sparkey
Great Adventurer
- Messages
- 2,250
- Reaction score
- 352
- Points
- 0
- Location
- California
- Ethnic group
- 3/4 Colonial American, 1/8 Cornish, 1/8 Welsh
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I2c1 PF3892+ (Swiss)
- mtDNA haplogroup
- U4a (Cornish)
Firstly, it's important to preface any analysis of Haplogroup I1 with three important references:
Combined, we see that I1 is rather young (current Nordtvedt estimate seems to be ~4000 years old) and has a very Germanic spread. It has a center of diversity around Schleswig-Holstein and a center of frequency north of there. Its initial expansion was likely out of the Nordic Bronze Age. The question I'd like to investigate is: Is there any I1 distribution that can be explained by a non-Germanic migration, and if so, what characteristics does it take?
Eupedia members have pointed out odd stretches of I1 into the Finns (evidence of a Uralic cluster?), the Balkans (evidence of a Slavic or Illyrian cluster?), and Ireland & Wales (evidence of a Celtic cluster?). But all these places did have Germanic migrations, as well. Can the I1 there be clustered separately from these Germanic migrations?
I have looked at the data, but have had difficulty coming to any conclusion other than this: If there is any non-Germanic I1, it has become non-Germanic only recently. Let's look first at the distribution and dating of the major I1 subclades:
So what of those spikes in interesting places? Not all I1 fits into subclades. Since Nordtvedt's STR clusters are the gold standard of I1 STR clusters, let's analyze them in the context of those:
Combined, we see that I1 is rather young (current Nordtvedt estimate seems to be ~4000 years old) and has a very Germanic spread. It has a center of diversity around Schleswig-Holstein and a center of frequency north of there. Its initial expansion was likely out of the Nordic Bronze Age. The question I'd like to investigate is: Is there any I1 distribution that can be explained by a non-Germanic migration, and if so, what characteristics does it take?
Eupedia members have pointed out odd stretches of I1 into the Finns (evidence of a Uralic cluster?), the Balkans (evidence of a Slavic or Illyrian cluster?), and Ireland & Wales (evidence of a Celtic cluster?). But all these places did have Germanic migrations, as well. Can the I1 there be clustered separately from these Germanic migrations?
I have looked at the data, but have had difficulty coming to any conclusion other than this: If there is any non-Germanic I1, it has become non-Germanic only recently. Let's look first at the distribution and dating of the major I1 subclades:
- I1f: ~2000 years old with a particularly English distribution, although with some membership in Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, and even Poland.
- I1d*: ~3000 years old with a very Nordic center of diversity but with a distribution everywhere, from Scandinavia to Turkey to Russia to the UK to Italy.
- I1d1: ~3000 years old with a more southern center of diversity than I1d*, but still an obviously Germanic distribution, with a lot of membership in the UK, and interesting membership in Croatia.
- I1d3: ~2000 years old with primary membership dominantly in Finland. I would suggest it to be Uralic if it wasn't for its obviously diverse (just less frequent) presence in the North Germanic countries, and its youth. As is, it looks like an expansion from Scandinavia on Finland.
So what of those spikes in interesting places? Not all I1 fits into subclades. Since Nordtvedt's STR clusters are the gold standard of I1 STR clusters, let's analyze them in the context of those:
- The Finnish spike: There is Finnish membership in several I1 clusters, but the majority of Finnish I1 is clearly I1d3, synonymous with the Nortdvedt STR cluster of I1-Bothnian. The non-I1d3 I1 in Finland clearly joins Germanic STR clusters, but what of this I1d3? Its age (~2000 years) places it before the Migration Period, but keep in mind that the age of a haplogroup is the earliest, not the approximate average, date that would be calculated for the migration of that group. Since 2000 years ago goes only to the Classical Period, it seems apparent that this fits the Migration Period, with subsequent expansion within Finland, better than anything else. I say Germanic.
- The Welsh spike: The STR cluster membership and the diversity of I1 as a whole in Wales is very much parallel to the STR cluster membership and diversity of I1 as a whole in England. The only possible exceptions are Welsh membership in the Nordtvedt STR clusters of AS2 and AS4, where Welsh membership seems to be a bit higher than English membership. But the diversity within these clusters is very low--clearly low enough to be Medieval expansions--and due to their joint membership in England, there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume that they are anything but English expansions on Wales. I say Germanic.
- The Irish spike: The Irish clustering contrasts with the Welsh clustering in that it seems to be the product of migrations exclusively rather than any genetic expansions. Irish membership is dominated by the ubiquitous and most commonly English AS-gen STR cluster, and has a notably high membership in the Norse clusters. But it doesn't have any of its own ancient clusters, or even interesting expansions like you seem to have in Wales. The only possibility I see of a "Celtic" I1 here is within the AS-gen cluster. But barring additional analysis of that, I say Germanic.
- The spike in the Balkans: This one is the least researched due to the lack of samples from the region, but so far, the most common cluster for Balkans members seems to be T2. T2 is an odd cluster that stretches from Ireland to the Balkans and seems to have common membership everywhere but at its center of diversity, which could indicate a displacement of I1 from its center of diversity (maybe close to Poland?). But although it's somewhat mysterious, T2's distribution is clearly not Slavic or Illyrian, and everything about it indicates Germanic, possibly a combination of East, North, and West Germanic, with its appearance in the Balkans apparently East Germanic. Other clusters present in the Balkans include different AS clusters, which are also apparently Germanic. So barring us finding an interesting Balkans-exclusive cluster, it appears that the spike (and I should probably use "spike" loosely because it really isn't all that common) in the Balkans is also Germanic.