This new study refutes Nordicist and Afrocentrist claims of population replacement in Ancient Greece, showing that modern
Peloponnesean Greeks are most closely related to other Southern Europeans, and far from both Slavic and non-European groups. They're also distinct from Greek-speaking populations in Asia Minor, only partly overlapping with those on the Aegean coast nearest to Greece.
Peloponnese has been one of the cradles of the Classical European civilization and an important contributor to the ancient European history. It has also been the subject of a controversy about the ancestry of its population. In a theory hotly debated by scholars for over 170 years, the German historian Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer proposed that the medieval Peloponneseans were totally extinguished by Slavic and Avar invaders and replaced by Slavic settlers during the 6th century CE. Here we use 2.5 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms to investigate the genetic structure of Peloponnesean populations in a sample of 241 individuals originating from all districts of the peninsula and to examine predictions of the theory of replacement of the medieval Peloponneseans by Slavs. We find considerable heterogeneity of Peloponnesean populations exemplified by genetically distinct subpopulations and by gene flow gradients within Peloponnese. By principal component analysis (PCA) and ADMIXTURE analysis the Peloponneseans are clearly distinguishable from the populations of the Slavic homeland and are very similar to Sicilians and Italians. Using a novel method of quantitative analysis of ADMIXTURE output we find that the Slavic ancestry of Peloponnesean subpopulations ranges from 0.2 to 14.4%. Subpopulations considered by Fallmerayer to be Slavic tribes or to have Near Eastern origin, have no significant ancestry of either. This study rejects the theory of extinction of medieval Peloponneseans and illustrates how genetics can clarify important aspects of the history of a human population.
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| Figure 2: Genetic similarity of Peloponneseans, Sicilians and Italians. PCA analysis of several European populations. (a) Notice the north to south distribution of the populations and that the Peloponneseans are placed to the far right of the graph and overlap with the Sicilians. (b) PCA analysis of Southern European populations illustrating the close relationship between Peloponneseans, Sicilians and Italians (TSI is an Italian population). (c) Network analysis illustrating the high connectivity between the Peloponnesean populations as well as between the Peloponneseans, the Sicilians and the Italians. Notice the distance between Peloponneseans and the Slavic, and Near Eastern populations. Peloponneseans are connected with the Near Eastern populations through Crete and Dodecanese. |
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| Figure 3: Testing the theory of replacement of medieval Peloponneseans by Slavs and Asia Minor settlers. (a) PCA analysis shows the broad separation of Peloponneseans from four populations of the Slavic homeland (Ukrainians, Polish, Russians and Belarusians). (b) PCA comparisons of the Peloponneseans with three Greek-speaking Asia Minor populations shows only partial overlap with the population of the Asia Minor Aegean coast. |
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| Supplementary Figure 2: Comparisons of Peloponneseans with non-European populations. PCA analysis of Peloponneseans and A. Near East. B. Caucasus. C. North Africa. D. East Africa. E. Arabia. F. West Siberia populations. |
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Stamatoyannopoulos et al.
"Genetics of the peloponnesean populations and the theory of extinction of the medieval peloponnesean Greeks".
Eur J Hum Genet, 2017.
Related: Genetic Continuity in Greece
4 comments
Indeed. The claims by Richard Lynn that mass miscegenation occurred in Greece is ridiculous. Number one, the Neotholic population which came into Europe from the Near east 7000 years ago has been in Europe long before the beginning of ancient Rome and Greece. Aristotle even mentioned that he noticed a difference between Greeks and Northern Europeans, stating they had a medium skin tone and where an "ideal people". Also, the Romans referred to the Celts as "red haired barbarians" indicating this difference existed during the classical era.
Southern Europeans are the same as Northern Europeans in terms of genetic admixture except that there is more of the Neothlic contribution in the south, hence the difference. This genetic make up of Europe is the reason why dark or light hair, as well as other traits, can be found all across the continent because the mixture of Near eastern farmer and hunter gather is distributed all across the continent, just in different percentages. Genetically, Europeans are all still very closely related.
It's strange to compare the greeks with distant slavic nations, but to forget to make a comparison with the greek neighbours - bulgarians, as from Bulgaria the slavic identity historically emerged.
The Slavic homeland is north of the Balkans, and South Slavs have a lot of indigenous Balkan ancestry, so they're not a good reference population.
Here is a interesting study worth posting
The Greeks really do have near-mythical origins, ancient DNA reveals -
"Ever since the days of Homer, Greeks have long idealized their Mycenaean “ancestors” in epic poems and classic tragedies that glorify the exploits of Odysseus, King Agamemnon, and other heroes who went in and out of favor with the Greek gods. Although these Mycenaeans were fictitious, scholars have debated whether today’s Greeks descend from the actual Mycenaeans, who created a famous civilization that dominated mainland Greece and the Aegean Sea from about 1600 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E., or whether the ancient Mycenaeans simply vanished from the region.
Now, ancient DNA suggests that living Greeks are indeed the descendants of Mycenaeans, with only a small proportion of DNA from later migrations to Greece. And the Mycenaeans themselves were closely related to the earlier Minoans, the study reveals, another great civilization that flourished on the island of Crete from 2600 B.C.E. to 1400 B.C.E. (named for the mythical King Minos)."
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals
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