DNA: Slavic galloblood groups tell the real story of the world - Pleiadian - LiveJournal. Russians and Ukrainians - who are the Slavs? The ancestral home of the Slavs according to genetic data

Something again began to be observed in the surge of Ukrainian-Slavic presence, too often from the lips of Ukrainian-patriots statements began to be heard that they, the black-browed ones, are the mega-Slavic people, but the Russians are only Bulgarian-speaking Chukhna and a mixture of different nations, and the Ukrainians are simply not an example of them an example of ethnic purity. Since the only witness to ethnic frequency can only be a science such as genetics, let’s turn to it and check how large the share of Slavic and non-Slavic blood is in our two ethnic groups.

According to Y-DNA (male), the main Slavic marker is the R1a1 haplogroup (mutations M-458 and Z-280), inherited by the Slavs from their Proto-Indo-European ancestors - of all the Indo-European peoples, R1a1 is most often found among the Slavs, and it is among the northern Slavs - the southern Slavs genetically closer to Romanians and Albanians and R1a1 is rare among them. Data on the distribution of R1a1 among Slavic peoples is provided by Europedia:

As we see, Ukrainians have a lower representation of R1a1 (43%) than Poles, Belarusians and Russians (46%), but higher than Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs. Thus, “genetic pure” Slavic peoples do not exist at all, and Ukrainians are slightly inferior to Russians in terms of the representation of the Slavic primordial principle.

This is the data that official genetics gives us. But if you do not trust the sampling and conclusions of official science, then everyone can independently check their ethnic origin through DNA analysis; for these purposes, there is an international project in the field of molecular genealogy and population genetics -

The description of this project says: “By attracting specialists from various sciences (historians, geneticists, linguists, archaeologists), genetic genealogists help confirm or refute one or another hypothesis (the ethnogenesis of peoples). Conclusions and assessments are largely comparative in nature, depending on the availability and replenishment of statistical data. This project is intended to contribute to this (accumulation of statistical data)." And here are the statistical data, that is, Y-DNA haplogroups, of real people from three Slavic countries that the project has accumulated:

Ukraine Russia Poland

R1a1 101(21.1%) 322(39.4%) 433(41.35%)

total 478,819,1049 participants.

Amazing statistics! Russia, with its large non-Slavic population - let me remind you once again that these are data for countries, not ethnic groups - is only slightly behind Poland in terms of the representation of the Slavic haplogroup R1a1 and is twice as large as Ukraine, where 97% of the population is Slavic. It almost sounds like a mockery to say that Ukrainians, unlike Russians, were able to preserve the purity of their ethnic group - almost all genetic markers found in Russians were also found in Ukrainians, and the most exotic haplogroups are more often found in the territory between Don and San, and in larger quantities. And the myth about the allegedly Finno-Ugric origin of Russians is completely dispelled upon closer examination: the main haplogroup of the Ural-speaking peoples - N1 - was found in only 14.7% of Russians; for comparison, E1b alone - a Western Balkan haplogroup of African origin - was found in 16.5% of Ukrainians.

In general, genetic studies show that the influence of the Balkans on the gene pool of Ukrainians was simply enormous - in total, the main haplogroups of the Balkans - E1b, I2, T and J2 - make up 37.5% of the gene pool of Ukrainians according to official science (see European table) and 38.7 % according to SEMARGL statistical data - two to three times more than the Russians and Poles; however, Ukrainians could also receive J2 from the Caucasus, through Turkic tribes - the J2a4b subclade, characteristic of the Vainakh peoples, is often found in Ukraine.

(Map of representation of haplogroup I2 - Ukraine lies entirely in the distribution area of ​​this haplogroup characteristic of the Balkans.)

(Haplogroup E1b1b and its distribution in Africa, Europe and Asia)

It is even more interesting to study the representation of East Asian (Mongoloid) haplogroups in the gene pool of the Slavs. The myth about the Mongolian origin of Russians, although already dilapidated, still remains popular among some unassuming Ukrainians, but alas, geneticists testify to something else - Mongoloid haplogroups C, O and especially Q are more often found not in Russia, but in Ukraine; according to Europedia, it is Ukraine that shows the largest number of finds of haplogroup Q in Europe (4%, see table and map):

It should be noted here that in Ukraine there is almost only one subclade of this haplogroup - Q1b1, also found among the Uighurs, Hazaras and 5% of Ashkenazi Jews - it seems that only one people could have awarded related East Eurasian genes to both Jews and Ukrainians - those were Turkic Khazars.

Thus, according to SEMARGL statistics, the East Eurasian (Mongoloid) component of the gene pool (according to Y-DNA) is 5.64% for Ukrainians, 3.17% for Russians, and 4% for Ukrainians and 1.5% for Russians, according to Europedia data. It is also interesting that the typically Negroid haplogroup E1a was also found among the Slavs, and in Ukraine, again, it is found more often. Western and South Asia also left their mark on the genetic history of the Slavs - haplogroups J1, R2 and H; according to SEMARGL, they generally provide 12.34% of the Ukrainian and 6.06% of the Russian gene pools - and again the Asian influence is more clearly manifested in Ukrainians, rather than in Russians.

But the Russians received more Western European and Northern European genes; haplogroups R1b and I1 together provide 11% of the Russian and 7% of the Ukrainian gene pools according to Europedia, and 15.26% and 11.5% according to SEMARGL statistics.

(Prevalence of haplogroup R1b in Europe).

Another evidence of the North European influence on the Russian gene pool is haplogroup N1 - it is a generic marker of the Finno-Ugric peoples, but its presence is also great in the gene pool of the Baltic peoples (they also inherited it from the Finno-Ugric peoples), it was also found among the Scandinavians - a study of the DNA of Russian nobles from the tribe of Rurik showed that the legendary Varangian was also a carrier of haplogroup N1c1. The distribution of haplogroup N1 among Russians is uneven - it is most densely represented in the Russian North, on the lands of the former Novgorod and Pskov republics, in Central Russia it is already much less common, and in Southern Russia it is even less common than in Ukraine. According to Europedia, N1 in total accounts for 23% of the Russian gene pool (half the size of the Slavic haplogroup R1a1), according to SEMARGL -14.7% (2.5 times less than R1a1). According to mtDNA (female), the Finno-Ugric influence is a little more noticeable, but nothing more:

Boris Malyarchuk’s table: Russian regional populations by mtDNA (upper table) and Y-DNA (lower) - as we see, according to Y-DNA, only Russians of the Pskov region are close to the Finno-Ugric and Balts, and the remaining groups of Russians are closer to each other and others Slavic peoples; According to mtDNA, the genetic distance of Russian populations from each other is wider. The East Eurasian (Mongoloid) influence on the Russian mtDNA gene pool is also insignificant and is associated not with the Tatar or Mongolian, but with the Finno-Ugric influence:

Even in the Russian North, the East Eurasian mtDNA haplogroups in total provide only 4-5%, and the Russians of the Center and South have even slightly less Mongoloid mtDNA haplogroups than the Western Slavs. In total, according to the study of Malyarchuk and Co., the East Eurasian component of the Russian mtDNA is 1.9% , Ukrainians - 2.3% (gentis.ru/info/ mtdna-tutorial/freq). In general, the mtDNA gene pool of Russians and Ukrainians is quite close and is characterized by the predominance of haplogroups H, U, V and J, typically European.

