Korenine / Origin / Herkunft

ETRUSCANS, VENETI and Slovenes: A Genetic Perspective
J. Skulj
The Hindu Institute of Learning,
Toronto, Canada. 2005-4-22

INTRODUCTION
In 1973, in his book Before Civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe, well known archaeologist and pre-historian Lord Colin Renfrew wrote: "The study of prehistory today is in a state of crisis.  Archaeologists all over the world have realized that much of pre-history, as written in existing textbooks, is inadequate, some of it quite simply wrong........the chronology of prehistoric Europe betrays a serious flaw in archaeological theory....Most of us have been brought up to believe, for instance, that the Pyramids of Egypt are the oldest-stone built monuments in the world, and that the first temples built by man were situated in the Near East...... There, it was thought metallurgy was invented.....It comes, then, as a shock to learn that all this is wrong.  The megalithic chamber tombs of western Europe are now dated earlier than the Pyramids...... Copper metallurgy appears to have been underway in the Balkans at an early date-earlier than in Greece...

Already, twenty years ago, the new scientific technique of radiocarbon dating brought archaeologists several surprises. But it did not challenge the basic assumptions underlying what they had written: the position of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia as the innovators, illuminating the rest of the Old World with the radiance of their culture was not challenged.  Today the second radiocarbon revolution, based on recent tree-ring dating, has undermined these assumptions.  Indeed, it is bringing down the whole edifice of links and connections that were so laboriously built up by scholars over the last fifty years in order to date and make intelligible our prehistoric past." (Renfrew 1973)

"In reconstructing the past it is natural to look for clues in stone tools, pottery and grave goods.  These are the tangible artifacts of the past-but they are not the only survivors.  In every cell of our bodies we all carry DNA which has been passed down almost unchanged from our earliest ancestors...DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the messenger of heredity" (Sykes & Renfrew 2000).

The mtDNA and Y chromosome have the potential to be particularly informative for the studies of human migrations that populated Europe.  Both components of the human genome are inherited from only one parent.  Therefore, neither can recombine, and thus both change by the accumulation of sequential mutations along radiation lineages.  Since all the sequence variants of the mtDNA or Y chromosome remain associated with each other in total linkage disequilibrium, the sum of the sequence variant sites of mtDNA or Y chromosome are designated its "haplotype".  Groups of haplotypes sharing distinctive sequence variants inherited from a common ancestor are known as `haplogroups" (Lell & Wallace 2000).
    
Analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of modern populations has become a useful tool for human population studies and for reconstructing aspects of evolutionary history.  The maternal mode of inheritance of the mtDNA, allows it to be used for inferring the pattern of prehistoric female migrations and peopling of different regions of the world.  It is now technically possible to validate these analyses by directly studying the DNA of ancient people and comparing them to the present day populations (Malyarchuk 2003, Vernesi 2004).

Table 1-The Age and Frequency of  the mtDNA Haplogroups and Subhaplogroups:

 

The columns do not add up to 100%, because the data are from many sources.

Abbreviations: Hg means haplogroup; (20) represents the total of the subhaplogroups; BSK1 is the mtDNA obtained from 4,000-5,000 year old skeletal remains from the Basque region; BSK2 are present day Basques; VEN are Italians from Veneto; SLO are Slovenes; POL are Poles; RUS are Russians; SWE are Swedes; EU Avg. is European average; IND are East-Indians.

Using the data of (R) (Richards 2000), (I) (Izagirre 1999), (MM) (Maca-Mayer 2003), (MP) (Mogentale-Profizi 2001) and summarized in Table 1, a weighted average haplogroup age has been calculated.  The weighted average haplogroup age of Europeans as a whole is~ 24,600 +/-2,800 years, but the Slovenian haplogroup age is almost the same age at ~24,400 +/- 2, 700 years. older at 27,460 years.  The reason for the old haplogroup age in Slovenes is a relatively high frequency of haplogroup U, which is 25 % more frequent in Slovenes than Europeans as a whole.  

The Origins and Diffusion of Haplogroups:
Haplogroup H is the most common haplogroup in Europeans.  It is also common in Caucasoid populations of the Near East and North Africa and is also observed in northern India.  Even though this haplogroup is more common in Europe than in the Near East, its diversity is much higher in the Near East than in Europe and this suggests that, haplogroup H originated in the Near East ~25,000 years ago and then expanded into Europe ~20,000 years ago (Torroni 1998).

Haplogroup V is is more recent and is considered to have European or North African origin ~13, 000 years ago (Torroni 1998).

Haplogroup J has its origin in the Near East and reaches its highest frequency in Arabia amongst Beduins and Yemeni at 25 % and that it may have accompanied the spread of farming to Europe (Richards 2000).  It is haplogroup J that is associated with the arrival of farming at the beginning of the Neolithic period (Renfrew 2002).

Haplogroup T is a sister of haplogroup J with its origin in the Near East ~50,000 years ago and more recent date in Europe (Richards 2000).

Haplogroup K is widely distributed amongst the populations of Europe, Near East and India (Torroni 2000, Kivisild 1999).  The 5200 year old `Ice Man' from the Alps, also carried the haplogroup K maternal lineage (Di Benedetto 2000).
 
