New I2b map

[GloomyGonzales]

The location of the I2b hotspot in Russia is very interesting. I can not say for sure but It looks like this hotspot is located near Kazan (the capital of medieval Volga Bulgaria) and the rout of these I2b's started in the Ladoga or Beloe lake and then by the Volga river they sailed to the Caspian sea. This route perfectly matches the so-called Volga trade route of the Varangians. But I’m curious why we don't see any presence of I2b's on the so-called trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks via Veliky Novgorod and Kiev by the Dnepr river to the Black sea and as well I sea no presence of I2b near old Russian cities established at the times of the Kievan Rus’?

[zanipolo]

The Visigoths crossed the Danube into the Roman Empire in 376. They were allowed by the Romans to settled in Thrace in 380 and became foederati, like the Franks in Belgium. Under Theodosius, the Visigoths sacked and settled around Constantinople. Under his successor, Alaric I, ravaged Greece (as far as the Peloponese) in 396 before being driven back to the mountains of northern Greece and Macedonia. Whether some of them stayed behind, or whether they raped local women is unknown, but I2b and I1 had to get there one way or another.

I believe that one reasonable explanation is that the descendants of the Visigoths who had settled in Thrace dispersed to Macedonia, Greece and North-West Anatolia progressively over time. After all, they had become citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire, so why should they stay in one place when they could seek their fortunes further away within the empire's borders ? Just by marrying/moving from one village/town to the next each generation, the lineages would have dispersed naturally over the centuries. But if that is what happened, we should still expect a higher percentage in Thrace, shouldn't we ? Not necessarily. The Bulgars invaded the region a century later, and are known to have fought the Gothic armies of foederati. It's possible that many Gothic families, sentimentally unattached the the land of Thrace, sought refuge into the relative safety of the mountains of Epirus and Macedonia around that time.

With a bit of imagination we could come up with several other scenarios. The thing is that countless events went unrecorded in history, and others that were recorded at lost today, especially those from the Antiquity. So we will never know what or how it happened, but the point of population genetics is justly to help us better understand history by looking at what people left behind them, their genes, and try to rediscover what history has forgotten.

I wonder if the "true" goths ( I1 and or I2 )where the ostrogoths of Scandza sweden ,and these settled in balkans and italy , while the visigoths where the recruited men ( into the gothic army ) , from the black sea gothic lands of Sarmatians and scythians?

These sarmatians and scythians would be Ra1 or ?
Also, the germanic bastanae was living in the north of the Scythians

[LeBrok]

Probably not the Magyar, who were surely R1a. I'd say the Gepids, and perhaps later the Germans and Austrians colonising the region under the Habsburg rule.

Most likely you are right here.

I2b in Russia being of Viking origin, it arrived soon after the Magyar established themselves in Hungary.

According to this map Rus/viking area were more to the east. Bulgars correspond more with I2b hot spot though. Also the hot spot by black sea corresponds to Bulgars settlement in 8th century.


On other hand, I2b looks more like a strong Germanic marker. It might mean that Rus/vicing/goth settlements were longer lasting in these areas than we tend to think. Some Goths minorities existed by black sea till recent times. Not all the Goths moved out by 500 hundreds. Many stayed behind and had longer time to influence gene pool in this area. It might be true also for Volga hot spot.

[spongetaro]

South eastern French I2b may have something to do with the Ligurians whose territory was larger than nowadays Liguria before being reduced to the French and Italian riviera after the Celtic invasions.
BTW, we can see that I2b predates U152 in the area as U152 is very low in the region (Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur has only 11% of it) and since no Germanic people is recorded in the area.

Alsace: 22.5%
Nord-Pas-de-Calais: 17.65%
Auvergne: 16.85%
Ile-de-France: 14.29%
Midi-Pyrenees: 13.43%
Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur: 11.11%

[zanipolo]

Most likely you are right here.



According to this map Rus/viking area were more to the east. Bulgars correspond more with I2b hot spot though. Also the hot spot by black sea corresponds to Bulgars settlement in 8th century.


