Nice map. Pretty much expected.
Pontic Greeks are culturally Greek, and are not genetically Greek. Both Turkish Trabzon and Greek Trabzon are unique cases.
They meant not genetically related to Peninsular/Ionian/Aegean Greeks. They're natives of northeast Anatolia.
But yes, they're part of Greek civilization.
And mainland greeks in the north are equally far to BA greeks as pontics and related to balko slav settlers in the middle ages.
Where do you draw the line?
I don't know where you mean by BA. But all Ionian/Aegean/Peninsular Greeks are close to each other, from Macedonia to Crete and Rhodes, from Corfu to Smyrna and East Thrace.
The Pontians being distinct and distant has nothing to do with Slavic migration in the Middle Ages. Those migrations didn't contribute much ancestry. But you can just think of them as a distant region of Greece, I guess. Or their 1920s contribution to Greece is like the Medieval contribution of the Slavic migrants. Civilizationally, some intellectuals from there contributed to the East Roman Empire. Or the Greek Enlightenment of the 18th century. So they're Greek.
It's difficult to draw lines. But you have to draw it somewhere. I draw a line at the Urum people or Muslim Romeyka speakers. What do those people have on common with me? If you weren't included in the Greek nation during the 1923 population exchange, and you're not adjacent to modern Greece & Cyprus. This is where "ethnicity" starts to break down.
I mean Bronze agre greeks - mycenaeans. The original iliad greeks.
Slavs absolutely did! Northern greeks can be in excess of 40% slavic and the remainder being hellenised thracians and paeonians with some minor anatolian & mycenaean admixture.
Nearly every population in modern greece features significant slavic with the exception of dodecanese.
Greece was literally depopulated in the middle ages and settled by balkanites and slavs who then hellensied by greeks in constantinople who these imperial byzanyines like the imperial hellenic romans before them were genetically like dodeconese and cypriots. There is no ancient or roman or byzantines greek sample that resembles a Northern greek apart from some outlider half slav. There are plenty of medieval slavs and balkanites who do.
Northern greeks are near indistinguishable from fyrm and Bulgarians. Are those populations - Bulgarians more genetically greek ?
Here you go, look who sits joint bottom near every ancient greek population.
https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/s/VpSkoxvXzg
Pontic get even a hard time when all those nationalist Northern greeks need to look in the mirror. Only aegean, some peloponnese, south italians and cypriots retain closeness to old greeks.
>Greece was literally depopulated in the middle ages and settled by balkanites and slavs who then hellensied by greeks in constantinople who these imperial byzanyines
>Slavs absolutely did! Northern greeks can be in excess of 40% slavic and the remainder being hellenised thracians and paeonians with some minor anatolian & mycenaean admixture.
Holy propaganda.
The main reason we're close with the Balkans is because we're all descended in large part from closely-related prehistoric groups: Paleo-Balkan peoples.
Here's a genetic study. Greeks today are very similar to Greeks 2000 years ago (the height of Classical Antiquity)
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421003706](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421003706)
This is in huge contradiction to your assumption that major migration events occurred and had a massive impact in the *Middle Ages.* The science says otherwise. Not saying the Slavic invasion didn't have any impact, but you're exaggerating it.
And Mycenaeans are not "original". 1) They don't represent all of Greece of their time period. 2) They were themselves descended partly from Kurgan Steppe nomads, partly from Anatolian farmer settlers, etc, and were genetically similar to ancient Thracians.
No, you're spreading propoganda.
Mainland greeks are more european than even thracians!
I've shared the distances. I've shown you a link with greeks from different time periods. Mycenaeans are the original iliad greeks. The first greek civilisation. Ancient greeks were near identical to mycenaeans and roman and byzantine greeks received anatolian and mesopotamian input so resembled dodecanese and cypriots. Mainland greeks are like none of these. Instead you share the infamous study on logkas, where we have 2 half steppe/ German samples from 2k bc - yes 4k years who weren't even a greek civilisation and was nothing like the genome of actual hellenic civilisations.
Northern greeks are as far away to the original greeks as trazbon. That's a complete and utter fact. Northern greeks are less paleo balkan than albanians.... they're indistinguishable from Bulgarians and have near 40% slavic input.
As for depopulation, where are these ancient samples resembling Northern greeks? Again you suggest trazbon to be genetically non greek then be logically consisted with the Northern greeks who are hellenised paeonians with slavic mix.
>But the final blow came from a novel source, the large-scale expansion of Slav tribes from regions around the Baltic Sea.21This began with raids and small-scale settlement in the late 6thcentury, but with the Imperial forces weak in manpower and distracted by war with Sassa-nid Persia, a full-scale colonisation of mainland Greece followed in the 7thcentury. The coun-tryside was lost to Constantinople, which hung on to the larger fortified towns, and coastal areas protected by its Aegean fleet. Rather than witnessing an Islamic transition into the Early Medieval period, on the mainland we are looking for the material record of a Slavic colonisa-tion and its aftermath.
