E-V13 - Theories on its Origin and New Data

[corrigendum]

The problem with the Albanian branches is, that they are mostly very shallow, like they date from Late Antiquity to High Medieval Age. Take the above mentioned, it has no Albanian splits before Late Antiquity. On the other hand, there are non-Albanian branches which have splits between the LBA and Late Antiquity, pointing to more ancient survivors at the very least.

Most Albanian and other Balkan branches have older MRCAs than in-group MRCAs of western/central/northern European branches in specific countries. In the last 4 years it's become clear that the vast majority of E-V13 branches north of the Danube are Roman era arrivals from the Balkans towards the rest of Europe which is the reason why European branches one by one tend to eventually get Balkan counterparts.

You linked two times to E-PH2180 which is a subclade of E-L241 -> E-BY5617 and a big Albanian founder lineage.
The upstream branch members under E-BY5617 being largely Central European (German and Czech), but there is also an additional Albanian tester ungrouped, plus ancient DNA from Hungary and Poland:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/E-BY5617/tree

I think it spread from the Danubian zone (possibly from somewhere close to Viminacium) to Albania in Antiquity, likely with resettled Dacians. But that's just speculation at this point.

Corrections:
1. There is no "ancient" BY5617 from Hungary or Poland. The sample from Hungary dates to 700-830 CE and the sample from Poland dates to 1000-1200 CE. Thus, both are medieval samples, not "ancient" ones. The subclade formed by the medieval Polish sample and two modern ones (German and Polish) has an MRCA around 900 CE and it forms another clade with someone from Syria around 235 CE. The common ancestor of the German/Polish subclade and the Syrian lived in late antiquity. As such, this clade most probably moved north of the Balkans during the Roman era and not earlier and it's unrelated to any Dacians or the Carpathian region in general.

2. The MRCA of Albanians under BY5617 is ca. 400 BCE , while PH2180 has expanded since 500 CE(founder effect). Although PH2180 is an Albanian clade in general, there is a Montenegrin/Serb lineage which split from the Albanians around 500 CE but its carriers live in the same areas as Albanians (from Kosovo to Montenegro). A Romanian splits from the Montenegrin/Serbian subclade around 550 CE.

3. PH2180 forms a subclade (Y96696) with a sample from Algeria. The Algerian individual's background is linked to an Ottoman era arrival to Algeria. According to Rrënjët, it is probable that he has a Balkan origin, likely Albanian.

4. A central European subclade (S18507) has an MRCA around 1000 CE and a Serb from Rasina (north of Kosovo) forms a separate clade under BY5617.

Based on the above, I consider a much more likely location for BY5617 as a whole in Dardania and south of the Danube in all cases.

[corrigendum]

Early-/Proto-Slavs likely had E-V13 already, but their Baltoslavic ancestors rather not. Similar for Greeks before the Thracian migrations, they had very little to no E-V13 before contact to the Thracians. Vlachs are a good example too, because they speak Romance and the Roman language wasn't spread by E-V13 before the Daco-Thracians and people influenced by those were Romanised.

Proto-Slavs most likely didn't have any sort of E-V13 lineage because the vast majority of E-V13 lineages which exist in Europe today were south of the Balkans before the Roman era. For E-V13 to have been present in Proto-Slavs, it has to be present in the area between Ukraine-Belarus-east Poland during the late Iron Age before the Roman era.

Vlachs are not "Latinized" Thracians. They represent different groups of Roman era populations of the Balkans which became Latin-speaking, including Proto-Albanians. In the single study we have about Y-DNA among Vlachs (North Macedonia, Albania, Romania), E-V13 is not their main haplogroup, but it is one of the main haplogroups. Their other Paleo-Balkan lineages are R-M269 (Z2103 + PF7563) and J-L283. I don't think that it's coincidental that Vlachs have such key haplogroups from Albania to Romania.

If we define Proto-Albanian as the period of the Albanian language from the MIA to the end of the Roman era, there are several E-V13 lineages which should be found in Proto-Albanian populations. The two most diverse lineages found so far among Albanians are R-Z29758 and J-Y21045. Some lineages may not have been found yet or they've been lost due to bottleneck events like the precursor of R-Z2705, but in any case I don't think that it's coincidence that these two lineages have pre-IA (Pre-Proto-Albanian) diversity.

