Belgian Y-DNA from the Brabant Project

Maciamo

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The Brabant DNA Project was launched this year to analyse the Y-DNA composition of in the old Duchy of Brabant (modern Brussels + provinces of Walloon and Flemish Brabant, Antwerp and the Dutch province of North Brabant). It will soon expand to other provinces of Flanders, then Wallonia to cover all Belgium. It is the only Y-DNA project I know that is subsidised by the government.

UPDATE:

Here is the results based on 981 participants.

R1b : (n=600) 61.16%
R1b-M343 : n=1 (0.1%)
-R1b-P25: n=1 (0.1%)
--R1b-P297: n=1 (0.1%)
---R1b-M269 : n=17 (1.7%)
----R1b-P310 : n=7 (0.7%)
----- R1b-U106 (S21) : n=255 (26%)
----- R1b-P312 (S116, incl. L21) : n=208 (21.2%)
------ R1b-U152 (S28) : n=101 (10.3%)
------ R1b-SRY2627 : n=6 (0.6%)

R1a : n=38 (3.9%)
R1a* : n=1
-R1a1 : n=37

I1 : n=119 (12.1%)
I1* : n=112
- I1c (P109) : n=7

I2 : n=70 (7.1%)
-I2* : n=14 (1.4%)
-- I2a* : n=14 (1.4%)
-- I2b* : n=43 (4.3%)
--- I2b1 (M284) : n=2 (0.2%)
--- I2b3 (P78) : n=2 (0.2%)
--- I2b4 (P95) : n=3 (0.3%)

J1 : n=11 (1.1%)

J2 : n=40 (4.1%)
- J2a* (M410) : n=21 (2.2%)
---J2a3b (M67) : n=4 (0.4%)
----J2a3b1 (M92) : n=5 (0.5%)
---J2a3d (M319) : n=3 (0.3%)
- J2b* : n=0
-- J2b2 : n=6 (0.6%)

G2a : n=37 (3.8%)

E1 : n=50 (5.1%)
-E1b1b (M215) : n=0
---E1b1b1a (M78) : n=1
-----E1b1b1a1a (V12) : n=1
-----E1b1b1a1b (V13) : n=27 (2.8%)
------E1b1b1a1b5 (M35) : n=2
-----E1b1b1a1c (V22) : n=4
----E1b1b1b1 (M81) : n=2
---E1b1b1c (M123) : n=2
----E1b1b1c1 (M34) : n=11 (1.2%)


L : n=4 (0.4%)
-L1 (M27) : n=3
-L2 (M317) : n=1

T : n=6 (0.6%)

A : n=1 (0.1%)

Q : n=4 (0.4%)
 
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Wow! Great! I'm looking forward to the results once they get all of Belgium covered. It's fantastic that they're testing SNPs!

(y)
 
By the way, where did you find the R1b SNP info on that web site? I couldn't find it, but perhaps that is due to my lack of familiarity with Dutch/Flemish.
 
By the way, where did you find the R1b SNP info on that web site? I couldn't find it, but perhaps that is due to my lack of familiarity with Dutch/Flemish.

You need member's access to see those results. But surnames are kept private. You can only see the kit number for each result.
 
Here is an update of the subclades results. The breakdown of R1b is starting to come out nicely. S21/U106 is dominant, followed by S28/U152, as expected for Flanders. The reverse should be true for Wallonia. We will see once the project expands to the French-speaking provinces next year.

R1b : 58.87%
R1b-M343 : n=24
-R1b-M269 : n=5
--R1b-P310 : n=4
--- R1b-U106 (S21) : n=138
--- R1b-P312 (S116) : n=92
---- R1b-U152 (S28) : n=43
---- R1b-SRY2627 : n=6
---- R1b-L21 : n=0

R1a : 3.77%
R1a* : n=7
-R1a1 : n=13

I1 : 12.45%
I1* : n=61
- I1c (P109) : n=5

I2 : 8.63%
-I2* : n=9
-- I2a* : n=9
-- I2b* : n=21
--- I2b1 (M284) : n=2
--- I2b3 (P78) : n=2
--- I2b4 (P95) : n=2

J1 : 1.32%

J2 : 4.53%
- J2a* : n=9
--J2a2 : n=4
---J2a2a : n=4
--J2a8 : n=1
- J2b* : n=5
-- J2b2 : n=1

G2a : 3.58%

E1 : 4.91%
-E1b1b (M215) : n=1
---E1b1b1a1 (V12) : n=1
---E1b1b1a2 (V13) : n=13
---E1b1b1a3 (V22) : n=3
--E1b1b1b (M81) : n=1
--E1b1b1d (M281) : n=7

L : 0.75%
-L1 (M27) : n=3
-L2 (M317) : n=1

T : 0.57%

Q : 0.57%
 
Are you sure they are actually testing for L21? It seems EXTREMELY odd that there hasn't been a single L21 result thus far.