So, the representation of the Slavic haplogroup R1a1 among Russians is higher than among Ukrainians, and the representation of non-Slavic people is lower. Of the extraneous influences in Russians, the most noticeable genetic influence is the Finno-Ugrians, as well as Western and Northern Europe, while among Ukrainians the influence of the Balkans and Western and East Asia is more noticeable - most likely the Asian genes got to the Ukrainians from the Turkic peoples, since the Turks of the Black Sea The Caspian steppe itself is a genetic mixture of East and West Asia, the Caucasus and Europe. So draw a conclusion which of the two Slavic peoples is more Slavic. In conclusion, I post another table - the “average” faces of athletes from different European countries; don’t you think that the faces of Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian athletes are surprisingly similar?

Reconstruction of the genetic and linguistic history of Balto-Slavic populations

This most complete work on the gene pool of the Slavic and Baltic peoples sums up the results of many years of research. An interdisciplinary approach was used to reconstruct the long history of peoples speaking related languages. Geneticists and linguists have traced the formation of the gene pool of all groups of Slavs and Balts simultaneously according to three genetic systems: the Y chromosome (paternal lines of inheritance), mitochondrial DNA (maternal lines of inheritance) and broad genome data on autosomal markers (where paternal and maternal lines are represented equally). It was traced which local populations absorbed the gene pool of the Slavs during their settlement across Europe: it was this deep substrate that formed the main differences in the gene pools of different branches of the Slavs. The correlation of genetic diversity with linguistic diversity turned out to be high, but even greater with the geographic proximity of populations. The result of the study was the clarification of the tree of the Balto-Slavic languages.

Responses to the study in the media and on popular science sites - at the end of the text

The formation of the gene pool of Balto-Slavic populations was studied by a large international group of geneticists and linguists. An article with the results of their work was published in the journal PLoS ONE. The study was conducted under the guidance of Dr. Biol. Sciences O.P. Balanovsky (Institute of General Genetics and Medical Genetic Research Center) and academician Richard Willems (Estonian Biocenter and University of Tartu). It involved researchers from many countries in which Slavic and Baltic peoples make up the majority of the population - Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as scientists from Estonia, Great Britain and the consortium of the international Genographic project. This is the most complete work on the gene pool of the Slavic and Baltic peoples, sums up many years of research by numerous authors of the article and takes into account the data of other scientific teams.

Balto-Slavic languages ​​are spoken by approximately a third of the modern population of Europe, and in terms of area, the Baltic and Slavic peoples occupy about half of Europe. Linguists agree that the Baltic and Slavic languages ​​are not only related, but also have a common root in the family of Indo-European languages. They estimate that Proto-Balto-Slavic separated from other Indo-European languages ​​between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago, most likely in Central Europe. The divergence of the Baltic and Slavic language branches dates back to 3500-2500 years ago. The further division of the Slavic languages ​​occurred relatively recently - 1700-1300 years ago. The so-called “Slavicization of Europe” is associated with the early Middle Ages (approximately 1400-1000 years ago) - a period of rapid spread of Slavic languages ​​over vast territories. In Eastern Europe, the Slavs spread to the territories where Baltic, Finno-Ugric and Turkic populations lived, in Western Europe - to the territories of speakers of Germanic languages, in the Balkans - to the territories of local multilingual populations.

But how did these changes in European culture, reflected by the spread of Slavic languages, affect the gene pool of Europe? This was precisely the main question of the study. After all, until now the genetic history of the Balto-Slavic populations and their interaction with the gene pools of populations that spoke other languages ​​- Finno-Ugric, Germanic, Turkic - have remained insufficiently studied.

What did you study?

To study the Balto-Slavic populations as completely as possible, scientists used all three genetic systems, which are currently the most informative for studying the gene pool.

1) Y chromosome, which is inherited paternally: 6078 samples from 62 populations were studied;

2) Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited through the maternal line: 6876 mtDNA samples from 48 populations were studied;

3) Genome-wide (genome-wide) markers: 1,297 samples from 16 populations. These are points of genetic diversity (single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) that are scattered throughout the genome and are located on autosomes - non-sex chromosomes.

For the ADMIXTURE analysis, 200 thousand SNP markers were used, which are common to the three Illumina panels used (610K, 650K and 660K) and are not linked to each other; for the analysis of common fragments, all 500 thousand markers that are common to the three Illumina panels used (including markers linked to each other) were used; To analyze the principal components and calculate genetic distances, 57 thousand markers were used, which are common to the Illumina and Affimetrix panels, and are not linked to each other.

A significant part of these impressive data sets were obtained by the authors for the first time - 1254 samples for the Y chromosome, 917 samples for mtDNA, 70 samples for genome-wide markers. The rest of the data is taken from previously published works. For comparison, all data accumulated to date on other gene pools in Europe were used.

Using all three genetic systems, almost all modern peoples speaking languages ​​of the Balto-Slavic group were studied - sixteen peoples using a single extensive panel of markers:

Baltic peoples - Latvians and Lithuanians;

Eastern Slavs - Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians;

Western Slavs - Kashubians, Poles, Slovaks, Sorbs, Czechs;

Southern Slavs - Bulgarians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Serbs, Slovenes, Croats.

Such detailed and versatile data on any group of peoples (covering all ethnic groups, and even all major genetic systems) are very rare in population studies. Therefore, they make it possible to solve not only a specific, but also a more general methodological problem. The specific task is to describe the gene pool of the Slavs and Balts themselves, and the general task is to study, using their example, how different characteristics by which populations are usually characterized are related to each other: Y-chromosomal diversity, mitochondrial diversity, genome-wide diversity, linguistic relatedness, geographic location of populations .

The genetic landscape of the Slavs through three prisms

The genetic relationships of all studied populations with each other, established as a result of the study, are shown in the figures.

Rice. A presents results for genome-wide (autosomal) SNP markers. These markers are called autosomal because they are found on non-sex chromosomes (autosomes). And they are called genome-wide because they are evenly scattered throughout the genome.

Rice. B presents results for the Y chromosome based on its haplogroup frequencies.

Rice. C reflects results obtained from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup frequencies.