[Beast]

In this video Gjergj talks about the bottleneck and population decline that occurred in the Balkans, possibly due to wars, plagues, natural disasters etc but you have probably already seen the video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yff1giX9FNg&t=1604s

I know the Justinian plague took place and in Dardania there was a huge earth quake apparently. Some archaelogists also found inscriptions of Byzantine/Roman Dardania, in Ulpiana and also inscriptions in Shkupi have been found.

Justinian was of Dardanian origin findings show:

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/am...-justinian

[Riverman]

To begin with, the Proto-Slavic stage lasted up to the Early Medieval period, therefore it doesn't even matter whether they had E-V13 in the Early Iron Age, when they expanded, when they started to move West, into countries like Germany, they carried E-V13 branches with them already.

Also, a TMRCA of Albanian E-V13 around 400 BC is absolutely nothing special within the European context. We already know that with the Vekerzug and Ferigile stage, when the North Thracians picked up Scythian customs, there was a new wave of expansion which even lasted into the La Tene period, because the incoming Celts seem to have had so extensive contacts with the locals, that there was a fairly sizeable backflow to other Celtic areas.

Concerning the Vlachs, that's exactly what I was saying. The Vlachs have a Roman language, with which E-V13 has nothing to do. Most likely there is no surviving E-V13 language, because all Daco-Thracian dialects vanished after Antiquity. However, since the Albanian linguistic origins are still unresolved, there is a chance that either Pre-Albanian was a language carried by E-V13 or was at least influenced by Daco-Thracian dialects. Like the Dardanian language had strong Thracian substrate and later Dacian influences presumably, which might cause at least elements of Albanian being Daco-Thracian derived.
That is obviously not as likely for Slavic, Romance, Greek etc.
This makes the relationship a bit more special between E-V13 and Albanian, especially if adding the modern frequencies. Even if the Pre-Albanians, if they were Illyrians, might have carried close to no E-V13 in the earlier Iron Age possibly.

[Beast]

Early-/Proto-Slavs likely had E-V13 already, but their Baltoslavic ancestors rather not. Similar for Greeks before the Thracian migrations, they had very little to no E-V13 before contact to the Thracians. Vlachs are a good example too, because they speak Romance and the Roman language wasn't spread by E-V13 before the Daco-Thracians and people influenced by those were Romanised.

Proto-Slavs most likely didn't have any sort of E-V13 lineage because the vast majority of E-V13 lineages which exist in Europe today were south of the Balkans before the Roman era. For E-V13 to have been present in Proto-Slavs, it has to be present in the area between Ukraine-Belarus-east Poland during the late Iron Age before the Roman era.

Vlachs are not "Latinized" Thracians. They represent different groups of Roman era populations of the Balkans which became Latin-speaking, including Proto-Albanians. In the single study we have about Y-DNA among Vlachs (North Macedonia, Albania, Romania), E-V13 is not their main haplogroup, but it is one of the main haplogroups. Their other Paleo-Balkan lineages are R-M269 (Z2103 + PF7563) and J-L283. I don't think that it's coincidental that Vlachs have such key haplogroups from Albania to Romania.

If we define Proto-Albanian as the period of the Albanian language from the MIA to the end of the Roman era, there are several E-V13 lineages which should be found in Proto-Albanian populations. The two most diverse lineages found so far among Albanians are R-Z29758 and J-Y21045. Some lineages may not have been found yet or they've been lost due to bottleneck events like the precursor of R-Z2705, but in any case I don't think that it's coincidence that these two lineages have pre-IA (Pre-Proto-Albanian) diversity.

So how do you explain the E-V13 in Albanians ?

EDIT: I see, you wrote Dardania, yes it might of originated there or it might of not, maybe in the eastern part. Or in Moesia. Some of the J-L283 and R1b might come from tribes in Albania or some area there. While some brances might of come from somewhere else.

[Rober_tce]

GenArchivist users, please don’t personalize discussions. Thank you all.

