origin of the Germanic tribes

[Eki]

I find it interesting that Danish and Norwegian kings are said to have had Trojan kings as ancestors. Among the Trojan kings were names like Jat and Finn:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/9004/Danes.html

# Bjaed (Bjaf), King of Troy
# Scaldea (Sceaf, Skjold), King of Troy
# Beowa (Beow, Bjaf), King of Troy
# Tecti (Taetwattatwa), King of Troy
# Jat (Geata, Geat), King of Troy
# Godwulf (Godolf), King of Troy (80- )
# Flocwald, King of Trojans (100- )
# Finn, King of Trojans (120- )

Italian Felice Vinci has find place names in Finland that resemble place names in ancients stories about Troy and claims Troy was in the Baltic area. Since archaeologists claim Troy was in Western Asia in modern day Turkey, I'd find more plausible that Trojans brought place names to the Baltic region:

http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/felicevincilocationoftroy.html

The Jat people in Pakistan and Northern India are said to have been descended from the Jeat tribes of Central Asia, just like the Geats, Jutes and Goths of Europe did. Troy wasn't that far from Central Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_Jat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_Jat

[Eki]

On this map, south of the Black Sea and east of Macedonia is an area called Propontis, which is said to have been settled by people called Sithones:

http://lazarus.elte.hu/~hzsolt/terkep/rtw/rtw_political_trm32.pdf

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/8153/sithonespz0.jpg

It's not that far from Troy and at least in nearby Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia and Lebanon Y-hg I1 is said to have been found:

I-M253/I-M307/I-P30/I-P40 has highest frequency in Scandinavia, Iceland, and northwest Europe. In Britain, haplogroup I-M253 is often used as a marker for "invaders," Viking or Anglo-Saxon. Within I1a, the M227 subclade is concentrated in eastern Europe and the Balkans and appears to have arisen in the last one thousand to five thousand years. It has been reported in Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine, Switzerland, Slovenia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Lebanon.

Tacitus wrote in his 97 AD book "Germania" about a tribe called Sitones living next to Suiones (probably Svear in Sweden). Some say Sitones were Germanic, but some say the Sitones were Finns. It's still an open debate:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tacitus1.html

Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and, agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage. Here end the territories of the Suevians.

[Eki]

Here's more about the Sithones. The names of the tribe Bottiaei from Crete and their chief Botton are also interesting, since the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland is called Bottenvik in Swedish:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/7Fragments*.html

11 What is now called Macedonia was in earlier times called Emathia. And it took its present name from Macedon, one of its early chieftains. And there was also a city emathia close to the sea. Now a part of this country was taken and held by certain of the Epeirotes and the Illyrians, but most of it by the Bottiaei and the Thracians. The Bottiaei came from Crete originally, so it is said,492 along with Botton as chieftain. As for the Thracians, p331the Pieres inhabited Pieria and the region about Olympus; the Paeones, the region on both sides of the Axius River, which on that account is called Amphaxitis; the Edoni and Bisaltae, the rest of the country as far as the Strymon. Of these two peoples the latter are called Bisaltae alone, whereas a part of the Edoni are called Mygdones, a part Edones, and a part Sithones. But of all these tribes the Argeadae,493 as they are called, established themselves as masters, and also the Chalcidians of Euboea; for the Chalcidians of Euboea also came over to the country of the Sithones and jointly peopled about thirty cities in it, although later on the majority of them were ejected and came together into one city, Olynthus; and they were named the Thracian Chalcidians.

11a The ethnic494 of Botteia495 is spelled with the i,496 according to Strabo in his Seventh Boat. And the city is called497 after Botton the Cretan.498

[Eki]

The Nordic Bronze Age Culture is said to have been influenced by Mediterrenian cultures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Bronze_Age

Even though Scandinavians joined the European Bronze Age cultures fairly late through trade, Scandinavian sites present rich and well-preserved objects made of wool, wood and imported Central European bronze and gold. The Scandinavians adopted many important European and Mediterranean symbols while adapting these to create a unique Nordic style. Mycenaean Greece, the Villanovan culture, Phoenicia and Ancient Egypt have all been identified as possible sources of influence for Scandinavian artwork from this period. The foreign influence is believed to have been due to the amber trade. Amber found in Mycenaean graves from this period originates from the Baltic Sea, so it is reasonable to assume that the culture that arose in the Nordic Bronze Age constituted one supply end of the so-called Amber Road. Many petroglyphs depict ships, and the large stone formations known as stone ships suggest that shipping played an important role. Several petroglyphs depict ships that have been identified as plausibly Mediterranean.

[Eki]

Kurt Braunmuller claims that Proto-Germanic was formed from Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (Phoenician and Punic) and Baltic Finnish languages. For those who understand Swedish:

http://www.sprakradet.se/servlet/GetDoc?meta_id=2390

[PDHOTLEN]

getting more lucid all the time

The latest views on Proto-Germanic are getting clearer all the time. I guess you people who live there (or have roots there) in NW Europe would have the keenest interest in the subject.

It looks to me, superficially, that the ancient Finnish presence in eastern Europe, especially in all or most of forested Russia west of the Ural mountains, should be entered into the equation; DNA-wise if not linguistically. I'm wondering about the R1a1 connection to Finns in the originally forested (now apparently deforested) area of Russia.

I read somewhere that the Proto-Indo-European language sprang from Uralian (=Finno-Ugric?) speakers. Anyway, more attention to Russian R1a1 DNA research is obviously called for.

