Up to a certain step all of you who have African, Middle Eastern, European, Melanesian, or Asian or Native American ancestry will be the same as me and Jane. We all are.
My European haplo group, H5b, comes originally from an African haplogroup called L3, in the African Rift Valley, some 70,000 years ago. Mitochondrial Eve was 180,000 years ago, and her descendants produced two groups, ultimately. One was L3, shared with people all over north Africa. But the part of that L3 lineage that would lead to H5b followed improving climate conditions northward, leading them slowly up the Great Rift of Africa into the Middle East by two routes, one into southern Arabia, one into northern. It’s worth noting that the world had just gone through (theoretically) a cataclysm, a volcanic winter, produced by the eruption of the Toba supervolcano, in Indonesia: 6-7 years of darkened skies, acid rain, and (in Africa) drought. This one group, apparently as conditions improved, began to move. Maybe it was population pressure, caused by a greater birthrate as conditions improved. Maybe it was scarcity of game, or whatever—one day a group that was strongly L3 just started traveling more.
Ten thousand years later, 60,000 years ago, L3 mutated again; and the daughters that had this mutation migrated, some back into northern Africa (Egypt) and some through Iran and Syria; then some went into Anatolia (Asia Minor), some went south of the Caspian Sea toward Asia, and some went between the Caspian and the Black Sea, into what became Azerbaijan.
A mere 5000 years further on, 55,000 years, there was another MtDNA mutation: those daughters began to wander all over the aforesaid regions, and back into Egypt, down into Yemen, off through Iraq, and toward Mongolia and toward Turkmenistan (above the Black Sea). Those lineages wandering off in these directions formed other haplogroups who drop off our chart entirely.
Another mutation, 41,000 years ago…again sent daughters wandering all over this area, getting nearly to the heart of Russia, but concentrating mostly in Arabia.
Another, 30,000 years ago, give or take 7000 years, and daughters of the H haplogroup spread clear to the Indus valley, but one part of it, my part, headed the opposite direction—going west. Unfortunately so: the world was about to enter another deep freeze, and Europe (the west) was NOT going to be a good place to settle.
There was a big dieoff among the daughters and sons of the H group, and the weather forced them south. The H (European) haplogroup probably lost a lot of lineages, narrowed to a few lines, and nearly froze to death: by 5000 BC the H3h2 group (Jane’s group) just hunkered down in southern France, northern Italy, and in Spain. Mine, the H5b group, hunkered down south of the Black Sea.
Scientists are ‘still studying’ how the H5b group moved after that, though it likely could have gone up the same route other H’s followed, up through Georgia (Russia) and across into Europe, or up and over the Black Sea to reach Scandinavia or up through ancient Illyria (Albania) to reach central Europe.
The report, in effect, left my unfortunate MtDNA stranded on the underside of the Black Sea, about the time the migrations were happening that led first settlements, then secondary invasions down into Greece, down into Italy, into Crete, and into central Europe, Scandinavia, and Britain. The pyramids would rise in north Africa, the city states of Sumer and Akkad, the settlements at Catal Huyuk (who knows, maybe some of mine were there) and the Cyclades (Greek islands) all began and had their day. My folk were generally either down in some of those areas or slogging through forest. Some of them could have become the Franks. I’ve got a lot of that in my ancestry. So does Jane. Some could have been Gauls. Some could have been Finnish hunters or Scandinavians: some Swedes are H5b. Some Dutch are, and I am that. I’m also betting on the Franks and Gauls.
But not necessarily exclusively.
A really iffy part of my ancestry has me descended from, among other things, people from Pannonia (Ancient Hungary) and Alaric the Visigoth (who dealt with the Romans), as well as a Byzantine Emperor and a Roman general. I don’t trust those bits. They equate with the Scandinavian genealogy that has me descended from a Frost Giant.
The fact that H5b concentrates in south Italy is interesting (where wave A survived the Roman [wave b} influx) and Bulgaria/Turkey/Macedonia and turns up again in Finland (the Frost Giants? she asks facetiously) —it’s a puzzlement. The scientists well know how most of the rest of the H haplogroups got where it was going. But how did H5b get abandoned in Turkey 5000 years ago and then end up, as my ancestors did, in Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and England for the last 3000 years?
There are some historical circumstances that could account for it, and one of them IS the Roman empire, ca. 750 bc-ca 500 ad in various incarnations. It moved people about—drafted legions in the Middle East to serve in Britain and France, drafted the Aeduan tribe of Central France to serve in Syria…and it set governments in power and left them there after its own demise.
And I do have on the tag-ends of my traceable ancestry a Scandianvian chief who was done in by a bona fide wizard in a long-running feud. Maybe I should take another look at those Finnish frost giants.
So that’s why you like ice-skating!
There’d be another curiosity to the “Roman Legions” explanation. They’d be recruiting men, and your maternal line went up there. How’d that happen? Some possibilities are obvious, but one should be careful of jumping to conclusions! 😉
This whole story is fascinating. (Been successful for Jean Auel. 😉 )
Just wondering… We Europeans have ~2-4% Homo neanderthalensis in our genomes. Is there any possibility that could be a confusion? Is your report detailed enough?
Totally off topic, but I thought you might enjoy this recent space station video if you haven’t seen it already!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=doN4t5NKW-k#!
Neat! THanks~!
I have 1.7% Neanderthal and 1.4% Denisovan DNA. I can say the Neanderthal could have come in anywhere along the way, likely way back in Syria; but the Denisovan—the one example we have is in Siberia, but we don’t know entirely where it came from: the fact Jane and I, H’s, both have it, has to say something about an origin. Jane has 2.0 Neanderthal and 2.1 Denisovan. I don’t know where they’re calculating that, since they have access in the tests to more than the mitochondrial dna.
And, yes, where the legions went, women went, 😉 usually to form towns and settlements…but if there were more daughters than dowry in a family, and there was a soldier who, in return for a lifetime of sock-mending and cooking home meals, gardening and doctoring and child-raising, would be given a little farm at his retirement—well, there were worse lives than the society of camp women of a winning army, particularly among the Romans, who reached their assigned operating area, camped, parked, and stayed for generations. Camp wives was more to the point: the Romans were a bit straiter laced than the local populations in that regard. Though there were some men who’d march off to southern climes and leave their wives and kids—after 30 years in a place, and grandchildren, and a town having developed, and the presence of the men they’d spent their lives serving beside, there was kind of a nesting instinct, in guys who were now strangers in a familiar land, vs a trek halfway across the world back to Syria. The accounts we have indicate increasing ties where they were, providing a ready-made citizen militia to back up the regulars at need.
If conditions in the area were not safe, they’d move their families to a place that was safer. Rarely post 100 AD were the legions actually Roman–and their wife-choices tended to cause a bit of
genetic migration.
There are two women in my tree that would be VERY interesting contributors, however, if the reckoning is true: one the daughter of a Visigothic lord in Spain; and the other is Galla Placidia, the daughter of a Byzantine ruler, Valentinian, who was married to several interesting figures in the fall of the West. I don’t believe it: people PAID to have interesting people in their tree, even back-when, so the more interesting the figure you’re related to, the more skeptical you have to be. But along with these notable bearers of interesting MtDNA—were a lot of nice women who lived their lives mending socks and having a dozen kids.
I’m not sure what to make of Denisovans yet. Isn’t it just two small bones so far? They’re pushing the data pretty far from not much source material!
And I’m not sure what to make of the H-nat influence. Do we know they share nothing in the haplotypes we believe are H-sap? If they do, then we could have correlations and proportions different than non-Europeans. I did the ancestryDNA test, which seems to be just a simple admixture test. I gave my sister a few questions to call and ask about, since she’s the one that’s registered, i.e. paid for the test.
And in reading your description of Roman Legionaires, the term “anything in skirts” came to mind–because the H-nat genes had to get in here somehow!
Lol—I’m also questioning how they arrive at that percentage for the hominids—whether it’s specifically out of my provided genetic material, or whether it’s a number hypothesized for all H5b haplogroup members. I’ll have to find another H5b or H3h2 and find out if other people’s numbers differ from ours.
The Denisovan stuff is very thin—indeed, a tooth and a rib or something like. But—teeth are pretty good sources under bad conditions, being packed in enamel.
I also want to know more about this new hominid and when they think this girl lived or under what conditions. NatGeo usually doesn’t hop on something unless the evidence is pretty good.
For those of you with interest in pursuing this: there are 2 questions—what your own cells can tell you about what you came from. And what you can find out by using a family tree and public records. Ancestry.com is REAL good on the public records and on being able to cross-compare other people’s trees. It is also not for the easily-distressed-by-imprecision, because any Tom, Dick, or Harriet can insert info which may or may not be right, and having people who are their own grandfather is fairly frequent on that site, not to mention people whose sons were born before they were. OTOH, knowledge can help untangle these mare’s-nests. If you are prone to apoplexy when confronted with a transcription error in a file upload, like a person who uploaded a massive family tree that has a code Ancestry reads as Span, Georgia, for some unguessable reason, or someone who said that dying in France is always done on the Somme, in Picardie, no matter how inconvenient—well, suffice it to say whoever did it was surely one of MY relatives, to judge by the number of Boone relatives who demised there, and I could just kill the culprit, if ever found. Where will I kill him? I leave it to you.
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/ is the one I used for the MtDNA test, and the one I will probably use when I get my brother the Y-DNA test. They are solid in their scientific info, and they send the info collected directly to research scientists attempting to trace human migrations over the ages.
http://www.ancestry.com is the one I used for the autosomal DNA test, and I shouldn’t complain, because they made me a beta tester and gave me the test for free. This seems to turn up more recent matches: WIKI: “Like mtDNA and Y-DNA SNPs, autosomal SNPs are changes at a single point in genetic code…the test counts the number and size of matching runs of DNA from one point to another. It then computes the likely number of generations between two people…” You can look up autosomal DNA testing (used for geneological purposes). I’ve been, frankly disappointed by it. I must have over a thousand, two thousand matches in the ancestry trees—but almost all are baker, bolling, boone, smith, jones, (can you figure why the family-matching ‘bot gets overexcited about those names?)harris, wilson, hall, hull, and very rarely, excepting the boones, who are amazingly prolific—do I get anything from the tiptons, vandeventers, cherry, etc. I expected more. They also offer the Y-DNA test.
