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Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans.
Lazaridis, Iosif 1,2,*; Mittnik, Alissa 3,4,*; Patterson, Nick 2,5; Mallick, Swapan 1,2,6; Rohland, Nadin 1; Pfrengle, Saskia 4; Furtwangler, Anja 4; Peltzer, Alexander 3,7; Posth, Cosimo 3,4; Vasilakis, Andonis 8; McGeorge, P. J. P. 9; Konsolaki-Yannopoulou, Eleni 10; Korres, George 11; Martlew, Holley 12; Michalodimitrakis, Manolis 13; Ozsait, Mehmet 14; Ozsait, Nesrin 14; Papathanasiou, Anastasia 15; Richards, Michael 16; Roodenberg, Songul Alpaslan 1; Tzedakis, Yannis 17; Arnott, Robert 18; Fernandes, Daniel M. 19,20; Hughey, Jeffery R. 21; Lotakis, Dimitra M. 22; Navas, Patrick A. 22; Maniatis, Yannis 23; Stamatoyannopoulos, John A. 24,25,26; Stewardson, Kristin 1,6; Stockhammer, Philipp 3,27; Pinhasi, Ron 19,28; Reich, David 1,2,6; Krause, Johannes 3,4; Stamatoyannopoulos, George 22,25
[Letter] Nature. 548(7666):214-218, August 10, 2017.

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: New genome-wide data for ancient, Bronze Age individuals, including Minoans, Mycenaeans, and southwestern Anatolians, show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically very similar yet distinct, supporting the idea of continuity but not isolation in the history of populations of the Aegean.

The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. We have assembled genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete, Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, and their eastern neighbours from southwestern Anatolia. Here we show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean 1,2, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus 3 and Iran 4,5. However, the Mycenaeans differed from Minoans in deriving additional ancestry from an ultimate source related to the hunter-gatherers of eastern Europe and Siberia 6,7,8, introduced via a proximal source related to the inhabitants of either the Eurasian steppe 1,6,9 or Armenia 4,9. Modern Greeks resemble the Mycenaeans, but with some additional dilution of the Early Neolithic ancestry. Our results support the idea of continuity but not isolation in the history of populations of the Aegean, before and after the time of its earliest civilizations.