Question Paternal Continuity of Modern Greeks From Ancient Greeks

[Juan.delajara]

Minoans, typically are considered to predate Greek civilization as they were not Greek speakers. Mycenaean are considered the earliest iteration of the Greek ethnos and they enter the stage by rapidly absorbing the Minoans. Autosomal ancestry is going to be the definitive call on continuity and genetic makeup as a whole of any population. You can very clearly see ethnic shifts that do or do not occur with a large enough sampling over a broad enough span of time - let's not gloss over that fact. Changes will be seen and shifts from North Africa, the caucasus, Iran, Central/Eastern Europe, etc. will all be quite obvious if they are to occur. We may not be able to seperate per say Trojan influence from Hittite, but we can definitely seperate the broader macro regions from one another genetically.

Roman identity within the Greek world was that of a civic status, not an ethnological one. There was never any period in which the Greeks "lost" the conception of their origins. Even linguistic and cultural elements which were originally Roman were Grecified over time as the ethnic composition of the Byzantine empire began to regress to a Greek majority. I do not see linguistic shifts within Greek as probable cause for genetic shifts. That would more realistically only be supported in the case of a total linguistic turnover (such as what we see with the arrival of the slavic languages in the balkans).

It's all fine and well to track Y DNA but it is only 0.5% of our genes. It makes absolutely no sense to base conceptions of continuity off this specific chromosome which accounts for so little of what we are. Even if we see an extreme turnover in Y-DNA frequencies, it means very little as far as implication of discontinuity. All it takes is certain families with less than common haplogroups having a male heir bias to significantly impact the patrilineal makeup of their locality and there is nothing saying these families have to be foreign. Why focus on specifically the purely male line of descent?

Just one brief comment, Y Dna is around 2% of the total DNA of an adult male not 0,5%, and is essential for the characteristics inherited from father to son.

 

[Ralphie Boy]

Regarding the original post, that J2a lines in modern Greeks are either Levantine or Anatolian, looking at the available samples via YFull, TheYtree, the Greek Project at Family Tree DNA, there are Greeks branched with Italians, Middle Easterners, Turks and others. Some are in branches by themselves, not assigned yet to terminal haplogroups.

As to the J2a sample from Roman Tenea, Z504*, under it is a Cypriot, some Turks and Italians, a Greek, and others like Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Albania, etc., groups who usually show up in J2a results. There is PF5119 found in Hellenistic Samsun, and under it in J93015 are a Greek, Pontian Turk and Armenian.

The only direct branching with an ancient sample for modern Greeks is Italy Rome Imperial, J-Y304436. There is one Greek under an Italy Rome Imperial in J165124.

For years some people thought Greeks were substantially Middle Eastern or Ottoman Turkish. But the commercial DNA results and studies strongly disagree. The Anatolia in many Greeks comes in large part from Anatolian Greeks, supported by DNA results, family trees, surname searches, etc.

A large number of Greeks have matches and strong affinity to Sicily and south Italy. If this is proxy ancestry and not older Greece-related, what are the components?

 

[Vitruvius]

Just one brief comment, Y Dna is around 2% of the total DNA of an adult male not 0,5%, and is essential for the characteristics inherited from father to son.

I mean this respectfully, but to be clear I specified genes, not dna. It is important to not confuse the two. The vast majority of dna does not code for proteins and is known as junk dna. It contributes nothing to your genetic makeup - meaning it has no function or contribution to your expressed traits (things such as hair/eye/skin color, height, blood type, personality, etc.)

Y dna contains 100-200 protein coded genes. The Human Genome Project estimates the total human genome is comprised of between 20,000 - 25,000 protein coded genes.

100/20,000 = 0.005 (0.5%) 200/25,000 = 0.008 (0.8%)

So we are looking at 0.5% - 0.8% as to what your male uniparental heritage contributes to your genetic makeup - almost nothing.

All chromosomes are essential, including the sex chromosomes, but the vast majority of what your father passes to you will be inherited on the autosomes, not Y dna. Those who speak as if Y dna is an even modestly influential measure in quantifying continuity are living in fantasies of their own making. The fact of the matter is that one's strictly paternal lineage has an extraordinarily minor influence on one's genetic makeup. The Y chromosome contains the least amount of genetic information out of all chromosomes. It's plenty fine to take note of it, but there are individuals who are more than ready to discount a literal 99.5% of the human genetic makeup in topics related to ethnic continuity since they've already spent so much time and energy hyperfocusing on strictly paternal lineage while trying to overconflate ethnic affiliation with specific Y DNA mutations. Colliqually this kind of behavior is known as sunk cost fallacy. As I said prior there are plenty of scenarios in which oddball haplogroups internal to a population can expand rapidly outside of the scenario of foreign population introgression. That idea went effectively ignored. This is also combined with the fact that we have no data whatsoever on ancient northern Greece from the iron age onwards, and if memory serves just two bronze age samples. Call me a skeptic but I cannot take claims such as mass population turnover from incoming Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs etc. very seriously. Not without a sizable autosomal timelapse to support it at the very least.

