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| Etruscan sarcophagus (CC by Ecelan) |
As you may know, two main theories have been proposed for the origins of the ancient Italian civilization that taught Romans nearly everything, especially in the field of architecture: on one side that they were Bronze Age arrivals from Anatolia, maybe related to ancient Trojans, which had some support on art aesthetics, the historical presence of a close relative of Etruscan language in the island of Lemnos, some classical theories and, more recently, an ancient mtDNA study (Vernesi 2004), which found the mtDNA of ancient Etruscan aristocrats to be closest (by FST) to Turks than to any other studied population, excepted (by slight margin) modern Tuscans.
The main alternative theory proposes that Etruscans were a local development, what would be also consistent with an Anatolian genetic affinity because the Italian peninsula, including Tuscany, shows repeated waves of cultural influences from the Western Balcans first (Neolithic) and from the Aegean later on (Chalcolithic especially).
The debate seems however far away from reaching any strong conclusion, notably now that a new study revising Vernesi's data finds a different and rather puzzling set of affinities for ancient Etruscans.
Silvia Ghirotto et al., Origins and Evolution of the Etruscans’ mtDNA. PLoS ONE, 2013. Open access → LINK [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0055519]
AbstractThe Etruscan culture is documented in Etruria, Central Italy, from the 8th to the 1st century BC. For more than 2,000 years there has been disagreement on the Etruscans’ biological origins, whether local or in Anatolia. Genetic affinities with both Tuscan and Anatolian populations have been reported, but so far all attempts have failed to fit the Etruscans’ and modern populations in the same genealogy. We extracted and typed the hypervariable region of mitochondrial DNA of 14 individuals buried in two Etruscan necropoleis, analyzing them along with other Etruscan and Medieval samples, and 4,910 contemporary individuals from the Mediterranean basin. Comparing ancient (30 Etruscans, 27 Medieval individuals) and modern DNA sequences (370 Tuscans), with the results of millions of computer simulations, we show that the Etruscans can be considered ancestral, with a high degree of confidence, to the current inhabitants of Casentino and Volterra, but not to the general contemporary population of the former Etruscan homeland. By further considering two Anatolian samples (35 and 123 individuals) we could estimate that the genetic links between Tuscany and Anatolia date back to at least 5,000 years ago, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan culture developed locally, and not as an immediate consequence of immigration from the Eastern Mediterranean shores.
The study finds that ancient Etruscan mtDNA is closest among modern populations (by FST) to Southern Germans and, following closely, a varied array of other Europeans (totally the opposite to Vernesi's findings), and rather not too close to Turks or other Eastern Mediterranean populations.
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| Annotated version of Fig. S3-B, FST distances of ancient Etruscan mtDNA (red: 0.4-0.6, orange: 0.6-0.8, yellow: 0.8-1.0) See also Fig. S4 (multidimensional scaling graphs) = Click to expand = |
Among ancient populations, ancient Etruscans are found to be closer to Neolithic farmers from Central Europe and then to ancient Lucchesi (from Lucca, including those from the Chalcolithic era, i.e. Eneolithic):
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| Fig. S4-C Multi Dimensional Scaling summarizing genetic affinities between the Etruscans and (...) (C) 9 ancient populations of Europe. Population labels and sample sizes are provided in Table S2 [Neo_Farm: Neolithic Central Europeans, Med: Medieval Tuscans] |
Among the study's conclusions are:
Notice that this is always in relation to the ancient Etruscan mtDNA data, which comes from the tombs of aristocrats, not commoners. However they insist:
An intriguing issue not considered apparently by the authors is the appearance of greatest genetic similitude with some populations of Central Europe. I would consider preliminarily that a possible line of interpretation of this data might be that the Etruscan elites might have arrived with the Urnfields expansion peoples (Indoeuropeans most probably) but were culturally and linguistically assimilated by the native substrate (proto-Etruscans did participate of the fashion of corpse incineration and burial of the charred remains in urns, which even led some to propose that they were Indoeuropeans in fact).
However this clashes with the fact that they also appear extremely close to Central European Neolithic peoples, which are not at all similar to modern nor Urnfields period Central Europeans. So I have to admit that a local Neolithic origin may be the most reasonable hypothesis with this data and that the irregular Central European affinities may have other explanation (such as local preservation of a mtDNA pool closer to Neolithic one than usual).
