Paleolithic Y-haplogroup heritage predominates in a Cretan highland plateau

Abstract

The island of Crete, credited by some historical scholars as a central crucible of western civilization, has been under continuous archeological investigation since the second half of the nineteenth century. In the present work, the geographic stratification of the contemporary Cretan Y-chromosome gene pool was assessed by high-resolution haplotyping to investigate the potential imprints of past colonization episodes and the population substructure. In addition to analyzing the possible geographic origins of Y-chromosome lineages in relatively accessible areas of the island, this study includes samples from the isolated interior of the Lasithi Plateau -a mountain plain located in eastern Crete. The potential significance of the results from the latter region is underscored by the possibility that this region was used as a Minoan refugium. Comparisons of Y-haplogroup frequencies among three Cretan populations as well as with published data from additional Mediterranean locations revealed significant differences in the frequency distributions of Y-chromosome haplogroups within the island. The most outstanding differences were observed in haplogroups J2 and R1, with the predominance of haplogroup R lineages in the Lasithi Plateau and of haplogroup J lineages in the more accessible regions of the island. Y-STR-based analyses demonstrated the close affinity that R1a1 chromosomes from the Lasithi Plateau shared with those from the Balkans, but not with those from lowland eastern Crete. In contrast, Cretan R1b microsatellite-defined haplotypes displayed more resemblance to those from Northeast Italy than to those from Turkey and the Balkans.

Differential Greek and northern African migrations to Sicily are supported by genetic evidence from the Y chromosome

“…The general heterogeneous composition of Hgs seen in our Sicilian data is consistent with similar patterns observed in other major islands of the Mediterranean, like Sardinia (gene diversity 0.801±0.010 SD on 939 samples using 23 Hgs) 39 and Crete 29,40 (gene diversity 0.926±0.0006 SD on 193 samples using 29 Hgs), 29 possibly reflecting the complex histories of settlements in these islands during the Holocene (Supplementary Table 1). …”

Y-chromosomal evidence of the cultural diffusion of agriculture in southeast Europe

“…Common to this cluster are lower frequencies of Hgs, G-M201 and J-M410, and higher frequencies of Hgs, I-M423, E-V13 and J-M241. Whereas the first two are primarily Middle Eastern Hgs and have been shown to be associated with the early Neolithic colonization of Crete, 38,46 Italy, 47,48 and southern Caucasus, I-M423, E-V13…”

The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a

“…We assembled a genotyping panel of 16 244 males from 126 Eurasian populations, some of which we report upon for the first time herein and others that we have combined from earlier studies, 22,[29][30][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and updated to a higher level of phylogenetic resolution. All samples were obtained using locally approved informed consent and were de-identified.…”