[targaryen]

Based on the Y-DNA, I would guess 5-6 out of those 11 in Romania are not from the "Real Sarmatians". That puts V13 at 15-20%, which is indeed much less than south of the Danube. On the other hand, one less or more sample could make the difference between 0% or 30-40% :-) It also seems two of the sites sampled in Romania are really close to the Danube, so will be interesting to see where the non-"Real Sarmatians" were found. The non-"Real Sarmatians" from Romania also look quite EEF-rich, more so than most in Hungary.

For Sarmatian era Hungary I have to look back at the samples from the 2022 study to see what can be derived by elimination.

We know that Greeks and Slavs had different source lineages though, whereas the exact Albanian origins are still not resolved yet. And of course, the frequency is much higher too. Just saying there is a difference.

Literally none of them are resolved. It's Montenegrins, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs, etc... all that have E-V13. I specifically e-mailed Lazaridis about this a few years back about Greeks and E-V13 specifically, and he basically said "we have to wait and see for more results".

I have no idea where E-V13 started in the LBA, but in 2024? This is simply a Pan-Balkanic lineage. It's not owned by any ethnicity. It's been spread all over the Balkans and beyond. Focusing on Albanians alone, like E-V13 is an Albanian-only lineage is completely bizarre.

Of course E-V13 is Pan-European. I was speaking about ethnic affiliations of the BA.

If we are talking about the origins of E-V13 in the BA, then it has little to do with modern day ethnic groups. There were no modern day Albanians, Greek or Balkan Slavs back then. A period of 3,000 years is completely enough to strip away the autosomal content behind a Y-DNA.

Even in antiquity, as far as I know we have 6 samples with a West Balkan autosomal profile.

480 BC - 2x Himera samples
BC Era Croatia - 1x Croatian sample
3x Roman Era Croatian samples

So even by 500 BC, E-V13 had already penetrated the Western Balkans.

[Riverman]

E-V13 should have been at least sporadically been present in the West Balkans (West of Serbia) by about 1.300-1.100 BC, since the Channelled Ware/Belegis II-Gáva expansion.

[Capsian20]

E-V13 should have been at least sporadically been present in the West Balkans (West of Serbia) by about 1.300-1.100 BC, since the Channelled Ware/Belegis II-Gáva expansion.

Anyways i think is very difficult to categorize the Thracians people exclusively they as Hg E-V13, maybe is found in others population in Balkan

[Riverman]

E-V13 should have been at least sporadically been present in the West Balkans (West of Serbia) by about 1.300-1.100 BC, since the Channelled Ware/Belegis II-Gáva expansion.

Anyways i think is very difficult to categorize the Thracians people exclusively they as Hg E-V13, maybe is found in others population in Balkan

Just like with Slavic haplogroups, E-V13 did occasionally kind of "bleed out" of their Daco-Thracian ethnos and spread to other people. But the core and bulk of the E-V13 carriers was Daco-Thracian up to the Later Iron Age and it is absolutely clear to me that the early Daco-Thracians must have been more than 90 % E-V13. The association is 1:1 - Daco-Thracian lineages were E-V13.

We see that very clear with no other haplogroup having the same typical distribution and correlations. Not R-Z2103, R-Z93, I2, J-L283 etc. All these haplogroups have different distributions and correlations with other haplogroups. E-V13 is in a unique position with no clear correlation to any other haplogroup, and this means that the LBA-EIA Daco-Thracians must have been totally dominated by E-V13.
All the early E-V13 samples we got so far are either from Daco-Thracians or people which were known to have picked Daco-Thracian lineages up.

Like:
South Eastern Thracians from Post-Psenichevo
Cimmerian-Caucasians
Vekerzug and Scythians
Eastern La Tene
Sarmatians

The data is still meagre but its sufficient to say that E-V13 was Daco-Thracian and Daco-Thracians were E-V13 in a nearly one to one overlap since at least the Late Bronze Age. What was before nobody knows and after Channelled Ware and the Cimmerian incusions some splinters were fairly widespread here and there.

But the bulk seems to have remained Daco-Thracian up to the later Iron Age. We see that especially before the Vekerzug-Ferigile spread with Scythian innovations there are very few outgroups with no overlap with the central group. This means the bulk of E-V13, especially the core groups under E-Z5018/Z5018 likely lived still in one homeland and geographically close up to the Vekerzug into La Tene period.

And that must be with near certainty the Tisza-Danube zone.

