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This is extremely interesting to me particularly since my Y-DNA direct paternal line is M-319 the same haplogroup of 2/3 of the Minoans tested. An FMS mtDNA for one of the M-319 Minoans is H131a which appears to have spread from eastern Anatolia/Caucasus. The Minoan samples are estimated approximately at 4,000YBP.
Yup very interesting, even more is the amateur community digging into it more, some good samples provided that will provide further insights as time goes on.
Over at Nature at this LINK. Why is the presence of steppe admixture in Mycenaeans important? And why does it matter if the Minoans already had a lot of ancestry from the Caucasus or surrounds? Because Mycenaeans were Indo-Europeans and Minoans weren't. I'm still reading the paper and will update this entry regularly over the next few days.
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Update 03/08/2017: This is my own Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the Minoan and Mycenaean samples, which are freely available at the Reich Lab website here. The Armenian angle for the eastern admixture in Mycenaeans looks forced. The trajectory of this admixture obviously runs from Northern or Eastern Europe to the Minoans. If it did arrive from Armenia, then realistically only via a heavily steppe-admixed population. Right click and open in a new tab to enlarge:
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Update 05/08/2017: Much like Lazaridis et al., I ran a series to qpAdm analyses to find the best mixture model for the Mycenaeans. However, just to see what would happen, unlike Lazaridis et al., I didn't group any of the archaeological populations into larger clusters based on their genetic affinities. The three models below stood out from the rest in terms of their statistical fits.
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So it's essentially the same outcome as the one obtained by Lazaridis et al., because Sintashta and Srubnaya are part of their Steppe_MLBA cluster, while Corded Ware is part of their Europe_LNBA cluster, and it's these clusters that, along with Minoan_Lasithi, provided their most successful mixture models for the Mycenaeans. But it's nice to see Sintashta at the top of my results, because it fits so well with the long postulated archaeological links between Sintashta and the Mycenaeans (for instance, see here).
Yup very interesting, even more is the amateur community digging into it more, some good samples provided that will provide further insights as time goes on.
The Minoans were the hub of a wide-spread trading network. They likely originally migrated from Anatolia/Near East as part of the dissemination of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent.
The Mycenaeans were a hybrid Indo-European/Old European population (with the Indo-Europeans the ruling group and the Old Europeans ("Pelasgians") the peasantry.
The Minoans were the hub of a wide-spread trading network. They likely originally migrated from Anatolia/Near East as part of the dissemination of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent.
The Mycenaeans were a hybrid Indo-European/Old European population (with the Indo-Europeans the ruling group and the Old Europeans ("Pelasgians") the peasantry.
I agree but in addition there is a Caucasus/Iranian component.
I agree but in addition there is a Caucasus/Iranian component.
The Caucasus is not that far from the upper Tigris and Euphrates and eastern Anatolia. The Minoans likely trace back to more than just one group. Farmers migrated often because of overpopulation, drought, or because they had exhausted their fields. The Caucasians and Iranians (Elamites) might have served as troops or mercenaries in the Akkadian Empire, which spread all the way to current Syria and Lebanon.
Or the earlier, they could have been traders, with the cultural influence of Mesopotamia/Sumeria spreading to the Mediterranean and Egypt (and possibly Crete). Genes can be traded just like goods.
Interesting article on the Mitochondrial DNA of the Minoans
Quoted from article "A new study reported in the journal Nature Communications indicates that the Minoans, who 5,000 years ago established the first advanced Bronze Age civilization in present-day Crete, probably were descendents of the first Neolithic humans to reach the island around 7,000 BC and that they have the greatest genetic similarity with modern European populations." End Quote
The similarity was because the first Minoans were part of the overall migration of farmers from the Near East into Europe, absorbing the pre-existing low-density population of hunter-gatherers. Later migrations formed overlays, over a largely unchanged majority "Pelasgic" population, displacing language, customs, and religion, but genes much less so.
The similarity was because the first Minoans were part of the overall migration of farmers from the Near East into Europe, absorbing the pre-existing low-density population of hunter-gatherers. Later migrations formed overlays, over a largely unchanged majority "Pelasgic" population, displacing language, customs, and religion, but genes much less so.
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