Y chromosomes of Hungarians

I had blogged about this research in 2005 when it was presented in the ESHG conference. Now there is a full article in Annals of Human Genetics. See also my post on Ancient Hungarian mtDNA. An interesting bit from the paper:

Haplogroup I was detected with almost equal frequency in the two modern populations: 24% in Hungarians and 21.7% in Szeklers. However, two of its major subclades- I1a-M253 and I1b*(xM26) – show an opposite occurrence in the two ethnic groups, 8% and 13%, respectively, in Hungarians, and 16.5% and 5.2% in Szeklers. These are within the range of normal central and eastern European values (Rootsi et al., 2004; Peričić et al., 2005). The elevated frequency of Hg I1a together with higher frequency of R1b-M269 in Szekler population might be the consequence, at least in part, of the genetic impact of people of German origin, who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards (Transylvanian Saxons)(Makkai, 1990; Kristó, 2002).

Also:

The J1-M267 Y-chromosomal lineage is notably frequent in Szeklers (10.3%; a value far above the range for other central and eastern European populations (Semino et al., 2000a, 2004; Di Giacomo et al., 2004), while its frequency in Hungarians (3.0%) is unremarkable.

...

Among these J2-M172 subclades, J2e1-M102 is more frequent in Szeklers (7.2%) than in Hungarians (4.0%), while the undifferentiated J2-M172* Y chromosomes are slightly more common in Hungarian population (8% vs. 3.1%). Both J2f*-M67 and J2f1-M92 lineages were detected in our study in one single individual, in each population.

Interestingly, the two ancient indiviuals harboring Y-haplogroup N3 (anc21 and anc28) were also classified anthropologically as Europo-Mongolid, while anc21 harbored the Caucasoid mtDNA haplogroup H. This is consistent with the notion that the Mongoloid elements in ancient Hungarians fused with Caucasoid elements, although the results from the modern population suggests that the blend was finally overwhelmed by the Caucasoid component.

Annals of Human Genetics doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.2008.00440.x

Y-Chromosome Analysis of Ancient Hungarian and Two Modern Hungarian-Speaking Populations from the Carpathian Basin

B. Csányi et al.

The Hungarian population belongs linguistically to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family. The Tat C allele is an interesting marker in the Finno-Ugric context, distributed in all the Finno-Ugric-speaking populations, except for Hungarians. This question arises whether the ancestral Hungarians, who settled in the Carpathian Basin, harbored this polymorphism or not. 100 men from modern Hungary, 97 Szeklers (a Hungarian-speaking population from Transylvania), and 4 archaeologically Hungarian bone samples from the 10^th century were studied for this polymorphism. Among the modern individuals, only one Szekler carries the Tat C allele, whereas out of the four skeletal remains, two possess the allele. The latter finding, even allowing for the low sample number, appears to indicate a Siberian lineage of the invading Hungarians, which later has largely disappeared.

The two modern Hungarian-speaking populations, based on 22 Y-chromosomal binary markers, share similar components described for other Europeans, except for the presence of the haplogroup P*(xM173) in Szekler samples, which may reflect a Central Asian connection, and high frequency of haplogroup J in both Szeklers and Hungarians. MDS analysis based on haplogroup frequency values, confirms that modern Hungarian and Szekler populations are genetically closely related, and similar to populations from Central Europe and the Balkans.

Link