Appearence and tactics of early 5th century Saxons.

[Chariovalda]

Andreas
Unfortunately those links don´t work for me

Now they should work 8)

Yes, J is present in low percentages in Western Europe. The problem with the "Saxon invasion" question is that it is apparently very biased. Some researchers seem to be obsessed with I1a, probably because it has a nice looking Germanic distribution, as shown in Rootsi et Al maps. But I1a is only a marker, it is not the dominant hapogroup not even in Scandinavia, so if you consider it as showing Germanic lineage you have to admit it is minoritary even in Scandinavia, let aside England, but if you use as a marker, you have to use in combination with other markers, you can´t have both. IMO the research of other markers, including J, R1a and E3b would be more meaningful.

I think I've run into what you meant by your remark about the obsession with I1a, though mostly in the form of forums and amateur websites.
Anyway, this "obsession" does not apply to the work of Weale and Capelli.

What was a bit annoying to me when re-reading articles was the use of different systems of haplogroup and -type definition, oh, those benighted pre-Y consortium days...

Anyway, I was wondering about your remarks about the population of northern France and Belgium vis a vis those of England and the Netherlands / North Germany / South Scandinavia. I did find some data in Rosser (AMJH 2000), which agreed with what you said, using what appears to be a sample from Flanders (conceivably "Germanic") and from Picardy in France. The latter sample was however rather small, and from a part of Gaul not too far from the language frontier and the main areas of Frankish settlement. I would very much want to see larger samples and also with more detailed haplogroup and haplotype divisions (and please, using the Y chromosome consortium's classification system :wink: ), so that one would have more complete information and perhaps ways of identifying differences or the absence of differences in the Y chromosome makeup of Northern French / Belgian and Netherlandish/North German/South Scandinavian populations.

Alright, enough DNA gibberish for now; I suspect few understand what we're babbling about anyway, and it's not easy for me either (hey, I'm just a poor history graduate, not a geneticist :wink: ).

If you want to exchange info, documents, links etc. just PM me; I've collected quite a little library of articles…