There also seems to be a family tree service you can join that is connected to the Genographic Project, and I have not yet run that down.
Worldwide access to Ancestry (meaning you get records from all over the world) is far from cheap, per annum—200 to 300 just for the tree/records access. I count it one of my principle vices. OTOH, if you can get family members to chip in for you to do the research, this can become viable.
Each of these genetic tests (and each person can have 2 or 3) (separate from the tree access) is about 200.00—or more, if you go to some private companies. And the output of the tests is thorough Greek without guides to interpret it. SO if you go to a private company, they’ll hand you your haplogroups, say, without any info about how to ‘read’ that info and correlate it with a map and a timeline. I would recommend, for each family, that you get 1 MtDNA, and one Y-DNA. Because all persons have the same MtDNA, and because the Y is what it is, you’re good with those 2. I’m not convinced the autosomal dna can do you any good whatsoever unless you have a large tree, and more to the point, a large number of unknown relatives who are also happening to get tested in the same system. Ancestry probably has the best application for that, but I haven’t found its information reveals anything your tree can’t tell you. Am I really related to the Strodes, Bollings, etc, yes. And I’m not exactly surprised, since they were in my tree already. Nobody I haven’t known has ever turned up, or shall we say, if they have, the test can’t help us find out why the bot thinks that somebody somewhere might match. Is it a relative I have that they don’t know they have? OR vice versa? There’s no way to know.
Right now my vote is on Genographic, though I have a huge investment of time and tree in Ancestry. And the Genographic data, if you check ‘share with scientists’ helps genetic research in terms of geography and tracking ethnicity, etc.
Interesting: I just used my code from Genographic to ‘purchase’ the Family Tree DNA and it let me transfer the data from my Genographic account over to FTDNA, filling out my personal data, but no credit card data, cost $0, which produced a password and code for FTDNA, and they promise me I can access my ‘stuff’ tomorrow. I of course have checked the blank that gives the research lads access to my personal data and haplogroup stuff. I used ‘notepad’ to take a look at the output, and does the word ‘rocket science’ and ‘weird code’ apply? Definitely: long, long, long file with lots of codish symbols, so apparently my maternal ancestors have a lot to say. 😉
I’m really interested in what this test could tell me as I’m such a ‘wrong side of the tracks’ American Mutt that genealogical records are truly meaningless.
You should give ancestry.com a try anyhow. You can get a couple weeks at first for free, of course. 😉 But it sure sucked my sister in! 🙂 We didn’t have all that much for starters, but it had a whole lot more–like being descended from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins! Who knew?! Not us!
I know portions of my family tree on both sides. But it’s what’s NOT filled in there, and what nobody wanted to admit or chose to forget, or what accidents over time lost, that are equally interesting. Exactly *who* is that Indian woman in that photo I still need to find if it survived my move into this house and two hurricanes? Who were her people, her relatives who were connected into my family tree by marriage, evidently approved by both sides? Who were the others, the supposed “Indian Blood” on both sides, where on one side, there’s a historical account and lots of proximity and settlement that lends credence, but the proof’s been lost (by accident and on purpose) over the generations? How am I connected to distant cousins elsewhere, some of whom are a different skin color? Who were all the rogues and scoundrels, all the sinners and saints? What were their hopes and dreams, their daily lives, and their beliefs? Why did they decide that next hill, or crossing the ocean, looked so good? Just curiosity or something else? I’d like to know, too, what things might be there in health. And I wouldn’t mind knowing if they were eccentric. Or if, say, someone in there was adopted or fostered in. Or if someone was very fond of the special friend they lived with, same-sex. What did all these people do in their community? Loners and weirdos? Or friends with everybody? Respected? Despised? What kinds of work? What kinds of fun? Did they perhaps influence and inspire someone else around there? Were they mentored or inspired by someone around them? — So very much of that is intangible and gets lost, and so much we’ll never really know. Other things can be pieced together. Some things get passed down, artifacts, heirlooms, gifts, handiwork, or…tales. All of it is interesting, even the strangest bits.
I really need to take time and hunt up that box and that photo. Every time I’m reminded of it, something else seems to come up. Gotta make the time and find it. This weekend!
CJ, I had the same Ancestry offer you did — which struck me as a sweet deal. But mine did show up a few surprises. Basic ancestry is Irish/Scots and Cree on Dad’s side (his mom was Cree with an Iroquois and Quebequois in the mix) and my mom’s family in Quebec since 1660s (out of Normandy). But most expectations went out the window.
37% was Scandinavian — which really shocked me, but there were all those Vikings (Normandy, Normans, Ireland, Scotland and England). I can certainly get us back thru the Quebec bunch to William the Conqueror.
22% was Central Europe taking care of France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. So that gets the Gaulic Celts and Franks and likely any Anglo-Saxons and whomever else was meandering or pushing and shoving their way thru (and maybe Neanderthal vestiages).
11% was Southern Europe which covers Spain and Italy, also covers the Celts since those who ended up in Ireland came via the Iberian Penninsula (and a more likely Neanderthal link).