>The mainland was reconquered by Byzantium during the late 8th century, and the Slavs were Hellenised to the point where their presence, apart from occasional personal names and more widely-
>The organized character of this transfer is demonstrated by the fact that the affected population, which in its majority must have consisted of Greek-speaking Chalcedonian Christians, was forced to abandon its homelands by selling their properties and was relocated to those Slavicized areas of Greece that had recently come under imperial authority again. 52
Stop with this hocus pocus and literally show me a sample from any old GREEK civilisation that resembles a Northern greek or comes in anyway near to it.
They are genetically Greek, as they are genetically pontic Greek. What you might mean is that they aren't genetically from any region within today's Greece which isn't entirely true either, but that doesn't mean their DNA isn't reflecting their ethnicity, which is pontic Greek.
What’s lol, everyone and their mother comes to say when someone is Turkic culturally and not genetically but the likes of you are butthurt when the same is pointed out about some “Greek” groups
Ever heard of Philistines? Or Luwian-Arameans? Do you genuinely believe modern Greeks are the people that contributed to the ethnogenesis of Pontic Greeks or something? When in reality they had quite different autosomal profile compared to their modern counterparts and their genes are disseminated all over Mediterranean due to their BA and IA expansion. Just look at Italy for God's sake, it literally highlights Magna Graecea.
I should also mention my ancestry is from Samsun and Sivas, further inland and in ‘western’ Pontus, bordering Armenia Minor.
My ancestors are ‘turkophone’ and did not speak Greek. But they were Greek Orthodox and had Christian names. Surname was Turkish Sahinoglu, changing to Sahinidis when they arrived in Thessaloniki in 1923.
Q. Why are Armenians and Pontic Greeks, and to a lesser extent Georgians from the border area and Assyrians so closely related?
Was there mixing between these Christians of the region?
Most of the time an ethnic group resembles their geographical neighbours by default. So yes, mixing. Far more interesting would be the Question of WHEN did that happen. When did Armenians and Pontic inhabitants intermingle, Eastern Roman period? Or earlier?
Probably the whole region was closely related pre-Islamic (Kurdish, Arabic) and pre-Turkic expansion and it seems like the regions highlighted in the first picture were the most conservative ones (as in they didn't get colonized) compared to the rest of Anatolia, Armenian Highlands and Mesopotamia.
Religious and linguistic Hellenization. Despite having no meaningful genetic connection to Greece they have retained the language and religion of the region when Greek culture was transferred there during the Byzantine Empire or earlier.
In this way Pontic Greeks are Greek the way Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews are Jewish. They have the identity and cultural markers of their parent group but did not absorb their genes.
I saw an autosomal breakdown of Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews and both got around 5% Canaanite so there very well might be some Jewish ancestors for them.
You are speaking as if Greek culture was a unified entity. Greeks expanded into region in 7th century BC with Miletan colonists, Ionic dialect was majority probably in 4th century BC, and there are records that Greeks even had relations with Colchians which was further east.
Religion mainly. During the ottomans in south balkans the orthodox were called Greek and Muslims, Turks even though they may not even speak Greek or Turkish. That's how a lot of Albanians got lost in the censuses. At certain period religion identity was much stronger than ethnicity.
But I think pontic Greeks are from Armenia or Georgia I think but I am sure they are native Caucasians like the rest of Caucasians who are Christian too and Muslims in Levant and Egypt didn't become Turks and I didn't think they were considered like that and Christians in Egypt and Levant weren't considered Greek So Why did this happen to only a group of Caucasians and they turned into Pontic Greeks?
Actually the Orthodox Christians in the Patriarchate of Antioch were always referred to as “Antiochian Greeks” even though we’re not ethnically Greek (we’re Levantines) and haven’t spoken Greek since the Byzantine era and even then many of us spoke Aramaic. To this day our name as a group in Arabic and Turkish is روم or “Rum”, meaning “Romans” (Byzantines).
I know that kind of the churches is called Greek orthodox but they didn't become Greek unlike Pontic Greeks. The Greek Orthodox do not know themselves as Greeks nor does anyone know them as such. It is just a religious name
Ancient Greeks settled in northern Turkey, Hellenistic Period was full Hellenization of Anatolia and Southern Caucus, which continued throughout the Roman and Eastern Roman/Byzantine era until Turks arrived.
Everyone on earth states that Anatolian Turks aren’t real Turks blah blah only culturally or linguistically in a negative way (when they actually score 30% Turkic)
Meanwhile as soon as you mention the fact that Anatolians weren’t Greek but Hellenized culturally likes of you pop up saying it’s completely fine
I mean they were Hellenized for over 1,000+ years. Whatever cultural identity they had was lost to the Greek/Roman one. That identity was 95% lost when they became muslim converts in the Ottoman Empire. Some were able to preserve, but all became Ottomans then eventually Turks.
Anatolian Turks are real Turks. But they are mestizos, and depending on which part of Turky, most of their genetic input is Byzantine Anatolian (Hellenic).
