Van Burens in Ancient Greece?

Y-Chromosome Haplogorp T1a-Y21204

In February 2026 a paper was published discussing the results of a study relating to populations in ancient Gree (Psonis et al, “Genetic affinities between the ancient Greek and colonyof Amvrakia and its metropolis” Genetic affinities between the ancient Greek colony of Amvrakia and its metropolis | Genome Biology | Springer Nature Link ). Oddly, the title misrepresents the actual goal of the study, because “metropolis” of Amvrakia was the polis of Corinth, but the people chosen to represent Corinth were actually buried in the polis of Tenea rather than Corinth. Tenea and Corinth are alocated bout 16 miles (25 km) form each other, and Tenea was a dependency of Corinth, but the difference in the origin of the two cities could potentially make a significant difference in the origin and compostion of their populations, even considereing the long time span between the origin of Tenea (~1180 BC) and the Greek Archaic through the Greek Hellenistic pperiods.

According to [the ancient Greek geographer] Pausanias Tenea's founders were Trojan prisoners of war whom Agamemnon [king of Mycenae] allowed to build their own town. The name Tenea is styled upon Tenedos, the founders' hometown, whose mythological eponym was the hero Tenes. Tenea and Rome, according to Virgil's Aeneid, had in the years following the Trojan War produced citizens of Trojan ancestry.” (Wikipedia “Tenea”) Therefore, it seems odd to use citizens from Tenea as a proxy for citizens from Corinth, since the Trojans were not Greeks. Although over the intervening centuries the autosomal makeup of the two related cities may have blended into each other, the Y-chromosome haplogroups would likely have to a greater degree retained any differences.

In a future post I'll discuss this supposed Trojan origin in more detail, as the German tribe of the Franks, which formed the core of medieval Germany, also claimed Trojan descent, as did the van Arkel famly of Holland, according to Dirck Pauw (Dirck Pauw also claimed that after the van Arkel and other Trojan fled Greece they had fled to Hungary, which appears to be a detail unique to the van Arkel origin myth, but which is of great interest because in fact during the van Arkel's supposed tenure in Hungary, which ended in 346 AD, Hungary had strong E-V13 presencee). And, as I'll also discuss in that future post, one and perhaps two ancient E-V13 men were present in Tenea and, although they were not closely related to the Swaim/den Hertog branch of E-V13, their presence in Tenea is an indication that Swaim/den Hertog E-FT388527 branch might have been there as well.

But in this post I'm going to restrict my discussion primarily to the one minor detail of the Psonis study, which the Psonis paper didn't mention at all and would have had no interest in. This detail is that the one of the ancient Teneans was in the Y-chromosome haplogroup T-Y21204. This specifica haplogroup appears both anciently and today to be ow in numbers. Interestingly, it's ancestral haplogroups were present together with the ancestral haplogroups of E-V13 in Varna, Bulgaria around 4500 BC, and shared an even earlier origin in Anatolia and the Levant.

The E-FGC11450 haplogroup, the most recent haplogroup ancestarl to E-FT388527 with more than a few members, is also a small haplogroup, although not quite as small as that of T-Y21240. Futhermore, neither were native to northwestern Europe or specifically to Holland, and yet in the 1400's AD and ater both haplogroups were found in the veryy specific locations of Heicop and Lang Nuland (Nieuwland), with T-Y21204 also in Heuklom. And the T-Y21204 family in the Land of Arkel had the surname van Buren (Buuren, Bueren).''

From Koolwaaij:

I haven't unraveled exactly what this means, but at the very least it implies that the two lines had treveled together from somewhere in the Balkans, probably Greece, because otherwise the odds must be huge for both of these small lineages to have ended up by 1400 AD in the Land of Arkel. However, even if that's true it doesn't necessarily mean that both lines were present in Tenea, or even that the van Buren line was present in Tenea. However, considering the small size of the T-Y21204 lineage and its history, I think there's a good chance that the van Buren line was, inddeed, present in ancient Tenea.

FTDNA estimates that The T[Y21204 mutation was fomred in 5700 BC and that the most recent common ancestor of all men in the haplogroup lived around 1850 BC This TMRCA date means that all living men in the haplogroup trace their ancestry back to one man who lived around 1850 BC.

As of the time I'm writing this is May 2026, FTDNA has tested 197 men in the T-Y21204 haplogroup. FTDNA says these men live in 35 different countries.

In contracts, the E-V13 subclade E-Z5018, which is ancestral to E-FGC11450 and E-FT388527, had a comparable TMRCA date to T-Y21204 of 1750 BC, but FTDNA has tested 4,520 men in E-Z5018 (including men in all subclades) and these men live in 90 different countries.

In other words, FTDNA has tested 23 times the number of men in E-Z5018 compared to T-Y21240. It is true that FTDNA's figures for haplogroups no doubt suffer from strong selecgtion bias, including a likely slection bias in favoring, for example, one among others, Western Europeans versus Eastern Euroepans, but these figures are give us at least an idea of the relatively sizes of the two haplogroups, and we can say with some confidence that T-Y21204 is uncommon in Western Europe, including the Netherlands, and the English-speaking former colonies of Western Europe.

