References:

• Cornelius Tacitus, The Agricola and The Germania, completed 98 AD, translated by H. Mattingly 1948, revised translation by S.A. Handford 1970, Penguin Classics. [1]
• Cornelius Tacitus, The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus, the Oxford translation revised with notes, Edition: 10, Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,Eric Casteleijn and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team, Project Gutenberg

  [1] Like many ancient documents, we don't have originals to consult. We don't have copies of originals. We have copies of copies of copies, etc. In the case of The Germania, we have almost thirty texts that date from the 15th and 16th centuries AD, but thought to be based on a single 9th century AD text.

In the 2005 research paper by Maesschalck et al. in which they analyzed 12 Y-chromosome markers for donors in Flanders, Belgium they found the most common alleles for this population as follows:

Our particiants 1848, 43277, 45538 and 52298 are exact 12-marker matches to these most common alleles for a modern population in Flanders, Belgium. In the Maesschalck et al. paper, only 2 of the 99 people sampled were exact matches for all 12 markers having the most frequent alleles in this population.

Reference:

Announcement of population data: Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in a Belgian population sample and identification of a micro-variant with a flanking site mutation at DYS19, Kris De Maesschalck, Elisabeth Vanhoutte, Katleen Knaepen, Nancy Vanderheyden, Jean-Jacques Cassiman, Ronny Decorte, Forensic Science International 152 (2005) 89–94.

It is of interest that the 2005 research paper by Ballard et al. found these same alleles as most prevalent in UK Caucasian males. Their prevelance is somewhat different, but the pattern is quite similar:

Thus our particiants 1848, 43277, 45538 and 52298 are exact 12-marker matches to these most common alleles for a modern population in Flanders, Belgium and in the UK among Caucasians. This suggest the males in the UK are not all that different in their Y-markers from the modern-day Belgians. IN the Ballard et al. paper, 3.2% of the UK Caucasian males had all of the most common alleles shown in the table above.

Reference:

Announcement of population data Y chromosome STR haplotypes in three UK populations, D.J. Ballard*, C. Phillips, C.R. Thacker, C. Robson, A.P. Revoir, D. Syndercombe Court, Forensic Science International 152 (2005) 289–305.

Also, in the 2006 paper by Hass et al., these same alelles are most common in Switzerland. 2.6% of the samples in the Hass et al. paper had these most common ones:

Reference:

Announcement of Population Data Y-chromosome STR haplotypes in a population sample from Switzerland (Zurich area) , C. Haas *, T. Wangensteen, N. Giezendanner, A. Kratzer, W. Ba¨r Forensic Science International 158 (2006) 213–218.

This page was last updated by Jim Sims on Wed, August 2, 2006 21:18