Ottoman Marmara (1479–1652 CE)

The Ottoman-era individuals sampled from the Marmara region belong to a historical landscape shaped by centuries of migration, trade and imperial administration. Archaeological data indicates these remains derive from late 15th to mid-17th century contexts at coastal Zeytinliada (Erdek, Balıkesir) and the inland lakeside town of Yenişehirkapı (İznik). This period follows the consolidation of Ottoman rule across northwestern Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean.

Visually cinematic: the narrow straits, salt-swept harbors and fortified towns formed arteries of movement—soldiers, artisans, merchants and seafarers—that left traces in material culture and in human bodies. Limited evidence suggests local burial practices persisted alongside imported goods and styles, reflecting a fusion of provincial Anatolian traditions with imperial cosmopolitanism.

Archaeological indicators at both sites—stratified Ottoman layers, funerary deposits and associated artifacts—anchor the samples in place and time, but the small sample size constrains broad claims about population turnover or continuity. Instead, these three genomes offer snapshots: moments in a long, evolving story of Anatolian occupancy that would be better resolved with larger, spatially varied datasets.

Genome-wide resolution is limited for this set: three mitochondrial genomes were recovered, yielding haplogroups H, T and U (one each). These mtDNA lineages are widespread across Europe and West Eurasia and have previously been observed in Anatolian and Mediterranean populations. Archaeological context and the mtDNA evidence together suggest matrilineal continuity with long-standing West Eurasian maternal lineages in the region, but the signal is necessarily narrow.

Critically, no Y‑chromosome data are reported for these three individuals, so paternal ancestry, patrilineal continuity and sex-biased migration cannot be assessed. With n=3, statistical power is extremely low: patterns could reflect chance sampling of diverse maternal lines rather than population-level structure. Where broader ancient and modern datasets are available, Anatolia shows complex ancestry reflecting local Neolithic roots combined with subsequent interactions across the Balkans, Caucasus and Near East; these larger patterns offer a context for interpreting Ottoman-era diversity but do not substitute for direct, well-sampled genomic evidence from the period.

In sum: the mtDNA results are informative as individual life histories and as prompts for further study, but any demographic inference must be framed as preliminary until larger, sex-balanced and genome-wide samples are analyzed.