View Full Version : Genetic study Albanians/Balkans
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543790v2
Some of the conclusions of the article:
Modern Albanians derive overwhelmingly (80–90%) from the population that inhabited the Albanian lands in the Early Middle Ages, both in the north and the south.
This population itself derived overwhelmingly (68–84%) from the ancient tribes of the same region, dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages.
During the migration period, the Albanian lands remained a refuge where the pre-Roman population structure largely survived.
The ethnogenesis of the Arbėr/Albanians likely occurred around the 3rd–9th centuries.
The Eastern European autosomal component among modern Albanians is lower than in neighboring populations, around 10–20% (this includes Slavic ancestry).
Most Albanian paternal lineages must have spread from the central and western Balkans from the Bronze Age to Antiquity.
Modern Albanians from all regions are genetically very similar to each other, with only minor local differences.
https://i.postimg.cc/66cYxBnz/Uten-navn.png
There were three medieval samples...
Some of the runs for the two Medieval samples from Albania (Kinete and Shtike), they can be modelled on a QPADM run with Southern Illyrian + some MENA, while Thracian and Bulgaria IA as a model fails:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Go1c0-zXMAEOsU8?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Go1dRgZXwAIfAc5?format=png&name=900x900
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Go1dRggW0AAML3j?format=jpg&name=large
For these supposed ''Thracian'' claims, these Medieval Albania samples plot nowhere close to any Thracians/Bulgaria, they are basically just MENA shifted Illyrians or MENA influenced as shown by QAPDM admixtures, or Roman Illyrians next to the Southern Illyrian cluster:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Go1dRggW0AAML3j?format=jpg&name=large
Pretty similar to what I get on Illustrative DNA running the same model
https://i.postimg.cc/MZLWgPSz/Bilde-2023-06-23-185935848.png
https://i.postimg.cc/Sx0rzGpm/Bilde-2023-06-23-162713952.png
Target: Arba
Distance: 1.1113% / 0.01111334
65.0 Illyrians
24.0 MENA
11.0 Slavic
Target: Arba
Distance: 1.1858% / 0.01185818
72.2 Illyrians
18.0 Slavic
9.8 MENA
For these supposed ''Thracian'' claims, these Medieval Albania samples plot nowhere close to any Thracians/Bulgaria, they are basically just MENA shifted Illyrians or MENA influenced as shown by QAPDM admixtures, or Roman Illyrians next to the Southern Illyrian cluster:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Go1dRggW0AAML3j?format=jpg&name=large
They also have no Slavic admixture.
J-PH4679/ (https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-PH4679/) an early proto-Albanian lineage found in Iron Age Italy with Illyrian profile, shows IBD sharing with Illyrians in Albania and Messapic sample in south east Italy (which has another J-L283 Albanian under it). This links proto-Albanian to Iapygian/Illyrian migrants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapic_language which many linguists argue are related languages.
Also I never knew ''Thracians'' lived on the West coast of the Balkans :lol:
In any case, possible contacts with Romanians do not concern the oldest Latin influences on Albanian, as they go back to times when only the coast was Romanized and not the central Balkan areas. What is more, Albanian has preserved Latin characteristics that did not survive in any Romance language, that is, from before the regionalization of Latin, or at least may be found elsewhere only in very conservative varieties ...
