I-FGC22045, a Balkan Y haplogroup of Scandinavian origin

[Bogdan Munteanu]

My father, Constantin Munteanu, has the I-PH3895 haplogroup, discovered by a Big Y test at FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA). It is a branch of I-FGC22061, an Y haplogroup with many sub-branches encountered mainly in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia, apparently associated with a medieval Vlach tribe named Drobnjak. I-FGC22061 is itself a branch of I-FGC22045.

The parent branch of the Balkan I-FGC22045 is the haplogroup named I-FGC22048 by FTDNA and I-FGC22046 by YFull.

An ancient sub-branch of I-FGC22048 / I-FGC22046 was discovered in a boy (sample VK 379) who lived between 700 - 800 CE during the Viking Age in Böda, Öland, Sweden.

The other contemporary sub-branch of I-FGC22048 outside I-FGC22045 is I-FT216475, encountered today in Southern Sweden in Kumla, Västmanland and Kvällinge, Gladhammar (a little south of Västervik).

Balkan branch
I-M253 > I-P109 > I-S14887 > I-Y11203 > I-FGC22048 (I-FGC22046) > I-FGC22045 > I-FGC22061 > I-PH3895

Swedish branch
I-M253 > I-P109 > I-S14887 > I-Y11203 > I-FGC22048 (I-FGC22046) > I-FT216475 > I-Y90931

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22048/classic
https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22048/ancient
https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-FGC22046/

According to FamilyTreeDNA, the common ancestor of the Balkan and Swedish branches lived in Scandinavia around 500 BCE, so around 2500 years ago.

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-PH3895/compare/I-FT216475

Who was the man of Scandinavian origin who brought the I-FGC22045 haplogroup to the Balkans is the first part of the genealogical enigma to be solved. There are multiple theories regarding the arrival of the haplogroup in the Balkans, but the most plausible is that the ancestor of the men with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup was of Norman origin. It is known that the Normans were of Scandinavian origin on their paternal side.

My research, based on medieval documents kept in the Dubrovnik archive, points to a Norman man named Gervase who was the ruler of Ragusa (today Dubrovnik, Croatia) between 1186-1190, when the city-state was controlled by the Norman Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily. This man very probably belonged to the Montfort family and was actually Gervase of Tilbury, an Englishman of Norman origin.

I presented this theory in detail in my messages posted on the Molgen forum at the address below:

https://forum.molgen.org/index.php/topic,14941.0.html

The second part of the genealogical enigma is to find the Scandinavian ancestors of the man who brought the I-FGC22045 haplogroup to the Balkans. The only method that I can use is to investigate my father's autosomal matches (from Ancestry, MyHeritage and FTDNA) who according to their trees have mainly Scandinavian ancestors and according to their ethnicity estimate have mainly Scandinavian DNA. Of course, they must not have ancestors or DNA from Eastern Europe or the Balkans and as little as possible German ancestry or DNA (the Germans were present in the Balkans as colonists from medieval times).

This seems pretty simple. I should compare the trees of the DNA matches and discover the distant shared ancestors who probably are also the ancestors of my father. The problem is that in Scandinavia until the 19th century the surnames were actually patronymics (father's name + son/daughter), which changed with each generation. So, the method of finding the common ancestors of the autosomal matches based only on surnames doesn't work.

I needed to try another method. I created a custom map with the birthplaces of the persons from the trees of the autosomal matches. The goal is to see if there are ancestors of different matches who were born in the same village or town/city. At this time I added only the ancestors of 15 matches, but there are at least 50 more matches with trees (unfortunately there are also interesting matches without trees). Currently, there are only three birthplaces which are common for ancestors of two different matches (Skellefteå, Ryssby and Copenhagen). You can see the map at the address below:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=18MkC0nQcHpNyFrXRG_hYSSOOlQDCaWQ&usp=sharing (map that can be zoomed)

A more precise and easy method (no research needed) would be to find a Scandinavian man with an Y haplogroup more closely related to I-FGC22045 than I-FT216475. Since last year, FTDNA has offered for free an intermediate Y haplogroup to all the men who bought the Family Finder (autosomal DNA) test. Because of this, my father now has 30 Scandinavian matches (Y-12, Y-25 and Y-67)  who have the I-S14887 intermediate haplogroup (the grandparent branch of I-FGC22045). But this haplogroup is intermediate, that is halfway to their precise haplogroup, which can only be discovered by a Big Y test. Their precise haplogroup could be very closely related to I-FGC22045 or distantly related, because the I-S14887 haplogroup has many sub-branches, and I-FGC22045 is only one of them. I could contact these matches and try to convince them to take the Big Y test, which is fairly expensive. I did this in March with 25 Y-DNA matches of British origin and convinced 5 of them to take the test. However, only 2 have received their Big Y results after 2 months, the other 3 have not received the results after more than 4 months of waiting. So, I really cannot recommend taking a Big Y test right now, except if you are willing to wait 4 months or more for the results. You can see below a map with my father's Y-DNA matches who could have a closely related Y haplogroup, including the Scandinavian ones (the matches with the I-S14887 haplogroup have red markers) :

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1tAy-Hp70_oDeBaA0jJKE1W2flO8iS38&usp=sharing (map that can be zoomed)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l8iFoUbEVHJ70BPXpXFBE1ppvAVQmJnk/view?usp=sharing (map legend)

[Bogdan Munteanu]

The Molgen forum has been down for the last few days. I saved the pages of the forum thread about the I-FGC22045 haplogroup and made an archive which is stored on my Google Drive and can be freely downloaded. The saved files are in MHTML format and can be opened with any internet browser. All the files uploaded to Google Drive are scanned by Google, so the archive and its content are safe to open.

I-FGC22045 - a Balkan Y haplogroup of Scandinavian origin (ZIP archive)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1stpAwF3xiRAzZXzFBGGSP3OlstMm1nd-/view?usp=sharing

[Bogdan Munteanu]

I try to find the origin of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup using autosomal DNA, so I wanted to see if my father has autosomal matches who have the I-S14887 haplogroup. I searched for "I-S14887" in the list of autosomal (Family Finder) matches from FTDNA and found three matches in this situation. These are men who have bought the Family Finder test and have received I-S14887 as an intermediate haplogroup. Their precise Y haplogroups remain to be determined, but it could be one of the branches of I-FGC22045. See the screenshot below, hosted on my Google Drive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gWtqi5gDog0u9uqxn5x6HhJuQwkFJfDy/view?usp=sharing

Two of the matches are from Sweden and I speak about them below. One match is from the Balkans and I will speak about him on the Molgen forum thread, when the forum will be online again.

1) Mats N. (13 cM shared DNA) has only taken the Family Finder (autosomal) test. He doesn't offer any information about himself or his ancestors. Unfortunately, his ethnicity estimate is private. My father has 2 shared matches with Mats N., an Albanian and a Rumanian, so it's possible that Mats is of Balkan origin on his paternal side, which would explain him being an autosomal match. I sent a message to Mats' e-mail address, but received no response.

2) G. Berqkvist (8 cM shared DNA) has only taken the Family Finder test. He doesn't offer any information about himself or his ancestors. My father has 3 shared matches with G. Berqvist, one being a Swede with possible Balkan ancestry and two being Finns without Balkan ancestry. I contacted Berqvist at the beginning of May and he responded. He doesn't know his complete paternal ethnicity, because he doesn't know who his great-grandfather was. All that he has is a photo and two letters sent around 1890 from Michigan, USA by a man with a very common Swedish name. This man is his great-grandfather, but despite extensive research he could not find him in the US or Swedish censuses of that time. I convinced G. Berqvist to take the Big Y test, which can help him find his relatives on the paternal line. He will contact me when he will receive his Big Y results.

Regarding the ZIP archive with the messages posted on the Molgen forum, it must be said that clicking on the link from my previous message displays a page with the list of the files from the archive. Clicking on the files does nothing, because they cannot be downloaded individually. One must click on the "Download" icon (with a downward arrow) from the right hand corner of the screen in order to download the full archive (1 MB) and then open the files directly from the archive or after unzipping the archive. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aNygewCv9FeI7Hbn036VSW5HivrBvafG/view?usp=sharing

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a two part message.

PART 1

More than a month ago, on 26 June, I presented on the Molgen genealogy forum an update about the men convinced by me to take the Big Y test and who ordered it between 13-24 March. All of them had previously taken an Y-STR test, so their DNA samples were already available at the FTDNA laboratory. Only 2 of them (Chase, Barnard) received their results after approximately 2 months, the other 3 (Sherwood, Rodd, Oborne) have not received them after more than 4 months of waiting. I contacted them on 3 July to find out what happened.

1) R. Sherwood told me that a few days before he received the following e-mail from FTDNA, announcing a quality control failure:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[...]
We are contacting you regarding the Big Y-700 upgrade for kit ****. [...]
I'm sorry your Big Y-700 results are delayed. The Big Y-700 test typically takes 10-12 weeks to process on average.
Unfortunately, your sample experienced a quality control failure at the end of its most recent run and we are starting a rerun immediately at the highest priority.
I understand you are eager for the results of your testing, and we do not like to postpone tests for our customers. However, there are instances when samples can require additional testing. Our lab works to reduce the situations where this would be necessary whenever possible.
While it is rare that this next rerun would also fail to pass quality control and produce results, it does happen from time to time. Please ensure that your mailing address is current by editing the Contact Information under your Account Settings. We will contact you if a new collection is required at such time.
At this time, no further action or response is required. If this rerun passes quality control, you can expect your results within the next 6-8 weeks on average. It is possible results may come back sooner than this timeframe, as your sample is being processed at the highest priority and the lab is working to reduce delays.
We will notify you once the results are available or if anything else is needed on your end.[...]

Regards,
L. R.
Quality Assurance
FamilyTreeDNA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are other men in the same situation. I spoke previously about users who posted messages in June on the FTDNA forum with the same problem. I now found the messages that I believed had disappeared.

https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/paternal-lineages-y-dna/big-y-and-snp-discovery/324400-latest-y-700-batches?p=336077#post336077
https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/paternal-lineages-y-dna/big-y-and-snp-discovery/324400-latest-y-700-batches?p=336113#post336113

R. Sherwood finally received his results 5 weeks after receiving the e-mail from FTDNA. He ordered the Big Y test on 17 March, so he waited almost 4.5 months for the results (haplogroup I-Y6088).

Again, this is not uncommon, there is a user who wrote in March on the FTDNA forum that he received the Big Y results after 4 months and 4 days.

https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/paternal-lineages-y-dna/big-y-and-snp-discovery/324400-latest-y-700-batches?p=335642#post335642

2) C. Rodd told me that a few weeks prior he received an e-mail from FTDNA telling him they don't have enough material to sample and they were sending another kit. The kit was received at the end of June and the new sample was sent back very quickly. The test was ordered on 17 March and the FTDNA e-mail came at the beginning of June, after 2.5 months. It's not clear why FTDNA took so long to inform a paying customer about the fact that the test could not be done with the current DNA sample. C. Rodd eventually got his results (haplogroup I-A5574) on 12 August, after almost 5 months of waiting.

3) J. Oborne told me that he didn't receive any e-mail from FTDNA. I advised him to contact FTDNA, because it is possible that their e-mail was automatically sent to the spam folder, and this is why he didn't see it. He ordered the Big Y test on 19 March, and you can see in the screenshot below that he has the Big Y-700 label, so FTDNA acknowledged the order.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D8Q5WP5lrFHc-dH2SxvjD7lPLg7p24Yf/view?usp=sharing

However, it seems that FTDNA is only partially to blame in this case. Oborne (from Canada) told me that he paid with a check in USD from his Canadian bank account. But on the page with payment options from FTDNA's site it is said that FTDNA accepts checks or money orders only from US customers. International (non-US) customers who don't want to use debit/credit cards or PayPal can pay only via bank transfer (wire transfer). After contacting FTDNA, Oborne told me that their accounting department said they couldn’t cash the USD check because it came from Canada. There seems to be a problem when sending a USD check from a bank in Canada to a bank in the US. More details in the article below:

https://community.dynamics.com/blogs/post/?postid=44b6ad23-0c55-4cc4-b83f-0ba30846358b

So the check sent by J. Oborne was not cashed by FTDNA, and the Big Y test was not done. This is another example of the situation about which I spoke previously, men with the Big Y label, but with a generic haplogroup, I-M253 in this case. That means the test was ordered, but it is stuck, frozen, for a reason outside the testing process. In this case J.Oborne paid with a check, while being an international customer, a payment option that FTDNA does not support anymore (Oborne paid like this for his Y-STR test many years ago). FTDNA's fault is the lack of communication, not telling Oborne immediately that his payment was not accepted. Four and a half months were lost waiting for a result that could not arrive.

From my little sample of men who ordered the Big Y test at the end of March, two have received their results on time and two were announced that the tests have failed or could not be done. What is concerning is the failure rate of the tests, 2 of 4, and that means 50%. FTDNA clearly has a problem when it comes to the Big Y tests. A failure rate so high is not normal.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

The Molgen forum, a Russian genetic genealogy forum, which hosted my research about the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, continues to be down for unknown reasons. I have no complaints about the forum and how I was treated there, but the fact that the forum went down without an explanation is concerning.

This is my second negative experience with a forum. I actually started to publish my research on the Serbian genealogy forum Poreklo, because there was already a thread started about the I-FGC22061 haplogroup (a major branch of I-FGC22045), and the majority of the men with this haplogroup are Serbs. But after two years of posting, I was led to understand that I was not welcome to post there anymore, so I left. The messages posted by me on the Poreklo forum can be read from the archive linked below, which contains the pages of the forum with my messages, including the messages which were deleted by the forum admins. The archive is hosted by Google Drive, which scans all the uploaded files, so the archive and its files are safe to open. Click on the download icon in the upper-right corner of the screen in order to download the 500 KB ZIP archive and then open the files directly from the archive or after unzipping it. My messages (posts) on the Poreklo forum were initially in both French and English and later only in English.

Messages posted by me on the Drobnjak-Novljan (I-FGC22061) thread of the Poreklo forum
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oLtcJ67IN7oml01-9Tk2i6L1hs_wp_7W/view?usp=sharing

I tried to find why the Molgen forum was down, so I posted a message on the Molgen Facebook group, using my sister's FB account, because I don't have one.

My first message was posted on 2 August 2024.

=============
Since the Molgen forum is down and has been like this for almost a week, it seems that the problem is more serious than a verification problem with the site. I don't know why the forum administrators do not say here when the forum will be back online. The forum has very few visitors, while being the best Russian genetic genealogy forum. Keeping it offline for a long time will make it lose a part of its already small audience.

Bogdan Munteanu
=============

This is the response that I received a day later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only problem is verification. The owner of the [Molgen] site is a very busy person, you don't know him. He can't find time to verify or transfer rights to another person.

N.Z.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To which I responded:

=============
Thanks for the response. I maintain my opinion that there is more to this than the verification of the site, maybe an internal dispute about the site's ownership.
I don't know the owner and I don't know how busy he is. I also don't know what is this "site verification", that seems to be so time consuming. But I am sure that the owner has a reputation and wants to maintain it. And just like people, sites also have a reputation. The sites that go down for extended periods of time lose their reputation, because they appear as unreliable.

A forum is a site created by its users, who spend time posting messages. A forum without users is dead. The users will not lose their time in order to contribute to a forum with a low reputation. If the users perceive a forum as unreliable, because it is down frequently or for extended periods of time, they will leave and post their messages elsewhere.
The search engines are also very sensitive to a site's reputation, and they downgrade the rank of the sites that go down for many days. I can tell you from my experience that the Molgen forum is not favored by Google, probably because it's a Russian forum. It took Google almost 1 YEAR to index the thread created by me in August 2023 on the Molgen forum ("Haplogroup I-FGC22045, a Balkan branch of I-P109"). When searching for "I-FGC22045", Google did not display the Molgen thread as a result until July 2024. By comparison, when I created on 25 July 2024 a similar thread on the Scandinavian genealogy forum Rotter, it took Google only 1 DAY to index the thread. And it's not about my thread, but about the threads of all the users. Google will be more than happy to not show results from the Molgen forum, if the forum is down for a long time.

And finally, there is also the reputation of the country and its people. The owner of the forum wants Russia and the Russians to be seen as unreliable? I hope not.

Bogdan Munteanu
=============

I didn't receive another response.

I can continue to post my research here if I decide to continue with it. If the admins of the Rötter site have a problem with posting my research here, they can tell me, and I will go somewhere else, no questions asked. I understand that this is a Scandinavian genealogy forum and at this time my research concerns mainly the presence of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup in the Balkans and the connection with England, which are easier to research than the Scandinavian origin of the haplogroup. The Scandinavian origin is very important and I hope to continue to research it, maybe with the help of those Scandinavian men with the I-S14887 haplogroup who will take the Big Y test in order to find their precise haplogroup, which can be closely related to I-FGC22045.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a four part message.

PART 1

I will provide an overview of the haplogroup situation for those who are interested only in the genetic genealogy part of the research and maybe want to pursue a similar approach, but don't know how to research the male line using Y-DNA testing.

The I-FGC22045 haplogroup is encountered today in the Balkans, mainly in some countries of former Yugoslavia (Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, North Macedonia), in Albania and Rumania. It has a sibling branch named I-FT216475, encountered today in Southern Sweden. Both I-FGC22045 and I-FT216475 were derived from the Scandinavian haplogroup I-FGC22048. This latter haplogroup is a sub-branch of I-S14887, itself encountered today in Scandinavia, Germany, England and the USA. The I-S14887 haplogroup is old, and those that have it at this time received it for free after FTDNA analyzed their Family Finder test, so they actually have a newer haplogroup, to be determined if they buy the Big Y test (this is why FTDNA provides the intermediate haplogroup).

I-M253 > I-P109 > I-S14887 > I-Y11203 > I-FGC22048 (I-FGC22046) > I-FGC22045 > I-FGC22061 > I-PH3895

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22045/story

See the screenshot below of the FTDNA haplotree with my explanations (all the screenshots hosted on Google Drive can be zoomed in and out when viewed online by clicking on the + or - buttons at the bottom of the page). Haplotree means tree of haplogroups.

Haplotree of I-S14887 and its branches on FTDNA:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tjOqvGRK5zd5K_BzhFV0xggtmanvXwHr/view?usp=sharing

Haplotree of I-S14887 and its branches on YFull (scroll down the page to see I-FGC22046 / I-FGC22048 and its sub-branches) :

https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-S14887/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XiJbPTSJo2jOCTzPGqpApLUWpY-vr-7A/view?usp=sharing (screenshot with my explanations)

Differences between FTDNA's haplotree and YFull's haplotree:

1) On FTDNA, the Ancient Scandinavian branch is named I-FGC22048, whereas on YFull it is named I-FGC22046.

2) On FTDNA you can collapse and expand the sub-branches by clicking on the "v" or ">" signs next to the haplogroups, whereas on YFull you can not. This is useful when taking screenshots, and you can see that I collapsed all the sub-branches in order to have in the same screenshot I-S14887 and I-FGC22048. The screenshot from YFull doesn't show I-S14887 and it shows only some of the branches of I-FGC22046.

3) On YFull there is an Albanian with the I-FGC22045* haplogroup, which doesn't appear on FTDNA. This Albanian is A. D. Gjoka, who is an Y-12 match of my father on FTDNA, where he has the I-S14887 haplogroup (from the FF test). On YFull he has a more precise haplogroup, because he has taken a WGS (Whole Genome Sequencing) test at Dante Labs and uploaded his results to YFull.

4) On FTDNA there are 2 men with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, an Ukrainian and a North Macedonian. The Ukrainian is O. Siryi, who is a Y-12 match of my father, and is also present on YFull, where he has the I-FGC22052* haplogroup. The North Macedonian named Nuzda is an Y-25 match of my father.

5) It must be said that Gjoka, Siryi or Nuzda do not actually have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, which is an old haplogroup, but newer haplogroups that will be determined when other men will take a Big Y or similar test and will have the same mutations on the Y chromosome as Gjoka, Siryi or Nuzda. Nuzda in fact has not taken the Big Y test, but an Y-37 test and then probably bought two SNP packs in order to get that haplogroup. It is very possible that Siryi has the distant paternal ancestor from the Balkans, because his real name is Chumak and this surname literally means "[medieval] salt trader". As I discussed on the Poreklo and Molgen forums, the I-FGC22045 haplogroup seems to be linked to the salt production and trade in the Middle Ages in the Balkans, England and very probably also in Scandinavia (where the method of extracting salt from seawater by boiling it using fire fueled by wood was invented).

6) On YFull the contemporary Swedish branch is I-FGC22046*, practically the same as the Ancient Scandinavian branch. This is because only A. Bergqvist has uploaded his Big Y results to YFull, whereas R. Johansson and A. Welander are not present on YFull. If one of them was present, YFull would have created a new branch under I-FGC22046, named after one of the Y chromosome mutations shared with A. Bergqvist.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

I will shortly discuss my father's Y-STR and Big Y matches.


Y-111 MATCHES
==============
There is only 1 Y-111 match, M. Djurdjic from Montenegro, with a genetic distance (GD) of 9 steps. This means that my father and him have a common ancestor who lived 3-400 years ago. See screenshot.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Y74DG_mFN1eKx3bBJMERblPf1qI2egP/view?usp=sharing


Y-67 MATCHES
=============
There are 58 Y-67 matches.
8 matches who have taken the Big Y test have a closely related haplogroup (branch of I-FGC22061), the rest have distantly related haplogroups. See the screenshots below with the closely related matches.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ptriS4ue8XislVGdjqm8O7VdCKKknMwR/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eBGf08hniFuzygl08rHRn4rONyJo_0ZT/view?usp=sharing

There are a few interesting Y-67 matches who have not taken the Big Y test and could have a closely related haplogroup to I-FGC22045.

1) A.T. Pierce (I-M253) : Two members of the Pierce-Southern U.S project have the I-S14887 haplogroup, so A.T. Pierce could also have a branch of that haplogroup. However he has not taken the Family Finder test, so he will not receive an intermediate haplogroup to see if it is I-S14887.

2) L. G. Gidholm (I-M253) : He's a Swede who is a Y-12, Y-25 and Y-67 match. He has taken the Family Finder test, so he should receive an intermediate haplogroup. However, since he has not received it until now, it is hard to believe that he will ever receive it. So, only if he orders the Big Y test we could see if his precise haplogroup is closely related to I-FGC22045. See screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11LxKh7KuLDcXKYqFm5sw_POxVT_01Y9Z/view?usp=sharingî

3) T.H. Lawrence : He's an American who has the I-S14887 haplogroup, received because he has taken the Family Finder test. He doesn't mention his earlier paternal ancestor or his country of origin. See screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vxBjqjo_jgSSmc94u-rIekB402QOvH9j/view?usp=sharing


Y-37 MATCHES
=============
There are 16 Y-37 matches.
Only 1 match, B. Seat from Croatia, has the I-S14887 haplogroup, received because he has taken the Family Finder test. His precise Y haplogroup is very probably a branch of I-FGC22061.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aQeWS8SeB7vKniIo3Oy5Qw7m2eBKihwU/view?usp=sharing

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

Y-25 MATCHES
=============
There are 1099 Y-25 matches.
10 matches have a haplogroup that is a sub-branch of I-FGC22045. See the screenshots below with these closely related matches.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PDdyCIabOXWVzB_DMbMR9rn5YthbO0xm/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14pXB9K03gcBauq0IalCu_aQT81PcA60a/view?usp=sharing

31 matches have the I-S14887 haplogroup, received because they have taken the FF test. 19 of them are from Scandinavia. Their haplogroups could be closely related to I-FGC22045 or distantly related. See the screenshots.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SAidLQRZG84KBuskqhwj8Rf6ckrAZIa1/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tz1_CxgwD-F5OH-BZere96aWITYGF2pG/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zMBURUfL9aqdMfOAfHAZWd-MxVkEBDnK/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dj7QRZlZHbbKiam14ZevIQbCZTCPhnHg/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b_H1w6Eg67tCeGrGxPHTXAZEn2GCBln7/view?usp=sharing


Y-12 MATCHES
=============
There are 4005 Y-12 matches.
12 matches have a haplogroup that is a sub-branch of I-FGC2245. See the screenshots below with these closely related matches.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mcrWW-l6crI0pCwNzfEAsyx8MlHLLXN1/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13g0Nf3NnQ23uVtr5P1D4npG4Y6ECY7Q1/view?usp=sharing

2 matches from Sweden (R. Johansson and A. Bergqvist) have a haplogroup that is a sub-branch of I-FT216475, the Scandinavian sibling branch of the Balkan I-FGC22045. See the screenshots below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/147Vx7C_eAehNLKvDLh0chFocOyM48I8B/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U8sWwCzyTcM1fSMxFBJMl4SaxamwzkfY/view?usp=sharing

There are two other Swedes who have a haplogroup that is a sub-branch of I-FT216475, but are not Y-STR matches of my father:
- A. Welander has the same precise Y haplogroup as A. Bergqvist.
- R.Nilsson has the I-M253 haplogroup, but is a Y-67 match (5 steps) for R. Johansson, so his haplogroup is either I-FT216475 or its sub-branch I-Y90931.

34 Y-12 matches have the I-S14887 haplogroup, received because they have taken the FF test. 21 of them are from Scandinavia. See the screenshots.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16IeJ-inonf7qinhdiB8Un1zpzCaU4DwV/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c9NP-IwVhl_bUHDxYzxWNG7wDoyQMErH/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ld9aNX7GHWk9yClLU1StSsWXJWj-7ZGq/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19TlCYRg5KFDFk6E9co7STcYTv3g2H1nB/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QmjJPqc8yrEvWQFWC59pPjDDtUy2QsEW/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j_0u1KueO35EFCJkCoZjWdTh2If6UqkD/view?usp=sharing


BIG Y MATCHES
==============
There are 20 Big Y matches, all from the Balkans. See the screenshots below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YErCC_Nk0rx3HEOenkJWH3kJljje32tX/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OSCbAYTynAp28s-PcnWZBVfSl1XmSC-Y/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzombdUhmHvVtAdyjJijYlt-PlC6wW7R/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16ZGKRTJlLvvyIkbfUQhYX_iE12CmbLlZ/view?usp=sharing

CONCLUSION
=============

So, what must be done now from a genetic genealogy point of view in order to advance the research on the origin of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup? The answer is simple, convince as many as possible of the men with the intermediate I-S14887 haplogroup, to take the Big Y test in order to receive a precise haplogroup. It is possible that at least one of these men, probably one with a Scandinavian or English ancestor, has an Y haplogroup which is very closely related to I-FGC22045.

According to FTDNA and YFull, the Scandinavian I-FGC22048 (I-FGC22046) appeared in 700-800 BCE, and its Balkan branch I-FGC22045 in 300-500 BCE. In contrast, I-FGC22061, the South-Slavic branch of I-FGC22045 appeared in 700 CE. So, more than 1000 years have passed before I-FGC22061 branched off of I-FGC22045. This is a long time, which proves that between I-FGC22045 and I-FGC22061 there is at least one other branch, to be discovered.

I-M253 > I-P109 > I-S14887 > I-Y11203 > I-FGC22048 (I-FGC22046) > I-FGC22045 > undiscovered branch > I-FGC22061 > I-PH3895

This undiscovered branch could be found in Scandinavia or quite possibly in France, Italy or England, where the Normans have settled. Does one of my father's Y-STR matches have the Y haplogroup belonging to this currently undiscovered branch? Only a Big Y test could prove this assumption. But from what I've seen, none of the men who received the intermediate I-S14887 haplogroup a few months ago has ordered the Big Y test.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

At the end of March, I contacted C.F. Marsh, an Y-12 and Y-25 match of my father, trying to convince him to take the Big Y test. He did not respond to my e-mail. However, now I see that he has ordered the Big Y test, so maybe in the end my message convinced him.

This is the e-mail sent by me. I attached a screenshot that showed Marsh as my fathers' Y-25 match and a screenshot with the YFull tree of the I-FGC22046 haplogroup. I invited him to read my research posted on the Molgen forum, which was online at that time.