On the opposing side, we do have autosomal data from Hellenistic and Iron age Paeonians who average on G25 at a distance of just 0.03 (IA) and 0.025 (Hellenistic) to modern Greek Thessalians. This is overlapping (i.e. plausibly genetically the same population) for any not familiar with scaled G25 norms. The Paeonians were not Greeks, but it is plausible and probable to believe their autosomal structure would have been similar to or the same as Greek Macedonians.

 

[HereToLearn]

For years some people thought Greeks were substantially Middle Eastern or Ottoman Turkish.

Maybe visually impaired people.

 

[bigsnake49]

One cannot speak about ethnic and population continuity without uniparental continuity. It is the safest way to detemine regional ethnic/genetic continuity beyond doubt. Because similar ancestral proportions can exist under different scenarios.

For the Greeks, we can say for sure that there was little continuity to moderns from the Bronze Age. However, from the Iron Age we still lack data and even more so from the Roman period, from which we got something more recently, but its still just a glimpse.

Concerning J2a/M410 and ancient Minoan, Mycenaean and pre-Roman Greeks, here are some branches on FTDNA which were found in the ancient Greek DNA record. which could be assigned more downstream:

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/J-BY759/tree (upstream position of this important branch to get the full context)

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The first thing you notice is that there are barely any big founder events for any of these lineages, especially not in Europe and basically not a single Greek tester.

Therefore, regardless of single Greek testers being found at some point, these branches of J-M410 play no significant role in modern Greeks. Now Greeks are not super well-represented on FTDNA, not doubt about that. But now compare the situation with the big South Dacian founder lineages of E-CTS9320, of which one sample was found in later Iron Age-Roman era Greece as well, plus it has some of THE most important branches of E-V13 in Vlachs in particular (especially E-FT181830) and pretty important ones in Albanians.

It is full of Greek samples, including small to medium sized founder events (like E-FTB51584): https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/E-CTS9320/tree

Therefore the Daco-Thracian/South Dacian into Vlach and Albanian, but also regional branches from Iron Age to Antiquity, completely top the ancient Minoan/Mycenaean branches of J-M410 we got so far. And that's just a single Daco-Thracian branch, which tops them all.

Here is another branch of the Minoan-Greek sphere under G-P303: https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/G-Z6147/tree
It has a modern Greek tester, possibly even two (if the Italian is of Greek descent), but still no founder lineage which persisted into moderns with a big significance.

There might be, however, still old Greek branches around, which just happened to not have been tested in the ancients, but so far they are hard to find, to put it that way. Can chance, but so far the regional continuity from the Bronze Age is rather meagre, at least at first glance.

Making assumptions and conclusions based on FTDNA is a fools errand. It is a self selected group. First of all Greeks are severely under tested both on the autosomal and Y-DNA side. Only the Australian Greek and German Greek immigrants have been tested to any degree. I have a lot of matches on myheritage.com on my mother's side but only one on my father's side and almost all of them Greek immigrants from Germany. Why the discrepancy? Because my mother's village emigrated to Germany in large numbers whereas my father's village did not. No Australian matches whatever. Almost no matches from Greeks from Greece on myheritage.com. I have a few matches on Ancestry from Greek Americans and also from some of the same matches found on myheritage.com. Almost none of my autosomal matches are in the FTDNA database. So how can you make any conclusions based on under represented and under tested population? A population that has not been sampled scientifically?

 

[HereToLearn]

Good point, commercial testing is heavily skewed in the case of Italy too I suppose. The overwhelming majority of the Italians emigrating to North America and Australia were from the south.

 

[eastara]

All Continental Greeks are heavily admixed with Albanians and Slavs and just for that reason they look more European. Those who lived before the Middle Ages along the coastal regions of the Balkans and in the bigger cities had a big Anatolian admixture, unless purely Anatolian. This happened in Hellenistic and mainly in Roman time, when people form Anatolia and Levant started moving to Europe. The original Classical Greeks were too few to be the forefathers of all Hellenised people who wanted to live to Europe. Anatolia at the time was more urbanised and civilised than most places on the continent.

