Yaroslav Osmomysl, Rurik of the Kievan Rus

and Rorik of Dorestadad

Introduction

In the near future I'll post my analysis of the origin of the Y-chromosome haplogroup E-V13 and its downstream haplogroup E-FGC11450. These are the larger upstream haplgroups to which all of the den Hartogs/Hertogs in Holland and Swaims in America belong to.

As I've discussed in previous posts, between the years 130-1000 AD a1500 AD most of the known ancient E-V13 men and all the known ancient E-FGC11450 men were buried within the boundaries of the regions later considered part of or controlled by the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. However, during the 800's AD it appears that there was also a northward shift of a fraction of the E-V13 men into Poland (5 men) and Denmark (2 men). Interestingly, 4 of the E-V13 men in Poland and 1 of the men in Denmark were from haplogroup E-S2979, and the other man from Poland was E-FGC11451; together with E-FGC11450, these 3 haplogroups form a tight cluster that, according to YFull (but not FTDNA) were formed within a 100-year period around 1600=1500 BC. When we look to the determine the likely origin of E-FGC111450, we should look most closely at the men in these three haplogroups.

I'e previously posted my list of known ancient E-V13 members, but since then I've discovered another 6 from Russia, 1 from Ukraine and 3 from the Crimean Peninsula, which is either Ukraine or Russia depending on one's political perspective. Eight of these 10 men died between 881-1500 AD. Two from Crimea are have unknown dates, but may have some association with men from other haplogroups that lived from about 225-700 AD. The information on all but one of these men is sketch and tentative, as it didn't come from published papers so far as I can tell, but perhaps from oral presentations. Also, 4 of these men are shown to be in haplogroups ancestral to E-V13 rather than being in E-V13 itself, but I've nonethelss included them because it's possible that they are E-V13 but that the testing was inadequate to determine further downstream haplogroups; for example one is listed as E-M215 and two are listed as E-M35, but in fact everyone at those late time who were in those haplogroups were also in a long string of downstream haplogroups as well; thus,they may well have beeen E-V13. The other 5 were tested at least to E-V13, with one testing as E-BY3880 and one E-Z5018.

These men may represent an easterly subset of the apparent northern migration of some of the E-V13 men, or their ancestors may have lived in the regions for many generations (or a combination of both).

Two of the ancient Crimeans, if they are in fact dated to somewhere in the range of 255-700 AD, could shine new light of the origin of E-FGC11450. Regardless of when they lived, however, they have already given me a new understanding of where E-FGC11450 might have been residing at an early date, because E-FGC11450 first appears in Pannonia among Ostrogoths and Huns who moved there from the previous Gothic homeland of Oium on the Pontic Steppe. This included the Crimean Peninsula. What had previously been confusing to me was that the autosomal genomes of some of the E-V13 lines, inlcluding that of FVD009 (Fonyod 9), the first known E-FGC11450 man, looked Agegean to me ('Aegean” means from around the Aegean Sea, which includes not only Greece but coastal western Anatolia). But with the presence of E-V13 in Ukraine I suddenly realized that this actually made perfect sense: the ancient Greeks had established many colonies around the periphery of the Black Sea, including in and around the Crimean Peninsula. So when in the mid-400's AD Fonyod 9 with his Aegean-like DNA showed up with Ostrogoths and Huns in Pannonia, it now made sense. At that time, E-FGC11450 may have been living within one or more Greek colonies north of the Black Sea, which were in constant contact with all the various steppe groups. This also explained Scythian 197 (scy197), apparently determined to have been a Scythian steppe individual, and Derecske I20802, buried 200-300 AD in the Tisa region as a Sarmatian. Some of the E-V13 from the Greek colonies had over the generations remained genetically and culturally Greek (or Hellenistic), while others had merged into the steppe tribes that included Scythians and Sarmatian.

That's my curreny hypothesis, anyway, which I'll discuss in uch more detail in an upcoming post.

In this post I'm going to concentrate mostly on the one individual from Ukraine, really from Russia as well, who's remains have been identified by Ukraine archaeologists as being those of a historically attested man named Yaroslave Osmomysl, who died in 1187 AD and was E-V13 of an unknown downstream haplogroup. Osmomysl was the Rurikid knyaz (prince) of Halych. This identification is no doubt disputed by other scholars on various grounds that I'll discuss, to me this identification set off another light bulb, becaue it perfectly explained why E-FGC11450 Szekefehervar 53 would have been buried in the royal Arpad basilica among the Hungarian kings and their families: Szekesfehervar 53 might not have been a Hungarian as I had assumed, but a Rurikid who at his death had been visiting or accompanying his female kin who had married an Arpad king!

Furthermore, the Rurikids were supposed to have descended from a Varamgoam Viking from Denmark named Rurik, who in the 800's had laid the foundations for the Kievan Rus empire. Certain scolars will certainly object that Rurik was unikely to have been E-V13, which is considered Balkan, but we have SHE001 from perhaps 881 AD living in Kievan Rus territory northeast of Moscow, and 2 or 3 individuals from Kieven Rus E-V13 men living in Tver 1100-1300. This certainly strengthens the claim that the remains identified as those of Osmomysl truly were his, but doesn't prove it.

But if the remains supposedly those of Osmomysl are further tested and determined to be of the same haplogroup as that of Szekefehervar 53, then strenghtens the case for Osmomysl being legitimate as well as provides the likely general identity of Szekefehervar 53.

But there's more, because some scolars, particularly Russian scholars, believe that Rurik was the same person as Rorik of Dorestad. I've mentioned Rorik of Dorestad in a previous post in which I'd also noted that many of my DNA matches had large amounts of ancestry that MyHeritage had identifed as Scandinavian, even though those with the family trees of those available didn't support such Scandinavian ancestry. Dorestad was located within 20 miles of Middelkoop and Leerbroek, the earliest known locations of the Swaim/den Harrog line. So if the E-V13 remains identified as Osmomysl were truly his, then we have a potential E-V13 link from Osmomysl to Rurik to Rorik to Swaim/den Hartog.

I'm going to be lazy and post without re-reading or editing what I'd written a few months ago about Osmomysl. I'll eventually get around to editing this post, but I don't want to disturb the flow of my current research on the origin of E-V13 with several days of re-writing. Hopefully it's not too repetitive or incomprehensible.

Yaroslav Osmomysl

In searching for anceint men in the E-V13 and its ancestral haplogroups, I recently came across several that were knew to me because they appear not to be listed by Family Tree DNA (FTDNA), YFull, or in any scientific journal article that I've seen. Most of these men were from medieval Ukraine and Russia, and one of them in particular is of interest because he had been identified by the archaeologist who discovered him as being a member of the Rurikid dynasty that rule Kievan Rus and early Russia for centuries, and also because the Rurikid dynasty surprisingly has a possible very strong connection to Dorestad (Wijk bij Duursteded) from the 800's AD. This is of interest because Dorestad is located less than 20 miles from Middelkoop, Leerbroek and Arkel, which is the earliest known locatio of the Swaim/den Hartog lineage that is also haplogroup E-V13. In short, it's possible that the progenitor of the Ruriked dysnasty had lived for many years Dorestad, and that he had left male children in Dorestad as well as in Russia/Ukraine. This man was the Danish Viking Rorik of Dorestand, who some scholars believe was the same person as Rurik of the Kievan Rus.

I'm not claiming that this is true, and that the Swaim/den Hartog line descended from Rorik of Dorestad. But I am saying that this is an interesting connection that had occurred spontaneously to me as I searched for evidence E-V13 DNA in ancient Russia/Ukraine. It hasn't been proven that Rorik of Dorestad was actually Rurik of the Kievan Rus, and also the Y-chromosome desecenat haplogroup of the remains suppsoedly thos of the Rurik's descentant, who was named Yaroslave Osmomysl, has apparently not be published and possibly not determined, so that we can't be certain that it was E-FGC11450. Howver, even if Rorik/Rurik was from an E-V13 descendant haplogroup other than that of the Swaim/den Hartog line, it must be true that Rorik of Dorestad had been accompanied by a large host of Danes, many of whom might also have followed him to Russia. Thus, it's possible that men exist today in both Holland and Russia/Ukraine who were descended from many men who had been with Rorik in Dorestad.

