Who were the ancestors of the Flemings and Wallons?

[mwauthy]

@mwauty
a bit dubious your explanation, without offense.
Why a roman road could stay a frontier in Germanics times after the departure of Romans and the demantlement of their western empire part? I rather think the today frontier, stable enough by time, is the result of a desiquilibrium between the composing components of the human groups along it. There were Germanics and Celts descendants on both sides but more germanics in North, the opposite in South; the only exception could be Liege region but some other reasons than only ethnic ones could have played a role for Liege/Liek. Just a guess.

I think you misunderstood my point. When the Franks moved into Toxandria the Romans still had an empire for two more centuries. The road mentioned in the previous text was the northernmost Roman road in the area and on a map it almost matches the linguistic division in Belgium.
Romans cared less about what was happening north of the road and were not really interfering in the Frankish affairs or culture allowing Flemish to be retained. The importance of trade from Boulogne to Cologne meant it was heavily guarded and the social structure and language of the settled Franks south of the road remained Romanized and Latinized for the 6 or 7 generations until the eventual collapse of the empire.
The reason I think it remained latinized after the collapse was due to the population already adapted to the Roman way of life including its leaders with no new invaders displacing them or their language.
It's hard for me to post images or attachments. However, if you take a look at a map of the Via Agrippa and how it cut through Belgium it is quite striking.
Like Maciamo has said the Frankish leaders continued this Latinization having their capitals at Tournai and Liege and considered themselves the heirs of the Roman Empire.

 

[Maciamo]

mwauty, I agree with what Moesan said. All Belgium was a blend of Celtic and Germanic inhabitants, with little difference between Flanders and Wallonia. This was confirmed by DNA tests. It's especially Roman ancestry that is a bit higher in the south, while Scandinavian (Viking) is higher in coastal areas. Note that the Franks at their first capital in Tournai (Merovingians) then Liege (Carolingians), both in Wallonia.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Another interesting theory I read somewhere is that the Roman road of the Via Agrippa from Boulogne to Cologne caused the linguistic divide in Belgium.

The road was heavily guarded by the Romans and the land south of it was very important to the empire because of the fertile soil and ability to grow grain. Thus it's Romanization or Latinization was perpetuated and protected longer even after the Franks started settling in Toxandria.

the land south of this road was fertile on a soil that was easy to work on, like the loss soils of Haspengouw and the Condroz
the land north of this road was not fit to work on, the soil was to heavy and there were to many swamps, it was never properly colonised by the Romans
the Francs did keep many of the farming estates intact after their invasions, but north of this road there were practically none

but I don't think this explains the language divide
this fertile zone didn't spread far south, not as far as the Ardennes

 

[mwauthy]

mwauty, I agree with what Moesan said. All Belgium was a blend of Celtic and Germanic inhabitants, with little difference between Flanders and Wallonia. This was confirmed by DNA tests. It's especially Roman ancestry that is a bit higher in the south, while Scandinavian (Viking) is higher in coastal areas. Note that the Franks at their first capital in Tournai (Merovingians) then Liege (Carolingians), both in Wallonia.

I was never trying to assert that people south of the road were genetically different than the north or had more Roman DNA. I'm aware that people from Wallonia are genetically very similar to their Flemish neighbors to the north. Furthermore, the DNA test of my father who is from Wallonia further proved that people from Wallonia are primarily Celtic/Germanic.

My point was that after 300 AD and for the next 180 years the road was the cultural and linguistic border for the Roman Empire in Toxandria. This 180 year influence did not change the genetic makeup of the Wallonians but did affect the language and culture.

Here is a hypothetical modern day analogy to help my argument. There are Hispanics in the southwest United States that are genetically similar to people living in Mexico. After a few generations they speak English instead of Spanish because of the United States cultural and institutional influences.

If hypothetically the United States government were to no longer be around in 200 years from now and the leaders of the next government considered themselves the heirs of the United States legacy, I am pretty confident that the hispanics who had lived for 6-7 generations in the southwest would continue speaking English and would probably not even remember how to speak Spanish.

Both my parents are French speaking. I'm first generation American and even though I understand French pretty fluently I have trouble speaking it. My nephews and nieces don't understand or speak it at all. It only took two generations for the language to disappear. Imagine 180 years in Toxandria.