Update (Feb 15): Gail Tonnesen has researched in greater depth what haplogroups could the ancient Etruscans have specifically → LINK
A model of genealogical continuity across 2,500 years thus proved to best fit the observed data for Volterra, and especially Casentino, but not for another community dwelling in an area also rich with Etruscan archaeological remains (Murlo), nor (as expected) for the bulk of the current Tuscan population, here represented by a forensic sample of the inhabitants of Florence. Therefore, the present analysis indicates that the Etruscan genetic heritage is still present, but only in some isolates, whereas current Tuscans are not generally descended from Etruscan ancestors along the female lines.
Notice that this is always in relation to the ancient Etruscan mtDNA data, which comes from the tombs of aristocrats, not commoners. However they insist:
Because Medieval Tuscans appear directly descended from Etruscan ancestors, one can reasonably speculate that the genetic build-up of the Murlo and Florence populations was modified by immigration in the last five centuries.
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| Villanovan urn (CC by Sailko) |
However this clashes with the fact that they also appear extremely close to Central European Neolithic peoples, which are not at all similar to modern nor Urnfields period Central Europeans. So I have to admit that a local Neolithic origin may be the most reasonable hypothesis with this data and that the irregular Central European affinities may have other explanation (such as local preservation of a mtDNA pool closer to Neolithic one than usual).
Update (Feb 15): Gail Tonnesen has researched in greater depth what haplogroups could the ancient Etruscans have specifically → LINK
I offer a different take in a recent post at my blog. In my view, they are probably intrusive to Italy ca. the 8th to 12th centuries BCE, and were "pushed" their (as were the related Rhaetic people of the Alps) by expanding Indo-European populations. But, in my view they are probably ancestral with not much subsequent demographic disruption from Cardium Pottery Noelithic people of Southern France. Pliny's historical account in his Natural Histories tends to support this view and it seems quite consistent with the archeological and genetic evidence. I suggest that Lemnos was a 9th century BCE colony of people in the Etruscan linguistic family emigrating to new lands in response to similar "push" factors to those that caused the Etruscans to settle in Tuscany.
ReplyDeleteI would attribute Indo-European culture features in Etruscans to intentional but partial cultural borrowing from a high relative status (at the time) neighboring culture, rather than assimilation of a substrate culture.
The PCA chart, however, suggests that perhaps pre-Indo-European peoples descended from LBK peoples rather than Cardium Pottery peoples may be a better reading, although the same general narrative once the Rhaetic people find themselves fleeing to the Alps (from another direction) otherwise holds true. In this analysis, Etruscan similarites of Indo-Europeans arise from an areal cultural stew in a place formative to both Etruscans and Indo-Europeans that both draw from.
I find your argument rather convoluted and illustrates your IMO lighthearted inclination to see population replacements and re-replacements all around even in the most unlikely settings.
ReplyDeleteUrnfields characteristics may well have been borrowed following militaristic raids and therefore a "high status" derived from military might alone. It'd be surely correct to say that Italy was relatively underdeveloped before the Etruscan and later Roman apogee relative to the Aegean or even, at some times, Iberia, but hardly Central Europe. So any prestige kind of influence should be of militaristic nature. Most other Etruscan cultural traits are actually taken from the East (Greece mainly), in what seems to be another more truly prestigious kind of influence based on cultural achievements.
"The PCA chart, however, suggests that perhaps pre-Indo-European peoples descended from LBK peoples rather than Cardium Pottery peoples"...
In this study there is no Cardium Pottery data. Other studies (West of Italy) have shown them to have rather similar mtDNA pools to Central European Neolithic peoples, and, like them, therefore, to be quite different from modern populations.
Or let's see if I can explain myself better: the Bronze Age populations we know from Germany are not at all like LBK peoples but much more like modern ones. There is uncertainty to what may have happened in the Chalcolithic but I'd say with great certainty that either in the Chalcolithic or in the Bronze Age itself there was a (partial?) replacement of populations in Central Europe. This may be related to the expansion of Northern "neo-Paleolithic" Funnelbeaker phenomenon, Western Megalithism (partly related to the former) or Indoeuropean Kurgan-derived cultures (or possibly all them cumulatively). Whatever the case we have no reason to imagine late Bronze Age Western Indoeuropeans from Central Europe (Urnfields culture in our debate) as direct descendants of LBK peoples.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally I miss a haplogroup by haplogroup comparison here. Statistical inferences are nice but maybe treating the genetic pool of ancient Etruscans as a single set is wrong to begin with, having complex origins itself.
"Additionally I miss a haplogroup by haplogroup comparison here."
DeleteThere is no mention of haplogroups in the paper, and it appears they did not attempt to assign the ancient DNA samples to haplogroups, so I looked at the 30 ancient mtDNA haplotypes listed in Table S1.