Whether or not Rorik was Rurik, there's another interesting aspect to the identification of Osmomysl as being E-V13. If Osmomysl was a true Rurikid and his Y haplogroud was E-V13, the the Rurikid line also was E-V13. The remains of a few other men have been found that have been claimed to have been those of a Rurikid, and these remains were in the haplogroups N1a, R1a and I2a. For the supposed Rurikid in the N1a haplogroup a scientific paper has been published purporting to prove the Rurikid line was N1a. However, none of circumstances surround the identification of any of the supposed Rurikids, including that of N1a, actually proves that the studied remains were actually those of a Rurikid. On the other hand, there appears to be interesting evidence based on a genetic disease inherited paternally indicates that the remains identified as that Osmomysl suffered this disease, and the accounts of chronicles also appear to indicate that this disease was also suffered by Yaroslav the Wise, a Rurikid and paternal ancestor of Osmomysl.

Another very interestingly bit evidence that might indicate that the remains identified as Osmomysl were truly his is that of E-V13 (E-FGC11450) Szekeesfhearvar 53. As I've stated in the past, Szekeesfhearvar 53 was buried in the Royal Basilica of Szekesfehervar, which was built by king Stephen I of Hungary as the burial location of the Arpad royal family. The archaeogist who first dug up the remains in the 1800's in fact believed that Szekeesfhearvar 53 was king Stepehn I. That is probably not true, but what is true is that the Szekesfehervar Basilica was not a place in which only a few select people were buried, even after the death of the Arpad line.

Yaroslav Osmomysl mother was an the daughter of Arpad Coloman, King of Hungary, meaning that Osmomysl was the grandson of Coloman. Osmomsysl's paternal great-grandfather, Prince Rostislav Vladimirovich of Tmutarakhan was married to Sophia, daughter of Arpad Bela I, King of Hungary; thus, Osmomysl was a great-great granson of Bela as well as a grandson of Coloman. In other words, he had Arpad ancestors through both his mother and father. Euphrozyne of Kiev, a daughter of Mstislav Vladimirovich, Grand Prince of Kiev and a Rurikid, was married to Arpad Geza II, King of Hungary, and was the mother of Bela III, The mother ofArpad Bela II, King of Hungary, was Predislava of Kiev, the daughter of Grand Prince Svyatopoik II, another Rurikid Prince.

There may be other such Arpad-Ruruikd marriages, but the point is made that the two famiies were heavily intermarried with each other, and it would not be a surprise to find that a Rurikid was buried in the Royal Basilica of Szekeesfhearvar. If the Rurikid line was E-V13, then without more information than this, then the most obvious explanation for the identiy of Szekeesfhearvar 53 was that he was a Rurikid.

If Szekeesfhearvar 53 was a Rurikid, then the Rurikids were E-FGC11450. However, Szekesfehervar 53 was from a different descendant branch of E-FGC11450 than the Swaim/den Hartog line. In that case, if Rorik of Dorestad was Rurik the Kievan Rus, then the Swaim/den Hartog line would not descend from Rorik—but could still have been descended from one of his fellow Vaikings, who would definitely be a kinsman in the paternal line.

Yaroslav Vladimirkovich “Osmomysl”, Prince of Halych

Ukraine (Krylos, Halych) 1135-1 October 1187 AD

Y-haplogroup E1b1b1a1b1a (E-V13)

The information on Yaroslav Osmomysl came not through FTDNA or a scientific paper, but from the website exploreyourdna.com, which compiles ancient DNA and which I've found particularly useful because for many entries they include an autosomal ancestry using a reference population set that I'll discuss in a future post on the origin of E-FGC11450 and E-V13. In this entry for Osmomysl, his Y-chromosome haplogroup was listed as E1b1b1a1b1a, which is the “longhand” equivalent of the SNP E-V13. Even after some research it isn't clear who had tested Osmomysl to dtermine his Y-haplogroup. This is partly because no sceintific paper has discussed him, and possibly also because of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. However, there is interest in Ukraine in determining the ancestry of the Rurikids, so there's little reason to doubt that the remains purported to be his were tested and found to be E-V

The Rurikids

“The Rurik dynasty, also known as the Rurikid or Rurikid dynasty...was a noble lineage allegedly founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, who, according to tradition, established himself at Novgorod in the year 862. The Rurikids were the ruling dynasty of Kievan Rus' and its principalities following its disintegration....As a ruling house, the Rurikids held their own for a total of 21 generations in male-line succession, from Rurik (d.879) to Feodor I of Russia (d. 1598), a period of more than 700 years. They are one of Europe's oldest royal houses, with numerous existing cadet branches.” (Wikipedia “Rurikids”)

Other than this the history of the Rurikids isn't of great importance for our purposes. Here' however, is what Wikipedia has to say about “Gentic studies” of the Rurikids Ireferences omitted):

“The genetic study "Population genomics of the Viking world" was published September 16, 2020 in Nature, and showed that Gleb Svyatoslavich (sample VK542), an 11th century Rurikid Prince of Tmututarakan and Novgorod in Kievan Rus', was found to belong to Y-DNA haplogroup I2a1a2b1a1a (I-Y3120) and mtDNA haplogroup H5a2a. In YFull's YTree a more detailed position is given for his Y-DNA under I-Y3120's subclades Y4460 > Y3106 > Y91535.

A genetic study on the origins of Rurikids (Zhur et al. 2023) analysed "for the first time", remains belonging to Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich. The study found that Dmitry Alexandrovich and most of the "medieval and modern Rurikids", starting with Prince Yaroslav the Wise, belong to paternal haplogroup N-M231 (N1a). The genetic results suggest that the formation of the Rurikid lineage included a population from eastern Scandinavia (Öland), a population from Central Europe or the Iron Age Eurasian Steppe, and an East Asian component via Siberian geneflow to Northeastern Europe.”

I've include these quotes because they sound authoritative and well-infomred and because this article is probably the beginning and end of most people's research on the subject. One of the problems with this information is that it doesn't explain the contradition inherent it saying that Rurikid Gleb Svyatoslavich was haplogroup I2a and Rurikid Dmitry Alexandrovich was haplogroup N1a. To be a Rurikid means to be a male-line descendant of Rurik, and therefore all true Rurikids must necessarily be in the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. If two men, living and/or dead, are caimed to be Rurikids but have different haplogroups, then either one or both men are/were not true Rurikids. Either the ancient remains were not of a Rurikid, or the living man was not actually descended from the Rurikids, or both, or the was at least one non-paternity even (NPE) in one or more branches of the Rurikid line.

I don't want to wade into the weeds of the Rurikid supposed family tree; the most accurate and concise assessment of this family is probably that of the fmg.ac webiste under entry “Russia” (RUSSIA ) The Rurikids had a large family, but all of the supposed Rurikids claimed as the identity of the ancient remains were supposed to have descended from Yaroslav the Wise (978-1054), who was supposed to have been the 2x great-granson of Rurik through Rurik's son Igor. The fmg.ac website says about the Rurikids: “The earliest generations of the so-called Rurikid family are reconstructed solely on the basis of the sparse information in the Povest' vremennykh let or 'Tale of the Years of Time', better known as the Primary Chronicle and also sometimes known as Nestor´s Chronicle. As pointed out by Franklin & Shepard[2], the extant manuscripts of the Primary Chronicle which date from the 12th century should not be taken at face value as they must have been compiled from patchy sources of information. It is likely that the compilers exaggerated the role of Rurik's family in the 9th and 10th centuries, in order to establish a lengthy, credible history for the Russian principalities which were flourishing by the 12th century.  In particular, the alleged establishment by "Oleg" in 882 of the principality of Kiev should be treated with caution.  Nevertheless, the historical existence of Rurik´s supposed son Igor, and Igor´s son Sviatoslav, is corroborated by th  De Administrando Imperio of Emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogenneto, written in the mid-10th century and therefore contemporary with Sviatoslav´s reign.”