To show the relative proximity and distance of different populations on a two-dimensional graph, population genetics uses two methods borrowed from multivariate statistics: principal component analysis and multivariate scaling. In essence, they are close, but their advantages and disadvantages are opposite. The principal component method shows the position of populations mathematically accurately, but sometimes loses a significant part of the genetic information contained in the original data. The multidimensional scaling method, on the contrary, uses all genetic information, but the geometric distances between point populations on the graph may be somewhat distorted relative to the calculated genetic distances between them. In this case, the principal component method was used for autosomal data, and the genetic distance method was used for Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial data.

As can be seen, both according to genome-wide markers and the Y chromosome (A and B), the majority of Balto-Slavic populations are aligned along the north-south axis.

East Slavs- Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians - are clearly grouped. They form their own cluster, although within it the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians do not completely overlap with each other. The exception is the Northern Russians, who are genetically distant from the rest of the Eastern Slavs and gravitate towards the neighboring Finno-Ugric populations.

From the Western Slavs Czechs and to a lesser extent Slovaks are distinct from the Eastern Slavs and are biased towards Germans and other Western European populations. But the Poles are closest to the Eastern Slavs. In fact, in the graphs, Poles, Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians form a common cluster, while Slovaks and especially Czechs are somewhat distant from it.

Southern Slavs form a dispersed group on the graph, which is internally divided into western (Slovenians, Croats and Bosnians) and eastern (Macedonians and Bulgarians) regions with the Serbs in the middle. At the same time, the Slovenes are genetically close to the Hungarians (a geographically close, but not Slavic people), and the eastern branch of the southern Slavs is also grouped with the non-Slavic, but geographically close Romanians and to some extent with the Greeks.

Baltic peoples- Latvians and Lithuanians - show genetic closeness to Estonians, who speak the language of the Finno-Ugric group, and to some Eastern Slavs (Belarusians). It also turned out that the Baltic populations are close to the Volga group of Finno-Ugric peoples (especially the Mordovians). The authors clarify that this may reflect historical events - in ancient times, the area of ​​Baltic-speaking populations extended far to the east and almost reached the current area of ​​the Mordovians.

It is important that all of the listed patterns were identified in independent and seemingly completely different genetic systems - the Y chromosome and genome-wide autosomal markers.

For mtDNA (Figure C), as usual, the degree of structure in the gene pool is much less pronounced, which is associated with lower phylogenetic resolution in the available mtDNA data. But, although not as clearly expressed, the same patterns are visible in the mtDNA results. For example, in the mtDNA graph, most East Slavic populations overlap with each other, Northern Russians are separated from them, and Southern Slavs are genetically similar to their non-Slavic-speaking neighbors in the Balkans.

Comparing the degree of expression of the same patterns in the results for different genetic systems, the authors emphasize that the Y chromosome often reveals patterns in more detail than not only mtDNA, but also more fashionable genome-wide markers.

Search for deep ancestors

To compare populations based on the composition of their ancestral components, the program ADMIXTURE (“mixture” or “composition”) is often used. It contains genome-wide data on a large number of populations and specifies the number of hypothetical ancestral populations from which all these modern populations were formed. The program calculates what the genetic composition of these ancestral populations (ancestral components) should be, and draws for each modern population a colored spectrum indicating the proportions of these ancestors in its gene pool. It is clear that such a model is rather arbitrary - in reality, it is unlikely that modern gene pools were formed as a result of the mixing of a fixed given number of ancestral populations. But such a simplifying model is often useful, and the ancestral components identified usually make real sense. For example, when analyzing data on a global scale, the African component is always the first to be identified, which makes up almost 100% in sub-Saharan African populations, and its share in other populations of the world corresponds well to the degree of their direct or indirect admixture with African populations.

In this work, the ADMIXTURE method was also used - the authors set different numbers of ancestral populations and published all the corresponding graphs, but a special test showed that the statistically most valid results were obtained in the case when the number of ancestral components was set to six (K = 6). In this case, the authors got this picture.

In Balto-Slavic populations, almost the entire spectrum is represented by two colors: blue (ancestral component k3) and light blue (ancestral component k2), although in different proportions. Looking at Europe as a whole, k3 (blue) is a large contributor to all European populations and decreases from the northeast to the south. This ancestral component is maximum in Baltic populations, prevails in the Eastern Slavs (80-95%) and decreases in the Southern Slavs (55-70%). In contrast, k2 (blue) is more common in populations of the Mediterranean and Caucasian regions and decreases towards northern Europe. Among the Southern Slavs it accounts for approximately 30%, among the Western Slavs it decreases to 20%, and among the northern Russian and Baltic populations to 5%.

It can be seen that the Slavs also have a lemon-yellow color in the ancestral spectrum, this is the k5 component, which is represented to any significant extent only among the Eastern Slavs, and of these, it is more pronounced among the Northern Russians. This component is Siberian in origin, since, as can be seen in the graph, it makes up the main part of the spectrum for Siberian populations. But the k6 component (dark yellow), which dominates in China, Mongolia and Altai, is almost zero among Russians. This means that the eastern trace in the gene pool of northern Russians is associated more with ancient migrations from the forests and tundras of Siberia than from the steppes of Central Asia (a new refutation of the popular idea that the Russian gene pool was greatly influenced by the Tatar-Mongol yoke). The dark green k4 component characterizes the populations of South Asia and is also common in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Therefore, it is not surprising that it, albeit with a small frequency, is found among the southern Slavs and other peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, but almost disappears among the Western and Eastern Slavs.

From an examination of the composition of the ancestral components, the conclusion follows that there is significant genetic similarity between the majority of Western and Eastern Slavs over a large territory - from Poland in the west to the European part of Russia in the east. And the southern Slavs, geographically limited to the small Balkan Peninsula, differ significantly from the western and eastern ones.

But how did these differences arise?

Common fragments of the genomes of the Slavs and their neighbors

To answer this question, the authors conducted a subtle analysis of the gene pool for two groups of Slavs: the first included the Western and Eastern Slavs (after all, they turned out to be very similar genetically), and the second included the Southern Slavs. Comparisons were made based on the presence of identical chromosome fragments in people originating from these population groups. This method is called IBD analysis - its name comes from the classical concept of population genetics “identical by descent”, that is, the search for genetic fragments that are identical in origin. These fragments were inherited by different people, representatives of different populations, from the same common ancestor. It is clear that in almost any population in the world there can be at least one descendant of a representative of the Western and Eastern Slavs, and, conversely, among the Eastern Slavs there can be at least one descendant of almost any people in the world. But these are isolated coincidences - that’s why population genetics studies populations, and not its individual representatives. Those populations in which many such matches are found are indeed significantly related to each other, or rather, they have a significant number of common ancestors. These common fragments, in fact, are haplotypes, similar to the haplotypes of mtDNA and the Y chromosome in that they also have one ancestor, but different in that over time they are broken up by recombination - the exchange of sections between chromosomes that came from the father and from the mother, with cell division. And haplotypes make it possible to date using autosomal markers - knowing the rate of recombination, one can estimate from the length of the surviving common haplotypes how much time has passed from common ancestors, that is, how long has the common gene pool existed.

