The Greeks in the West: genetic signatures of the Hellenic colonisation in southern Italy and Sicily

Journal article

Greek colonisation of South Italy and Sicily (Magna Graecia) was a defining event in European cultural history, although the demographic processes and genetic impacts involved have not been systematically investigated. Here, we combine high-resolution surveys of the variability at the uni-parentally inherited Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA in selected samples of putative source and recipient populations with forward-in-time simulations of alternative demographic models to detect signatures of that impact. Using a subset of haplotypes chosen to represent historical sources, we recover a clear signature of Greek ancestry in East Sicily compatible with the settlement from Euboea during the Archaic Period (eighth to fifth century BCE). We inferred moderate sex-bias in the numbers of individuals involved in the colonisation: a few thousand breeding men and a few hundred breeding women were the estimated number of migrants. Last, we demonstrate that studies aimed at quantifying Hellenic genetic flow by the proportion of specific lineages surviving in present-day populations may be misleading.

Authors: Tofanelli, S; Brisighelli, F; Anagnostou, P; Busby, G; Ferri, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Journal: European Journal of Human Genetics
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 429–436
• Publication date: 2015-07-15
• Acceptance date: 2015-05-06
• DOI: 10.1038/ejhg.2015.124
• EISSN: 1476-5438
• ISSN: 1018-4813
• Language: English