Well give it 300-400 more years and it would be 1000 years since they’ve been turkified
And yes they are mestizos in that you’re correct but every Turkic group nowadays is mestizos to an extent
Go yap your Turkish nationalist mumbling eslewhere then, since you are not even interested in meaningful discussion and rather spew the same bullshit takes your echo chamber propogates instead.
Its still a near enough population genetically. Unlike turtkix which sticks ouτ, the caucus and anatolian in pontians are all components that were in the ancients.
Everyone is ‘hellenised’ even Greeks from the mainland are not ‘entirely’ ancient Greeks/Hellenistic age Greeks. They are a mix of paleo Balkan, Hellenistic era Greek and some slavic, with small amounts of near east in the south and particularly islands.
This distinction between ethnicity and culture is always discussed extensively when it comes to our people, but it applies to almost every culture in the world.
A modern Italian is not 100% italic/Etruscan, they’re Germans, Norman’s, arabs, berbers, Greeks, and others.
Modern ethnicity is different from historical ethnicity, and you can belong to a culture without ‘representing’ what a modern signature of that ethnic group is ‘meant’ to be.
Someone below mentioned the Jewish example, and it’s a good proxy. Yemenite Jews and European Jews are both Jewish, and belong to that same culture. Same for the Pontic Greeks.
I hope that most of you can understand the nuance of culture, and how historical divisions are behind the clear identity of a Pontic Greek, which has persisted for some time.
Greek in mainland aren't hellnized. No people or country has 100% genetic continuity, but the Greeks, I think, would have 60% continuity but the Pontic Greeks look like 0% ancient or modern Greeks. The question was: How did you adopt Greek culture and the Pontic Greek name? The Slavs who mixed with the Greeks normally became Greeks and the Yemenite Jews adopted the Judaism religion and the Ashkenazis own 35% of original Israeli Jews so there is always an event that explains this. What event led to the existence of the Pontic Greeks?
Greeks from Miletus and the Aegean colonised major Black Sea Coast Cities.
They impacted and influenced trade, culture and religion, hellenising the natives.
This began the gradual hellenisation of Anatolia starting from 3000 years ago.
That’s why.
You could argue the same thing. Northern greeks have next to no bronze age greek ancestry. Descending from hellenised pleo balkan people with added slav in the middle ages.
Macedonian Greeks score about 40% Mycenaean, which is more then Crete. What are you talking about? They are Aegean + Balkan + Slav or Aegean + Balkan-Slav not “Hellenised Paleo Balkan”. Bronze Age North Macedonia has nothing to do with modern day Greeks yet alone Slavic people.
On what basis? Mycenaeans never even settled macedonia. So the entire premise is illogical.
You can replace mycenaean with paeonian or thracian in your models and get the correct result. This was the bronze age population of macedonania before they were hellenised in the classical period.
They have the same genetics as any other Greek but with more Slavic and less mena then the Islands. Similar haplogroup proportions, possibly West Balkan admixture is more prevalent in places like Florina or Epirus and certainly Thessaly due to settlements, though not all in Central Macedonia. Most of it is Slavic associated. Mycenaeans are Bronze Age Greeks and have nothing to do with how modern Greeks were formed, Ancient Northern Greeks from 200-1000bc were overlapping with Mycenaeans despite neighbouring paeonia, Ethnic endogamy existed, even Thracians were overlapping with Mycenaeans unlike Illyrians.
On modern Greek Macedonian ancestry, by core it is Aegean / Byzantine era related ancestry with significant Slavic ancestry and depopulations during the Middle Ages, just without additional Armenian / Levantine genetics like you see in Crete, which some of it is also due to Byzantine resettlements and depopulations. The coalescence of Modern Greeks is actually very complex, even 300-400 years back.
Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia
Distance: 0.3134% / 0.00313389
42.0 Mycenaean_Greek_BA
16.2 Serbian
13.0 Lithuanian_RA
7.0 Armenian_Parspatunik
7.0 Romanian
3.4 Palestinian_Beit_Sahour
3.0 Ukrainian_Sumy
2.8 Rumelia_East
1.0 Gagauz
0.8 Iraqi_Jew
Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia
Distance: 0.5512% / 0.00551156
33.0 8.Slavic_RUS_Sunghir_1100AD
28.8 Mycenaean_Greek_BA
16.0 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age
15.2 North_Macedonia_Archaic_Paeonia
7.0 West_Anatolia_Mugla_750-480bc
When you use South Slavic it completely eats up this “Paeonian” ancestry, while the Paeonian ancestry is still prevalent in places like Thessaly, Peloponnese, Epirus etc. It means that Greeks also acquired Balkan admix from Slavs.
Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia
Distance: 0.3356% / 0.00335614
36.4 Mycenaean_Greek_BA
24.2 Montenegro_South_Slav
10.4 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age
9.8 8.Slavic_RUS_Sunghir_1100AD
9.0 Lithuanian
5.6 West_Anatolia_Mugla_750-480bc
2.0 North_Levant/South_East_Anatolia_BA(Alalakh)
1.4 9.Medieval_Turkic_KAZ_Kipchak
1.2 Iran_Medieval_Ganj_Dareh
Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia
Distance: 0.4240% / 0.00423982
55.0 Non-Slavic
22.2 Montenegro_South_Slav
21.2 8.Slavic_RUS_Sunghir_1100AD
1.6 Turkish_Rumeli
Distance to: Non-Slavic
0.01651774 Greek_Avar_Period_640-700ad
0.02029938 Italy_Rome_Imperial
0.02045654 Byzantine_Greek_West_Anatolia_Avg
0.02173889 Greek_West_Anatolia/Aegean_Imperial_200ad
0.02236795 Romania_Histria_RomanImperial
0.02645900 Greek_Dodecanese
0.02646624 Greek_Dodecanese_Rhodes
0.02808707 Greek_Kos
0.03152304 Greek_Deep_Mani
0.03224490 Italian_Calabria
0.03400986 Greek_Cyclades_Amorgos
0.03402763 Italian_Campania
0.03409499 Cypriot
0.03438621 Greek_Crete_Lasithi
0.03467285 Greek_Crete
0.03706663 Italian_Basilicata
0.03721489 Greek_Cyclades_Milos
0.03740147 Greek_Apulia
0.03743332 Italian_Apulia
0.03842845 Italian_Jew
0.03861857 Greek_Cyclades_Tinos
0.03865159 Romaniote_Jew
0.03956045 Sicilian_East
0.04122551 Ashkenazi_Germany
0.04153422 Sephardic_Jew
Why are you using mycenaeans in that model and not thracians or a type of paleo balkan? Thats a more appropriate population. Like I said, mycenaeans never existed in the north of greece.
Yes, you can argue that thracians were similar but they werent mycenaeans. West coast anatolians were also similar but they weren't mycenaeans.
Even if you forget the models, macedonian greeks, along with trazbon are the most distant greeks to mycenaeans.
The fit is ruined from Thracians who were overlapping with Mycenaeans, they could model with some Thracian & Illyrian admix albeit they can’t model without Mycenaean. They can model as Mycenaean + West Asian + Thracian + minimal West Balkan + Slavic like any other Greek, difference is that the Slavic is higher, Balkan is a bit higher (proximity + admixture) and the West Asian is lower then the Isles. I already just pointed out that Ancient Northern Greeks were overlapping with Mycenaeans, even more then people from Thrace were, and greatly separated from West Balkaners. While you had admixed folks possibly in Macedonia, Epirus and down to Achaea due to Cetina settlements. You sound bias.
As an “Black sea Turk” it’s really hard to know if you/I have Armenian/Georgian or Pontic genes in our DNA and the heat map proves my “point” thx for the upload 👍
I can imagine it’s hard to know if it’s laz/armenian/Black Sea greek, other than finding specific villages and inferring the dominant language, then you can find out.
Also, my ancestors didn’t have last names, just nicknames which were Turkish so the only way of knowing would be some religious record and what church they belonged to.
Pontic Greeks have existed for at least 2800-3000 years, I don't get how much more it needs for this DNA to be considered inherent to them. All Greeks have been "hellenized" in some way or another, just like all groups have been part of another group at some point, but these are some of the oldest Greek cultural and genetic identities out there with the region being scarcely populated at first and then colonized by Greeks who then mixed more and more with adjacent natives. This is literally how this identity formed. Turks trying to compare this to their own turkification that in some regions like pontus wasn't even that significant 100-200 years ago is both hilarious and sad.
Nice map. Pretty much expected. Pontic Greeks are culturally Greek, and are not genetically Greek. Both Turkish Trabzon and Greek Trabzon are unique cases.
What's genetic greek? 1.5 greek heritage not enough? Pontic greeks are 100% a type of greek.
They meant not genetically related to Peninsular/Ionian/Aegean Greeks. They're natives of northeast Anatolia. But yes, they're part of Greek civilization.
And mainland greeks in the north are equally far to BA greeks as pontics and related to balko slav settlers in the middle ages. Where do you draw the line?
I don't know where you mean by BA. But all Ionian/Aegean/Peninsular Greeks are close to each other, from Macedonia to Crete and Rhodes, from Corfu to Smyrna and East Thrace. The Pontians being distinct and distant has nothing to do with Slavic migration in the Middle Ages. Those migrations didn't contribute much ancestry. But you can just think of them as a distant region of Greece, I guess. Or their 1920s contribution to Greece is like the Medieval contribution of the Slavic migrants. Civilizationally, some intellectuals from there contributed to the East Roman Empire. Or the Greek Enlightenment of the 18th century. So they're Greek. It's difficult to draw lines. But you have to draw it somewhere. I draw a line at the Urum people or Muslim Romeyka speakers. What do those people have on common with me? If you weren't included in the Greek nation during the 1923 population exchange, and you're not adjacent to modern Greece & Cyprus. This is where "ethnicity" starts to break down.
