Slavic era & Ostsiedlung Berlin DNA

If I hit here with the time machine from the year 1200, would you understand me, Mr. Wemhoff?


MATTHIAS WEMHOFF: No - but it depends on where the Berliners came from. Westphalia, I'm one myself, I understand - Berlin was founded by newcomers.


MICHAEL MALLIARIS: No, they spoke Rhenish (laughs). But of course the Westphalian settlers who moved east in the 13th century were also there.


CLAUDIA MELISCH: That has not been proven, the original Berliner speaks Middle Low German. This is a mixture of Central German or Central Low Saxon, from the Hanover and Platt region. They spoke in a similar way to how Walter von der Vogelweide wrote poetry - we wouldn't understand everything today, but we would understand a lot.


The Slavs who lived in our region until the 12th century are genetically different from the medieval [Berlin] settlers, as the first DNA studies show.


WEMHOFF: That's where Berlin differs from the much older Spandau, which was shaped by the Slavs. Up until the 12th century, it was the number one trading center in the region, had a castle and was perfectly connected to the mouth of the Spree and Havel rivers.


https://plus.tagesspiegel.de/berlin...cht-so-verfallen-wie-die-schwaben-429046.html

^^^ More about it:

"Regarding the foundation and development of C?lln (Petriplatz, first graveyard 2nd half of 12th century) it is most interesting if people of Slavic origin were amongst the first inhabitants. Therefore the two major groups which are thought to have formed the early inhabitants of C?lln and Berlin fall directly on the border of genetically well distinguishable Western-European (Germans) and Eastern European populations (Slavs). The Y-chromosomal haplotypes of the here investigated three males from the early 13th century could be more allocated to Western European populations than to a Slavic origin. This is also in confirmation with the predicted haplogroups R1b, I1 and E1b1b."

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...hree-medieval-fighters-from-Coelln-Berlin.pdf

Strontium isotopes also confirm the origins of new settlers from areas to the west of the Elbe River.


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^^^ However, I'm not sure why did they assign E1b1b as "more allocated to Western European populations".


Based on what we already know about Early Medieval Slavic Y-DNA, E1b1b was quite common among Slavs.

^^^ When talking about the origins of Berliners, we must not forget it once used to be a 30% French city:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Huguenot_Refugees_in_Brandenburg_and_Berlin,_Germany

"By 1700 ca. 6000 French Huguenots had settled in Berlin which was around 1/3 of the population at that time."

The authors should take this into account instead of modeling Berlin as just a two-way mixture of Slavs + Germans.