Now the really odd part was the 9% Central Asian all alone out there with no apparent links east of the Alps, the Balkins, Asia Minor or eastern Europe — just all those Stans. Okay, I figure Indo-European heartland, and probably invading hordes off the southern steppes. But still odd that it’s all east of the Caspian which hints at a really fast moving population influx into the West at some point.
Only 6% was British Isles which was a surprise since Ryan and Ross are old, old names.
Now 15% is classified as uncertian which I figure relates to the Native American ancestry.
While I really would like the NatGeo test it would leave some to me important holes. The MtDNA would never capture the Native American ancestry; if I got my dad a test, it would be done on the Y-DNA and still miss it.
I do have one solid 4th-6th gen match that’s interesting. A brother of her gggrandfather was the father of my Metis ggrandmother (have found separately a 2nd cousin who shares the same ggrandmother and still lives in the Northwest Territories). All the other dozens of supposed matches are mysteries and this is the only link with a known name I’ve hit so far. But the Irish side stops flat I’m 1811 for the family records and likely for the old Irish records too.
But would be nifty to see how the Neanderthals mix in and what the Central Asian group works out as. hmmm, maybe tax refund!
The Cree/Metis bit may explain the Uncertain. I remember seeing a PBS documentary several years ago about trying to run MtDNA cladistics on Native (N/S) American populations to see how many waves of migration there might have been and from where.
(Kennewick Man’s reconstructed head looks more like actor Patrick Stewart than any Siberian/Mongol. And there are persistent findings of possible human habitation 30-40Kya.)
As I recall they came up with 4 clades, A, B, C, D, for almost all Native Americans, but another, X, in the some of the Cree. I found that intriguing because of the Clovis/French hypothesis.
Paul, yep, I’m betting the unknown 15% is the NA side of the picture. My 2nd cousin in Canada said that Ancestry.CA didn’t offer the DNA test and she was sorta bummed about that. And since my NA ancestry is largely north of the border, getting that fleshed out would depend heavily on Navajos and Apaches in the SW getting an Ancestry DNA test done. Not gonna hold my breathe on that.
That X clade is interesting and something a lot of people have scratched their heads over. I’m with you — I think it could be either a good indicator of a Solutrian population influx [most people don’t realize that the majority of Clovis sites and points come from the eastern US], or Vikings doing more than fighting and avoiding the locals or maybe Prince Maddoc of Wales really did wander over. I like the Solutrian hypothesis myself. There’s evidence of early archaic cultures up in Labrador along the Altlantic Coast going back about 8000 years with a tool kit very similar to Clovis and with evidence for deep sea fishing. Definitely could have had European paleolithic folk coming over.
When it comes to Kennewick Man, they never were able to get any good DNA which really sucked. But studies of the bones and skull showed that he was closer in morphology to Ainu than any other early groups. They were in Siberia as well as being the aboriginal peoples of Japan prior to the Japanese settling in from the Korean Penninsula and were lighter skinned and didn’t have the epicantic fold of the eyes like Asian/Mongoloid groups. They weren’t true Caucasians, but had several similar traits. Hey! Maybe that’s my Central Asian bunch!
Hey, watch it! 😉 That’s my umpty-umpth great grandfather in law your talking about, Maddog ap Maredudd (Meredith), Prince of Powys.
Ooo! DNA!
I did my test through 23&Me, wondering what was in my woodpile and where it would show up. It turns out I am… 100% European. Northern European, at that. Not exactly what I expected, considering I can track the family lines back to Mayflower in three different directions. You’d think SOMEONE would have gone exogamous in there somewhere…!
The MtDNA was H1c, which originated about 13,000 years ago in Western Europe, about at the end of the Ice Age. The parent line of H1 appears to have been common in Doggerland, which was about where the Baltic Sea is now. I do wonder what sorts of archaeology one might find if one could look at that sea-bed. In any case, it looks like H1c started near Doggerland, and when Doggerland flooded, it dispersed outward across Europe and northern Asia. Current ‘hot spots’ are Spain, the British Isles, the eastern end of the Black Sea, and especially western Scandinavia.
I think I smell Vikings.
I’m 2.7% Neanderthal, according to my test results. This may be the result of admixture from 40,000 years ago, when H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis co-existed in Spain and northern Italy, but there’s a theory floating out there that the saps and neans did not mix, and that any similarities between us and them is due to shared genetics from 500,000+ years ago. I’m not sure I subscribe to this theory, because it doesn’t explain the low to vanishing percentage that peoples who stayed in Africa have of nean genes. The nean percentage goes up to its maximum among Europeans… which correlates well with where neans were when they were last running around as a separate lineage.
I’m astounded by the Denisovan percentages that you, CJ, and Jane both have. What I’ve read on Denisovans puts them in Central Asia (in the Denisova Cave), but also in… get this, Papua New Guinea. That implies either a migration across the face of Asia, or perhaps a low-population density distribution across the southern portion of that continent. There’s so little known about these people that anything is possible — including that we already have other remains from them, stored in collections here and there, but misidentified as other hominid species.
As for how such genes got to you… well, you can always blame the Huns. 🙂
Ruadhan, there was a show on one of the history channels not long ago about Doggerland and apparently things get brought up every once in awhile in fishing nets.
When it comes to Neander and H.Sap mixing it up, there’s a lot of controversy about it in the profession. The view 15 years ago was absolutley not according to the most vocal bunch. But others, especially Trinkhaus thought otherwise for various reasons, mostly based on the fact that the “classic” Neander traits of huge brow ridges, no chins and being short and stooped over where over played. That Neander profile was based on one of the first Neander finds, La-Chapelle-Aus-Saints which was a male approximately 60 years ago who had severe osteo-arthritis in the spine and other areas. Neander remains several hundred thousand years old have very pronouced morphology; remains from late in the sequence tend not to, and those from the Levant [Middle East such as Israel] have very marginal ones. One professor said it’s actually rather difficult in the field to determine if the remains are Neanderthal or H. Sapiens in that area — and that area has the earliest and longest potential interactions, going back close to 125,000 years.
Up until recently, the DNA evidence was saying nothing of Neander survived in the modern genome. Recent evidence is saying the opposite. This has come about from testing of recent finds, heaped on other finds which show a clear morphology mix of features in northern Italy if I remember right and in the Balkins. Personally, looking at guys playing football with huge brow ridges and no necks had me convinced over 30 years ago that Neanderthans and H. Sapiens had mixed it up.
The whole human migration is something that needs more work and the DNA approach is fascinating. I can remember mention of H. erectus still surviving in SE Asia as late as 35,000 years ago; and here you have Australian and Papua NG folks with heavy brow ridges, and other supposed Neander traits [which no one seems to mention], it sure makes you wonder how much of these could be vestiges of earlier populations and how much are direct environmental adaptations.
Ryanrick, the brow ridges may be a trait that neanderthals express, but it isn’t a specific trait of neanderthals alone. I think that may cause some confusion along the way.
I was interested to read in the article CJ linked to above that the Denisovan girl likely was quite dark — a trait associated, in modern human populations, with peoples who live at or near the Equator. The Denisova Cave is close to smack-dab in the middle of Russia — and 40,000 years ago (give or take a few millenia) I don’t think the area was tropical in nature (though I could be wrong about that.) This makes me wonder if the Denisova girl whose fingerbone started all this speculation belonged to a population that was pushed north by… something. Some event. Or perhaps someone.
Are the Denisovans late-model Homo erectus? That would be… fascinating.
I was reading an article not long ago about Neanderthals in the Middle East, and how they may have prevented modern humans from exiting Africa for several tens of thousands of years, due to competition, and it was only when the world warmed up that us Saps got a foothold in the area. Neanderthals as cold-adapted hominids? Makes a certain amount of sense… especially if we got our blonds from them (and now I’m thinking of Neanderthals as the polar bears of humans.)
My genetic testing company has given no percentages for Denisovan genes, so I have no idea if I have any trace of them in my make-up. I do know that another H1c person on the same system had 3.2 percent Neanderthal compared to my 2.7, so they aren’t calculating the amounts by MtDNA lineage. There’s a theory floating out there that we got some of our immunity genes from Neanderthal, so maybe they’re counting alleles in those genes.
Way back when there was a guy in my Calculus I class that I thought could make a passable Neanderthal, suitably unsuited. Which also should cause doubts about their mental capacities.
Or should I have written “incapacities”?
Back when I was in college I saw, overlayed on a map of Eurasia, the percentages of Type B blood in Eurasian populations drawn as a cline. Interestingly, for historians, it showed a broad “tongue” of high B, highest in the Southern Siberia/Sinkiang (Xinjang?) region and fading to the west as far as “Eastern” Europe, as in Hungary/Bulgaria. Also interesting was a narrow “canyon of low B, high A through Siberia–the Trans-Siberian Railway colonization.
@ryanrick, The H5b also is found in southwest Asia: (53% of modern H5b findings are European, 33% Mediterranean, and some 17% Southwest Asian [I know it won’t add to 100%: I’m recalling off the top of my head, imprecisely,]—I dunno, perhaps your southeast Asia finding COULD even be a stray H5b, tying you more closely to the Black Sea; but who knows how long ago it was, or whether it’s recent, from some European. OTOH, I guess the Native American MIGHT tie to that origin, a bit of a hike over the Land Bridge and over to Cree territory, but not impossible. You sure got a heckuva mix! My autosomal results are almost all British Isles, 7% unknown, something-like. And I already knew that: my people tended to live in Devon, Leicestershire, Gloucestershire and Shropshire, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland…but only a few lines of those were there before 1066: even the Welsh had pre-1066 ties on the continent. And I’m very reliably out of a long line of Dutch ancestry—my grandfather’s Vandeventers are not in doubt, and do show up in the matches; yet they don’t show as broad a track in the results as I’d expect. Is there something odd about my Dutch ancestors? Nothing I’ve ever turned up. Are they and their German and ultimately Scandinavian predecessors the missing 7%? I don’t know. Like you, I find the autosomal results odd—showing you more variety than you’d think; and me, less.
