Race of the ancient Romans?

[Robocop]

Overall southern Italians are closer to Turks in terms of genotype and phenotype than Bosniaks.

Southern Italians are whole different story in compare to central or northern Italians I thought you was referring on entire Italy.

And one more time, I will repeat, by Y-DNA, Turks are total aliens to Bosniaks.

[Smaug]

I'm ready.

Done. True, Celts and Germanics are far from being the same.

[Styrian Mujo]

And one more time, I will repeat, by Y-DNA, Turks are total aliens to Bosniaks.

Tell that to Ulla.

[arcticwolf]

95% Nordids, 5% SubNordids. 0% Med.

[Scholarios]

I give up. I'll just leave you Greeks and Italians with your nationalist delusions. I'll find a more interesting subject wich does not invlove Greeks and Italians.

Youre welcome to contribute with data that doesn't include "feelings".

Actually, we don't know exactly what were Ancient Greeks background, and even less so Ancient Romans (who seem to be less heterogeneous than Greeks were). But we do know that

A. E and J2 predominates in all areas where Ancient Greeks were- and in Modern Greece today- combined with R1B.

B. Slavs and northerners brought other stuff- like I2a, which wasn't in Ancient Greeks- at least not at high levels.

C. Ancient writers describe Greeks and Italics as what would be "swarthy" to Modern Northern and Central Europeans.

D. Ancient DNA tests show that Minoan mtdna has its closest match in....modern Crete

These are just facts. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from them. To me, the idea that Greeks and Romans were somehow closer stock to North-Central Europeans doesn't follow. Getting into all these complex and to my mind superfluous theories about hunter-gatherers etc. doesn't really help anyone's case. There is still so much we don't know. Look at the case of the Etruscans. 3 different DNA tests, all different results.

[Kale]

95% Nordids, 5% SubNordids. 0% Med.

95% Nordids, 5% Superultrameganords, -482% med.

[Bloodnigger]

95% Nordids, 5% Superultrameganords, -482% med.

90% Nordids, 5% Ubermenschen, 5% Artek.

=>100% Delivery

[Ulla]

Youre welcome to contribute with data that doesn't include "feelings".

Actually, we don't know exactly what were Ancient Greeks background, and even less so Ancient Romans (who seem to be less heterogeneous than Greeks were). But we do know that

A. E and J2 predominates in all areas where Ancient Greeks were- and in Modern Greece today- combined with R1B.

B. Slavs and northerners brought other stuff- like I2a, which wasn't in Ancient Greeks- at least not at high levels.

C. Ancient writers describe Greeks and Italics as what would be "swarthy" to Modern Northern and Central Europeans.

D. Ancient DNA tests show that Minoan mtdna has its closest match in....modern Crete

These are just facts. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from them. To me, the idea that Greeks and Romans were somehow closer stock to North-Central Europeans doesn't follow. Getting into all these complex and to my mind superfluous theories about hunter-gatherers etc. doesn't really help anyone's case. There is still so much we don't know. Look at the case of the Etruscans. 3 different DNA tests, all different results.

I agree, more or less. BTW quite interisting contribution.

Anyhow, Italics (included Latins) in their early stages were almost homogeneous. I answer on the rest tomorrow.

[Styrian Mujo]

While it is difficult to gauge the intermixture that took place between the older established inhabitants and the infiltrating Greeks wherever they may have come from, the tradition of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean may have had an even greater impact on the physical nature of the people. It has been estimated that in classical times the number of slaves in Attica was roughly equal to the number of free inhabitants, or around 100,000." In Sparta there was an even greater proportion of slaves, and most of them, the helots, were Messenians. While the slaves of Athens were a wide racial mix and therefore less likely to unite on the basis of a common language, these Messenian helots of Sparta all spoke Greek, and had a kind of group self-consciousness. Thus they presented "special problems of security for their Spartan masters, whose numbers were constantly on the decline."

Changes in the ethnic composition of Greek city-states are illustrated by the comments about the case of Piso. Piso, who had been the recipient of an unhelpful decision by a vote of the Athenian city assembly,

"made a violent speech in which he said that the latter-day Athenians had no right to identify themselves with the great Athenians of the days of Pericles, Demosthenes, Aeschylus, and Plato. The ancient Athenians had been extirpated by repeated wars and massacres and these were mere mongrels, degenerates, and the descendants of slaves. He said that any Roman who flattered them as if they were the legitimate heirs of those ancient heroes was lowering the dignity of the Roman name."

Such historical ideas make it clear that even two thousand years ago the notion of ethnic purity amongst the Greeks was difficult to sustain. The ethnic mix continued over the next two thousand years. As Nicol has observed, "The ancient Greeks were, after all, of very mixed ancestry; and there can be no doubt that the Byzantine Greeks, both before and after the Slav occupation, were even more heterogenous.”

