Tolkien | the confirmed haplogroup is R-Y42738*

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«I'd give a bit for a time-machine.

But of course my mind being what it is (and wholly different from Stenton's) it is the things of racial and linguistic significance that attract me and stick in my memory. Still, I hope one day you'll be able (if you wish) to delve into this intriguing story of the origins of our peculiar people. And indeed of us in particular. For barring the Tolkien (which must long ago have become a pretty thin strand) you are a Mercian or Hwiccian (of Wychwood) on both sides.»

(J. R. R. Tolkien, "Letters", No. 95 [1945])

I have provided this "time-machine" to the Tolkien family. And I will also help to confirm (or to deny) the Hwiccian roots of the Suffield and Bratt family. But now let us tell something very important about the roots of the Tolkien male line. Welcome to my "time-machine"...

Source: SNP Tracker

In the male line, "on the spear side" (or "after the sword", as we say in Poland) King Aragorn was probably descended from the House of Hador (sind. Bar Hador) by one of the Edain Fathers, Marach. From Aragorn to his famous ancestor from the Second Age, Elendil, we count as many as 41 consecutive male ancestors (see The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A). Elendil himself was the son of Amandil, the Lord of Andúnië. Between Andúnië's oldest heir, Elatan, and Aragorn, we have as many as 60 generations of male ancestors. Genealogist gets dizzy when he hears this. Tolkien loved genealogy (I recommend this text). He was also interested in inheritance - including inheriting likings and even dreams (see here)!

In the unfinished novel The Lost Road (see HoMe V, especially p. 77) he planned to describe the experiences of members of one male line of descendants, from the time of the Silmarillion to the early Middle Ages and modern times, including the disaster of Númenor ("Atlantis") and the times of the Ice Age ("painted caves","the Ice Age story", "Pre Ice Age: story of Galdor"). This text was planned as the interaction of father and son in a continuous paternal line. It all starts with a 20th-century parent-and-descendant pair - Alboin and Audoin. There is also a couple - Elendil and Herendil (later Amandil) in Númenor ("Atlantis"). Here's what else was to be there:

• a story from the post-Beleriand era with Elendil and Gil-galad in their fight against Sauron,
• before the Ice Age - the story of Galdor,
• Ice Age and great sculptures in ice,
• history among Paleolithic cave paintings,
• a story with the participation of the mythical people Tuatha-de-Danaan or Tir-nan-Og,
• story with the Lombards (the story of Sheave - see here)
• history with a nordic boat burial (Vinland)
• Old English story of Ælfwine who found the Straight Way.

Tolkien's historical and mythological perspective was extremely wide and covered thousands of years (we can also see how in the 1930s Tolkien imagined the location of the events of the Silmarillion and Akallabêth - before the last ice age of our Earth).

Tolkien was fascinated by genetic genealogy, although he probably never used the term. He was fascinated by family trees, although he only knew his great-grandparents "on the spear side" and "on the distaff side". The novel The Lost Road (and later The Notion Club Papers) shows that his imagination was fueled by the possibility of learning the history of someone's (his?) male line. Tolkien was also fascinated by the fact that after centuries, offspring may resemble their ancestors (Lúthien vs. Arwen).

Today we know the approximate history of Tolkien's male line over the last several tens of thousands of years. It's worth taking a look at this map by typing "Y42738" in the box! Thanks to the Tolkien Family in the USA, and thanks to the genealogical and genetic project that I was helped to finance by my genetic-genealogist colleague, Dr. Artur Martyka, my genetic cousin, Jonas Holm Erstad, and Patrons on my Patronite, we conducted FamilyTreeDNA for about $ 400 (the so-called "Big Y" - see tutaj) full sequencing of the genome of J. R. R. Tolkien's distant cousin Eric Tolkien from California, USA (he is J. R. R. Tolkien's 4th cousin 1x removed).