The Vikings did a lot of slave trading, and they ended up in surprising places, such as mercenaries in Byzantium. They’re the reason the Russians are called Russians and they’re the white in the White Russians. Vikings collected slaves pretty much everywhere they raided and traded them widely — money from the middle east has turned up in hordes in Scandinavia. I just wish my budget could handle a $200 outlay. I’d really like to know my “deep” roots.
Yep, old Radbard of Russia may be in my tree, along with a Polish gal.
Maybe a piggy bank for spare change would work toward that, or a birthday present…
“Slaves”? Don’t you mean “Slavs”, as they went down river to old Byzantium? 😉
Maybe you read the same article I did in the paper today. Writing about the wit and wisdom of “Dear Abby” someone wrote that they wanted to trace their family but couldn’t afford it. Her advice was “run for public office.”
The Vikings weren’t the only ones who got around in that period. I know that they settled Kiev and had played mercenaries for the Byzantines. But apparently you also had Berber/North African slave raides going on in Ireland, southern England and coastal France in the Middle Ages, taking whole villages off to the slave markets in Northern Africa and probaby into the Levant area as well. Sure surprised me when I stumbled on that!
Well, I’ve decided this is just way to fun and I want some more info. So, come tax refund, $200 is set aside to get the NatGeo test and hopefully a great breakdown of the different Haplo groups.
In the 1970’s, there was an odd book called America B.C. which claimed several early Mediterranean and European groups had sailed the Gulf Stream currents to North America, with linguistic and epigraphic evidence to support the claims. It actually looked plausible. If true, then part of the Native American genetic base in pre-Columbian times would have already included North African, Mesopotamian, and European bloodlines (or rather, genotypes) to some degree, mixed in with the prehistoric Bering Land Bridge migrations from Asia. — Some of the specific groups included Phoenicians, Egyptians, and various Celtic groups from Iberia to Gaul to the British Isles, with epigraphy claims of Celtic Ogham and varieties of Phoenician and Germanic Futhark runes, with a few other more exotic Middle Eastern / North African scripts thrown in. Of course, there were arguments pro and con on this, but the claim was there were other sources and scientists beginning to back this up. It seemed worth considering and at least plausible. A fuller defense would benefit from North American artifacts being found in Europe and the Mediterranean region from pre-Columbian times.
Then after European colonization began, you had contact between Native and European populations, so you’d have some degree possible on either “side of the fence,” despite anyone’s claims about “purity.” Much the same with Europe, Asia, and Africa. There were travel and trade and conflict and alliances, even back into prehistoric times.
It’d be wonderful to shed some light on people like the Basques and Minoans and Etruscans, for instance, or to identify the “Sea Peoples” or other prehistoric and early historic (written about) groups.
It’d be great if we could learn something more definite about the prehistory of Europe, going back before the Bronze Age and Neolithic, and back into whatever was really going on between the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, or before. …Or to learn before that, to Lucy and forward.
So whatever genetics can tell us about those migrations and contacts should be really interesting.
And Thor Hyerdahl proved that ocean current could take someone from Morocco to the Americas, and wrote a book about it:”The Ra Expeditions.”
One of the things that really interests me about actual history versus folklore is, could there be some sort of historical basis behind all those tales, nearly worldwide, of things like giants, dwarves, elves, and the like?
Could these be tales of humans (groups or singles) with genetic differences or dietary or environmental conditions that had notable differences in their development?
Could some have been significantly different genetic groups unlike what we are used to seeing from recorded history? — Do pointed ears or other features and coloring pop up in folklore simply by comparison to animals, or vivid imaginations, or were there clans/tribes of other humans or near-humans or other hominids running around out there to cause such stories?
Wouldn’t a Neanderthal survivor look a lot like certain folkloric types? What about a large, hairy hominid (Abominable Snowman, Yeti, Wild Man of Asia, Sasquatch/Bigfoot, Swamp Ape) ? — Or plenty of other possibilities?
If you’re a primitive tribesman in Europe, say, around or just after the last Ice Age, and you come across a clan of strange-looking human-like “people,” then don’t you tell your buddies back at camp all about it? If, say, you fumbled your hunt or got trounced in a fight, or if you won, or if someone caught your fancy but you don’t quite want to admit who that was and what he or she looked like, don’t you tell your people an “exaggerated” story? If you’re itching to start a fight with the neighboring group, say, maybe they’re evil magical people! Or they look and sound strange, so they must be the bad guys. Or someone in camp cooked something or let it go too long, or people in camp got sick. Hey, it couldn’t be our own fault, or something we don’t understand. It must be those guys over there! Right? 😉 — Or going the other way, what would a non-typical human group think about new humans in the area? What would other hominids think about the new neighbors? And hmm, say, is that one kinda cute, but ma and pa and the sibs would never, ever approve…? Ahh, spring…!
Yes, the plot bunnies are working overtime, if only they’d do better at *finishing* and *carrying through*.
BCS: re: folklore: Personally, I like thinking that the tale of Beowulf is a vastly embroidered encounter between a gang of young toughs on one side, and an old lady and her REALLY big son on the other. The toughs tried something on the old lady, the son beat the crap out of a couple of them, and the rest went off to lick their wounds and plot revenge.
One man’s witch is another man’s mother…!