 

[eastara]

There are some leaks from the new study with old bones from Bulgaria. It turned out practically all remains from Philippopolis from the Roman and Byzantine era are 100% Anatolians and Levantines. There was a large presence of haplogroup L.

 

[Juan.delajara]

I mean this respectfully, but to be clear I specified genes, not dna. It is important to not confuse the two. The vast majority of dna does not code for proteins and is known as junk dna. It contributes nothing to your genetic makeup - meaning it has no function or contribution to your expressed traits (things such as hair/eye/skin color, height, blood type, personality, etc.)

Y dna contains 100-200 protein coded genes. The Human Genome Project estimates the total human genome is comprised of between 20,000 - 25,000 protein coded genes.

100/20,000 = 0.005 (0.5%) 200/25,000 = 0.008 (0.8%)

So we are looking at 0.5% - 0.8% as to what your male uniparental heritage contributes to your genetic makeup - almost nothing.

All chromosomes are essential, including the sex chromosomes, but the vast majority of what your father passes to you will be inherited on the autosomes, not Y dna. Those who speak as if Y dna is an even modestly influential measure in quantifying continuity are living in fantasies of their own making. The fact of the matter is that one's strictly paternal lineage has an extraordinarily minor influence on one's genetic makeup. The Y chromosome contains the least amount of genetic information out of all chromosomes. It's plenty fine to take note of it, but there are individuals who are more than ready to discount a literal 99.5% of the human genetic makeup in topics related to ethnic continuity since they've already spent so much time and energy hyperfocusing on strictly paternal lineage while trying to overconflate ethnic affiliation with specific Y DNA mutations. Colliqually this kind of behavior is known as sunk cost fallacy. As I said prior there are plenty of scenarios in which oddball haplogroups internal to a population can expand rapidly outside of the scenario of foreign population introgression. That idea went effectively ignored. This is also combined with the fact that we have no data whatsoever on ancient northern Greece from the iron age onwards, and if memory serves just two bronze age samples. Call me a skeptic but I cannot take claims such as mass population turnover from incoming Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs etc. very seriously. Not without a sizable autosomal timelapse to support it at the very least.

On the opposing side, we do have autosomal data from Hellenistic and Iron age Paeonians who average on G25 at a distance of just 0.03 (IA) and 0.025 (Hellenistic) to modern Greek Thessalians. This is overlapping (i.e. plausibly genetically the same population) for any not familiar with scaled G25 norms. The Paeonians were not Greeks, but it is plausible and probable to believe their autosomal structure would have been similar to or the same as Greek Macedonians.

View attachment 18712

Thanks for your answer. I'm not indeed an expert, as I have a degree in law and business, so my statement is related to some scientific discussion I've read about this matter, and I'm not able to rebate, with well grounded arguments, what you just said. Although, I would like to underline, once more, that this is a matter of discussion among experts. Best Regards

 

[Vitruvius]

Thanks for your answer. I'm not indeed an expert, as I have a degree in law and business, so my statement is related to some scientific discussion I've read about this matter, and I'm not able to rebate, with well grounded arguments, what you just said. Although, I would like to underline, once more, that this is a matter of discussion among experts. Best Regards

Not a problem at all. I too am no expert, but I just wanted to clarify what I was saying. And to your credit, you are correct that Y-dna does comprise of about ~2% total human DNA. It's just that most of this DNA is not utilized in any way to influence trait dynamics.

 

[Riverman]

Making assumptions and conclusions based on FTDNA is a fools errand. It is a self selected group. First of all Greeks are severely under tested both on the autosomal and Y-DNA side. Only the Australian Greek and German Greek immigrants have been tested to any degree. I have a lot of matches on myheritage.com on my mother's side but only one on my father's side and almost all of them Greek immigrants from Germany. Why the discrepancy? Because my mother's village emigrated to Germany in large numbers whereas my father's village did not. No Australian matches whatever. Almost no matches from Greeks from Greece on myheritage.com. I have a few matches on Ancestry from Greek Americans and also from some of the same matches found on myheritage.com. Almost none of my autosomal matches are in the FTDNA database. So how can you make any conclusions based on under represented and under tested population? A population that has not been sampled scientifically?

It is not perfect, but probably the best we got.
German lineages have statistically more issues, because there are old American lineages with lots of testers and Germans from specific regions of the South West are very much overrepresented.
This is much less of an issue for Greeks, though more testing is necessary and bias exists.
The Greeks are fairly more evenly distributed and show clear patterns with high frequencies and diversity for Vlach and Albanian lineages in particular. Also potentially old Greek, but with a post-BA Thracian origin.
And this despite a bias rather towards Greeks from Islands AFAIK.
Add this to the very weak presence of modern testers in BA Greek branches.

