Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 August 9

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 9

Genetic impact of Germanic people on Spain,Portugal and France

How much of a genetic impact did Germanic invaders leave on Spain,Portugal,and France? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncle dan is home (talk • contribs) 16:12, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Population genetics is generally tracked by haplogroup. File:Percentage of major Y-DNA haplogroups in Europe.png is a map of Y-Chromosome haplogroups in Europe today. I'm not sure it's a simple answer as to the genetic impact of the migration period had on local genetics, as it's also hard to say what the genetics was like 'before' said migrations. --Jayron32 16:46, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Bear in mind that the impact of the Germanic Vandals in Spain and Portugal, although significant, hasn't endured as thoroughly as it did in France; parts of France have been conquered at various points in the last 1500 years, and the whole country at points (cf. the "French military victories" thing from fifteen years ago), but that's generally been military conquest with minor demographic effects, while in Hispania, the Arab invasion and subsequent control (of all, then of parts, of the peninsula) for 700+ years caused significant demographic changes. Nyttend (talk) 02:47, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

As Jayron alreasy pointed out, had germanic "invaders" (actually, most of them were foederati, allied of Rome, that took over when Rome collapsed) significantly different genetics from their "invaded", to begin with? For sure they belong to the Indo-European languages speakers (as opposed to only a few other Europeans peoples), Indo-European migrations wasn't that long ago and they were not so much isolated, that significant genetic difference occurred. Gem fr (talk) 13:07, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Also, as the map shows, there's a gradual genetic change as one moves west to east; without dramatic differences between neighboring populations or out-of-place genetic markers, AND the genetics largely matches linguistics (i.e. the Finns show the greatest difference, and they're linguistically the least related to the other Europeans). --Jayron32 14:10, 11 August 2017 (UTC)