Montenegrins

Montenegrins (Crnogorci, tsr̩nǒɡoːrtsi or tsr̩noɡǒːrtsi; lit. "Black Mountain People") are a South Slavic ethnic group that share a common Montenegrin culture, history, and language, identified with the country of Montenegro. According to one triple analysis – autosomal, mitochondrial and paternal — of available data from large-scale studies on South Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data situates Montenegrins with Serbs in between two Balkan clusters. According to a 2020 autosomal marker analysis, Montenegrins are situated in between Serbians and Kosovo Albanians. Y-DNA genetic study done in 2010 on 404 male individuals from Montenegro gave the following results: haplogroup I2a (29.7%), E-V13 (26.9%), R1b (9.4%), R1a (7.6%), I1 (6.1%), J2a1 (4.7%), J2b (4.4%), G2a (2.4%), Q (1.9%), I2b (1.7%), N (1.4%), H (1.4%), L (1.2%), and J1 (0.49%). A 2022 study on 267 samples from northeastern Montenegro found that the "most common haplogroups are I2 and R1b, both identified in 23.97% of samples, followed by E (22.47%), J2 (11.61%), I1 (6.74%), G2 (3.75%), R1a (3.37%), I1 (1.12%), G (1.12%), N (0.75%), C (0.37%), T1 (0.37%) and Q1 (0.37%)". History of Montenegro Slavs settled in the Balkans during the 6th and 7th centuries. According to De Administrando Imperio, there existed three Slavic polities on the territory of modern Montenegro: Duklja, roughly corresponding to the southern half; Travunia, the west; and Principality of Serbia, the north. Duklja emerged as an independent state during the 11th century, initially held by the Vojislavljević dynasty, later to be conquered and incorporated into the state of the Nemanjić dynasty. De Administrando Imperio does not mention which Slavic people lived in Duklja, but Duklja was considered to be one of the first Serb states, alongside Raška formed chiefly under the Vlastimirović and Vojislavljević dynasties respectively. Who exactly were the Slavic inhabitants of Duklja differs among authors, as other historians maintain that it is not possible to equate the people of Duklja with either Serbs or Croats, considering most historical Byzantian documents from that time.