Returning to the Wikipedia quote regarding the Y-chromosome haplogroups of the remains of the supposed Rurikids, the 2023 archaeogenetic paper by Zhur et al discussed the supposed remains of “Gleb Svyatoslavich as well as of two other remains identified as other Rurikids. It says: “The three ancient alleged Rurikids, whose Y chromosome haplogroups were previously determined by other scientific groups, include a sample allegedly belonging to Prince Gleb Svyatoslavich of Chernigov (O), published under the identification number VK542, a sample presumably belonging to Prince Izyaslav Ingvarevich Lutsky (M) with the identification number VK541, and a sample belonging to Bela Rostislavovich (O), a large Hungarian feudal lord, a representative of the Chernigov line of the princely family of the Rurikids . The Y chromosomal haplogroups established for these samples are as follows: Prince Gleb – I2a (whole genome sequence); Prince Izyaslav – R1a (whole genome sequence); and Prince Bela – N1a1a1a1a1a1a (according to STR markers). It is important to note that the belonging of the Chernigov and Lutsk burial places to the Rurikids cannot be substantiated by archaeological data, which calls into question the hypotheses that follow from the genetic analysis of these samples.”

In other words, the Zhur study is saying that two of threeremains that had been acribed to the named Rurikids Gleb Vyatoslavich (I2a) and Izyaslav Ingvarevich (R1a), should be disregarded because the circumstances were such that the remains could not be identified with certainty as Rurikids.

However, the Zhur et al study is not as critical of the identify of the one set of remains supposedly those of Bela Rostislavovich, who was in haplogroup N1a. I haven't looked into the circumstances regarding the study on Bela, but Zhur et al in their study claim that the remains they tested definitely belonged to Rurikid Dmitry Alexandrovich because of “the historical information on the burial place, archaeological data, and anthropological determinations...” “Supplementary 1” is cited to support this contention, but as I can't locate Supplementary 1 I can't judge its accuracy. Possibly the information in Supplementary 1 is persuasive, but based on the generatlities just quoted above, especially in light of the paper's explanation of why Rurikid remains are difficult to come by (the Russians!), I personally am not persuaded. I want details on the exact historical information that points to these remains being those of Dmitry Alexandrovich, and what exact archaeological data indicate the same, and what are the specific “anthropological determinations” (i.e., the non-DNA examination of the bones themselves) indicate these remains were those of Dmitry Alexandrovich. When I read general reassurances such as the above quote, I immediately think that if they had even one piece of specific evidence that approach proof what they wanted to be true, they would have detailed that evidence. Because they did not, I remain skeptical.

The Zhur et al study also cites as proof that the Rurikid Y-haplogroup was N1a the fact that N1a is also the DNA of several “alleged modern Rurikids”, allegations that the paper doesn't attempt to prove as true.

Non-Mention of the “Osmomysl” Remains and Possible Non Paternity Events

However, the two greatest flaws of th paper in my opinion are that the paper doesn't discuss the possibility of female adultery in the Rurikid line and it doesn't discuss the fifth set of ancient remains claimed to be those of a Rurikid, those claimed to be the remaisn of Yaroslav Osmomysl.

I don't know when the remains claimed to be those of Osmomysl were genotyped, but he Zhur et al paper was published in 2023, which is quite recently. The authors of the study surely knew of the existence of those remains and should have at least mentioned them even if to dismiss them. Partly there may have been difficulties in pursuing this issue because the authors of the paper are Russians while Osmomysl's remains are located in Ukraine, and the two nations have been at war since early 2022. Nonethells, if the authors knew aboutt the “Osmomysl” remains, it was intellectual dishonest of them not to have mentioned the their existence, whether or not its haplogroup had yet been determined.

A non paternity event is when, within a marriage, a child is born to the wife when her husband was not the father, usually due to adultery by the wife, but also potentially due to rape or, modernly, artificial insemination. Based on what I've seen in the fmg.ac website on the Rurikids, the male Rurikids committed adultery frequently and had many children by such illicit liasons. I don't know enough about the Rurikids to form an idea on the extent of possibly adultery by the wives of the Rurikids, but if was certainly less than that of the men as adultery by a female was viewed as a much more serious transgrssion than adultery by a male because it could introduce a false heir into the male lineage. Nonetheless, such adulteries by females did at least occasionally occur,

The wife of Dmitry Alexandrovich, the Rurikid at question in the Zhur et al study, was Alexandra Bryachislavna, one of whose 3x great-grandfathers was Vladimir II Monomah (1053-1125), whose daugther Euphemia was caught in the act of adultery by her husband King Coloman (Kalman) of Hungary, who returned her to her father and refused to recognize her later-born son, as his son or an Arpad (Coloman was very ill at the time of the adultery and it's possible he knew with absolute certainty that her son wasn't his).

Another instance occurred as I detailed in my post of 10 July 2024, regarding the accusations of adultery of Beatrice d'Este, the third wife of King Andrew II. Beatrice was pregnant when Andrew III died and his sons, including Bela IV, accused her of adultery and forced her to flee Hungary. The son born to her was Stephen the Posthumous, whose son Andrew III was eventually elected King of Hungary and is considered the last member of the Arpad dynasty, although of courrse that might not be true.

Presumably most women married to princes and kings who commit adultery, as well as their lovers, took great care to commit their acts in secret, and to keep it a secret for fear of reprisal including their executions, so presumably most such acts that produced a male child went unknown to the cuckolded prince or king. If so, all of the male offspring from that son would be considered to be, for example, a Rurikid, and would likely believe himself to be a Rurikid, but he and all his descendants would have diferent Y-DNA than would the other, true Rurikids.

Thus, it is possible that socially there could be Rurukids who were N1a, R1a, I2a, and E-V13, but biologically only all of the true Rurikids would belong to only one haplogroup.

Thus, even if the remains claimed to be those of Dmitry Alexandrovich were truly his, this still does not necessarily mean that the N1a was the true Rurikid haplogroup, inherited from Rurik.

This also obviously leave room for the possibility that the Rurikid Yaroslav Osmomysl is the correcty identity of the remains found to be E-V13. We'll now look into the circumstances of the discoveries of those remains to determine the likelihood that they were correctly identified.

All of the paternal descendants of Rurik, and thus all of the paternal descendants of Yaroslav the Wise, had to be from the same haplogroup, whether it was E1b (E-V13), N1a, I2a or Rla. A man or presumed Rurikid men with different haplogroups could have been from NPE fathers and/or the remains could have been misattributed as Rurikids.

Bt what is the correct Rurikid Y-chromosome haplogorup? If the remains believed to be those of Yaroslav Osmomysl are truly those of Osmomysl, then E-V13 is a strong contender to be the true Rurikid haplogroup. Next we examine the evidence that the remains were truly those of Osmomysl.

