Karitsiotes: What's in our DNA?

Stelios Chagias

Dimitris Katsampis

"Science that reveals our ancient and prehistoric ancestry"

In 2014 and 2015 six fellow villagers from various families in Adelaide underwent a series of DNA tests conducted by 23andMe, the US genomics and biotechnology company, hoping to genetically link modern Karitsiotes with ancient and prehistoric ancestors as well as living distant relatives throughout the world today.

The project was carried out under the auspices of Family Trees of Southern Parnon and was partly funded by the Brotherhood of Karitsa in South Australia. The six volunteers to be tested were specifically selected to inquire into some of the main clans of Karitsa, as follows:

• Nikolaos Ioanni Malavazos, aged 96, from the Antonis clan
• Diamantis Michail Malavazos, 91, the Roumanos, Makarios, Sioularmpis and Gavochristos families of the Malavazos clan
• Konstantinos Stylianou Malavazos, 61, the Krekos and Kapsalis families also of the broader Malavazos clan
• Diamantis Stylianou Chagias, 90, the Chagias clan
• Dimitrios Evangelou Katsampis, 63, the Vatsouras family of the Katsampis clan
• Filippos Konstantinou Katsampis, 52, the Markos, Ntavelis and Pofolos families also of the broader Katsampis clan

The results of these tests, sure to amaze, are shown in the table at the end, but first a short explanation of the column headings: All of today’s white Europeans have a small percentage of their DNA that comes from the Neanderthals, an extinct species or subspecies of humans, who lived in Europe and the Middle East from 800,000 to 40,000 years ago and interbred with modern humans when they migrated from Africa and began settling around the world. Black people who never left Africa have no Neanderthal DNA in their gene pool. Men carry male and female DNA markers, haplotides, from each parent. Women carry the female DNA marker found in the mitochondria of cells. The female and male markers are passed on, from mother to daughter and father to son, going back thousands of years.

In fact, all white Europeans can trace their origins to seven women, sometimes called The Seven Daughters of Eve. The seven prehistoric mothers have been given the names Ursula, Helena, Xenia, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine who originates in the Middle East. The prefix on the female marker shows from which woman a European originates.

The male surname is passed down the generations just like a male haplotide. So in the case of Karitsiotes, for instance, all Malavazos folk and all Katsampis folk have the same male markers respectively. This fact is shown in the table. The ancestry composition is made up of 31 worldwide populations.

A point to note Balkan means the Balkan Peninsula, and Italian the Italian Peninsula.

*** Table showing ancestry composition of six Karitsiotes ***
* Please note the six fellow villagers tested reveal genealogical ties with 17 of the 31 known world populations. All values are expressed in percentages.
NAME	Nikolaos Ioanni Antonis	Diamantis Michail Malavazos	Diamantis Stylianou Chagias	Dimitrios Evangelou Katsampis	Konstantinos Stylianou Malavazos	Filippos Konstantinou Katsampis
Male Marker	R1a1a	G2a4	I2a2a	E1b1b1a2*	G2a4	E1b1b1a2*
Female Marker	T2b4	K1a	H12	H	U5a1a1	U5a1a1
Neanderthal	2.9	2.5	2.9	3.3	3.2	2.8
European	99.6	100	99.9	99.1	99.7	99.2
Balkan	75.5	70.6	77.4	71	74.6	67.7
Italian	4.9	8.3	7.5	8.2	7.9	7.1
Broadly Southern European	17	18.9	10.4	14.2	10.7	22.6
Broadly European	2.2	1.6	1.4	4.2	4.5	1
Broadly Northern European		0.3	0.2	1.3	1.3	0.4
Eastern European			3		0.7	0.2
Ashkenazi		less than 0		0.1	0.1
Finnish						0.3
British and Irish		0.3
Broadly Middle-Eastern and Northern African				0.3	0.2
East African				0.2
Broadly East Asian	0.2			less than 0.1		0.1
Yakut					0.1
South Asian	0.2					0.3
Broadly south Saharan						0.1
Unassigned	less than 0.1		0.1	0.4	0.1	0.3