===============
Subject: Your Y-DNA haplogroup and test at FamilyTreeDNA

Hello,

You are an Y-25 and Y-12 (25 and 12 Markers) match on FamilyTreeDNA with my father, Constantin Munteanu (see the attached screenshot). I am curious if you plan to upgrade your Y-DNA test to Big Y-700 in order to have a more precise haplogroup, not the generic I-M253, which doesn't tell much about the paternal genealogy, other than the fact that you are of Germanic descent on your paternal line.

Why am I asking you this? Because you can help me in my research to find the English ancestor of my father.

My father has taken the Big Y-700 test and his haplogroup is I-PH3895 (I-M253>I-P109>I-FGC22046>I-FGC22045>I-FGC22061>I-PH3895). The I-P109 branch of I-M253 is Scandinavian in origin, and I-FGC22045 is the most widespread branch of I-P109 in the Balkans (encountered mostly in the countries of former Yugoslavia and in Albania). A Scandinavian Y haplogroup in the Balkans is unusual, but it can be explained by multiple theories, one of them being that it was brought by the Normans, who fought with the Byzantines in the Balkans. The Normans were of Scandinavian origin on their paternal line.

My theory is that the I-FGC22045 haplogroup was brought to the Balkans by Gervase of Tilbury, himself an Englishman of Norman origin, who lived around the year 1200. He was a lawyer specialized in Canon law (law regarding the activities of the Catholic church) and he worked between 1183-1190 for William II, the Norman king of Sicily and southern Italy. The same William II had appointed a man named Gervase as the ruler (count) of the city-state of Ragusa (today Dubrovnik in Croatia) between 1186-1190. In my opinion, supported by my research, Gervase the Norman count of Ragusa was Gervase of Tilbury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gervase_of_Tilbury

Gervase the Norman count had with him his brothers and sons, this is proven by the documents from the Dubrovnik archive. One of his sons, named Martinussio, became the founder of a noble family in Ragusa [Dubrovnik] that lasted under this name for a few hundred years. The Ragusans were merchants and established trade colonies across the Balkans. Many Ragusan men from these colonies married local women. This is how the Y haplogroup of Gervase was spread in the Balkans. Being a Norman, Gervase the count was of Scandinavian origin on his paternal side, so that could explain the existence of a Scandinavian Y haplogroup in the Balkans.

My father has many autosomal matches [genetic relatives] with ancestors from the Adriatic Sea coast, in today's Croatia, where Dubrovnik is located. But, my father also has (on Ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage and FTDNA) distant genetic relatives that have only British ancestors and no Eastern European or Balkan DNA. This supports the theory that Gervase the Norman count of Dubrovnik was actually Gervase of Tilbury, who was born in England.

Even though Gervase of Tilbury is a well known medieval intelectual, not much is known about his family. My theory, based on genealogical research, is that his true name was Montfort, being part of the same family as Simon de Montfort (1208-1265), much praised today for his intention to establish a parliamentary system in England with real influence over the king.

There is something that could link you to Gervase of Tilbury and the Montfort family. Your earliest known paternal ancestor, John Marshe, was from Faversham, Kent, which is close (30 km) to Maidstone, Kent. The Montfort family owned the Sutton Valence castle in Maidstone from 1238 to 1265. Moreover, the agreement reached between the baronial government (led by Simon de Montfort) and Henry III of England in 1264 was signed in Canterbury (“Peace of Canterbury”), a city which is very close (15 km) to Faversham. It is possible that you are a descendant of the Montfort family, which was of Norman origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Valence_Castle

So, there is the possibility that you have an Y haplogroup that is of Norman origin, inherited from the Montfort family. But, at this time you don't know your precise haplogroup, because you didn’t take the Big Y-700 test. What are the advantages of Big Y over your current Y-37 test? It provides you with a precise haplogroup and a list of Big Y matches, much more accurate than your current haplogroup and list of matches.

The difference between the Y-37 test (which you already took) and the Big Y test is like looking at an object with a loupe (Y-111 test) or a microscope (Big Y test).

1) Your current I-M253 haplogroup is very generic and is shared by tens of millions of men across the world. The precise haplogroup discovered by the Big Y test is shared with at most hundreds of men.

2) Your current Y-12, Y-25 and Y-37 matches are unreliable for judging the closeness of the genealogical relationship. There are hundreds or thousands of matches and you cannot know how closely they are related to you. The Big Y matches are in the single or double digits (usually less than 20), and you have with them a common ancestor who lived 3-800 years ago.

The Big Y test costs around 280 USD, because you already took the Y-111 test. For someone interested in genealogy it is definitely worth the price and is incomparably better than the Y-111 test. It is your decision if you want to buy the Big Y-700 test. I don't want to put pressure on you, you decide what you do with your money. But the Big Y test is the only one that can be used for genealogical research.

If you don’t want to upgrade your Y-DNA test because of the cost, there is a cheaper option, paid by me. I can make an account for you on Yseq.net (a German company specialized in Y-DNA testing) and buy you a test for only 20 USD. The test kit will be mailed by Yseq at the address that you give me (can be a PO box). This test checks if you have the FGC22055 mutation (SNP) on your Y chromosome. If yes, then your haplogroup is of Scandinavian origin and is very closely related to the haplogroup of the Balkan branch of I-P109.

You can read my detailed research about my father’s Y-DNA haplogroup on the forum thread below. I began to speak about Gervase of Tilbury in the last third part of the first page. See also the attached screenshot from YFull with the I-FGC22046 branch (Scandinavian) and its sub branches I-FGC* (Norman, presumed by me) and I-FGC22045 (Balkan).

https://forum.molgen.org/index.php/topic,14941.0.html
==================

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a two part message

PART 1

As I already said, my father has 3 autosomal matches who have the I-S14887 intermediate haplogroup, discovered from the Family Finder test. I spoke in a previous message about two of the matches, who are from Sweden. Now I speak about the third one, from the Balkans, and about a new Big Y match who appeared two weeks ago.

1) M. Kovijanic (17 cM shared autosomal DNA) has taken the Family Finder and Y-37 tests. He doesn't offer any information about himself or his ancestors. His e-mail address is the address of R. Konjokrad, who has the I-FTA28824 haplogroup (a sub-branch of I-FGC22045) and is an Y-12 and Big Y match of my father. So, M. Kovijanic very probably also has the I-FTA28824, like R. Konjokrad and A. Jaksić, who claim to be descendants of Pavle Abazović, a medieval military commander from the Drobnjak tribe. R. Konjokrad is also an autosomal match for my father, but only on GEDmatch (5.7 cM), not on FTDNA.

2) The new Big Y match is named E. Knezevic (original name Knežević, pronounced like Knezhevich). His earliest known paternal ancestor was from Tramošnica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has the I-Y58427 haplogroup (a branch of I-FGC22054).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tziKXyic6r8XkuiUkKNJRPQEKt36uaTp/view?usp=sharing (match)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VLX3YUmXiaHz6lGSRHp_c7fhp_T0WwIu/view?usp=sharing (additional genealogical information)

E. Knezevic's haplogroup is the parent branch of I-Y50461, the haplogroup of two men (G. Barach and D. Barac) having paternal ancestors named Barać (pronunced Barach in English) from Lika-Senj county, Croatia. That's interesting, because in medieval times there was a Croatian Knežević family originating from Herzegovina who received lands in Lika region from Matthias Corvinus, the Hungarian king.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xtFLxkHOejXjO78D63RMPFuFSTkfRqds/view?usp=sharing

A family named Knežević, of Vlach origin, from the Bunić village was mentioned by Marko Šarić in his article about the 1712 Lika and Krbava census (page 379 and others).
G. Barach has the paternal ancestor from Svračkovo Selo, Croatia, located very close (10 km) to Bunić. So, the Barać family is probably descending from the Knežević family.

---------------------
The House of Knežević was a Croatian noble family, descending from the medieval village of Broćno (Brotnjo) at Čitluk, Herzegovina. First mentioned there in the 15th century, family moved in the second half of the century towards northwest, where the members of the family gained new estates from the king Matthias Korvin in Gračac and Grab in the Lika Region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Kne%C5%BEevi%C4%87

{automatic translation from Croatian}
KNEŽEVIĆ, a noble family with estates in Lika, Krbava and Međimurje. According to tradition, originally from Broćno in Herzegovina, where they were originally called Krušević; after the death of Prince Filip near Jajce in 1463, they took the surname Knezići, then Kneževići. Two of Philip's sons, whose names are unknown, went to Russia, or Poland (the general and diplomat Karol Otto Kniaziewicz, 1762–1842 could be descended from this lawyer), and the third, Ivan, escaped with his family and his company, settled in the area of ​​today's Gračac and built a fort at Gradina. In 1466, King Matthias Corvinus granted him nobility.
https://hbl.lzmk.hr/clanak/knezevic

Predmoderne etnije u Lici i Krbavi prema popisu iz 1712/14
[Pre-modern ethnic groups in Lika and Krbava according to the 1712/14 census (PDF article in Croatian)]
https://www.pilar.hr/wp-content/images/stories/dokumenti/lika/lika_1_mail_r_325.pdf
---------------------

My father has autosomal matches who have Knezevic ancestors only from Bosnia-Herzegovina. See also the screenshots linked below.

1) R. Knezevic is an 8 cM match on Ancestry. His paternal grandfather, Nikola Knezevic, was born in Alići, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was married to Janja Travancic from Zavidovići.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YihSLTTNwecsAyuhHmsVBVU4DguedXtH/view?usp=sharing (match)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zSHE7V7iWMGLWt3e24uhB9DrXjfYa7bB/view?usp=sharing (tree in PDF format)

2) D. Klaic is an 11 cM match on Ancestry. His paternal grandmother was Marija Knežević, but her birthplace is not mentioned. I presume she was from Bosnia-Herzegovina, because the ancestors from D. Klaic's maternal side are from Orašje, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iMXUpi_OsYI8XVjTinjz81qK2_6kohCE/view?usp=sharing (match)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eq-H9N4-QpzXlHCQ8Uo_378Naod8od9j/view?usp=sharing (tree in PDF format)

3) J. Tomich is an 18 cM match on Ancestry. His paternal grandmother was Eftalie Knesevic, probably from Travnik, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where her son was born.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mxOfoezcyGVYU77WIx1kSb8AWQCKgVjD/view?usp=sharing (match)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vB3AQS0n2D4kMwdL4PglhdbgwmSvxbzi/view?usp=sharing (tree in PDF format)

4) A. Vlahovic is a 10.1 cM match on MyHeritage. Her paternal grandmother was Matija Knezevic, probably from Bosnia-Herzegovina, where her granddaughter was born.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPAeD26oC3RBgHhg_-BQataO2m6Y_iG-/view?usp=sharing (match)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18nnYnGLUXThUpmX5rG0rZ4wtT1obc4PD/view?usp=sharing (tree in PDF format)

5) M. Aksin is a 9.3 cM match on MyHeritage. His paternal grandmother was Anka Knežević, born in Gornjoselci, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11L71HzccoXFijoxn_MvoTPmVdhiIAWB3/view?usp=sharing (match)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iUbblxZHXa7Iv3JBSxMu3hn0UKRutMXy/view?usp=sharing (tree in PDF format)

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

An update about the situation of the intemediate (partial) Y haplogroup promised by FTDNA to all the men who bought the autosomal DNA test named Family Finder (FF). You can see the initial announcement from 29 August 2023 posted on FTDNA's blog:

==========
[...] FamilyTreeDNA uses a custom Global Screening Array chip from Illumina that looks at about 700,000 SNPs from the autosomes, X chromosome, Y chromosome, and mtDNA. However, because the main purpose of this chip is to determine autosomal results (matching, ancestral populations, etc.), the chips contain minimal Y-DNA and mtDNA SNPs.

This means you’ll only receive a partial haplogroup from an autosomal test. Most customers can expect this haplogroup to have originated in the Metal Age (about 10,000 years ago). Comparatively, a predicted, broad haplogroup from a Y-STR test like the Y-37 or Y-111 will typically have originated in the Stone Age (about 100,000 years ago), and a haplogroup from the Big Y-700 will typically have originated in the Middle Ages or in the Modern Age (about 1,000 to 500 years ago)—within genealogical times.

Microarray chips like the Global Screening Array chip have been updated over time, and the Y-DNA SNP selection on the various chips has also changed and varies from company to company. Haplogroup results may vary from tester to tester, even if they are on the same direct paternal line, depending on which chip their test was processed on and if they have a “no call” or no results for a particular SNP.

While the haplogroup you’ll receive with an autosomal test is better than a broad haplogroup from the Y-37 or Y-111, only a test like the Big Y-700 will provide you with the complete story of your direct paternal line and properly place all testers from the same direct paternal line on the haplotree.[...]

Who gets one?

Genetic males with an autosomal DNA test, either a Family Finder or an unlocked autosomal transfer, will receive a Y-DNA haplogroup as part of the reporting. Because the database is so large, haplogroups will be added to your results in parts, depending on when you tested and if you tested directly with FamilyTreeDNA or with another company and transferred to us.

-Family Finder customers with new results that post after the feature is live will receive their haplogroup with the rest of their results.
-Family Finder customers who received results between March 2019 and the day before the feature is live will be the first to receive their results.
-Family Finder customers who received results prior to March 2019 will receive their results next.
-Autosomal transfer customers who have unlocked their full results will be the third group to receive their results.

https://blog.familytreedna.com/y-dna-haplogroups-family-finder/
=============

In 2024 I made a map with my father's Y-STR matches who had basic Y haplogroups (I-M253, I-L22 or I-P109) and at the same time had bought the FF test. All these men were eligible to receive the intermediate haplogroup. However, few of the matches present on my map have received it. In my last message on the Molgen forum (30 July 2024) I posted the messages exchanged with some "top contributors" of the FTDNA User Group on Facebook. It is obvious that they had no idea about the real situation.

Now it turns out that FTDNA changed its mind. The vast majority of the men who bought an FF test before 2015 will not receive an intermediate haplogroup. Apparently it's not technically possible, because of the DNA chip that was used then. If it's not possible, why did FTDNA publicly announce that all those who bought the FF test will receive an intermediate haplogroup? Why did they not test all the DNA chips before the announcement? They specifically said that "the chips have been updated over time", so they were aware of the potential problems with the chips from different generations.

I was not the only one unpleasantly surprised by this turn of events. Read the message below from the user "loobster" posted on FTDNA's forum:

==============
Message posted by loobster on 7 August 2024:

In the [FTDNA] GAP [Group Administrator Pages] Newsletter I received May 29, 2024:
"Haplogroups for the current chip are complete, and we’re working on older versions."

And in the GAP Newsletter I received Jun 27, 2024:
"We've finished issuing the Family Finder Y-DNA haplogroups for Family-Finder-tested customers through late 2015. Next will be a few that were ordered through resellers, the first chip (2010 to about Oct. 2015), and autosomal transfers. The latter won’t start until probably mid-July or so."

And then in the GAP Newsletter I received Aug. 1, 2024 it said
"We’ve completed all the Family Finder Y-DNA haplogroup assignments and will be moving to the transfers soon.

I called Customer Service today and was told very few of the Family Finder Kits that were processed in 2010 thru earlier 2015 got a Y-Haplogroup.
To anyone still hoping -- according to Customer Service, of those that were processed then, all that are going to get a Y-Haplogroup have gotten.

Anybody see anything in the earlier announcements which suggests they will only be able to assign a Y-Haplogroup for a very few of the Family Finder Kits that were processed in 2010 thru earlier 2015? Or in the one received Aug. 1, 2024 that says or suggests they were only able to assign a Y-Haplogroup for a very few of the Family Finder Kits that were processed in 2010 thru earlier 2015?

https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/family-tree-dna-communications/announcements-and-new-features/334569-coming-soon-y-dna-haplogroups-for-family-finder?p=336336#post336336
===============

The conclusion is this. The men who bought the FF test before 2015 will not receive an intermediate (partial) Y haplogroup. However, they may receive a (very) basic haplogroup. I say this because I know someone who bought the FF test in 2013 and received the E-P2 haplogroup in June 2024. His son who bought in 2018 the Y-37 test has the E-M35 haplogroup. It must be said that E-P2 is the grandparent branch of E-M35 (E-P2>E-M215>E-M35), so the FF test from 2013 received an even more basic haplogroup than the one discovered by the Y-37 test. Of course, the haplogroup from the FF test is free and is better than nothing, but it's very far from the intermediate haplogroup promised by FTDNA in 2023. Now let's see how FTDNA deals with the intermediate Y haplogroups of the autosomal transfers. This time I don't have high hopes.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a five part message.

PART 1

It is known that I-FGC22061, the South-Slavic branch of I-FGC22045, is associated with the Drobnjaks, a Vlach medieval tribe who lived initially in Bosnia and then migrated to a region that was part of Old Herzegovina and now is part of Montenegro. It is presumed by me that the haplogroup I-FGC22045 was brought to the Balkans by the Normans, more specifically by the family of Gervase, the Norman count of Ragusa [Dubrovnik] between 1186-1190. It is also known from the documents in the Dubrovnik archive that Gervase had two sons, named Martinussio and Stancius, and his brothers were also present in Ragusa. Martinussio founded a noble family with the same name, who is mentioned in Ragusa for a few hundred years. We must discover how the Y haplogroup of Gervase was passed to the Vlachs of the Drobnjak tribe.

For this we must find the proof of the genealogical connection between the family of Gervase and the Drobnjak tribe. Both the members of the Martinussio family and the Drobnjak Vlachs were merchants. The Vlachs were also carriers of goods throughout the Balkans. They carried inland the goods of the Ragusan merchants, for example the salt extracted from the saltpans around Ragusa [today Dubrovnik, Croatia], which is a port on the Adriatic Sea. And from inland they carried ore (especially silver and lead) to the Adriatic sea ports. The Ragusan merchants had colonies along the main trade routes in the Balkans, staffed with their people. The documents from the Dubrovnik archive mention many commercial interactions between the Ragusan merchants and the Vlachs (deals, sales, loans, etc.), including the Drobnjak Vlachs. It is normal to presume that in time the Ragusans and the Vlachs also developed matrimonial connections, despite not having the same religion (the Ragusans were Catholic and the Vlachs were mainly Orthodox, with a minority being Catholic). But at this time we don't have any document that registers the marriage of a Ragusan merchant with a Vlach woman. In the documents there are wifes of Ragusan merchants who have Slavic names, but we don't know if they were of Vlach origin or of Slavic origin.

There are no documents where a man from the Martinussio family married a Vlach woman. But I found a document that could prove indirectly a quasi-matrimonial relation between a Martinussio man and a Drobnjak Vlach woman. A fragment of the document is quoted in an article written by a Bosnian historian specialized in the history of the Western Balkan Vlachs.

==============
{automatic translation from Bosnian}
One discussion from June 1405 regarding the issue of ownership of a slave girl might be able to talk about the progenitor of these Dubravčićs. Namely, the dispute was between the Ugarak Vlach [named] Dubravec Ugarčić, his son Tsek, and Mona from Bosnia, otherwise the maid of Mihail Martinušić [Michael de Martinussio], having the new name Vladna. In an effort to recover their former maidservant, Dubravec and his son lost this dispute. It seems justified that these two Ugarak Vlachs could be Dubravac, the progenitor of [the] Dubravčić [family], and his son Tseko (Cechum, Cechus) is actually Kejčin Dubravčić from the famous document of the obligation of loyalty from 1419 (Ceycin Dubraucich).

{original quote in Latin displayed as footnote in the article}
“questio verteretur inter Dubrauez Ugarzich et Cechum eius filium vlachos Ugarçe ex parte una agentes et patentes et Monna in Bosina vocata nunc nominatam Vladnam famulam ser Michaelis de Martinussio” (06. 06. 1405), М. Динић, Из Дубровачког архива, III, Београд 1967, [pages] 84-85.

{automatic translation of the quote}
"the dispute was between Dubrauez Ugarzich and Cechus his son, [both] Ugarak Vlachs, on the one hand, acting and patenting, and Mona from Bosnia, now named Vladna, the servant of Ser Michael de Martinussio"

Есад КУРТОВИЋ (Esad Kurtović)
Дубравчићи, Власи, Угарци са подручја Љубомир (Dubravčići, Ugarci Vlachs from the area of ​​Ljubomir)
https://www.iib.ac.rs/assets/files/IC57(2008)-E.Kurtovic-Dubravici.VlasiUgarciSaPodrucjaLjubomira.pdf (325 KB PDF file)
https://tinyurl.com/ugarci-vlachs-kurtovic (shortened URL of the article hosted on academia.edu site)
==============

So, on 6 June 1405 there was a legal dispute between a male member of the Martinussio family and two Ugarak Vlachs concerning a female slave owned by Martinussio. Esad Kurtović said that the female was a former maidservant [female domestic servant] of the Vlachs, and they wanted her back. But this statement was not present in the original quote displayed as a footnote of the article. I searched on the internet for the book from which the quote was taken and found it. I post below the entire document from the book and then have it automatically translated. I also post a link to a screenshot of the original document.

================
{original document in Latin}
Die VI mensis junii 1405. Cum coram nobili et prudenti viro domino Symeone de Bona honorabili rectore civitatis Ragusii et juratis judicibus ser Dobre de Chalich, ser Stephano de Lucharis, ser Marino de Bona et ser Marino de Chaboga questio verteretur inter Dubrauez Vgarzich et Cechum eius filium vlachos de Vgarce ex parte una agentes et petentes et Monna in Bosina vocata nunc nominatam Vladnam famulam ser Michaelis de Martinussio. Dicebant namque dicti Dubraueç et Cechus dicte Monne: ,,Tua avia (sic) et tua mater fuerunt serve mee empticie et similiter tu es serva mea et recesisti a nobis, petimus quod tu debeas reverti ad nos et nobis servire ut serva nostra." Ad que dicta Monna respondit: ,,Est verum quod avia mea et mater mea et ego fuimus serve vestre; sed vos dedistis me regi Hostoye Bossine et ipse rex Hostoya me franchavit dicendo michi: ,,Aut vis ire ad paterenos aut ad callogerios aut ad dobrognazi (sic) aut Ragusium, ubi vis esse faciam te poni et sociari francham et liberam", et ego ellegi venire Ragusium et sic fecit me sociari hic. Ita quod non habeo plus agere vobiscum nec sum serva vestra quia fui francha a vobis quando dedisti me regi." Et dicti Dubrauez et Çechus dicebant: ,,Est verum quod dedimus te dicto regi et fuit contra voluntatem quia aliud facere non poteramus salvo id quod ipse volebat." Qua petitione et responsionibus auditis dictus dominus rector cum dictis judicibus dixit et per sententiam judicavit eo quia dicti Dubrauez et Çecho (sic) dederunt dictam Monnam dicto regi, ut supra confessi fuerunt, et ipse rex mixit eam francham a servitute Ragusium, ipsam Monnam esse liberam et francham a dictis Dobraueç et eius heredibus et ab eorum servitute et esse in libertate propria et sui juris, ut mulier franchata a servitute qua fuit.

{automatic translation}
On the 6th of June, 1405. When in the presence of the noble and wise man Lord Symeon de Bona, the honorable governor of the city of Ragusa, and the judges of the jury, Ser Dobre de Chalich, Ser Stephano de Lucharis, Ser Marino de Bona, and Ser Marino de Chaboga, the question was turned between Dubravec Ugarčić and his son Tsek, Vlachs from Ugarak, on the one hand, acting and petitioning, and Monna from Bosnia, now named Vladna, the servant of Ser Michael de Martinussio. For the said Dubravec and Tsek said to the said Monna: "Your grandmother and your mother were my servants by purchase, and likewise you are my servant and have withdrawn from us [left us]. We ask that you should return to us and serve us as our servant." To which the said Monna replied: "It is true that my grandmother and my mother and I were your servants; but you gave me to King Ostoja of Bosnia, and King Ostoja himself freed me, saying to me: "Either you want to go to the Paterenos or to the Callogerios or to the Dobrognazi or to Ragusa, wherever you want to be I will make you be placed [there] and associated free and clear", and I chose to come to Ragusa and so he made me be associated here. So that I have no more to do with you nor am I your servant because I was freed from you when you gave me to the king." And the said Dubravec and Tsek said: "It is true that we gave you to the said king and it was against our will because we could not do anything else except what he wanted." Having heard the said petition and the answers, the said lord governor with the judges said and judged by sentence that because the said Dubravec and Tsek gave the said Monna to the said king, as they confessed above, and the king himself freed her from the servitude in Ragusa, that the said Monna itself was free and clear from the said Dubravec and his heirs and from their servitude, and to be in her own freedom and of her right, as a woman freed from the servitude she was in [before].

М. Динић, Из Дубровачког архива, III (M. Dinić, From the Dubrovnik archive, III, p.84-85)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nPU6EYNnOdFz-y38triDiDRhKz8xuakZ/view?usp=sharing (screenshot of the document)
I used the free site New OCR to extract the text from the screenshot, and Google Translate to translate it.
===============

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

Now let's discuss the document from 6 June 1405. The female named Monna from Bosnia was a famula of Michael de Martinussio in Ragusa [Dubrovnik, Croatia]. The term "famula" was used at that time for a woman who was a paid servant, not a slave. See the article below.

==============
[...] I would like to mention that the term famula was never used to designate a slave woman (always [called] ancilla or serva), but always a servant working on the basis of a contract.

Neven Budak
Slavery in late medieval Dalmatia/Croatia: labour, legal status, integration (p. 758)
https://www.academia.edu/7484826/Slavery_in_Late_Medieval_Dalmatia_Croatia
============

However, Monna was a former slave of Dubravec and his son Tsek, who were Ugarak Vlachs. In Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, languages that are almost the same, the name Ugarak has the plural Ugarci. This is pronounced in English as Ugartsi, because the letter "c" in the Slavic languages written with the Latin alphabet is pronounced "ts/tz". So the words Ugarak, Ugarac or Ugarci denote the same people. Similarly we have the Drobnjak Vlachs with the plural Drobnjaci (pronunced like Drobnyatsi in English).

Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about the Vlachs from medieval Bosnia-Herzegovina.

===========
Vlachs in medieval Bosnia and Herzegovina were a Western Balkans population descending from a mixture of Romanized pre-Slavic Romance-speaking peoples and the South Slavs. From the 14th century the ethnic meaning of term "Vlach" was replaced with societal meaning and often meant the Slavic population with similar lifestyle. They practiced transhumance as herdsmen, shepherds, farmers, and in time developed peculiar socio-political organizational units known as katuns. With their caravans, Vlach carried out much of the traffic between Bosnian inland and coastal cities such as Dubrovnik. They also had close contacts and militarily served various Bosnian noble families and kings.
[...]
Vlachs are first mentioned in Bosnian documents in c. 1234 by ban Matej Ninoslav. Sources from 1361, 1385, 1399, 1406, 1407, 1408 and 1417 among others mention them in relation to Bosnian bans and kings. Vlachs in the Bosnian state of Tvrtko I were considered as military element. The relationship of Vlach katuns and feudal holdings can be traced from the 14th century. By 1382 they were under the jurisdiction of the Bosnian ruler, and later assigned to large landowners.
[...]
In 1382, Vukoslav Piščić was named as knez of all Vlachs by King Tvrtko I of Bosnia. As the earliest noble landowners in Hum (later Herzegovina), with katun Tomić, they were assigned to the Sanković noble family. In 1409, when Tvrtko I conquered parts of Rascia and Zeta, Vlachs were inhabiting some 100 katuns. They were mentioned as "Vlachorum congregationes et cetus". In the area around Stolac and Žabljak there were so many Vlachs that at the end of the 15th century the territory was called Donji Vlasi (Lower Vlachs). The Gornji Vlasi (Upper Vlachs) were only mentioned by Mavro Orbini.