Breu, Walter (2022), "Romance in Contact with Albanian", The Oxford Encyclopedia of Romance Linguistics, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Albanian_language
Nice try ;)
And these are the closest populations for the 3rd Medieval Albania sample which was not posted earlier, belongs to haplogroup R-PF7563, plots almost like the
Iron Age
Closest modern populations:
Italian Emilia Romagna Italy Modern 0.029068
2 Albanian Arbereshe Italy Italy Modern 0.029379
3 Italian Italy Modern 0.031203
4 Albanian North County Lezhe Albania Modern 0.031394
5 Albanian Central County Tirana Albania Modern 0.032042
6 Albanian Central Albania Modern 0.032158
7 Albanian Central County Durres Albania Modern 0.032206
8 Albanian Central County Elbasan Albania Modern 0.032270
9 Italian Lazio Italy Modern 0.032271
10 Albanian South County Berat Albania Modern 0.032650
11 Albanian Tosk Albania Modern 0.032890
12 Albanian Chameria Epirus Greece Modern 0.032941
13 Albanian Greece Greece Modern 0.033015
14 Albanian Albania Modern 0.033177
15 Albanian North Albania Modern 0.033235
16 Albanian South County Fier Albania Modern 0.033379
17 Albanian South County Gjirokaster Albania Modern 0.033396
18 Albanian South Albania Modern 0.033643
19 Albanian South County Vlore Albania Modern 0.033727
20 Italian Umbria Italy Modern 0.034265
21 Albanian North County Kukes Albania Modern 0.034336
22 Albanian North County Diber Albania Modern 0.034354
23 Italian Marche Italy Modern 0.034462
24 Albanian North County Shkoder Albania Modern 0.034515
25 Albanian Gheg Albania Modern 0.034661
26 Greek Western Greece Greece Modern 0.034669
1 Paeonian N. Macedonia Iron Age 0.027299
2 Dardanian W. Balkans Iron Age 0.027835
3 Macedonia IA N. Macedonia Iron Age 0.028281
4 Southern Illyrian W. Balkans Iron Age 0.029258
5 Greece Logkas MBA Greece Middle Bronze Age 0.029291
6 Roman Illyrian W. Balkans Roman 0.029922
7 Roman Moesia Balkans Roman 0.030755
8 Montenegro BA Montenegro Bronze Age 0.030798
9 Albania BA Albania Bronze Age 0.030877
10 Ancient Macedonian N. Macedonia Classical 0.031348
11 BA Western Balkan Balkans Ancient 0.031387
12 Albania Medieval Albania Medieval 0.031627
13 Macedonia BA N. Macedonia Bronze Age 0.032167
14 Albania Ottoman Albania Ottoman 0.032556
15 Dacian Romania Iron Age 0.032616
16 Croatia BA Croatia Bronze Age 0.033122
17 Illyrian W. Balkans Iron Age 0.034253
18 Greece Ottoman Greece Ottoman 0.037284
19 Albania IA Albania Iron Age 0.037485
20 Greece Medieval Greece Medieval 0.038375
21 Roman Dacian Romania Roman 0.038839
22 Macedonia Ottoman N. Macedonia Ottoman 0.039445
23 Albania Medieaval Kenete Northeastern Durres Albania Ancient 0.039568
24 Albania Medieval Shtike Southeastern Kolonja Albania Medieval 0.040575
25 Croatia IA Croatia Iron Age 0.042642
Dukei
07-20-2026, 05:32 AM
Nice thread. Here is some more from the study you posted:
We next rotated using our unadmixed East European proxy (CEE_Medieval) and slightly earlier
Balkan Roman populations that cluster close to Albania_Medieval on the PCA (Montenegro_Doclea_Roman_Serbia_Roman_ Naissus;Fig.4A)(Table S4). To test linguistic theories which postulate a Daco-Thracian origin of Albanian, we also added individuals from Roman Serbia (Serbia_Roman_Thracian_profile) that cluster with Bronze and Iron Age samples from the southeastern Balkans (Bulgaria_EIA and Greece_BA_Myceanean;Fig.4). A one-way Roman period West Balkan model (100% Montenegro_Doclea_Roman) was adequate, suggesting that Daco-Thracian speaking populations either did not contribute ancesty to Albania_Medieval, or their autosomal profile was Central-West-Balkan-like. Furthermore, Albania_Medieval lacks East European-related ancestry entirely (based on our qpAdm models and the abscence of IBD matches), demonstrating that the Slavic migrations that transformed the genetic and linguistic landscape of the Balkans in the Early Middle Ages did not affect the samples individuals from 8-9th CE Albania.