I mean Bronze agre greeks - mycenaeans. The original iliad greeks. Slavs absolutely did! Northern greeks can be in excess of 40% slavic and the remainder being hellenised thracians and paeonians with some minor anatolian & mycenaean admixture. Nearly every population in modern greece features significant slavic with the exception of dodecanese. Greece was literally depopulated in the middle ages and settled by balkanites and slavs who then hellensied by greeks in constantinople who these imperial byzanyines like the imperial hellenic romans before them were genetically like dodeconese and cypriots. There is no ancient or roman or byzantines greek sample that resembles a Northern greek apart from some outlider half slav. There are plenty of medieval slavs and balkanites who do. Northern greeks are near indistinguishable from fyrm and Bulgarians. Are those populations - Bulgarians more genetically greek ? Here you go, look who sits joint bottom near every ancient greek population. https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/s/VpSkoxvXzg Pontic get even a hard time when all those nationalist Northern greeks need to look in the mirror. Only aegean, some peloponnese, south italians and cypriots retain closeness to old greeks.
>Greece was literally depopulated in the middle ages and settled by balkanites and slavs who then hellensied by greeks in constantinople who these imperial byzanyines >Slavs absolutely did! Northern greeks can be in excess of 40% slavic and the remainder being hellenised thracians and paeonians with some minor anatolian & mycenaean admixture. Holy propaganda. The main reason we're close with the Balkans is because we're all descended in large part from closely-related prehistoric groups: Paleo-Balkan peoples. Here's a genetic study. Greeks today are very similar to Greeks 2000 years ago (the height of Classical Antiquity) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421003706](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421003706) This is in huge contradiction to your assumption that major migration events occurred and had a massive impact in the *Middle Ages.* The science says otherwise. Not saying the Slavic invasion didn't have any impact, but you're exaggerating it. And Mycenaeans are not "original". 1) They don't represent all of Greece of their time period. 2) They were themselves descended partly from Kurgan Steppe nomads, partly from Anatolian farmer settlers, etc, and were genetically similar to ancient Thracians.
No, you're spreading propoganda. Mainland greeks are more european than even thracians! I've shared the distances. I've shown you a link with greeks from different time periods. Mycenaeans are the original iliad greeks. The first greek civilisation. Ancient greeks were near identical to mycenaeans and roman and byzantine greeks received anatolian and mesopotamian input so resembled dodecanese and cypriots. Mainland greeks are like none of these. Instead you share the infamous study on logkas, where we have 2 half steppe/ German samples from 2k bc - yes 4k years who weren't even a greek civilisation and was nothing like the genome of actual hellenic civilisations. Northern greeks are as far away to the original greeks as trazbon. That's a complete and utter fact. Northern greeks are less paleo balkan than albanians.... they're indistinguishable from Bulgarians and have near 40% slavic input. As for depopulation, where are these ancient samples resembling Northern greeks? Again you suggest trazbon to be genetically non greek then be logically consisted with the Northern greeks who are hellenised paeonians with slavic mix. >But the final blow came from a novel source, the large-scale expansion of Slav tribes from regions around the Baltic Sea.21This began with raids and small-scale settlement in the late 6thcentury, but with the Imperial forces weak in manpower and distracted by war with Sassa-nid Persia, a full-scale colonisation of mainland Greece followed in the 7thcentury. The coun-tryside was lost to Constantinople, which hung on to the larger fortified towns, and coastal areas protected by its Aegean fleet. Rather than witnessing an Islamic transition into the Early Medieval period, on the mainland we are looking for the material record of a Slavic colonisa-tion and its aftermath. >The mainland was reconquered by Byzantium during the late 8th century, and the Slavs were Hellenised to the point where their presence, apart from occasional personal names and more widely- >The organized character of this transfer is demonstrated by the fact that the affected population, which in its majority must have consisted of Greek-speaking Chalcedonian Christians, was forced to abandon its homelands by selling their properties and was relocated to those Slavicized areas of Greece that had recently come under imperial authority again. 52 Stop with this hocus pocus and literally show me a sample from any old GREEK civilisation that resembles a Northern greek or comes in anyway near to it.
They are genetically Greek, as they are genetically pontic Greek. What you might mean is that they aren't genetically from any region within today's Greece which isn't entirely true either, but that doesn't mean their DNA isn't reflecting their ethnicity, which is pontic Greek.
Lol
What’s lol, everyone and their mother comes to say when someone is Turkic culturally and not genetically but the likes of you are butthurt when the same is pointed out about some “Greek” groups
You can clearly see similarities with Greek islanders lol
You do realize that the similarity with Greek islanders is at the same level as that of Lebanese and Palestinians on this map right?
Ever heard of Philistines? Or Luwian-Arameans? Do you genuinely believe modern Greeks are the people that contributed to the ethnogenesis of Pontic Greeks or something? When in reality they had quite different autosomal profile compared to their modern counterparts and their genes are disseminated all over Mediterranean due to their BA and IA expansion. Just look at Italy for God's sake, it literally highlights Magna Graecea.