I find that very very difficult to believe, given the several L21+ results in the Netherlands from FTDNA's database and the large number of French and German L21+ thus far. It's hard to believe there is some sort of L21 hole in Brabant.
 
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According to the following post on the Rootsweb DNA List, L21 is not being tested in the Brabant Project:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2009-11/1258021593


. . . Belgium adds up to 57.1 % and Holland to 64.7 % because these are the percentages of "R1b" in the data (the other haplogroups are not shown here) and "M343" are those not yet tested for subclades. Unfortunately L21 isn't tested but many of the P312 may be L21 . Indeed U152 isn't so strong in Belgium.
 
Estimation of the geo-ethnic origin of Y-DNA in Belgium

History is complicated, and migrations have often come from similar regions. So we may never know the proportion of Y-DNA that came directly from Italy during Roman times, as opposed from Gaul/France or southern Germany. It's impossible at present to distinguish between a G2a or T that came from the Near East to Belgium via the Neolithic farmer migration from the Balkans, one that came from Roman Italy, and one that came 200 years ago from France. We also can't know if a Belgian R1a is descended from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Greece or if that R1a has been in Belgium since the Corded Ware period. I will nevertheless attempt to give the maximum likelihood for the traditional ancient ethnic groups : Germanic, Celtic, Roman, and Neolithic farmers.

Germanic Y-DNA


The Germanic group is the easiest to identify because it has the most distinctive haplogroups. It is totally possible that Germanic tribes had a few "foreign" haplogroups among them by the time they invaded the Roman Empire and settled in Belgium. I will disregard them to simplify the task (and because anyway there is absolutely no way of knowing until ancient Germanic skeletons are tested). The following haplogroups in Belgium can be considered the result of Germanic migrations :

- I1 (12.5%)
- R1b-U106 (26%)

It is usually considered that I2b is also Germanic. But as it is in fact the descendants of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, this haplogroup could have been present in Belgium for much longer. I have seen Belgian I2b STR haplotypes with no close match anywhere else, so they are unlikely to be a recent split from northern Germany.

R1a is even more complex due to its very wide geographic spread and few subclades. I find it strange that only 3.75% of R1a is found in Belgium. That's about what could be expected from the Corded-Ware settlement, but that leaves no place from later Germanic migration. Proportionally to I1 and R1b-U106, there should be at least an additional 4% (unless different Germanic tribes had very different frequencies). Or it could be that the R1a Indo-Europeans of the Corded Ware never crossed the Rhine, and therefore all the R1a in Belgium is of later Germanic origin. I think that this latter hypothesis is the most likely.

The last possible Germanic component would be the other clades of R1b than U106. I would exclude S28, SRY2627 and M343 because they are too rare in Germanic countries. But some P312, P310 and M269 could be Germanic.

I estimate that the minimum percentage of Germanic lineages in Brabant is :

12.5% + 26% + 3.75% = 42.25%

The maximum would be around 62%, depending on the actual number of I2b and other R1b of Germanic origin. 48% seems a reasonable estimate.

Italo-Celtic Y-DNA

The Celtic group is hard to define. The original Celtic speakers would normally be the Indo-European R1b. The question is whether the Indo-European Celts really intermingled with the locals, or whether they remained a separate social group throughout the age of Celtic culture, until the Roman conquest. The Celtic ruling class was patrilineal, so it is easy to imagine the Celtic aristocracy being made up primarily of R1b lineages.

The Celts lived in towns and owned slaves, probably taken from the aboriginal population. But what exactly happened to the Pre-Celtic farmers and megaliths builders when the Proto-Italo-Celts settled in Central Europe about 4000 years ago ? Indigenous paternal lineages suffered a considerable set back over time. Pre-Celtic I2, J2b, E-V13, G2a and T all together only account for 10 to 15% of the modern Belgian Y lineages (depending if we include I2b or not), so only a third to half of the supposed R1b lineages of Italo-Celtic origin. As all those pre-Celtic lineages are also found in France, southern Germany and Italy, it is not even certain that they are the continuity of the lineages found on the Belgian territory, or a later repopulation that came during the La Tène or Roman period.

Did the Neolithic farmers keep farming on the side for their new Celtic rulers in their oppida, or did they become completely Celticised and integrated ? Both Celtic and Roman nobility were pretty exclusive. Nobles were the only ones allowed to become warriors, just like in medieval times. Nobles stayed in the forts or towns, and farmers in their villages. The Celtic aristocracy will surely have taken beautiful wives or concubines among the local farmers, progressively mixing autosomal DNA. Y-chromosomes, however, would have been preserved.

With this in mind, true Celtic lineages (Indo-European aristocracy) would be the R1b-P312 lineages and its subclades, i.e. 32% of the population (a small percentage of these lineages could be Germanic though).

