Appearence and tactics of early 5th century Saxons.

[Chariovalda]

Hi
I posted early in this thread that there was no "Germanic" haplogroup that can be traced, as that is a linguistic term. However I have been aware of an study in Human Biology (2201) in which Haplotype 5 has been identified as Berber. Together with other high resolution DNA studies (44 Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms) an study in The American Journal of Human Genetics (2001) claims to have identified moorish genetic flow to Spain, supposedly arriving after the Arab conquest, and it has been estimated to account for 7% of modern Iberian genetic pool. So it is possible that a "Germanic" haplotype could be eventually found as a useful marker, however the diferences in the genetic pool of Iberia and North Africa are much greater than those of Britain and Denmark.

Aryaman, the argument of the genetic studies by Goldstein, Weale and Capelli et al for a greater or lesser "Norwegian" and/or "Danish-North German-Netherlandish" male genetic impact on the populations of Britain was based not on a specific haplogroup - there is, indeed, no specific Germanic haplogroup, in fact almost none of the major European haplogroups can be identified with certainty with any of the historical European cultural-ethnic groups - but on the division of the haplogroups among the population. In terms of this division, the populations of northern, central and eastern England are more similar to that of southern Scandinavia and the northern parts of Germany and the Netherlands than to that of Wales and Ireland. The far south of England and the Scottish lowlands, however, are somewhat intermediate between the Anglo-Saxon "homelands" and the "Celtic fringe".

Anyway, there's a new genetic survey under way that will use a larger sample than the most recent investigation by Capelli, so that may give us a slightly more nuanced picture - even if it's still too small for my liking.