[corrigendum]

To begin with, the Proto-Slavic stage lasted up to the Early Medieval period, therefore it doesn't even matter whether they had E-V13 in the Early Iron Age, when they expanded, when they started to move West, into countries like Germany, they carried E-V13 branches with them already.

Proto-Slavs most likely didn't have any sort of E-V13 lineage because the vast majority of E-V13 lineages which exist in Europe today were south of the Balkans before the Roman era. For E-V13 to have been present in Proto-Slavs, it has to be present in the area between Ukraine-Belarus-east Poland during the late Iron Age before the Roman era.

Proto-Slavs couldn't spread specific E-V13 lineages because they didn't live in any area where E-V13 would have been present. When Proto-Slavs moved westwards and settled in other areas, they assimilated other populations who already lived there, but this doesn't make these lineages "Proto-Slavic" as they didn't spread with any P-Sl. population. We still haven't found a single E-V13 lineage which could have moved with P-Slavs within the Balkans.

Also, a TMRCA of Albanian E-V13 around 400 BC is absolutely nothing special within the European context. We already know that with the Vekerzug and Ferigile stage, when the North Thracians picked up Scythian customs, there was a new wave of expansion which even lasted into the La Tene period, because the incoming Celts seem to have had so extensive contacts with the locals, that there was a fairly sizeable backflow to other Celtic areas.

We haven't found any such "north Thracian"/E-V13 population which picked up Scythian customs or a "fairly sizeable backflow" to other Celtic areas which included E-V13. I replied to the mistakes which were repeated in this post:

The problem with the Albanian branches is, that they are mostly very shallow, like they date from Late Antiquity to High Medieval Age. 

The youngest in-group E-V13 MRCAs, almost universally, happen to exist north of the Balkans. 1/4 German E-V13 carriers are descendants of a single person who lived during the Roman era (under L540).

Fact is, by most accounts, most of Albania was South of the Jirecek line and not in the Romance sphere in Late Antiquity.

Not an actual fact, and it's also clear that Latin was more common than previously thought in areas south of the Jirecek line.

On a different view on the main topic in question, here another update on the sampling bias - regions from which we got no ancient DNA haplogroup E sample so far and which had a strong prehistorical and historical Daco-Thracian presence:

At most 1/3 of the areas you included in this map have ever been considered to be inhabited by Thracians and/or Dacians.

All the samples from eastern Hungary in this map are either Roman (1) or medieval (every other sample), hence it's a mistake to claim that these are "ancient Thracians" because they're not.


Note how the center of Getian/Dacian is southern Romania (Wallachia) and it wasn't the key language throughout Romania.

More importantly, we do have samples from some of these areas in the pre-Roman period, it's just that E-V13 hasn't been found or has been shown to be very low. There are 8 Y-DNA samples from eastern Hungary along or east of the Tisza river from the end of the LBA to the start of the Roman/Sarmatian period. None of them are E-V13. There are 11 Y-DNA samples from Roman era Romania. 1/11 is E-V13. It's a huge mistake to still claim that "no samples exist" because while there aren't many of them, they definitely do exist.

I didn't post "a link". I posted 3 major studies that definitively state Albanians represent a continuity in the region from the Bronze Age.

The relation between Albanian and Messapic excludes any BA-IA, non-western Balkan location. Iapygians had Z2103, J-L283, I-M223>P78 and we should expect in future studies to get Z2103>CTS1450 and PF7562 in LBA/EIA Apulia in locations where J-L283 has been found. These results suffice for a strong suggestion about Y-DNA in pre-Proto-Albanian populations. We'll likely get E-V13 along with the rest of these lineages during the IA in Dardania and this should form the majority of E-V13 lineages among Albanians, without excluding other sources for E-V13.

[Riverman]

Just some comments in response to what you wrote:

- In Germany E-L540 is most important around an epicentre in or close to the Sorbs and related Czech/Wendish tribes in my opinion. Once you move away from that E-L540 centre, its importance decreases drastically. In the areas to the South (already in Czechia and Austria) and West (already in Hesse and Westward), its importance being drastically reduced, while the diversity and frequency doesn't go down.
My current best interpretation is that E-L540 was a founder lineage in a Proto-Slavic group, probably being transmitted by Lusatians, Dacians, Celts or Germanics or an unknown people, and had a second founder event in or close to the Elb to Bavarian Frankish region.
For Germans as a whole E-L540 is an important E-V13 lineage, but its regionally quite concentrated and doesn't explain in any way the distribution and diversity of E-V13 as a whole.
This huge founder event of E-L540, untypical for most E-V13 branches, being explained by its spread with early Slavs and its role as one of the founder lineages of the North and especially West Slavic people.

We haven't found any such "north Thracian"/E-V13 population which picked up Scythian customs or a "fairly sizeable backflow" to other Celtic areas which included E-V13. I replied to the mistakes which were repeated in this post:

We have found it and the Western Vekerzug individual from Chotin proves it. There would be way more in the Eastern Vekerzug group, the Sanislau group, and even in Chotin about half of the burials were cremations, including the uniquely North Thracian/Dacian horse burials with cremation! They combine old Gáva-related cremation customs with Scythian artefacts and horse burials.

At most 1/3 of the areas you included in this map have ever been considered to be inhabited by Thracians and/or Dacians.

The map you posted cuts the Northern regions off, because it concentrates on Greek vs. Roman language spheres. The Carpi and related North Thracian/Dacian people lived far to the North and all the areas I marked were at some point Daco-Thracian. For many areas the limits are rather conservative.
For example, the Subcarpathian region of Poland had a significant influx of Daco-Thracian related cultural formation at different times, from Gáva onwards. Eastern Slovakia and Transcarpathia are Proto-Thracian regions and were later core regions of the Daco-Thracian tribes.

This is a more realistic map for the later Iron Age, the era of the Dacian kingdom:



At this time some Northern groups were already under pressure from Germanics and Sarmatians, therefore we can assume that at some point before, more of the areas to the North had an even stronger Dacian presence than at that time. During Channelled Ware there was a Lusatian to Gáva-related transitional zone in Southern Poland and Ukraine North of Transcarpthia.

We'll likely get E-V13 along with the rest of these lineages during the IA in Dardania and this should form the majority of E-V13 lineages among Albanians, without excluding other sources for E-V13.

Dardania and Dacia ripensis/mediterranea are the core regions for the Pre-/Proto-Albanians, sure. That's why they got so much E-V13, not because they were sitting in modern Albania. The idea that all the E-V13 and other branches were coming in and being assimilated by a minority of locals is not impossible, but just not the most parsimonious explanation and scenario.

[Qrts]

Relevant to this thread since it falls under 'new data' - two new, and interesting, E-V13 Syrian samples:

Zanabili family from Aleppo, claimants of Sayyed heritage - positive for E-A24070 and negative for its downstream E-A24054. (https://twitter.com/DNASyria/status/1766161436630266306)

Baroudi family from Aleppo, originally from Homs - they fall under E-BY5617 and have a TMRCA of ~1,750 ybp with another Syrian family from Latakia. (https://twitter.com/DNASyria/status/1765337169600606660)

[Capsian20]

Relevant to this thread since it falls under 'new data' - two new, and interesting, E-V13 Syrian samples:

Zanabili family from Aleppo, claimants of Sayyed heritage - positive for E-A24070 and negative for its downstream E-A24054. (https://twitter.com/DNASyria/status/1766161436630266306)

Baroudi family from Aleppo, originally from Homs - they fall under E-BY5617 and have a TMRCA of ~1,750 ybp with another Syrian family from Latakia. (https://twitter.com/DNASyria/status/1765337169600606660)

Hello its this new sample YF127782 from Syria ?

[Riverman]

Relevant to this thread since it falls under 'new data' - two new, and interesting, E-V13 Syrian samples:

Zanabili family from Aleppo, claimants of Sayyed heritage - positive for E-A24070 and negative for its downstream E-A24054. (https://twitter.com/DNASyria/status/1766161436630266306)

Baroudi family from Aleppo, originally from Homs - they fall under E-BY5617 and have a TMRCA of ~1,750 ybp with another Syrian family from Latakia. (https://twitter.com/DNASyria/status/1765337169600606660)

It is amazing that some Near Eastern countries have a higher frequency of E-V13 than some European countries, even though these E-V13 branches are without a doubt from Europe. In some countries its a founder event with little diversity, but countries like Syria seem to have a broader range indeed.