 

[Ralphie Boy]

The Albanians, Vlachs and Slavs who are major inputs in modern Greeks went through transformations themselves, by mixing with Greeks who have different autosomal profiles, like Dodecanese, Deep Mani, Pontus, etc.

Middle Eastern and Turkish inputs and their uniparental markers are there also but way more diluted according to the commercial DNA results (South Greece).

In the Southern Arc papers the argument is that the Mycenaean profile is missing from the Anatolian Greek colonies due to admixture, as opposed to Empuries Greeks who didn’t mix with locals. Those colonies did not lose their ANF from admixture with newcomers, according to the results, though it was reduced, as would be expected.

Though Y DNA evidence is scant, J2a-L25 clades start showing up in Hellenistic southwest Anatolia. In Byzantine Anatolia, before Turkish DNA arrived, there was L70. That and other branches held by modern Greeks with Dodecanese/east Aegean roots might be valuable clues.

 

[eastara]

The Albanians, Vlachs and Slavs who are major inputs in modern Greeks went through transformations themselves, by mixing with Greeks who have different autosomal profiles, like Dodecanese, Deep Mani, Pontus, etc.

Middle Eastern and Turkish inputs and their uniparental markers are there also but way more diluted according to the commercial DNA results (South Greece).

In the Southern Arc papers the argument is that the Mycenaean profile is missing from the Anatolian Greek colonies due to admixture, as opposed to Empuries Greeks who didn’t mix with locals. Those colonies did not lose their ANF from admixture with newcomers, according to the results, though it was reduced, as would be expected.

Though Y DNA evidence is scant, J2a-L25 clades start showing up in Hellenistic southwest Anatolia. In Byzantine Anatolia, before Turkish DNA arrived, there was L70. That and other branches held by modern Greeks with Dodecanese/east Aegean roots might be valuable clues.

That's correct, for example modern Bulgarians also have Anatolian and other non-European admixture, which happened in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times. However they have more East and West European influence from Early Medieval times.
The Balkans were to a large extend depopulated afer the fall of the Danubian limes in 7th c. After that the Byzantine territories were repopulated mainly with Anatolians, and the local Barbarian subjects already had nothing to do with the Classical Greeks.
So the efforts of many Greeks to claim genetic continuity from Classical and even Mycenean times are not viable. There could be something minute from those periods, but the larger picture is different.

 

[Thucydides enjoyer]

That's correct, for example modern Bulgarians also have Anatolian and other non-European admixture, which happened in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times. However they have more East and West European influence from Early Medieval times.
The Balkans were to a large extend depopulated afer the fall of the Danubian limes in 7th c. After that the Byzantine territories were repopulated mainly with Anatolians, and the local Barbarian subjects already had nothing to do with the Classical Greeks.
So the efforts of many Greeks to claim genetic continuity from Classical and even Mycenean times are not viable. There could be something minute from those periods, but the larger picture is different.

Mycenaean ancestry isnt that visible,but the anatolian repopulation wasnt that high in greece as it is expected to be.Tenea samples show around 40% anatolian ancestry,in the north it could be lower.

 

[peloponnesian]

All Continental Greeks are heavily admixed with Albanians and Slavs and just for that reason they look more European. Those who lived before the Middle Ages along the coastal regions of the Balkans and in the bigger cities had a big Anatolian admixture, unless purely Anatolian. This happened in Hellenistic and mainly in Roman time, when people form Anatolia and Levant started moving to Europe. The original Classical Greeks were too few to be the forefathers of all Hellenised people who wanted to live to Europe. Anatolia at the time was more urbanised and civilised than most places on the continent.

The original Classical Greeks also had substantial Near Eastern (non-Neolithic) ancestry, it's evident both via autosomal analysis and Y DNA. 2 of the major BA/IA Greek branches are these:

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The reality is that there was never a time that people in the Aegean islands and Greece didn't mix with Anatolians (primarily) and Near Easterners, from the Neolithic to the modern era.

 

[Riverman]

The original Classical Greeks also had substantial Near Eastern (non-Neolithic) ancestry, it's evident both via autosomal analysis and Y DNA. 2 of the major BA/IA Greek branches are these:

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The reality is that there was never a time that people in the Aegean islands and Greece didn't mix with Anatolians (primarily) and Near Easterners, from the Neolithic to the modern era.