Haplogroup U is considered the oldest.  This haplogroup is present in Slovenian population at ~ 20 %; this considerably higher than the European average of 16 %.  Subhaplogroup U5, which is part of Hg U is estimated to be the oldest.  It is present in modern Basques at 12 %, Slovenes at 11 % and Indians at <1 %.  U5 is to have evolved mainly in Europe ~50 000 years ago (Richards 2000), along with Hg V at a more recent date (Achilli 2004). This may account for some of the linguistic similarities between Basque and Slavic languages as noted by Jandacek and Arko (Jandacek 2001).  It should be noted that Tambets et al. consider U4, which is another subhaplogroup of U, to be even more European than U5 and note that it is relatively frequent in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.  In Slovenes the frequency of U4 at 6% is double the European average. Both U5 and U4 are recognized as Upper Paleolithic in age and their beginnings are before farming; a few U4 lineages have also been found in India (Tambets 2002).

Haplogroup X is shared between Europeans and American Indians (Torroni 1998).  The estimated arrival from Europe to the area of the Great Lakes is ~15,000 years ago.

The research by Richards et al. (1996), based upon the analysis of mitochondrial DNA, suggests that the greater part of the variability of the mtDNA in Europe is to be dated back to the Late Upper Paleolithic (70 %), with the significant proportion to Upper Paleolithic (10 %) and only limited proportion (20 %) to haplogroup J, associated by them with the arrival of farming at the beginning of the Neolithic period (Renfrew 2002).  Into the area of the Alps, only a relatively small number (7 %) of lineages have entered since the Bronze Age up to the present times (Richards 2000).

ETRUSCAN and VENETIC mtDNA LINEAGES:
Vernesi et al. obtained fragments of well preserved skeletons from Etruscan necropolises, covering much of the Etruria in terms of both chronology (7th to 2nd centuries B.C.) and geography. The tombs typically belong to the social elites, so the individuals studied may represent only a specific social group, the upper classes.  The ancient human remains came from the following sites: Adria, Volterra, Castelfranco di Sotto, Castellucio di Pienza, Magliano and Marsiliana, Tarquinia and also Capua.  Two cities, Adria in the Po valley and Capua in Campania, were at the fringes of Etruscan territory.  In Adria the hybridization with the Veneti may have occurred (Vernesi 2004).

Vernesi et al. compared the mtDNA results obtained from the ancient remains to a number of modern populations.  Unfortunately, they did not take into account the genetic studies of Slovenes ( Malyarchuk 2003), who are geographically relatively close to Adria.  

The Etruscans are one of the mysterious peoples of the ancient world, who seem to have appeared for a time on the stage of history, and then seemed to have disappeared.  In fact, from the end of the Roman period to the Middle Ages, they could be said to have ceased to exist, since the sites of their cities, towns, villages and farms had been completely lost.  It was in the19th century that the study of the Etruscan legacy began in earnest.  The heart of Etruria was the territory, in the present day Italy, on the Tyrrhenian  Sea between the rivers, Arno on the north and Tiber on the south and extending to Perugia in the east.  The Etruscan influence in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., went beyond its heartland and extended to, Adria in the Po valley in the north and to Capua in the south.  It is generally accepted, that present day Tuscans are the Etruscans' closest neighbors (Wellard 1973, Vernesi 2004).

The Veneti are also one the historic peoples, subject of many discussions and debates, but who were more widespread than the Etruscans.  They were present in many lands (Mogentale-Profizi 2001): Veneti in Paphlagonia -northern coast of present day Turkey-were mentioned by Homer in 9th cent. BC.,  Veneti in Illyricum (Enetoi) on the lower Danube and in the upper Adriatic, were mentioned by Herodotus in 5th cent. BC:, Veneti in central Europe mentioned by Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, Veneti in Gaul were mentioned by Caesar, and Veneti in Latium who are referred to as Venetulani by Pliny the Elder.  The Veneti and Etruscans appear to be related.  However, Adria was in the 10th Roman province `Venetia et Histria' until the downfall of the empire.  There is historical, linguistic and topographic evidence that present day Slovenes are indigenous to their land and descendents of the Veneti (Šavli 1996).

DISCUSSION of GENETIC STUDIES
In the bone fragments, taken from the tombs of Etruria, Capua and Venetia, Vernesi et al. (2004) have found that haplogroup H was the most common; other haplogroups such as JT and preHV were also present.  When they made a more refined comparison using the haplotypes that are components of haplogroups, they found that out of 22 mtDNA HVS1 haplotypes, which they observed in 28 skeletal remains, only two of them, CRS and 16126, occur in a sample of modern Tuscans and are carried by ~14% of them.  Tuscans are considered to be the descendants of the Etruscans.  Both haplotypes occur in skeletons from Adria and Magliano/Marsiliana.  The fragments from Magliano/Marsiliana have been dated at 7th-6th centuries B.C., whereas those from Adria are from 5th-4th centuries B.C. (Vernesi 2004).

Table 2- Mt DNA Comparison of Etruscans, Veneti and Slovenes for HVS 1 Haplotypes: