Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)
CHAPTER TEN – Unique identification of the skeletons
separately. We considered various measurement error probabilities as we tried to establish the relationship between skeleton 11/52 and Béla III. With a greater measurement error probability, the total likelihood difference suggested a father-son relationship, while with the realistic measurement errors of 0.06250, 0.03125 and 0.01563 the statistical analysis strongly suggests that skeleton 11/52 is Béla II (Table 14 A/B/ C/D). 5. The mtDNA haplogroup of skeleton II/52_3. At this point, the hereditary information of Predslava of Kiev and Béla II must be considered. Béla Ill ’s mitochondrial haplogroup is Hlb, which is in line with his mother being Euphrosyne, the daughter of Mtsislav I, Grand Prince of Kiev, while his grandmother Helena was the daughter of Uros I, Grand Prince of Serbia. This is why King Béla Ill’s mtDNA haplogroup is of Kievan origin. King Béla Il ’s grandfather was Géza I, whose first wife was Princess Sofia of Loon and whose second wife was the Byzantine Princess Synadene. Their child was Álmos, Prince of the Árpád Dynasty (and King of Croatia), whose wife was Predslava of Kiev. Predslava’s grandfather was Duke of Bohemia Spytihnëv II (1031-1061), whose wife was of German origin. Their daughter, the grandmother of Béla II, married Sviatopolk II, Grand Prince of Kiev. The mother of person II/52_3 was Predslava, whose T2b mitochondrial haplogroup was inherited maternally all the way, which is why it is not surprising that person II/52_3’ s haplogroup points not to Serbian, but to western origin, which is strong evidence that this skeleton must be Béla II. The mitochondrial (maternal) haplogroup analysis of Olasz et al. (2018) does not support the hypothesis that skeleton 11/52 is Béla Ill ’s father, Géza II. 195