The 1376 and 1454 documents by Republic of Ragusa [Dubrovnik] about trade with Bosnian lands mention Vlachi et Bosgnani. In the 1418 document by Grgur Nikolić, Vlachs, Serbs and Ragusians are clearly distinguished. In the 14th century documents, they were treated as shepherds from mountains that separate Croatia and Bosnia. It is argued that some group of Vlachs in the 14th century migrated to Zagora and Cetina county in Croatia, followed by the sudden appearance of stećaks [memorial stones] in the territory they lived on. In 1436, Vlachs are mentioned living around the Cetina, with Croats and Serbs which were part of Count Ivan Frankopan’s estate. At a time of social unrest, the Vlachs often fled to the area of Ragusa or Kotor, served in the military of Ragusa during the Ottoman threat, and when most of Herzegovina was occupied by the Ottomans by 1472, once again fled to Ragusan territory. Some data of historic documents show that a part of Vlachs belonged to Bosnian Church, and they largely contributed to the spread of this church.
[...]
In southeastern Hum (later southeastern Herzegovina) between 1393–1437 many Vlach katuns emerged. The primary lords of the Herzegovinian Vlachs were Bosnian Slavic noble families, the Kosača, Pavlović, Sanković and Nikolić. The Vlachs from Herzegovina sometime plundered lands of Republic of Ragusa in the 14th and 15th century and grew rich by trade of goods between Ragusa and the mines of Bosnia. Vlachs were surnamed Pliščić, Gleđević, Ugarac, Boban, Mirilović, Vragović, Kresojević, Nenković, Bančić, Pilatovac, Pocrnja, Drobnjak and Riđan.[...] Other katun Vlachs were Boljun, Bukvić, Burmaz, Godun, Hardomilić, Horojević, Hrabren, Jurjević, Kersojević, Kićurić, Kujavić, Milobradačić, Perventinić, Pribinović, Rudinjan, Veseličić, Vitković, Vojnović, Vragović, Zotović.
[...]
They lived in small villages called katun whose chieftain were titled katunar. Around them they placed guards; guard stations were called varde or vardišta. They practiced transhumance as herdsmen and shepherds, and became agricultural when settled permanently. They exported livestock products; animal skin, wool, cheese, butter and dried meat. Other exports included honey and wood. The Vlach cheese was reputable because of fat [...]. With their caravans, led by kramar, mostly composed of horses numbering between 10–100, they conducted a large part of the trade between inland and coastal cities. Their military tradition and mobile lifestyle was used by the Bosnian lords and later by the Ottomans. [...] The emergence of the stećaks and their symbolism in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the scholars is often related to Vlach communities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs_in_medieval_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
=============

Now about the "katuns", the communities in which most of the medieval Vlachs lived.

==============
The katun [...] is a rural self-governing community in the Balkans, traditional of the living style of Albanians, Vlachs (in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia), as well as some Slavic communities of hill people. Traditionally, a katun is based on strong kinship ties and the practice of a closed farming economy based on stockbreeding, constantly moving to find pasture. The community based its organizational, political and economic activities on the decisions of a council of elders or a senior member appointed as its leader.
[...]
A katun consisted of a community of several families or households gathered around one leader who directed the organizational, political and economic goals of his group. The main occupation in the katun was always cattle breeding, almost exclusively sheep and to some extent goats, so the community used to be quite mobile.
[...]
The shape and scope of the katuns varied, and their warrior companies were important. These companies used to serve under local Slavic noblemen, who often bore the title of voivode. They sometimes served under foreign militaries, such as the Venetians and the Ottomans. In the end, some katuns managed to expand into larger territories, where there was a lack of influence from the regional or central government and social relations. In the second half of the 14th and 15th centuries, some of these katuns built permanent villages, outside or in the župas [counties] themselves.
[...]
The first mentions of katuns in medieval Bosnia dates back from the 14th century and are related to the Burmazi (1300), Banjani (1319), Drobnjaci (1354), Predojevići (1356), Mirilovići (1366), Zlokruha (1367), Žurovići (1367), Ugarci (1368), Vlahovići (1368), Tomići (1369), Vragovići (1376), Plijeske (1377), Prijeraci (1377), Kresojevići (1379), Perutinići (1386), Hrabreni (1388), Kutlovići (1393) and Maleševci (1397).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katun_(community)
==============

According to the Kurtović article quoted above, the Ugarak Vlachs lived in an area around Ljubinje, a town located 50 km from Dubrovnik. The Drobnjak Vlachs at that time lived also close to Dubrovnik (Ragusa), because they are mentioned in many documents as doing business in Dubrovnik.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubinje

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

After this brief introduction about Vlachs, let's go back to the document.

Dubravec and Tsek said that Monna, along with her mother and grandmother were their slaves. But Monna somehow left them and they wanted her back. Indeed, if a slave woman had a child, the child would automatically become a slave of the same master, so this explains the grandmother-mother-daughter succession in slavery.

But before discussing the document further we must learn about the life of the slaves, particularly women, before slavery was officially banned in Ragusa in 1416. Women were brought as slaves to Dubrovnik in order to work mainly as maids. However, as can be seen from the articles quoted below, sometimes they were also the mistresses of their masters and had children with them.

=======================
{automatic translation from Serbian}

What was the life of slaves in medieval Dubrovnik actually like? Female slaves came to Dubrovnik when they were quite young, to a large extent, most of them were between the ages of 12 and 19. As they were not free, they were not meant to marry, and they could not start a family like most medieval women. Archival documents testify, however, that many female slaves were sold together with their children. They could have had children either from the pre-capture period or with their original masters. There are a number of examples of the release of female slaves with children, probably descendants of the owners.
[...]
The sexual exploitation of female slaves in medieval Dubrovnik was present and can be seen in the mirror of archival material as it looked like. That the slaves were sometimes
also the mistresses of their masters is also proven by the following, very specific case, but even more so by the result of the court case that followed. Namely, if it were determined that the women were right, that is, that the masters really kept them as lovers and not as slaves, then they could be freed, as was determined in the case of the slave Stana. Her master bought her and took her to Italy, and Stana herself was originally from Bosnia, that is from Rudina, where most of the slaves came from, especially in the 1380s. Stana was Radil's daughter and was bought from her parents. She refused to return to her previous master, when she returned to Dubrovnik from Apulia [Italy], precisely because she considered herself a free woman since she was his lover and that he kept her as such, and not as a slave as he had bought her. The sworn members of the Dubrovnik court decided that Stana was a free woman, and she became one on 18 July 1283.
[...]
As elsewhere in the Mediterranean and in Europe at the time, slaves were freed in Dubrovnik as well. These writings existed throughout the Middle Ages, but were most numerous at the end of the 13th century. Liberation used to follow for a larger sum of money, but often for the same reasons as in Italy or Spain. Emancipation was a deed pleasing to God, for the salvation of the soul and atonement for the sins committed by the former slave owner. However, there are significantly more cases when this is done for a certain amount of money. There were also cases when slaves, especially female slaves, received something else along with their freedom so that they could start a new life in freedom. Most of the freedmen
continued their lives as servants, mostly in Dubrovnik [Ragusa], and there were also examples of slaves who married and continued to live outside the Republic [of Ragusa] or returned to their native land.

Борис Стојковски (Boris Stojkovski)
Положај Робља у Средњовековном Дубровнику Између Легислативе и Праксе (The Position of Slaves in Medieval Dubrovnik Between Legislation and Practice)
https://tinyurl.com/slaves-medieval-ragusa (shortened URL of the article hosted on academia.edu site)
====================

====================
The oldest preserved testament from a Dalmatian city, written in 918 by Andrew, the prior of Zadar, reveals more evidence on early medieval slavery. Andrew belonged to a rich family which in his lifetime founded the biggest monastery in the town, the Benedictine abbey of St. Chrisogonus. His wealth consisted of five houses, numerous vineyards, lands and cattle. He either freed or left to his heirs thirty male and female slaves.
[...]
A somewhat later testament of Peter, the prior of Split, sheds some light on the position of some of these women. Peter freed his daughter Gadatia together with her mother, his aulea ancilla. It seems that some slaves, especially female, had a chance to get integrated into their master’s family, although we shall never know how they were accepted and treated by other family members, first of all their half-brothers and sisters with whom they had to share their father’s inheritance. The somewhat later example of Dobromir, a Croatian slave freed in 1125 by his Venetian master Peter Staniario (Stanier), indicates the possibility of full integration into the master’s family, since not only did Dobromir have the right to use the family name of the Staniarii, but his descendants, as it seems, became by the begining of the thirteenth century the only bearers of this noble name. It is true that this case is of Venetian, and not Dalmatian origin, but we might assume that at that time cultural differences between the regions were even smaller than in the later centuries. The most valuable source for investigating slavery in Croatia is the so called Cartulary of St. Peter de Gumay, actually a montaneum [cartulary, medieval manuscript] belonging to a Benedictine monastery situated on Croatian territory, in the vicinity of Split.
[...]
From the begining of the 14th century in Dubrovnik there was a clear increase in the number of persons who entered service on the basis of a contract and for a certain period of time. Their number rose suddenly in the second decade of the century. During the duration of the contract, these persons were deprived of most of their rights, and were under the full authority of their masters. Moreover, unless specifically prohibited by the contract, they could have been sold to third persons, which indeed happened very often. Some of them entered into lifelong service, which put them in almost the same position as «real» slaves. The majority of women, however, entered into a time limited service, with an average duration of about twelve and a half years. There was no significant difference in the duration of the contracts between those women who received some salary for their work, and those who worked only for clothing, food, and shelter.
[...]
The freedom of enslaved persons was further restricted by the right of the master to decide about their marriages and about his ownership of children born by slaves. Although it was possible for a slave woman to marry a free man, their children would belong to the slave’s master.

Neven Budak
Slavery in late medieval Dalmatia/Croatia: labour, legal status, integration
https://www.academia.edu/7484826/Slavery_in_Late_Medieval_Dalmatia_Croatia
https://www.persee.fr/doc/mefr_1123-9883_2000_num_112_2_9067
==================

==================
Economically speaking, Bosnia (together with Serbia) gained suddenly in importance when ancient mining sites for precious metals were rediscovered in the thirteenth century. The large deposits of silver, gold, copper, iron, lead, and other ores helped to meet the demand for precious metals, spurred by the increased use of money in western Europe, that could no longer be filled by existing mines north of the Alps. Yet Bosnia did not really benefit from this lucky coincidence. Exports from these mines, silver in particular, were immediately monopolized by Ragusan merchants and formed the basis for Ragusa’s rise to become the most important trade partner and transshipment point for long-distance trade on the eastern Adriatic coast. From Novo Brdo in Serbia and Srebrenica in Bosnia, the two most important mines of the Balkan region, Ragusan traders brought precious metals down the Neretva River to the Adriatic, and shipped them from Ragusa on Ragusan or Venetian ships, first to Venice and from there to other places in western Europe, north and south of the Alps. Most servi [male slaves] and ancillae [female slaves] from Bosnia (or Serbia) who were brought to Ragusa took the same route. Merchants of precious metals traveled side by side with kidnappers and slave traders. They may even have been the same people.

Juliane Schiel
The Ragusan “Maids-of-all-Work”
https://brill.com/view/journals/jgs/5/2/article-p139_2.xml?language=en
===================

===================
Ragusans favored women as slaves overwhelmingly. Nearly 90 percent of the slave charters recorded sales of women. The mountainous land above the Dalmatian coast suffered levies on its manpower from Roman times through the era of Turkish domination. This thirteenth-century levy differed from the others only in that it drew upon the women of the region, not the men. The women, like the men, impressive in their size and strength, suggest by their greater numbers that urban domestic slavery was considered to be as well, or better, served by female laborers. Women might be housed within the domestic establishment. They stood in ranking order to the ancilla babiça [mammy or wet nurse], nutrix [wet nurse], and baiula [governess]of the household. They were thought more docile and tractable than men, and, deprived of a family network of their own, probably proved so in day-to-day life. The needs of a domestic household meshed readily with those of the commercial establishment housed with it. The enslaved mountain women could lift bales, clean, wrap, sort, and process exportable wax, skins, and other goods with no more complex skills than those they were acquiring to serve domestic needs. Equal to the work, they appeared to be easily controlled and motivated through a system of incentives and rewards.

The conjunction of a recruitment policy for itinerant bachelor artisans and the importing of female slaves insured urban order and a degree of tranquility but simultaneously exacerbated the market problem. Female slaves provided some bachelors with a domestic establishment, sex, and companionship. The traveling years, when young men made their fortunes abroad in prospering towns like Ragusa, were being lengthened in these decades, and loneliness accompanied by alienation was a possible source of civic disturbance. A temporary household with a slave remedied this problem. Francho Sacchetti, the son of a Florentine in residence in Ragusa in the early decades of the fourteenth century, may have had a slave girl named Maria for his mother. His birth predated his father’s marriage considerably, although he was an accepted member of his father’s married house-hold. As Eugene Genovese has remarked about such relationships, they were commonplace in slave systems and to be expected in the atmosphere of intimacy encouraged by domestic slavery. Yet few offspring of such liaisons fared as well as Sacchetti.

Susan Mosher Stuard
To Town to Serve: Urban Domestic Slavery in Medieval Ragusa
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/oa_edited_volume/chapter/3628843
====================

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

Let's continue with the document.

Monna, the former slave, responds to the accusations of her former owners, the two Ugarak Vlachs. She says that she was given by them to the Bosnian King Ostoja and the King freed her. Then the King presented her four options from which to choose her future as a free woman:

1) go to the Paterenos [actually Patarenes]
2) go to the Callogerios
3) go to the Dobrognazi
4) go to Ragusa

The Patarenos were the followers of the pataria, a Catholic reform movement which lasted from 1057 to 1075.

===============
The pataria was an eleventh-century Catholic movement focused on the city of Milan in northern Italy, which aimed to reform the clergy and ecclesiastic government within the city and its ecclesiastical province, in support of papal sanctions against simony and clerical marriage. Those involved in the movement were called patarini (singular patarino), patarines or patarenes, a word perhaps chosen by their opponents, the etymology of which is uncertain. The movement, associated with urban unrest in the city of Milan, is generally considered to have begun in 1057 and ended in 1075.

The name Patarenes has also been used for the unconnected earlier Bogomils and the later Albigensians or Cathars, who in contrast were anti-papal and non-Catholic. These were declared heretical sects. They are considered by some as a precursor to the Protestant Reformation, however some sources fail to differentiate these different groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pataria

{automatic translation from Italian}
In 1089 , Pope Urban II ruled that sacraments imparted by simoniacal and corrupt priests were equally valid. This decision completely dismantled the Patarine theses. The disorientation of the Patarines worsened with Callistus II, when it was realized that the Church of the poor would never arise, indeed the Pope had begun to reintegrate the old members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that the Patarines had fought. At this point a split occurred among the supporters of the Pataria: some accepted the compromise by returning to the ranks of the "reformed" Church; others left for the pilgrimage, took up the life of a hermit or joined the first crusade; still others, convinced that the agreement between the Church and the Empire was the symptom of the fact that the ecclesiastical hierarchy was by its nature corrupted by worldly goods, embraced heretical theses, approaching Catharism and being openly persecuted for this from 1185 by Pope Lucius III.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patarini

{automatic translation from Italian}
Numerous late antique and medieval Christological doctrines are commonly referred to as Manichaean. This list includes the Priscillians (4th century - Spain), the Paulicians and the Tondrakians (Syria and Armenia and then Thrace from the 7th to the 12th century), the Bogomils (according to the Greek Church) and Paterenes (according to the Latin Church) of the Balkans (from the 10th to the 16th century) and finally the Publicans (distortion of Paulicians), Patari and Cathars in Germany, France and central-northern Italy.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichei_medievali
===============

Of course, in 1405, after more than 300 years from the beginning of the movement, there were no Patarenes left. In the document written in Latin, the name was used probably for the followers of the Bosnian Church.

===============
The Bosnian Church (Serbo-Croatian: Crkva bosanska/Црква босанска) was a schismatic Christian church in medieval Bosnia and Herzegovina that was independent from and considered heretical by both the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Historians traditionally connected the church with the Bogomils, although this has been challenged and is now rejected by the majority of scholars. Adherents of the church called themselves simply Krstjani ("Christians") or Dobri Bošnjani ("Good Bosnians"). The church's organization and beliefs are poorly understood, because few if any records were left by church members and the church is mostly known from the writings of outside sources — primarily Catholic ones. The monumental tombstones called stećak that appeared in medieval Bosnia, as well as Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, are sometimes identified with the Bosnian Church.
[...]
The bid to consolidate Catholic rule in Bosnia in the 12th to 13th centuries proved difficult. The Banate of Bosnia held strict trade relations with the Republic of Ragusa, and Bosnia's bishop was under the jurisdiction of Ragusa. This was disputed by the Hungarians, who tried to achieve their jurisdiction over Bosnia's bishops, but Bosnia's first Ban Kulin averted that. In order to conduct a crusade against him, the Hungarians turned to Rome, complaining to Pope Innocent III that the Kingdom of Bosnia was a centre of heresy, based on the refuge that some Cathars (also known as Bogomils or Patarenes) had found there. To avert the Hungarian attack, Ban Kulin held a public assembly on 8 April 1203 and affirmed his loyalty to Rome in the presence of an envoy of the Pope, while the faithful abjured their mistakes and committed to following the Catholic doctrine. Yet, in practice this was ignored. After the death of Kulin in 1204, a mission was sent to convert Bosnia to Rome but failed.
[...]
It was not until Pope Nicholas' Bull Prae Cunctis in 1291 that the Franciscan-led Inquisition was imposed on Bosnia. Bogomilism was eradicated in Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire in the 13th century, but survived in Bosnia and Herzegovina until the Ottoman Empire gained control of the region in 1463.
[...]
According to Bašić, the Bosnian Church was dualist in character, and so was neither a schismatic Catholic nor Orthodox Church. According to Mauro Orbini (d. 1614), the Patarenes and the Manicheans were two Christian religious sects in Bosnia. The Manicheans had a bishop called djed and priests called strojnici (strojniks), the same titles ascribed to the leaders of the Bosnian Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Church
================

What is interesting is the fact that Ostoja the Bosnian King apparently was a member of the Bosnian Church himself. And he did not like that members of that church were being captured and sold as slaves to Ragusa [Dubrovnik], so he complained in 1401 to the Ragusan rulers. So, it is not surprising at all that he freed Monna from slavery if she also was a member of the Bosnian Church, as his advice that she could go to the Patarenes indicates.

===============
Stephen Ostoja (Serbo-Croatian: Stjepan Ostoja / Стјепан Остоја; died September 1418) was King of Bosnia from 1398 to 1404 and from 1409 to 1418. He was a member of the House of Kotromanić, most likely son of Vladislaus and brother of King Tvrtko I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostoja_of_Bosnia

{automatic translation from Bosnian}
In the political life of Bosnia, Ostoja appeared late as a pretender, in 1397, and he was supported by the most powerful big men Sandalj Hranić Kosača , Pavle Radinović and Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić. [...] Two years after coming to the throne [in 1398], he complained to the people of Dubrovnik about the sale of Bosnians into slavery in that city. Since Roman Catholics could not be sold as slaves, it is assumed that they were members of the Bosnian Church, to which Ostoja himself certainly belonged, as the only non-Catholic king of Bosnia. In this endeavor, he was supported by the Bosnian Grand Duke Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, also a member of the Bosnian Church. There was a short war with Dubrovnik, but their success was evident sixteen years later, when the sale of slaves was banned in Dubrovnik.

https://bs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stjepan_Ostoja,_kralj_Bosne
===============

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 5

The second option given to Monna was to go to the Callogerios. This was a monastic order belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church and who also accepted females as nuns.

=================
The Caloyers (Greek: καλόγερος, kalos ghérôn, "good old men"), also spelled Calogers or Calogeri, were Greek monks who followed the rule of Saint Basil. Both male and female, they inhabited Mount Athos (only men), and disseminated throughout many of the churches of the East. They lived either in monasteries, as at Mount Athos and Meteora or insulated in hermitages, devoted to agriculture and prayer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloyers
==================

The third option is by far the most interesting one. The freed Monna could go to the Dobrognazi. Who were these Dobrognazi? They were the Drobnjak Vlachs. I spoke in part 2 of this message about the fact that the plural of the name Drobnjak is Drobnjaci, pronunced in English as Drobnyatsi. Those that wrote the documents in Latin always wanted that he names transcribed in Latin sound just like the original. In Ragusa, Latin was the official written language for the documents and Italian was the spoken language. The name Dobrognazi sounds in Latin and Italian just like Dobronyatsi. Of course Drobnjaci (Drobnyatsi) and Dobronjaci (Dobronyatsi) are not completely identical, but both names refer to the same Vlach tribe and this is a well established fact. In the medieval documents, the Drobnjak Vlachs frequently appear with a slightly modified name, because the majority of the documents were written in Latin and not all those that wrote the documents knew how to transcribe the Drobnjak name. So, the various names like Dobrognazi, Drobgnazi, Droggnazi, Drognazi, Droghgnazi used in Latin documents are the transcriptions of the name Drobnjak or its plural Drobnjaci. This can be seen in the article about the Drobnjaci Vlachs linked below, in which there are quotes from many documents written in Latin.

You can see in the screenshot below the names Drobnjak and Drobnjaci written in the Serbian text in Cyrillic alphabet, and also in Latin alphabet (used by the Croatian and Bosnian languages) added by me. In the footnotes you can see three variants of these names (Dropgnach, Drobgnach and Dobrognazi) written in the Latin alphabet used in the medieval Ragusan documents. The screenshot is of the page 119 from the article "Средњовјековни Дробњаци у изворима и литератури с посебним освртом на Гацко" ("Medieval Drobnjaci in sources and literature with special reference to Gacko") written by Радмило Б. Пекић (Radmilo B. Pekić).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Od4K2lSkVnEtV4hccZZGReJDoHUPtSIx/view?usp=sharing (screenshot)

https://tinyurl.com/medieval-vlachs-gacko (shortened URL of the article hosted on academia.edu)

There are many other variants of the transcribed Drobnjak name encountered in the medieval archives.

=================
The tribal name Drobnjaci (Drobignaçich, Drobgnach, Droggnaz, Dropgnach, Drupinach, Idobrignach) in Herzegovina can be followed from 14th century Ragusan sources: Dragossius Costadinich vlachus Drobignaçich (1365), Goitan Banilouich et Bogosclauus Dessiminich vlacchi de chatono de Dobrgnaçi (1376), Vulchota filius Dobroslaui Drobgnach (1377), Dubraueç Chostadinich et Jurech Bogutouich Drobnachi (1377), and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drobnjaci
=================

The fact that the King of Bosnia gave Monna the possibility to go to the Drobnjak Vlachs means that this was a safe option for her, that she would be protected there. At that time there were many other Vlach tribes and katuns in Bosnia, as was mentioned in the above quotes from the articles about the Bosnian Vlachs and their katuns. The explanation for the Drobnjaks being chosen as the only Vlach option is that Monna's family was originally from the Drobnjak tribe.

The fourth and last option the King gave Monna was to go to Ragusa. And this is the option that she chose in the end. She was a free woman and she could be hired as a paid servant by a Ragusan family, which is what happened. Monna was hired by Michael de Martinussio. We don't know why she chose this option, maybe she wanted to start a new life in the biggest city of the region, and this may explain why she changed her name from Monna to Vladna. It is also possible that she wanted to earn some money before returning to the territory of the Drobnjak tribe.

The document with the legal dispute continues with the fact that the two Ugarak Vlachs acknowleged that they had given Monna to the Bosnian king, although it was against their will, because they had no other choice. The Ragusan judges ruled in favor of Monna, so her freedom was officially confirmed.

We can only speculate what happened next. We can presume that Monna/Vladna was in a relationship with Michael de Martinussio and they had children. Some of their male children could have returned to the Drobnjak tribe when they became adults, or Monna herself returned with her children to the territory of the Drobnjak tribe. But it is plausible that these male children were the ones who brought into the Drobnjak tribe the presumed I-FGC22045 haplogroup of the Martinussio family, inherited from Gervase the Norman count of Ragusa [Dubrovnik].

In conclusion, the route taken by the I-FGC22045 haplogroup from its place of origin to its destination is almost confirmed. I say almost, because the link between the Martinussio family and the Drobnjak tribe must be confirmed not only by historical documents, but also by genetic testing, just like the link between the Martinussio family and the Montfort family.

Scandinavians > Normans > Ragusan Merchants > Balkan Vlachs

Scandinavians > Gervase the Norman Count > Martinussio Family > Drobnjak Vlachs

In my opinion, the more detailed route is the following :

Scandinavia > France (Montfort Family) > England (Montfort Family) > Ragusa (Gervase of Tilbury and Martinussio Family) > Balkans (Drobnjak Vlachs)

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a four part messsage.


PART 1

The I-FGC22061 haplogroup is the South-Slavic branch of I-FGC22045 and is associated with the Novljani brotherhood of the medieval Drobnjak tribe, possibly originating from the area of Novalja, a town on the island of Pag. This theory is supported by the fact that Pag was a center of salt production, and the Drobnjak tribe, like all the Vlach tribes, was involved in the transport of salt inland, where it was lacking. As I already said, the I-FGC22045 haplogroup seems to be connected with the production and transport of salt in the Middle Ages.

Novalja on the map:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HOH9-BNcnx8EJ2CNtQbRrT5ghq0WQSeK/view?usp=sharing (screenshot)

===============
Pag [...] is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea. It is the fifth-largest island of the Croatian coast and the one with the longest coastline. [...] There are two towns on the island, Pag and Novalja, as well as many smaller villages and tourist places. Pag is the only Croatian island that is administratively divided between two counties. Its northern part belongs to Lika-Senj County, while the central and southern parts belong to Zadar County. Pag belongs to the north Dalmatian archipelago and it extends northwest–southeast along the coast, forming the Velebit Channel.
[...]
Throughout its history, Pag has been connected with salt production, a traditional activity that has been practiced for more than a thousand years. While the earliest historical records of salt production on the island date to 999, it is believed salt was produced on Pag in Roman times. The origin of the town of Pag is connected with the exploitation of natural suitably shallow coves within the closed bay (the so-called Valle di Pago) for salt manufacturing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pag_(island)

Dalmatia is one of the four historical regions of Croatia, alongside Central Croatia, Slavonia, and Istria, located on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. Dalmatia is a narrow belt stretching from the island of Rab in the north to the Bay of Kotor in the south. The Dalmatian Hinterland ranges in width from fifty kilometres in the north, to just a few kilometres in the south; it is mostly covered by the rugged Dinaric Alps. Seventy-nine islands (and about 500 islets) run parallel to the coast, the largest (in Dalmatia) being Brač, Pag, and Hvar. The largest city is Split, followed by Zadar, Šibenik, and Dubrovnik.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatia
=============

I already discussed the Novalja - Novljani (Drobnjak) connection in a message posted on the Molgen forum:

==============
The first Drobnjak mentioned in the documents is Batigna Drobognago in 1285 in Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The Vlach prince Nikola Rašković Drobnjak lived around 1450 in Gacko (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and is at this time the only confirmed medieval man with a haplogroup which is a branch of I-FGC22045. The haplogroup seems to be associated with the Novljani brotherhood of the Drobnjak tribe. This name is derived from the name of a place (town or village) that contained the Serbo-Croatian word root “Nov”, that is “New” in English. On the Adriatic Sea coast there are multiple places having such a name, for example Novi Vinodolski and Novalja in Croatia and Herceg Novi in Montenegro.
[...]
My father has two distant autosomal matches ( 8 cM) with ancestors from Novalja, a town on the Croatian island of Pag which is located just opposite the Lika-Senj county where my father has many autosomal matches. These two matches are 1st cousins and share two great-grandparents named Grgo Dabo and Marija Peranić from Novalja.
[...]
Novalja is a good candidate for the place of origin of the Novljani brotherhood [of the Drobnjak tribe], because its inhabitants are called Novljani and the island of Pag has a long history of producing salt from sea water.

https://forum.molgen.org/index.php/topic,14941.msg588748.html#msg588748
==============

At that time I didn't search to see if there is a connection between the island of Pag (where the town Novalja is located) and the Normans. But to my surprise, searching recently on Google for <<pag island "normans">>, the first result is exactly that connection, namely the Norman leader known as Amicus of Giovinazzo. The town of Giovinazzo is located in southeastern Italy, 20 km from Bari.

