UKR166 White Croat Medieval Raw Genome 23andme format

The White Croats were an early medieval people of Slavic culture, recorded in Byzantine, Frankish, and later Slavic sources. They are generally associated with the region of Eastern Europe north of the Carpathians, especially southern Poland, western Ukraine, and parts of Slovakia and Bohemia. Their name is thought to derive from an Iranian root related to “guardian” or “ally,” which reflects the long-standing contact between Slavic and Iranian-speaking steppe peoples. The epithet “White” likely had a symbolic meaning of “western” or “original,” since in old Slavic usage white often indicated the direction west or a homeland origin.

According to Byzantine historian Constantine 7th Porphyrogenitus in De Administrando Imperio, the White Croats once lived in the north before migrating southward. Around the 6th–7th centuries, some groups left their homeland north of the Carpathians and moved into the Balkans, where they became the ancestors of the modern Croats of Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Croatia proper. Other branches of White Croats remained in their original territories, eventually assimilating into surrounding Slavic populations such as Poles, Ukrainians, and Slovaks.

The connection between the White Croats and the Balkan Croats is debated. Most historians agree that the Croats who settled in the Balkans originated from the northern White Croat homeland, though they may not have been the sole contributors to the ethnogenesis of the South Slavic Croats. Instead, they likely formed a ruling or military elite that imposed their identity and name on local Slavic groups in the Balkans, leading to the creation of the early medieval Croatian duchy.

For this video, I have gathered the raw DNA of a medieval period white croat from Lviv Oblast in Ukraine.