Seven of them appear to be U5, although they only identified the U5 defining mutation 16270 in two of the seven, and they seem to have missed several other mutations that should be present. For example, samples Hap4 and Hap5 are both U5a2a (based on the combination of 16114a and 16294). U5a2a should also have mutations at 16256, 16270 and 16526, but they miss all 3 of these in Hap4, while they only found 16256 in Hap5. So based on the U5 samples, they appear to have a high error rate of missed markers in their results.
Eight of the samples appear to be JT, based on the mutation at 16126. Two of the samples might be H1b based on the mutation at 16356. I can't identify haplogroups for any of the remaining 13 samples. Six of the samples are CRS, but given that they missed 16270 in most of the apparent U5 samples, it is really impossible to guess what haplogroup the CRS samples might be.
Figure 3, the median joining network, has the haplotypes scrambled in a way that has no connection to their actual relationship in the phylogeographic tree. So that makes me wonder if the rest of their analysis is meaningful.
Obviously they need to do additional sequencing on 13 of the 30 samples to identify their haplogroup. But the results we have so far seem to show the ancient Etruscans samples dominated by haplogroups J and U5.
This you say is most interesting and relevant. Maybe we are trying to understand ancient Etruscans without really understanding their mtDNA.
DeleteDo you feel like writing a short text, maybe with a complementary image (or table that I'd turn into image easily) so I can add as update with due credit to you? Or, if it ends up being a long text, as a separate article? If so, send me an email with the result to lialdamiz[at]gmail[dot]com. Thanks in advance.
I'll put together a table tomorrow and send it to you. Hopefully they still have sample material available to do additional coding region testing?
DeleteHope (but don't expect) so. Otherwise much aDNA would be resequenced and, sadly, it's not the case.
DeleteI await for whatever you can find, which may well be the best that can be done.
"I miss a haplogroup by haplogroup comparison here".
ReplyDeleteYes. The real story is likely to be quite complicated. As I see it, though:
"Among ancient populations, ancient Etruscans are found to be closer to Neolithic farmers from Central Europe and then to ancient Lucchesi"
These people probably spoke an Anatolian language because it seems very likely that is where they started out from. And that makes sense of Maju's comment:
"I would consider preliminarily that a possible line of interpretation of this data might be that the Etruscan elites might have arrived with the Urnfields expansion peoples (Indoeuropeans most probably) but were culturally and linguistically assimilated by the native substrate"
The 'original' language survived. But Indo-European speaking people came to dominate further south in Italy and, ultimately (Rome), to take over.
"I suggest that Lemnos was a 9th century BCE colony of people in the Etruscan linguistic family"
As a result of this paper I think that is the most likely explanation for any connection.
"the Etruscans’ biological origins, whether local or in Anatolia."
ReplyDeleteEven if the Etruscans were originally a sea-based intrusion wouldn't the most likely explanation - possibly from quite soon after the original colonization - be both?
Taking Carthage or any of the Greek colonies as an example wouldn't the coastal colony itself have the most external DNA, the remote hinterland the least and the near hinterland the most mixed. Over time, especially as the coastal colony cities are likely to bear the brunt of various wars over the centuries the percentage might then shift more towards the local end of the spectrum.
Similarly if the original colony contained more men than women there'd be more local mtdna anyway even in the colonies.
(Actually not just Carthage but more recently countries like Brazil where the majority of colonists were male and the percentage of original dna in the current population varies with remoteness from the coastal colonies.)
The matter is that we have to deal only with mtDNA, which is certainly both the more likely to stay put after colonization or conquest (because of gender bias in such matters) and is also in my experience the one more likely to reflect most of the autosomal DNA apparent origins - Y-DNA's influence is almost always minor, unless, as happened in Latin America, the colonization was sustained, repeated, generation after generation, century after century. This could be the case of Magna Graecia or as you suggest the Phoenician colonies, but probably not of the Etruscan colonization, if it was such at all, which would seem to correlate (assuming early Proto-Villanovan chronology) with the the very end of the pre-IE states of the Aegean (i.e. Trojan War, Hittite and Mycenaean expansion, etc.), which would hardly be able to provide then repeated waves of male settlers with the "correct" ethno-cultural background anymore.
Delete"with the the very end of the pre-IE states of the Aegean (i.e. Trojan War, Hittite and Mycenaean expansion, etc.), which would hardly be able to provide then repeated waves of male settlers with the "correct" ethno-cultural background anymore."
DeleteThat was my thinking. Even if the cultural origin was Anatolian given the timing the dna element may have been submerged quite early because of lack of further reinforcement.
Please check the new entry by GailT: http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/guest-article-by-gail-tonnesen-comments.html
ReplyDelete