R1a1(*?) & U5b2

[Eki]

Here's more about the Sithones. The names of the tribe Bottiaei from Crete and their chief Botton are also interesting, since the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland is called Bottenvik in Swedish:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...ragments*.html

The Nordic countries have mysterious labyrinth-shaped rock formations that the Finns call Jatulintarha (Garden of Jatul) and Swedes Trojaborg (Trojan castle). Maybe they came to the Baltic sea area with Botton and his Cretans, since a labyrinth is well-known in the legend of Minotaur in Crete:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaurus

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a creature that was part man and part bull.[1] It dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction[2] built for King Minos of Crete and designed by the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus who were ordered to build it to hold the Minotaur. The historical site of Knossos is usually identified as the site of the labyrinth. The Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus.

Here' s a picture of a Jatulintarha/Trojaborg in Gotland:

http://www.lansmuseetgotland.se/historiskaspar/trojaborg.html

[Eki]

The Nordic countries have mysterious labyrinth-shaped rock formations that the Finns call Jatulintarha (Garden of Jatul) and Swedes Trojaborg (Trojan castle). Maybe they came to the Baltic sea area with Botton and his Cretans, since a labyrinth is well-known in the legend of Minotaur in Crete:

Also the Germanic words burg and borg meaning a fortified place seem to point to Troy:

O.E. burg, burh "castle, manor house, fortified place" (related to beorg "hill"), from P.Gmc. *burgs "fortress" (cf. O.N. borg "wall, castle," Ger. Burg "castle," Goth. baurgs "city"), from PIE *bhrgh "high," with derivatives referring to hills, hill forts, fortified elevations (cf. Welsh bera "stack, pyramid," Skt. bhrant-, Avestan brzant- "high," Gk. Pergamos, name of the citadel of Troy). In Ger. and O.N., chiefly as "fortress, castle;" in Goth. "town, civic community." Meaning shifted M.E. from "fortress," to "fortified town," to simply "town" (especially one possessing municipal organization or sending representatives to Parliament). In U.S. (originally Pennsylvania, 1718) often an incorporated town; in Alaska, however, it is the equivalent of a county. The Scot. form is burgh. The O.E. dative singular byrig is found in many place names as -bury.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=borough

[Eki]

South of the Black Sea seems to have a lot of blood type A, just like Scandinavia:

http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/images/map_of_A_blood_allele.gif

[Eki]

It's said here that Caucasoid Berbers could have been part of the stock that gave rise to Cretans:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1399-0039.1999.530301.x

The origin of Cretan populations as determined by characterization of HLA alleles

Abstract:

The Cretan HLA gene profile has been compared with those of other Mediterranean populations in order to provide additional information regarding the history of their origins. The allele frequencies, genetic distances between populations, relatedness dendrograms and correspondence analyses were calculated. Our results indicate that the Indoeuropean Greeks may be considered as a Mediterranean population of a more recent origin (after 2000 B.C.), while all other studied Mediterraneans (including Cretans) belong to an older substratum which was present in the area since pre-Neolithic times. A significant Turkish gene flow has not been detected in the Greek or Cretan populations, although Greeks and Turks have two high frequency HLA-DRB-DQB haplotypes in common. It is proposed that Imazighen (Caucasoid Berbers living at present in the North African coast and Saharan areas) are the remains of pre-Neolithic Saharan populations which could emigrate northwards between about ...

[Eki]

Geneticists have also found a link between the Berbers and the Saami of Scandinavia:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15791543

Saami and Berbers--an unexpected mitochondrial DNA link.

The sequencing of entire human mitochondrial DNAs belonging to haplogroup U reveals that this clade arose shortly after the "out of Africa" exit and rapidly radiated into numerous regionally distinct subclades. Intriguingly, the Saami of Scandinavia and the Berbers of North Africa were found to share an extremely young branch, aged merely approximately 9,000 years. This unexpected finding not only confirms that the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of southwestern Europe was the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers that repopulated northern Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum but also reveals a direct maternal link between those European hunter-gatherer populations and the Berbers.

[Eki]

Kurt Braunmuller claims that Proto-Germanic was formed from Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (Phoenician and Punic) and Baltic Finnish languages. For those who understand Swedish:

http://www.sprakradet.se/servlet/GetDoc?meta_id=2390

It has also been speculated that Phoenicians settled England to mine tin:

http://phoenicia.org/celts.html

History tells us that England was settled by the Phoenicians who sailed to England to mine the tin. The Phoenicians invaded England in 1103 BC and when they arrived they found England to be inhabited by the Picts. Picts were a small people and were considered aborigines. Over a period of time the Phoenicians were assimilated. Today the small descendants of this intermarriage between the Picts and the Phoenicians have been incorrectly termed Celts.

http://phoenicia.org/britmines.html

[Eki]

There seems to be a whole book on the Phoenician Origin of Britons
Scots & Anglo-Saxons:

http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pob/pob_toc.html

[PDHOTLEN]

Picts & Sykes book

Don't forget the book by Bryan Sykes: "Saxons, Vikings and Celts" (2006), also titled "Blood of the Isles" in the UK. He goes into the Pict subject.

R1a1 & U5b2

[PDHOTLEN]

not sure about my name origin

Although I do think my paternal ancestors were from Norway, my last name "Hotlen" may have been assumed after the move to the USA. I more or less dismissed a comment made by my father, when I was little, that our name was originally Olsen (or Olson), since my parents had a habit of telling "white lies" when it suited their agendas. But maybe it was true, since I can't find anything about Anders Hotlen - the furthest back I can trace (Wisconsin).

R1a1* & U5b2