LAYERED GENOMIC COMPOSITION AND LINGUISTIC CONTINUITY IN GRECÌA SALENTINA

Abstract

Grecìa Salentina (GS) is a small Greek-dialect-speaking area of Salento, Southern Italy (Puglia), whose origins — ancient colonization vs. medieval Byzantine settlement — have long been debated. Researchers sequenced whole genomes from 27 GS natives and 21 local controls, comparing them against a balanced reference panel of 799 modern samples from Greece and Anatolia plus 4,021 ancient genomes from the literature, examining genetic structure at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Across all analyses, the GS genomic profile matched the rest of Southern Italy, with no clear evidence of a distinct source population from outside Italy — meaning the Greek-speaking community's DNA is not genetically distinguishable from its non-Greek-speaking neighbors despite the linguistic continuity.