“Anyone who isn’t an über-patriotic Greek and has knowledge of the history of Greece in the late antiquity and early Middle Ages could have guessed the heavy Slavic imprint in the current population; the Slavs overran much of Greece in in the late 6th and early 7th centuries and it took the Eastern Roman Empire until late 9th century to fully regain control. ”

No one has to be an “über-patriotic Greek” (stereotype alert!) to know that the impact of the Slavic invasions in Greece is quite exaggerated and that the supposed “heavy Slavic imprint” in the current Greek population is historically dubious as Greece’s geography/climate did not favor any form of en masse Slavic settlement (much to the chagrin of both Peter Charanis and the author/authors of the Chronicle of Monemvasia).

But let’s play devil’s advocate and argue that the Slavs did settle in large numbers and stayed for a while. Why haven’t archaeologists found piles of buried Slavic wares, weapons, hearths, and Zbruch idols throughout Greece? Now I don’t mean to burst anyone’s “gene bubble”, but “Traces of Slavic culture in Greece are rare.” (I too can’t believe that the well-esteemed editor of the “Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium”, Alexander P. Kazhdan, would turn out to be such an “über-patriotic Greek”.)

“The number of Slavic place names alone testify to this era’s strong legacy to Greece.”

Toponyms alone are not reliable indicators of migration/settlement patterns unless you believe that the town of Sparta in New York was first established and settled by ancient Spartans. And last time I checked, most of the Slavic place names collected by Max Vasmer seem to be absent in the Byzantine literature (including “Stolos”, which interestingly is not a Slavic word given that it means “fleet/equipment” in ancient Greek).

As for the IBD study, where in all the “gene jargon” is there proof that the alleles shared by different European groups are in fact identical and ancestral? Also, do the authors provide any information on gene flow directionality between the groups analyzed? And if not, then wouldn’t the absence of gene flow directionality serve as a problem in terms of determining the exact age of the “ancestral alleles” shared by the studied groups?

To make a long story short, it appears that this study is basing its historical inferences on one too many genetic uncertainties and/or false positives (though I could be mistaken). All I can say with certainty is that more research is needed.

Cheers

Mr. Guy

P.S. @Razib Khan: Your blog is very informative sir. Keep up the good work.

One has to be careful about how important migrations are (vs. continuity), and what they really influence, and how they can be sorted out. For example, on the autosomal side, all Germans are rather poorly related to each other: so, some early subgroup migrating elsewhere, unlike y-DNA, will generally not display much relation to extant Germans. Conversely, Eastern Germanic tribes in conjunction with Slavic expansion have left both y-DNA (I and ancient R1a) and strong autosomal signatures that unite the regions I am mentioning in the first sentence – mostly because of climatically restricted population sizes but also ensuing homogeneity.

It’s funny I had a similar discussion with my wife, who is 1/2 Sicilian on either side, about 3 weeks ago. When my daughter asked her about her ancestry she said 1/2 Italian, and was miffed when I corrected her with “Sicilian”. Her argument was that Sicily is a part of Italy and so the correct term is Italian, but my argument is that Sicilian is the correct ethnic term, and Italian is a recent political term. When some of her Sicilian ancestors left Europe, they did NOT leave Italy, rather left the “Kingdom of the Two Sicilies”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Two_Sicilies

This paper has proven me correct!

In terms of Northern Italian descent, a lot of Italians in South America are of Northern descent, especially those in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile – or the Southern Cone.

My eldest daughter’s mother is French, and her mother is 1/2 Northern Italian, 1/2 French ancestry, but if you ask her about her ethnicity, she prefers to say 1/2 French, 1/2 Lombard…

Modern era migration patterns have also been very different. There way a major exodus of Southern Italians to the U.S. in the late 19th century and early 20th century; this rivaled Irish migration to the U.S. and was similar in motivation and character. There was no a comparable scale exodus of Northern Italians.

I saw the following figures on the Glasgow forum regarding % Irish in Coatbridge (16km east of Glasgow City center) in 1851: 35.8% Irish born!

There are figures available in “The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939″ (By Roger Swift, Sheridan Gilley) which is partially available on Google Books

See the map taken from this book here which shows the percentage Irish born across Britain in 1841, note several districts with over 30% particulary concentrated in around Glasgow and Liverpool, and this is before the Great Famine even started!
http://books.google.ie/books?id=q6PwHF6FUYUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Irish born population of Liverpool city peaked at 22.5% in 1851 not surprising given that it was main entrance point for refugees from the famine.

Nice data support there!

I’ve read that the percentage of recent Irish ancestry in places like Central Scotland (Glascow area) is close to 50%.

1841 415,725
1851 727,326
1861 805,717
1871 774,310
1881 781,119
1891 653,122
1901 631,629
1911 550,040
1921 523,767

I don’t have figures for 1931-1950, but here are those from 1951 to 2001, obviously the UK census for 2011 hasn’t released the relevant figures let. Given the economic situation there has been a noticable increase in migration to Britain. During the dark days of the 1980′s over 330,000 went to Britain in period 1982-1993.

1951: 716,028
1961: 948,320
1971: 957,830
1981: 850,397
1991: 837,464
2001: 869,093

There has been constant Irish migration to Britain which is born up by the fact that the Irish-born population has been relatively stable over the last 170 years. At the moment it’s reckoned that about 6 million people in Britain have at least one Irish grandparent and are thus eligible for Irish citizenship (10% of the population). When you factor in the bigger picture and migration during the 19th century you end up with up to 14million people having some Irish ancestry (nearly 25% of population).

Also, Northern Ireland is part of the UK, so they are building confounding factors into their data – which is silly.

My take would be that there could have beeen a massive undocumented arrival of Britons to Ireland, resulting from the displacement of Britons around 0 AD or so by the Romans Empire. Then you have large numbers of English moving into Leinster (East) and to a lesser extent Ulster (North) and Munster (South), during the period of colonization. Then you have massive immigration of Irish during the famine years and during the industrial revolution to the UK, and continuing strong emigration till the 1980′s or so. It’s been estimated that 25% of the English population is of recent Irish ancestry.

So for this piece of the paper, they would have been much better off to compare “England”, NOT the UK, to Ireland and Germany.

yes, but this parameter is similar in iberia and the balkans. and yet these patterns aren’t replicated there. why? you probably answered it later: . Long standing political borders played their role too. the barbarian penetration of italy seems to have been demographically less significant that the full on sweep you allude to in mainland greece after the 6th century and before the 10th century byzantine revival.

When it comes to population structures in Italy, look at the geography. One might think that Italy as a peninsula would be united as a result of it’s geography, but the mountains of Italy have been effective barriers inside it. The sea has been able to unite some of the coasts, but it hasn’t often reached deep inland and through foot, mule or horse, it was a very difficult journey from the eastern to the western coast of Italy. Long standing political borders played their role too.

The division of Italy was well shown in the richness of it’s local pre-modern dialects and languages. In mid-17th century Friuli a local peasant couldn’t understand what a clergyman from Umbria spoke without the help of a translator.

But as much as one would find it genetically difficult, if not impossible, to identify “American” based upon a genetic cluster, and yet there is overwhelming cultural allegiance to “being American” in this country, I was struck by how much the sentiment in Spain and Italy was the opposite.

“I am not Spanish, I am Basque,” or Catalan were common refrains and this was emphasized in the local signage. In Italy there is still a mournful appreciation to the damage done by fascist Italianization and the subsequent marginalization of dialects and languages that corresponded to historical demes.