Wikipedia Article on the History of Osmomysl's Remains

The Wikipedia article “Yaroslav Osmomysl” explains some of the circumstances regarding the history of finding and studying Osmomysl's remains:

“Osmomysl's remains found their final resting place only recently after long period of disturbance. Originally, he was buried in the Assumption Cathedral in ancient Halych (now the village of Krylos, in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine). In 1939 his stone sarcophagus was discovered by Ukrainian archaeologist Jaroslaw Pasternak, after his long search for the cathedral that was destroyed by [the mid-1200's] Mongol-Tatar hordes and never rebuilt later. It appeared that the burial was looted earlier and Yaroslav's bones were found mixed with bones of a young princess of unknown family. The sarcophagus is displayed in the History museum of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Trying to secure his archaeological artifacts from ancient Halych and drawings of the cathedral in Krylos before the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine, Jaroslaw Pasternak hid them in an undisclosed location shortly after he emigrated to Germany,[dubious–discuss] where he died without disclosing the secret place. The purported remains were found for the second time in 1992, hidden in the crypt of St. George Cathedral in Lviv, by archeologist Yuriy Lukomskyy. After anthropological study, the remains were reburied at the Lviv Cathedral. As a result of study a reconstruction of Yaroslav Osmomysl's face was made.”

The “[dubious]” editorial comment in this quote is from Wikipedia, not me. I'm not certain why or exactly what the editor who wrote this comment considered to be dubious, but we'll soon see another version of this incident that helps clarify it.

As with the previously quoted Wikipdia article on the Rurikids, this article is incorrect in its assumption that the the remains in question have been proved to be those of Osmomysl. Without more information, the circumstances surrounding the disovery and subsequent handling of these remains are enough to raise doubt that the remains were those of Osmomysl.”

This account doesn't indicate the exact reasons that caused Pasternak to believe that the remain were of Osmomsyl, Krylos was the capital of Halych and the Assumption Cathedral in which the remains were found in the stone sarcophagus had been built at the direction of Osmomysl (In the center of Old Halych, the capital of Galicia, in Krylos · Ukraine travel blog ); so perhaps these facts alone were enough prove to Pasternak that the remains were those of Osmomysl. I don't known whether Osmomysl's remains have been carbon-dated. One of the references in this article is to something apparently written in 1944 Pasternak entitled “Ancient Halych”, but as this was apparetnly written in either Ukrainian or Russian and may not be available on the internet, this isn't something that can be easily obtained and probablny not in English.

Obviously another problem is whether the remains hidden in the Kyev cathedral were the same remains that had earlier been removed from the Krylos cathedral by Pasternak. We need more information on the 1992 presumed rediscovery of the remains.

Fortunately, we do have a more detailed account of the history of these remains.

Another Description of the Discovery of Osmomysl's Remains

A description of the story of remains identified as Osmomysl can be found on the Facebook page “Foundation to Preserve Ukraine's Sacral Arts” (June 8 2023 We are pleased to... - Foundation to Preserve Ukraine's Sacral Arts | Facebook ). This narrative adds a couple of important details that would tend to authenticate that the remains supposedly of Osmomysl that were found hidden in the Kyev cathedral in 1991 were in fact the remains originally found by Pasternak in the Krylos cathedral.

Her'e's the relevant Facebook post:

“A prtially destroyed burial of a woman was found beneath the floor of the narthex of the Assumption Cathedral of the 12^th century in the princely city of Halych. Ukraininan archaeologist Yaroslav Pasternak discovered the burial during archaeological excavations in 1937, near a stone sarcophagus containing the remains of a man. Some researchers identify him with with the figure of the famous Haylch prince from the Ruruk dynasty, Yaroslav Volodymyrovch (Osmomysl). (d. October 1, 1187). A fragment of a gold-woven ribbon (a forehead band) measuring 31x2.6 cm was preserved on the forehead of the buried woman. A crushed yellow-green glass bottle, probably used for oil during the burial ceremony, was found near her head. The beginning of World War II and the emigration of Yaroslav Pasternak to Europe, and then on to Canada, concealed information about the location of the uncovered remains. In fact, they were considered lost forever. A group of scientists, including Yuriy Lukomsky, Mykola Bandrivsky and Roman Sulik, rediscovered the remains during their research in the crypts of St. George Cathedral in Lviv on November 14, 1991. Yaroslav Pasternak's written confirmation of the discovered remains' association with the mentioned burials was found on a blank sheet of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. In addition, a female skull with a gold-woven forehead band was discovered in the collections of the Lviv Historical Museum. These significant discoveries marked a new stage in research, particularly in anthropology. In 2000, anthropologist Serhiy Horbenko conducted a detailed study and reconstruction of a skull found in the burial ground. Research on the remains suggested that they belonged to a woman aged 16-23 years old, standing at a height of 163-164 cm. The anthropologist also noted a mixed European-Mongoloid facial type. The latter led to the assumption that the burial belonged to an unknown daughter of Yaroslav Osmomysl and his wife Princess Olha Yuriivna (Dolhorukaya), who was the daughter of Prince Yuri Dolhorukiy and a daughter of the Polovtsian Khan Aepa, inheriting Mongoloid features from him. Historians also suggest that the unknown Yaroslavna was the wife of Prince Mstislav Rostislavich († June 13, 1180) and the mother of Prince Mstislav Mstislavich the Daring († 1228). After the reconstruction, Serhiy Horbenko's work was exhibited in the Lviv Historical Museum only once, in the form of a plasticine model. No copies have been made so far. With time, cracks appeared on the model, and there was a need to preserve it. It was decided that 3D fixation was one of the most optimal options. Andriy Hryvniak from the company "Skeiron" performed scanning and graphic reconstruction of the woman's face based on a 3D model in the "Metahuman Creator" program. It is interesting that, according to the museum staff, the skull and a fragment of a gold-woven crown are still inside the reconstruction. The next step in verifying this information was to conduct an X-ray and confirm the data. Therefore, a sculptural copy in plaster is being created for the purpose of: 1) physically preserving the anthropological reconstruction; 2) re-examining the skull, and, provided that the materials are well-preserved, conducting DNA analysis. The significance of these discoveries is profound, as they are among the few skeletons from the princely era that have been found in sacred structures and remain in Ukraine. As is known, most similar findings were deliberately taken to Russia, and Ukrainian anthropologists never had the opportunity to work with them.”

This version of the story is much more complete and does appear to prove that the bones found by Lukomsky et al in the Kyev cathedral in 1991 (not 1992) were the remains originally found by Pasternak in the Krylos cathedral. The written statement of such by Pasternk is probably enough by itself to prove this, but since exact details of how this letter was found and what said were not provided, it's impossible to judge this for ourselves. The skull of the woman with the gold woven band (presumably the “princess” from the Wikipedia article), which had been originally found at Krylos, is also decent evidence, although it appears less likely that anything can be proved by the fact that her skull indicated a mixed Euroepan-Asian ancestry.

However, even though we can be reasonably certain that the remains found in Kiev in 1991 were those found by Pasternak in Krylos in 1937, wihtout more information we still can't be certain that the remains originally from Krylos were those of Osmomysl, although it is definitely reasonable to believe that they likely were those of Osmomysl.

As it turns out, more information appears to be available that may ultimately prove that the remains were those of Osmomysl

Perthes Disease

The following is from an online transcript of an interview by a man named Vadym Nazarenko of “Oleksandra Kozak, Ph.D in history, the Senior Scientific Experit in Bioarchaeology at the Instiute of Archaeology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and docent of the Department of Archaeology at the Kyiv Mohyla University”. Nazarenko.”