To be clear, there are likely far more than 197 men living in the world or in Western Europe, because only a small fraction of men in any haplogroup are likely to pay to have Y-chromosome DNA tested. To illustrte this, for the E-FT388527 Swaim/den Hartog terminal (thus far) haplogroup, FTDNA shows only 2 individuals—one Swain/den Hertog (me, wih my paternal line from the Land of Arkel) and one Sulc (paternal line from Czechia). Yet the Google AI says that in the USA there re about up to 6,150 men with the name Swaim, in Canada up to 3,100 men with the hame Swim (the Canadian variant of the name after the group was split during the Revolutionary War), and in the Neetherlands there are up to 7,000 individuals with the surnames den Hartog, den Hertog or variants, with the den Hertog name “significantly less common” than den Hartog. This is about 16,000 individuals potentially descended from Willem Ottens with those surnames, and if we assume half are male, that's 8,000 men likely in the E-FT388527 haplogroup. And this figure doesn't count the Sulc/Solc line atl, nor does it count all the men in the Netherlands and Americas with surnames other than variants of Swaim of den Hartog, or who descended from Otto's brother Gerrit, or from other men incestral to Willem Ottens. Of all these thousands of men, only one has taken FTDNA's Y-chromosome test (although several others have taken the STR test, as shown in FTDNA's “Swaim surname project.

The Google AI says that there are up to 5,000 individuals in the Netherlands and USA with the name van Buren. Assuming half are males, this is 2,500 men plausibly in the E-Y21204 haplogroup, but fewer of these may be in the haplogroup E-Y21204 because this name is a “van” name based on a location, and men in other haplogroups may have taken that surname (as opposed to den Hartog or Swaim, which are not geographically based). How likely it is that all E-Y21204 men in the Netherlands and Americas have the van Buren name is unknown, but could be signficant.

Therefore, there may be thousands of men in Western Europe and its former colonies in the E-Y21204 haplogroup. But it's nonetheless true that it, like E-FT388527 and E-FGC11450, is still a minor haplogroup within Western Europe and its former colonies.

Van Buren in the Land of Arkel

The Psonis study was inteed to “investigate the genetic relationships between the Corinthian metropolis and the Amvrakia colony, the contribution of the local population to the ounding genetic pool, as well as the demography of Amvrakia in subsequent periods.” Amvrakia (today's Arta, Gree, in Epirus) was founded in the 600's BC. A member of T-21204 was also found in Amvrakia from 475-450 BC (Amv_Epi_Cl_4). Thus, the implication is that one branch of T-Y21204 migrated from Tenea to Amvrakia sometime after the founding of Amvrakia.

My interest in Tenea was not the T-Y21204 haplogroup, but in the ancient individual Ten_Pel_Hel_2, who was buried in Tenea between 323-31 BC and was in haplogroup E-CTS9320, a branch of E-BY3880. The Swaim/den Hartog line descends from a different branch of E-BY3880, and so the two lineages diverged by 2100 BC. Nonetheless, it's quite plausible that the Swaim/den Hartog line had also been present in Tenea as well as E-CTS0320. Therefore, we can tentatively use Ten_Pel_Hel_2 as a proxy for the possible location of the Swaim/den Hartog line (although it could actually have existed elsewhere, or in several places at one). As I'll discuss in a future article, it appears that ehte earliest E-FGC11450 mand (FVD009 from Fonyond, Hungary) and the earliest E-FGC11451 mand (Arg5_1 from Argmum Bulgaria), both of whom died around 450 AD, were Greeks who were likely from from the Greek colonies on the norhtern and western shores of the Black Sea.

The Psonis study tested 9 invidividuals from Tenea, of whom 4 were males. Two of those males were from the Roman perios, and at a quick glance one and probably both appear to have likely come from lineages not present in Tenea from before the Roman period, but rather were migrants from Armenia. Ignoring these two men we have only men from the E-V13/E-CTS9320 haplogroup and the he T-S27463 haplogroup. Therefore, I looked into the history of the T-S27463 haplogroup to see how it had interacted over time with the E-V13 haplogroup.

Gere;s the relevant part of table S3 from Psonis showing both Ten_Pel_Arch_1 and Ten_Pel_Hel_2, as well as two females:

t(The haplogroup for Ten_Pel_Hel_2 is blurry in the original spreadsheet)

We see that Ten_Pel_Arch_1 is haplogroup T-S27463, but when we search for that haplogroup on FTDNA it won't appear. This is because these two SNPs, as well as several others, are "equivalent" SNPs, meaning that every man with one SNP also has the other. Therefore, a haplogroup can be defined or "named" by any of these equivalent SNPs. In this case YFull names the haplogroup as T-S27463, while FTDNA names it as T-Y21204. Below shows the equivalent SNPs for T-S27463 and we see that it includes T-Y21204 in the second row of the black box. 

We can then to to FTDNA and see that Ten_Pel_Arch_1 is listed as being in haplogroup T-Y21204:

Beside looking into the history of the T-Y21240 lineage, I also wanted to see if I could find evidence that the line was present today in the Netherlands, which if was true would be evidence that the it had possibly traveled there together with the E-FT388527 haplogroup. Although if both lines were present today in the Netherlands, that fact wouldn't be proof that the two lines had trveled there togetherk it would be evidence that they might have, because both lineages were small and T-Y21204 had been together with a differe E-BY3880 line in Hellenistic Greece. Not proof, but evidence.

