Haplogroup E3b1a2 as a Possible Indicator of Settlement in Roman Britain
by Soldiers of Balkan Origin
Abstract
The invasion of Britain by the Roman
military in CE 43, and the subsequent occupation of Britain for nearly four
centuries, brought thousands of soldiers from the Balkan peninsula to Britain
as part of auxiliary units and as regular legionnaires. The presence of Haplogroup E3b1a-M78 among
the male populations of present-day Wales, England and Scotland, and its nearly
complete absence among the modern male population of Ireland, provide a
potential genetic indicator of settlement during the 1st through 4th Centuries
CE by Roman soldiers from the Balkan peninsula and their male Romano-British
descendants. Haplotype data from several
major genetic surveys of Britain and Ireland are examined, analyzed and
correlated with historical, epigraphic and archaeological information, with the
goal of identifying any significant phylogeographic associations between
E3b1a-M78 and those known Romano-British settlements and military posts that
were associated specifically with Roman soldiers of Balkan origin. Studies by Cruciani et al. (2007), Perečić et
al. (2005), and Marjanovic et al. (2005), examining the distribution of
E3b1a-M78 and E3b1a2-V13 in the Balkans, are analyzed further to provide
evidence of phylogeographic associations between the E3b1a2 haplotypes
identified within the Balkans by these studies and those regions of the Balkans
occupied first by the Roman army in antiquity.
E3b1a2 is found to be at its highest frequency worldwide in the
geographic region corresponding closely to the ancient Roman province of Moesia Superior, a region that today
encompasses Kosovo, southern Serbia, northern Macedonia and extreme
northwestern Bulgaria. The Balkan
studies also provide evidence to support the use of E3b1a-M78 (in the present
study) as a close proxy for the presence of E3b1a2-V13 (representing 85% of the
parent E3b1a-M78 clade) in both the Balkans and in
Address for
correspondence: stevenbird1000@hotmail.com
Received:
Introduction
The
origins, arrival times and possible routes of migration of the E3b haplogroup[1]
to
At about
the same time as the release of Oppenheimer’s book, Bryan Sykes (2006)
published his book Blood of the Isles
(entitled Saxons, Vikings, and Celts
in the
Very
shortly after the publication of these two books, Cruciani et al. (2007)
published a new study defining ten subclades of haplogroup E3b1a-M78 through
several newly identified unique event polymorphisms (UEP’s).[7]
The subclade E3b1a2 (identified by the presence of the V13 and V36 UEPs) was
found by Cruciani et al. (2007) to have a strong phylogeographic association
with the southern Balkan peninsula; this subclade also was found by the same
study to correspond very closely to the α (“alpha”) cluster of E3b1a-M78,
first identified by Cruciani et al., (2004) using microsatellite (
Semino et
al. (2004) viewed E3b1a-M78, of which E3b1a2 is, by far, the most common
subclade in Europe, as an indicator of the diffusion of people from the Balkans
(along with a “companion” clade, J2b1-M12/M102) and therefore a candidate for a
residual genetic signature of the Neolithic demic diffusion model. Cruciani et
al. (2007) have brought the Neolithic dating assumption into question, however,
by their revised dating of the expansion of E-V13 and J-M12, from the Balkans
to the remainder of
Two
dating methods were employed by Cruciani (2007) to calculate the “time to most
recent common ancestor” ("TMRCA"): that of Zhivotovsky et al. (2006)
based on his “evolutionary effective” mutation rate for an average square
distance ("
An
important finding of this study was that E-V13 and J-M12 had essentially
identical population coalescence times.
They concluded that the E-V13 and J-M12 subclades expanded in
Our estimated coalescence age of about 4.5
ky for haplogroups E-V13 and J-M12 in Europe (and their C.I.s) would also
exclude a demographic expansion associated with the introduction of agriculture
from Anatolia and would place this event at the beginning of the Balkan Bronze
Age, a period that saw strong demographic changes as clearly testified from
archeological records.
These
expansion times were calculated by Cruciani (2007) to have occurred between
4.0-4.7 kya for E-V13 and 4.1-4.7 kya for J2-M12, with the upper limit of the
expansion time for E-V13 at 5.3 kya and for J2-M12 at 6.4 kya. Both expansion times therefore are centered
at approximately 4.3-4.35 kya, a period of time corresponding to the EBA in the
southern Balkans (Hoddinott, 1981).