The interviewer “mentioned the archaeopatholgical research done on the remains of King Richard III of England that dound that he was not a hunchback but had suffered from scoliosis, and whether similar studies had been done on any ancient Ukrainians.” Kozak answered:

“Similar research was begun in Ukraine in the 1960s. When the sarcophagus of Yaroslav the Wise was uncovered, Mykhaylo Herasymov created a reconstruction of Yaroslav’s exterior. Pathology was researched, with results conforming to that which is known about Yaroslav in the chronicles. This is what allowed researchers to identify him. The Ukrainian anthropologist and doctor Serhiy Horbenko, who worked in France, created reconstructions based on human remains. Notably, he made a reconstruction of Joan of Arc and even worked with the possible remains of Yaroslav Osmomysl [Prince of Halych in the 12th c.]. He did his own paleopathological research and showed that the remains bore evidence of Perthes disease (a congenital deformation of the top of the hip). The disease is inherited from the father. Yaroslav the Wise had a similar deformation. The presence of Perthes disease was one of the indicators that these remains could have been those of Yaroslav Osmomysl.” (The life and death of people in medieval Ukraine, told by a paleoanthropologist - Euromaidan Press )

The interviewer Nazaranko then asks “Therefore Perthes disease is a possible “family” disease of the Rurikids”. Kozak answers “Yes, it is possible that Perthes was hereditary in the Rurikid dynasty. It is inherited from the father. We wanted to build a reconstruction of the possible remains of Yuri Dolgoruky [Kyivan prince who founded Moscow – editor]. However, we doubt whether the burial, uncovered beside the Church of the Savior at Berestove, contained his remains. Are they authentic? No.” (ibid)

Thus, Kozak, an expert in the study of disease in ancient remains, is saying that the remains of Yaoslav the Wise were studied archaeopathologically and he was determined to have had Perthes disease, which apparently was consistent with a mention or mentions in chronicles of something that could be explained by Perthe's disease. Furthermore, the remains identified as those of Yaroslav Osmomysl, who was a direct male-line descendant of Yaroslav the Wise, was determined by archaeopaothological examination also to have had Perthes disease. Furthermore, Perthe's disease is a genetic condition passed through the male line, and therefore the fact that both men sufferend from Perthes disease is one line of evidence that the remains claimed to be those of Osmomysl were correctly identified as such.”

The problem here is that although it appears that the remains of the man believed to be that of Yaroslav Osmomysl appear to be linked by this paternally inherited genetic disease to the remains of the man that had been identified as Osmomysl's 3x great-grandfather Yaroslav the Wise, we don't know anything about the discovery of the remains believed to be those of Yaroslav the wise. The Wikipedia entry “Yaroslav the Wise” has an account of the history of the remains identified as those of Yaroslav the Wise:

“Following his death, the body of Yaroslav the Wise was entombed in a white marble sarcophagus within Saint Sophia Cathedral in. In 1936, the sacrophagus was opened and found to contain the skeletal remains of two individuals, one male and one female. The male was determined to be Yaroslav. The identity of the female was never established, though some believe them to be those of Yaroslav's spouse Ingegerd. The sarcophagus was again opened in 1939 and the remains removed for research, not being documented as returned until 1964. In 2009, the sarcophagus was opened and surprisingly found to contain only one skeleton, that of a female. It seems the documents detailing the 1964 reinterment of the remains were falsified to hide the fact that Yaroslav's remains had been lost. Subsequent questioning of individuals involved in the research and reinterment of the remains seems to point to the idea that Yaroslav's remains were purposely hidden prior to the German occupation of Ukraine and then either lost completely or stolen and transported to the United States, where many ancient religious artifacts were placed to avoid "mistreatment" by the communists.”

Presumably it was either in 1936 or 1939 that the remains presumed to be those of Yaroslv the wise were studied and found to have Perthes disease, althoug Kozak didn't clarify this issue. The evidentiary problem still exists that we don't know how strong was the original evidence that the sarcophagus contained the remains of Yaroslav the Wise. However, Kozak flatly stated that those remains were those of Yaroslav the Wise, so this must carry some weight. Furthermore, there is some weight to be given to the fact that two different sets of remains were fount that archaeologits believed to be those of Yaroslav the Wise and of his paternal-line descendant Yaroslav Osmomysl, and that upon anthropological examination both remains were found be have sufferent from the paternally-inherited Perthes disease. Kozak also stated that Yaroslav having Perthes disease “apparently was consistent with a mention or mentions in chronicles of something that could be explained by Perthe's disease.”

It's unfortuate that the remains had been lost before they could have been tested genetically, but in my opinion the fact that both remains had been determined to have had Perthes disease appears to be pretty persuasive evidence, However, even here there are problems because it isn't certain that Perthes disease is actually an inherited condition. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons says that “The cause of Perthes disease is not known. Some recent studies indicate that there may be a genetic link to the development of Perthes, but more research needs to be concucted.” (Perthes Disease - Legg-Calve-Perthes - OrthoInfo - AAOS )

Conclusion as the the Identity of the E-V13 Remains from Krylos

In my opinion the evidence is strong that the remains found in the Kiev cathedral are the same remains found by Pasternak in the Krylos cathedral. It appears likely that these remains are those of Yaroslav Osmomysl as they were found in a stone sarcophagus in the cathedral he ordered built, a probability that could esily be strengthened by carbon-dating the remains, if this has not already been done. Questions remain about the Perthes disease linkage to the remains presumed to be Osmomysl's and those presumed tobe those of his paternal ancestor Yaroslav the Wise, but perhaps those remains will one day show up in museum storage room somewhere and be tested for its Y-chromosome haplotype.

In the meantime, there is another possible way to determine the probabiity that the E-V13 remians presumed to be those of Yarsolav Osmomysl were truly his, based on information either already obtained from those remains or that should be able to be obtained from another study of those remains.

Szekesfehervar 53 May be the Key to Proving the Rurikid Haplogroup

The cirumstances surrounding the testing of the remains purported to be those of Osmomysl for their Y-chromoome haplogroup appear not to have been published, at least not in English. The test appears to have showed that Osmomysl was E-V13, but with no apparent dtermination of which descendant haplogroup of E-V13 he belonged. If this has not been determined, the remains should be retested to determine that.

The descendant haplogroup should be compared to that of Szkesfehervar 53, who was in haplogroup:

E-V13-->E-Z1057-->E-CTS1273-->E-BY3880-->E-Z6018-->E-S2979-->E-FGC11457-->E-FGC11451-->E-FGC11450-->E-Y58870

Before we go further, I want to point out that the Yfull tree has just 3 individuals listed in the E-Y58870 branch of E-FGC11450. One of these of course is Szkesfehervar 53. The other two are living men, both of whom are from Schleswig-Holstein (this appears when you hover the cursor over the country map). Grand Prince Sviatoslav (d. 1076), son of Yaroslave the Wise, married Cecelia von Dithmarschen (d. 1060), daughter of Etheler von Stade, Graf in Dithmarschen. Dithmarchen is located in southern Schleswig, which was probably in those days considered part of Denmark. It was no doubt Cececilia who moved to Kiev with her husband, but from the viewpoint of the Rurikids this marriage must have been to solidify an alliance with this region and its possible that a Rurikid was sent there to further the Rurikid interests there. But also this region was possibly ruled at some time by Rorik of Dorestad as well.

History of the Szekesfehervar Skeletal Remains

In the mid-1800's archaeologists recovered the remains of 10 individuals who had been buried at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assuption in Szekesfehervar, Hungary, located 40 miles southwest of Budapest and 55 miles northeast of Fonyod, the location of the earliest known E-FGC11450 man.

Three scientific papers and a book were written by the most recent of the scientitist to have studied these remains. (Kasler and Szentirmay, eds., Identifying the Arpad Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church, (2021) Identifying the Árpád dynasty skeletons interred in the Matthias Church : applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research ) The book provides interesting and useful information on the modern studies of the remains, but is marred by a few flaws such as labeling in a chart the Y-chromosome haplogroup of Szekesfehervar 53 as R1a rather than E-V13. Also, regarding the study as a whole, I have serious doubts as to whether the researchers had correctly identfied the remains claimed to be those of Bela III king of Hungary and his wife Anne of Antioch. These identities were made in the 1800's with the discovery of the remains, and the modern researchers appear to have blindly refused to have reconsider the identities of the remains in face of evidence indicating that they were actually of individuals who had lived 200 years earlier than Bela III and Anne of Antioch This evidence comes from carbondating and, for the remains supposedly those of Bela III, of the figurative trepanation marks on his skull, a pre-Christian practice that ceased among the Hungarians once they were at least nominally Christianezed by 1000 AD, and certainly by the time of Bela III. My belief is that the remains supposedly those of Bela III are actuall those of either Stephen I, the first king of Hungary, or more likely those of his father Geza, who had been baptized and who encourage the Hungarians to become Christians, but who also himsel continued to practice his pre-Christian religion. Fortunately, athough Bela III was not an descendant of Stephen or I and Geza, he was from the same paternal line that descended from Grand Prince Taksony, so their Y-chromosome DNA would be the same. But the power of science is that as a method it constantly disruputs previously-helf views in the face of new evidence that contradicts those views, and instead of merely saying that “it is strange” that Bela III's skull would have been trepanated, a scientist should then reconsider whether it really was Bela III's skull.