On other hand, I2b looks more like a strong Germanic marker. It might mean that Rus/vicing/goth settlements were longer lasting in these areas than we tend to think. Some Goths minorities existed by black sea till recent times. Not all the Goths moved out by 500 hundreds. Many stayed behind and had longer time to influence gene pool in this area. It might be true also for Volga hot spot.

if what you say about the germanic marker is correct, then due to the 500 years of the germanic bastarnae in the black sea area would make a big dent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae

[LeBrok]

Sure, the I2b signature could be cumulative of few Germanic peoples.
I'm giving up on Bulgars. They went too fast through the area, and there is nothing much of I2b in current Bulgaria region.
I2b has to be linked with Germanic tribes who stayed a long time in these areas. I mean a long time, at least 500 years +.

What will we make out of Greece hot spot? What German tribe settled there? I have no idea, German tourists? :)

.....

Then I had another look at the map. It is quite buffling the track from Volga hot spot to Black Sea hot spot to Greece hot spot. It is totaly separtated from north-west Europe hot spots. Looks like something went down from Volga to Greece, or from Greece with Greek colonists and up the Volga.

[Maciamo]

According to this map Rus/viking area were more to the east. Bulgars correspond more with I2b hot spot though.

As I said before, the I2b map is very approximate due to the sparsity of data. Studies prior to 2007 almost never gave the percentages of I2b, but just all I's together, or I1b2 (what is called I2a on this site) and IxI1b2. The hotspot in the Volga Bulgar region is solely based on the old I1c map from Rootsi et al. 2004. The only detailed study of I2b in Russia I have is Balanovsky et al. 2008 and they didn't test the Volga Bulgars region. They found between 1.7% and 4.2% of I2b in Vladimir Oblast (the name of which is incidentally of Viking origin, derived from Valdemar) and 2.2% of I2b among Kuban Cossacks (who did not originated from the Kuban/North Caucasus region though). The Vladimir Oblast is one of the main area settled by the Varangians.

On other hand, I2b looks more like a strong Germanic marker. It might mean that Rus/vicing/goth settlements were longer lasting in these areas than we tend to think. Some Goths minorities existed by black sea till recent times. Not all the Goths moved out by 500 hundreds. Many stayed behind and had longer time to influence gene pool in this area. It might be true also for Volga hot spot.

Indeed, a lot of Goths stayed on the northern Black Sea shores. Only the elite, the army and their relatives moved into the Roman empire. We have virtually no written information about what happened in Ukraine and Russia in the late Antiquity, and not much during the Middle Ages.

[Maciamo]

if what you say about the germanic marker is correct, then due to the 500 years of the germanic bastarnae in the black sea area would make a big dent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae

Very good point about the Bastarnae. I didn't think about them. Wikipedia describes them as a mixed Celto-Germanic group. They could therefore have originated at the boundary between Celtic and Germanic cultures, namely central Germany, which is exactly where I2b peaks today !

[GloomyGonzales]

This mystery can be easily explained if we look into recent Russian history. In 1762 year Yekaterina II invited farmers from Germanic countries to colonize Low Volga region (Samara - Saratov). I guess a lot of Germanic people settled there. In Russia they are called Volga Germans. Furthermore there was Volga Germans Republic during 1918-1941. That can explain why we see I2b hotspot in this region but not Viking I1. If I am right there should be correlation between R1b and I2b distribution in Low Volga region.

[Maciamo]

This mystery can be easily explained if we look into recent Russian history. In 1762 year Yekaterina II invited farmers from Germanic countries to colonize Low Volga region (Samara - Saratov). I guess a lot of Germanic people settled there. In Russia they are called Volga Germans. Furthermore there was Volga Germans Republic during 1918-1941. That can explain why we see I2b hotspot in this region but not Viking I1. If I am right there should be correlation between R1b and I2b distribution in Low Volga region.

That's a good point, but Germans also have I1, and anyway I1 is present in the region alongside I2b. As you mentioned earlier, the Volga was the main trade route of the Varangian Vikings. So I would attribute the presence of I1 and I2b along the Volga to a cumulative effect of Swedish Vikings and Volga Germans.

[Maciamo]

I was looking at Bosch et al. 2006, who studied the Aromun population in South Albania, Macedonia and Romania. The Aromuns (or Aromanians or Vlachs) speak Romance languages related to Romanian. They are considered the descendants of Latinised Balkanic peoples, like the Thracians, Dacians and Illyrians. In other words, their DNA should be the closest to that of the inhabitants of the Southeast Europe during the late Roman Empire, before the Slavs, Bulgars, Turks and others invaded the region. The fact that they kept their language intact is, I believe, proof enough that they didn't mix with the new immigrants. If the Goths became Roman citizens and adopted Latin, their descendants ought to be found primarily among these Aromanians. Now just look at what I found.