Cruciani
et al.’s E-V13 and J2-M12 coalescence times bear a striking similarity to
carbon-14-based date calculations for certain archaeological sites in the
Maritsa river valley and its tributaries, near the city of Nova Zagora,
Bulgaria (Nilolova, 2002). These sites
are associated directly with the proto-Thracian culture of the southern Balkans
that came to dominate the region during the first millennium
Another
difficulty for the acceptance of Oppenheimer’s “Neolithic” arrival time for E3b
and J2 in
If
E3b1a-M78 had in fact arrived during the Neolithic era by water routes from
While a
Neolithic arrival date for E3b in
Bronze Age and Iron Age Celtic-style cultures have been
identified by both Oppenheimer and Sykes as being associated with the so-called
"Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype" (R1b1c). Alcock (1972, pp. 99-112) has examined the
model of a Celtic Irish-Sea culture-province in the pre-Roman Iron Age (“IA”),
in particular connections across the Irish Sea, including a dominant Irish
cultural component, as well as related settlement in Wales, Strathclyde,
Argyll, and southwestern Britain. The
problems encountered by the Neolithic theory of Oppenheimer, i.e., the virtual
absence of E3b and the complete absence of J in
Difficulties
with Neolithic, BA, and IA models for the migration of E3b and J2 to
Methodology
The three
data sets of Capelli, Weale, and Sykes used six to ten
A factor
preventing direct comparison (by percentage) of these three data sets was a
substantial difference in the format used for reporting the geographic origins
of individual haplotypes. Weale (2002)
and Capelli (2003) each specified geographic locations (towns or villages) in
their reports of haplotype frequencies; Sykes (2006), however, reported his
findings by combining locations into larger geographic regions that, in most
cases, joined several British counties into a single data set (such as "
Even with
these limitations, however, it was possible to identify some trends in the
three data sets when combined. Using
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Figure 1. Histograms of E3b-M35, Allele Frequencies by
Subclade
As a
third method of estimation (and to provide a check of the robustness of the
derived subclade assignments), a median-joining network was constructed in NETWORK
4.2.0.1,[14]
using the allele data from the OGAP predicted as E3b by Athey's Y-Haplogroup
Predictor, as shown in Figure 2.[15] The E3b (estimated) data from the OGAP is
presented in Table 1, along with the subclade assignments determined
using the methodology outlined above.
These assignments are also presented in Table 2, grouped
according to the OGAP's geographic regions and the overall percentages for each
E3b subclade.

Key to multiple taxa nodes:
Modal: A2960, 5371, 4018, A3040, A3097, A3174,
A2923, A2833
A3429, A2967,A3029,
A9065 (E-M78)
2745: 2745,
A2243, A2950, A1201 (E-M78)
738: 738,
A2090, A2109, A3093 (E-M78)
5251: 5251, A8115, A8135, A8584
(E-M78)
A2981: A2981, 503 (E-M78)
A2751: A2751, A2211 (E-M78)
A2547: A2547, A231 (E-M78)
(All
other nodes have one taxon each.
Geographic descriptions apply only to the adjacent taxon).
Figure 2. Median-Joining Network, OGAP Data, E3b
Table
1. OGAP E3b Data Grouped by Region and
Classified by Subclade
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3 |
3 |
1 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
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9 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
2 |
8 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
2 |
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OGAP
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3 |
0 |
|
1 |
6 |
8 |
9 |
2 |
9 |
5 |
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Haplotype
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Estimated |
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Number |
OGAP
Regional Identification |
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|
1 |
|
2 |
|
Subclade |
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738 |
Argyll
|
13 |
23 |
13 |
10 |
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|
13 |
11 |
17 |
0 |
E3b1a-M78 |
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|
A2547
|
Borders |
13 |
24 |
13 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
14 |
11 |
17 |
0 |
E3b1a-M78 |
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A2960
|
|
13 |
24 |
13 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
11 |
17 |
12 |
E3b1a-M78 |
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|
5251 |
|
13 |
24 |
14 |
10 |
|
|
13 |
11 |
18 |
|
E3b1a-M78 |
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|
5371 |
|
13 |
24 |
13 |
10 |
|
|
13 |
11 |
17 |
|
E3b1a-M78 |
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5924 |
|
13 |
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