Ancient Greek Army Ancestry Highlights Mercenary Role in Historical Migrations

In PNAS, an international team led by investigators at Harvard University the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center, and the University of Florence present findings from a genomic analysis of ancient soldiers at the Greek Sicilian colony Himera. Using targeted enrichment sequencing, the researchers profiled roughly 1.2 million SNPs across the genome in ancient 5^th century samples representing 33 apparent Battles of Himera participants and another 21 ancient Sicilians from nearby Indigenous Sicani settlements. Together with sequences for almost 100 individuals from modern-day Italy and Greece, the ancient sequences revealed northern Europe, Steppe, and Caucasus ancestry in the Greek soldier group, they report. The new genetic ­— combined with available archaeological, historical, and other — data, "illustrate the significant role mercenaries played in ancient Greek armies and highlight how participation in war contributed to continental-scale human mobility in the Classical world," the authors write, adding that the wide-reaching Greek mercenary origins lends "nuance to our understanding of the long-distance movements of individuals relating to specialized economic or religious activities, apart from well-documented population movements, such as the establishment of colonies.