Asia Minor DNA

[Anizio]

Hello,

I got my FamilyFinder DNA results from FamilyTreeDNA.com and it included 24% Asia Minor genetic ethnicity. I know someone else who did the same test who lives in Italy and had 28% Asia Minor. Both of us are full-Italian ancestrally and other than the Asia Minor part, it is confirmed.

Could this be explained by the fact that the pre-Indo European peoples of Italy (colloquially called the Pelasgians) were supposedly migrants who came from Asia Minor?

I find this large percentage odd otherwise, and even more odd when it seems to be turning up in others people's results in the same amount. It is also a very high amount to explain unless it comes from many lines of my ancestry independently.

Anyone else experience this? Agree with my theory/disagree? Have some explanation?

Thanks

[Anizio]

Update: Surfing the internet I have found a number of Italians who have done DNA testing posting the same question, with 20-30% of their MyOrigins on FTDNA coming up as Asia Minor.

It seems very likely to me now that this represents a "deep ancestry" of the Italian people, pre-Indo European migration.

My theory would be the Asia Minor DNA for people who have full Italian ancestry represents the wave of migrations pre-Indo Europeans, such as the Rutuli, the North Picene, the Oenotri, and the generic term Pelasgi. Then what shows up as South European would be the actual Italian Indo European tribes such as the Latins, the Umbrians, the Sabines, etc. who only showed up in Italy 3-4,000 years ago.



Anyone with thoughts or similar results please reply

[carubia]

What part of Italy did your ancestors come from?

[Anizio]

Mine are 55% from Marche, mostly the north of Marche, the rest are mostly Lazio and Abruzzo, and then about 7% is a mix of Como, Umbria, Romagna, and like .7% from Avellino.

Basically, not at all enough to justify anyone claiming Asia Minor DNA comes from being Southern - especially when Southern would give you some Arab DNA, not Asia Minor, and not the amounts I'm talking about. I have seen similar results in other people from Calabria to Marche....no way all Italians should have 20-40% Asia Minor DNA, and ONLY Asia Minor without other mixes.

Being from Marche, with the theory that the Northern Piceni people, who would have lived in Pesaro e Urbino, it would make sense that the DNA is actually pre-Indo European DNA.

Otherwise, I can find no explanation for why so many Italians, from all over, have such consistent levels of Asia Minor DNA from FamilyTreeDNA (not showing up on other companies tests).

Any attempt to link it with being Southern is fallacious. Plus, I have 4th and 5th cousins showing up in places like Chieti, Pesaro e Urbino, Camerino, the exact places they should be showing up to support the fact that I do not have some secret recent Turkish ancestor - not that that would explain it anyway since, again, this seems to be showing up in other Italian's FamilyTreeDNA results too and no one there seems to have an explanation :s

[carubia]

Since only one company is getting this result it sounds suspicious. I can think of a way that Southern Italians, particularly Sicilians, might have "Asia Minor DNA": Asia Minor used to largely be Greek, and certainly so was Sicily.

[Anizio]

My thoughts exactly. Since the pre-Indo European populations of Italy, south of Luca and Rimini, Greece, and Western Anatolia, were all of the same ethnic group which spread from Anatolia west, my only explanation is that there is a strong genetic footprint of these people in Italy.

For Sicilians it would be the Elymi, Sicani, and Siculi peoples and should have the highest concentrations of this DNA. But it should be present to varying degrees throughout Italy. I'm surprised, with all the news stories and research on Neanderthal DNA that no one has done research into the mixture of Indo-European DNA and pre-Indo European DNA, especially in Italy which is constantly called a genetic island. :/

[carubia]

Actually, genetic studies of Sicilians have found them to be mainly Greek with only a small contribution from the earlier indigenous people, except for parts of Trapani.

[113yearslater]

This is the thing with these DNA tests, though -- they are all guesses. What does it even mean ot have X percent "Asia Minor DNA" when someone from Asia Minor is probably looking at their results going, "How did I wind up with Y percent East Asian?" We're ALL mixes. Humans have been fraternizing for a long time.

I remember watching a really illuminating talk from Roots Tech a year or so back by a fellow who was talking about this. He got his own DNA sequenced by something like four companies, and his results were:

1) All British.
2) No British.
3) British and French.
4) Totally from Spain.

So it's not that one company is suspect -- they ALL are. They're all guessing.

This dude also said that there were REAL studies done, academic ones and not ones where someone was trying to sell something to you from a commercial company, where a bunch of geneticists found a group of people that had been isolated for tens of thousands of years and tried to isolate something in their DNA that would flag it as being from them, one little genetic marker that was found ONLY in this one small tribe that had only been intermarrying for the past bezillion years. They couldn't find anything -- they couldn't find one single gene that was present in these people that wasn't found elsewhere as well.