Only a few centuries separate the La Tène expansion to Belgium from the Roman conquest. It is therefore difficult to determine which of the present-day haplogroups are descended from ancient Belgae and which are Roman. The only percentage I can give is the Gallo-Roman (or Belgo-Italic) admixture. Roman in this case means Northern and Central Italian around 2000 years ago. Southern Italians being mostly of Greek and Phoenician descent, I will create another category.

Near-Eastern Y-DNA

Neolithic farmers are also ultimately from the Near East, but they came to Europe much earlier, and via a very different route through the Balkans and the Danube basin. Their autosomal admixture would be quite different from the southern Italians and Greeks of classical times. That is why I insist on separating the two groups.

Most J2a, J1, L and other E subclades than V13 are probably of Etruscan, Greek, Phoenician or southern Italian origin rather than northern Italian or Central European. That represents about 7.5% of the population. Add to that the 4.5% of R1b-M343, which could also be Greco-Anatolian or southern Italian.

In conclusion, up to 12% of the Brabantine Y-DNA could be of Greek or Levantine origin, in addition to the 7.5% already counted under "Neolithic farmer". That's nearly 20% of Near-Eastern Y-DNA, a bit more than I expected.
 
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It's weird that they wouldn't test for a main subclade like R-L21 and test for rare subclades like I2b1c (aka I2b3) or J2a2a.

In any case the percentage of L21 cannot be higher than P312. I doubt that all P312 should be L21, but maybe half of them...

It is weird, but maybe they didn't know about L21 when they were setting up and planning the project. L21 wasn't discovered (for all practical purposes) until October of 2008.

Half or more of P312 would still be a significant amount of Belgian R1b1b2.

It is really disappointing to me that they are not testing for one of the most frequent European R1b1b2 subclades.
 
Southern Italians being mostly of Greek and Phoenician descent
NO.
Most southern italians are of Greek descend yes, but not phoenician. Only in some pockets of Sicily, but not Southern Italy as a whole
 
It's been four months since the last update. The Brabant DNA Project is now expandin to all Belgium. The latest results include 741 participants, almost all from Flanders. The province and East and West Flanders account for the biggest part of the new results. The percentage of R1b is a bit higher while all other haplogroups lower except I1 and R1a which are stable. This means that East and West Flanders have a considerably higher frequency of R1b than the provinces of Antwerp, Brabant and Brussels.

R1b : 61.94%
R1b-M343 : n=1 (0.15%)
-R1b-M269 : n=9 (1.37%)
--R1b-P310 : n=4 (0.61%)
--- R1b-U106 (S21) : n=193 (29.47%)
--- R1b-P312 (S116, incl. L21) : n=131 (20%)
---- R1b-U152 (S28) : n=61 (9.31%)
---- R1b-SRY2627 : n=6 (0.92%)

R1a : 3.91%
R1a* : n=1
-R1a1 : n=21

I1 : 12.68%
I1* : n=77
- I1c (P109) : n=6

I2 : 7.82%
-I2* : n=11 (1.68%)
-- I2a* : n=9 (1.37%)
-- I2b* : n=21 (3.21%)
--- I2b1 (M284) : n=2 (0.31%)
--- I2b3 (P78) : n=2 (0.31%)
--- I2b4 (P95) : n=2 (0.31%)

J1 : 1.21%

J2 : 4.18%
- J2a* : n=9
--J2a2 : n=4
---J2a2a : n=4
--J2a8 : n=3
- J2b* : n=0
-- J2b2 : n=6

G2a : 2.83%

E1 : 4.45%
-E1b1b (M215) : n=0
---E1b1b1a1 (V12) : n=1
---E1b1b1a2 (V13) : n=18
---E1b1b1a3 (V22) : n=4
--E1b1b1c (M123) : n=1
---E1b1b1c1 (M34) : n=6
--E1b1b1b (M81) : n=1

L : 0.54%
-L1 (M27) : n=3
-L2 (M317) : n=1

T : 0.81%

Q : 0.54%
 
thanks maciamo yes r1b is very high in flanders and many of the frisians who join
the saxons and angels were r1b .
i didnt knew my clade m34 exist in belgium even though in low frequency
more than haplogroup T maybe i gusse most of the m34 samples from barbant
and not flanders ,again thanks .
 
well m34 is in the same frequency as haplogroup j1 in those areas
maybe they arrived together just to remind you m34 also exist in italy mayb enot like j1 but it is there west camapania found 4% e1b1b1c1
and aslo apeninnene marche 7% maybe it was present among italic tribes in the easter part of italy like the piceni and umbri maybe it joined j1e in his neolithic journey
genetic code
 
I have removed the Germanic haplogroups from the Belgian data to have an idea of what the pre-Frankish population admixture. It looks amazingly similar to northern Italy.