Its been a lot of years since I read Beowulf, but to me it always read like an encounter with a remnant Neanderthal population and a group of more ‘modern’ people. Even back then, pre-Indiana Jones, I was fascinated with the whole history of early man (yes, I was one of those kids who though archaeology would be a WONDERFUL occupation, until I realized there weren’t really many opportunities in the field) and I remember analyzing Beowulf along those lines in an English paper somewhere. I forget what I got for a grade, but my teacher disagreed. Made for some really interesting though lines though!
This is a really fascinating topic and great discussion, and encourages me to have the sequencing done. Perhaps a splurge for a birthday? A family joke was that I’m a throwback to the Vikings who raped my ancestors (the only fair-haired person in the family until my very much younger sister arrived), so maybe I’ll find out the truth!
The New York Times recently reported that a genetics researcher was able to identify supposedly anonymous individuals in the 1,000 Genomes Project. The researcher did not expect that his new method for probing the DNA database would succeed so well. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/health/search-of-dna-sequences-reveals-full-identities.html?hp
Interesting. I have no problem with anybody knowing my genetic history, or identity—as in, so what are they going to do with it? Build another me? One thing I am is difficult to Xerox. Send me spam? Good grief, people in Nigeria already do that. Connect me with mysterious mobsters? Ivar the Boneless would send them scampering, so I’m not too worried about finding horsethieves in the family tree. The ‘privacy’ shudders just don’t affect me much…I mean, f’ gosh sakes, if you live in a small town, there IS no privacy, and that is the state our Founding Fathers envisioned when they set up a lot of what they set up. If they COULD locate some stray cousins, heck, that could be interesting. I know they’re out there: my great-gran had 12 kids.
Among other privacy concerns, the scientists and database managers might be worried about genocide. I’ve read the book “IBM and the Holocaust” and sad to say the Nazis used IBM technology and censuses to help them decide who were undesirables. Right now, a reasonable person could not draw the line on various races and declare any undesirable. Then again, a reasonable person wouldn’t consider any race undesirable. It take a crazy person to do so, and when a nation follows that person or elects them, then the results are more than catastrophic.
The same technology that makes us transparent to hate-mongers also makes hate-mongers more transparent to us. Hitler could get a following today—but Hitler getting elected is another matter. We have our Assads and other hateful people, but they have not fared well with the internet. The reactionary Islamists are another problem—because though they use technology, they really don’t like it, and they like it far less in the hands of people who disagree with them, never mind your genetics. What people will find who get too deeply into this genetics thing is that we’re all African, we’re intermarried to the max, and we’re pretty deeply scrambled with people who weren’t even homo sapiens sapiens. I think what we have to fear isn’t knowledge, it’s people trying to persuade us day is night and all our problems stem from not believing their fantasy.
That’s also a problem for the idea that people want to “weed out” or “cure” certain traits. If a given trait has survival value under certain conditions, then it’s worth keeping in the gene pool. We can’t know what the future might bring, here or elsewhere, so that all traits might have potential value, even if they are troublesome. Gene therapy to replace some “undesirable” trait? OK, that could be good or it could be bad. Who decided it’s undesirable? What if it has value for possible descendants? Oops, too late, it’s been replaced. While yes, it would be good if we could cure some things and ease human suffering and improve the quality of life for people, there is the other side of the coin: What if someone learns compassion or works for some better things in life, because they know someone like that? Or another coin altogether: Some minority or majority does not have the right to decide that someone (or everyone) with some trait must have it changed, replaced, deleted because it doesn’t suit the group’s idea of how things ought to be. Thankfully, many people don’t want something like that and would raise plenty of objections if someone / group tried it. But it’s one of the issues that will have to be sorted out, if the technology develops to the point that’s possible. Physical makeup? Appearance? Mental and emotional makeup? Personality? So much is in our genes, and so much else is in what happens after. That said, if I could have normal vision, yes, I’d be eager for that. Everything has pluses and minuses. And…just maybe we’ll do better about it all than the things people worry about.
I read recently that they think they’ve identified the bones of Richard III.
As soon as I win the lottery, I’m going to talk one of my brothers into the Y-DNA test because one of the mysteries in my family tree has always been the paternal line. Somewhere around 1857 we have a 16 yr old mother giving birth to a child who supposedly belongs to an uncle of President Cleveland. The location works, they were both in the same city at that time, but the prospective father was in his 60s, and a pretty widely known public figure in the area. They never married, even though he was single at the time, and he did have a same-name-son who would have been in his 20s when my ancestor was born. The son sort of disappears ‘out west’ soon after, but he may have been in the area at the right time. The old man lives around the corner for the next 15 or so years, even after my 5xgreat-grandmother dies and leaves my 4xgreat-grandfather living with a woman who I now think is his grandmother. I’d LOVE to be able to connect this man to his father, but really I suspect the story is just that, even if the child was given the Cleveland name. Other than his name and the family story, I can’t find any documentation to PROVE who his father is. Hopefully one of these days! They keep adding records online, so it could happen. Other than that one REALLY fuzzy connection, the paternal line goes back to those famous Frost Giants and/or Adam and Eve. One advantage/disadvantage to having a President in the mix, everyone wants to connect, and at least one someone wrote a book. The Y-DNA test really should be able to prove/disprove that connection!