To find evidence of the existence of the T-Y21204 haplogroup in the Netherlands I checked the FTDNA geographical proojects “Netherlands” and “Benelux” (which can be accessed by going to the website or just by entereing a search term such as “FTDNA Benelux project” and “FTDNA “Netherlands project”) I believed that the odds of finding the line in the Netherlands were low, but in fact three living T-Y21204 men had actually had their Y-chromosome DNA tested and had joined both FTDNA projects. And all three men had the surname “van Bueren/van Buuren”.

This is from the "Netherlands” Project There are three individuals here with the van Buuren/Beuren name.

This is from the “Benelux” project:

These are two of the same individuals from the Netherlands project

But from the “New-Nehterlanders” project we have someone different:

The lineage of Cornelis Maessen van Buren is the New Netherland family that produced the president of the USA Martin van Buren. But the problem is that we two van Buren families with two different paternal haplogroups.

In a situation such as this there are two possibilities. One is that there were two different van Buren families in Holland/Gelderland. The other is that there was only one van Buren family and that the particular line with this van Buren from New Netherland was the result of a “Non Paternal Event” (NPE), which is a nice way of saying that a wife cheated on her husband and had a child by another man that she passed off as the husband's child. Such events are and were quite common.

Becaue it appears that FTDNA restricts access to the R-CTS99623 haplogroup because it's too specific to one family, I can't analyze the ancient members in the haplogroup.

Although it would have been nice to be able to look at the haplogroup ancestry of the man claiming Cornelis Masessen van Buren as a paternal ancestor, for the primary purose of this post the answer to this puzzle doesn't matter. What matters is the location of the van Buuren family in Holland, which can be found in the a family tree of the Koolwaaij family. In the Netherlands and Benelux projects the individual 571055 included the information that his eariest known paternal ancestor was Gerrit Hendricksen van Buuren 1680-1764, from the town of Heukelom.

Heukelom today is located in Gelderland, but historically it was part of Holland and was in the heart of the Land of Arkel, and the lords of Heukelu(m were van Arkels even after the main branch of the van Arkel line was defeated and extinguished. Heukelum is located 6 miles (10 km) from Middelkoop, the center of the early Swaim/den Hartog lineage. Futhermore,

Other member of the family lived in Heicop, where den Hartogs are known to have lived at the time, and at least one owned some land in Lang Nuland (Nieuwland),

From Koolwaaij:

Furthmore, Cornelis Aertsz van Buuren (1610-1669) married Anneke Gerritsdr van Broeckhuysen, daugher of Gerardus van Broeckhuysen (-1653), a minister, rector of the Latin school in Vianen and lived in Kedichem. This is an interestng link because, as I've posted in the past, the van Broeckhuysen family were nobility in Gelderland who had derived from the lords of Swalmen, who were closely related to van Oist/Oyst/Oest/Osst family located in Oost near Eijsden, who in the late 1300's bought the larodship of Swalmen from Robijn van Swalmen. This provides and interesting link to my hypothesis that Otto Gerrits van Oist was the father of Willem Ottens, and adds to the evidence that these famillies by the 1600's were relatively well-to-do descendants of the ridderschap nobility of earlier centuries.

The van Buuren line as presented by Koolwaaij is:

Aernout van Bueren ~1450- m Stijn

Aerdt Aerdtsz van Bueren 1485-1554 m

Farmer in Heicop

Leenman of the hofstad Culemborg

Barten Aertsz 1511

Hendrick Barten 1540- m

Aert Hendricksen van Buuren 1570-

Cornelis Aerts van Buuren 1610-1669 m Anneke Cornelisdr van Broeckhuysen

(From Kookwaaij Aernout van Bueren (± 1450-????) » Stamboom Koolwaaij - Van Buuren » Genealogie Online )

The Other van Buren Lineage

The FTDNA Y-chromosome “New-Netherlanders” project lists the following individual:

screenshot 3659

This van Buren claims descent from Cornealis Maessen van Buren (-1648), who was from the van Renssellaerswyck colony near Albany New York (by the way, this colony also had a member called “Thijs Barentsz” who arrived on the ship Renssellaerswyck that sialed from Texel 1636, who was a shoemaker who owed money in 1652, but about whom nothing else is known. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I've speculated that he might be the same Thys Barentsen (Swaim) who migrated to Newtherland in 1661. He married a Scythie Cornlis whose parents are unknown, but it's possible that she was a van Buren who had remiained in Holland. The problem is that there appears to be no other information about this Renssellaerswyck Thijs Barentsz, so all of this is sheer speculation).

i

The problem with the claimed descendant of Cornelis Maessen van Buren is that he belongs to an entirely different haplogroup than that of the T-Y21204 van Bueren family just discussed. This man belonged to haplogorup R-FTC96623. FTDNA appears to be hiding the details of this haplogroup from the public view, possibly because it is too specific to one person, which invokes privacy issues. For this reason I can't even find which higher-level haplogroups his lineage belongs to, renderingn it impossible to analyze his haplogroup.

Although the most likely explanation for these two van Buren lines is simply that they were different lines who both used the name van Buren and that line that migrated to America was unrelated to the line that reained in Heukelom, Heicop and Leuven (in Gelderland). However, it's also possible that the presumed van Buren indiv who tested with FTDNA was in fact not a descendant from the van Cornelis Masessen van Buren line but rather that a non-paternity event had occurred in one of his ancestors, in which a woman married to a van Buren had a child through an adulterous liason who was passed off as a van Buren. This is and was quite common, but I'm not implying that it happened here, but rather merely saying that this is an alternative possibility.

