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From Biological History and Demography to Linguistics and DNA Analysis: A Holistic Approach to Population Structure Studies in the Adriatic Area

Anthropological research of modern European populations indicates pronounced diversity between and among various groups, confirming the complexity of interactions of the components of the “eternal triangle” (heredity, environment and culture). Such studies require an interdisciplinary approach and a large scale of diverse data: sociocultural, linguistic, archeological, anthropo-genetic, biological, and biomedical. For several decades, holistic anthropological research, based on the belief that human evolution and variability can be understood only by the simultaneous study of biological and socio-cultural phenomena, has been conducted in the Eastern Adriatic and in the Balkan region as well. Detailed characterization of historical events, population movements and migrations, demographic peculiarities, family structure, linguistic peculiarities, and various biological and genetic traits were investigated, revealing possible routes of peopling of this geographic area. Within the context of this research, this paper will address various scenarios of microevolution, including factors such as population exchange, demic diffusion, short-term and long-term migration movements and population mobility, possible founder effects, the form of selection of reproductive partners, the effect of possible settling and population reflux and the dependence of demographic characteristics of various historical groups. Current findings concerning mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome lineages of the population of Eastern Adriatic will be analyzed and interpreted with an emphasis on the fact that historical processes are the laboratory in which modern human populations were created.

anthropology; population structure; bio-cultural evolution; migrations; history

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