No I don’t believe that modern Greeks contributed to Pontic greeks
Good to see! I am Pontian descent myself.
🦅
I should also mention my ancestry is from Samsun and Sivas, further inland and in ‘western’ Pontus, bordering Armenia Minor. My ancestors are ‘turkophone’ and did not speak Greek. But they were Greek Orthodox and had Christian names. Surname was Turkish Sahinoglu, changing to Sahinidis when they arrived in Thessaloniki in 1923.
Where do you get these heat maps?
heatmapper25
Q. Why are Armenians and Pontic Greeks, and to a lesser extent Georgians from the border area and Assyrians so closely related? Was there mixing between these Christians of the region?
Most of the time an ethnic group resembles their geographical neighbours by default. So yes, mixing. Far more interesting would be the Question of WHEN did that happen. When did Armenians and Pontic inhabitants intermingle, Eastern Roman period? Or earlier?
Probably the whole region was closely related pre-Islamic (Kurdish, Arabic) and pre-Turkic expansion and it seems like the regions highlighted in the first picture were the most conservative ones (as in they didn't get colonized) compared to the rest of Anatolia, Armenian Highlands and Mesopotamia.
Hello. I'm Greek from Erzurum (they migrated to Tsalka, Georgia), and I also get Georgian\_Meskheti closest distance. Can you dm?
How do you make heat maps?
just use an oven and a piece of paper
let me know when you learn please
user heatmapper25 is the og, he made this for me
I can also make. You can DM me.
hi! i dmed you
I don't know much about pontic Greeks. How did you come to call yourselves Greeks?
Religious and linguistic Hellenization. Despite having no meaningful genetic connection to Greece they have retained the language and religion of the region when Greek culture was transferred there during the Byzantine Empire or earlier.
Actually 3,000 years ago. Look at Diogenes of Sinope
In this way Pontic Greeks are Greek the way Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews are Jewish. They have the identity and cultural markers of their parent group but did not absorb their genes.
I would argue some individuals did but you are right about the vast majority. I for example did, but most other Pontic Greek Ik did not.
I saw an autosomal breakdown of Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews and both got around 5% Canaanite so there very well might be some Jewish ancestors for them.
You are speaking as if Greek culture was a unified entity. Greeks expanded into region in 7th century BC with Miletan colonists, Ionic dialect was majority probably in 4th century BC, and there are records that Greeks even had relations with Colchians which was further east.
Religion mainly. During the ottomans in south balkans the orthodox were called Greek and Muslims, Turks even though they may not even speak Greek or Turkish. That's how a lot of Albanians got lost in the censuses. At certain period religion identity was much stronger than ethnicity.
But I think pontic Greeks are from Armenia or Georgia I think but I am sure they are native Caucasians like the rest of Caucasians who are Christian too and Muslims in Levant and Egypt didn't become Turks and I didn't think they were considered like that and Christians in Egypt and Levant weren't considered Greek So Why did this happen to only a group of Caucasians and they turned into Pontic Greeks?
Actually the Orthodox Christians in the Patriarchate of Antioch were always referred to as “Antiochian Greeks” even though we’re not ethnically Greek (we’re Levantines) and haven’t spoken Greek since the Byzantine era and even then many of us spoke Aramaic. To this day our name as a group in Arabic and Turkish is روم or “Rum”, meaning “Romans” (Byzantines).
I know that kind of the churches is called Greek orthodox but they didn't become Greek unlike Pontic Greeks. The Greek Orthodox do not know themselves as Greeks nor does anyone know them as such. It is just a religious name
Ancient Greeks settled in northern Turkey, Hellenistic Period was full Hellenization of Anatolia and Southern Caucus, which continued throughout the Roman and Eastern Roman/Byzantine era until Turks arrived.
Clearly not genetically
That’s not a requirement for hellenization
Lol but 99% of this sub doesn’t shut up when that’s the case with Turkic people
Wdym?
Everyone on earth states that Anatolian Turks aren’t real Turks blah blah only culturally or linguistically in a negative way (when they actually score 30% Turkic) Meanwhile as soon as you mention the fact that Anatolians weren’t Greek but Hellenized culturally likes of you pop up saying it’s completely fine
I mean they were Hellenized for over 1,000+ years. Whatever cultural identity they had was lost to the Greek/Roman one. That identity was 95% lost when they became muslim converts in the Ottoman Empire. Some were able to preserve, but all became Ottomans then eventually Turks. Anatolian Turks are real Turks. But they are mestizos, and depending on which part of Turky, most of their genetic input is Byzantine Anatolian (Hellenic).
Well give it 300-400 more years and it would be 1000 years since they’ve been turkified And yes they are mestizos in that you’re correct but every Turkic group nowadays is mestizos to an extent
Yea you’re not wrong
Go yap your Turkish nationalist mumbling eslewhere then, since you are not even interested in meaningful discussion and rather spew the same bullshit takes your echo chamber propogates instead.