For now this mystery remains.

Summary of the T-Y21204 van Burens

Three men with the name van Buuren/Bueren tested with FTDNA who were placed by FTDNA in haplogroup T-Y21204. One of these men claimed as his earliest-known paternal ancestors “Gerrit Hendicksen van Buuren, 1680-1764, Heukelum”. The Koolwaaij genealogy, supported by records, indicates that this family was from Heukelom, Heicop, Lang Nuland and other places within or immediately near the old Land of Arkel, the exact micro-region from in which the earliest-known Swaim/den Hartog members lived.

Another man who claimed as his earliest-known ancestor “Cornelis Maessen van Buren”, a known Renssellaerswyck van Buren, is in a different haplogroup, R-FTC96623. This tested individual may or may not be a true paternal desceant of Cornelis Maessen van Buren, but I suspect that he is and that these are two different van Buren lineages. However, if so it is likely that the T-Y21204 lineage is the one that had descended from the noble van Buren family because of one members marriage in the 1600's to a van Broeckhuysen descendant.

In either case, it appears nearly certain that members from T-Y21204 lineage lived in the same micro-location as did members of the Swaim/den Hartog lineage, in the 1400's-1600's. A member from this same small T-Y21204 lineage had also lived in Tenea, Greece during the Archaic perios 800-480 BC. Another member lived in ancient Amvrakia, a colony of Corinch to which some Teneans also migrated.

However, although members of the T-Y21204 lineage lived in Tenea and Amvrakia in ancient Greece, this doen't prove that the van buren lineage had descended froom them.

Also present in Tenea during the Hellenistic era (323-31 BC) was an E-V13 member, from the E-BY3880 subclade E-CTS9820. This is a separate branch from the Swaim/den Hartog subclade of E-BY3880, but the fact that a member of one branch had lived in Tenea implies that other members from that and other branches may also have live din Tenea. One of those members was plausibly within the same lineage as the Swaim/den Hartog E-FT388527 lineage, but this is no evience of this.

As it stands we cannot connect the Swaim/den Hartog lineage to Tenea. Nontheless, it is quite interesting that a the T-Y21204 haplogroup was present in ancient Greece, as the E-FGC11450 branch has living members in that country and Greece and the Balkans is the region of the highest concentrion of E-V13.

Next we'll look at what we know of the history of the T-Y21204 haplogroup to find any paralles to that with E-V13.

Temporal/Geographical Parallels between the haplogroup lineages T1a leading to o

Ten_Pel_Arch_1 (T-Y21204)

nd E-V13 leading to Ten_Pel_Hel_2 (E-BY9320)

The two haplogroups, including their ancestral lines, are found together around 4500 BC in Varna, Bulgaria, and probably earlier. The Varna

Under Construction

I1707                              7600 BC      Ain Ghazal Jordan Amman             LT-L298

cch205                            6600 BC      Catalhoyuk Anatolia                       LT-L298

bad030                          6350 BC      Antalya Anatolia                                T-Z19859

I0700                            5900 BC      Malak Preslavets Bulgaria Dobruja   T-Z19859

I2208                             5880 BC     Malak Preslavets Bulgaria Dobruja       T-Z19859

I24887                           5150 BC   Asparn Schletz Austria                           T-Z198589

VAR010                        4600 BC   Varna Bulgaria                                      T-L446

VAR022                         4540 BC   Varna Bulgaria                                  T-L446

VAR032                          4480 BC       Varna Bulgaria                               T-L446

I1180                               4000 BC Pequin Israel                                         T-Z1985

I4615                             3000 BC Sirnak Anatolia                                       T-Z19935

I17962                              660 BC Delphi Greece Phocis                          T-Y21204

I24200                              550 BC Nabeul Tunisia Phoenicia                  n T-L446

Ten_Pel_Arch 1             490 BC Tenea Greece                                      T-Y21204

I7318                           480 BC Hhimera Sicitly                               T-Y21204

Amv_Epi_Cl_4            475 BC Amvrakia Greece Arta Epirus           T-Y21204

I7224 409 BC Himera Sicily Battle of Himera                                T-Y21204

I4530 300 AD Samsun Anatolia Amisos                                          T-CTS933

VK398 1100 AD Varnhem Skara Sweden Viking Age                 T-Y21204

I3403 1800 AD Roopkund Lake Inda                                            T-Y21204

n/a 1400-1600 Land of Arkel                                                         T-Y21204

Te

The following are the locations that are common to both this T1a/ancestral haplogoroup lineage and the E-V13/ancestral haplogroup:

Ain Ghazal Jordan 7700 BC

Asparn Schletz Austria1 5100 BC

Varna Bulgaria 4500 BC

Phocis Greece Time difference

Tenea Greece Time difference

Himera Sicily 480 BC

Sweden/Denmark Viking Age 1100 AD

Land of Arkel 1400's AD

We see that elements of these two lineages have moved together through time and geography for nearly 10,000 years, migrating from the Levant to Austria and to Varna Bulgaria, then to Greece, then Sicily and then to the Land of Arkel by 1400 AD, and to Viking Age Scandinavia at some time before 1100 AD.