Giovinazzo on the map
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t-p4ryZJJLhliTyLfqYi3izvVT8cGRzV/view?usp=sharing (screenshot)

=============
Amicus of Giovinazzo, also Amicus II (fl. 1063–1090), was a Norman nobleman and military leader during the Norman conquest of southern Italy. He was the count of Molfetta from 1068 until his death and of Giovinazzo from 1068 until 1073. He came from a prominent family often opposed to the rule of the Hautevilles. In 1067–68, 1072–73 and 1079–80 he took part in rebellions against the Hauteville Duke of Apulia. In 1067 and 1079 he received aid from Byzantium against the duke.

In 1074–75, Amicus invaded Croatia, more specifically Dalmatia (theme), in support of the Byzantines in a dispute with the Croatian king. He captured the king, Petar Krešimir IV and probably intended to carve out for himself a principality there, but he was defeated by the Republic of Venice and returned to Italy. In 1081–82, Amicus participated in the invasion of Byzantium. He led the right wing at the Battle of Dyrrhachium [Durrës, Albania].
[...]
Amicus II belonged to a family known to modern scholars as the "sons of Amicus". His grandfather and namesake, Amicus I, lived in Normandy before 1030. Two of the latter's sons, Walter and Peter I, arrived in Italy before 1038. Walter was the father of Amicus II and Peter of Lesina. Amicus was thus the first cousin of Peter I's sons, Geoffrey of Taranto and Peter II of Trani. The family [of Amicus] was related—how is not known—to the Hauteville family.
[...]
Amicus acquired lands in several places across southern Italy, as well as the lordships of Giovinazzo, Molfetta, Spinazzola and Terlizzi. [...] Amicus' family was active in the conquest of Apulia. His cousin, Peter II, took Trani in 1054, and his cousin, Geoffrey, took Taranto in 1063 and Otranto in 1064. These conquests were made on their own initiative and the cities were held by them by right of conquest. According to the Anonymous Chronicle of Bari, Amicus entered the small coastal town of Giovinazzo in 1068, a euphemistic way of saying he conquered it from the Byzantines. Amicus may have been given Giovinazzo (or its tribute) as early as 1058. That he did not, however, possess it at the start of the rebellion of 1067 is suggested by the fact that the Norman chronicler Amatus of Montecassino does not refer to him by any territory, but simply as Ami de Galtier, that is, Amicus son of Walter.

Likewise in 1068, with the rebellion crushed, Amicus' father-in-law fled to Greece and Amicus took over the port city of Molfetta. Amicus' was pardoned after his failed rebellion and forfeited only some minor properties. By October 1069 he had acquired the lordship of Spinazzola, probably by ducal grant. [...] Amicus or else his son Godfrey was responsible for the Norman-era fortification of Terlizzi, of which only the square tower still stands.

Following the second failed rebellion in 1073, however, Robert Guiscard confiscated Giovinazzo (which had gone over to his allegiance during the revolt). Amicus did retain Spinazzola, Terlizzi (acquired sometime earlier) and Molfetta after 1073.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_of_Giovinazzo
===============

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

As I already said, the purpose of this genealogical research is to find who actually brought the Scandinavian I-FGC22045 haplogroup to the Balkans. This could be a single man, or more probably multiple men related on their strict paternal line. These men were very probably Normans with a paternal Scandinavian ancestry. But we must also take into account the fact that the I-FGC22045 haplogroup has three branches:

1) South-Slavic branch (I-FGC22061) with many sub-branches (I-PH3895, I-FGC22054, I-FT36856, I-Y58427, etc.)
2) North-Slavic branch (I-FGC22052) => exact haplogroup has not been determined at this time
3) Albanian branch (I-FGC22045*) => exact haplogroup has not been determined at this time

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22045/story

https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-FGC22045/

The three branches have a common Scandinavian ancestor, who according to YFull lived around 800 CE (1200 ybp = years before present [time]). The Y chromosome of this common ancestor was passed to his male descendants from the Balkans and the new mutations that appeared on the chromosome caused the haplogroup to split into two branches, the Slavic and the Albanian ones around 900 CE (1100 ybp). The Slavic branch then very soon split into the South-Slavic and North-Slavic branches. After that, the South-Slavic branch further split into multiple sub-branches. These time periods are only estimations based on the frequency of the naturally occurring mutations on the Y chromosome, so they may differ more or less from the exact time when the splitting of branches and the creation of the new haplogroups really happened.

Scandinavian branch => common Balkan branch => Albanian branch + Slavic branch => Albanian branch + North-Slavic branch + South-Slavic branch

According to the time estimates provided by YFull, between the splitting of the Albanian branch and of the common Slavic branch from the common Balkan branch there is a time period of approximately 100 years. This can mean two things:

1) The Albanian branch appeared first in the Balkans and then from it appeared the Slavic branch after 100 years. So we must search for a man of Scandinavian origin who was present in Albania (Southern Balkans) and having the Albanian branch haplogroup. Then after 100 years one of his descendants migrated to the Western Balkans (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia) having an Y chromosome with the mutation associated with the common Slavic branch (I-FGC22052).

2) The split between the Albanian branch and the common Slavic branch did not occur in the Balkans, but outside the Balkans. Then two men of Scandinavian origin, related on their paternal side, brought these two branches to the Balkans at two different times separated by 100 years.

So, we must find a family of Scandinavian paternal origin who was present in the Middle Ages in the Western Balkans (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro) and in Albania.

From my research, this family was the Montfort family of Norman origin, whose members are mentioned in medieval documents as being present in the Western Balkans and Albania on their way to the Crusades or as participants to the battles between the Normans and the Byzantine Empire. There was a Robert de Montfort who fought with the Normans against the Byzantines and died in 1108 in Albania. His gravestone was discovered near Ballsh, a town 30 km from Vlorë, a seaport that was under Norman rule for 4 years. Then in 1202 the brothers Simon and Guy de Montfort, participants in the Fourth Crusade, were mentioned as refusing to take part in the siege of Zara [today Zadar, Croatia]. We can see that there are almost 100 years between the presence of Robert de Montfort-sur-Risle in Albania and the presence of Simon de Montfort-l'Amaury and his brother Guy in Croatia. There was also Gervase the Norman count of Ragusa in 1186-1190 and his descendants from the Martinussio family who are mentioned for a few hundred years in the Ragusan [Dubrovnik] documents. In my opinion Gervase was a member of the Montfort family. Some say that the two Norman families with a similar name, Montfort-sur-Risle and Montfort-l'Amaury, were not related, but Gervase is recorded in the documents with two pseudonyms, Gervase de Rille (alternative spelling of Risle) and Gervase Naymeri (alternative spelling of Amaury) that may suggest that the two families were in fact related. I already spoke about this in detail on the Molgen forum thread, from page 2 on.

https://forum.molgen.org/index.php/topic,14941.15.html

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

But of course, the Montfort family was not the only Norman family present in the Balkans at that time. The Giovinazzo family was also present, and is mentioned both in the Western Balkans (Dalmatia) and in Albania.

So, back to Amicus of Giovinazzo. He led a Norman campaign against Dalmatia apparently in order to depose the King Petar Krešimir IV because of a conflict with the Catholic Church. This was demonstrated by the historians as being not true, the real purpose being to acquire the Dalmatian lands for himself, after losing many of his Italian possessions to the vassals of Robert Guiscard.

==============
Amicus activity in Croatia at the coastal part of the region Dalmatia, during the period from the fall of Petar Krešimir IV (d. 1074) to the coronation of Demetrius Zvonimir (1075), in the scholarship was initially explained as an involvement on the behalf of the Holy See against Petar Krešimir IV due to supposed antagonism among the local clergy towards church reforms. [...] At the time, the papal legate to Croatia was Gerard, who, as the archbishop of Siponto, was almost a neighbour of Amicus in southern Italy. It was probably his idea to use Amicus to help place Zvonimir, considered an ally of Rome, on the throne.
[...]
He [Amicus] embarked in the spring of 1074, probably from Molfetta [Italy], which was in his control, or possibly from Ancona further up the coast. By 19 March, the Normans occupied several coastal Dalmatian city-states, including Split, Trogir, Zadar and Biograd. As the next target, according to a late source, Amicus attacked the coast of the Gulf of Quarnero [Kvarner Gulf]. Between 14 April and 9 May [...] he besieged the town of Rab on the island of the same name. The Miracula Sancti Christophori of Bishop Juraj Koštica, written towards 1308, reports that "a large group of Varangians" assaulted Rab. He provides dates, but no year, although from context it appears it can refer only to the expedition of Amicus who, as a Norman, could be described as a "Varangian" (Viking).

In November 1074, Gerard [the papal legate] held another synod at Split to reaffirm the decisions of 1060. According to a synodal document, it took place "at the time when duke Amicus took the Croatian king prisoner." Although it does not name the king, Petar Krešimir must be meant. A letter of Pope Gregory VII to Stephen II, bishop of Zadar, dated to November 1074, also mentions the capture of Petar Krešimir by Amicus. This is the last mention of Krešimir in any source. According to one source, it was while capturing the stronghold of Novalja on the island of Pag that Amicus captured the king. [...] By 8 February 1075, however, Amicus had been substantially defeated through Venetian intervention. He had lost control of the Dalmatian cities of Split, Trogir, Zadar and Biograd, for on that date the Venetian doge, Domenico Selvo, exacted an oath from four cities that they would never again invite the Normans in.
[...]
Having made his peace [with Robert Guiscard], which turned out to be permanent, Amicus took part in Robert Guiscard's attack on the Byzantine Empire in 1081, which culminated in the fall of Dyrrhachium [today Durrës, Albania] in February 1082 after an eight-month siege. He led the right wing [of the Norman army] at the Battle of Dyrrhachium.
[...]
Amicus was married to a daughter (name unknown) of Count Joscelin of Molfetta. With her he had at least one son named Godfrey or Geoffrey (fl. 1089–1105). Having in effect acquired Molfetta through Godfrey's mother, Amicus was able to pass it on to his son despite the loss of his other lands through confiscation for rebellion. Godfrey also inherited from his father the castle of Terlizzi, a connection to Dalmatia and possibly a rebellious spirit. He was returning from Dalmatia, quite possibly from exile, when he passed through the Tremiti Islands in 1092 or 1093.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_of_Giovinazzo
================

The single source that links Amicus of Giovinazzo with Novalja is the book "History of Dalmatia" written by Giuseppe Praga. There is an English translation published in 1993, but it's not available for download, just like the Italian version from 1981 ("Storia di Dalmazia"), so I cannot provide the quote from the book. But G. Praga being an archivist and historian knew the value of documents in supporting historical research, so this information seems plausible, although it is not confirmed by other sources.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Praga#La_%22Storia_di_Dalmazia%22
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/fWZpAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Regardless of the fact that the information provided by G. Praga is true or not, it is an historical fact that the Normans led by Amicus di Giovinazzo ruled in Dalmatia over some of the islands and coastal cities for almost a year between 1074-1075. As such, they also probably ruled over the island of Pag, where the town of Novalja is located.

============
During the 1074 invasion of the Normans [in Dalmatia] died Petar Krešimir IV [King of Dalmatia and Croatia], and in February 1075 the Venetians banished the Normans and secured the Dalmatian cities for themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Dalmatia
============

The documented presence of the Giovinazzo family of Norman origin in the Western Balkans and Albania spans almost 20 years. It began in 1074-1075 with the invasion and conquest of a part of Dalmatia [Croatia], continued in 1081-1082 with the invasion of Byzantium and the Battle of Dyrrhachium [Durrës, Albania] and the last mention is the return of Godfrey of Giovinazzo from an exile in Dalmatia in 1091-1092. Very probably Amicus of Giovinazzo and his son Godfrey were not the only members of the Giovinazzo family who were present at that time in the Balkans.

Could Amicus of Giovinazzo be the man who brought the I-FGC22045 to the Balkans? It is possible, but the problem of this hypothesis is the fact that after 1092 there is no mention of the Giovinazzo family in the Balkans. However, according to his Wikipedia article, Amicus of Giovinazzo was related to the Hauteville family, and the Hauteville family is mentioned as participating in the battles against the Byzantine empire in the Balkans for more than 100 years, between 1081-1186.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Norman_wars

I maintain my theory that the Slavic branch of I-FGC22045 was brought to the Balkans by Gervase of Tilbury, who in my opinion was Gervase the Norman count of Ragusa, a member of the Montfort family. In this case the Albanian branch of I-FGC22045 could be descended from Robert de Montfort, who came to the Balkans 100 years before Gervase. But it is also possible that the Albanian branch could be descended from Amicus of Giovinazzo or a member of the Hauteville family, if this family was related on the paternal side to the Montfort family. There could be other genealogical combinations that could explain the origin of the branches of I-FGC22045, but at this time all is pure speculation and only DNA testing can solve this enigma.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

I was waiting for the Big Y result of G. Berqkvist, who has the I-S14887 intermediate haplogroup, received because he has taken the Family Finder test at FTDNA. He also has 8 cM of shared autosomal DNA with my father. But he did not order the Big Y test, as he told me he would do a few months ago, when I spoke to him by e-mail. I contacted him today and he told me that he had other, more important expenses, so the Big Y test was postponed. That's not a problem, I understand the situation, everyone has his own priorities when it comes to spending money. There are many other Scandinavians with the intermediate I-S14887 haplogroup who are Y-STR matches for my father and also didn't buy the Big Y test after receiving the intermediate haplogroup for free. Let's hope some of them will eventually buy it, because this is the best method to research distant paternal ancestry. Until then I can only use my father's autosomal matches from Scandinavia to see if I can find a common ancestor of these matches, who is probably also an ancestor of my father.

I updated the map with my father's Y-STR matches on FTDNA who can have an Y haplogroup closely related to I-FGC22045. I also changed the color scheme.

Address of the map:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1tAy-Hp70_oDeBaA0jJKE1W2flO8iS38&usp=sharing

Screenshot with the legend of the map:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gHcgJvgWT_iTBuZyYT8dlYxP5BttizKq/view?usp=sharing

The current situation is like this:

1) FTDNA has finished delivering the free intermediate Y haplogroup for those who bought the Family Finder (FF) test in the past. The vast majority of my father's Y-STR matches who are on the map and bought the FF test did so before 2015, when FTDNA used an old chip for sequencing DNA. These matches will not receive an intermediate Y haplogroup like I-S14887, but will stay with their current I-M253 haplogroup. If they want to know their precise haplogroup, they must buy the Big Y test.

2) FTDNA has begun delivering the free intermediate Y haplogroup for those who transferred for free their autosomal test results from another DNA testing company. However, for this free haplogroup are eligible only those who have unlocked their full results on FTDNA, that is paid the one-time fee of  20 dollars in order to see their ethnicity estimate and the chromosome browser. FTDNA differentiates between the autosomal transfers from MyHeritage (which uses the FTDNA lab for their autosomal tests) and those from Ancestry and 23andMe, which use their own laboratories for the autosomal tests. Only the autosomal transfers from MyHeritage will have an intermediate Y haplogroup that can be seen by their DNA matches, the intermediate haplogroups of the autosomal transfers from Ancestry and 23andMe will be seen only by the testers and cannot be seen by the matches. I checked some of the matches from the map who have transferred their autosomal results to FTDNA but they have not received their intermediate Y haplogroup, or the haplogroup is private because they took the DNA test at Ancestry or 23andMe.

3) There are currently 18 matches with the I-M253 haplogroup who have ordered the Big Y test. Their results will probably be available in 2 months at the earliest.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a four part message.

PART 1

Last week a big number of those who transferred their autosomal test results to FTDNA received an intermediate haplogroup. I know this because I myself received one. FTDNA sent me an e-mail in which I was notified that my Family Finder Y-DNA haplogroup is ready. I have transferred my DNA test results from Ancestry to FTDNA in 2019. See the screenshots below from my FTDNA account that show the intermediate haplogroup.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14PKwNuELAXBA8EQX2fh37mVQT04OGH64/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n1VB5nDb2uCWysWa5FrwsVFsgn9vU2Ub/view?usp=sharing

The received haplogroup was I-P109, which is the same one received from 23andMe when I took the test there (23andMe offers free intermediate Y and mtDNA haplogroups for those who buy the autosomal test). However, if I had taken the Family Finder test at FTDNA after 2015 I would have received a more precise haplogroup, namely I-S14887. So, those who transferred their test results from Ancestry and 23andMe receive a less precise haplogroup than those who have taken the autosomal test at FTDNA after 2015. As I said in my previous message, those who have taken the Family Finder (FF) test at FTDNA before 2015 will receive a basic haplogroup like I-M253, less precise than I-P109.

I-M253 > I-L22 > I-P109 > I-S14887 > I-FGC22048 (I-FGC22046) > I-FGC22045 > I-FGC22061 > I-PH3895

Although FTDNA's initiative to offer free intermediate haplogroups to those who have transferred their autosomal test results from other DNA testing companies is a great feature, the fact that this haplogroup is only visible to the tester and not to his autosomal matches is not great at all. The intermediate haplogroup of those who took the FF test at FTDNA is visible to the matches. Why FTDNA chose to discriminate against those who transferred their results from other companies doesn't help the genealogical research and it doesn't help FTDNA's business to sell Big Y tests. For example, let's say that someone has taken the Big Y test and has the I-FGC22045 haplogroup or one of his branches. If he sees that one of his autosomal matches has the intermediate I-P109 or I-S14887 haplogroups he may contact the match and convince him to take the Big Y test in order to see if they have a closely related precise Y haplogroup. This has happened to me. When I saw that G. Berqkvist, an 8 cM autosomal match for my father, has received the intermediate I-S14887 haplogroup, I contacted him and convinced him to take the Big Y test, which he will probably order next year. But if G. Berqkvist had not taken the FF test at FTDNA and instead transferred his test results from another company, I would not have seen his intermediate haplogroup and I would not have contacted him. So, FTDNA loses money by not displaying the intermediate Y haplogroup of those who transferred their test results from Ancestry or 23andMe, which are the vast majority of those with autosomal transfers.

However, I found a method by which you can display your intermediate Y haplogroup in order for your autosomal matches to see it. You can manually add your haplogroup next to your surname in the list of surnames and next to the surname of your earliest known paternal ancestor. For this you must edit the information from your FTDNA account settings.

Add your Y haplogroup in the surnames list:
1) Log in to your FTDNA account and move the mouse cursor above the upper right corner of the page, where your username and kit number are displayed.
2) Click on "Account Settings".
3) Click on "Genealogy" in the account settings page.
4) Click on the "Surnames" tab in the genealogy page.
5) Click on the pencil icon next to your surname.
6) Add the intermediate haplogroup in parentheses next to your surname like this: Surname (intermediate haplogroup)
7) Click on "Save" to save the edited surname.
8 ) Make sure that the surname is up in the list, in order to be seen by your matches without clicking on your name in their autosomal matches list.

Add your Y haplogroup to the name of your earliest known paternal ancestor:
1) Log in to your FTDNA account and move the mouse cursor above the upper right corner of the page, where your username and kit number are displayed.
2) Click on "Account Settings".
3) Click on "Genealogy" in the account settings page.
4) Click on the "Earliest Known Ancestors" tab in the genealogy page.
5) Click in the "Name and Birth/Death Date" field.
6) Add the intermediate haplogroup in parentheses next to your ancestor name like this: Name (intermediate haplogroup)
7) Scroll down the page and click on "Save" to save the edited name.

The result will be like the one shown in the screenshots below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IUYv28NiEI7joV9qi_kUad7_fE4pkX4U/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yxTpCzJurAv8eTqpMe6KQJio_s0lLe_s/view?usp=sharing

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

After this influx of intermediate Y haplogroups I updated the map with the men who could have haplogroups closely related to I-FGC22045. I added some new matches to the map and deleted others that have received an intermediate haplogroup which indicates that their precise haplogroup is not closely related to I-FGC22045. I also changed the map markers in order to see the various haplogroups displayed on the map without clicking on the markers. I chose a marker with the letter M for I-M253, a marker resembling two crossed L's for I-L22, a marker with the letter P for I-P109, a marker resembling S for I-S14887 and a marker resembling Y for those that have Big Y tests in progress. I must say that there are many more Y-STR matches of my father with the I-L22 haplogroup that I have not currently added to the map and I may add in the future.

Updated map of my father's Y-STR matches who could have haplogroups closely related to I-FGC22045:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1tAy-Hp70_oDeBaA0jJKE1W2flO8iS38&usp=sharing

Highlights of the updated map:

1) An Italian named T.R. Simoni has received the I-P109 intermediate haplogroup (previously he had the I-M253 haplogroup). His earliest known paternal ancestor is from Fagnano, next to Lucca a city 60 km from Florence, Tuscany. It is the second Italian with this haplogroup, the other being A.V. Pugliese.

2) V. Voutilainen, an Y-12 match, has ordered the Big Y test. His earliest known ancestor is Per Jönsson (b. 1530 in Småland, Sweden). His current haplogroup is I-M253, but there is an Y-12 match named A. Voutilainen and an autosomal match on FTDNA named E. Voutilainen who both have the I-L22 intermediate haplogroup.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JiLrM8ZK7WottjN9KN0LmxLak9b5Cx7t/view?usp=sharing ( V. and A. Voutilainen, Y-12 matches)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11yC4YP2WVEq_RcX2Fc5Hi4q2UgKUWkLG/view?usp=sharing (V. Voutilainen tree part 1)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1brHZ4Pau_A-cpni_eqO_LV-xh1mRm4id/view?usp=sharing  (V. Voutilainen tree part 2)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IsT9aeEj7NuPmfiR_Eqq3Sp79tqz-KtW/view?usp=sharing  (V. Voutilainen tree part 3)

Moreover, although V. Voutilainen is not an autosomal match for my father on FTDNA, there are 2 autosomal (Family Finder) matches with this surname and 1 who has an ancestor with this surname.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYLOmC6b3H9m3nFlupZ1zkji3fxzdxZh/view?usp=sharing

All three have the same DNA segment on chr. 20 shared with my father, as you can see in the screenshot below. So, all three have a common ancestor named Voutilainen.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FN7BjDnd5IhyXPbYAR46SmBQT3AZjcSz/view?usp=sharing

1) E. Voutilainen is a 10 cM match. He has the I-L22 intermediate haplogroup. He doesn't have a tree on FTDNA, but he has one on MyHeritage, managed by his sister, who is also a match there. His earliest known paternal ancestor is Pehr Foudilain b. 1799 - Leppävirta, Finland, the father of Anders Foudilain from M.L.'s tree below. His ethnicity estimate is private.

2) M.L. Voutilainen is a 10 cM match. In her tree the earliest known paternal ancestor is Anders Foudilain, b.1824 in Leppävirta, Finland. She has 100% Finnish DNA.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aViSXwfYiU8RVVpO_J9ZkFWMfZwAIBfU/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate)

3) R. Holopainen is a 11 cM match. He doesn't have a tree, but his earliest known paternal ancestor is Anders Holopainen b.1690 in Leppävirta Finland. In his list of ancestral surnames the surname Voutilainen is mentioned as being from Leppävirta, just like the ancestor of M.L. Voutilainen. His ethnicity estimate is private.

There are more matches named Voutilainen or having Voutilainen ancestors on MyHeritage. All share the same DNA segment on chr. 20 as the matches from FTDNA. It appears that the descendants of the Swede named Per Jönsson (born in Småland) had at first the surname Smålander/Smolander after their ancestor's place of origin. Then to this surname was added Voutilainen. Finally, Smålander/Smolander was discarded and only Voutilainen remained as the surname, probably when members of that family identified itself as Finnish, not Swedish, and did not want their surname to be linked to a Swedish region. However, the etymology of the surname root "Vouti" is from Old Swedish and means "bailiff" (from which the modern "sheriff" is derived), so the Swedish origin of the family founder still was reflected in the surname. It is possible that Per Jönsson was a Swede sent to Finland to work as a bailiff (state officer) there, because Finland was under Swedish rule from 1150 to 1809. So, "Smålander Voutilainen" actually meant "Smålander the Bailiff" ("the man from Småland who worked as a bailiff").

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vouti#Finnish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland_under_Swedish_rule

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

Matches named Voutilainen or having Voutilainen ancestors on MyHeritage (see screenshots below) :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d9HjbiuZ8RufqI5G8w3DAiLdrJ_euAqZ/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GI_mOfCf0LTuifDBu13OG5InpFJU7oca/view?usp=sharing

1) A. Paiho (15.7 cM shared). She has an ancestor named Olof Voutilainen, b.1794 in Kaavi, Finland, 50 km from Leppävirta.

2) G. Avilova (born Pitkänen) - 15 cM shared. She has Voutilainen ancestors descended from Per Jönsson (b. 1530 in Småland, Sweden), just like V. Voutilainen from FTDNA.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GKpUqasZ--iE0H7CmQj2BJbeTr7b7W74/view?usp=sharing (G. Pitkänen Avilova - tree part 1)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1An6Ryg96SB_P1lse_2q2fsbXV2hn4J8N/view?usp=sharing (G. Pitkänen Avilova - tree part 2)

3) M. Luostarinen (13.3 cM shared DNA). Has a private tree.

4) E. J. Voutilainen (10.2 cM shared DNA). It is the same person as the match named E. Voutilainen on FTDNA (see above).

5) Member (10.2 cM shared DNA). She is the sister of E. J. Voutilainen, as reported by MyHeritage.

6) N.M. Kiesiläinen (10.2 cM shared DNA). She has an ancestor named Pehr Matsson Voutilainen Smålander (b. 1658 in Kuopio, Finland) who was married to Gertrud Jöransdotter Hiltunen. The same man, named Pehr Matson Smolander and married to Gertrud Kerttu Jöransdoter Hiltunen, appears in the tree of G. Avilova.

7) T. Tuomainen (10.2 cM shared DNA). Has a private tree.

8 ) T. Siikanen (9.7 cM shared DNA). He has an ancestor named Reetta Aatamintytär Voutilainen Fougdilain (b. 1729 in Kaavi, Finland). Voutilainen from Kaavi also appears in the tree of A. Paiho, discussed above.

9) E. Miettinen (9.7 cM shared DNA). Has a private tree.