The number of common haplotypes between the “West-Eastern” Slavs (the authors had to use this awkward term for lack of a better one) and eight other groups of European peoples was calculated:

1) South Slavs (Bulgarians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Slovenes, Croats);
2) populations of Western Europe (Italians, Germans, French);
3) Baltic populations (Latvians, Lithuanians);
4) populations of northeastern Europe (Western Finnish peoples - Vepsians, Karelians, Finns, Estonians);
5) populations of central Europe, whose range is located between the West-Eastern and South Slavs - their authors conventionally call them “inter-Slavic populations”; these are surprisingly multilingual populations: the Gagauz speak the language of the Turkic group of the Altai language family, the Hungarians speak the language of the Ugric group of the Uralic language family, and the Romanians speak the language of the Romance group);
6) Greeks;
7) populations of the Volga region and the Urals (Bashkirs, Komi, Mordovians, Tatars, Udmurts, Chuvash);
8) North Caucasian populations (Adygs, Balkars, Nogais).

If we take the number of common haplotypes between the West-Eastern and Southern Slavs as a standard, then some of the surrounding non-Slavic populations will (in terms of the number of common haplotypes) be higher than this standard, some lower, and some equal to it. Below the standard (that is, they have less kinship with the West-Eastern Slavs than the South Slavs) were the peoples of the Volga region, Western Europe, the Caucasus, as well as the Greeks.

It would seem that we can talk about a greater relationship between the Slavic gene pools with each other than with the surrounding non-Slavic peoples. This is partly true, but everything is not so simple - the relationship between the gene pools of the Balts and the populations of northeastern Europe (Vepsians, Karelians, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, Northern Russians, Estonians) turned out to be twice as high as the standard. One can go to the opposite extreme and consider that the “West-Eastern” Slavs are not genetically related to the Southern Slavs, but only to their geographical neighbors, probably due to the assimilation of related peoples. But the picture is further complicated by the fact that with the peoples now living in the territories in the middle between the “West-Eastern” and Southern Slavs - that is, with the Hungarians, Romanians and Gagauzians - the West-Eastern Slavs have the same number of genome fragments as with the southern Slavs (these “inter-Slavic” populations are at the standard level).

Therefore, the authors conducted another similar analysis, but now placing the southern Slavs at the center of consideration. The number of common genetic fragments between them and the surrounding population groups was compared. It turned out that the number of common fragments among the Southern Slavs with the “West-Eastern” Slavs is approximately the same as the number of their common fragments with the “inter-Slavic” populations (Gagauz, Hungarians, Romanians). But the number of common fragments with geographically neighboring Greeks is much smaller. Let us take into account that the West-Eastern Slavs are geographically further from the South Slavs than the “inter-Slavic” ones, therefore, from a geographical point of view, the number of common fragments with the “West-Eastern” Slavs should be smaller. And since this is not the case, it means that the linguistic kinship of the “West-Eastern” and Southern Slavs is partly manifested in this analysis of common genome fragments. Moreover, although the common genome fragments found between the two groups of Slavs vary in length, there are slightly more fragments about 2-3 centimeters long than others, and it is precisely this length that fragments should have been preserved since the Slavic expansion of the second half of the 1st millennium AD

These results for the Slavs, from which no firm conclusions can be drawn, should be compared with a recent similar study on Turkic-speaking populations (Yunusbaev et al., 2015). It would seem that in both cases there is a rapid spread of native speakers (Turkic or Slavic, respectively) over vast territories, which cannot but be accompanied by the assimilation of the local (pre-Turkic or pre-Slavic) population. But in the case of the Turks, the method of analyzing common fragments revealed - albeit a very small - component of the genome that the Turks brought from their probable Altai ancestral home. But in the case of the Slavs, the picture turned out to be much more complex. This may be due to the fact that the Turks, during their settlement, often assimilated populations that were genetically very different from them and from each other, and the Slavs spread across the territory of Europe with its relatively homogeneous gene pool, and part of the populations they assimilated were related to at least the Baltic groups.

Overall, two conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of common fragments. First of all, the results of mixing the gene pool of the West-Eastern Slavs with other populations of the northern part of Eastern Europe are clearly visible. Secondly - albeit not so expressively - a somewhat greater degree of kinship between the West-Eastern and South Slavs with each other is visible than would be expected based simply on the geographical distance between them.

Scheme and results of analysis of common genome fragments (IBD)

Reconstruction of the language tree.

The team of authors included not only geneticists, but also leading Russian linguists. This made it possible to use in this work a refined kinship tree of the Balto-Slavic languages ​​due to updating and rechecking the array of lexicostatistical data. Lexicostatistics deals with identifying the rate of linguistic change and determining the time of separation of related languages ​​and the degree of relatedness between them. The source material was the lexical lists (Swadesh lists) of 20 modern Balto-Slavic languages ​​and dialects.

After the separation of the Baltic and Slavic branches, the very first fork in the Slavic branch turned out to be threefold - the division of the Slavs into western, eastern and southern branches - and dated about 1900 years ago. Further division of the Slavic languages ​​began in the 5th-6th centuries (about 1300-1500 years ago): the eastern branch was divided into Russian and Ukrainian/Belarusian, the western branch into Czech/Slovak, Proto-Sorbian and Polish/Kashubian, the southern branch into Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian, Macedonian. The emergence of modern languages ​​occurred 1000-500 years ago. This dating of the tree is consistent with historical and archaeological data, which indicate the rapid spread of the Slavs across Europe in the second half of the 1st millennium AD.

Genetic diversity at different levels of the linguistic tree

Since the linguistic tree of the Slavic languages ​​is so accurately constructed, it became possible to analyze how the genetic diversity of Slavic populations, estimated from the frequencies of Y-chromosome haplogroups, is distributed along this tree. This analysis was performed using the standard AMOVA test procedure.

It turned out that genetic differences between populations speaking the same language, although varying from almost zero values ​​(for speakers of Czech or Macedonian) to a value of 0.05 (for speakers of northern dialects of Russian), averaged only 0.01.

Next, the frequencies in all these populations of one people were averaged and the average ethnic frequencies of haplogroups were obtained. And then the genetic differences between these average ethnic characteristics of peoples within each branch of the Slavic languages ​​were calculated. These differences turned out to be not exactly the same for different branches: for example, for the Western Slavs the differences are greater than for the Eastern Slavs, but this could be expected by looking at the graphs of their genetic relationships. However, on average, the differences between ethnic groups turned out to be greater – 0.03.

