Periodically I get asked about Greek genetics. I check the literature, and it doesn’t seem like a deep survey has been performed on the modern populations yet. Yes, there are a few samples that the Estonian group has made public, but I don’t see an equivalent to the sort of stuff you see for Italy or Spain. Why? One speculation, which a Greek friend suggested wasn’t totally crazy, is that there may be nervousness if they found “too much” Northern European ancestry in northern Greece. In other words, Slavic ancestry.

The ancient DNA work shows that 2 to 3 thousand years ago the Hellenes weren’t more Northern European than they are now. But a big issue is there is as “Greek cline” in the modern populations. I have a lot of private samples I can’t ever share, but I can look at them. I have a bunch of individuals whose four grandparents were born in Greece, and some samples labeled from Thessaly. Check out the PCA, admixture, and a Treemix below.

I’ll let you draw your conclusions.
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