The DNA segment on cr. 20 is shared with many people, the vast majority (more than 90%) being Finns or having Finnish ancestry. I cannot see the ethnicity estimate of the matches from MyHeritage, but I can see the ethnicity of the FTDNA matches who have enabled this feature. I will show below 7 of these matches from the total of maybe 60 who share this segment. It is of no surprise that 6 of these matches have full or partial Finnish ancestry, this was to be expected, because the segment is encountered mainly in Finland.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1syO_ydSUaBcBzHHnf7HZVWs5jEoi7bzF/view?usp=sharing (list of the 7 compared matches)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MhliTypFK9o4FVMwlNobWEMHfsLxQZkl/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 1)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-DUEPbT-RG-iPg-1SlqYWSRXlsq0XHvD/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 2)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NHIFb4YWDyg-HD37D8X79Jjab37_rpo3/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 3)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z91LjLI-Za3RNtC4ySGD1cFml67YtI57/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 4)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JEcsI9EP7tBhmztyaE_fOMr0mHCynCqT/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 5)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FIq7TJYKQqBBWYKNoGWtU0YacsmckXkt/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 6)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BYo2mN9oct4MUwh7S5BCQBkn5C1ZW8M0/view?usp=sharing (ethnicity estimate 7)

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

The most interesting match is N.F. Tiberg, who according to FTDNA has 52% British and 48% Scandinavian DNA. But although he only has Western and Northern European DNA, his Y haplogroup is Caucasian (intermediate haplogroup G-Z6554), encountered mainly in Russia. Of course, he must take the Big Y test in order to discover his precise haplogroup and start the genealogical research for his distant paternal ancestor. His situation is almost the mirror image of the men from the Balkans who have only Eastern European and Balkan DNA, but have a Scandinavian haplogroup (I-FGC22045).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yc9ptvTgNji2SfsJn2quIjLsPp46DR7o/view?usp=sharing (N.F. Tiberg match)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JJ_omZE-QJm_IWptvTlGfCJk9jynNeHG/view?usp=sharing (tree 1)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xpjHd4C3b6V77YisLlz9qcdvJ49nkCO0/view?usp=sharing (tree 2)

In trying to understand how the I-FGC22045 haplogroup arrived from Scandinavia to the Balkans I found out that the Swedish Vikings known as Rus' or Varangians undertook military raids in the Caucasus. I posted an hypothesis on the Poreklo forum (link below) according to which the I-FGC22045 haplogroup first arrived in the Caucasus with the Rus', and then from the Caucasus arrived in the Balkans, when the Ottomans (Turks) conquered the Balkans and appointed as state officials men from the Caucasus. One of these men was named Abaza Pasha and was from a Caucasian people named Abazins. I made the connection because one of the historical rulers of the Drobnjak tribe was named Pavle Abazović, his surname being formed from the non-Slavic root "Abaza" and the Slavic termination "ović". The hypothesis turned out not to be true, because the descendants of Pavle Abazović have the I-FGC22061 haplogroup of Scandinavian origin, whereas the descendants of Abaza Pasha have the G-M201 haplogroup of Caucasian origin (one of them took a Y-STR test almost one year after me posting the hypothesis). But, returning to N.F. Tiberg's situation, it is possible that the Rus' Vikings returned to Scandinavia from their military expeditions in the Caucasus with Caucasian men who wanted to join them, or with captured Caucasian men who were later freed and married Scandinavian women. One of them could be N.F. Tiberg's ancestor.

https://forum.poreklo.rs/index.php?topic=472.msg183967#msg183967

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_expeditions_of_the_Rus%27

From N.F. Tiberg's tree we can see that his earliest known ancestor was from Högsby, a town which is close to the Öland island where in the village of Böda were discovered the remains of a boy who lived in the Viking age and had the I-FGC22048 haplogroup, the parent branch of I-FGC22045.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6gsby

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22048/classic

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XSKBib2IYGsMuDJuK9COCgxSDqme4aIK/view?usp=sharing (screenshot with Högsby and Böda on the map)

We know that the shared segment from chromosome 20 is associated with the Finnish Voutilainen family, who descends from a Swede named Per Jönsson. This segment is also present in the DNA of a contemporary Swede whose earliest known ancestor was from Högsby. The same segment is present in the Balkans. Could it be that this segment from chromosome 20 is actually from the ancestor who brought the I-FGC22045 haplogroup to the Balkans? It is possible.

In conclusion, my father has not only Y-STR matches with the Voutilainen surname and a haplogroup derived from I-L22, but also autosomal matches with Voutilainen ancestors on both FTDNA and MyHeritage. This makes the Big Y test result of V. Voutilainen very interesting, because there is a chance that he has a precise haplogroup closely related to I-FGC22045.

[Ervin Knezevic]

Hi Bogdan, My name is Ervin Knezevic, member of the I-Y58427 haplogroup, you mentioned me a bit further up in your text I can trace my paternal ancestry to my great great grandfather Pero (Peter) Knezevic who was born in 1881 and died in 1916 in WW I as part of Austo-Hungarian army (I found corroborating documents in Vienna military archives). He lived in Tramosnica near Gradacac in Bosnia (northern part). They were not originally from there but I have no data on where they came from at present. I would need to go there and dig through church archives, but it would have to wait a bit since I don't live there. We are Catholics and Croatian, unlike most of other members of Drobnjak lineage. My branch separated from their main one a long time ago, at least according to genetics. My great geat grandfather was the last Knez of that area. That's how I got my surname, it's a derivative of a title. Now the term Knez can mean many different things, depending on ethnicity and timeframe, anything from Prince to local Chief. I am aware that both Vlahs and South Slavs used that title, so it can be tricky figuring out exact etymology. Not all Knezevic families are related by blood and ancestry, due to the facts I mentioned above. If you need any more info on my personal ancestry, I'll be more than happy to provide it. By the way, great job compiling all the possible theories, I'm quite impressed. I do have one of my own though which I'll post below.

[Ervin Knezevic]

I have looked into timeline and spread of connected haplogroups and one thing came to my mind. As you go up the tree, you have Balkans, Romania, Ukraine and goes straight up to Sweden, which would suggest a land migration rather than a marine one as you'd have plenty more matches either in Italy or Adriatic coast of the Balkans, primarily Dalmatia, which is not the case at the moment (might be available as more people test later on).

[Ervin Knezevic]

This above as well as presence of related samples in Bulgaria and the timeline of events could point to Prince Sviatoslav of Kiev's incursion and conquest of Bulgaria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sviatoslav_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sviatoslav%27s_invasion_of_Bulgaria
Since he was a Rurikid that means his ancestry would be Scandinavian, as well as his haplogroup. Whether it was from him or any other Varangian in his entourage, I do not know, but since Norse moved around in clans, there's a good chance they were related, whether closely or distantly, I can't tell though.
Let me know your thoughts and all the best

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a three part message.


PART 1

Hi, Ervin. Your ancestors may have been Bunjevci, who originally were Catholic Vlachs. Apparently they migrated from western Herzegovina to Dalmatia, then to Lika and then north to Bačka, a region that is today split between Hungary and Serbia. But the medieval route from Lika to Bačka was probably through Gradačac, so your ancestors stayed there while other Bunjevci went to Bačka. Gradačac is in the Tuzla canton and the city of Tuzla was renowned in the medieval period for its salt mines. The region was named Soli ("Salts" in English) before the Ottoman conquest. As I said multiple times, the I-FGC22045 haplogroup seems to be linked with the production, transport and trade of salt in medieval times.

You can see below a screenshot of a map with the migration of the Bunjevci and with them of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. I also added Ragusa [Dubrovnik] because in my opinion it was the starting point of the spread of the I-FGC22045 in the Balkans.

Ragusa [Dubrovnik] => Western Herzegovina => Lika => Soli (Gradačac) => Bačka
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MV92oHibLJYLsUsFzQ0oL8q502xyuwcg/view?usp=sharing

==================
Bunjevci [...] are a South Slavic sub-ethnic group of Croats living mostly in the Bačka area of northern Serbia and southern Hungary (Bács-Kiskun County), particularly in Baja and surroundings, in Croatia (e.g. Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Lika-Senj County, Slavonia, Split-Dalmatia County, Vukovar-Srijem County), and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They presumably originate from western Herzegovina. As a result of the Ottoman conquest, some of them migrated to Dalmatia, from there to Lika and the Croatian Littoral, and in the 17th century to the Bácska area of Hungary. Bunjevci who remained in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as those in modern Croatia today, maintain that designation chiefly as a regional identity, and declare as ethnic Croats. [...] Bunjevci are mainly Catholic and the majority still speaks Neo-Shtokavian Younger Ikavian dialect of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language with certain archaic characteristics.
[...]
The migrations [of the Bunjevci] from Northern Dalmatia were influenced by Ottomans conquest in the 15th and 16th century, and the first migration to Primorje is considered to have happened in 1605 when around 50 families from Krmpota near Zemunik settled in Lič near Fužine by Danilo Frankol, captain of Senj, in agreement with Nikola and Juraj Zrinski, and with several waves until 1647 settling in Lič, the hinterland of Senj [...] and some to Pag and Istria. Some also arrived during the Cretan War (1645–1669), and after the Ottomans defeat in Lika (1683–1687), some littoral Bunjevci moved to settlements in Lika, like Pazarište, Smiljan, Gospićko field, Široka Kula, valley of Ričice and Hotuče. According to the common theory based on historical documents happened at least three big migrations to Podunavlje, first from the beginning of the 17th century (without Franciscan friars), second in the mid 17th century during Cretan War, and third during Great Turkish War (1683–1699).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunjevci

Tuzla [...] is the third-largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the administrative center of Tuzla Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The name Tuzla is the Ottoman Turkish word for salt mine, tuzla, and refers to the extensive salt deposits found underneath the city, mined for export as a large source of Ottoman tax revenue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuzla

Soli or Só was a zemlja of the medieval Bosnian state, located in today's northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, centered around the town of Tuzla. [...] The meaning of the name is "salts". With the arrival of the Ottoman Empire around 1512, the names of the villages "Gornje Soli" and "Donje Soli" were translated to "Memlehai-bala" and "Memlehai-zir", literally meaning Upper and Lower Saltworks, resp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soli_(zemlja)
==================

I already spoke about Bunjevci on the Poreklo forum when I said that my father's ancestor from the Western Balkans could also have been a Bunjevac (singular of Bunjevci) who left Bačka (in Hungary at that time) and went to Transylvania (also in Hungary at that time). The two messages are from 23 and 28 June 2023 and have multiple parts. It is interesting that one of the beliefs about the Bunjevci was that they were of Norman origin. Also interesting is the belief that Bunjevci were members of the Bosnian Church, in light of the fact that Monna from Bosnia was also a member of the Bosnian Church. In my opinion, Monna is the presumed female ancestor of those with the I-FGC22061 haplogroup, whereas Michael de Martinussio is the presumed male ancestor. If Monna had children with Michael de Martinussio without being married to him and then left his house, the children were hers, because she was a free woman, not a slave, and the children would likely be raised in their mother's faith.

https://forum.poreklo.rs/index.php?topic=472.msg189695#msg189695

The Knežević noble family also migrated from Western Herzegovina (Brotnjo/Broćno) to Lika (Gračac). And they were Catholic.

================
{automatic translation from Croatian}
KNEŽEVIĆ, a noble family with estates in Lika, Krbava and Međimurje. According to tradition, originally from Broćno [Brotnjo, Čitluk] in Herzegovina, where they were originally called Krušević; after the death of Prince Philip [Knežević] near Jajce in 1463, they took the surname Knezići, then Kneževići. Two of Philip's sons, whose names are unknown, went to Russia, or Poland (the general and diplomat Karol Otto Kniaziewicz, 1762–1842 could be descended from this lawyer), and the third, Ivan, escaped with his family and his company, settled in the area of ​​today's Gračac and built a fort at Gradina. In 1466, King Matthias Corvinus granted him nobility.
https://hbl.lzmk.hr/clanak/knezevic
================

There is also a family tree on Geni:
https://www.geni.com/people/Martin-barun-Kne%C5%BEevi%C4%87-de-Szent-Helena/6000000010996295548

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

When I was posting on the Poreklo forum, I made a map with all the men who according to their Y-DNA testing have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. The majority of them have taken a Y-23 or Y-25 STR test analyzed at the Belgrade University genetics department in the campaigns organized by the Poreklo society. Their precise haplogroup is only presumed as being a branch of I-FGC22061 (the South-Slavic branch of I-FGC22045), but those that after this test bought a Big Y test at FTDNA had their haplogroup confirmed as being I-FGC22061.

Map with the men having the I-FGC22045 haplogroup (presumed or confirmed) :
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1vUVGMnK_Jqmyq_ZT0aiAS2bxaFtSgc4&usp=sharing

According to their Wikipedia article, there were Bunjevci settlements in Gospićko field, the region around the town of Gospić in Lika, Croatia. Three men with the I-FGC22061 haplogroup have their earliest paternal ancestor born around Gospić: Milinović, Rukavina and Barać. Only Barać has taken the Big Y test and has the haplogroup confirmed as being I-Y50461. My father has autosomal matches with the Milinović and Rukavina surnames, whose ancestors were from Lika-Senj county, where Gospić is located.

By looking at the zoomed map linked above I noticed something interesting. I already spoke in my message posted in this thread on 20 september about the theory that the Novljani brotherhood of the Drobnjak tribe could have gotten their name after the town of Novalja on the island of Pag, whose residents are named Novljani. But exactly next to Gospić there is a settlement named Lički Novi, which literally means "Novi from Lika [county]". This settlement is very old and has a Wikipedia article in Croatian.

Screenshot of the zoomed map with the area around Gospić and Lički Novi:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EaQjQZMLDsD8Whk6GHudIwBdbxPWEGkV/view?usp=sharing

==============
{automatic translation from Croatian}
Lički Novi (formerly Novi or Novigrad, Latin Novum castrum) is a settlement in the Republic of Croatia, part of the town of Gospić in Lika-Senj County.
[...]
Lički Novi was mentioned for the first time in 1449, on the occasion of the great division of the Frankopan estates by the seven sons of Prince Nikola IV [Frankopan]. Then Prince Dujmo IV was assigned the fortress of Novi (Latin Novum castrum) along with Ostrvica, Slunj and Ledenice. Dujam was legally brought into possession of the fortress of Novi by the notary public of the Knin Chapter, which was confirmed by [Hungarian] King Matthias Corvinus on July 22, 1464.
[...]
The Ottomans invaded Lika at the beginning of the 16th century. The fall of Lika under the rule of the Turks took place in 1527.[...] The Turks forced the development of [Lički] Novi, so they assigned it the function of a district center. They renovated the old Novljan fortress and stationed a crew of 50 soldiers in it. Around the fortress, Novlja's houses were lined up, of which there could be about a hundred. The region around ​​Novi had fertile soil and was therefore well populated. It covered land from Divosel and Bilaj to Kosinje. The Novljan district included four voivodeships with headquarters in Bilaj, Smiljan, Ostrovica and Kosinj. Of the mentioned places, Bilaj developed the best. His fortress on a high rock was rebuilt by the Turks and a crew of about fifty guys was stationed in it. The suburb of Bilaj developed into a commercial center with about 250 houses. Other voivodeship centers were smaller places. There were several larger Muslim estates on the territory of the Novljan district. In addition to these properties, several villages where Christian Vlachs lived were created over time. This is how the villages of Krznarić, Bogdanić, Bužim, Stari and Novi Hoteš, Obrovac and Badar were created .

In the spring of 1689, [Austrian] General Ivan Josip Herberstein from Karlovac led a large army from Krajina with the intention of chasing the Turks from Lika. All parts of the Christian army met on 15 June under the Turkish fortress in Novi. At the same time, Vlach uprisings under the command of Stojan Janković broke into Lika. Seeing a huge Christian army in front of Novi, the Turkish crew surrendered without a fight.

Until Gospić grew into the administrative center of Lika, the most visible place in its area was Novi. After 1689, the population of Novi that was not baptized dispersed. Next, in 1690, 34 families from Ledenice and 28 families of Christian Vlachs were colonized here. [...] The census made in 1712 mentions 462 inhabitants in Novi. Surnames include : Zduna, Matajija, Galac, Tonković, Svetić, Pađen, Jurčić, Belobrk, Kanić, Alić, Šnajdar, Bušljeta, Francetić, Jerković, Sendrić, Ivić, Musić, Brkljača, Umljenović, Hasić, Matijević, Ferić, Čanić, Dešić, Bubaš, Frković, Magašić, Jengić, Marković, Stilinović, Stančić, Kos, Turić, Šabanović, Buneta and Zdunić.

https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%C4%8Dki_Novi
==================

So, there is another locality which has the root "Nov" in its name and could be the origin of the Novljani name. We know that the Novljani were Vlachs and Vlachs are mentioned as being inhabitants of Lički Novi both before and after the Turkish conquest. And actually both the Turks and the Austrians colonized Vlachs families in Novi. I looked at the surnames of the inhabitants of Novi recorded in the 1712 census and found two who appear on my map with the men having the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. The first is Matijević, whose paternal ancestor is from Bihać in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 50 km from Gospić. The second is Šabanović from Bijelo Polje, Montenegro, whose paternal ancestor apparently was from Gacko in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Šabanović has taken the Big Y test and his haplogroup is FGC22054.

The name Šabanović (pronounced Shabanovich in English) is interesting. I searched its etymology and it seems that it's derived from the Turkish name Șaban (pronounced Shaban in English). This is possible, but to me it seems very close to the Rumanian/Vlach word "Cioban" (meaning "Shepherd" in English), which is pronounced like "Choban" in English. It is known that in the Middle Ages the Vlachs were primarily shepherds. According to the Poreklo forum Šabanović is Muslim, so his Vlach ancestor converted to Islam probably under the Turkish occupation. Could it be that his ancestor chose the name Šaban after converting because it seems so close to the word "Cioban"? It is possible. The surname "Ciobanu" (meaning "The Shepherd") is relatively frequent in Rumania, alongside many derived surnames (Ciobănașu, Ciobănel, etc.).

https://www.locatefamily.com/C/CIO/CIOBANU-1.html

According to their haplogroups, the Šabanović, Knežević and Barać families have a common Vlach ancestor who probably lived in the Lika area.

I-FGC22045 > I-FGC22061 > I-FGC22054 (Šabanović) > I-Y58427 (Knežević) > I-Y50461 (Barać)

In conclusion, the town of Gospić and the surrounding area seem to be important when researching the origin of the Novljani brotherhood of the Drobnjak tribe.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

If the I-FGC22045 haplogroup came by land from Scandinavia, we would have many more men with the haplogroup along the route, which is not the case at all. The fact that the biggest number and diversity of the haplogroup is in the Western Balkans means that this is the place where it appeared after leaving Scandinavia. The only man with the haplogroup outside the Balkans actually has a common ancestor with the South-Slavic branch, which is not shared with the Albanian branch. His paternal ancestor is very probably also originating from the Western Balkans. Yes, the lack of the haplogroup in Italy is strange, but at this time the haplogroup does not exist anywhere else in Western Europe, not even in Scandinavia. Maybe the haplogroup really exists in Western and Northern Europe, but we need to collect tens of thousands of dollars and pay the Big Y tests of those who currently have the I-S14887 haplogroup or the I-P109 haplogroup in order to see if this is true.

Actually we don't know if the I-FGC22045 haplogroup is present in Bulgaria. There are 2 Bulgarians who have the I-P109 haplogroup on my map, that I discovered on the Bulgarian DNA Project, but we cannot be sure that they have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. Moreover, none of them is an STR match for my father, although they took the test at FTDNA. My father has only five Y-12 matches who mention Bulgaria as the country of their paternal ancestor. Three have the I-M253 haplogroup, the other two have the I-L1237 and I-FTB97359 haplogroups. There is no Bulgarian with the intermediate I-S14887 haplogroup, at least in my father's autosomal matches from FTDNA.

The biggest problem with the Rurikid hypothesis of the I-FGC22045 origin is the fact that even though the Rurikids were Scandinavian, their Y haplogroup was not Scandinavian, but Finno-Ugric. There is a scientific study that found their Y haplogroup, and it is N1a.

=====================
The Rurikids were the reigning house of Rus’, its principalities and, ultimately the Tsardom of Russia, for seven centuries: from the IX to the end of the XVI century. According to the Primary Chronicle (the Tale of Bygone Years), the main chronicle of Rus’, the Rurik dynasty was founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, invited to reign in Novgorod in 862, but still there is no direct genetic evidence of the origin of the early Rurikids. This research, for the first time, provides a genome-wide paleogenetic analysis of bone remains belonging to one of the Rurikids, Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich (?–1294), the son of the Grand Prince of Vladimir Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky (1221–1263). It has been established that his Y chromosome belongs to the N1a haplogroup. Most of the modern Rurikids, according to their genealogies, belonging to the N1a haplogroup, have the most similar variants of Y chromosomes to each other, as well as to the Y chromosome of Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich. Genome-wide data of the medieval and modern Rurikids unequivocally indicates that they belong to the N1a haplogroup of the Y chromosome, starting at least from the XI century (since the time of Prince Yaroslav the Wise). All the other alleged Rurikids, both ancient and modern, being carriers of other haplogroups (R1a, I2a), possess high heterogeneity of the sequence of Y chromosomes, meaning that we cannot confirm their common ancestry. The most probable ancestors of Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich in the male line were the men who left the burial ground Bolshoy Oleny Island on the coast of the Kola Peninsula about 3,600 years ago. The reconstruction of the genome of Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich indicates the contribution of three ancestral components to his origin: (1) the early medieval population of the east of Scandinavia from the island of Oland, (2) representatives of the steppe nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes of the Iron Age or the early medieval population of central Europe (steppe nomads from the territory of Hungary), and (3) the ancient East-Eurasian component. Reliable statistics were also obtained when the Scandinavians were replaced with the Medieval Russian Slavic populations of the XI century. Thus, for the first time, we have shown the complex nature of interethnic interactions in the formation of the nobility of medieval Rus’ on the example of the ancient Rurikid.
[...]
Among [the] “Vikings” [populations], Sweden_EarlyViking was the largest contributing population to the genome of Prince Dmitry Aleksandrovich (46.6%). For other “Vikings” this proportion did not exceed 9%. The minimum contribution is made by the Estonia_ EarlyViking population: 2.7%. The Sweden_ EarlyViking population is represented by three samples from the village of Bode (Böde) on the island of Öland and dated around the period between the VII and VIII centuries AD (with ID’s VK379, VK382, VK359). The analysis of strontium isotopes for these samples attributed them to the category of migrants to the town of Bode, although the question of whether they were the original inhabitants of the island of Oland remains open.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10615192/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_N-M231
====================

But even though the men with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup are not the descendants of the Rurikids on the paternal line, they may have common ancestors with them. This is because it was discovered that half of the autosomal DNA of Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich is related to the autosomal DNA of VK379, who had the I-FGC22048 haplogroup, the parent haplogroup of the contemporary haplogroups I-FGC22045 (Balkans) and I-FT216475 (Sweden).

===================
Öland 1077 [VK379] was a 5-9 year old boy who lived between 700 - 800 CE during the Viking Age and was found in the region now known as Böda, Öland, Sweden. He was associated with the Viking Sweden cultural group. His direct maternal line belonged to mtDNA haplogroup U3b1b.

Reference: VK379 from Margaryan et al. 2020
https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22045/ancient
==================

However, we cannot exclude that between those who came along in Russia with the Rurikids there were also men with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. There is a Y-DNA project named "Rurikid Dynasty". The majority of the members have the N haplogroup, but there is one who claims to be descending from Dmitry Pozharsky (1612-1711) and has the I-L22 haplogroup. The ancestor of the tested Russian is probably from the Pozharsky noble family, maybe the son of the Russian hero with the same name.

=============
Dmitry Mikhaylovich Pozharsky (Russian: Дми́трий Миха́йлович Пожа́рский, 17 October 1577 – 30 April 1642) was a Russian prince known for his military leadership during the Polish–Muscovite War from 1611 to 1612. Pozharsky formed the Second Volunteer Army with Kuzma Minin in Nizhny Novgorod against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's occupation of Russia during the Time of Troubles, resulting in Polish withdrawal after Russian victory at the Battle of Moscow in 1612. Pozharsky received the unprecedented title of Saviour of the Fatherland from Mikhail I of Russia, becoming a folk hero in Russian culture and honored in the Monument to Minin and Pozharsky in Moscow's Red Square.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Pozharsky
=============

The intermediate I-L22 haplogroup of the tested Russian is probably of Scandinavian origin, but unless he takes the Big Y test we cannot say how closely related is his precise haplogroup to I-FGC22045.

[Ervin Knezevic]

Hi Bogdan. As always great and studious reply. I agree with most of what you said about probable Vlah origins of Knezevic and related families in Lika. I also agree that haplogroup I-FGC22045 is almost exclusively West Balkan, with some in Romania, namely yourself If we go a bit up the tree we get the first Swedish match in I-FGC22046. Going a step further it gets us Swedish, Norwegian, UK (several) and Russia matches at I-Y11203. Going further to I-FGC16678 we see a lot of North European, especially UK. Lack of matches in North Italy (Langobards) and Sicily (Normans) makes me think it didn't come via the sea, or if it did, it might have come directly from either Sweden or even UK, just one person that created a founder effect in the Balkans. Could have been a last surviving line which would therefore mean that intermediate line could have been extinguished.

As for N1a origins of the Rurikids, I am rather skeptical. There re a lot of non parental events and I am not convinced by the scientific papers and mathodology done to test the remains. Another thing is that N1a is mainly Finnish, rather than Scandinavian proper (Sweden, Norway, Denmark have a very low frequency), which leads me to believe that Rurikids would be more likely to be either I1, R1a or R1b3, the first two most likely candidates as it is possible R1b3 came via thralls from UK and nearby coastal areas where Vikings plundered.

Lack of intermediary lineage could also support this theory as we know Rurikids exited the scene quite a while back and there are numerous inconsistencies with extant lineages that are alive today.

The scholarly consensus is that the Rus' people originated in what is currently coastal eastern Sweden around the eighth century and that their name has the same origin as Roslagen in Sweden (with the older name being Roden).

According to the prevalent theory, the name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times. The name Rus' would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi.

The origins of the Rurikids are unclear, as its namesake Rurik, a Varangian prince who allegedly founded the dynasty in 862 through the "Calling of the Varangians", is considered to be a legendary, mythical and perhaps even entirely fictional character by modern scholars. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky (1947) stated: '...no Kievan sources anterior to the Primary Chronicle (early twelfth century), knew of Riurik. In tracing the ancestry of Kievan princes they usually stopped with Igor.'[18] As an example, Hilarion of Kiev's Sermon on Law and Grace (1050s), praising Volodimer I of Kiev, only goes back to his father Sviatoslav I and grandfather Igor of Kiev.[19] Even if Rurik did exist, scholars have long doubted or rejected his paternity of Igor.[c] The connections between Rurik, Oleg and Igor, as attested in the Primary Chronicle and Novgorod First Chronicle, are tenuous at best; in all other cases, these two chronicles base any particular ruler's legitimacy on the fact that their father or grandfather previously "sat on the throne in Kiev", and never refer back to Rurik.

Above is from Wilipedia. What could have happened is that Rurik was indeed a prince at that time whose descendants were dethroned by either Igor or couple of generations earlier. Linguistical and archaeological evidence points to Vikings being present in that area and leaving quite an imprint on organisation, culture and way of life in that area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians

Therefore, I believe our branch is a matter of either exile or mass extinction due to violent events or both. Personally, out of all theories I think an English noble that fell into disfavour migrated or one of the original Rurikids or their Varangian entourage sired our ancestor as they either conquered Bulgaria as I previously stated or went into exile in the Balkans for some reason. One more thing, due to lack of spread, especially to nearby countries, I do entertain the notion that the haplogroup is much younger than we might believe. Mutation rates are not as linear as we think.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about it all
As always, looking forward to your feedback.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a two part message

PART 1

The absence of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup in Western or Northern Europe is not an exception. Compared with the total population of these regions, very few men have taken a Big Y test. I looked at the results of the Normans - CE [Continental Europe] Project on FTDNA and found three similar situations only on the I-P109 branch.

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/normans-ce/about/background

1) R.J. Antel has the earliest known paternal ancestor from Regöly, Tolna, Hungary. There is nobody else today with this haplogroup on FTDNA or YFull. He is an Y-12 match.
I-M253>I-L22>I-P109>I-S14887>I-FTD33188

2) Three men from Russia have a haplogroup which is encountered today only there.
I-M253>I-L22>I-P109>I-S14887>   I-Y29631

3) A man from Bosnia-Herzegovina and two men from Croatia have a haplogroup which is not encountered in Western or Northern Europe. One of them, named Buha, has a family story about descending from a French soldier participating in the Crusades, a story that was recorded before commercial DNA testing became available.
I-M253>I-L22>I-P109>I-S10891>   I-FTA73226

If you look at the map with my father's Y-STR matches who could have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, you can see that there are many men with paternal British ancestors who have the I-M253 haplogroup. I managed to convince five of them to take the big Y test, but that's a drop in the ocean compared to the total number. I did not add to the map those men with British surnames who have not mentioned the birthplace of their earliest known ancestor, so there are many more men who could have been on that map.

In France the situation is even worse, because FTDNA does not sell DNA testing kits there, commercial DNA testing being illegal. Of course, nobody was ever punished or fined for taking a DNA test in France, but the French people must buy the kits from other countries. This is why very few French men have taken a Y-DNA test.

