On Germanic and Polish DNA

Distribution of Y-chromosomal haplogroup I1a in Europe.

Commentator Unknown123 asks what we can tell about the differences between German and Polish DNA. Obviously German is here referring to one of the Germanic peoples who occupy the modern nation of Germany and speak a Germanic language. But as noted before, just because people speak a common language doesn’t necessarily mean they have a common genetic origin. Germans and English both speak Germanic languages , but Germans could easily share more DNA with their Slavic-language speaking neighbors in Poland than with the English.

According to Wikipedia, the modern Germanic peoples include Afrikaners, Austrians, Danes, Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisians, Germans, Icelanders, Lowland Scots, Norwegians, and Swedes.^[225][226]

And here is a map that is very suggestive of Viking raiders:

(It’s also not a bad map of the distribution of Germanic peoples in 750 BC.)

Wikipedia states:

It is suggested by geneticists that the movements of Germanic peoples has had a strong influence upon the modern distribution of the male lineage represented by the Y-DNA haplogroup I1, which is believed to have originated with one man, who lived approximately 4,000 to 6,000 years somewhere in Northern Europe, possibly modern Denmark … There is evidence of this man’s descendants settling in all of the areas that Germanic tribes are recorded as having subsequently invaded or migrated to.^[220][v] However, it is quite possible that Haplogroup I1 is pre-Germanic, that is I1 may have originated with individuals who adopted the proto-Germanic culture, at an early stage of its development or were co-founders of that culture. Should that earliest Proto-Germanic speaking ancestor be found, his Y-DNA would most likely be an admixture of the aforementioned I1, but would also contain R1a1a, R1b-P312 and R1b-U106, a genetic combination of the haplogroups found among current Germanic speaking peoples.^{[221] …}

Haplogroup I1 accounts for approximately 40% of Icelandic males, 40%–50% of Swedish males, 40% of Norwegian males, and 40% of Danish Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups. Haplogroup I1 peaks in certain areas of Northern Germany and Eastern England at more than 30%. Haplogroup R1b and haplogroup R1a collectively account for more than 40% of males in Sweden; over 50% in Norway, 60% in Iceland, 60–70% in Germany, and between 50%–70% of the males in England and the Netherlands depending on region.^[222]

Note, though, that this map has some amusing results; clearly it’s a more Nordic distribution than specifically German, with “Celtic” Ireland just as Nordic as much of England and Germany.

Wikipedia also states:

According to a study published in 2010, I-M253 originated between 3,170 and 5,000 years ago, in Chalcolithic Europe.^[1] A new study in 2015 estimated the origin as between 3,470 and 5,070 years ago or between 3,180 and 3,760 years ago, using two different techniques.^[2] It is suggested that it initially dispersed from the area that is now Denmark.^[8]

A 2014 study in Hungary uncovered remains of nine individuals from the Linear Pottery culture, one of whom was found to have carried the M253 SNP which defines Haplogroup I1. This culture is thought to have been present between 6,500 and 7,500 years ago.^[12]

Further:

In 2002 a paper was published by Michael E. Weale and colleagues showing genetic evidence for population differences between the English and Welsh populations, including a markedly higher level of Y-DNA haplogroup I in England than in Wales. They saw this as convincing evidence of Anglo-Saxon mass invasion of eastern Great Britain from northern Germany and Denmark during the Migration Period.^[13] The authors assumed that populations with large proportions of haplogroup I originated from northern Germany or southern Scandinavia, particularly Denmark, and that their ancestors had migrated across the North Sea with Anglo-Saxon migrations and DanishVikings. The main claim by the researchers was:

“That an Anglo-Saxon immigration event affecting 50–100% of the Central English male gene pool at that time is required. We note, however, that our data do not allow us to distinguish an event that simply added to the indigenous Central English male gene pool from one where indigenous males were displaced elsewhere or one where indigenous males were reduced in number … This study shows that the Welsh border was more of a genetic barrier to Anglo-Saxon Y chromosome gene flow than the North Sea … These results indicate that a political boundary can be more important than a geophysical one in population genetic structuring.”