In my next post I'll discuss more about Tenea and the early origin of E-V13 as a Indo-European-speaking, Yamaya-related population.

In other future posts I'll also write about the origin of E-V13 as a Yamnaya-related population and its spread into the Balkans. Two men from haplogrops ancestral to E-V13 are from Mycenaean Greece, but the earliest E-V13 men are from Orlivak in Ukraine (Danube delta region), the Maritsa valley of southeastern Bulgaria and the Phrygian Highlands of Anatolia. While E-V13 is often considered to be associated with Thracians, I think that it was possibly more closely associated with the Bryges/Phrygians and their close cousins the Greeks. Phrygians were closely associated with Troy, so it was perhaps they who had colonized the island of Tenedos, the island from which the Teneans originated, which is also the island the Greeks occupied duirng the Trojan War for its strategic location.

I'll also discuss what I believe is the Greek origin of the E-V13 that was found in Hungary, who I believe came from the northern/western Black Sea Greek colonies (Bosporan Kingdom). This probably includes the Swaim/den Hartog E-FT338527 haplogroup, but this remains to be proven. Most of the E-V13 in Hungary and the Middle Danube region were Iazyges Sarmatians who migrated there around 20 AD after migrating from the Sea of Azov (Maeotia), wich is actually a mashy appendage of the Black Sea (Euxine). Many of these Sarmatians joined the Roman army and spread E-V13 into the British Isles, Germany, France and elsewhere, while others remained in the region around Hungary and later became associated with the Avars and then the Magyars (Hungarians). I'll outline a few pathways that the Swaim/den Hartog line might have taken from Hungary to Holland, including the possility that it had migrated to Bavaria and only much later ended up in Holland when the Dukes of Bavaria-Straubing became the counts of Holland (John the Pitiless was actually present and active in the Lando of Arekl including Gorinchem, and apparently had unidentified illegitimate children, and would also would likely have had other men from Bavaria with him. Straubing itself is the location of an archaeogenetic study regarding the Ostrogoth or Sarmatian populations with Arifical Cranial Deformation (ACD), which was also prevalent in Fonyod, esent in Fonyod along with the earliest E-FGC11450 man FVD009.

I'll also revisit the Frankish origin myth, in which the Franks claimed descent from Trojans, a presence in the Sea of Azov, and a presence in Hungary. While historians in general dismiss this mythology as little more than an attempt to connect the Franks to the Romans, who also claimed descent from Trojans, I think the evidence is now pretty clear that this myth was likely grounded in the real experiences of some of the non-Franks from Hungary and the Middle Danube who really had lived on the shores of the Sea of Azov (Sarmatians, Heruli), and who possibly who claimed descent from Teneans (such as Black Sea Greeks caught up in the Hun/Ostrogoth migration into Hungary). Some of these men likely joined the Franks, and if so after several generations after these popole joined the Franks, even those Franks whose paternal lineages had never left the lower Rhine region, really did have such ancestors.

Note on the hypotheis that the father of Willem Ottens was Otto Gerrits van Oist.:

The fact that this van Buren family was found in Heicop, Lang Nuland, and this mall region in general tends to support my hypothesis that the father of Willem Ottens was Otto Gerrits van Oist. In a previous post I wrote:

The van Broeckhuysen family was an offshoot of the van Swalmen family, which was closely related to the van Oist family of Swalmen (Swalmen, as I've pointed out in previous posts, was actually pronounced very much like "Swaim", as can be seen from ancient maps but also in the spelling of today's Sjwaampop music festival (Sjwaampop.com). From the Koolwaaij family tree we see that one of the van Buurens married a van Broeckhuysen:

The fact thar this van Buuren family also lived in such close proximity to the Swaim/den Hartog family also increases the chances that the Scytie Cornelis to whom Thys Barentsen was married was in fact a van Buren. The argument against this is that the van Buren family by 1661, the year that Thys Barentsen emigrated to America, had already been for many ears established in the Renesselaerswijck colony near Albany. Interestingly, also in that colony was a "Thijs Barentsz", who had sailed on the Rensselaerswyck that arrived in New Netherland 4 March 1637. All that appears to be known about this Thijs Barentsz is that he was a shoemaker and that he bought supplies from the colony on credit that he was ordered to pay in 1652 (Rensselaerswyck Settlers). It's possible that he had returned to Holland seomtime after 1652, married Scythie Cornlis there, and then regurned to New Netherland in 1661. I recall from previous research that one or more of the van Burens had returned to Holland as well, before returning to America, but this would need confirmation as I'm only working from memory. 

The van Buren from the R1b haplogroup as discussed above is definitely a problem for this hyothesis, unless he's at some point in the future he's determined to be descended from an NPE. But even in that case Scytie Cornelis could have been a T-Y21204 van Buuren, although this then would not be the same family as that of the Rensselaerswyck van Burens. 

Psonis et al (2026) "Benetaic affinities between and ancient Greek colonly and its metoropolis: the case of Amvrakia in western Greece" Genetic affinities between an ancient Greek colony and its metropolis: the case of Amvrakia in western Greece | bioRxiv

The commons belongs to us all - Creative Commons

 

New Swaim/den Hartog Most Recent Haplogroup

Recently a man took FTDNA's Big Y-700 DNA test and FTDNA and FTDNA ddetermined that he and I share a haplogroup that is now the most recently known haplogroup that the Swaims and den Hartogs/Hertogs belong to, along with this other mn. The new haplogorup is E-FT388527.