THEN I want to get the mtDNA done because the maternal line sort of falls to earth somewhere in Canada in the early to mid-1800s, supposedly from Scotland. Another mystery! Most of the rest of the DNA mix is British Isles with a bit of German (4xgreat-grandfather married an immigrant who I’ve traced back to a village in Germany where they recycled the same genes for several hundred years anyway) and one umpteen-great-grandmother who was French-Canadian. Dad’s side is much clearer as my great uncle did years of research and other than the German connection, that side has been in the U.S. since the 1600s and 1700s. More mostly British Isles. I’d love to see where it all falls.
I’d love to do the Y test on my father’s family, but the only surviving male on that side is my father’s brother, who I haven’t seen since the 1980’s, which means he might not actually be alive any more.
There may be a non-paternal event in that line. My father’s paternal grandfather was raised under one surname, but has a birth record under another. His marriage used that other-surname record, too, so it doesn’t appear to be a bad transcription. Was he adopted? Did something else go on, such that his mother truthfully claimed one child/one living on the 1900 Census? Inquiring mind wants to know.
GOTTA love those ‘non-paternal events’
Gawd, how’d this morph into the thread that would not die? 🙂
Is that a bad thing? I’m still interested, and you’re still reading, too. 😉
I think one issue is that the study subjects expected to remain anonymous–and at the time they signed on, no one expected they would/could be identified. Such a lack of privacy could greatly discourage other potential volunteers from participating in future studies. Another issue is that researchers are no longer dealing with blinded samples; some bias could creep in. A third issue is that insurance companies might be all too eager to discover whether any of the identified people have heritable traits that might make them poor insurance risks.
Sperm donors expect to remain anonymous, too, but one fifteen-year-old boy found his biological father using very similar techniques. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/03/genetics.news
The point it that there is a lot of information out there, and all you really need is a structured way of going through it to get the answer you want. Others have said this, and these latest cases make it true: there is no true ‘privacy’ anymore… not if by ‘privacy’ you mean ‘anonymity’.
CJ’s comment about the ‘small town’ is well taken. Now that the Internet is here and looking like it will stay, we’re all in the same small town.
OH shoot, even BEFORE the internet it was a small, small world. I was living in Mass. and went to to Alaska for a job, where I met my husband who grew up in Oregon. My sister, who had married a guy from North Carolina, was living in Nebraska where her husband was stationed while in the Air Force. We found out after a few months MY SISTER’S DOCTOR WAS MY HUSBAND’S SISTER!
Now, statistically, what the heck are the chances of THAT?
Its been a darn small town for a long time. Its just getting a lot smaller and noisier!
AND THIS WAS 20 YEARS AGO!
too bad this thing wont let us edit our posts!
That privacy/anonymity has it good points and its bad points. The thing we tend to forget is that, while most people are OK enough, and only a few really want to make trouble, there are also benefits to anonymity…and then there are benefits to being able to lift that anonymity for the right reasons.
Some people really *are* decent, friendly folks, worth getting to know. Sometimes, it’s worth dropping that anonymity, if it includes someone, makes a better life for one or both somehow. Sure, giving a child up for adoption, one might want anonymity. Likewise for sperm donation.
But what if that child needs the benefit of knowing his/her biological mother or father? What if the parent would benefit from being involved in that child’s life?
There are times when it is of benefit to take a risk and trust, to be a real, true friend, rather than hiding behind one’s anonymity, privacy, and sometimes fears of what’s on either side of that screen.
Not that I advocate being rash or foolish or naive. If someone does choose to drop their anonymity, they need to be sure that they or that other person are safe, a good risk, worth the time and effort.
And I don’t agree with certain things being a good idea, by the way. I had one online friendship that I thought was good, special, but it ended, it hurt a lot because I was invested in the friendship, and I will always wonder what the real truth was there on the other side of that, because of it. And that was a friendship, not romance or sexual. So there are all sorts of arguments, all sorts of angles, to the issue of anonymity and privacy.
In our concerns for safety and security, for emotional well being, we as a society need to work out not only ways to ensure privacy and anonymity, but ways to lift that when it’s a better idea for people to get to know one another. What does it say about us, if we provide ways of shutting off or preventing contact, but we don’t provide ways of connecting and facilitating good relationships?
Still, the solutions aren’t always easy or apparent. Good relationships take work on both sides.
The issue of privacy (and copyright) on the internet is a very interesting one. There’s an event taking place today which may have a major influence on the future of the internet: Kim DotCom’s new Mega service will be switching on in a few hours.
It will make military-grade encryption easily and freely available to ordinary users, and it’s being done in a way that makes it impossible for governments to limit or control. This may soon lead to encrypted email and other communications becoming the norm. Then all the warrantless monitoring of private emails and data by the US government that’s currently going on will no longer be possible.
It may also make piracy of music and movies a lot easier. It will probably quickly replace BitTorrent for file sharing. It’s difficult to say what the result will be. It may force new business models on Hollywood and the recording industry. Books? Difficult to predict.
My guess is that within a couple of years Mega will change the internet landscape.