In Scandinavia we have another problem. Because the I1 haplogroup is so widespread there, men are not interested in their precise Y haplogroup, probably thinking that they will not find anything exciting about their "boring" paternal ancestry, confirmed as being Scandinavian. This is why we have many Scandinavians with the intermediate I-L22, I-P109 and I-S14887 haplogroups and almost none of them is buying the Big Y test to find their precise haplogroup.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

Is there anything we can do to make the I-FGC22045 haplogroup appear in Western or Northern Europe? Yes, we can pay men who have the intermediate I-L22, I-P109 or I-S14887 haplogroups to take a Y-DNA test at YSEQ in order to see if they have the FGC22055 mutation (equivalent to the FGC22048 mutation) on their Y chromosome. The test costs only 20 dollars. I have updated the map and added a Y-12 match (J.O. Johansson) with the I-L22 haplogroup whose paternal ancestor was from Kalmar, a city located just next to the Öland island. Could he have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup? Maybe, but only a Big Y test at FTDNA or a SNP test at YSEQ could confirm it.

Any theory about the origin of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup can be taken into consideration if it is supported by historical and genealogical facts discovered by someone who is willing to search for these facts in books and documents available online or offline.

However, the easiest way to find the origin of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup is to do a Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) testing of the remains of Nikola Rašković Drobnjak (NRD), the medieval local ruler from Cernica (Gacko, Bosnia-Herzegovina), who lived around the year 1450. He was confirmed by an Y-23 test as having the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, so his DNA contains all the answers. We can wait for the managers of the Poreklo society to do it, but their good intentions are blocked by the bureaucracy, or so they say. Or we can do it ourselves, those interested in the origin of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. We need someone from Bosnia-Herzegovina to contact the museum where the remains are located and ask the museum administration if they are willing to give him a sample for the testing. The advantage for the museum and the historians who work there is the fact that they can write an article about the testing, and gain international reputation if it is proven that NRD was a descendant of the Montfort family on his paternal line. If the response from the museum is yes, we can inquire about which DNA company could do the test and how much it will cost. For this we can ask the Hungarians who organized the testing of the remains of Matthias Corvinus' son at a private DNA testing company in the US. Then we can open a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign in order to collect the money needed. If the money is collected, the DNA sample can be taken from the museum. After defeating the international bureaucracy which prevents transferring DNA samples between countries, we can finally send the sample to the DNA testing company, receive the result of the test and upload it to GEDmatch and YFull.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a four part message.

PART 1

I spoke about the Italo-Norman named Amicus of Giovinazzo in my message from 20 September. Leading a Norman army, he invaded Croatia and ruled part of the coastal land and islands between 1074-1075. In Italy he had multiple land properties, one of them being Spinazzola. I read the Wikipedia article about Spinazzola and looked on the map to see where this place is located. I noticed some coincidences (or not) related to this genealogical research.

See the screenshot below with the location of Spinazzola on the map. The screenshot was taken from the map that contains the ancestors of my father's Italian autosomal matches.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HtZjJO2x5Itid8Pxaz9LJ_ybdrxh2sj3/view?usp=sharing (screenshot)

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1ehkGcADHkOlLGMgpcQbcC5dRxbzAlsg&usp=sharing (map that can be zoomed in and out)

===============
Amicus [of Giovinazzo] acquired lands in several places across southern Italy, as well as the lordships of Giovinazzo, Molfetta, Spinazzola and Terlizzi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_of_Giovinazzo#Lands

Spinazzola is a town and comune in the province of Barletta-Andria-Trani, Apulia, southern Italy. [...] Pope Innocent XII [1615-1700] was born here in the castle of the Pignatelli family, now destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinazzola

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Pignatelli

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pignatelli_(famiglia)
===============

So, the Pignatelli family had a castle in Spinazzola. I spoke on the Molgen forum about the link between the Pignatelli family and Gervase of Tilbury, the presumed ancestor of the men with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup. John [Giovanni] Pignatelli was the student of Gervase in Bologna, when Gervase taught there canon law (law related to the Catholic church). This is mentioned in Gervase's book "Otia Imperialia". Gervase and his relative Philip of Salisbury stayed at the home of John [Giovanni] Pignatelli, then archdeacon of Naples.

I also spoke about the fact that my father has an Ancestry.com match named S. Trecaso (8 cM shared DNA). Trecaso has an ancestor named Leonardantonio Pignatelli from Conversano, Bari, Apulia, Italy.

https://forum.molgen.org/index.php/topic,14941.msg596379.html#msg596379 (message about Pignatelli on the Molgen forum)

Now the second coincidence. Just next to Spinazzola, at only 10 km distance, is a town named Palazzo San Gervasio, which in medieval time had a Norman castle built by Robert Guiscard de Hauteville. "San Gervasio" in Italian means "Saint Gervasius" in English.

================
{automatic translation from Italian]
Palazzo San Gervasio is an Italian municipality of 4,384 inhabitants in the province of Potenza in Basilicata.
[...]
The first historical source dates back to 1082 and speaks of a farmhouse dependent on the Complex of the Holy Trinity of Venosa, a farmhouse which is probably the Palatium built by Robert Guiscard in 1050, later called San Gervasio in honour of the saint to whom a small church was dedicated in a village in the area, Cervarezza.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_San_Gervasio

{automatic translation from Italian]
Palazzo San Gervasio is a town of Norman origin, which owes its foundation to the privileges offered by Drogo d'Altavilla and which developed around the Palatium {Palace, Castle], built by Robert Guiscard in 1050, or by Guiscard's nephew Roger II [of Sicily] in 1140.
[...]
The Palatium [Pallazo in Italian = Palace in English] was called San Gervasio from the name of the saint to whom the small church of Cervarezza, one of the ancient villages in the area, was dedicated. The oldest nucleus of the Spirito Santo district had a church dedicated to the martyrs Gervasio and Protasio, mentioned in two papal bulls from the beginning of the 12th century.
https://www.palazzosangervasio.net/storia/1218-la-storia-di-palazzo-san-gervasio

{automatic translation from Italian]
During the Angevin domination, in 1267, Charles of Anjou made the "tenimento di San Gervasio" [estate of San Gervasio] a defensive outpost for the whole of Basilicata, entrusting the task of custodian to Nicola Frezzano from Venosa. Some documents dating back to 1281 testify how the "marescallia di San Gervasio" [stable of San Gervasio] was the seat of the best equine [horse] breeds, raised by the Angevin sovereigns.
https://www.comune.palazzo.pz.it/page/90c339ca-7e58-4efa-aa8d-b31d0d900bf5lastoria
================

So, Palazzo San Gervasio is a municipality in the province of Potenza in Basilicata. As you can see on the map linked at the beginning of the message, many of the Italian ancestors of my father's autosomal matches are from the region of Basilicata, including from the Potenza province. This is a coincidence, or maybe not.

===================
In the 11th century, Basilicata, together with the rest of much of southern Italy, was conquered by the Normans. Melfi became the first capital of the County of Apulia (later County of Apulia and Calabria) in 1043, where Robert Guiscard was named "Duke" by Pope Nicholas II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicata#Middle_Ages
===================

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

Finally, the third coincidence. As can be seen from the articles quoted above, Palazzo San Gervasio was reputed in medieval times for its horse farm, which apparently bred the best horses raised for the Angevin noble family.

I spoke on page 2 of the Molgen forum thread about the book "Man of Essex: Family Background and Early Life of Gervase of Tilbury" written by Peter Rook and available only in electronic form on Amazon.

Peter Edward Rook
Man of Essex: Family Background and Early Life of Gervase of Tilbury 1020 - 1163
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09TZFVMDW/

In the book, three chapters are dedicated to the presumed horse breeding activity of the Tilbury family (the first one is named: "The origin of the horses that were bred in Tilbury"). In the introduction the author says: "[...] in the Domesday book, one of the most critical aspects of Tilbury life was that it housed a stud farm (p. 16)." Although I do not share the point of view of Peter Rook regarding the genealogy of Gervase of Tilbury, there may be a connection between Gervase's family and horses, as I will explain below.

In 1198, Otto [IV] – the Holy Roman Emperor after 1209 – appointed Gervase [of Tilbury] Marshal of the Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gervase_of_Tilbury

==================
The  first sign of a link between Gervase and Otto [IV] is found in a document of May 1214: Gervase appears in Tarascon, a few miles  north  of  ArIes, acting as an arbiter voluntarius in a dispute between the monastery of Saint-Paul of Mausole and some local magnates. He is described as Master Gervase, marshal of the imperial court in the kingdom  of  Arles. The appointment as marshal of Arles had presumably been made by Otto IV, possibly at the time of  his imperial coronation in 1209, at which Gervase may even have been present. Gervase tells us in the Otia [Imperialia]  that it was his intention to fulfil his duties with his tongue rather than a sword; it seems therefore that it was  a military appointment, but an honorific one.

Gervase of Tilbury: Otia Imperialia (Recreation for an Emperor) - page XXXI of the introduction
Edited by S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gervase-of-tilbury-otia-imperialia-9780198202882
===================

The term "Marshal" means a high officer of the state, now mostly used for those working in law enforcement or the army. But this term is very old and is connected to horses, because at first the marshal was the master of the stables and then became the officer in charge of logistics, which in the Middle Ages included the horses used by the army for battles or for transporting the goods needed by the soldiers.

================
Marescallus is a term from Law Latin [legal Latin] that has several meanings

A high royal officer, also known as a marshal or mareschal.
A master of the stables.
A military officer who acted as quartermaster, similar to a constable.
An officer of the Court of Exchequer.
A state officer.
An officer of a manor.
For example, a marescallus could be:

The person in charge of the royal stables, responsible for the care and training of the horses.
A military officer who oversaw the distribution of supplies and provisions to troops.
An officer of the Court of Exchequer who managed the financial affairs of the royal household.
These examples illustrate the different roles and responsibilities that a marescallus could have held in medieval times. Depending on the context, a marescallus could have been a high-ranking official with significant power and influence, or a more specialized officer with a specific area of expertise.

https://www.lsd.law/define/marescallus
==============

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

Coincidentally or not, Gervase of Tilbury's name also has an indirect connection to horses. It is derived from the name of Saint Gervasius, patron saint of haymakers, hay being one of the foodstuffs used to feed horses, especially those kept in stables.

==============
Gervasius and Protasius (also Gervase and Protase, Gervasis and Prothasis and in French Gervais and Protais) are venerated as Christian martyrs, probably of the 2nd century. They are the patron saints of Milan and of haymakers and are invoked for the discovery of thieves.
[...]
Immediately after the discovery of the relics by Ambrose, the cult of Saints Gervasius and Protasius was spread in Italy, churches were built in their honour at Pavia, Nola and other places.
[...]
Nevertheless, they were venerated by farmers in Germany and a German saying amongst harvesters was: "When it rains on St Gervasius' Day / forty days of rain will follow". Thus, as with the cults of Saint Swithun, Saint Medard, the Seven Sleepers, and Saint Godelieve, that of Saints Gervasius and Protasius was connected with the weather.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gervasius_and_Protasius

Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticated animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs.
[...]
Hay can be used as animal fodder when or where there is not enough pasture or rangeland on which to graze an animal, when grazing is not feasible due to weather (such as during the winter), or when lush pasture by itself would be too rich for the health of the animal. It is also fed when an animal cannot access any pastures—for example, when the animal is being kept in a stable or barn.
[...]
Hay production and harvest, commonly known as "making hay", "haymaking", "haying" or "doing hay", involves a multiple step process: cutting, drying or "curing", raking, processing, and storing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay
==============

What's more, the Montfort family held the high office of "Constable [Chief Marshal] of Normandy" for 50 years, including the year of the conquest of England. This office was historically linked to horses.

===============
{automatic translation from French}
Constable (from Latin: comes stabuli, "count of the stable", meaning count in charge of the stables and therefore, originally, of the war cavalry) was a high dignity in many medieval kingdoms. Depending on the country, his role was generally to command the army and to settle problems between knights or nobles, via a special tribunal, such as the English Court of Chivalry or the French jurisdiction of the point of honor. Sometimes, he also had police powers. The constable was assisted by one or more marshals.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conn%C3%A9table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constable
-----------------------
The Constable of Normandy was a high office of the Duchy of Normandy, who commanded the Duke of Normandy's army.
1066 - Hugues [Hugh] II de Monfort
1107 - Robert de Montfort
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constable_of_Normandy
----------------------
It was therefore another Hugh—his son Hugh II, who furnished fifty ships and sixty knights for the expedition to England, and was the "Constable" spoken of by Ordericus [Vitalis] at the battle of Hastings; for the De Montforts were hereditary Marshalls of Normandy.
https://www.1066.co.nz/Mosaic%20DVD/text/misc/romney3.htm
===============

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

In my opinion Gervase the Norman count of Ragusa [Dubrovnik] was Gervase of Tilbury. It is known that Martinussio, the son of the Norman count, founded a noble family with the same name in Ragusa. Was the Martinussio family involved in horse breeding, like the family of Gervase of Tilbury? It turns out that yes.

There is a book about horses in medieval Bosnia, where the name of Michael de Martinussio is mentioned several times as a horse breeder. I already spoke about Michael de Martinussio in my message from 3 September. He was the employer of Monna from Bosnia, a maidservant who was a freed slave. The book is written in Bosnian, but has a summary in English at the end, from which I quote below the most important fragments.

======================
In the history of medieval Bosnia the horse enabled the migration of the peoples, and helped to overcome a physical obstacle in the development of the country and enable the Bosnians to spread their small Dinaric community from the narrow basin of the Bosnia River to the Adriatic Sea and River Sava on one side, and from the River Una to the River Drina, on the other, thus creating the strongest country in the hinterland of Ragusa (Dubrovnik).

Horses were frequently mentioned in documents resulting from the mutual communication between Ragusa and its hinterland. These regulated contractual breeding of horses (socida). [...] Ragusans as owners gave their horses for breeding to the local population in the hinterland, separately or together along with other cattle. They themselves did not have suitable conditions for breeding and were ready to relinquish this task to others for certain compensation. The breeders took care of the horses, fed them, groomed them, worked with them and cared for their offspring. Their gain consisted of claiming a part of the result of work with horses, a part of their offspring or a fixed monthly fee which they received in return for their effort. Contracts about breeding contain regulations about rights, obligations and duties of the owner and the breeder which were formed by a long practice in the mutual communication between the owner and the breeder with an aim to equally protect both sides.
[...]
Even though the general development of medieval society is associated with the horse as a moving force, its place and role in the Middle Ages is most often connected to caravan trade. Tie transport of goods to distant destinations and the profit this brought gave these activities important practical features on an inter-state scale (export and import) as well as in the realisation of individual contracts. The transport of goods was extremely well organized between the salesmen and the caravan trader. The basis of this organization is provided by Vlachs from the immediate Ragusan hinterland. With their professionalism in the agreement of contracts, providing of quality carthorses, transport of goods, protection of goods, fulfilling of their obligations (customs, damages) and longer activities in this field as their recognizable profession, they have the features of modern transport businesses. Horses transport all kinds of commodities, mostly salt, ore, textiles, wax, honey, leather, craft products and various contemporary goods which enabled trade and significant profit.
[...]
The organized caravan convoys with hundreds of carthorses maintained the transport between the seacoast and the hinterland and improved the economic development. It is enough to say that many settlements in the hinterland prospered on the roads of caravan convoys and on the places of caravan stations, and some were even created by the virtue of caravan trade in that time. Tie price of transport of goods by horses depended on the distance, weather conditions, safety on the roads, kind of goods in the cargo and the number of carriages.
[...]
Beside the transport of commodities, the horse also had a significant role in the transport of passengers who followed the goods or used caravans in order to reach economic or political subjects in the hinterland. Apart from the merchants, the most important passengers were ambassadors and couriers. The organization of embassies and postal service was based on horses, therefore caring for horses was a distinct duty of the state organs. This is best shown by the documents for Dubrovnik where nobles, as state officials, were given special tasks of providing and caring for horses used in embassies.

Esad Kurtović: Konj u srednjovjekovnoj Bosni [The Horse In Medieval Bosnia] (pp. 405-409)
https://www.scribd.com/document/429523222/Esad-Kurtovic-Konj-u-srednjovjekovnoj-Bo-pdf

https://www.academia.edu/31875091/Esad_Kurtovi%C4%87_Konj_u_srednjovjekovnoj_Bosni_Filozofski_fakultet_Sarajevo_2014
=========================

At the end of the book there is a table named "Uzgoj i čuvanje stoke (konja)", in translation "Breeding and keeping livestock (horses)". The columns of the table are: "Vlasnik" [Owner], "Uzgajivač" [Breeder], "Stoka" [Cattle], "Datum" [Date], "Signatura" [Name of the collection of documents where the information was found].

Michael de Martinussio appears three times in the table, in 1390, 1392 and 1416 (pages 456, 458 and 440). Each time he appears in the "Uzgajivač" [Breeder] column. He very probably had a horse farm outside of Ragusa where he kept the horses of those who appear in the table as "Vlasnik" [Owner]. Again, maybe this is a coincidence that a member of the Martinussio family was a horse breeder, but maybe not, and he actually continued the Montfort family tradition of his ancestor, Gervase of Tilbury.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a two part message.

PART 1

A month ago I added my father's FTDNA account to the Swedish DNA Project.

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/sweden/about

I thought that this project would be interested in a Balkan haplogroup of probable Swedish origin and would help me with my research. Then on 28 October I wrote the following e-mail to the 4 admins of the group:

====================
Hello,

I sent this e-mail to all four admins of the Sweden DNA Project, because I don't know who will have the time to respond to it.

Some time ago I submitted my father's Y-DNA haplogroup (I-PH3895) to the Project and it was accepted, so you are probably aware of the existence of I-FGC22045, the Balkan Y-DNA haplogroup which is the sibling branch of the Swedish I-FT216475, both being derived from I-FGC22048.

I-M253>I-L22>I-P109>I-S14887>I-FGC22048>I-FGC22045>I-FGC22061>I-PH3895

I wrote in detail about the haplogroup on a Rötter forum thread:

https://forum.rotter.se/index.php?topic=199859.0

I-FGC22045 is a genealogical enigma, because it is associated with a medieval Vlach tribe, so being of Scandinavian origin was a complete surprise, because the Vlachs are a Balkan people living south of the Danube river. There are multiple theories about the haplogroup origin, the most probable being the one involving the Normans, who were present in the Balkans in the times of the Crusades and their war with the Byzantine empire. But none of these theories has been proven by genetic data, because at this time the haplogroup has not been discovered in Western or Northern Europe, where the Normans and their Scandinavian paternal ancestors lived.

Since my theory is that the man who brought the haplogroup to the Balkans was a Norman born in England linked to the Essex and Wiltshire counties, this year I convinced 4 men of British ancestry to take the Big Y test. They were Y-STR matches of my father with the I-M253 haplogroup, but none of them has a Big Y haplogroup closely related to I-FGC22045. Although there are many more Y-STR matches of British ancestry, I think convincing men with the I-M253 haplogroup to take a Big Y test is not the way to go.

So, I think it is better to try to find the I-FGC22045 haplogroup in Sweden. I know that the Big Y test is expensive, so my idea is to convince a few Y-STR matches of my father to take a single SNP test at YSEQ, paid for by me. The test costs 19 USD and there is also the shipping and return postage cost, so the tester will pay nothing. The problem is that in order to do that, the testers will have to give me their address, so that YSEQ could send them the DNA kits. It is possible that they would not want to do that, so they will refuse to take the test.

This is why I think the Sweden DNA Project could help, by acting as an intermediary. That is, I would donate the money for the tests to the Sweden DNA Project (SDP), and SDP will order the tests from YSEQ. I don't know if SDP has a YSEQ account, but this is easy to do and free. The Project then could create a Group ("Add a new group") from the "My Account" page and could receive donations which can be used to order the tests. You must first ask YSEQ how much is the return postage from Sweden to Germany in order to know the total cost of the tests.

As for the test, I think that it should be for the FGC22045 SNP.

https://www.yseq.net/product_info.php?products_id=24442

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FGC22045/story

Since the I-FGC22048 haplogroup (parent of I-FGC22045) was discovered on the Öland island, I think that the men who should be tested should have their earliest paternal ancestor born as close as possible to that island. And I think that the men should have the I-S14887 intermediate haplogroup, this increases the chance of them being positive for the FGC22045 SNP. By looking at your database I found the following men which could be tested:

S. Ranfors (Y-12 match for my father)  I-S14887
Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor:  Staffan Persson (1654-1744) Plaggebo, Småland, Sweden

T. Wester (Y-12 match)  I-S14887
Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor: Lars Månsson (1727-1798) Mossebo, Älvsb. Sweden

C.T. Kvist (Y-12 match)  I-S14887
Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor: Gumme Jönsson (1773-1827) Sweden

K. L. Nyman (Y-12 match)  I-S14887
Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor: Erik Brask Nilsson (1714-1757) Sweden

J. O. Johansson (Y-12 match) I-L22
he has the I-L22 haplogroup, but his ancestor is from Kalmar, the closest to Öland of all the matches
Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor: Karl Anton Johansson (1876-1957) Sweden

So, my question is if the Sweden DNA Project is interested in helping me solve the genealogical enigma of I-FGC22045. I could donate the money for the tests, if you can convince these men to take the SNP test and you will order the tests from YSEQ.

All the best,
Bogdan Munteanu
==========================

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

I waited for a week and received no response, so I removed my father's FTDNA account from the Sweden DNA Project. The admins were definitely not interested in the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, which didn't surprise me. What I requested from them was not at all unusual. I did the same thing with two Albanian DNA projects, because I-FGC22045 has also an Albanian branch. I contacted the admins and proposed to donate money for tests at YSEQ. Both admins accepted and I paid for 2 SNP tests at one project and 1 SNP test at the other.

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/rrenjet/about
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/albanian-bloodlines/about

The difference is that both Albanian DNA Projects had accounts at YSEQ and had ordered these tests before, whereas the Sweden DNA Project did not have an account there. That's the biggest surprise, that a DNA project with 11000 members doesn't use YSEQ for quick and cheap testing of its members in order to help them with their genealogical research. YSEQ is a respected DNA testing company, whose founder worked at FamilyTreeDNA on establishing the Big Y test.

https://isogg.org/wiki/YSEQ
https://h600.org/wiki/article33--YSEQ-jumps-into-the-DTC-WGS-market-with-WGS400

On a different note, I have updated my map with the men who have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup, by using new icons from Google Maps that make it easier to see those who have the same haplogroup. Of course, the new icons are used only for the men who have taken a Big Y test and have a precise Y haplogroup. There is a new addition to the map, N. Coradello (I-FGC22054), who has taken the Big Y test years ago, but I forgot about him, because he is no longer a Big Y and Y-12 match for my father. He probably made his FTDNA account private, for whatever reason.

Map with the men who have the I-FGC22045 haplogroup (confirmed or presumed)
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1vUVGMnK_Jqmyq_ZT0aiAS2bxaFtSgc4&usp=sharing

Now something strange that has never happen before. Two weeks ago FTDNA removed more than 200 of my father's Y-12 matches (I know this because I monitor the number of matches by taking weekly screenshots of the number). One of these matches, Ö. S. Gustafsson (Lindh), had the Big Y test in progress, so I won't find out anymore his precise haplogroup.

Screenshot with the Y-STR matches taken on 29 October 2024  (4036 Y-12 matches)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1byTGPkbxRUhIE87VC72q8HPNyeLwy5M8/view?usp=sharing

Screenshot with the Y-STR matches taken on 10 November 2024 (3802 Y-12 matches)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MCM9ZU1quaP3APD7b9X7scnXfYpSow3K/view?usp=sharing

I also monitor the Y-STR matches who have Big Y tests in progress, which is very easy to do.

1) Having the Y-12 matches list displayed, click on "Filter", then check the case "Big Y-700" and click "Apply", so only those who have taken a Big Y test are displayed.
2) Type "i-m253" in the search box and hit Enter, so that only those who have the I-M253 haplogroup are displayed. These men either have the Big Y test in progress or have a Big Y test which is "stuck / frozen", like this situation presented in my message from 12 August, part 1. This is why they have the basic haplogroup I-M253, and not their precise haplogroup, which will appear only when the Big Y test is completed.
3) The same thing can be done for other basic haplogroups, like I-L22, I-P109 or I-S14887, more precise than I-M253. By searching these haplogroups in the list filtered for Big Y-700, I found that there are 2 men with the I-L22 haplogroup who have the Big Y test in progress or stuck.

At this time there are 14 Y-12 matches, 6 Y-25 matches, 1 Y-67 match with the I-M253 haplogroup and 2 Y-12 matches with the I-L22 haplogroup who have the Big Y test in progress or stuck.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a six part message.

PART 1

I spoke with A. Jakšić (I-FGC22045>I-FGC22061>I-FT36856) and he gave me screenshots with the pages about Nikola Rašković Drobnjak (NRD) from the book "Genetičko poreklo Srba Stare Hercegovine" (Genetic origin of the Serbs from Old Herzegovina) written by some members of the Poreklo Society of Serbian Genealogists and published in 2022. I knew about the book, but didn't want to pay 100 euros for only a few pages about the DNA testing of NRD. The article about NRD is a little appendix of the book, not a part of the actual content, which deals with the Y-DNA of the contemporary population.

This is the official announcement about the book:
https://www.poreklo.rs/2022/04/18/objavljena-knjiga-geneticko-poreklo-srba-stare-hercegovine/

There is a good article from 15 May 2022 about the book on a web portal from Bosnia-Herzegovina, from which I provide a few quotes.

===================
{automatic translation from Serbo-Croatian}
In the gate of the Old Church in Mostar [Bosnia-Herzegovina], the book "Genetic origin of the Serbs of Old Herzegovina" was presented today, which is the result of a joint research effort of the Society of Serbian Genealogists "Poreklo" and the Faculty of Biology in Belgrade. The book contains a register of more than 2,700 surnames and data on 1,200 pages. 16 people worked on the research. Jovica Krtinić, president of the Society of Serbian Genealogists "Poreklo" and one of the editors of the book, stated that the research was started in 2016, and the study included 1143 individuals. [Only] male persons were tested, since the research was based on the testing of Y chromosomes, through which the origin is most reliably tested.
[...]
"This research has shown that Old Herzegovina is one of the key roots important for understanding the ethnogenesis of the Serbs, whether they are from Dalmatia [Croatia], Lika [Croatia], Kordun [Croatia], Bania [Croatia], Bela Krajina [Slovenia], Bosnian Krajina [Bosnia-Herzegovina], Podrinje [Bosnia-Herzegovina], Central Serbia. In all those places, displaced Serbs from Herzegovina were found. Over the course of six years, day after day, we found dozens of newly discovered genera [extended families]. When we started we had about twenty Herzegovinians tested, today there are 1143. The work continues and we hope to have an expanded edition. We could not test all the Herzegovinian genera, but we hope that there will be an opportunity to continue with the research", said Krtinić.
[...]
"Herzegovina is really the key place of ethnogenesis of the Serbian people, especially during the period of Nemanjić's Serbia when all of Herzegovina belonged to that state and when the Serbian people took shape completely. There are many haplogroups in Herzegovina, not all Herzegovinians are of the same origin on the line of male ancestors. As for Herzegovina as the mother of the Serbian people, it refers to the migrations of the Dinaric Serbian population, and the authors have recognized this before. They knew that Serbs from Herzegovina emigrated to Šumadija [Serbia] and Vojvodina [Serbia], and the same dialect is spoken in Krajina [Croatia]," says Jerković.
[...]
This content is co-financed from the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia - Directorate for Cooperation with the Diaspora and Serbs in the region of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, and the views expressed do not necessarily express the views of the authority that allocated the funds.

https://topportal.info/geneticko-porijeklo-srba-stare-hercegovine-evo-sta-je-pokazalo-sestogodisnje-istrazivanje/ (original article)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QilOLqBpALXBs0s1nARzy1hl_quwK4F8/view?usp=sharing (MHTML file, archive of the original article)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xWBO_N_3Ur_DWWwvzV21hiq5vqmLH_uZ/view?usp=sharing (MHTML file, archive of the automatically translated article)

https://www.poreklo.rs/poreklo-in-english/ (site of the Poreklo society)
====================

The interesting thing about the article is the note about the funding provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia. So, the article about the book, actually a promotion of the book in another country, was co-financed by the Serbian government. There is nothing bad in this, but the Poreklo society has always claimed that it has nothing to do with the Serbian government, that they are an independent private entity, not connected to the state authorities in any way. However, the promotion of their book in Bosnia-Herzegovina was sponsored by the Serbian government. This means that the Serbian political authorities are interested in the work of the Poreklo society, and the book was deemed worthy of promoting with money from the state budget.