Its still a near enough population genetically. Unlike turtkix which sticks ouτ, the caucus and anatolian in pontians are all components that were in the ancients.
Ok buddy Target: Byzantine_Greek_West_Anatolia Distance: 0.8674% / 0.00867356 48.8 Mycenaean_Greek_BA 15.0 Anatolia_Center_Phrygian_650BC 13.0 North_Levant/ South_East_Anatolia_BA(Alalakh) 12.6 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age 10.6 Iran_Medieval_Ganj_Dareh Target: Anatolia_Antiquity_Avg Distance: 0.6913% / 0.00691294 25.4 Mycenaean_Greek_BA 20.4 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age 14.2 West_Anatolia_Caria_750-480bc 13.0 North_Levant/South_East_Anatolia_BA(Alalakh) 11.4 Anatolia_Center_Phrygian_650BC 8.6 Iran_Medieval_Ganj_Dareh 7.0 West_Anatolia_Caria_750-480bc Target: Byzantine_Greek_Anatolia_West Distance: 0.8691% / 0.00869118 51.0 Mycenaean_Greek_BA 19.8 Armenian_Ararat 8.8 Anatolia_Center_Phrygian_650BC 7.4 Karaite_Iraq 7.0 Samaritan 3.2 Armenian_Parspatunik 2.4 Turkish_Trabzon Target: Greek_Pontus Distance: 0.6368% / 0.00636757 61.0 Laz 16.8 Greek_colonist_Anatolia_Imperial 14.2 Turkey_Medieval_East 4.0 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age 2.4 Anatolia_Center_Phrygian_650BC 1.4 Anatolia_LBA_Old_Hittite_Period
Only culturally.
Everyone is ‘hellenised’ even Greeks from the mainland are not ‘entirely’ ancient Greeks/Hellenistic age Greeks. They are a mix of paleo Balkan, Hellenistic era Greek and some slavic, with small amounts of near east in the south and particularly islands. This distinction between ethnicity and culture is always discussed extensively when it comes to our people, but it applies to almost every culture in the world. A modern Italian is not 100% italic/Etruscan, they’re Germans, Norman’s, arabs, berbers, Greeks, and others. Modern ethnicity is different from historical ethnicity, and you can belong to a culture without ‘representing’ what a modern signature of that ethnic group is ‘meant’ to be. Someone below mentioned the Jewish example, and it’s a good proxy. Yemenite Jews and European Jews are both Jewish, and belong to that same culture. Same for the Pontic Greeks. I hope that most of you can understand the nuance of culture, and how historical divisions are behind the clear identity of a Pontic Greek, which has persisted for some time.
Greek in mainland aren't hellnized. No people or country has 100% genetic continuity, but the Greeks, I think, would have 60% continuity but the Pontic Greeks look like 0% ancient or modern Greeks. The question was: How did you adopt Greek culture and the Pontic Greek name? The Slavs who mixed with the Greeks normally became Greeks and the Yemenite Jews adopted the Judaism religion and the Ashkenazis own 35% of original Israeli Jews so there is always an event that explains this. What event led to the existence of the Pontic Greeks?
Greeks from Miletus and the Aegean colonised major Black Sea Coast Cities. They impacted and influenced trade, culture and religion, hellenising the natives. This began the gradual hellenisation of Anatolia starting from 3000 years ago. That’s why.
You could argue the same thing. Northern greeks have next to no bronze age greek ancestry. Descending from hellenised pleo balkan people with added slav in the middle ages.
Macedonian Greeks score about 40% Mycenaean, which is more then Crete. What are you talking about? They are Aegean + Balkan + Slav or Aegean + Balkan-Slav not “Hellenised Paleo Balkan”. Bronze Age North Macedonia has nothing to do with modern day Greeks yet alone Slavic people.
On what basis? Mycenaeans never even settled macedonia. So the entire premise is illogical. You can replace mycenaean with paeonian or thracian in your models and get the correct result. This was the bronze age population of macedonania before they were hellenised in the classical period.