Humans have been mixing it up for a looooong time. These DNA tests are just not going to tell us what we want them to tell us. We're all mixtures of mixtures.

[Santar]

Geno 2.0 has me 14% asia minor. My italian parent is all italian from abruzzo.

[AGandolfo]

I just got my DNA results done & they seemed pretty accurate. Based on verbal family lore my breakdown makes sense. My niece had her DNA done & she came up as close relation. My mother & brother are doing the same. Based on the ancestry connections I made it's pretty accurate.

Ever since cloud technology, DNA analyses have gotten far more detailed & sophisticated. I have a 23andme kit. I will post back if it does not come back as match.

[iginio]

There is truth in most of what has been said on this thread. Just as other have already pointed out Italy has had a range of ethnicities settle there. Where does middle eastern and asia minor come from? You might be descended from the Etruscans whose DNA shows them to have come from what is today Syria. There are pockets of people all over Italy whose ancestors came from another place and settled down. I remember there was a town that the people there descended from people from a place in Syria. There was a large number of people from Albania who settled in Italy in the 1500's. This could explain why I have had genetic matches with people from the Balkans.

The Roman Empire brought slaves to Italy from every where. Southern Italy was called Magna Graecia.

Someone said that it is impossible to determine ethnicity from DNA. This is untrue. It is possible to determine a person's ethnicity from their DNA. I think maybe what the real issue there is probabilities.

[BrownEyedGirl]

Great post, Iginio.

I've had friends test through Ancestry.com, and some have tested high for "Middle Eastern", not so much "Asia Minor" (which Ancestry designates as "Caucasus"). I have a friend who descends from Southern Italy and Sicily, and he tested 35 percent Middle Eastern and the rest Italian/Greek which is a combo designation at Ancestry. I'm not sure if the other primary testing companies address "Middle Eastern" as such.

Many Europeans have Caucasus/Asia Minor DNA, and it's considered white/CAUCASIAN. It's even debatable as to whether some of those countries are in Europe rather than Asia.

As far as the Middle Eastern/Arabic, I think it is from more "recent" history (over the last couple thousand years) rather than further back. Just my thought.

I'm still waiting for my Ancestry DNA test to be processed. On the edge of my seat. Lol.

[patrizio22]

I'm an italian from Central Italy, from the Marche. I also had 26 per cent asia minor component through geno 2.0 next gen. We italians from central Italy must bear in mind that we have an unusually high percentage of y dna j2, basically the same percentages you get in Crete or the Caucasus, nearly 30 per cent. We have more than in Southern Italy. We also have lower percentages of R1b than northern Italy and Tuscany, about 35 per cent. It must be linked with the birth of the italic tribes as a mixture of Bronze Age apennine culture with indo european proto villanovans ( R1b U152). There must a been within the apennine culture a population from the southern Balkans who didn't leave many archaeological traces because it was integrated into the apennine culture.

I don't think a greek town in Ancona, a phoenician harbour in Abruzzi, a Byzantine presence in Central Italy or even the Roman empire can account for such percentages of J2a.

Although there a subclade of J2, L70 and its sublclades, which seems to have arrived from Central Europe with the indo europeans. Several of these subclades are found in central Italy.

[patrizio22]

I'm an italian from Central Italy, from the Marche. I also had 26 per cent asia minor component through geno 2.0 next gen. We italians from central Italy must bear in mind that we have an unusually high percentage of y dna j2, basically the same percentages you get in Crete or the Caucasus, nearly 30 per cent. We have more than in Southern Italy. We also have lower percentages of R1b than northern Italy and Tuscany, about 35 per cent. It must be linked with the birth of the italic tribes as a mixture of Bronze Age apennine culture with indo european proto villanovans ( R1b U152). There must a been within the apennine culture a population from the southern Balkans who didn't leave many archaeological traces because it was integrated into the apennine culture.

I don't think a greek town in Ancona, a phoenician harbour in Abruzzi, a Byzantine presence in Central Italy or even the Roman empire can account for such percentages of J2a.

Although there a subclade of J2, L70 and its sublclades, which seems to have arrived from Central Europe with the indo europeans. Several of these subclades are found in central Italy.

[BrownEyedGirl]

I got my results back from Ancestry.com, and the lack of Middle Eastern surprised me. My mother's family is from Campania, but she, my grandparents and great grandparents don't look a bit Middle Eastern. But the reason it surprised me is because the amount of Middle Eastern admixture in Southern Italy seems significant.

So Ancestry results were 35 percent Italian, 34 percent Irish, and the rest was Scandinavian, British, Iberian, and a trace of Caucus. (My father is from Northern Europe.)

After running my Ancestry DNA results through DNA Land, it showed 45 percent South Central Europe (17 percent Bulkan/Greek and 28 percent North Italian - Lombardy), 45 percent Northwest Europe, and 10 percent Basque.

Interesting.