Every man has various Y-chromosome SNPs that are considered “private” or “novel” SNPs because at the time of testing he was the only man known to have those SNPs. Below is my YFull Nove SNP page showing my 17 “Best quality” novel SNPs (I have other SNPs that are “lower quality”, which doesn't mean they are inferior in themselves, but that they were more difficult to read with today's technology).

When another man is tested who has a SNP that matches another man's novel SNP, that SNP is no longer considered a novel SNP and because a new branch in the trees of both men because both men had inherited that mutation from a common ancestor.

Because the other man did not send his FTDNA test results to YFull for analysis, YFull doesn't know that this novel SNP of mine is no longer novel, and thus is still shows on this list.

The SNP that I (and all the Swaims and den Hartogs/Hertogs) share with this man is the 6^th SNP from the top on this list, 9556232, which is also called E-FT388527. The “FT” is the code for “Family Tree DNA”, meaning that this is the person or organization that first discovered the SNP, which occurred when I took the Big Y-700 test in 2020.

I don't know the name of the man who we now know is a match to the Swaim and Den Hartog/Hertog lines in haplogroup E-FT388527. He is still too distantly related for FTDNA to consider him a match, but he is nonetheless still a match.

The Swaim/den Hartot haplogroup, starting with E-V13, is as follows:

E-V13 6950 BC

E-CTS8814 3150 BC

E-CTS5856 2950 BC

E-BY4877 2400 BC

E-BY3880 2300 BC

E-FTT49 2250 BC

E-Z5018 2100 BC

E-S2979 1750 BC

E-FGC11457 1650 BC

E-FGC11451 1500 BC

E-FGC11450 1050 BC

E-FT389281 950 BC

E-FT388654 800 BC

E-FT388527 1 BC

The dates in the second column are FTDNA's estimated formation dates for the haplogroups. Thus, FT388527 was formed around 1 BC. This is a much more recent formation date than for E-FG389281, which the Swaim/den Hartog line shares with the man whose ancestor was Giacomo Prati from northern Italy. E-FT38854, which I share with an unkown man from an unknown country, is slightly more recent but not as recent as the new match.

I don't know the name or the country of birth of the new match, but in the FTDNA E-V13 Project he says that his ealiest known paternal ancestor was Michal Solc from the Czech Republic born around 1560 AD. Below is the page showing this, and also showing other relatively closely-related matches.

Below is a page from FTDNA showing the the dates of the three most recent haplogroups with the countries of the men who tested their DNA.

Screensh

This graphic also shows the general dates of the common ancestors of the living men who took the test. Thus, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the Italian and me lived around 800 BC, the MRCA of the unkown man in haplogroups E-FT38854 and me (and thus all Swaims and den Hartogs/Hertogs) is around 1 BC, and the common ancestor of th Czech and me is 450 AD.

The date of 450 AD is particularly interesting because this was the with the time range (433-467 AD) of the first known anceint man in the E-FGC11450 haplogroup, “Fonyod 9” (FVD009). Fonyod 9 died as an infant and thus was likel born in the area of what is now the town of Fonyod, Hungary, which then had been called Pannonia (essentially Hungary west of the Danube).

The community in which Fonyod 9 had lived his short life was located on the south shore of Lake Balaton, a region which is known at that time to have been occupied by the Ostrogoths who were then vassals of the Huns and who had migrated with the Huns from the north Pontic region (north of the Black Sea) into Hungary, which the Romans had ceded to the Huns in 433 AD. The Huns had ruled the Pontic Steppe until 370 AD when the Huns conquered the Goths; the group of Goths and other peoples from the region who were later known as Visigoths had fled to the safety of the Roman Empire, while the people who later became known as the Ostrogoths had remained on the steppe as vassals of the Huns and had adopted some of the Hun customs, including artificial cranial deformation (ACD).

In an upcoming post I'll discuss this in more detail, but some fo the Fonyod villagers had genomes that were consistent with Ostrogoths, and one woman had a genome that looks to me to have probably been Hun (the paper from the study of Fonyod and three other nearby ancient communities didn't venture a guess as to the identity of any of these individuals, so these are just my personal opinions). The identity of Fonyod 9 is more enigmatic, and the reference populations the team used threw more shade on the issue than light, in my opinion.

However, from other studies that I'll detail in my future post, the genome of Fonyod 9 looks to be Mycenaean-like, meaning that it was similar to the genomes of the Mycenaean Greeks who lived from about 1700-1200 BC. Two of the earliest of the E-V13 men, who were among the Kapitan Andreevo (Bulgaria) individuals 1100-500 BC, also had Mycenaean-like DNA. Thus, this genome was persistent in at least some of the E-V13 individuals over at least nearly a thousand years (500 BC-450 AD), and thus it probably indicates that this was the genome of the core E-V13 population at that time, which likely means that population was either Greek, Macedonian or Thracian (Bulgarian).