Finally, the average frequencies of haplogroups were calculated for the three branches of Slavic languages ​​- Western, Eastern and Southern - and the differences between them doubled - about 0.06.

According to the principle of equidistance, developed by the domestic school of genogeography, if a population system develops on its own, without major external influences, then the gradual separation of populations leads to a linear accumulation of both linguistic and genetic diversity. As a result, genetic diversity is approximately the same at all levels - between populations of the same people, between ethnic groups of the same branch, and between different branches (their average characteristics). Indeed, the ancestors of different groups of Slavs were once only populations of one people close to each other, and their languages ​​differed no more than dialects of the same language differ now. And by averaging frequencies over all modern populations of a branch, we find its center of gravity, its point of origin, and reconstruct the gene pool of this ancestral population.

But all this, as stated above, only works when populations are left to their own devices and have little interaction with their neighbors. However, for the Slavs, the values ​​of genetic diversity at different hierarchical levels are not the same: with equidistance they should be 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, but they differ sharply - 0.06, 0.03, 0.01. This suggests that the Slavic populations were actively mixing with surrounding peoples. And the fact that the greatest variability occurs at the most ancient level (differences between the three branches of Slavic languages) indicates that these interactions were especially strong in the early stages of the history of Slavic populations.

Kinship or neighborhood?

The roles played by geography and languages ​​in shaping the genetic diversity of Balto-Slavic populations can be compared using the Mantel test. Geography plays a dual role. Of course, this is a factor of geographical proximity, which brings gene pools closer together through mixed marriages between neighbors. But on the other hand, geography can also reflect origins, when related peoples do not move far from each other, but settle into neighboring territories. Languages ​​are a factor of the original kinship of gene pools or parts of gene pools inherited from common ancestors along with a common language (or not inherited if the language was changed but the gene pool remained almost the same).

The test was independently performed for three genetic systems: Y chromosome, mtDNA and autosomal markers. All three versions of the test showed an extremely high correlation between genetics and geographic location of populations (0.80-0.95). But a very high correlation was also found between genetics and linguistics (0.74-0.78). Because linguistic measures themselves are highly correlated with geography, the authors examined partial correlations to distinguish between the direct and indirect effects of geography on the other two systems. When excluding the geographical factor, the partial correlation with linguistics became much lower (0.3 for mtDNA and 0.2 for the other two systems), while for all three genetic systems the correlation with geography when excluding the linguistic factor remained large (0. 5 for mtDNA and 0.8 for the other two systems). This indicates that the connection with the geographical factor is the main one, and a high connection with linguistics is often determined by the fact that peoples speaking related languages ​​are also geographical neighbors.

Two substrates in Slavic gene pools

Geneticists believe that, spreading across Europe, the Slavs assimilated local populations that lived in these territories in pre-Slavic times. This is the genetic substrate that they have absorbed, and this substrate differs in different territories. The results of the work made it possible to identify two main substrates. The “Central-Eastern European substrate” was adopted by the Western and Eastern Slavs (on the spectrum of ancestral components it is expressed in blue, and in the Y-chromosome data these populations carry high frequencies of haplogroup R1a). The other, “South-Eastern European substrate”, was absorbed by the Southern Slavs (this is the blue color in the spectrum of ancestral components, and a feature of the Y-chromosomal gene pool is the high frequencies of haplogroup I2a).

Three arguments support this conclusion about the importance of the substrate in the formation of the Slavic gene pool.

First, the fact that the combined group of Western and Eastern Slavs shares fewer genome fragments with the Southern Slavs than with the populations of northeastern Europe, including the Baltic and Finno-Ugric peoples. The special genetic closeness of the Finno-Ugric peoples to the Balts is visible both in the principal component plots and in the multidimensional scaling graphs. And it was precisely the peoples of the Baltic and Finno-Ugric language groups that were settled in that part of the East European Plain, which later became part of the area of ​​the Slavs.

Secondly, the AMOVA test also indicates the important role of substrate, since the genetic diversity between different Slavic branches far exceeds the diversity within branches; This is the picture that should have formed if the eastern and southern branches of the Slavs assimilated genetically different populations.

Thirdly, the predominant role of geography in the formation of the gene pool of the Slavs speaks of the same thing. After all, if there had been no inclusion of the substrate, then the common origin fixed in the language could not but affect the similarity of the gene pools, even when some groups of Slavs migrated long distances from their relatives. But no such role for linguistic relatedness has been identified. And on the contrary: the genetic similarity between the pre-Slavic populations living on the territory of half of Europe should have been approximately proportional to the geographical distances between them, but in no way related to the linguistic kinship between the Slavic groups that later came to these lands. Then, if the substrate predominates in modern Slavic gene pools, then the similarity of these gene pools should follow geographical distances. Which is what was revealed.

Synthesis of data on different genetic and non-genetic systems.

In genetic work, the word “analysis” appears at every step, and very rarely “synthesis”. Here, “synthesis” is even included in the title of the work. What does it mean?

It has already been said that this study is unique in that almost for the first time for a large group of related peoples, each people was studied, and studied according to all three modern genetic systems, and in addition, the linguistic relationship between them was quantitatively assessed. And this makes it possible, using the example of the Slavs, to see how three different genetic systems, linguistics and geography are interconnected - and to synthesize these heterogeneous data into general conclusions. This is all the more important because comparing genetic and linguistic reconstructions with geography has a long tradition in population genetics.

The correlations of all five systems (three genetic, linguistic and geographical) with each other are shown in the figure. The very high similarity of all five systems is striking: none of the correlation coefficients falls below 0.68 - that is, in fact, 0.7, which is considered a very high correlation in population genetics. And the highest coefficients reach the maximum possible ceiling (correlation 0.95). Particular correspondence is noted for Y-chromosomal and autosomal markers and geographic location. We can say that these three characteristics of the Balto-Slavic populations form an interconnected triad (correlation coefficients above 0.9, dark red color in the figure).

The consistency of the results for different feature systems confirms the reliability of such results. It also points to the promise of the so-called multisystem approach. This approach consists, firstly, of parallel analysis of different systems of features; secondly, in unconditional trust only in those patterns that are revealed not by any one system, but by the majority of systems; thirdly, in a careful consideration of cases when some system stands out from the general pattern. In this article, the authors made extensive use of a multisystem approach. When formulating statements about the genetic similarity or difference of certain peoples, the authors each time checked whether they were confirmed by the majority of the systems used. And the fact that linguistics stands out from the general pattern served as one of the arguments in favor of the hypothesis of the predominance of the substrate.