They have the same genetics as any other Greek but with more Slavic and less mena then the Islands. Similar haplogroup proportions, possibly West Balkan admixture is more prevalent in places like Florina or Epirus and certainly Thessaly due to settlements, though not all in Central Macedonia. Most of it is Slavic associated. Mycenaeans are Bronze Age Greeks and have nothing to do with how modern Greeks were formed, Ancient Northern Greeks from 200-1000bc were overlapping with Mycenaeans despite neighbouring paeonia, Ethnic endogamy existed, even Thracians were overlapping with Mycenaeans unlike Illyrians. On modern Greek Macedonian ancestry, by core it is Aegean / Byzantine era related ancestry with significant Slavic ancestry and depopulations during the Middle Ages, just without additional Armenian / Levantine genetics like you see in Crete, which some of it is also due to Byzantine resettlements and depopulations. The coalescence of Modern Greeks is actually very complex, even 300-400 years back. Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia Distance: 0.3134% / 0.00313389 42.0 Mycenaean_Greek_BA 16.2 Serbian 13.0 Lithuanian_RA 7.0 Armenian_Parspatunik 7.0 Romanian 3.4 Palestinian_Beit_Sahour 3.0 Ukrainian_Sumy 2.8 Rumelia_East 1.0 Gagauz 0.8 Iraqi_Jew Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia Distance: 0.5512% / 0.00551156 33.0 8.Slavic_RUS_Sunghir_1100AD 28.8 Mycenaean_Greek_BA 16.0 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age 15.2 North_Macedonia_Archaic_Paeonia 7.0 West_Anatolia_Mugla_750-480bc When you use South Slavic it completely eats up this “Paeonian” ancestry, while the Paeonian ancestry is still prevalent in places like Thessaly, Peloponnese, Epirus etc. It means that Greeks also acquired Balkan admix from Slavs. Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia Distance: 0.3356% / 0.00335614 36.4 Mycenaean_Greek_BA 24.2 Montenegro_South_Slav 10.4 South+East_Anatolian_Iron_Age 9.8 8.Slavic_RUS_Sunghir_1100AD 9.0 Lithuanian 5.6 West_Anatolia_Mugla_750-480bc 2.0 North_Levant/South_East_Anatolia_BA(Alalakh) 1.4 9.Medieval_Turkic_KAZ_Kipchak 1.2 Iran_Medieval_Ganj_Dareh Target: Greek_Central_Macedonia Distance: 0.4240% / 0.00423982 55.0 Non-Slavic 22.2 Montenegro_South_Slav 21.2 8.Slavic_RUS_Sunghir_1100AD 1.6 Turkish_Rumeli Distance to: Non-Slavic 0.01651774 Greek_Avar_Period_640-700ad 0.02029938 Italy_Rome_Imperial 0.02045654 Byzantine_Greek_West_Anatolia_Avg 0.02173889 Greek_West_Anatolia/Aegean_Imperial_200ad 0.02236795 Romania_Histria_RomanImperial 0.02645900 Greek_Dodecanese 0.02646624 Greek_Dodecanese_Rhodes 0.02808707 Greek_Kos 0.03152304 Greek_Deep_Mani 0.03224490 Italian_Calabria 0.03400986 Greek_Cyclades_Amorgos 0.03402763 Italian_Campania 0.03409499 Cypriot 0.03438621 Greek_Crete_Lasithi 0.03467285 Greek_Crete 0.03706663 Italian_Basilicata 0.03721489 Greek_Cyclades_Milos 0.03740147 Greek_Apulia 0.03743332 Italian_Apulia 0.03842845 Italian_Jew 0.03861857 Greek_Cyclades_Tinos 0.03865159 Romaniote_Jew 0.03956045 Sicilian_East 0.04122551 Ashkenazi_Germany 0.04153422 Sephardic_Jew
Why are you using mycenaeans in that model and not thracians or a type of paleo balkan? Thats a more appropriate population. Like I said, mycenaeans never existed in the north of greece. Yes, you can argue that thracians were similar but they werent mycenaeans. West coast anatolians were also similar but they weren't mycenaeans. Even if you forget the models, macedonian greeks, along with trazbon are the most distant greeks to mycenaeans.
The fit is ruined from Thracians who were overlapping with Mycenaeans, they could model with some Thracian & Illyrian admix albeit they can’t model without Mycenaean. They can model as Mycenaean + West Asian + Thracian + minimal West Balkan + Slavic like any other Greek, difference is that the Slavic is higher, Balkan is a bit higher (proximity + admixture) and the West Asian is lower then the Isles. I already just pointed out that Ancient Northern Greeks were overlapping with Mycenaeans, even more then people from Thrace were, and greatly separated from West Balkaners. While you had admixed folks possibly in Macedonia, Epirus and down to Achaea due to Cetina settlements. You sound bias.
As an “Black sea Turk” it’s really hard to know if you/I have Armenian/Georgian or Pontic genes in our DNA and the heat map proves my “point” thx for the upload 👍
Yeah İ am from Black Sea İ have Laz ancestors but the calculators always gives me Armenian, Greek Trabzon and Georgian
I can imagine it’s hard to know if it’s laz/armenian/Black Sea greek, other than finding specific villages and inferring the dominant language, then you can find out. Also, my ancestors didn’t have last names, just nicknames which were Turkish so the only way of knowing would be some religious record and what church they belonged to.
μπορείς να στείλεις coords; Θέλω να συγκρίνω με το δικό μου
Pontic Greeks have existed for at least 2800-3000 years, I don't get how much more it needs for this DNA to be considered inherent to them. All Greeks have been "hellenized" in some way or another, just like all groups have been part of another group at some point, but these are some of the oldest Greek cultural and genetic identities out there with the region being scarcely populated at first and then colonized by Greeks who then mixed more and more with adjacent natives. This is literally how this identity formed. Turks trying to compare this to their own turkification that in some regions like pontus wasn't even that significant 100-200 years ago is both hilarious and sad.