I emphasize this indirect connection between the Poreklo society and the Serbian government because this was a reason why I was banned for 7 days from the Poreklo forum and eventually one of the admins suggested that I post my messages about the I-FGC22045 haplogroup elsewhere, not on their forum. The Poreklo admins were apparently outraged because I said that the delay in doing a more thorough DNA testing of the remains of NRD was caused by something else than the bureaucracy. I did not say that Poreklo was receiving orders from the Serbian government not to do another DNA test of NRD. I only said that the Poreklo society seemed to be apprehensive in doing a more detailed test (including an autosomal one), because that may discover genealogic relations with peoples from countries that are today considered adversaries of Serbia, namely Albania, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Muslim and Croatian part of it).

The South Slavic branch of I-FGC22045 is I-FGC22061, and this haplogroup is mainly encountered in men who identify as Serbs from Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia. Of course, there are other men with this haplogroup who don't identify as Serbs, but the majority of those currently tested identify as Serbs. It is presumed that approximately 3% of those identifying as Serbs have the I-FGC22061 haplogroup. One of the Poreklo admins told me on the forum that the origin of the I-FGC22061 haplogroup will not change the history of the Serbs. To which I responded that it's probably true, but it can change the history of many Serbian families.

I heard that Poreklo now tries to do the detailed DNA testing of NRD's remains (probably a WGS test), but I don't believe this to be true. I don't know what changed today compared to the time when I was posting on the Poreklo forum and the Poreklo admins were accusing the bureaucracy for blocking the testing by not allowing the remains to be tested in another country. A Poreklo admin told me in the past that it's not possible for a Poreklo representative to pack a skeleton in a suitcase and cross the border, although he knew very well that for DNA testing only a few grams of bone or teeth are needed. Things like this make me very skeptical about the will of the Poreklo society to do the testing, whatever their real reason is.

This is not to say that I don't appreciate the work done by the Poreklo society, far from that. They are an example for the other countries in how to organize campaigns of mass DNA testing. And the Poreklo forum is a good source of information for many Balkan Y-DNA haplogroups, although at this time they have blocked the translation of whole pages with Google Translate. But Yandex Translate can be used instead.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

Now back to the pages about Nikola Rašković Drobnjak (NRD), who was a local ruler (knez = prince) of the Vlachs from the area of the town of Gacko (Bosnia-Herzegovina). I will discuss first the inscription from his tombstone.

Scanned article from the book:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MtxV05LyJKRpl_NGYw1YZVmxnTpgFMNR/view?usp=sharing

Image of the inscription from the tombstone:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/145WapC60crmzzrwX8VSVdwiHwLqlIXer/view?usp=sharing

NRD's remains were unearthed from a place in the village of Cernica (near Gacko) in 2018 by a team from the Herzegovina Museum in Trebinje (Bosnia-Herzegovina). They were in a tomb under a stone (stećak) with the inscription "АСЕ  ЛЕЖИ  ССNЕЗЬ  NИССОЛА  РАШССОВИЧЬ  ДРОБNАССЬ". Although there are articles in which this inscription is mentioned, none has analyzed it from a linguistic point of view. I will try to do it myself.

The inscription is written in the Bosnian Cyrillic script. Interestingly enough, the "ethnic affiliation" of this script is also disputed to the current day by the Serbs and Croats. There is an entire section about this dispute in the Wikipedia article. So, not only the persons buried in the graves can have an "ethnic affiliation" which is disputed, it turns out that the texts from the tombstones can have it also.

==================
Bosnian Cyrillic, widely known as Bosančica, is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that originated in medieval Bosnia. The term was coined at the end of the 19th century by Ćiro Truhelka. It was widely used in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the bordering areas of modern-day Croatia (southern and middle Dalmatia and Dubrovnik regions).
[...]
In conclusion, main traits of Bosnian Cyrillic include:
- It was a form of Cyrillic script mainly in use in Bosnia and Herzegovina, central Dalmatia and Dubrovnik.
- Its earliest monuments are from the 11th century, but the golden epoch covered the period from the 14th to 17th centuries. From the late 18th century it rather speedily fell into disuse to be replaced by the Latin script.
[...]
The polemic about [the] "ethnic affiliation" of Bosnian Cyrillic started in the 19th century, then reappeared in the mid-1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Cyrillic
==================

The first word "ACE" is transcribed in the articles written about the inscription as "овде" in Serbian or "ovdje" in Bosnian and Croatian, although this word does not exist in Serbo-Croatian and no explanation is given for this transcription. The translation of "ACE" to "ОВДЕ/OVDJE" ["HERE" in English] makes sense and is the true meaning of the word. This word was very likely from the Vlach language and is also present in Rumanian as AICI, AICEA or ACI with the same meaning, "HERE" ("in this place"). These words are pronounced like "AIĆ, AIČA and AĆ" in Serbo-Croatian written in Latin script. The pronunciation in English is "AEECH, AEECHA and ACHEE", where CH is pronounced like in the word CHIP.

https://dexonline.ro/definitie/aici/definitii
https://dexonline.ro/definitie/aci/definitii

The problem is that the C from the Cyrillic "ACE" is actually pronounced like S in English, so ACE would be transcribed as ASE in Latin script. There is no such word in Rumanian. Moreover, at the time of the writing of the inscription, the Rumanian language was written only in Cyrillic script, not in Latin script like today. I maintain the opinion that ACE is the Rumanian/Vlach word ACI, but possibly written under the influence of the Italian language known by the writer of the inscription. When the Rumanian language went from the Cyrillic script to the Latin script in the 19th century, the sounds Č and Ć (CHE and CHI in English) that are present in the language were transcribed like in Italian as CE and CI. For example, like in the Italian words ACETO ("vinegar") and CIBO ("food"). So, ACE from the inscription uses the same writing convention as the Italian orthography for the sound Č. We don't know the precise word used by the Vlachs, but it probably was ACE (AČ in Serbo-Croatian), as a variant of ACI (AĆ in Serbo-Croatian).

The correct writing of ACE (AČ) in Bosnian Cyrillic would have been AV or AVE, because according to the Wikipedia article the sound Č was written as V. That probably seemed confusing to the writer, maybe again under the influence of Italian, where AVE is for example used in the prayer named "Ave Maria" ("Hail Mary"). So, he opted for ACE instead.

The word ЛЕЖИ means "LIES" in English, so ACE ЛЕЖИ means "HERE LIES". In Rumanian the most common text used on tombstones is AICI/ACI ODIHNEȘTE, meaning "HERE RESTS".

The word ССNЕЗЬ is transcribed in Latin script as KNEZ, meaning "PRINCE/DUKE" or more precisely "ruler/chief of a local community".

================
Knez or Kenez (Romanian: cnez/cneaz or chinez; Hungarian: kenéz; Latin: kenezius, Serbian Cyrillic: кнез) was one of the titles given to the leader of the Vlach communities in the Kingdom of Hungary and western Balkans during the Middle Ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knez_(Vlach_leader)
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The use of CC instead of K is one of the characteristics of the Bosnian Cyrillic script. You can see this in a picture of the script displayed in the Wikipedia article written in Bosnian.

https://bs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosan%C4%8Dica

The words NИССОЛА РАШССОВИЧЬ ДРОБNАССЬ are transcribed in Serbo-Croatian as NIKOLA RAŠKOVIĆ DROBNAK and in English as NIKOLA RASHKOVICH DROBNAK, meaning the name of the person buried in the grave.

So, the translation of the inscription is "HERE LIES KNEZ NIKOLA RAŠKOVIĆ DROBNAK".

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

The article begins with a few historical considerations about the place where the remains of NRD were found. To better understand the article, I linked below three screenshots from Google Maps:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aX39232_Wfg8dzlcixD684O6G3533Eoy/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KJYHbRweg-nvxFqMHaDBAbyCA_wp6Nzt/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YtE0ApgOO9rbQFEti4dlI9vsXvjoxfFy/view?usp=sharing

These are the most important fragments about the historical perspective, translated automatically with Google.

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At the suggestion of the Society of Serbian Genealogists "Poreklo", and with the support of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Belgrade and the Scientific Council of the Serbian DNA Project, the archaeological team of the Museum of Herzegovina from Trebinje carried out archaeological excavations under the medieval tombstone in the village of Cernica near Gacko in mid-October 2018. It is a stećak [tombstone] that was discovered in 2013 during the arrangement of the local cemetery, on which the inscription "Here lies Prince Nikola Rašković Drobnjak" is written. The stećak is located right next to the ruins of a medieval church, which, according to tradition, was built by Jelena Lazarevic, the daughter of Prince Lazar [of Serbia] and wife of duke Sandalj Hranić [Bosnian nobleman] from Hum [Zachlumia].
[...]
Through Cernica, where the caravan station and then the marketplace were located, the Dubrovnik road was passing by, while in the nearby fortified town of Ključ, Sandalj and his nephew and heir Stjepan Vukčić Kosača received embassies and issued charters. Customs were established in Cernica in Sandal's time, which caused the resentment of Dubrovnik's and other merchants. It is believed that the marketplace was managed by the knezes (princes), and thanks to the Dubrovnik archive, several of them are known by their first and last names. The marketplace represented the central area where public and business life took place and, in addition to the inn [hotel] for travelers, the customs house and the customs office, a church was also usually located on it.

Before 2013, there was no proof confirming that there was a church in Cernica, until the remains of a medieval church were unexpectedly discovered during the cleaning and arrangement of the village cemetery. The discovered church is located on the site under Makov val, on the eastern side of the village cemetery, under a vertical steep rock. A macadam [asphalt] road runs right next to the church and leads deeper into the interior of Cernica, and further to the fortified town of Ključ, the famous residence of Hranič-Kosac.

To the south of the church stretches the fertile Cernica field, where medieval tombstones (stečci) are located on a raised ridge. The locals call the whole area "bazaar", and the famous Cernica marketplace, known from the medieval and Turkish periods, was probably located there. Next to the mentioned ridge, the Dubrovnik [caravan] road started, which is still visible today, and descends into the field from the famous Stone Hill (Monte lapidos), often mentioned in Dubrovnik archives as a place where interceptions, attacks and robberies took place. It should be noted that above Cernica is the village of Stepen, which was inhabited in the period by the Vlachs Pliščići or Plijeska, from which katun was Vukosav Pliščić, the knez of all the Vlachs living in the Bosnian kingdom.

Poreklo Society of Serbian Genealogists
Genetic origin of the Serbs from Old Herzegovina (Belgrade 2022), pages 1041-1043
=====================

Cernica was located on the caravan road coming from Dubrovnik and it was an important marketplace in medieval times. Since the Vlachs were the people who transported goods from Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) inland through Cernica, it is very likely that they constituted the majority of the population of Cernica. And this is why the local ruler, the knez, was also in charge of the marketplace. Nikola Rašković Drobnjak was one of these knezes who ruled over the Vlach population of Cernica area. But as it is said in the article, the nearby village of Stepen was the home of the Pliščić or Plijeska Vlachs, the place where the knez of all Bosnian Vlachs from NRD's time was born.

The name "Pliščić / Plijeska" can give some clues about the origin of the Vlachs from the area of Cernica. It resembles the Rumanian name "Pleșca" (written as "Pleška" in Serbo-Croatian or "Pleshka" in English). The name Pleșca apparently derives from the noun "pleșcă", which means baldness, and by extension "lack of vegetation" when it is used in reference to a place. See below the definition of "pleșcă" from two Rumanian dictionaries.

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{automatic translation}
pleșcă (feminine noun) : 1. (Regionalism) Baldness. 2. (Regionalism) Epithet given to a bald man. 3 (Regionalism) Head. 4 (Regionalism) Skeleton.
MDA (The small academic dictionary) Bucharest, 2010

pleșcă (feminine noun) : 1. Baldness, emptiness. 2. (by extension) Devoid of vegetation, bare. (topography) Pleșca Mare, peak. (1,292 m) located in the Igniș Mountains; Pleșcioara, hill (806 m) north of Baia Mare; Pleșca, hill in Bocicoiel, Bogdan Vodă, Rozavlea, Băiuț, Groșii Țibleșului, Lăpușu Românesc (Vișovan, 2008). (onomastics) Pleșca, Plesca, Pleșcă, Pleșcan, family name (43 people with these names, in Maramureș, in 2007). – From pleș “bald” (MDA).
DRAM (Dictionary of regionalisms and archaisms from Maramureș) Baia Mare, 2015

https://dexonline.ro/definitie/ple%C8%99c%C4%83
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Contemporary people named Pleșca:
https://www.locatefamily.com/P/PLE/PLESCA-1.html

So, "pleșcă" is a so-called regionalism, that is a word which is used only in a particular geographic area, namely the Maramureș region, which is located in Northern Transylvania. It is possible that the Pliščići/Plijeska Vlachs were originally from Maramureș.

My father has many autosomal matches from Maramureș, although there is no family story about ancestors from there. But genetic genealogy can discover genealogical links that were forgotten.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

The article continues by presenting the instance where a man named "Nicola Rascouich Drobnach" was mentioned in 1453 in a document written in Latin, obviously the transcription of the Serbo-Croatian "Nikola Rašković Drobnjak". The patronymic Rašković means that his father was named Raško (Rashko in English) and there are three mentions of the name Raško connected with the Drobnjak Vlach tribe from Gacko: Raško Klapčić (1409 and 1413), Raško Pribjenović (1433) and Raško Mrđenović (1421). There was also a Drobnjak Vlach named Jurien (Đurien) Rašković who could have been linked to Nikola Rašković and who is mentioned in the archives between 1430 and 1444.

I remember that on the Poreklo forum someone was confused by the name Jurien, because its etymology is not clear, but definitely not Slavic. In my opinion, Jurien is a version of the Rumanian name Iulian, derived from the Latin name Julius/Julianus, from which Julian (English), Julien (French) and Giuliano (Italian) are also derived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_(given_name)

The Vlach name Jurien was pronounced like Iurien in Rumanian (Yoorien in English). Iurien is the rhotacized version of Iulian, with the "L" changed to "R" (and secondarily the  "A" changed to "E"). Rhotacism in the Rumanian language meant changing the consonants L and N (when they were located between two vowels) to R. So, the Rumanian name Iulian became Iurian in some territories inhabited by speakers of the Rumanian language, most notably North Transylvania (Maramureș), where rhotacism persisted in popular language until the middle of the 20th century.

IULIAN > IURIAN > IURIEN (written as JURIEN in Serbo-Croatian, but pronounced like IURIEN in Rumanian)
(the L between the two vowels U and I was transformed into R)

Only the first name IULIAN is used in contemporary Rumania, but IURIAN was used in the past and the proof is the fact that there are Rumanians who have the surname Iurian. Almost all of them are from Transylvania, the vast majority from the Cluj and Mureș counties.

https://www.locatefamily.com/I/IUR/IURIAN-1.html

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In Romanian, rhotacism shifted intervocalic "L" to "R" and "N" to "R". Thus, Latin "caelum" (sky, heaven) became Romanian "cer", Latin "fenestra" (window) Romanian "fereastră" and Latin "felicitas" (happiness) Romanian "fericire". Some northern Romanian dialects and Istro-Romanian [Vlach language from Istria, Croatia] also changed all intervocalic [n] to [r] in words of Latin origin. For example, Latin "bonus" became Istro-Romanian "bur" (compared to standard Daco-Romanian "bun").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism#Romanian
=====================

As can be seen from the Wikipedia articles quoted above, rhotacism is present in the language of the Vlachs who settled in Istria, a peninsula in Croatia. It is very likely that the Drobnjak Vlachs spoke a similar language to the Istrian Vlachs, so this is why they used the rhotacized name Jurien. These Istrian Vlachs also lived on the island of Krk, which is exactly opposite the town of Novi Vinodolski, from which the name Novljani (a Drobnjak brotherhood) is possibly derived.

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The Istro-Romanians (Istro Romanian: rumeri or rumâri) are a Romance ethnic group native to or associated with the Istrian Peninsula. Historically, they inhabited vast parts of it, as well as the western side of the island of Krk until 1875.
[...]
It is known that the Istro-Romanians are actually not indigenous to Istria, since the differences between the Istro-Romanian language and the now extinct geographically close Dalmatian are notable. In addition, they count several similarities with the Transylvanian Romanians and Timok Vlachs, suggesting that the Istro-Romanians originate from the current areas west of Romania or Serbia.
[...]
Two other dominant theories [about the origin of the Istrian Vlachs] are distinguished. According to the theory of the Romanian philologist and linguist Ovid Densusianu, the Istro-Romanians originate from the southwest of Transylvania and Banat, and would have emigrated from there between the years 1000 and 1400. He bases this theory on language traits, for example, the simple intervocalic rhotacism (sound change that converts one consonant into a "R-like" sound) of [n] ([n]> [r]) in the words of Latin origin, as in the Țara Moților dialect in Romania. In addition, there are Istro-Romanian popular stories about their arrival in Istria during the Middle Ages. According to local legends, there were seven caravans that came from Transylvania and settled in Istria, six south of the Učka and one north of it. This theory is also embraced by other scholars like Vasile Frățilă. Other authors say that the Istro-Romanians migrated much earlier, in the second half of the first millennium, before the start of the Hungarian influence on Romanian, since the Istro-Romanian language does not have these influences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanians
======================

The rhotacism is also present in the name of the Istrian Vlachs. Their name RUMÎRI (or RUMÂRI) is derived from the original (true) name of the Rumanians, namely RUMÎNI (or RUMÂNI). The letters Î and  are used in the Rumanian language for the same sound, written in the International Phonetic Alphabet as ɨ (close central unrounded vowel).

RUMÎNI (RUMÂNI) > RUMÎRI (RUMÂRI) / RUMERI
(the N between the two vowels Î and I was transformed into R)

In conclusion, it is possible that the Drobnjak and Pliščić/Plijeska Vlachs were originally from Transylvania, because some linguistic characteristics of their language (rhotacism in particular) indicate a link to the region of Maramureș.[/i]

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 5

The next part of the article is about the archeological work done and what was discovered in the medieval tomb. In the tomb there were two graves. In the first grave 2 skeletons were discovered (designated as 1/1 and 1/2), both of men with a height of 168-175 cm and an age of 45 years (+/- 10 years). In the second grave was discovered a multitude of bone remains which belonged to 3 adults (designated as 2/1, 2/1 and 2/3) and 1 child. Two of the adults from the second grave (2/1 and 2/2) were confirmed as being male after anayzing the DNA from their skulls. The skull of the person 2/3 was only partially preserved and had two blade injuries, one healed, the other not (which probably caused the death). This part of the article is not clear, it also speaks about a male of around 23 years, a woman of 38 years and a person of non-defined sex of 45 years. These age estimations may be based on other fragments of bone, outside of those designated with numbers.

In the genetics laboratory the remains of the persons designated as 1/1, 2/1 and 2/2 were Y-DNA tested for 23 STR markers.

The man designated as 1/1 had the I1 haplogroup, sub-branch I-FGC33034 (now named I-FGC22061 by FTDNA and YFull). So, Nikola Rašković Drobnjak (or his close relative buried next to him) was confirmed as having the I-FGC33034 (I-FGC22061) haplogroup, typical for the Novljani brotherhood of the Drobnjak tribe (plural Drobnjaci). It is not known if the tested person was actually NRD or his relative. The fact that the two persons (1/1 and 1/2) buried in the first grave were relatives is mentioned in the article, and although it makes sense, it was not confirmed by DNA testing, or this was not specified in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drobnjaci

The men designated as 2/1 and 2/2 had the N2 haplogroup, sub-branch N-FT1812494, typical for the Banjan tribe (pl. Banjani), also a Vlach tribe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjani

In the article it is not specified why the remains of the other two adults found in the graves (1/2 and 2/3) were not tested as well. This makes absolutely no sense and only raises questions. The genetics laboratory is the same one used for the Y-DNA mass testing organized by the Poreklo society.

I was accused by the Poreklo forum admins of being a conspiracy theorist when I asked them why they will not explain the reasons for the long delay in doing a more advanced DNA testing of the remains of NRD. But now I can also ask them why they did not explain in the article the reasons for testing the remains of only 3 persons, instead of all 5. The managers of the Poreklo society must understand that in order not to generate conspiracy theories, they must be more transparent with their decisions and they must explain the reasons behind these decisions. Otherwise you cannot stop the people in thinking that all the 5 persons were tested, but only the results of 3 persons were convenient for the Poreklo society, so the other 2 persons were declared as not tested, without any justification.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 6

But the controversy surrounding the remains of NRD doesn't end here. I was searching with Google for a better photo of the inscription from his tombstone, to use with this message. I found a good one at the beginning of an article published on the site Sputnik Serbia in December 2022, about the appeal of 43 historians for the protection of Serbian heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The article is in fact a copy of the article published the day before on the site of RTRS (Radio and Television of Republika Srpska), a thing mentioned at the end of the article from Sputnik Serbia. The difference between the two articles is the photo used in the article, the RTRS version using the flag of Republika Srpska and the Sputnik Serbia version using the photo of the inscription from the tombstone of NRD).

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{automatic translation from Serbian}
The appeal points out that researchers, historians, professors and public workers from Republika Srpska and Serbia are witnessing increasingly frequent and obvious work on falsifying historical facts about the medieval past of Serbs in the territory of today's Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Although historical sources mention the Serbs as a people inhabiting these areas since the first half of the 7th century, while numerous historical monuments, such as the Charter of Ban Kulin, charters of other medieval rulers of Bosnia, Miroslav's Gospel, and others, speak of Serbian centuries-old continuity, along with various archaeological localities, an attempt at a kind of historical-identity engineering that was started by the Austro-Hungarian state with a systematic organized falsification of historical facts during the occupation of these areas, occurs even today in different, even more perfidious, forms, the appeal states.
[...]
"One of the obvious examples of the promotion of the so-called Bosnian nation and the production of non-existent historical continuities that reach deep into the past is the recent case regarding the Čajnički Four Gospels, which certain circles from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared to be of "Bosnian provenance", thereby denying its Orthodox and Serbian origin character [...] historians write.
[...]
Throughout the 20th century, the appeal states, there were attempts to distort the facts about the tombstones of our ancestors, popularly called stećci [singular "stećak"], such as those of the Serbian noble family Hrabren Miloradović at the Radimlja necropolis in Stolac, next to which a monument to the Blajburg victims was erected on the same complex.

https://lat.sputnikportal.rs/20221229/apel-43-istoricara-za-zastitu-srpskog-nasledja-na-prostoru-bih-1148716922.html

https://www.rtrs.tv/vijesti/vijest.php?id=498212

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LSbDP1zpoB0oFPB-H9xgFdhXw3U5ONFg/view?usp=sharing (MHTML file, archive of the original article)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RObPXMQJJvo_zlwZEojGDu7bvT2EyIYb/view?usp=sharing (MHTML file, archive of the automatically translated article)
====================

The article from Sputnik Serbia only has one photo, with the inscription from the tombstone (stećak) of NRD. The copyright of the photo is the following:

© Photo: given to Sputnik by the Association "Poreklo"

The fact that the Poreklo society of Serbian genealogists gave exactly this photo for the article implies that in its opinion NRD's tomb is part of the "attempts to distort the facts about the tombstones of our ancestors, popularly called stećci". And therein lies the problem. We don't know how the medieval people identified themselves, and to try to project a contemporary identity on a medieval man is wrong. The members of the medieval Drobnjak tribe were presented as Vlach in the documents from that time, but we don't know if NRD called himself a Vlach or something else. We don't know what languages he spoke in and which language was considered by him as being his native tongue. This lack of ethnic and linguistic information about NRD makes it easy for the contemporary ethnic groups involved in the dispute mentioned in the Sputnik Serbia article to claim him as one of their own. Yes, NRD is the ancestor of the people from the ethnic groups that inhabit the present-day area of Gacko (Bosnia-Herzegovina), but nobody knows how he identified himself, so he cannot be associated only with a particular contemporary ethnic group. He can be associated with all the contemporary ethnic groups from the region, because they are all his descendants, even if today these groups are adversaries.

We don't currently know what genealogical information contains the DNA of NRD. His autosomal DNA would very likely show that he is related to contemporary people from all the ethnic groups inhabiting the Western Balkans. And this can be a problem for those that claim that he is of one particular ethnicity and not related to the other ethnic groups. This may explain the delay in properly DNA testing his remains, because the result would destroy the belief that NRD was the ancestor only of a particular contemporary ethnic group. I am interested in NRD's autosomal DNA because it will solve the enigma of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup origin (Norman, Varangian, Goth, Saxon, etc.). But maybe some Serbs are afraid that NRD's autosomal DNA will show him being closely related to peoples that are today considered as adversaries or even enemies by the Serbs, namely the Albanians, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. This is why I think that the Poreklo society uses the excuse of the international bureaucracy not to do the testing.

In my opinion, the pressure on Poreklo comes not from  the Serbian government, but from the public opinion, and especially from the paying members of the Poreklo society who do not want to dispel the myth of the Drobnjak tribe being the most ethnically pure Serb tribe, a myth present in the books written about this medieval tribe. The Serbs consider themselves mainly a mix of Slavic and Balkan old populations, which is true and can be seen in the ethnicity estimates of the Serbs who have taken an autosomal test. They mainly have Slavic and Balkan DNA in various proportions. The Y haplogroups of the Serbs are also mainly Slavic and Balkan, but there are also in lesser numbers Germanic and Asian haplogroups, a proof of the invasions and migrations that happened in the Balkans in medieval times (the old Slavs were themselves a people who migrated to the Balkans from Central Europe).

The myth of the pure Serbian ethnicity of the Drobnjak tribe has already been cracked when it became clear that the Y haplogroup associated with the descendants of this tribe is not Slavic or Balkan, but Scandinavian. Was the paternal ancestor of the Drobnjak tribe an "invader" or a "migrant" who assimilated in the local population? Only the autosomal DNA of NRD could tell the truth, in conjunction with the historical documents from that time. However, the Y chromosome doesn't seem to be a political problem. It is unusual, but Scandinavia is geographically far from the Balkans, and there are no disputes between the Scandinavian countries and the Balkan countries.

The political problem seems to be regional, in that NRD's autosomal DNA could completely shatter the myth of the Drobnjaks "pure" Serbian ethnicity, if it will show that NRD shares big percentages of DNA with men from the Balkans who don't identify as Serbs and don't have Serb ancestors. But this is what genetic genealogy is for, to challenge from a scientific point of view the myths and stories on which families and peoples are built. Genetic genealogy can confirm the genealogical story of a family or the ethnogenesis story of a people, or can demonstrate that they are false. The Poreklo society is used to that, because each man who is tested in the Serbian DNA Project launched by Poreklo receives not only the Y haplogroup, but also an interpretation of the result that shows if his family story is true or not. In the case of NRD, we don't know his family story, but maybe we can learn it from his autosomal DNA.

In conclusion, it is understandable that many people and many states don't like the disruptive potential of genetic genealogy in the historical field, but genetic data is true historical data and it should be taken into account when writing the history of families, peoples and countries. If history is a science that tells the truth about the past, then genetic genealogy should be one of the main tools used by historians, alongside the historical documents and archeological finds.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

This is a seven part message.

