The medieval history of several populations often suffers from scarcity of contemporary records resulting in contradictory and sometimes biased interpretations by historians. This is the situation with the population of the island of Crete, which remained relatively undisturbed until the Middle Ages when multiple wars, invasions, and occupations by foreigners took place. Historians have considered the effects of the occupation of Crete by the Arabs (in the 9th and 10th centuries C.E.) and the Venetians (in the 13th to the 17th centuries C.E.) to the local population. To obtain insights on such effects from a genetic perspective, we studied representative samples from 17 Cretan districts using the Illumina 1 million or 2.5 million arrays and compared the Cretans to the populations of origin of the medieval conquerors and settlers. Highlights of our findings include (1) small genetic contributions from the Arab occupation to the extant Cretan population, (2) low genetic contribution of the Venetians to the extant Cretan population, and (3) evidence of a genetic relationship among the Cretans and Central, Northern, and Eastern Europeans, which could be explained by the settlement in the island of northern origin tribes during the medieval period. Our results show how the interaction between genetics and the historical record can help shed light on the historical record.

中文翻译：

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克里特岛人口遗传史

几个人口的中世纪历史往往缺乏当代记录，导致历史学家的解释相互矛盾，有时甚至有偏见。这就是克里特岛人口的情况，直到中世纪发生多次战争、入侵和外国人占领之前，克里特岛的人口一直相对不受干扰。历史学家曾考虑过阿拉伯人（公元 9 世纪和 10 世纪）和威尼斯人（公元 13 至 17 世纪）占领克里特岛对当地居民的影响。为了从遗传角度深入了解这种影响，我们使用 Illumina 100 万或 250 万阵列研究了来自 17 个克里特岛地区的代表性样本，并将克里特岛人与中世纪征服者和定居者的起源人口进行了比较。我们发现的重点包括：（1）阿拉伯占领对现存克里特岛人口的遗传贡献很小，（2）威尼斯人对现存克里特岛人口的遗传贡献很小，以及（3）克里特岛和中部之间存在遗传关系的证据。 、北欧和东欧人，这可以通过中世纪时期北方部落部落在岛上的定居来解释。我们的结果显示了遗传学和历史记录之间的相互作用如何有助于阐明历史记录。这可以通过中世纪时期北部部落部落的定居点来解释。我们的结果显示了遗传学和历史记录之间的相互作用如何有助于阐明历史记录。这可以通过中世纪时期北部部落部落的定居点来解释。我们的结果显示了遗传学和历史记录之间的相互作用如何有助于阐明历史记录。