Absolutely agreed, but do you know what's so odd? That the T-Y21204 branch might turn out to be a Greek founder, yet the moderns are all over the place. It has multiple Greek-related ancient DNA finds already, despite the low frequency testing for ancient Greeks.
The odd part is that nearly all upstream branches and ancient DNA results might be rather European also, which is why I would question when specific branches entered Europe. E.g., upstream is T-Y6055 and there we find a sample from CA period Bulgaria, from Varna, further upstream 2 more Varna samples, which couldn't be assigned.

So this haplogroup/some of its branches could have been in Europe for long and might just have survived elsewhere, sometimes, probably even due to Greek/Hellenistic exchange. The absolutely Levantine branches have a TMRCA of about 7000 BC. Basically that's a Neolithic entry point.

Without Varna that would be speculative, but since we have the Varna samples, the likely European presence to origin story is factual.

The situation is kind of similar with an E-L618 branch E-BY28614:

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This branch looks even more Near Eastern at first glance, but the ancient DNA proves that it was present in Varna also, thousands of years before this branch came into existence, making a back migration to the WENA regions a distinct possibility. It shares with the T branch also the 7000 BC TMRCA, by chance.

Therefore its possible we have here two Neolithic branches, which both had a presence in Varna/Central-Eastern Balkans and ended up in the early Greek-Aegean sphere, but were later spread to WENA countries. At least for some branches this assumption is safe, for others its probably speculative and wrong.

 

[—BoNe—]

The Greek haplogroups from the Classical period that show continuity with present-day populations are R1b-M269, which, according to studies, reaches between 15–20%.

The most abundant subclades are PF7562 and Z2109.

Both are associated with horse breeding.

 

[Riverman]

The Greek haplogroups from the Classical period that show continuity with present-day populations are R1b-M269, which, according to studies, reaches between 15–20%.

The most abundant subclades are PF7562 and Z2109.

Both are associated with horse breeding.

A significant part of these Greeks comes from Albanians and later Balkan movements, though.

 

[—BoNe—]

A significant part of these Greeks comes from Albanians and later Balkan movements, though.

The Albanian branch of PF7562 is: PF7563>PF7566>BY9673.

PF7563 consolidated 15 branches in 2850 BC and was found in Mycenaean royal tombs. The fact that 1 out of 15 branches is dominant in present-day Albania does not mean that the other 14 were dominant as well.

 

[Granzon]

The original Classical Greeks also had substantial Near Eastern (non-Neolithic) ancestry, it's evident both via autosomal analysis and Y DNA. 2 of the major BA/IA Greek branches are these:

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The reality is that there was never a time that people in the Aegean islands and Greece didn't mix with Anatolians (primarily) and Near Easterners, from the Neolithic to the modern era.

Absolutely agreed, but do you know what's so odd? That the T-Y21204 branch might turn out to be a Greek founder, yet the moderns are all over the place. It has multiple Greek-related ancient DNA finds already, despite the low frequency testing for ancient Greeks.
The odd part is that nearly all upstream branches and ancient DNA results might be rather European also, which is why I would question when specific branches entered Europe. E.g., upstream is T-Y6055 and there we find a sample from CA period Bulgaria, from Varna, further upstream 2 more Varna samples, which couldn't be assigned.

So this haplogroup/some of its branches could have been in Europe for long and might just have survived elsewhere, sometimes, probably even due to Greek/Hellenistic exchange. The absolutely Levantine branches have a TMRCA of about 7000 BC. Basically that's a Neolithic entry point.

Without Varna that would be speculative, but since we have the Varna samples, the likely European presence to origin story is factual.

The situation is kind of similar with an E-L618 branch E-BY28614:

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This branch looks even more Near Eastern at first glance, but the ancient DNA proves that it was present in Varna also, thousands of years before this branch came into existence, making a back migration to the WENA regions a distinct possibility. It shares with the T branch also the 7000 BC TMRCA, by chance.

Therefore its possible we have here two Neolithic branches, which both had a presence in Varna/Central-Eastern Balkans and ended up in the early Greek-Aegean sphere, but were later spread to WENA countries. At least for some branches this assumption is safe, for others its probably speculative and wrong.

These are actually very interesting. I wasn't aware the Anatolian & Near Eastern Y-DNA was present even back then for Greeks.

Would ancient Anatolians be similar to Europeans if the were plotted on a PCA or would they be intermediate between the general European cluster and middle eastern cluster? Would Ancient/Classical Greeks be in the European cluster?