This pattern of almost complete coincidence of the three genetic systems with each other, their coincidence with geography, but only partial similarity with linguistics can serve as a beacon for future studies of the gene pools of other regions of the world. At the same time, this pattern is not universal for the whole world: for populations with contrasting origins of the male and female parts of the population, data on the Y chromosome and mtDNA can vary greatly (as shown, for example, in the article by Quintano-Murci et al., 2008), and for populations in which the processes of gradual growth and fragmentation prevailed over crossbreeding, genetics may be more correlated with linguistics than with geography (as shown, for example, in the article by Balanovsky et al., 2011).

History of Slavic gene pools: research results

First of all, this is the predominance in Slavic populations of the pre-Slavic substrate - two genetic components assimilated by them - Eastern European for the Western and Eastern Slavs and South European for the Southern Slavs. (The names “Central-Eastern European” and “South-Eastern European” are too long; for the sake of brevity, it is more convenient to call Eastern European and Southern European, remembering that they do not extend to Western Europe, but are located in its eastern half with the dichotomous division of Europe).

But, despite the fact that in the gene pool of the Western and Eastern Slavs there is a large assimilated component of their neighbors on the East European Plain, these Slavic populations form a genetically quite integral group, differing both from their western neighbors (German-speaking populations) and from their eastern and northern (Finno-Ugric peoples). Of course, a couple of exceptions can be found to this rule, but they are concentrated on the periphery of the range of the Western and Eastern Slavs. For example, the distinctive gene pool of the Czechs has some genetic similarities with their German neighbors to the west, but other West Slavic populations (Poles and Sorbs) are genetically clearly separated from their German neighbors. Likewise, at the other end of the Slavic range, the Northern Russians have clear similarities with the Finno-Ugric and Baltic populations, but no such clear similarities are observed for the Central or Southern Russians, let alone other Slavic peoples.

Therefore, it can be assumed that after the main stage of the spread of Slavic languages ​​and the assimilation of the pre-Slavic substrate passed, the formation of local characteristics of the gene pool began. It proceeded differently for different parts of the vast area of ​​the Western and Eastern Slavs, but the initial kinship (common substrate plus a common Slavic superstrate) and, probably, the intense subsequent exchange of genes within the Slavic area, cemented the Western and Eastern Slavs into a single genetic community.

The work makes a cautious assumption that the assimilated substrate could be represented predominantly by Baltic-speaking populations. Indeed, archaeological evidence indicates a very wide distribution of Baltic groups before the start of Slavic settlement. The Baltic substratum among the Slavs (albeit, along with the Finno-Ugric one) was also identified by anthropologists. The genetic data obtained in this work - both in graphs of genetic relationships and in the proportion of common genome fragments - indicate that modern Baltic peoples are the closest genetic neighbors of the Eastern Slavs. At the same time, the Balts are also linguistically the closest relatives of the Slavs. And we can assume that by the time of assimilation, their gene pool was not so different from the gene pool of the Slavs who began their widespread settlement. Therefore, if we assume that the Slavs settling to the east assimilated mainly the Balts, this can explain both the similarity of modern Slavic and Baltic peoples with each other, and their differences from the surrounding non-Balto-Slavic groups of Europe.

As for the southern Slavs, the history of their gene pool could have proceeded in a similar way, although independently from the Western and Eastern Slavs. The South Slavs assimilated a significant part of the pre-Slavic population of the Balkans, which had a different gene pool than the population of the East European Plain assimilated by the Eastern and Western Slavs. Therefore, the South Slavic populations show greater similarity with the non-Slavic populations of the Balkans (Romanians and Hungarians) than with other Slavic peoples.

Source:

Genetic heritage of the Balto-Slavic speaking populations: a synthesis of autosomal, mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal data

Alena Kushniarevich, Olga Utevska, Marina Chuhryaeva, Anastasia Agdzhoyan, Khadizhat Dibirova, Ingrida Uktverite, Märt Möls, Lejla Kovačević, Andrey Pshenichnov, Svetlana Frolova, Andrey Shanko, Ene Metspalu, Maere Reidla, Kristiina Tambets, Erika Tamm, S ergey Koshel, Valery Zaporozhchenko , Lubov Atramentova, Vaidutis Kučinskas, Oleg Davydenko, Lidya Tegako, Irina Evseeva, Michail Churnosov, Elvira Pocheshchova, Bayazit Yunusbaev, Elza Khusnutdinova, Damir Marjanović, Pavao Rudan, Siiri Rootsi, Nick Yankovsky, Phillip Endicott, Alexei Kassian, Anna D ybo, The Genographic Consortium, Chris Tyler-Smith, Elena Balanovska, Mait Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Richard Villems and Oleg Balanovsky

http://lenta.ru/articles/2015/09/15/balto/

Radio broadcasts:

Oleg Balanovsky in the program “Homeland of Elephants” (radio station “Moscow Speaks”)

Oleg Balanovsky in the program “Science in Focus” (radio station “Echo of Moscow”)

Oleg Balanovsky at the Sputnik radio station (formerly Voice of Russia), Rossiya Segodnya agency

TV programs:

Oleg Balanovsky in the program “Hamburg Account”, Public Television of Russia (OTR)

Recent joint research by Russian, British and Estonian genetic scientists has put a big and bold end to the common Russophobic myth that has been infiltrated into people’s consciousness for decades - they say, “scratch a Russian and you will definitely find a Tatar.”

The results of a large-scale experiment, published in the latest issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, clearly state that “despite popular opinions about the strong Tatar and Mongol admixture in the blood of Russians, which their ancestors inherited during the Tatar-Mongol invasion, the haplogroups of the Turkic peoples and other Asian ethnic groups left virtually no trace on the population of the modern northwestern, central and southern regions.”

Like this. We can safely put an end to this long-standing dispute and consider further discussions on this issue simply inappropriate.

We are not Tatars. Tatars are not us. No influence on Russian so-called genes. “Mongol-Tatar yoke” did not have any effect. We Russians did not have and do not have any admixture of “Horde blood”.

Moreover, genetic scientists, summing up their research, declare that the genotypes of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are almost completely identical, thereby proving that we were and remain one people:

“...genetic variations of the Y chromosome of the inhabitants of the central and southern regions of Ancient Rus' turned out to be almost identical to those of the “Slavic brothers” - Ukrainians and Belarusians”.

One of the project leaders, Russian geneticist Oleg Balanovsky, admitted in an interview with Gazeta.ru that Russians are practically a monolithic people from a genetic point of view, destroying another myth “everyone is mixed up, there are no Russians anymore.” Just the opposite - there were Russians and there are Russians. One people, one nation, a monolithic nationality - with a clearly defined special genotype.