Here is the J-PH4679+ on a pca map. It plots with Albania BA/IA. https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-PH4679/
https://i.postimg.cc/hPQJdv88/lol.jpg
argedu
07-21-2026, 01:38 PM
Hello everyone, I came from another forum. So basically this study claims Medieval Albania derives up to at least 84% of
it's ancestry from Bronze & Iron Age western Balkans (Illyrians) while modern Albanians derive 80-90% of their ancestry
from this Medieval population? How come they did not include the R-PF7563/Barc sample which is the most Iron Age shifted? So there was an east shift also like happened elsewhere in the western Balkans during the Roman era?
This analysis recovered Albania_Medieval once more as a 100% Roman West Balkan (Table S4), showing that the ancestors of this population largely shielded from the demographic upheavals of the Migration Period.
Based on PCA and qpAdm models, we showed that present-day Albanians descend from earlier Medieval groups in Albania, which derived most of their ancestry from Late Bronze and Iron Age western Balkan individuals.
Based on the two samples from Kenete and Shtike - which may not capture the entire genetic diversity of Medieval
populations from Albania the Early Medieval ancestors of the Albanians, both in North and South Albania experienced
no contribution from surrounding Slavic populations (Fig. 4A, B;Table S4) and maintained the highest levels of Bronze Age and Iron Age West Balkan ancestry observed in the present-day Balkans (66-84%). The only detectable post-Iron Age ancestry shift in the ancestors of Albania's Medieval inhabitants is represented by a 16-32% contribution from an Anatolian or south-east Balkan related population, which likely took place during the preceding Roman period, as happened elsewhere in the Balkans. Remarkably, 1,200 years later, the genetic profile of Albania_Medieval represents on average 80-90% of the ancestry of present-day Albanians, depending on the East European-related proxy used in qpAdm analyses (Fig.5).
So it seems the E-V13 is something that was added later as also happened elsewhere in the Western-Central Balkans? Whereas J-L283, R-CTS1450, R-PF7563 and I-P78 were part of the early Albanians in the Western Balkans/Illyrians. Of course they are bottlenecks, as it was 17-20% in Late antiquity Western-Central Balkans of the Roman era in urban areas (Serbia, Croatia etc.). The % today are Medieval founder effects. In the paper they claim even these E-V13 carriers had West-Central Balkan profiles ? Could some also of had East Med/Anatolian profiles? Many of these E-V13 clades that have many foreigners could even represent Romanised speakers of the Balkans that lived in urban centers that got absorbed into Albanians? Some clades don't seem to of started expanding with Albanians until post 500 CE or 900 CE or even later. Very little clades seem to of been part of early Albanians.
argedu
07-21-2026, 03:57 PM
Some more on the wikipedia page you posted:
Proto-Albanian came into contact with Latin since the Illyro–Roman wars in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE, when the Roman Republic defeated the Illyrians and began to establish its rule in the Western Balkans, gradually consolidating its dominion during the last two centuries BCE. But the major Latin influence in Proto-Albanian occurred since the first years of the common era, when the Western Balkans were eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire after the Great Illyrian Revolt of 6–9 CE (Bellum Batonianum).[30]
Proto-Albanian speech came into contact in its earlier stage with Ancient Greek since the 7th century BCE, when the Greek colonies were founded on the Adriatic coast of Albania. In that period early loanwords were borrowed from Doric Greek (West Greek), either directly from the colonists or indirectly through trade communication in the hinterland.[20] During the 5th–4th centuries BCE Proto-Albanian directly loaned words from Ancient Macedonian, at a time when this language gained prominence in the region and was not yet replaced by Koine Greek.[21] Several Proto-Albanian terms have been preserved in the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria and other ancient glossaries.[22] Some of the Proto-Albanian glosses in Hesychius are considered to have been loaned to the Doric Greek as early as the 7th century BCE.[23]
These and linguistic facts, phylogeny and countless other things that clearly support the proto-Albanians were an Illyrian people (J-L283, R-PF7563, R-CTS1450, I-P78) as you said. Can you come to genarchivist, I want to talk to you there on private?
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.3 Copyright © 2026 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.