In 2003 a paper was published by Christian Capelli and colleagues which supported, but modified, the conclusions of Weale and colleagues.^[14] This paper, which sampled Great Britain and Ireland on a grid, found a smaller difference between Welsh and English samples, with a gradual decrease in Haplogroup I frequency moving westwards in southern Great Britain. The results suggested to the authors that Norwegian Vikings invaders had heavily influenced the northern area of the British Isles, but that both English and mainland Scottish samples all have German/Danish influence.

But the original question was about Germany and Poland, not England and Wales, so we are wandering a bit off-track.

source: Big Think: Genetic map of EuropeLuckily for me, Wikipedia helpfully has a table of European Population Genetic Substructure based on SNPs^[48][59]. We’ll be extracting the most useful parts.

A score of “1” on this graph means that the two populations in question are identical–fully inter-mixing. The closer to 1 two groups score, the more similar they are. The further from one they score, (the bigger the number,) the more different they are.

Here is a potentially relevant map of the neolithic cultures of Europe

For example, the most closely related peoples on the graph are Austrians and their neighbors in southern Germany and Hungary (despite Hungarians speaking a non-Indo-European language brought in by recent steppe invaders.) Both groups scored 1.04 relative to Austrians, and a 1.08 relative to each other.

Northern and southern Germans also received a 1.08–so southern Germans are about as closely related to northern Germans as they are to Hungarians, and are more closely related to Austrians than to northern Germans.

This might reflect the pre-Roman empire population in which (as we discussed in the previous post) the Celtic cultures of Hallstatt and La Tene dominated a stretch of central Europe between Austria and Switzerland, with significant expansion both east and west, whilst the proto-Germanic peoples occupied northern Germany and later spread southward.

The least closely related peoples on the graph are (unsurprisingly) the Sami (Lapp) town of Kuusamo in northeastern Finland and Spain, at 4.21. (Finns are always kind of outliers in Europe, and Spaniards are kind of outliers in their own, different way, being the part of mainland Europe furthest from the Indo-European expansion starting point and so having received fewer invaders.

So what does the table say about Germans and their neighbors?

source: Big Think: Genetic map of Europe

Northern Germany:
South Germany 1.08
Austria 1.10
Hungary 1.11
Sweden 1.12
Czech Repub 1.15
Poland 1.18
France 1.25
Bulgaria 1.32
Switzerland 1.36

Southern Germany:
Austria 1.04
North Germany 1.08
Hungary 1.08
France 1.12
Czech Repub 1.16
Switzerland 1.17
Bulgaria 1.19
Latvia 1.20
Sweden 1.21
Poland 1.23

 

Poland:
Czech Repub 1.09
Hungary: 1.14
Estonia 1.17
North Germany 1.18
Russia 1.18
Austria 1.19
Lithuania 1.20
South Germany 1.23
Latvia: 1.26
Bulgaria 1.29
Sweden 1.30
Switzerland 1.46

Obviously I didn’t include all of the data in the original table; all of the other sampled European groups, such as Italians, Spaniards, and Finns are genetically further away from north and south Germany and Poland than the listed groups.

So northern Germany and Poland are quite closely related–even closer than northern Germans are to the French (whose country is named after a Germanic tribe, the Franks, who conquered it during the Barbarian Migrations at the Fall of the Roman Empire,) or the Swiss, many of whom speak German. By contrast, southern Germany is more closely related to France and Switzerland than to Poland, but still more closely related to the Poles than Italians or Spaniards.

To be continued…

Some thoughts on the Early History of the Germans

Disclaimer: I’m not German nor an expert in German history.

The word “German” can obviously be defined three different ways:

1. A citizen of the country of Germany
2. Someone who speaks the German language
3. A member of the German people

No one is really interested in #1, because this is a legal definition rather than a truly meaningful one. A wealthy enough person can easily gain citizenship in almost any country they want to, but this does not make them an actual member of that society.

About 95 million people speak German as their first language, plus about 15 million who’ve learned it as a second or third language. The wider Germanic language family has about a billion speakers, mostly because a lot of people in India have learned English.

Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe showing culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC. The red shows the area of the preceding Nordic Bronze Age in Scandinavia; the magenta-colored area towards the south represents the later Jastorf culture of the North German Plain.

The oddest thing about the Germanic languages is their origin–according to Wikipedia, proto-Germanic spread southward from southern Scandinavia/Denmark (modern name for the region, obviously not the 500-BC name) into central Europe. Have a map:

Red: Settlements before 750 BC
Orange: New settlements 750–500 BC
Yellow: NS 500–250 BC
Green: NS 250 BC – AD 1
Some sources give a date of 750 BC for the earliest expansion out of southern Scandinavia along the North Sea coast towards the mouth of the Rhine. (from Wikipedia)

And another map.

Okay, fine, but note that Scandinavia is a peninsula, and the area just north of the Nordic part is inhabited by people (the Sami/Lapps) who don’t even speak an Indo-European language. Neither do the nearby Finns. Assuming those folks were already there when the proto-German speakers arrived, how did they get from the Indo-European urheimat, just north of the Caucasus mountains, to southern Norway and Sweden, without significantly occupying either northern/eastern Finnoscandia nor central/eastern Europe?

Further, once they arrived in southern Scandinavia, what prompted them to head southward again?

During the initial years of Germanic expansion, the heart of central and western Europe was occupied by Celtic peoples, notably the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures (yes I have another map!)

Yellow: Hallstatt territory, 6th cen BC
Teal: Celtic expansion by 275 BC
Light Grey: Lusitanian area of Iberia where Celtic presence is uncertain
Green: Areas where Celtic languages remain widely spoken today

While the modern Celtic languages are nearly forgotten outside of Ireland and Wales, the pre-Roman Celtic range was quite impressive. Around 390 BC, the Celts sacked Rome; around 280 BC, they defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae, attacked Delphi, and eventually made their way to Turkey (well, Anatolia), where they established the Kingdom of Galatia. The Galatians earned themselves enduring fame by receiving a letter from St. Paul, which is now the ninth book of the New Testament.

So around 500 BC, the Celts were clearly a force to be reckoned with throughout much of Europe. Then came the Germanics from the north (perhaps they felt pressure from the Sami?) and the Italics from the south.The Germanics spread principally to the east, through modern Poland (which I hear is very flat and thus easy to move through,) and into the core Hallstatt areas of Austria and Switzerland, while the Romans conquered the Celtic areas of France, Spain, and England. (Modern names, obviously.)

As the Roman empire crumbled, the Germans invaded (YES ANOTHER MAP!) and basically conquered everything in their path.

Simplified map of the German migrations of the 2nd through 5th centuries

And then, of course, the Norse went and invaded a whole bunch of places, too, so that England effectively got invaded twice by different Germanic tribes–first the Angles/Saxons/Jutes, and second the Normans.

I’m going to skip the map of the Viking expansion, but you’re probably already well aware of their most far-flung settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland (North America.) They looted north Africa, settled in southern Italy, and apparently created the first Russian kingdoms, the Kievan Rus and the Volga Bulgars.

Obviously not all of the places the Germanics conquered ended up speaking Germanic languages–I haven’t heard of much Norwegian being spoken in Sicily lately. Nor did all of the places which today speak Germanic languages end up with many Germanic people in them–a small band of conquerors can impose their language on a much larger subject population, and then a small band of warriors from that population can turn around and go conquer someone else and impose the language on them in turn, resulting in a language being spoken by people with very no genetic relationship at all to the original speakers.

For example, even though everyone in England speaks English, very little (only 30%) of the modern English DNA comes from the Angles (or any Germanic tribe)–most of it hails from the pre-Germanic, presumably Celtic population. The English, in turn, conquered large swathes of the globe, and today English is spoken (often as a second language) by folks with zero Germanic ancestry in far-flung places like India, South Africa, and Japan (conquered by the US.)

So our next post, we’ll turn our attention to the Germanic peoples. Where are they now, and how distinct are they from their neighbors?