 

[MOESAN]

Thanks all of yours for your opinions !
Hre I ‘ll partly agree and partly disagree with Maciamo and Mwauthy !
I think this ancient roman road runs between the low plain of the Flanders and the hills of Walloonia, so in a corridor separating two different « ecosystems ». It seems to me the hilly region of South was better to permit some resistance of the romanized pop against the Germanics. And the Germanics authorized to stay in South (Salian Franks for the most) were at the service of the Empire and did not make the bulk of the total pop, and by the rôle they played there were more easily integrated in the Roman-post-Roman world. So my explanation is not completely out of worth. The physical aspect of Walloons as a whole is not strickly opposed to the flemish speaking areas one, but they were a bit darker, even darker than the France Northerners of partly germanized areas of Flandres/Picardy and North-Normandy though Walloons were more often red haired than Flemings, and they were a bit more meso-brachycephalic too. Here I agree only to 50 % with Maciamo, a) it’s not strongly the Roman genetic input which differentiated the two pops, whatever could say Y-haplos, but the mutual proportions of Celtic-Germanic inputs (it’s true there is not a radical opposition) ; of course, culturally, it’s also the ancienty of Rome culture implantation which made the difference ; b) but even in romanized France the Franks spoke their germanic language for some centuries and they lost it firstable in the places where they were less numerous or surrounded by very more dense non-frankish speaking pops ; if Franks lost their langage in France, it’s not an abandon by snobism, because a folk can take cultural traits of another culture witthout take another language, when it is strong and numerous enough ; I even am sure frankish dured in Pas-de-Calais (Artois-Picardy) longer than in Walloonia, if I rely on what I know of the toponymy...


I think a good way to check this would be to study the toponymy of the two big regions of Belgium, excluding to take in account the personal names contained in place names, without great value for this purpose because personal names were (and are) submitted to modes ; but even this study could not exclude a (cumulative) multi-causes explanation, in fine !

 

[mwauthy]

I found this I1 map of the over 7,000 participants in the I1 project at FTDNA to be quite shocking considering my father is I1 and is from Wallonia Belgium and because based on the 140 Wallonia participants from the Benelux Project 10.5% were I1.

 

[Maciamo]

View attachment 10365

I found this I1 map of the over 7,000 participants in the I1 project at FTDNA to be quite shocking considering my father is I1 and is from Wallonia Belgium and because based on the 140 Wallonia participants from the Benelux Project 10.5% were I1.

It's not surprising. The map doesn't mean that I1 is rare in Wallonia, just that very few Walloons have tested with FTDNA. It's the same with other haplogroups. That's why FTDNA maps are very misleading. They give the impression that many haplogroups are common in region where lots of people tested. Check my maps on Eupedia instead for actual percentages by region.

 

[mwauthy]

It's not surprising. The map doesn't mean that I1 is rare in Wallonia, just that very few Walloons have tested with FTDNA. It's the same with other haplogroups. That's why FTDNA maps are very misleading. They give the impression that many haplogroups are common in region where lots of people tested. Check my maps on Eupedia instead for actual percentages by region.

Thanks! I was considering doing Big Y 500; however, considering the lack of Wallonia samples at FTDNA I get the feeling I won’t learn very much about possible recent subclades anytime soon. My theory is that I-FGC24357 is right around the end of the Iron Age when West Germanic tribes started leaving Denmark. If my haplogroup entered Wallonia with the Franks shortly afterward then I probably won’t learn much by doing deeper testing now.

 

[mwauthy]

It's not surprising. The map doesn't mean that I1 is rare in Wallonia, just that very few Walloons have tested with FTDNA. It's the same with other haplogroups. That's why FTDNA maps are very misleading. They give the impression that many haplogroups are common in region where lots of people tested. Check my maps on Eupedia instead for actual percentages by region.

Here are percentages for I-M253 based on the Ftdna Haplotree. I might add more countries later. Minimum of at least 25 kits positive for I-M253.

Sweden: 1,291/2,850= 45%
Norway: 579/1,537= 38%
Denmark: 202/555= 36%
Iceland: 42/132= 32%
Finland: 664/2,421= 27%
Netherlands: 229/983= 23%
England: 2,176/10,996= 20%
Germany: 1,278/7,326= 17%
Scotland: 797/5,835= 14%
Wales: 126/922= 14%
Belgium: 42/355= 12%
Switzerland: 148/1,255= 12%
France: 245/2,497= 10%
Austria: 45/478= 9%
Ireland: 569/7,767= 7%
Poland: 173/2,633= 7%

 

[hjalmar]

Another interesting theory I read somewhere is that the Roman road of the Via Agrippa from Boulogne to Cologne caused the linguistic divide in Belgium.

The road was heavily guarded by the Romans and the land south of it was very important to the empire because of the fertile soil and ability to grow grain. Thus it's Romanization or Latinization was perpetuated and protected longer even after the Franks started settling in Toxandria.

Might be worth noting that the Franks were a loose confederation of local, neighbouring tribes in the Roman border area, and that some of the known tribes that made up the Frankish confederation had names of Gallic origin. For example the Tencteri derives its name from Gallic "the faithful" and Usipetes/Assipetes "good riders"

 

[halfalp]

I haver high suspicions that Western Germans were probably mostly R1b-U106 instead of I1 or R1a, wich seems more correlate with Eastern Germans and later Northern ones.