Further, examining the materials of remains from ancient burials, scientists found that “Slavic tribes developed these lands (Central and Southern Russia) long before the mass resettlement of the main part of the ancient Russians to them in the 7th-9th centuries.” That is, the lands of Central and Southern Russia were inhabited by Russians (Rusichs) already, at least in the first centuries of our era (according to the Russian era). Even earlier.

Which allows us to debunk another Russophobic myth - that Moscow and the surrounding areas were supposedly inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes from ancient times and that Russians there are “aliens.” We, as geneticists have proven, are not aliens, but completely autochthonous inhabitants of Central Russia, where the Russians have lived since time immemorial. “Despite the fact that these lands were inhabited even before the last glaciation of our planet about 20 thousand years ago, there is no evidence directly indicating the presence of any “original” peoples living in this territory,” the report states. That is, there is no evidence that any other tribes lived on our lands before us, whom we supposedly displaced or assimilated. If I can put it this way, we have been living here since the creation of the world.

Scientists also determined the far boundaries of the habitat of our ancestors: “analysis of bone remains indicates that the main zone of contact between Caucasians and people of the Mongoloid type was in Western Siberia.” And if we consider that archaeologists who excavated the most ancient burials of the 1st millennium BC (BC) in the territory of Altai discovered the remains of distinctly Caucasoid people there (not to mention the world-famous Arkaim), then the conclusion is obvious. Our ancestors (ancient Russians, proto-Slavs) originally lived on almost the entire territory of modern Russia, including Siberia, and the Far East. So the campaign of Ermak Timofeevich and his comrades for the Urals, from this point of view, was a completely legitimate return of previously lost territories.

That's it, friends. Modern science is destroying Russophobic stereotypes and myths, cutting the ground from under the feet of our “friends” - liberals. Their further speculations on these topics are completely beyond the bounds of common sense, being of interest exclusively to psychiatrists who study the mechanisms of obsessive delusions...

We are no longer interested in this. The truth has been established.

We are Russians!

Now the same thing, but with scientific calculations. Here you can find the original article in English. Below is a short translation. Mostly pictures. The most discussed picture of the proximity of genotypes of different peoples.

And here is a map of the distribution of genotypes of the three fraternal Slavic peoples.

Well, the main conclusions should be after this picture:

This is the frequency of presence of various types of Y chromosomes in the blood of the local sedentary population (scientific name - haplotype).

• R1a - Slavs


• R1b - Western Europeans


• N3 - Finnish finougors


• N2 - Ural finougors

Conclusion - there is a Finnish admixture in Russian blood. And the further north you go, the more there is. But this admixture is also in Ukrainian and even Moldavian blood, and if anyone can be blamed for Finno-Ugric blood, it is our proud Balts.

For some reason, the map shows the borders of the Principality of Moscow under Ivan the Terrible and modern borders. But the genotype is stronger than the difference in languages ​​and religions. The united Slavic people of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles is in our blood.

And here you can see whose second part of the blood the Russians have:

I1a are Normans. Those who, according to legend, were called to rule in Rus'. And we see that they remained here in Rus'. The Murom and Vladimir-Suzdal islands are especially interesting. In terms of the density of Norman blood, the local residents are direct relatives of the English and French Normans. But the main blood there is still Slavic. I1b is found quite often among Russians and especially among Ukrainians and Serbs. Pay attention to the scale. Here the blackest thing is more than 25%, and in the picture with Slavic blood it’s 50%. That is, it is an impurity in the blood for Ukrainians and Belarusians. This is the gene that makes the genetic difference between northern and southern Slavs. Balkan gene, Serbian gene. J2 - Turkish gene. The Slavs have almost no admixture of these genes. There is even more Western European admixture in our blood. But they greatly spoiled Italy, France and especially Greece. And the Gagauz people in Moldova are clearly visible, as well as the peoples in the Caucasus.

Genetics of Germans, Lithuanians, Russians, Swedes, Finns, etc.

Genetics of Russian Ukrainians and Belarusians

This graph depicts all Slavs, including the western ones - Poles and Czechs, as well as the southern ones - Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, etc.
All Slavs have 2 main components. These are Eastern European and Atlantic-Mediterranean. The first is at its maximum among Belarusians, and the second among all southern Slavs - Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians. The Eastern European component is more primary in origin among the Slavs, and the Atlantic-Mediterranean component was acquired to a greater extent during the migration of the Slavs to the Balkans. Western Ukrainians and Slovaks have a slight increase in the Samoyed component relative to the neighboring Slavic peoples - Belarusians, Czechs, Poles; This is probably a genetic trace of the medieval migrations of the Huns and Ugrians to Central Europe.

Genetics of Slavs, Russians and Tatars, Germans, Caucasians, Jews, etc.

Genetics of Finns, Ugrians, Udmurts, Hungarians, Sami, etc.

Genetics of Tatars, Bashkirs, Azerbaijanis, Chuvashs, etc.

