input in the late republic/imperial era likely did occur and did also have a permanent impact but I don't believe this was through mass immigration, but more of a slower augmentation of Aegean ancestry. The then Romanized populations of southern Italy likely already derived the vast majority of their ancestry from Magna Graecians and did not need an excessive input from Anatolia or Greece proper to shift them further to a modern Dodecanese/S. Italian like average. It's impossible to know whether the later input was coming directly from Anatolia or Greece proper as their populations bordering the Aegean seemed to have converged into a single homogenous profile, but it's clear that all had been long since culturally hellenized.

We also have to anticipate the possibility of minor levels of Northern Italian input to Southern Italy during the middle ages. We've already seen some minor evidence for this in post moorish Sicily.

I agree, I have to dig it up, but some of the 2nd and 3rd phase colonies of Greek cities do indeed originate from Western Anatolia. That's the one thing I regret from deleting my X account, is that I had a lot of great graphics from studies I had posted. It had become something of a repository for them.

 

[Vitruvius]

I agree, I have to dig it up, but some of the 2nd and 3rd phase colonies of Greek cities do indeed originate from Western Anatolia. That's the one thing I regret from deleting my X account, is that I had a lot of great graphics from studies I had posted. It had become something of a repository for them.

Yes and this is just another part of the background nuance that most people lack. There was not a hard ethnic separation between mainland Greeks and Western Anatolians by the Greek Dark ages. They were understood to be the same ethnic group even if we now know their genes were not totally homogenized by this point. The fallout of the Trojan war was necessarily the backdrop that the Aegean iron age emerged from. This phenomenon, complete with its complexity, is the entity that went on to colonize Italy and to a lesser extent Spain and France.

 

[Jovialis]

Yes and this is just another part of the background nuance that most people lack. There was not a hard ethnic separation between mainland Greeks and Western Anatolians by the Greek Dark ages. They were understood to be the same ethnic group even if we now know their genes were not totally homogenized by this point. The fallout of the Trojan war was necessarily the backdrop that the Aegean iron age emerged from. This phenomenon, complete with its complexity, is the entity that went on to colonize Italy and to a lesser extent Spain and France.

This is not exactly the map I am looking for, but still highly informative. The one I am looking for shows there was actually limited colonization from West Anatolia into Southern Italy, but many of the non-Italian Greek colonies originated from Western Anatolia, like in Spain and Southern France. The Colonization of Apulia for example was started by Doric speakers.

There were three phases of Greek colonization, the first came exclusively from the mainland, the subsequent ones had many from West Anatolia.

EDIT: Here's another good one, but not the one I am looking for. The map I am searching for is written in Italian:

 

[Jovialis]

This is not exactly the map I am looking for, but still highly informative. The one I am looking for shows there was actually limited colonization from West Anatolia into Southern Italy, but many of the non-Italian Greek colonies originated from Western Anatolia, like in Spain and Southern France. The Colonization of Apulia for example was started by Doric speakers.

There were three phases of Greek colonization, the first came exclusively from the mainland, the subsequent ones had many from West Anatolia.

View attachment 19249

EDIT: Here's another good one, but not the one I am looking for. The map I am searching for is written in Italian:

View attachment 19250

Finally found it, this map is highly informative:

 

[Jovialis]

When I treat myself as a Modern rather than an Ancient, I am more "Western" on the PCA. Apparently, this is this the correct way to do it at least according to ChatGPT. Either way, still solidly, within the Apulian continuum:

 

[Jovialis]

Here is a self-contained HTML file of the PCA with the Italian Regional focus:

SMARTPCA_West_Eurasian_ITA_Analysis

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.

www.mediafire.com

 

[Jovialis]

Southern Europe:

 

[Jovialis]

Here's the whole thing:

 

[Jovialis]

When I treat myself as a Modern rather than an Ancient, I am more "Western" on the PCA. Apparently, this is this the correct way to do it at least according to ChatGPT. Either way, still solidly, within the Apulian continuum:

View attachment 19272

Lines up with what is seen in Dodecad K12b PCA.

I'd imagine that if AADR included Molise and Abruzzo, they would cluster near me. As well as Southern Lazio, and Northern Apulia (Foggia and Bari)