Fantastic News About Our DNA Origins of Robinson

I just heard from a member of a group I had signed up with at ftdna. It's the Scottish border Reviers DNA project because members there had the #393 allele being= 12 like ours. He sent me an 8 page printout full of information.

It turns out that it is indeed rare with R1b1b2's. The origins lead to the 5,500 Sarmatian troops that were stationed in Cumbria and Lancashire, England during the Roman period. These troops were armored cavalry. They then settled in NW England and assimilated with the population. They had been from Indo-Iranic or Turkic tribes originally from the Caucasus. Some of their direct descendants still live in the Caucasus under the name Ossetians.

The Sarmatians declined in the 4th Century. Their descendants became known as the Alans during the Early Middle Ages and gave rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group. In 175 AD Marcus Aurelius defeated the lazyges tribe of alans and took 8,000 Sarmatians into Roman service and he settled with 5,500 of them in Northern Britain at Ribchester south of Lancaster. Many Bretons of Alanic ancestry joined William the Conqueror in the conquest of Britain. Many Scottish families who have DYS #393=12 are likely to be descended from the Alans who arrived with the Normans, as from the Sarmatians who came with the Romans.

The Sarmatians evidently came from Sarmatia which was a region between the river Vistula (in modern day Poland) and the Caspian Sea. It covered parts of what is now Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Romania and the lower Danube. It was prominent from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD. These Sarmatians were a loose grouping of nomadic people. They were fierce warriors called the Amazons by the Greeks. They were skilled horsepeople, who spoke an Indo-Iranian language and had kinship to the Persians, Medes and Parthians originating in central Asia NW of the Caspian Sea.

In the 3rd century they crossed the River Don and invaded the land of the Scythians, another ethnically related group. Gradually they moved west into the Balkans and Eastern Europe. More recently, Sarmatia has been used as a fanciful or poetic name for Poland.

Our dna pattern was the same as this member except that he and they have allele #390 as a 24 and ours is a 21. I wonder what this means? If others are now 24 and we are back on 21, does that mean we haven't mutated as fast as they? Are we showing an older strain?

So little did our grandfather know that his Mayflower origins (well, the ship after it) from Wales turns out to be from Ireland or Scotland instead, and going back further leads to Roman soldiers stationed there long ago who came possibly from Persia! What a history. What caught my eye is their ability to work with horses, which our grandfather Frank would attest to. He was great with horses.

Reference: Robert Leigh