Path · Lineage, Ancestry, & Genealogy
The paper trail meets the DNA trail.
Medieval charters tell me who my family was. DNA tells me where they came from.
● Documented — Semen Zabata and Garcia Zabata are not from the Calatayud line
○ Working hypothesis — Establishing the parents of Garcia Zabata & Sancha (zabata)
Two lines
Paternal line · Y-DNA
R1b-U106
Terminal branch · R-FT302723
Big Y test. A member of the R-U106, R1b French, and Iberian R1b group projects.
○ Working hypothesis: Was Garcia & Semen Zabata’s ancestors Visigoths
Maternal line · mitochondrial DNA
A2d16
FamilyTreeDNA mitotree
A lineage of the Indigenous Americas, with an ancient Maya connection. The assignment shifted across tree updates before settling back on A2d16.
● Documented: current mitotree assignment
The Visigoth, Zabata, Alfaro path
The research centers on connecting Visigoths to García Zabata — written Zabata, Zapata, and Zabbata in the same charters — who appears in the records of the Cistercian monastery of Fitero and its neighbors from 1148, in the borderland where Navarra, Castile and Aragón met along the río Alhama.
700 BC
Non Iberian distant common ancestor (English)
TBD · ● Documented
450 AD
First Iberian distant common ancestor Cantabria.
TBD · ● Documented
1120 AD
Garcia Zapata’s emergence
TBD · ● Documented
1510 AD
Alfaro migration to Cervera Rio de Alhama
TBD · ● Documented
1850 AD
Manuel Alfaro Gonzalez moves to Ecuador
TBD · ● Documented
What the names suggest
Iberian families tended to name children after grandparents: the first son for the father’s father, the second for the mother’s father, the first daughter for the mother’s mother. Read backward from the children, the names point to people the charters never mention.
○ Working hypothesis
Garcia’s Ancestors were Visigoths
Review the 450 AD suggested ancestral area.
○ Working hypothesis
Sancha’s parents: From the Filera and Banz family.
García’s wife Sancha (Sancia), by the same convention applied to her children.
○ Working hypothesis
A Frankish thread
A daughter named Ozenda, a granddaughter married to a Frenchman named Nicholas, and a Martín Zapata married to the daughter of Sancho de Camador — possibly Rocamadour. García or Sancha may have come from north of the Pyrenees.
Open questions
- Was García — or Sancha — of Frankish origin?
- Fortún López de Soria and Lope Lopez de Alfaro, the same of different Alfaro line from Garcia and Pedro Zapata?
- Is the name Ozenda Visigothic, or Occitan?
- How do the Zapata connect to the Sánchez de Alfaro?
Sources
- Colección diplomática del monasterio de Fitero — Cristina Monterde Albiac
- Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de Navarra — Mariano Arigita y Lasa
- Los Zapata (1148–1340). Un ejemplo de aristocracia local en La Rioja Baja — Tomás Sáenz de Haro
- Calahorra y su entorno rural (1045–1295) — Tomás Sáenz de Haro
- Los orígenes del Temple en el valle medio del Ebro — Serafín Olcoz Yanguas (2019)
- El linaje de los Cintruénigo — Salvador Remírez Vallejo (2017)
In production · Short films
Three journeys, c. 300–900 CE
A woman migrating into the Maya world, a man into the Germanic lands, and the events unfolding in Israel in the same years — until their paths meet.