R1a in Hessen, Germany

[TheGreatLondino]

Hello everyone! I've got a bit of a phenomenon that if anyone could help me solve it would be greatly appreciated! I got a few DNA tests about three years ago, and they determined that my y-dna haplogroup is R1a, which is most common in Eastern Europe. I am entirely Northwestern European, and did not understand how I got this as my surname is of German origin. More recently, I created an ancestry tree and trace my fatherline back throughout the generations. They were in America for about the past 500, and before that immigrated from Hessen, Germany with palatine immigrants supposedly. Before this information, I assumed that I received R1a from Scandinavian invasions of Britain back to about 1000, since at that time I thought my surname Rickerd was a variant of Richard. However, due to ancestry I found it was changed a few times since America. Rickerd, before that Rickert, and before that assumedly Reichardt, and possibly before that Raccurst. As I said they came from Hessen Germany and even traced a handful of generations back and they still resided there. Does anyone have any info or reason as to why they may have been R1a, since it is not common in western or central Germany, especially before Cold war era? Anyone know what ancient group with eastern origins may have migrated or settled in that area? I was looking at both the Huns and Vandals, however I'm not sure about the Huns and I know the Vandals were mostly R1b. Or could this just be a phenomenon and not anything that could be explained by historical migrations? Thanks!

 

[Mordred]

R1a is mostly prevalent in Central-Eastern Europe. You shouldn't be surprised because germanic tribes were also R1a, apart from R1b of course.

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[Riverman]

Hello everyone! I've got a bit of a phenomenon that if anyone could help me solve it would be greatly appreciated! I got a few DNA tests about three years ago, and they determined that my y-dna haplogroup is R1a, which is most common in Eastern Europe. I am entirely Northwestern European, and did not understand how I got this as my surname is of German origin. More recently, I created an ancestry tree and trace my fatherline back throughout the generations. They were in America for about the past 500, and before that immigrated from Hessen, Germany with palatine immigrants supposedly. Before this information, I assumed that I received R1a from Scandinavian invasions of Britain back to about 1000, since at that time I thought my surname Rickerd was a variant of Richard. However, due to ancestry I found it was changed a few times since America. Rickerd, before that Rickert, and before that assumedly Reichardt, and possibly before that Raccurst. As I said they came from Hessen Germany and even traced a handful of generations back and they still resided there. Does anyone have any info or reason as to why they may have been R1a, since it is not common in western or central Germany, especially before Cold war era? Anyone know what ancient group with eastern origins may have migrated or settled in that area? I was looking at both the Huns and Vandals, however I'm not sure about the Huns and I know the Vandals were mostly R1b. Or could this just be a phenomenon and not anything that could be explained by historical migrations? Thanks!

There were Slavic settlements which reached Thuringia and Northern Bavaria, so its possible that this resulted in some Slavic lineages ending up in Central Germany. Another option is that some R1a, like E-V13, moved with Urnfield and Hallstatt connections. Especially from the Lusatian culture, there could have been early lineages of R1a which reached Central and Western Germany. In the Germany yDNA project on FTDNA are R1a samples from Hessen, from Frankfurt and Darmstadt, and from regions close by. So its definitely there, your lineage wouldn't be the only one. Would be interesting whether they are close to you. I would suggest you join the project and ask the moderators for doing a comparison or check yourself your matches. Testing BigY and uploading to YFull being also recommended - alternatively YSEQ testing and then uploading to YFull for an analysis, if you want to safe some money and have usage for the complete WGS. From the generalogical point of view, FTDNA being better imho, because you can directly compare there and get more matches.
But like with other haplogroups, really decisive is what your subclade is, not your haplogroup. Because you could be from a Viking R1a, Jewish R1a, old Urnfield R1a, Slavic R1a, Baltic R1a etc. Probably it can't be determined at the moment, but what really decides which is which is the subclade, not the general haplogroup. Because most haplogroups being fairly widely spread, its the subclades which are more ethnic and region specific, if anything.

 

[TheGreatLondino]

Yeah I just didn’t know if there was another explanation other than being at the edge of the distribution.

 

[TheGreatLondino]

I’ll have to check that out then. All the DNA tests I’ve taken don’t give me a well enough subclade to determine anything from it. Thanks for the answer I’ll do more research on the groups you’ve mentioned!