Paeonians/North Macedonia IA 23andme format

The Paeonians were an ancient people who inhabited the central Balkans, primarily in what is today North Macedonia and parts of northern Greece and western Bulgaria. Their territory stretched along the upper Vardar River, forming a cultural and political bridge between the Greeks, Thracians, and Illyrians.

Early Greek sources, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, treated them as a separate but familiar people. They traded with nearby Macedonians and Greek colonies, and by the Classical period, Paeonian elites adopted aspects of Greek material culture, including pottery styles and coinage.

In the 4th century BCE, the rising Macedonian kingdom began to assert dominance over Paeonia, eventually incorporating it as a vassal state. Some Paeonian kings became allies of Alexander the Great, even serving in Macedonian armies.

For this video, I have collected the raw genomes of 10 historical North Macedonian samples dating to the iron age.