We then transferred the results to YFull, which is humanity's great genetic tree (see here). Eric Tolkien (born 1949) is an American who has a common ancestor with Professor Tolkien - this ancestor was Christian Tolkien (1706-1791), born in Prussian Kreuzburg (now Kalingrad Oblast, Russia - see here) and died in Gdańsk (former Danzig), an artilleryman and firework specialist (see here). The American Tolkiens corresponded with their learned cousin from Oxford (see here). Thanks to my genealogical research, it was possible to finally confirm their relationship (I discovered the Gdańsk stage in the history of the Tolkiens and their Prussian, Baltic origin).

It is time to officially announce the results. Here is the final haplogroup (SNP) of Eric Tolkien, from the same bloodline as Professor Tolkien:

The Tolkien confirmed haplogroup is R-Y42738
(source: FamilyTreeDNA)

FamilyTreeDNA (Big Y) and YFull confirm that Eric Tolkien's haplogroup is R-Y42738. It was supposed to arise between 1800 and 3300 years ago (averaged 2500 years ago, i.e. around 480 BC, in the Iron Age).

R-Y42738 is a subbranch of the great Indo-European haplogroup R1a, which has its origins 24,000 years ago in the Paleolithic mammoth hunting community of present-day Siberia (see the so-called "Mal'ta Boy"). From R1a in the Neolithic, an ancestral line with the R-Z92 mutation was separated, which we find mainly among the descendants of the Balts and Eastern Slavs. From R-Z92 in the Bronze Age, the pre-Baltic group R-YP350, which today mainly includes descendants of the (Baltic) Old Prussians and Yotvingians (see here), was separated. A sub-branch of R-YP350 is R-Y42738 (which today includes the Tolkien family, the Derdzinski family and the Kacsóh family from Hungary, and from which in the Iron Age there were also separated sub-branches, which today include families from Norway, Finland and Belarus, which are probably related to with the history of the Baltic Sea Vikings).

These are the results of Eric Tolkien on the YFull website (in the red box Eric Tolkien with the designation of the former German-speaking Prussia, i.e. today's Kaliningrad Oblast, where already in the 14th-16th centuries we can find the ancestors of the Tolkien family, and Ryszard Derdziński with the designation of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, where in the beginning of the 18th century, his earliest known ancestors lived; see here).

Source: YFull

We can see that R-Y42738 is a sub-branch of R-YP350, from which new sub-branches grow: R-FT141242 (today it has a representative in the Swedish-speaking community of Finland) and then R-FT139371 (our "cousins" from Norway and Belarus belong here). It is even better seen in this version of the tree:

Source: YFull

The block diagram on FamilyTreeDNA also shows the same well (Eric Tolkien is marked there as R-Y42738 there):

Source: FamilyTreeDNA

The most interesting are the so-called SNP and STR matches (click on the pictures to see them):

Source: YFull

Source: YFull

 

You can see there that today Tolkien's closest match is the Derdziński family and the Hungarian Kacsóh family.

For me personally, these results are a big surprise and a surprise. This coincidence was well described by Dr. Łukasz Łapiński (specialist in genetic-genealogy):

"You live peacefully in Sosnowiec and you are crazy about Tolkien's work.

1. You discover the roots of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose close ancestors turn out to come from Gdańsk, and earlier from the area of today's "Warmia and Masuria" or Prussia.

2. You do a Y-DNA test, where, despite being from the south of Poland, you find out that your ancestors in the male line are genetically similar to the "population of Warmia and Masuria" or Prussia.

...Cherry on top:

3. You reach out to Professor Tolkien's relatives and give them a Y-DNA test, which shows that you are in a distant but nonetheless in the same relative group (...)."

by Łukasz Łapiński

In the autumn 2021, I am planning a meeting at ZOOM for the Tolkien Family,  for the Patrons of the project and #TolkienAncestry fans. At the seminar, geneticists and genealogists will explain the details of the Tolkien family's research.