Originally Posted by
pipinnacanus
You are funny guy. I understand you are simply asking for opinions, and I give my observations that unfortunately contradict most of your own.
A lot of Hungarians I think are in denial that they are of some genetic relationship to the Hunnic force that established itself in Pannonia during the great migrations period and gave the name to the modern country.
If the Y-Hg information concerning studies on MODERN Hungarian population genetics are correct (they are posted on this very site..) I think that the "Hungarians" have no detectable Hunnic ancestry whatsoever.
What happened to your people was, the last major homeland of continental Celts or Celticized Rhaetians found themselves trapped in a large region that includes parts of modern Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Austria.
These Celts were overwhelmed with enemies on all sides and did not have a defensible perimeter with Germans and Nordics pressing south, Roman armies pushing North, large but fairly lethargic and cautious Slavic populations pushing west, and to the far west heavily settled Gaul with the only other Celtic populations they could potentially seek aid or shelter from assimilated by the Romans into heavily controlled Civitas with no unsettled lands. To the Southeast, there are powerful and warlike Romanized Free-Dacians, Carpi, Illyrians, and massive numbers of Eastern Gothic populations flooding in.
As the Hunnic forces arrived into Pannonia, the Celts/Rhaetians/Boii would have probably long since effectively collapsed under the weight of a 360 degree battlefield of hostile alien populations. I think its was Strabo who describes the Rhaetians fleeing to Pannonia to join the Boii and them being militarily wiped out by Romanized Dacians / "The Romans Shepards". Fairly, the Continental Celts in this area were so completely and desperately surrounded by enemies at this point that they could not hope to survive culturally intact any more that the Goth tribal remnant in the pripet marsh could survive the successive Hunnic incursions.
The reason you see in Romanians, Czechs, Slovakians, Hungarians a roughly constant 20% (1 out of every five modern male citizens) of R1b-M269 I think is attributable to the fact that so many of the Boii/Rhaetians or fragments of continental celtic tribes who were outside of the dubious safety of the Alps, simply adopted the newly dominant culture as each population traded off power/control in this region.
You- strangely - may have a point about your speculation that some of the R1a in Hungarians could have been Celtic due to the Tocharian (male) europid mummies wearing in some cases scots/irish clan-like plaid clothing and all testing R1a. Perhaps this style was at one point found among all europid populations, or perhaps a lot of the modern 'Hungarian' R1a could be a Tocharian-style 'Celt' population that was lost once it was culturally destroyed and absorbed by asiatic steppe peoples.
I do NOT think it is possible however for R1a Hg, even clearly Europid SNP like M458 to have been a factor in Eastern Gothic, Gepid, Heruli, Lombardic populations as you speculated, due to the vast numbers of these Eastern Goths who migrated into and became absorbed into popultions of modern Western Euro nations, that later become Northern Italy, Spain, France, the low countries and later Norman-conquered Britain..
These Goths were so numerous that the main combat force in north-central France that finally defeats, at the expense of great casualties, the Hunnic forces, were primarily all Eastern Goths - INCLUDING THE 'ROMAN LEGION' involved which was staffed with Eastern Goth soldiers. These are the large portion of Goths who made it out from the steppes of what is today South Ukraine a few generations earlier, without submitting to the Huns.
There is such meager R1a of any sort in all these countries that the Goths brought major populations into that it really does not seem to me plausible that this was a significant or indigenous element of the Gothic Y-dna.
To put it bluntly, the Hungarians of modern times were populations who had already submitted to earlier conquering or rising tribal populations in this same region, and had already accepted a fairly flexible policy of adopting/shedding language and culture from whoever overran the area.
The modern Hungarians are-
the Celtic remnants who by now probably know of no celtic language or culture anymore, the Free Dacians, Illyrians, Carpi, the Romanized Dacians (who would by this time consider themselves ethnically seperate from the Free Dacians), along with Alani fleeing the Huns, portions of Gothic tribes who got caught behind the Hunnic lines of conquest, possibly some other Caucasus populations that might still identify with Sarmatian or Getic origins..
The one thing that all of these rather disparate populations did gain in common was that to function/live under the yoke of the Huns required the use of either Hunnic, Gothic, or probably both to survive. So, over the span of 75 years+/- and multiple generations, those who survived the Huns had done so by adopting their language, their culture, and understanding how to navigate their relatively brutal customs.
The genetic/ancestral 'Huns' of Pannonia - IF Y-dna population surveys of Modern Hungarian males are accurate, tend to indicate that the Gepids/Heruli etc.. ethnically cleansed all, or close to all, genetic 'Hunnic' males in Pannonia at the end of, or during, their final siege of the last Hunnic stronghold after the battle of Nedao.
The Goths would have good reason to do this, as any Asiatic/Hunnic populations left alive in Pannonia would very likely act as a fifth column for a eventual Hunnic force coming to avenge the loss of a entire army to the Goths, the next fighting season. The Huns did NOT consider non-ethnic Hun populations who became their foederati to be 'brothers', and a non-ethnic Hun would never be treated like one of their own tribe/ancestry. You were only a meatshield to be expended in war on behalf of the Huns, if you were not genetically Hunnic.
Thus, it would be very easy for the Goths to know who to spare and who to ethnically cleanse, given not only the Asiatic phenotype but also the status that village or population was held in by the Hunnic host.
The Y-dna results of Hungarian males show that they are a Haplogroup composite genetically of exactly the populations who we KNOW fell to the Hunnic conquest of Pannonia, and that effectively no ancient Hg 'O' or 'Q', let alone Hg 'N' exists to suggest that a asiatic, turkic, hunnic or even magyar/mongol paternal line ancestry exists in even a tiny % the modern population.
It may be that at one time, even the "Hungarians" themselves were wise to this game, and effected this claim to 'Hun' ancestry not by mistake but for defensive 'deterrence'. A population that never rose to evict its Hunnic overlords and had basically consigned itself to its lot as vassals of the brutal Huns, and later was liberated by a chance rebellion among some Eastern Germanic Goths who grew tired of this oppression, would not be very safe when other neighboring populations look greedily on their lands, property, women or valuables, instead they might be seen as a weak or 'easy mark' by the next super-power tribe to invade or come to power in the area.
By adopting the claim to genetic descent from the 'Huns', who even if hated were famous for their brutality and vicious warfare, this may have been a tactic for the former Hunnic vassals to make themselves appear more fierce and deter others from moving in on their territory. The fact that the Hunnic Vassals spoke a form of Hunnic, and knew the generalities of the culture and society all-too-well, it would not be hard to go from the Huns former vassals tribes left behind in Pannonia after their overlords were dispatched at long last, to laying claim to being 'The Huns',
in hopes this would induce others to leave them alone....
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