--- tgpedersen <
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> BTW
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemetes
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niemcza
>
> That would make sense if the Nemetes had come all
> the way from
> Przeworsk-land with Ariovistus. The question is
> then: how close would
> the Slavs have to have been at the time A. left with
> them for that to
> be their designation for Germanic?
>
>
> Torsten
****GK: I don't think the Nemetes have anything to do
with the "Nemtsi/Nimtsi" of the later Slavs. I agree
with Kortlandt and Shchukin: it is impossible to
identify a "Slavic" group as of your mentioned dates
<72-58 BCE>. There is also an interesting recent
genetic study which locates the "Slavic homeland"
somewhere in the basin of the Dnipro/Dnepr: cf.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/c3ht013txp686v71/
Some interesting quotes:
Localisation of the Slavic homeland prior to their
great expansion in the fifth to sixth centuries is one
of the key problems of European history in the first
millennium AD. Although it is assumed that
prehistorically the original habitat of Slavs was
Asia, from which they migrated in the third or second
millennium BC to populate parts of Eastern Europe
(Encyclopædia Britannica 2006), a debate concerning
the European homeland of Slavs seems to remain
unsolved. Because Slavs unequivocally enter the
records of history as late as the sixth century AD,
when their expansion in Eastern Europe was already
advanced, different theories concerning the Slavs
geographic origin based on archaeological,
anthropological and/or linguistic data have been
formulated. Two such theories have gained the largest
support among the scientists (Schenker 1995), one
placing the cradle of Slavs in the watershed of the
Vistula and Oder rivers (present-day Poland), and the
other locating it in the watershed of the middle
Dnieper (present-day Ukraine). Our results indicate
that using the population-of-origin approach based on
the AMOVA, as many as nine (P > 0.05) or ten (P >
0.01) populations can be traced back to the lands of
present-day Ukraine, including Eastern-Slavic Russians
and Belarusians, Western-Slavic Poles and Slovaks, and
Southern-Slavic Slovenes and Croats. On the other
hand, the Polish population gave insignificant F ST
values in pairwise comparisons with only one (i.e.
Ukrainians) or three (i.e. Ukrainians, Slovaks, and
Lusatians) populations (P > 0.05 or 0.01,
respectively). Moreover, the Y-STR genetic distance
between Poles and Belarusians, who are geographic
neighbours (Table 1), excludes significant gene flow
between the two populations and localisation of
Belarusians ancestors in present-day Poland.
In conclusion, we have demonstrated that Y-STR
haplotype distribution divides Slavs into two
genetically distant groups: one encompassing all
Western Slavs, Eastern Slavs, Slovenes and Western
Croats, and the other involving all remaining Southern
Slavs. Many northern Slavic populations are
genetically indistinguishable in regard to the
nine-locus Y-STR haplotype variation, and this
homogeneity extends from the Alps to the upper Volga,
and even as far as the Pacific Ocean (eastern Russia),
regardless of linguistic, cultural and historical
affiliations of the Slavic ethnicities. The example of
Slovaks and Belarusians shows that this homogeneity is
likely to be extended to other Y-chromosomal
microsatellites as well. Results of the
interpopulation Y-STR haplotype analysis exclude a
significant contribution of ancient tribes inhabiting
present-day Poland to the gene pool of Eastern and
Southern Slavs, and suggest that the Slavic expansion
started from present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the
hypothesis that places the earliest known homeland of
Slavs in the basin of the middle Dnieper. To our
knowledge, this is the first report on the use of
genetic markers in solving the question of the
localisation of the Slavic homeland.
***The observed northern Slavic Y-STR genetic
homogeneity extends from Slovakia and Ukraine to parts
of Russia and Belarus, but also involves
Southern-Slavic populations of Slovenia and western
Croatia, and is the most probably due to a homogeneous
genetic substrate inherited from the ancestral Slavic
population. However, due to the Y-STR proximity of
linguistically and geographically Southern-Slavic
Slovenes and western Croats to the northern Slavic
branch, the observed genetic differentiation cannot
simply be explained by the separation of both
Slavic-speaking groups by the non-Slavic Romanians,
Hungarians, and German-speaking Austrians.
A similar difference has been previously reported
between Bulgarians and a few other Slavic populations
(Roewer et al. 2005), and our results demonstrate that
other Southern-Slavic populations, namely Macedonians,
Serbs, Bosnians, and northern Croats are genetically
distinct from their northern linguistic relatives as
well.
....
the contribution of the Y chromosomes of peoples who
settled in the region before the Slavic expansion to
the genetic heritage of Southern Slavs is the most
likely explanation for this phenomenon. On the other
hand, our results indicate no significant genetic
traces of pre-sixth-century inhabitants of present-day
Slovenia in the Slovene Y chromosome genetic pool.
******
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