Conclusion

Geography of genetic components

So, according to the genetic map, the population of Europe, as we see, is characterized by five main haplogroups, which immediately catch the eye, standing out against the background of smaller markers, which in our conversation can simply be ignored so as not to get confused: 1. Haplogroup R1a - colored yellow on the map.2. Haplogroup R1b - red.3. Haplogroup I - lilac color.4. Haplogroup N - purple.5. Haplogroup J - green. It is immediately clear that the boundaries of the distribution of genetic haplogroups do not coincide with the boundaries of modern states, therefore, therefore, the blood of each nationality consists not of one, but two, three and even more haplogroups. This happened due to the reasons that the borders of countries changed over thousands of years, and their populations very often migrated due to various circumstances, often mixing with not only close, but sometimes even distant neighbors. Nevertheless, let's take a look at modern Slavic states and try to establish which haplotypes are most characteristic of their population. Let's start with Russia. On the European part of this country, shown on the map, two colors predominate: yellow and purple, which correspond to two haplogroups: R1a and N. Let’s move our gaze to Belarus. Here, too, two colors predominate - the same yellow R1a and..., no, not purple, but... lilac I. The same, in general, applies to Ukraine - here, again, there is yellow R1a, in addition to lilac I. As for Poland, then yellow R1a is not only present here, but is also dominant. But what about the situation, say, in the Balkan south, where a number of Slavic states are located? In the Czech Republic and Slovakia? Both here and there, yellow R1a plays, perhaps, a dominant role. As we have seen, the genetic Y-haplogroup R1a is present in all Slavic countries and is predominant there. In other words, the genetic Y-haplogroup R1a, colored yellow on the map, is undoubtedly an elite haplogroup of the Slavs, and not of Africans, Semites or any Celts, who, as we will now see, have their own haplogroups, the carriers of which they are . Haplogroup R1a was, in addition to Europe, also found in Asia, especially in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Tibet, India, etc. For example, in the northern regions of India, the concentration of the Slavic marker R1a reaches 70%!, which is higher than in other modern Slavic countries. It indirectly follows from this that the ancient Aryans, who created civilization in the Indus River Valley, in Persia, in Ancient China and beyond, were Slavs! We know that the Aryans spoke Sanskrit, which, as I have already shown in my article. About Aryans, Sanskrit and Slavs, posted on the same site earlier, is definitely a SLAVIC LANGUAGE. To put it more adequately, the Y-haplogroup R1a is the Slavic-Aryan haplogroup. This haplogroup originated in the north of Eurasia tens of thousands of years ago, and its carriers were forced at a certain historical stage to move south along a series of parallel streams under the pressure of Glaciation. Arriving in India, Japan, Iran, the Middle East, Turkey, etc., the Aryan Slavs brought the light of culture to these regions and established there the well-known state-civilizations of antiquity: Harappa, Sumer, the Kingdom of the Hittites, Persia, etc. clockwise. There cannot be the slightest doubt about this. Which peoples have other dominant haplogroups? Let's start, for example, with haplogroup N. Haplogroup N, which is characteristic of the Russian population along with R1a, present among all Slavs, is completely absent from all Slavs except Russians, but it is dominant among the inhabitants of Finland, where its content exceeds 60% , Estonia, Udmurtia, etc. That is, as it is easy to conclude, haplogroup N, which half of the genetics of the inhabitants of Russia consists of, is an elite marker of the Finno-Ugric population. Thus, the genetic Y-haplogroup N, colored purple on our map, is the Finno-Ugric haplogroup. Now let's look at haplogroup R1b, colored red on the map. As genetic studies show, this haplogroup is dominant among the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula - Spaniards, Portuguese, Western French, etc., reaching the highest percentage concentration among the Basque people, going off scale for 90%. If we consider that the Basques, as elite representatives of the Celts, also retained their own unique language, which does not belong to the languages ​​of the so-called Indo-European family, then we get a rare opportunity to be convinced that the historical genetic Celts followed the path of linguistic evolution without any contact with us Indo-Europeans. Those “Celtic” languages ​​now spoken in the British Isles by the Welsh, Scots and Irish are not actually Celtic, since they belong to the Indo-European family, just as the Welsh, Scots and Irish themselves are not genetic Celts, although the content of Celtic R1b in their blood is quite high due to certain historical circumstances, which consist in the fact that the monolithic diaspora of genetic Celts was in the long past forced out by someone from their African ancestral home, partly to Europe, and partly to the Black Sea regions. As a consequence of this, the Celts were pushed further by local peoples until the first found peace on the very shore of the Atlantic Ocean at the cost, however, of mixing with the elite population of these territories, which consisted of carriers of Slavic haplogroups. The only group of Celts that has survived without dissolving to this day, either linguistically or genetically, are the Basques. Another haplogroup that is prominent among European populations is haplogroup J, which is colored green. Thanks to our map, we can easily establish that the carriers of the haplogroup live mainly in the Middle East. That is, the genetic Y-haplogroup J is nothing more than a genetic marker of Semitic peoples. The time has come to consider the mysterious haplogroup I, which is colored lilac on our map. Early genetic studies conducted around the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries classify this haplogroup as "unidentified" because, unlike other haplogroups, it is relatively evenly distributed across the European continent. However, it was very soon noticed that the concentration of haplogroup I in Scandinavia is slightly higher than in other regions. This circumstance was the basis for calling this haplogroup “Varangian”, “Viking”. Further more. Following this, however, it was established that in the Balkans and, in particular, in Bosnia, the content of “Varangian” haplogroup I among the local population is even greater than in Scandinavia. The uniform distribution of haplogroup I in Europe indicates that this haplogroup was in Europe long before other haplogroups appeared there. That is, this is a haplogroup native to Europe. As further analysis showed, this haplogroup is associated with the famous Cro-Magnon Man, who appeared in Europe seemingly out of nowhere about 40,000 years ago. The question arises: which of today's inhabitants of Europe can we identify with haplogroup I? Who has the most of this genetic marker? It is clear that the Scandinavians have a lot of it. However, as it turns out, the Belarusians, i.e., the Slavs, have even more of it by as much as 2%, which directly indicates that Scandinavia was populated from the mainland and precisely by the Slavs, and not vice versa. The Slavs-northern Ukrainians also have more of this marker. If we go further south, then, as we have already said, we will see that in the Slavic countries on the Balkan Peninsula the concentration of haplogroup I is even higher. Moreover, it turns out that all carriers of haplogroup I, without exception, except the Scandinavians, still speak one of the Slavic languages. That is, they are, like the carriers of the Slavic-Aryan haplogroup R1a we have already considered, Slavs! It was these Slavs, who are still carriers of the “Varangian” haplogroup I, who founded the famous state of antiquity - Kievan Rus, because they called themselves Varangians-Rus or Dew. Let us also call the Slavs - carriers of the “Varangian” haplogroup I Slavs-Russ, in order to pay them tribute for our common past and also so as not to confuse them with other Slavs - Slavs-Aryans, who are carriers of haplogroup R1a. Unfortunately, not a single person still dares to state this obvious fact loudly. If we consider that, as we have already said, Scandinavia was settled from Slavic lands, then a healthy conclusion arises that the Scandinavians lost their mother Slavic language due to some historical troubles. What are we actually talking about? Take another look at the genetic map, but more closely. Who are the Germans? The genetics of the Germans (especially the northern ones) consists mainly of two Slavic haplogroups - R1a and I. That is, the Germans are none other than, without any stretch of the imagination, the genetic Slavs! It's the same with the Norwegians. Take a look at their genetics and the genetics of Belarusians. This is genetically still one people. And this united people once lived in a single compact state, which stretched from Iceland to Smolensk, and from Scandinavia to Egypt. As we see, hints of fragments of this state are still visible on the genetic map of Europe - in Belarus, Ukraine, Scandinavia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Greek Macedonia... It was a state founded by the Slavic Rus, although later its inhabitants peacefully joined and part of the Slavic-Aryans, who fled from the northern cold snap. We, apparently, will never know what our ancestors called this great state. We know only the names of its later variations: Great Light, which included Scandinavia (Little Light) and Belarus + Ukraine (Greater Light), Kievan Rus, Grand Duchy of Lithuania... Official science says with less and less confidence that the human cradle is located in Africa, although this is true. But this is true only for all haplogroups with the exception of two Slavic haplogroups - R1a and I, which were born in the northern hemisphere, and not in Africa. These Slavic haplogroups are exclusive markers of white Caucasians. Thus, there are no white Caucasians in the world except the Slavs. Some other peoples look European only because a large percentage of our Slavic blood still flows in their veins.