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Slovenian DNA

Table of contents:
A place to capture what is known about Slovenian DNA at this time. Slovenia is a relatively small country in both population and land mass. Slovenia has just over 2 million people and is between the US states of Connecticut and New Jersey in land area. Yet being in the center of an old major trade route (southern route around the Alps), it has a rich diversity of people's and culture. So we capture our work to collect information about the general DNA studies of our ancestors and others from this small area to see what turns up.

Major Y DNA Haplogroups
R1a @ 36%, R1b @ 20%, I2a @ 13%, I1 @ 12%
Major mtDNA Haplogroups
H @ 47%, J @ 10%, U5a @ 8%
(1) R1a in males is considered the major Haplogroup of Slavic descent peoples.
(2) An earlier study showed a large presence of E Haplogroup. This is believed in error.
There have been two published studies of DNA of the Slovene people (of recent). One on the Y / patriline and the other on the Mitochondrial / matriline. See the references below. From these studies, we obtain the resultant Haplogroup frequency of the Slovene population of today. (Note: the Y study also has numbers by region within Slovenia. The studies tested a limited number of markers and so are only discerning major haplogroup branches.)

Slovenia is an interesting study as its language and culture was stable for many years. Even today, the country is still considered more than 80% ethnically Slovene. Slovenian, the language, was spoken well beyond its current borders for centuries. For example, Trieste and its surrounding area, now part of Italy, was historically a majority Slovene speaking area while being an independent city-state. Much of present day southern Austria is Slovenian speaking. But, as mentioned, being on a major historical trade route, there are likely remnants of many cultures in their DNA.

Slovenia is one of the main countries that form what are termed the South Slavic people's. This as opposed to the (North) Eastern Slavs like the Poles, Czech's and Slovaks from the old Prussian empire area. And the (North) Western Slavs comprised of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Most of the former Jugoslavian nation (northern section at least) are ethnically south Slavic people's.

Although the country and population is small, there is no clear endogamy evidenced in testing. For most endogamous populations, they had to explicitly endorse / prefer marriage among close relatives. For example, the Parsi's who were a very tiny population that intermarried for a thousand years out of a requirement when accepted as refugees in India from Persia.

There were two main waves of emigration from Slovenia, mostly to North America, in recent times. One in the 1890 to 1920 time period due to the economic hardships in Slovenia and subsequently World War I. The other in the late 1940's to 1950's just after WWII and the establishment of the socialist republic under Joseph Tito. The first wave was of unskilled people looking for work and a future. The latter were comprised more of political refugees and were often educated; likely thought of as dissidents. The vast majority of the migration was to the United States. Next biggest to Argentina after WWII. In the first wave, they came mostly to the USA Midwest where menial jobs were more plentiful (steel mills, mining). Migrants also made their way to Germany. The second wave is more spread out but still saw settling within the older, established Slovenian ethnic neighborhoods.

See Also

Slavic DNA and Jordan DNA I1 in the Branches section

External References