Ancient Y-DNA Precursor To Contemporary Warner Y-DNA: Alken Enge, Denmark (draft in progress)

Ancient Y-DNA Haplogroup R-Z301 

Dates from 4750 Years Ago  

Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) writes on their website as of June 2025:

Discover the countries of origin and surnames for each branch of the world's largest Y-DNA Haplotree. Currently, the tree includes 93,000 branches, 791,000 variants, and 683,000 SNP-tested users from our Y-DNA database.

There are 5,283 downstream branches from R-Z301 which implies some greater number individuals have tested their Y-DNA.  In other words at least 5,283 of us who descend via R-Z301 are very distant cousins and some individual of the time is our most recent male common ancestor (MRCA).  This haplogroup starts to become interesting to us when we can place it spatially and by time.  In a general sense R-Z301 is from Western Europe and dates somewhere around 4750 years ago

Roman military accounts from the early centuries CE describe the tribes of north-central Europe as fierce fighters who took the field with large forces and treated vanquished foes with ritual brutality. Until recently, however, there hasn’t been much archaeological evidence to back up the Roman accounts. But some time in the first century CE, two of those tribes clashed in what is now the Alken Enge wetlands in the Illerup River Valley in Denmark. Archaeologists excavated the aftermath from 2009 to 2014, finding broken weapons and shields along with the bones of at least 82 men.

Ars Technica - 2,000 years ago in Denmark, a fierce battle left dozens dead

 

The FTDNA Discovery page brings us to the ancient connection R-Z301, albeit really ancient, as there are hundreds of generations back from a modern Warner to a R-Z301 MRCA.  In the article above and on the specific Discovery page for R-FT345366 the data exists from the archaeological site tying two different men who perished in the battle to R-Z301 and the 1st century, CE, albeit with hundreds of generations between their haplogroups.  Alken Enge 19209 and Alken Enge 19215 were two casualties of battle that connect to our modern Warner via R-Z301 MRCA.

Figure. [FTDNA 20250610]ANCIENT CONNECTION - Alken Enge, Denmark - R-Z301

Again, it becomes interesting because now we have a place, Denmark, more specific than Western Europe.   Of course then as now people emigrate.

If we look a little more perhaps we can find more specific data about haplogroups and other connections.  That's what genealogy is all about.