But this doesn't solve the myster of Fonyod 9's presence within the Ostrogoth community. The paper hints at the possibility that the “Mediterranean” individuals in these villages (including E-S2979 Hacs 21 and E-Z5018 Hacs 22) were Roman soliders who had remianed in the vicinity after the withdrawal of the Roman population, but I think that given his genome and the locations of other matches that the answer is something more intersting. I think it's more likely that Fonyod 9 (actually, his parents) might have been part of the Greek colonist population located on the northern shore of the Black Sea, specificially on or near the Crimean Peninsula. These populations were successively dominated by the Goths and Huns, and even before this some of the E-V13 men located there may have beome part of nomad populations, which could explain E-V13 Scythian 197 (scy197), who obviously was a Scythian. But Fonyod 9's parents appear to have had an unbroken Gree-like ancestry, but then for whatever reason were swept up in the Hun/Goth migration into Pannonia.

That's only my opinion, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and it appears to fit the best with what facts are currently available, including a strong ancient presence of E-V13 in Ukraine and Russia.

Czech Connections

Whatever the background of Fonyod 9, his parents (or at least his mother) obviously lived in the region south of Lake Balaton at around the time the MRCA of the Swaim/den Hartog and the new “Solc” Czech match. This doesn't mean that the parents of Fonyod 9 were the ancestors of the Swaim/den Hartog line and the Solc Czech line, and in fact they could not have been because Fonyod 9 is not a direct ancestor of the Swaim/den Hartog line as he's in a different haplogroup.

However, the only thus-far known ancient E-FGC11450 men were buried within the lands that later comprised the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. This began with Fonyod 8 from as early as 433 AD to Szekefehervar 53 from as late perhaps as 1300 or 1400 AD. Thus, there's a very good chance that the then-living Swaim/den Hartog paternal ancestor also lived in Hungary. This is now bolstered by the presence of the Czech match with an MRCA of 450 AD, especially as his ancestors lieved in what is now the Czech Republic, which is quite close to Hungary and easy to reach via the Danube. If the then-living Swaim/den Hartog ancestor had been a Roman soldier who had earlier migrated to Germany or the Netherlands, or had later migrated with the Goths into Italy (as perhaps Prati's ancestors had), then it's less likely that the Solc Czech ancestors would have ended up in nearby Czechia. It is of course still possible, but just slightly less likely.

There is also the match LIB11 from Libiva, Czechia, 400-500 AD, again exactly within the time range of the MRCA of the living Czech match and the Swaim/den Hartog line. LIB11 was in haplogroup E-S2979, which is closely related to E-FGC11450. The genome of LIB11, however, was not Mycenaean like that of Fonyod 9, as it had a much larger amounts of both Yamnaya (48%) and WHG (12%) ancestries than did Fonyod 9. However, he did have trace Anatolia Tepecif-Ciftlik ancestry, probably a vestiage of the Mycenaean-like ancestry (Tepecik-Ciftlic was the predominant ancestry of Fonyod 9).

E-FGC11450 Pusposladanay PLE23 from Hungary 950-1000 AD had IBD ancestry from Czechia:

I14172 Czechia 4300-3500 BC

I17251 Czechia 4000 BC

TRM006 Czechia 2700 BC

I13799 Czechia (Prague) 1300-900 BC

E-S2979 Tiszanana TCS18 from Hungary 975-1000 AD had four IBD matches from Czechia:

CAH010 Czechia 2350 BC

VLI023 Czechia 2200 BC

VLI050 Czechia 1850 BC

I14794 Prague 1300-900 BC

These matches don't necessarily mean that the E-V13 line ancestors of PLE23 or TCS18 had ever lived in the Czech Republic, however. The autosome of a member of a Y chromosome line all come from the female individuals who married into that line, and these IBD matches may have come from women whose ancestors had recently come recently from Czechia. Both of these men lived approximately the same time, and lived only 55 miles from each others, so a large or small immigration to the region from Czechia. Slovakia was part of the Hungarian-controlled lands from the early 900's, so there was a good deal of contact between the two regions.

But also IBD matches can be from thousands of years in the past. PLE23 was also an IBD match to HAN002, an R1a individual from Khanevo near Moscow Russia 2861-2492 BC, part of the Khanevo/Fatynovo culture that “developed on the northeastern edge of the Middle Dneiper [Dnipro] culture around 2900 BC, probably as a result of a mass migration of Corded Ware peoples from Central Europe.” (Wikipedia “Fatynovo-Balanovo culture”). As I'll discuss in a future post, I believe that the E-V13 line at this time possibly dwelled in the North/West Pontic region, The Dnieper/Dnipro river flows through Russia and Ukraine to the Dnieper Delta at Kherson north of the Crimean Peninsula tiont the Black Sea. Thus, PLE23's ancient Czech ancestry could have been acquired during his paternal line's (hypothetical) residence in the Pontic region rather than any E-V13 ancestry in Czechia.

(I hypothesize that the E-V13 lines later migrated (around 2500 BC) into the southern Balkans and Greece, as part of the population that brought Yamnaya ancestry along with E-V13 into Greece and the Balkans; it's around this time that the E-V13 population began to rapidly expand)

Whatever the true history of E-V13, we know that at least a few E-V13 men lived in Czechia from at elast 500 BC, beginning with Komarno I14465. I14465 lived between 650-500 AD, and is possibly the oldest known of the E-V13 ancient men, if the E-V13 Kapitan Andreevo men lived at the more recent end of their estimated time range of 1100-500 BC.