It is still unknown whether I2b and R1a in Belgium and northern Italy are exclusively of Germanic origin or (as I suspect) some of it was already there from before (I2b from the Paleolithic and R1a from the early Bronze Age). So I compromised and divided the percentage in two. S116 and L21 (20% of Y-DNA in Belgium) could be either Celtic or Germanic, so I also divided, but giving 12% to the Celts and 8% to the Germans.

Estimated Y-DNA admixture in Gallo-Roman Belgium

Roman-Belgium.jpg


Estimated Y-DNA admixture in Roman-era northern Italy

Gallia-Cisalpina.jpg


Unexpectedly, Gallo-Roman Belgium has more J1 and G2a than northern Italy and is therefore in an intermediary between northern and central Italy. It would make sense if the Roman settlers to Belgium came from Central or Southern Italy (and many surely did in Julius Caesar's time, when Belgium was conquered). This would explain why Belgian J2 and E1b1b include many typically lineages not only associated with the Neolithic expansion through the Balkans and Germany (J2b, E-V13), but also with southern Italy and Greece (J2a2, J2a8, E-V22, E-M123).

Once the R1b-U106 and some P312/S116 removed, the main R1b variety in Gallo-Roman Belgium is U152/S28. It is also the most common subclade in Italy, especially in the north. The current data from the Brabant/Belgian DNA project is overwhelmingly from Flanders, and U152 would already make up 1/3 of non-Germanic R1b, or 20% of all Gallo-Roman lineages. In Wallonia, from where I have gathered just over one hundred Y-DNA results, R1b-U152 is even stronger, accounting for at least half of all R1b, so possibly 30 to 35% of all Gallo-Roman lineages. The tiny Italy DNA project at FTDNA has 37% of R1b-U152 so far. Results like this indicate that Gallo-Roman Belgium may indeed have been more Roman than Gallo. It is consistent with the high density of Roman villas founded in southern Belgium, and the fact that the Romans chose Augusta Treverorum (Trier), just across the southern Belgian border as the capital Western Roman Empire in replacement during the 4th-century political turmoil. Everything points at a strong Roman presence from southern-central Belgium (Sambre and Meuse valleys) to the Moselle valley. The problem is that R1b-U152 could just as well be Belgic Celtic (Hallstatt or La Tène origin)... It is almost certainly Gallo-Roman; we just cannot say whether it is more Gallo or Roman for now.
 
great work maciamo
the roamn villas could probably the reson for the presence of
not typical european clades like {e-v22, e-m34, j1, }
it could also arrived with syrian settlers or roman auxiliry regiments some of them were from syria ,lebanon , commagene whic is central antolia all these areas carry those markers and those units were stationed in germania superior and germania inferior very close to south central belgium , the roman empire was very mobile taking populations from one corner to other corners i have just read in www. roman britain.com site
about the perfects of twentith legion which was in chester those perfects came from capadocia and osrhone in southern turkey so every thing is possible .
about r1b i am not expert of these subcaldes but i gusse many of the romans themselfs were r1b and many soldiers in the roman legions came from northen italy
 
Thanks Maciamo

Do you know if the results are accessable, to the participants and to the public?:)

I ask as our particular U152 branch has rare values: YCAII=19,22 and 447=27 said to be of 'Isles' origin!

It would be interesting to see if any are 'close' to us!
 
Haplotype data?

Thanks Maciamo

Do you know if the results are accessable, to the participants and to the public?:)

I ask as our particular U152 branch has rare values: YCAII=19,22 and 447=27 said to be of 'Isles' origin!

It would be interesting to see if any are 'close' to us!
Yes, I'd love to have STR details.
 
Flemish immigrants into the British Isles?

It's been four months since the last update. The Brabant DNA Project is now expandin to all Belgium. The latest results include 741 participants, almost all from Flanders. The province and East and West Flanders account for the biggest part of the new results. The percentage of R1b is a bit higher while all other haplogroups lower except I1 and R1a which are stable. This means that East and West Flanders have a considerably higher frequency of R1b than the provinces of Antwerp, Brabant and Brussels.....
Does anyone have any suggestions on what the old Flemish haplogroups might have looked like during the tenth and eleventh centuries?
I have read many times that Flemings were brought into Britain as part of the Norman invasion and control of Britain, starting 1066 AD. Is there anyway to tell who is a Fleming?
 
Does anyone have any suggestions on what the old Flemish haplogroups might have looked like during the tenth and eleventh centuries?
I have read many times that Flemings were brought into Britain as part of the Norman invasion and control of Britain, starting 1066 AD. Is there anyway to tell who is a Fleming?

Probably very similar to present day haplogroups. There was no significant migration to Flanders after the Franks and Saxons had settled (3rd to 6th century).
 

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