This is a visual summary involving the hypothetical recruitment by the Roman Legions of a man of the E-V13 haplogroup and E-BY4793 subclade, born in the Balkans early in the first millennium and assigned to military duty in the area that has often been referred to as Swabia, in modern southwestern Germany. Also represented are some of the subsequent mutations and resulting subclades along with known ancestors with such mutations and the 21st century Y-DNA testers at Family Tree DNA who are known to carry these mutations . The graphic is adapted from the The Timeline at Family Tree DNA with the addition of our notes highlighting the most active period of Roman recruitment in the Balkans and the earliest known male lineage ancestors of the related Y-DNA test subjects.
Note that while the man who migrated to Swabia would likely have been in subclade E-BY4793, there is a chance (perhaps about 1 in 10) that the E-BY165986 mutation occurred among that migrant’s recent ancestors, or at his own conception, before leaving the Balkans. This 10% is a rough estimate, considering that the variant could have occurred very early within the probability interval assigned by Family Tree DNA and rather late in the period of Roman recruitment in the Balkans.
Moreover, while all of our identified ancestors in Swabia have carried the E-BY165986 variant, this does not preclude the possibility that other lineages, with as yet unidentified mutations, might have branched off from our E-BY4793 lineage after the migration to Swabia but before the E-BY165986 mutation occurred. While we have not encountered evidence of this, with several hundred years predicted between the arrival of our E-BY4793 ancestor in Swabia and the E-BY165986 mutation, such other lineages and subsequent mutations would have to be considered likely. If so, we anticipate ongoing Y-DNA testing would show this to be the case.
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