Slavery in the ancient world and in Rome was vital to both the economy and even the social fabric of the society. While it was commonplace throughout the Mediterranean region, and the Hellenistic regions in the east, it was not nearly so vital to others as it was to the dominance of Rome. As the Romans consolidated their hegemony of Italy and Sicily followed by the systematic conquest of western Europe, countless millions of slaves were transported to Rome the Italian countryside and Latin colonies all over Europe.

The mass influx of slaves during this time period first was a sign of great wealth and power, but later destabilized an already fragile Roman class system. Farms originally run by small business families throughout Italy were soon gobbled up and replaced by enormous slave run plantations owned by the aristocratic elite. Cheap slave labor replaced work for the average citizen and the rolls of the unemployed masses grew to epidemic proportions. These issues had a great destabilizing effect on the social system which had a direct role in the demise of the Republic. As the rift between Senatorial elite (optimates) and social reformers (populares) grew, the use of the unemployed, landless, yet citizen mobs were an overwhelming ploy grinding away at the ability of the Senate to govern. Though there are many factors involved in the Fall of the Republic, slavery and its effects rippled throughout every aspect of that turbulent time period.

Not only did slavery help push the Roman lower classes into organized mobs, but the slaves themselves understandably revolted against oppression. The 3 servile wars in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, with the rebellion of Spartacus in the 70's BC the most notable, showed that the social system was dangerous and unhealthy. By the end of these civil wars and general social disorder, slaves were abundantly present in Rome. The slave population was at least equal to that of freedmen (non citizens), and has been estimated at anywhere from 25 to 40% of the population of the city as a whole. One such estimate suggests that the slave population in Rome circa 1 AD, may have been as much as 300,000 to 350,000 of the 900,000 total inhabitants. In outlying provinces, the numbers are certainly far less substantial, dropping to between an estimated 2 and 10% of the total. Still though, in some places such as Pergamum on the western coast of present day Turkey, the slave population may have been around 40,000 people or 1/3 of the cities total population. At the height of the Empire in the mid second century AD, some have estimated that the total slave population may have approached 10 million people, or approximately 1/6 of the population as a whole.

Gauls, Germanics and other 'barbarian' races were preferred for their strength and endurance. In fact, the Romans in many cases preferred to use these tribes in auxilia army roles rather than as slaves in the strictest sense. Still, these people were often relegated to the menial labor tasks of mining, farming and other labor related industries, reflecting upon stereotypes of the day. Greeks were especially prized slaves for both their cultural refinement and education. Greeks with the ability to educate the Roman youth or with knowledge of medicine were expensive and highly sought after. By the late empire, the predominant house slaves in Rome came almost entirely from the eastern Mediterranean.

[Styrian Mujo]

"One of the great mysteries of European history in my eyes is the complete reversal in character between the ancient Romans and medieval or modern Italians.

The Romans were very organised, disciplined, serious, rather stern and stoic, military-minded, cared little about family ties (they frequently adopted people unrelated to them or murdered their blood relatives), and were unusually ready to sacrifice themselves for the common good of their nation (as legionaries).

The Italians are just the opposite in all these respects. They are possibly the least organised Europeans, among the least disciplined. They are fun-loving hedonists. They have made terrible soldiers ever since the Middle Ages (Italians haven't won a single foreign battle in history, except in Libya and Ethiopia where their army far outnumbered the locals in number and fire power). Italians attach a lot of importance to family relations, and often place loyalty to family and friends above that of society or the whole nation. One of the main problems of modern Italy is tax fraud, because people don't feel enough solidarity with other Italians.

Many character traits are highly inheritable. Cats don't make dogs or vice versa. So how is it possible that modern Italians descend from ancient Romans ?

The character traits of modern Italians listed above are far more exacerbated in the southern half of Italy. This is all the more surprising since the ancient Latins originated in the coastal area between Rome and Naples. Since Rome was flooded with immigrants from all over the empire, chances are that the Roman genes survived better in Neapolitans. The region was heavily settled by rich Romans, who had holiday homes in what they called the Campania Felix. Campania was even part of the same province as Rome, the Regio I Latium et Campania. Some Roman emperors were more often in Capri than in Rome itself.

This made me wonder how much DNA from the ancient Latins, the patricians of the Roman Republic, survive in modern Italians. Ironically the temperament and values of the ancient Romans were closer to that of modern Swiss or Germans than to that of Italians. Yet it is hard to think of two European cultures more diametrically opposite as the Swiss/Germans and the Italians, especially if we look only at the Neapolitans or southern Italians."