Also annoyingly, the researchers radiocarbond dated all but one of the ten sets of remains, and that one undated set of remains is that of Szekesfehervar 53. The radiocarbon dating is presented in Table 4 (p. 103), and instead of dates for Szekesfehervar 53 (II/53_7), there's the explanaton “Not investigated”. To me this seems sloppy, because although the researchers' primary goal was to identify the Arpad dynasty's Y-chromosome DNA, and probably by the time they radiocarbon dated the remains they already thought they knew that Szekesfehervar 53 was not an Arpad, it is obvious from the fact that he had been buried in the Szekesfehervar Basilica that he was someone important to the Arpads and thus to Hungarian history, and that radiocardon data might be of use to future researchers. So better to test it now than force some future researcher to go through the no-doubt tedious process of applying for permission to re-examine the remains.

In Chapter 10 of the book describes Szekesfehervar 53 (II/53) thusly: “In the case of skeleton II/53, there were no grave goods of any kind, so its Árpád-era origin could neither be confirmed nor disproven by the archaeological investigation. The fact that the person was buried in the inner church’s southern aisle does not mean that the person is necessarily of royal origin, because during this period, not only kings were buried – usually in an earth grave – in the inner church. T he skeleton’s anthropological age is between 21 and 27 years, the time of death by archaeological estimation is between the 14th and 15th centuries. According to A-STR data, he is not related to the Árpád Dynasty. According to the genetic investigation, skeleton II/53 belongs to the haplogroup R1a. This haplotype can be found in Africa and the Southern Balkans, especially in Greece, which opens up the possibility, that a high-ranking person of Byzantine origin was buried in the Royal Basilica of Székesfehérvár, whose skeleton now rests in the crypt of the Matthias Church.” (pp. 190-191)

Again, unfortunately, there is much wrong with the facts and the logic in this quote. First, the quote states that “during this period” “not only kings” were buried in the inner church. But because the researchers didn't carbon-date these remains, we don't know what period is “this period.” The writer claims that “archaeological estimation” is that Szekesfehervar 53 died in the 1300's, but frankly I place no value on this statement given the earlier description of the removal of the remains, from the reuins of Szekesfehervar, which was done by an archaeologist name Henszlmann “between 1862 and 1874”: “The two men found south of the woman's grave [II/109] were 8-12 inches (21-31 cm) deeper than the previous woman's grave. According to Henszlmann's dating, one of the men (later labelled II/53) was 26 years old, the other skeleton (labelled II/54) may have been below the age of 30. Whether they were from the Arpad period could not be confirmed nor ruled out. With the lack of any grave goods, nothing could be determined about their rank in society. Our genetic investigation ruled out a relation to the Arpad dynasty and supplied clues suggesting their identity (see Chapter 10).”

The identity suggested in Chapter 10 is the the quote above about Szekesfehervar 53 posssibly having been a “high ranking person of Byzantine origin”, a rather wild guess based solely on his E-V13 haplogroup, which was also mischaracterized as being found “esepecially” in Greece (and is also very rare verging on non-existent in Africa.

In Chapter 10 it is stated that the “archaeological estimation” is that the body of II/53 (and II/54) was buried in the 1300's. But this is contradicted in the earlier quote describing the original archaeologist's study of the remains in situ, in which it is stated that the it cannot be confirmed or ruled out that the body was from the Arpad period, and where it is also stated that the body was buried 8-12 inches deeper than that of the remains of the woman II/109. The book says of II/109 that “In spite of Henszlmann's opinion about the royal nature of the grave, its depth suggests that it was from the late Middle Ages.” This seems to imply that bodies in general were buried more deeply during the Arpad period than during the Middle Ages. In turn, this means that the statement about II/53 in Chaptoer 10 regarding his burial in the 1300's is contradicted by the earlier statement that its burial was deeper than that of II/109, which implies that it had occurred earlier than the 1300's.

II/109 was radiocarbon dated to the range of 1415-1477 AD, and II/54 was radiocarbon dated to the range of 1320-1443 AD. Although apparntly II/54 and II/53 were found near each other and were buried at the same depth, indicating that they had possibly been buried at the same time or close to the same time, the book also says that by 1862 “some of the remains ahd been lost and mixed up” such that I'm not certain it's possibe to actually know if the remains now labelled II/53 are actually the remains labelled that by Henszlmann.

Figure 15 on page 74 of the book is a diagram of the Szekesfehervar Basilica based on the maps from the 1800's archaeologists, showing the locations of some of the graves, a text box says “According to Imre Henszlmann, Graves II/53, II/54, II/109. Saint Istvan and his family”. Saint Istvan is Stephen I, the first king of Hungary, so Henszlmann believed that the first Arpad king was either II/53 or II/54. It isn't clear to me why he would have believed this given that Henszlmann had estimated the age at death of II/53 as 26 and II/54 as “below 30” (Table 3, column C, p. 82), whereas it's known that Stephen I died aged 62-63, but possibly he had determined their probable identiies based on the location at which the bodies were buried and before he had made his anthropological determinations of their ages. It turns out that radiocarbon dating places II/54 and II/109 in the 1400's whereas Henszlmann believed they were buried at least 300 years earlier, which means that burial depth may not be a useful criteria in determining when the bodies were buried. Bodies were also often removed from one place and buried in another place considered appropriate due to familial relationships, so that we can't even been certain that just because two bodies were found next to each other that they had been buried at the same time.

The Chapter 10 summation states that Szekesfehervar 53 (II/53) was haplogroup R1a, a mistake repeated in Table 19 (p. 190), but it's clear from both the text and table that this is in the nature of a typo rather than an error of understanding, because the “Haplotype metapopulation” of the chart and the similar text statement indicates that it is E-V13 that is being discussed (although, as I earlier stated, the “metapopulation” is misrepresented as occuring in Africa, which is very rare, and being “especially” prevelant in Greece, when in fact its highest concentration is in Albania/Bosnia/southern Serbia, and also in that is “Byzantine origin”. E-V13 probably originated in western Asia, and the E-haplogrou originated in either Africa or Tibet (my guess is Tibet), and 12,000 years ago was found in Israel. It may have first been found in Europe in Spain 5000 BC, but was first found in Europe as the popultion ancestral to today's E-V13 in today's locality of Kapitan Andreevo on the border of Bulgaria and the European appendage of Turkey, and just north of norheastern Greece. My research indicates E-V13 entered Europe as part of an Iranic steppe nomad population, but it's also possible it was instead at that time part of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, and also later entered the Roman Empire as soldiers recruited from Roman Anatolia.

But to be fair to the a;uthors of the book, at the time they wrote the book the studies showing large numbers of E-V13 in Hungary had not been published.

So what does this mean in terms of the identity of Szekesfehervar 53?

First, modern these studies showed that Szekesfehervar 53 was in the E-V13 descendant haplogroup E-FGC11450, and also specifically of the E-Y58870 (aka E-BY4992) haplogroup that is descandant from E-FGC11450. The Swaim/den Hartog E-FGC11450 descendant haplogroup is E-257534 and thus Szekesfehervar 53 could not have been a direct Swaim/den Hartog ancestor. However, because E-FGC11450 at this time was a relative recent haplogroup and during the Avar era it appears tht most of its members were living in Hungary, its members may have during the Avar period formed a clan that maintained social ties to each other, it's possible that the Swaim/den Hartog ancestor(s) lwho was living contemoraneously with Szekesfehervar 53 was living in the same general region, or had parted ways relatively recently, between about 750-1000 AD. Thus, Szekesfehervar 53 may offer clues as to the history of the Swaim/den Hartog line.

The location within the Szekesfehervar Basilica in which Szekesfehervar 53 was buried appears to indicate his importance, despite the statement in the Kasner book that claims without citation that “not only kings” were buried in the inner church. I believe it likely that the inner church was in fact most likely reserved for kings and their family members, to the exclusion of random nobles or others, and that this is one reason why Henszlmann believed II/53 to be part of the family of Stephen I.

This is really all the information we know about Szekesfehervar 53 from this study. He was E-FGC11450 and he was buried with the kiings of Hungary (including the later non-Arpad kings) and their families.

Was Szekesfehervar 53 a Rurikid?

But we now know that it's possible, perhaps likely, that Yaroslav Osmomysl, a male-line descendnat of Yaroslav the Wise and of Rurik the founder of the Rurikid line, was E-V13.

If itturns out that Yaroslav Osmomysl was in the E-FGC11450 descendant haplogroup of E-V13, and specifically in Szekesfehervar 53's E-Y58870 descendant haplogroup of E-FGC11450, then we will know at least that Szekesfehervar 53 was a Rurikid, even if we don't know his exact identity.

The Arpads and the Rurikids had strong social ties and at various times intermarried, so with the knowledge that Yaroslav Osmomysl was E-V13, it now appears most likely that Szekesfehervar 53 was in fact a Rurikid.

But this brings up a puzzling question. Here's the list of the 4 ancient E-FGC11450 men who lived prior to Szekesfehervar 53:

Püspökladány 23 960-1l00 AD Hungary

Derecske 20799 750-800 AD Hungary

Nuštar 28388 750-780 AD Pannonian Croatia

Fonyód 536 (9) 433-467 AD Hungary

Here are the locations of these men plotted on a map, together with the location of Krylos, the burial location of Yaroslav Osmomysl:

screenshot

Clearly the early members of E-FGC11450 lived in Hungary, with Puspokladany 23 living there as late as 1100. So how is it that the Rurikid line, supposedly founded by Rurik, was E-FGC11450? E-FGC11450 appears to have first appeared in Hugary in 430 AD as part of the Goth contingent of the Huns, but members may actually have already been living in the Tisa region as early as 200 AD (if Derecske 20800 was E-FGC11450; so far we only know he was E-V13). Did the Ruridids then originate from Sarmatians or Alans?

Interstingly, the study on the man perhaps incorrectly identified as Dmitry Alexandrovich Nevsky stated about him that “The ancient samples closest in time to Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich belong to an early medieval population of Central Europe, the Avars steppe nomads of the late period, for example Hungary_Late Avar_ (ID 16741) and Hungary_Transtisza_LAvar (ID ARK-11).”(The Rurikids: The First Experience of Reconstructing the Genetic Portrait of the Ruling Family of Medieval Rus’ Based on Paleogenomic Data - PMC ) The locations of both of these individuals is less than 50 miles from both Derecske and Puspokladany, the locations of E-FGC11450 members Derecske 20799 and Pusposkladany 23, who lived within the same time from of about 750-800 AD. Others who were close matches to “Dmitry Alexandrovich” included two from Szeged, a hotspot for early Avar E-V13 men; PV-12 (Pitvaros-12), who was E-BY3880 (E-V13); and MM-80, who was a IBD match (cousin) to E-BY3880 Oroshaza-106 (OBT-106).

Thetrue story may be more convoluted than that, and I'll discuss that soon, but I want to state here that there's always the possibility that the Osmomysl branch of Rurikids was hijacked by a Hungarian noble having an adulterious liason with a the wife of one of the male member of the line of Yaroslav the Wise. This possibility would allow for the true Rurikid line to be haplogorup N1a, but for Yaroslav Osmomysl to have been the product or descendant of an NPE.

Thus, it's clear that the ancient man believed to have been Dmitry Alexandrovich was related to the Tisa region populations among which the known E-FGC11450 Avar-era populations lived, this is autosomal DNA and is much less informative about the past locations of members of particular Y-DNA lineages than does the actual locations of ancient men from those haplogroups. Although the paper on “Dmitry Alexandrovich” devotes a lot of analysis to his autosomal DNA, “Alexandrovich's” presumed paternal ancestor Rurik lived 11 generations in the past, which means that the contribution of his paternal line to “Alexandrovich's” autosomal DNA is very small; almost all of it came from the last few generations of the female lines feeding into the paternal line. On the other hand, these later Kivan Rus appear to have been highly endogamous and Rurik was an ancestor in a least a few of the female lines.

The closeness of his autosomal line could possibly indicate a recent NPE event in his paternal line by a Hungarian, with his paternal father, grandfather or great-grandfather, because in that case that ancestor is not actually from his paternal line and thus brings fresh DNA to the “paternal” line.

However, it's possible that the Ukrainians at that time simply had a large amount of DNA similar to that of the Hungarians, probably through gene flow from Hungary among the population as a whole as well as from Cumans (Kipchaks) who had similar Mongolian/Tian Shan Saka/Sarmatian ancestry.

Digression: Dukes of Bavaria-Straubing, Garay Family

Of course it might turn out that there was no strong connection between Yaroslav Osmomysl (and thus the Rurikids) and Szekesfehervar 53, but rather than he was a Hungarian noble related to a Hungarian queen. This is a strong possibility, and in fact when I researched this I thought (and still think) that he might have been related to Barbara of Cilli (Celje), the second wife of Sigismund of Lexumbourg who ws also king of Hungary from 1387-1437; he would then also have been related to Elizabeth of Luxembourg, the daughter of Sigismund and Barbara of Cilli, who was Albert the Habsburg, King of Hungary 1437-1439. One of the interesting aspects of this is that Barbara of Celje's sister Anne was married to a noble named Nicholas II Garay (Garai) (c. 1367-1483), who was a favorite of Sigismund and whose family derived from the clan Dorozsma. Dorozsma or Drusma was the name of a village near Szeged that is today part of Szeged called Kiskundorozsma. As it happens, several E-V13 men lived in Kiskundorozsma and Szeged during the early-late Avar eras; and not only this, but the Garay family also owned Nustar (today in Croatia), the very location where E-FGC11450 Nustar 28388 was buried in 750-780 AD. This may simply turn out to be coincidences, but also consider the interesting fact that Sigismund's niece Elisabeth of Gorlitz, the daughter of his brother John of Gorlitz, was married to John “the Pitiless”, Duke of Bavaria-Straubing. Also, Barbara of CillAnd what's interesting about this is that this was at the time the Dukes of Bavaria-Straubing were also the Counts of Holland (and the dukes that destroyed the power of the van Arkels), and from 1417-1422 John the Pitiless had wrested control of most of Holland, including Dordrecht and Gorinchem, from his niece Jacqueline and was at times physically preent in Gorinchem. And John the Pitiless had defeated his niece with the help of Sigismund, king of Hungary: “With the aid of Emperor Sigismund, who was his [John the Pitiless] wife's uncle, John III immediately started a war against his niece Jacqueline....” (Wikipedia “John III, Duke of Bavaria”) I don't know what “help” Sigismund provided, but if it was men then it was likely that Hungarians were present in Holland about a generation before the birth of Willem Ottens. I've written most of a post on this but hadn't published it yet when I discovered that Yarsolav Osmomysl was E-V13. In this post, however, I'm assuming a connection between E-FGC11450 and the Rurikds.