Komarno is located just across the Danube from Hungary and Komarno I14465 lived in the Verkerzug culture which is often considered to have been influenced by Scythians, at least in part because of the Scythian-style tripple-edged arrowheads found there. However, in a paper discussing this, the authors wrote “Yet, these arrowheads did not have to be made by Scythian people, because in the mixed Verkerzug culture these arrowheads are a local Carpathian product. They were also used in Greek colonies in the Black Sea region and in many places in the Mediterranean, rarely in Central Europe....Nevertheless, Bohemia can be labeled as an area of sporadic presence of triple-edged arrowheads. We can say it is somehow in the middle between Scythian-nomadic and Gree-Eurasian appearance of them.” (Bartik et al (2017) “The Verkerzug and other Eastern cultures in the Czech Republic” The_Vekerzug_and_other_Eastern_cultures_in_the_Cze (1).pdf ) Also, “ Generaly, Scythians (or “Scythians”) and cooperating ethnicities with them were in contact with the Greeks for a long time, and also with the developed state formations in Asia.” (ibid)

Scythian 197 from Moldova was E-1057 (E--CTS8814), the same haplogroup as Prague I16272, and lived around the same time of 400-150 BC. These earlies of the E-V13 men, including the Kapitan Andreevo men, had a definite connection to steppe haplogroups and many of the early E-V13 men also had Greek-like ancestral profile. Given the conjunction of these two cultures, Greek and stepped nomadic, which is definitely found in the first E-FGC11450 man Fonyod 9, the logical conclusion is that the early E-V13 lines were located in the Pontic Steppe north and west of the Black Sea.

This is strongly suggested by the probable presence in the Iron Age of two E-V13 men buried in the Greek colony of Chersonesus in Crimea (different from the the Cherson at the mouth of the Dnieper). These are:

CGG024173 E-V13 Mycenaean-like/steppe admixture

CGG024175 E-BY3880 Mycenaean-like

My information on these men comes from exploreyourdna.com, which maintains a database of ancient genomes and includes G25 genetic profiles for both of these men. I don't know where this information ultimately comes from (its publication is conceivably delayed due to the current Russia-Ukraine war), but there's no reason to believe this information is false. If it is proven that these men were E-V13 and from the Iron Age Greek colony of Chersonesus, this is very strong evidence that E-V13 were associated with the Black sea Greek colonies at this time, and earlier from Greece itself. The only date information is that these men were from the Iron Age, which we can consider to have been around from 1100-500 BC, or the same date range as the Kapitan Andreevo men. These may therefore be the earliest of the E-V13 men.

Another of the Iron Age men from Chersonesus was in haplogroup R1a-Z93, which was a large steppe haplogroup to which also belonged one of the Kapitan Andreevo men, men in Avar-era Hungary, and the Arpad royal line from Hungary.

E-FT388527

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The common ancestor of the line of Willem Ottens (~1440 Land of Arkel) and of the Solc Czech line lived around 450 AD. Before 450 AD the the Solc and Swai/den Hartog lines were the same line.

Although I've shown 2 E-V13 ancient Czech matches and 8 ancient Czech IBD matches to E-FGC11450 PLE23 and E-S2979 TCS18, it seems unlikely that the E-V13 ancestors of this Solc/Swaim-den Hartog line had resided anciently in Czechia.

The two early E-V13 ancient men from Czechia had likely either themselves or their recent ancestors wandered to Czechia from the Pontic Steppe, as there is no eivdence the E-V13 line was located more anciently in Czechia. The even more ancient Czech IBD matches are likelyfrom more recent connections to females with distant Czech ancestry.

Fonyod 9 lived at essentially the same time as the MRCA of the Solc and Swaim/den Hartog lines. Fonyod 9 was not the MRCA of the tw0 lines because he belonged to a differenct downstream branch of E-FGC11450, but it's likely that at this early time most or all of the E-FGC11450 lines had lived in the same general location, very likely one of the Greek colonies on the Pontic Steppe, possibly Chersonesus. Fonyod 9 had a Greek-like genome. It's likely that the Solc/Swaim-den Hartog MRCA also lived on either the Pontic Steppe or newly in Pannonia. The MRCA had at least 2 sons, one of them the progenitor of the Swaim/den Hart0g line and the other the progenitor of the Solc Czech line.

From this information we can't determine the history of the Swaim/den Hart0g line after it's split from the Solc line, but because the Solc line ended up in Czechia and not in the Rhine region, it sppears more likely that the Swaim/den Hartog line did not ende up in Holland through the agency of the Roman Army. Rather, the line at this time was, like Fonyod 9, probably located in Hungary in 450 AD. At this point in time the Roman Empire was collapsing in this region and its unlikely the Swaim/den Hart0g ancestors had ever been in the Roman army. All the known E-FGC11450 ancient men lived within the regions later comprising the Kingdom of Hungary, and this is liekly where the Swaim/den Hart0g line had lived for hundreds of years after 450 AD.

How the line got from Hungary to Holland is another question, but given the high amount of Scandinavian ancestry found in my Dutch DNA matches, which I've previously noted, and given the proximity of the Land of Arkel to the trading port of Dorestad, controlled in the 800's by Vikings, and/or of the Viking presence in Swalmen in Limburg in the 800's, my guess at this time is that the line had moved durin the end of the Avar era in Hungary to Denmark, and from there to the Netherlands. This, however, is based on very tenuous evidence and is only requires much more evidence to prove.

In my future posts I'll expand on all of this in much more detail.