PART 1

I didn't tell in my previous message why I was contacted by A. Jakšić. It was not about the article about Nikola Rašković Drobnjak (NRD). He sent me that article without me asking for it, because he presumed that I hadn't read it, which was true. The reason why he contacted me was to help him in his research about a member of the Drobnjak tribe who lived in the 1700s. For those who don't know, A. Jakšić is an expert in Drobnjak genealogy, which he has studied for many years and even wrote a book about the Drobnjak tribe. He considers himself a descendant of Pavle Abazović, a voivode (ruler/chief) of the Drobnjak tribe, who lived around 1600. This time A. Jakšić told me that he has discovered a monk named Simeon Marković, who was the grandson of Drakula Abazović, himself the brother of Pavle Abazović. See below the original image of the tree that Jakšić sent me and the version automatically translated with Google.

Abazović Drobnjak Family Tree (according to A. Jakšić)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17H7r5G1p23_vYrgiEzr82wKX8ZbKyPlj/view?usp=sharing (original image with text in Serbian)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y8l86C8_3sCDe90Atx1ST7Cx5eqhn7LX/view?usp=sharing (translated image with text in English)

Simeon was a monk at the Savina Orthodox Monastery near the city of Herceg Novi in today's Montenegro, on the Adriatic Sea coast. Like other monks from that time, he went abroad to collect funds, in his case for building a new church inside the Savina monastery complex. After staying 12 years in Russia in order to collect money from wealthy donors, Simeon the monk wanted to go back to his monastery with the funds he gathered. However, on his way back he fell ill and was given shelter at the Căldărușani Orthodox Monastery near Bucharest, Wallachia (today southern Rumania). There he died and was buried in 1773. A. Jakšić wanted me to translate in Rumanian an e-mail message from him to the managers of the Căldărușani Monastery, which I did.

======================
Monks frequently travelled in the 18th century although their journeys were long, uncertain and difficult. The purposes of such journeys were most often collecting donations and various material means for the survival and development of monastic communities and monasteries. They, however, travelled for other reasons as well, such as education, establishing valuable contacts, connecting remote monastic communities with the spiritual centres of the time, following theological and art movements, which were later transferred from spiritual centres as established religious and cultural models to remote local communities. The contacts were significant for the other side as well, especially in the case of Orthodox Russia. With their arrival to Russia, monks brought fresh information about political circumstances in the areas occupied by other empires, enabling Russian authorities to develop an entire intelligence network about other Orthodox centres and remote areas. This was especially important for Russia because the country clearly perceived itself as the successor of the Byzantine Empire and protector of the entire Orthodox Christianity. Preserving [Balkan] monasteries was crucial for preserving the ethnic and religious identity under the foreign rule in the 18th century. Thus Orthodox Christians in the Bay of Kotor under Venetian [Catholic] rule were grouped around the Savina Monastery as their spiritual centre. The journeys of monks were most often very long, sometimes lasting for years due to technical means and undeveloped traffic infrastructure of the time, as well as due to the need to collect as many donations as possible for the poor monastic communities, mostly under the foreign rule.
[...]
The assignment of Hieromonk Simeon Marković Draguličić [Drakuličić] (Nikšićevski) from Savina was apparently mostly related to the affairs outside of the monastery including frequent travels for collecting charity. He was engaged in it ever since his earliest days as a monk, as shown by several travelling permissions issued by Venetian authorities for the Ottoman Empire area (1729), as well as for other countries. [...] However, Simeon’s most important endeavor, agreed with the Savina Monastery fraternity, was his trip to Russia in an attempt to collect means for the construction of the Savina Big Church. He started off probably in late 1760 or early 1761. Documents stored in Russian archives, as well as Simeon Marković’s will, reveal to us that he contacted the former Bishop of Dalmatia Simeon Končarević immediately upon his arrival to Russia. Simeon Končarević, who had been living in Russia for several years already, wrote to the Synod in St. Petersburg from Moscow in July 1761 that Simeon Nikšićevski arrived in Moscow with a petition letter sealed by Dalmatian Orthodox monasteries. The petition letter wrote “about nationwide unrest in Dalmatia due to heavy Venetian repressions and oppressions, as confirmed by other reports arriving from there”. The petition letter was handed over to Count Mihail Ilarionovich Vorontsov in the Foreign Collegium. It shows that [Simeon] Marković, besides his assignment to collect charity, also had the intention and a task to plead for the status of his compatriots in Dalmatia. Along with his personal plea to the Synod for permission to collect donations during three years, Simeon Marković states that he arrived secretly (probably due to the mentioned letter). Furthermore, Simeon actively prepared the departure of Hieromonk Jefrem Đakovski from Kiev to Dalmatia in order to teach Orthodox people and preach.[...] In his testament, Simeon himself states that he spent much time in the city of Starodub, in the home of Count Mojsej Vladislavić, as well as in the home of Simeon Končarević in Kiev. Russian documents also reveal to us that Nikšićevski, after receiving the holy myrrh and books, set off to the Bay of Kotor from Kiev on June 25, 1772. On his way to the Savina Monastery, ill and weak, he passed away in the Monastery of St. Demetrius in Căldărușani (Wallachia).

Marina Matić: Travels of the Savina Monastery Monks in the 18th Century and their Objective and Role in the Local Community of the Bay of Kotor
https://tinyurl.com/savina-monks (shortened URL)
============================

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 2

It is very likely that Simeon the monk was accompanied in his travel and stay in Russia by at least one male member of his Drobnjak family in order to help him with the activities of everyday life. This is mentioned in the article when referring to other traveling monks: "In that period, Venetian authorities issued several permissions for commercial journeys to members of the Savina fraternity, as we discovered from Venetian documents from the first decades of the 18 th century. Such permissions were granted to monk Stefan for Gacko (1705), Metropolitan Savatije escorted by four persons (1707), monk Đorđe from Savina with two companions (October 6, 1710). [page 79]"

The presence of these "monk companions/aides" in Russia could suggest the existence of the I-FGC22045 haplogroup in the territories of the former Russian empire, possibly around Starodub and Kiev, if some of these companions chose to stay in Russia permanently. However, Simeon the monk had the I-FGC22045>I-FGC22061>I-FT36856 haplogroup (according to A. Jakšić), and his presumed companions, if they were his relatives, had the same haplogroup. But at this time the I-FGC22061 haplogroup or his sub-branches have not been discovered in men living in the territories of the former Russian empire.

There is however the I-FGC22045>I-FGC22052 haplogroup of O. Siryi, whose paternal ancestor was born in Petropavlovka (Dnepropetrovsk Oblast), a settlement far away to the east (5-600 km) from Starodub or Kiev. Taking into account the fact that the surname of Siryi's ancestor was actually Chumak (meaning "[salt] trader"), the current hypothesis is that his ancestor was a descendant of a Vlach caravan trader who became a "chumak" probably in Eastern Galicia, a region which was a major salt producer in medieval times. But there is also the possibility that he was the descendant of one of the Balkan men who emigrated from Montenegro, Dalmatia or the Bay of Kotor to the Russian empire, as it is said in the article.

================
Based on the stated above, we have seen that the purpose of travels of Savina monks was, in most cases, collecting donations for the monastery, but there were also, as we have established, many other purposes and objectives. Thus Savina monks travelled as pilgrims to the Holy Land, to Venice to defend their right to a bishop and Diocese of Dalmatia and the Bay of Kotor before the Senate, which they had longed for during the entire 18th century, or to the Eparchy of Buda for similar reasons. We find them in distant Corfu, dedicated to spreading and confirming the Christian faith. The travels and connections of Savina monks with Russia were multidimensional. Besides collecting donations, we have seen that Savina monks collected receivables in Russia, purchased and received books as gifts, pleaded for the status of Serbs in Dalmatia and the Bay of Kotor before Russian authorities, brought educated Russians to teach Serbs in those areas. By this means, the Savina monks, as well as the Orthodox clergy in general, had a significant contribution in establishing far-reaching, important connections with Russia, which led to the first mass emigration of Serbs from Montenegro, Dalmatia and the Bay of Kotor to Russia in the 18th century, as well as, at the same time, to a more decisive involvement of Russia in the Balkans, especially after the Russo-Turkish war from 1768 to 1774.

Marina Matić: Travels of the Savina Monastery Monks in the 18th Century and their Objective and Role in the Local Community of the Bay of Kotor (pages 85-86)
https://tinyurl.com/savina-monks (shortened URL)
===================

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 3

There is another interesting thing about Simeon the monk, namely his grandfather, Drakula Abazović, who was probably born around the year 1650. Drakula Abazović had an ancestor with the same name who was born around 1500. The name Drakula sounds familiar for anyone who has heard about Count Dracula the vampire. Indeed, Drakula is the transcription in Serbo-Croatian of the name Dracula. The letter K is used instead of C, because in Serbo-Croatian (Latin script) the letter C is used for the TS sound (like in "cats"). Of course, Count Dracula is a literary character and never existed in reality, but its name was inspired from the name of a real person, the Wallachian (Southern Rumanian) voivode (ruler) named "Vlad Țepeș" ("Vlad the Impaler" in English), also known as "Vlad Drăculea" ("Vlad the son of Dracul") in English.

=============================
Count Dracula is the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula. He is considered the prototypical and archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. Aspects of the character are believed by some to have been inspired by the 15th-century Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler, who was also known as Vlad Dracula [...].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dracula

Vlad II (Romanian: Vlad al II-lea), also known as Vlad Dracul (Vlad al II-lea Dracul) or Vlad the Dragon (before 1395 – November 1447), was Voivode of Wallachia from 1436 to 1442, and again from 1443 to 1447. He is internationally known as the father of Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula. [...] Vlad's early life is poorly documented. He was born before 1395, and was one of the numerous illegitimate sons of Mircea I of Wallachia. Vlad's modern biographers agree that he was sent as a hostage to Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary, in 1395 or 1396. Sigismund mentioned that Vlad had been educated at his court, suggesting that he spent his youth in Buda, Nuremberg and other major towns of Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire.[...] Sigismund made Vlad a first-class member of the Order of the Dragon (a chivalric order established by Sigismund) in Nuremberg on 8 February 1431. Other first-class members included Alfonso V of Aragon and Vytautas, Grand Duke of Lithuania. The dragon-shaped badge of the order gave rise to his Romanian sobriquet, Dracul ("the Dragon"), for which his sons became known as Dracula ("son of Dracul").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_II_Dracul

Vlad III, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Țepeș or Vlad Dracula; Romanian: Vlad Drăculea; 1428/31 – 1476/77), was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death in 1476/77. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. He was the second son of Vlad Dracul, who became the ruler of Wallachia in 1436.
[...]
Since he was old enough to be a candidate for the throne of Wallachia in 1448, Vlad's time of birth would have been between 1428 and 1431. Vlad was most probably born after his father settled in Transylvania in 1429. Historian Radu Florescu writes that Vlad was born in the Transylvanian Saxon town of Sighișoara (then in the Kingdom of Hungary), where his father lived in a three-story stone house from 1431 to 1435.
[...]
The name Dracula, which is now primarily known as the name of a vampire, was for centuries known as the sobriquet of Vlad III. Diplomatic reports and popular stories referred to him as Dracula, Dracuglia, or Drakula already in the 15th century. He himself signed his two letters as "Dragulya" or "Drakulya" in the late 1470s. His name had its origin in the sobriquet of his father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon" in medieval Romanian), who received it after he became a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracula is the Slavonic genitive form of Dracul, meaning "[the son] of Dracul (or the Dragon)". In modern Romanian, dracul means "the devil", which contributed to Vlad's reputation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
================================

It is obvious that the first Drakula Abazović (born around 1500) was named after the Wallachian ruler Vlad Drăculea (Vlad the Impaler), also known as Dracula/Dracuglia/Drakula. His original name (patronymic) was almost surely DRĂCULEA, but that name could not be pronounced or written correctly by the non-Rumanians (Hungarians and Germans) from Transylvania, which was part of Hungary at that time. The letter Ă is used in Rumanian for the "mid central vowel" sound, also known as "schwa". It is the sound written as E in the English word "MOTHER" or the German word "MUTTER". This sound does not exist in Hungarian. The pronunciation of the EA diphthong in Rumanian is different from the pronunciation in other languages in which this diphthong exists. For example, EA from the Rumanian word BEA doesn't sound at all like the EA from the English word BEAR, but it is somewhat similar to the EA from YEAH. The Hungarian language doesn't have diphthongs at all, each vowel from a group of two being pronounced separately, not combined, like in a diphthong. This incompatibility of the DRĂCULEA name with the Hungarian language is probably the cause why it was changed in DRACULA, much easier to pronounce for non-Rumanians.

The Serbo-Croatian language also doesn't have the Ă sound or the EA diphthong, so DRAKULA was used instead of DRĂCULEA. Nevertheless, the fact that the Drobnjaks from the Western Balkans used the name of a Wallachian ruler linked to Transylvania is a proof that they continued to maintain the contact with their original land, which in my opinion was Transylvania.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 4

Of course, if the Drobnjak extended family migrated from Transylvania to the Western Balkans, then its contemporary descendants from the Western Balkans must have autosomal matches from Transylvania with which they share DNA segments. I suggested on the Poreklo forum to all those that have the I-FGC22061 haplogroup to take the autosomal test at Ancestry and 23andMe and then upload the result from Ancestry to MyHeritage and FTDNA. If there are Transylvanian persons which appear as matches for many of those with the I-FGC22061 haplogroup, then these matches are probably descending from the Transylvanian population from which the Drobnjaks originated. As I already said multiple times, in my opinion the original name of the Drobnjaks was Dobroneagu.

I compared the lists of autosomal matches of my father from FTDNA, MyHeritage and 23andMe with the lists of Ervin Knezevic (I-FGC22045>I-FGC22061>I-FGC22054>I-Y58427) :

MyHeritage (I used a list of 41 matches with Rumanian surnames that E. Knezevic sent me as screenshots)
---------------
There are 2 shared matches: A. Diaconu and K. Kaplan.
1) A. Diaconu doesn't have a tree, so there is no genealogical information available.
2) K. Kaplan has a little tree, with only 2 ancestors having their birthplaces mentioned. His paternal grandfather had actually the surname Demian and was from Sîntimbru, Alba county, Transylvania. His paternal grandmother was from Lugoj, Timiș county, also in Transylvania.

23andMe (I used a list of 15 matches with Rumanian surnames that E. Knezevic sent me as screenshots)
-------------
There are two shared matches: C. Flesaru and L. David
3) C. Flesaru (actually Fleșaru) has a surname derived from the German name Fleischer, which he himself mentions in the "Family Background" section. However, he doesn't have German DNA and has the I-S17250 (a sub-branch of I2) haplogroup. All four of his grandparents are from Rumania, but he doesn't mention their birthplaces. His surname connection with the Germans may suggest that he is probably from Transylvania, which had a sizable population of German origin (Transylvanian Saxons) until World War 2.
4) L. David has the maternal grandfather from Budapest, Hungary and the maternal grandmother from Austria. She is an American and probably meant to say Austria-Hungary (Habsburg empire), because one of her ancestral surnames is Machlinecz, which seems to be a Rusyn surname.

FTDNA
-----------
E. Knezevic is not an autosomal match for my father on FTDNA, to directly see the shared matches by using the "[Matches] In Common" feature. However, the shared matches can be obtained indirectly by comparing my father's list of matches with E. Knezevic's list of matches using the CSV files resulting from exporting the matches.

This is how I did it: I copied the column with names from my father's CSV file to the Windows clipboard and pasted it into a text file. I then sorted the names alphabetically using a command from the free text editor that I use, EditPad Lite. I did the same thing with E. Knezevic's matches, creating another text file. I then compared the two text files with DiffMerge, a free file comparison software.

These are the shared matches:
1) A. Rezo
2) L. E. Rezo
3) A. Vrac Christensen
4) A. Novak
5) C. Kuhn
6) E. Toth
7) J. Jurkovic (Vuksic)
8 ) K. Blew
9) L. Milosavljević
10) M. Smith
11) M. Carapina
12) R. V Jerkovich
13) M. Polete
14) V. Kalla

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 5

I will discuss in detail the FTDNA autosomal matches that my father shares with E. Knezevic.

1) A. and 2) L. E. Rezo
--------------------------
They are brother and sister, with Rezo ancestors from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
According to the article about the surname Rezo that E. Knezevic sent me, the original name was Vuletić, and they were originally from the Sinj region.
My father has a 9 cM match on Ancestry named D. Skiles, who has Vuletić ancestors from Sarajevo.
My father has a 8.4 cM match on MyHeritage named D. Bajramovic, who has Vuletić ancestors, but doesn't say their birthplace.

3) A. Vrac Christensen
--------------------------
In her case the shared matches with my father are mainly from the Balkans, so she is also from the Balkans. First on the list of shared matches is B. Drobnjak, who, regardless of his surname, doesn't have the Drobnjak Y haplogroup. He is the user "Exiled" from the Poreklo forum, who didn't like what I was posting there and told me to open my own thread, because I devalue the Drobnjak-Novljan thread (see the message linked below). I think he was happy when I left the Poreklo forum.

https://forum.poreklo.rs/index.php?topic=472.msg186519#msg186519

And speaking about the Poreklo forum, E. Knezevic told me a month ago that he wasn't able to register on the Poreklo forum, because they wouldn't approve his registration despite him doing everything properly and receiving a message that he only needed to wait for a moderator to approve the registration. This is really strange, but it doesn't surprise me, because those who have the I-FGC22061 haplogroup and don't identify as Serbs seem not to be welcomed to the Poreklo forum. I personally was able to register and post on the forum for quite some time, but I always felt that there was a toxic behavior directed toward those who wanted to challenge the "established" history and myths surrounding the Drobnjak tribe. I have no idea what E. Knezevic wanted to post on the Drobnjak thread, but maybe him being a Croat was enough for the forum admins not to take chances on another user who could question the official Poreklo theory about the origin of the Drobnjak tribe.

4) A. Novak
--------------
Shared matches mainly from the Balkans.

5) C. Kuhn
--------------
Very interesting match. She has the Finnish segment on chr. 20 about which I spoke in parts 2-4 of my message from 3 October posted on the Rötter forum. Two of the shared matches with her are Tiberg and Holopainen. So, E. Knezevic also has a connection with the Voutilainen family. According to her ethnicity estimate, she has 60% West Slavic DNA and 30% Scandinavian DNA.

6) E. Toth
--------------
From Serbia, according to her surnames. Shared matches from the Balkans, including A. Novak, mentioned previously. The surname "Toth" in Hungarian means "Slovak" or "Slavonian" (Croatian).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B3th

7) J. Jurkovic (Vuksic)
------------------------
No relevant information about him. Shared matches from the Balkans.

8 ) K. Blew
--------------
Shared matches mainly with British names. But also A. Rezo (who has British ancestry) is a shared match.

9) L. Milosavljević
-------------------
She is Serbo-Croatian. Croatian ancestors from Lika-Senj County.
Very diverse shared matches, including M. L. Voutilainen, A. Vrac Christensen and M. Carapina. But L. Milosavljević does not have the Finnish segment.
The surname Milosavljević appears in the tree of D. Bajramovic, the MyHeritage match mentioned above, who also has the surname Vuletić in the tree.

10) M. Smith
--------------
American with 20% Greek&Balkan DNA. Shared matches are a Croat from Bosnia, an Albanian and a German.

11) M. Carapina
------------------
Ancestors from Vrdi, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Shared matches mainly from the Balkans, including A. Vrac Christensen, L. Milosavljević and L. Rezo.
My father has an 8 cM Ancestry match named S. Cinthio who has an ancestor named Matija Čarapina (B:1730 Vrdi, Bosnia Herzegovina). She also has an ancestor named Mara Knezović (B:Abt. 1700), married to Martin Tomić (B:1700 Brišnik, Duvanjsko, Polje, Bosnia and Herzegovina).

12) R. V. Jerkovich
---------------------
Ancestors from Hvar island, Croatia. Many shared matches, 74 in total. With two exceptions, all the shared matches have a 10 cM segment on chr. 10. The same segment is shared by probably 600 of MyHeritage matches.

13) M. Polete
----------------
26% Greek&Balkan + 40% Italian + 19% British DNA. Many and diverse shared matches (43 in total). Probably all share a segment on chr. 12.

14) V. Kalla
--------------
Hungarian. Only three shared matches.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 6

There are two autosomal 23andMe matches of E. Knezevic which are interesting. They are not also matches for my father on 23andMe.

1) V. Salajan (correct spelling is Sălăjan)
--------------------------------------------
V. Sălăjan has the maternal grandmother from a village named Sărata [literally meaning "Salty"], Panticeu commune, Cluj county. Both maternal grandparents are from Vultureni, Cluj county. He doesn't mention the birthplace of his paternal grandfather, from which he inherited the Y chromosome, but very likely he also was from Transylvania, like the other three grandparents.

On 23andMe, V. Sălăjan has the I-P109 intermediate Y haplogroup, just like E. Knezevic and my father. However, it's not sure that V. Sălăjan actually has the I-FGC22061 haplogroup. His ancestors are from Transylvania, which, as I said, had until WW2 a sizable number of ethnic Germans named "Sași" (Saxons). And in the I-P109 tree there are sub-branches with Germans and Hungarians. The cheapest way to know if he's I-FGC22061, is for him to take a FTDNA autosomal test. If he gets the I-S14887 haplogroup, then very likely he belongs to I-FGC22061. He can transfer his 23andMe result to FTDNA for free, but he will only get the I-P109 haplogroup, so he must buy the Family Finder (FF) test.

His name is [Sălăjan = Sălaj + an], which means his paternal ancestor was from Sălaj county in northwestern Transylvania. My father has autosomal matches from Sălaj county.


2) C. Gheta (correct spelling is Gheța)
------------------------------------------
C. Gheta is actually named Gheța (pronounced like Ghetsa), because he lists an ancestor with the name Gheție. E. Knezevic told me that he has 7 pages of common matches with Gheța. These shared matches are a mix of nationalities mainly from the Balkans (Albanians, Bulgarians, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Greeks, a few Hungarians) and a few English looking surnames. In my opinion, this fact is a clear sign that the shared DNA comes from a Vlach ancestor, because the Vlachs were the population which was present all across the Balkans.

All grandparents of C. Gheța are from Sălaj county (two from Răstoci and two from Lemniu). The village name Răstoci is very interesting. The verb "a răstoci" in Rumanian means "to divert the course of a river", which makes sense, because Răstoci is located next to a bend in the course of the Someș river, so maybe at that place the river was diverted from his original course.

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%83stoci,_S%C4%83laj (Răstoci, Transylvania)
http://www.dexonline.ro:8080/definitie/r%C4%83stoci/definitii (Rumanian verb "a răstoci")

I searched "Răstoci" on the internet and surprisingly, or not, there is a peak named "Rastoci" near Kolašin, Montenegro. It is being surrounded by places named "Katun", a typical name for the settlements of the medieval Vlach population (in Rumanian the word is "Cătun"). This may prove a presence of Transylvanian Vlachs in that area of Montenegro. In my opinion, the Drobnjaks were originally also Transylvanian Vlachs, like the Morlachs in general.

https://mapcarta.com/19025180/Map (Rastoci, Montenegro)

Gheție is a surname from northern Transylvania, being encountered especially in the Maramureș and Satu Mare counties.

https://www.locatefamily.com/G/GHE/GHETIE-1.html

As I said in my latest forum message, there seems to be a linguistic connection ("rhotacism") between the Drobnjak and Istrian Vlachs and the region of Maramureș.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maramure%C8%99

But there may also be another connection. As I said many times, the I-FGC22045 haplogroup seems to be linked to salt production and trade. Maramureș is one of the regions with big salt deposits, which were extracted for many centuries. I found an article about the medieval salt mining in Transylvania and Maramureș.

===============
{automatic translation}
In the Middle Ages, in the Carpathian Basin, the most important salt mines were found in Transylvania (at Turda, Dej, Sic, Cojocna, Ocna Sibiului) and in Maramureș (at Coștiui and Rona).
[...]
The first written mentions from the Middle Ages regarding the exploitation of salt are found in a note dating back to 892. According to it, the king of the Franks asked the Bulgarian khan not to allow the sale of salt in Moravia [Eastern Czechia]. This salt came either from Transylvania or from Maramureș, these lands being ruled by the Bulgarians at that time.
[...]
In Maramureș, salt exploitation probably only began in the 13th century. [...] From the warehouses, salt was transported overland by carts or by water by barges, the latter being preferred because it was less expensive. Salt from Transylvania was transported on the Mureș and Someș rivers, respectively on the rivers into which they flowed (Tisza and Danube), and salt from Maramureș on the Tisza.
[...]
Only a few registers have been preserved about salt production, all from the 15th-16th centuries. From these calculations we know that in 1494, 526,927 pieces of salt were cut at the Maramureș salt pan, about 5,796 tons. [...] Salt was exported only in one direction, namely to the Balkan Peninsula, through Bosnia and Serbia. We have data on exports only from the beginning of the 16th century: between August 1514 and March 1516, an estimated quantity of 226 to 266 tons of salt was exported from the Smederevo customs house near Belgrade.

Zsolt Simon
Mineritul de sare în Evul Mediu în Transilvania și Maramureș
[Salt mining in the Middle Ages in Transylvania and Maramureș]
https://www.academia.edu/9039647/Mineritul_de_sare_%C3%AEn_evul_mediu_%C3%AEn_Transilvania_%C5%9Fi_%C3%AEn_Maramure%C5%9F
======================

In the article there is interesting information, for example that the river Someș, which passes by the village of Răstoci, was used in medieval times for the transport of salt. Even more interesting, the export of Transylvanian and Maramureș salt was only towards the Western Balkans, through Serbia and Bosnia. This route coincides with the probable route of the Drobnjak migration from Transylvania through Maramureș to the Western Balkans.

[Bogdan Munteanu]

PART 7

In my message from 18 August, I spoke about C.F. Marsh (Y-12 and Y-25 match for my father), one of the men of English paternal origin contacted by me in order to convince them to take the Big Y test. My hope was that at least one of them could have a haplogroup closely related to I-FGC22045, which would prove my theory about Gervase of Tilbury being the man who brought the haplogroup to the Balkans.

FTDNA seems to have big problems lately with the Big Y tests, so C.F. Marsh only this week received his result, after 3.5 months of waiting. His haplogroup is I-BY161289, so very distantly related to I-FGC22045. It is not known why there is such a delay in delivering the Big Y results, but people are getting nervous about the increased waiting period. Apparently, some recent Big Y test results took as long as 21 weeks (more than 5 months) to be delivered!!! See the FTDNA forum thread below about the status of the current Big Y batches (and the anger of those who have already waited for more than 3 months without receiving an official explanation for the delay).

https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/paternal-lineages-y-dna/big-y-and-snp-discovery/324400-latest-y-700-batches?p=336976#post336976

The excuse used by FTDNA is that the current delay in Big Y-700 processing times is due to a high number of tests that must be processed.

================
There is currently a delay in Big Y-700 processing times due to high test volume. All other tests are within typical processing times as of December 4, 2024.
https://help.familytreedna.com/hc/en-us/articles/4660569658895-Test-Results-Processing-Times
================

But this doesn't seem to be the case. I spoke in my message from 10 November about how I monitor my father's Y-STR matches who have Big Y tests in progress. These are the numbers:

Y-STR matches who have the Big Y test in progress or stuck:

10 November 2024
----------------------
14 Y-12 matches, 6 Y-25 matches, 1 Y-67 match with the I-M253 haplogroup
2 Y-12 matches with the I-L22 haplogroup

8 December 2024
--------------------
14 Y-12 matches, 5 Y-25 matches, 1 Y-67 match with the I-M253 haplogroup
2 Y-12 matches with the I-L22 haplogroup

It's easy to see that in a month there is almost no difference. CF Marsh (an Y-12 and Y-25 match) has received his Big Y test result, and there is 1 new Big Y test ordered by an Y-12 match. So, there is no significant increase in the number of Big Y tests ordered. That means the "high test volume" is not from the men who have already taken an Y-STR test and pay for an upgrade. But it's hard to believe that all of a sudden people are ordering the expensive Big Y test without ordering first an Y-37 or Y-111 test. This has never happened before. In my opinion, the problem is the high rate of Big Y tests failing quality control, which leads to redoing the tests, so the DNA sequencers are busy with the old tests instead of the new ones.