The five Aromanian/Vlach population tested had between 17% and 42% of haplogroup I. The highest was for the sample from Andon Poci in South Albania, close to the Greek border (and close to our I2b hotspot). They also had 37% of R1b ! No R1a though. Granted the sample size is small, but all Aromun populations (except the one from central Albania) had a high level of both I and R1. The others have about the same percentage of I, R1a and R1b. Unfortunately the subclades of I were not tested, but if there is a substantial amount of I1 and I2b, as there should be in the region based on other studies, then there is a very good chance that these are the descendants of the Goths we discussed above.

Here is a map of Aromanian/Vlach populations.



The Aromuns from Stip in Macedonia have 17% of I, 21.5% of R1a and 23% of R1b. These are typically Germanic proportions, especially if the R1a cannot be attributed to the Slavs, Bulgars or other late-comers from Russia or Central Asia.

The non-Aromun populations in the region (Romanian, Macedonian, Albanian) have only between 8% and 16% of R1b, 13% being the average. Aromuns have between 23% and 37% of R1b in the same countries. They have clearly different ancestry. We can speculate a lot without knowing the subclades of I and R1b involved. It could be mostly native Balkanic I2a + Roman R1b-U152 and/or Anatolian R1b. Or it could be Germanic I1+I2b+R1b. Or even a mixture of both. It's too bad Bosch et al. didn't test the subclades as it makes the study inconclusive.

The map of I2b uses only the data of non-Vlach populations.

EDIT : I jus noticed that the STR values for all the samples in Bosch et al. are in appendix. I will check to see if I can determine the subclades of I.

[Shetop]

EDIT : I jus noticed that the STR values for all the samples in Bosch et al. are in appendix. I will check to see if I can determine the subclades of I.

Very intriguing hypothesis. Looking forward for possible prediction of I subclades.

[Taranis]

Thanks for that map, Maciamo.

[Maciamo]

I had a quick look. I don't have time today to check all the 67 haplotypes. If someone does, feel free to enter the STR values in this Haplogroup Predictor.

Most of the I's appear to be I2, and mostly I2a2-Din. So it seems that they are native to the region.

I1's are easy to spot. The DYS390 value is almost always 22. There are 8 haplotypes with this value : 2 Greeks, 3 Macedonians and 3 Romanians. Not a single Aromun.

I ran a few of the R1b haplotypes most common among the Aromuns and got 35% chance of Eastern European R1b, followed by Irish R1b and R1b-S28. It therefore looks more Italo-Celtic than Germanic.

Typical Germanic R1b (S21) has DYS390=23. But some other R1b also have this value. I decided to run only those., and they were indeed Frisian R1b or R1b-S21. Out of the 5 Germanic R1b, there are 2 Aromuns from Romania, 1 Romanian and 2 Macedonians.

It looks like the Aromuns are not related to the Goths after all, but that Gothic or other Germanic lineages are part of the mainstream (non-Aromun) population of the region.

[zanipolo]

@Maciano

Where did you get these numbers for North east Italy?

[Bodin]

[QUOTE=LeBrok;376565

Some Goths minorities existed by black sea till recent times. Not all the Goths moved out by 500 hundreds. Many stayed behind and had longer time to influence gene pool in this area. It might be true also for Volga hot spot.[/QUOTE]
I believe that there was Gotic minority on the coast of Black see in XVII century and they were speaking Gotic , and some of the words had writened when Russians taked aeria . But sun Gotic minority blend in to Russians and seized to egzist.

[zanipolo]

I believe that there was Gotic minority on the coast of Black see in XVII century and they were speaking Gotic , and some of the words had writened when Russians taked aeria . But sun Gotic minority blend in to Russians and seized to egzist.

you talking about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Gothic

[Maciamo]

I have updated the map of I2b (ISOGG I2a2)

[Eldritch]

I think Normans might have been I-M223 heavy.
Just look at Sicily and compare it to mainland Italy.

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/...x?section=ymap