This may mean nothing, but Straubing (whicih is located on the Danube) was also a location where sever Goth/Hun related remains frm the 400's AD were found, some with autosomal profiles quite similar to those of Fonyod 9 and many of the E-V13 Viminacium men (i.e., many had ancestry with “Turkey Tepecik Ciftllik and/or “Kura-Araxes Armenia” and were not European but likely from some steppe group.

Also, 48 miles southeast of Straubing and a few miles west of the Danube is the town of Schwaim. I had as well located a village by that same or similar name only a few miles north of Straubing. I can't find that any longer for some reason, but it probably exists. In any case, this is a conjunction of the name Swaim and Straubing in Bavaria as well as well as in Holland at the time just before the earliest known Swaim/den Hartogs lived in Holland. If an E-FGC11450 Sarmatian/Goth had ended up in Straubing and a descendant was one of those who had moved with the Dukes of Bavaria-Straubing to their new possession of Holland, and had lived in one of the Schwaims, this is yet another hypothesis as to the origin of the Swaim/den Hartog lineage. I may provide more details on this in the future.

End of Digression

Identifying Potential Szekesfehervar 53 Connections

I'll preface this section by saying that I haven not identified Szkesfehervar 53. He might easily be identfied as a Rurikid if his E-13 descendant haplogroup turns out to be the same as that of the remains claimed to be those of Yaroslav Osmomysl, because that would be the most likely explanation, but to identy exactly which Rurikid was Szkesfehervar would probably require a strong knowledge of the history of Hungary and Kievan Rus—and even then such a search might very well fail, especially because he'd died too young to have accompplished much.

If Szekesfehervar 53 was a Rurikid and the Rurikid line was truly E-V13, then what was he doing in Hungary? Since the universal practice among nobles when marrying was that the wife moved to the husband's home, it should be common to find a female from one country buried in her husband's country, but it would not be common to find a male from one country buried in another country. However, it's possible that it occsionaly or perhaps regularly occurred that a close male relative of the wife would escort her to her new country and perhaps remain with her as a companion or perhaps a hostage. A close male relative such as a brother might be preferred because it would reduce the likelihood of the wife's adultery with a man she was often around. I dont't know if such situations were common in Hungary or France (or selsewhere) but even if not common a male relative might die while visiting the wife. These circumstances might be the most common in which a non-Arpad male migh have been buried in the Royal Basilica of Szekesfehervar, and thus our best chance at identifying Szekesfehervar 53 might be to look for male relatives of Rurikid wives of Hungarian kings. Information on such people would probably be sparese, however, because the writingn of anything was relative uncommon and the death and burial of a young relative of a foreign wife of a king might not be considered important enough to note in an annal. But this appears to be offer the best chance of success.

In Kasner's book Table 3 (p. 82) provides for 11 of the Szekeesfhearvar remains estimates the “Estimated anthropological age of the skeletons at the time of death”. The remains were studed a number of times by a number of researchers, so some of the remains will have more than one estimate, but all but one lost set of remains was determined in 2008 by a researcher named Ery. The age at death of Szekeesfhearvar 53 was estimated in 1962 by Henszlmann to be 26, while in 2008 Ery estimated his age at death as between 21-27.

Thus, we may be looking for a Rurikid who had died hus, it seems that The simplest and probably correct explanation was that he was a male relative of a female Rurikid who had married an Arpad king or prince. Thus, we can identify Arpad kings or prince who married a Rurikid female and see to whom that leads us. To do this I used the table from the Wikipedia article “List of Hungarian Monarchs.”

Anastasia of Kiev

King Adrew I (c. 1015-1060) married Anastais of Kiev (c. 1023-1074)

Anastasia was a daughter of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise and Ingigerd of Sweden. I haven't found any close male relatives who appear to have been in their 20's and had any connection to Hungary.

Euphrosyne of Kiev

King Geza II (1130-1162) married Euphrosyne (Euphronzina) of Kiev, daughter of Mstislav Vladimirovich, Grand Prince of Kiev and Ljubava Dmitrievna, Grand Duchess of Kiev.

Euphrosyne was a half-sister to “Grand Prince Isaiaslav Mstislavich Volinsky of Kiev. He died in Jerusalem (some say Greece) and was buried there. Later he was transferred to Szekeesfhearvar and buried in the church of the knightly order “founded by him”.” (Ildiko, “Our kings in mass graves/The fate of Hungarian royal tombs from Prince Geza to Janos Szapolyai” (2004) ILDIKÓ HANKÓ: OUR KINGS IN A MASS GRAVE ). Idilko didn't cite the primary source from which this information came, and this information is not found in the fmg.ac website. The Idilko information appears to be a translation that sometimes confuses the pronouns by referring sometimes to “he” when “her” is meant, etc. Because of this, I wasn't certain at first whether the “he” who died in Jerusalem or Greece was Euphrosyne or her half-brother Isaiahvich, especially because the Wikipedia article “Euphrosyne of Kiev” states that Europhrosyne of Kiev on or after 1186 was forced by her son Bela III to leave Hungary for plotting to place Geza (Bela's brother and Europhrosyne's son) on the throne rather than Bela. She lived in Constantinople for awhile, and then in Jerusalem where apparently she died. But because the Idilko text says that he was reburied at buried in the church of the knightly order that he had founded, the text must mean that it was Isaiaslav who had died in Jerusalem because a woman would not have founded a knightly order.

Thus it appears that both Isaiaslav and his half-sister Euphrosyne had been buried in Jerusalem. Isaiaslav is supposed to have died around 1154, while Euphrosyne died in 1193. Isaiaslav was supposed to have been in his 50's when he died, so he could not have been Szekesfehervar 53, who died in the age range of 21-27.

What was Isaiaslav doing in Jerusalem? The Second Crusade had ended in 1150, but according to the Wikipedia article “List of Crusades” the Amalric led Crusader attacks into Egypt 1154-1169, so it's possible that Isaiaslav was in Jerusalem for this purpose. Also, it seems unlikely that Isaislav would have been in Jerusalem alone, and might have had with him a male relative younger than him and that both had died. This is merely my own speculation but it's possible that some time after Euphrosyne's death someone had collected her body for reburial and at the same time had collected the bodies of Isaiaslav and the hypothetical body of his Rurikid companion (Szekeesfhearvar 53) and that both were then reburied in the Royal Basilica of Szekeesfhearvar (rather than some church of a knightl order, for Isaiaslav). It doesn't really make sense that all three Isaiaslav was buried in the knightly church that he had founded, but that his younger companion and Euphrosyne were buried in the Royal Basilica.

Or Szekeesfhearvar 53 might have been some other Rurikid entirely, but I won't waste any more time on speculating. If Osmomysl's descendnat haplogroup of E-V13 is ever determined, then an investion can proceed using that haplogroup as a guide.

The Varangian Trade Routes

By Briangotts - This map has been uploaded by Electionworld from en.wikipedia.org to enable the Wikimedia Atlas of the World . Original uploader to en.wikipedia.org was Briangotts, known as Briangotts at en.wikipedia.org. Electionworld is not the creator of this map. Licensing information is below.The following source corroborates the Volga route between the Gulf of Finland and Atil, although it gives a different Western route, over Smolensk:Barraclough, Geoffrey , ed. (in Dutch) (1981) Spectrum-Times Atlas van de Wereldgeschiedenis, pp. 114–115, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1578382

The purple line on this map shows the route of the Varangians to the Greeks. We see here that it went from Sweden to Ladoga and Novgorod, then south through Kievan Rus principalities to Kiev and then to Cherson on the Crimea Peninsula. From Cherson it want by boat to Constantinople.

Kievan Rus 1245-1439 AD

By SeikoEn - Own work - Other example of similar map: 1: http://litopys.org.ua/krypgvol/gvol.gif; 2: http://izbornyk.org.ua/litop/map 1240.htm, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11221416