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After reading about it in The National
Geographic Magazine, I decided to participate in
The Genographic Project. I submitted tissue samples from
the inside of my cheeks to have my DNA examined. The results
came about one month later.
My Y-chromosome results identify me as a
member of member of the very uncommon haplogroup G.
Members of the haplogroup G carry the following Y-chromosome
markers:
M168 > M89 > M201
The map below
highlights my ancestors' route.
A brief descriptions of my
Y-chromosome markers:
-
M168: My
Earliest Ancestor
The M168 mutation first appeared in the
"Eurasian Adam" (also called "Y-chromosomal Adam", the
common ancestor of everyone living outside of Africa
today), between 31,000 and 79,000 years ago — most
likely in today's Ethiopia and Sudan. The migrations of
the original M168s descendants took them out of
Africa where they became the first homo sapiens
to survive away from humanity's birth place.
More information about
M168 in National Geographic (interactive map):
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?card=my051
-
M89: Moving
Through the Middle East
Haplogroup F (marked by mutation M89) first
appeared around 45,000 years in Northern Africa or the
Middle East. This marker is found in 90 to 95 percent of
all non-Africans. The first people to leave Africa (not
my ancestors) likely followed a coastal route that
eventually ended in Australia. My ancestors were part of
the second great wave of migration out of Africa; they
followed the expanding grasslands and plentiful game to
the Middle East and beyond.
More information about
M89 in National Geographic (interactive map):
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?card=my033
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M201: Living
in the Fertile Crescent
M168 and M89 are quite common but M201,
which defines haplogroup G, is a very rare mutation. It
arose around 30,000 years ago in a man born along the
eatern edge of the Middle East, perhaps as far east as
the Himalayan foothills in Pakistan or India. He has had
relatively few descendants. Some of them went east on
into southeast Asia, south China and the Pacific
Islands, but most moved back into the Middle East.
Then about 10 thousand years ago things began to change
for the members of the four Haplogroups G-J. Prior to
this time all humans were hunter-gatherers. The people
of what was known as the “Fertile Crescent” developed
agriculture and the world would never be the same again.
Population could expand rapidly and farmers began moving
out of the Middle East, through the islands and along
the shores of the Mediterranean, through Turkey into the
Balkans and the Caucasus Mountains. The ancestors of
most males in the G haplogroup migrated to Europe from
the Middle East or Mediterranean with the spread of
agriculture 6,000-8,000 years ago.
An hypothesis which is growing stronger recently is that
these same people at the same time might have introduced
the Indo-European language into northern India, the
Middle East, and Europe. Indo-European is the parent
language for Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Germanic and hence
of most of the other languages of the mid-east, north
India and Europe. There have been many attempts to
identify the original Indo-European homeland, but it is
now thought to have been the Sredy Stog culture in what
is now eastern Ukraine.
More information about
M201 in National Geographic (interactive map):
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?card=my034
Where the Gs were
around 1500 AD
The data in the table below
attempts to represent the situation before the relatively
recent European expansion that started around 1500 AD. This
is done by considering only stable populations that are
believed not to have migrated for hundreds of years. (For
example, European migrations to the Americas are not
counted.)
|
Region |
Percentage of Gs
in the male population |
|
Republic of Georgia, Caucasus
Mountains, south of Russia |
30% |
|
Island of Sardinia (Italy) |
14% |
|
North central Italy |
10% |
|
Northern Spain |
8% |
|
Turkey |
7% |
|
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Greece,
Hungary, Albania, Croatia, Ethiopia |
around 5% |
|
Northwestern Europe |
1% to 3% |
|
Middle East |
1% to 3% |
|
China, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines,
Polynesian Islands |
less than 1% |
These percentages are
perhaps surprising because my recent ancestors come from
northern Portugal (the original region of Peixoto, my
father's family name), Alsace (my maternal grandfather, Leon
Schwab, was from Strasbourg), Catalonia (the original
region of
Nin, my paternal grandmother's family name), and the
French Basque Country (the original region of Etchebarne,
my maternal grandmother's family name).
Current
distribution of G haplotypes
This external site has 10 tables, one for each of G1,
G2, ..., G10, showing the current distribution of G
haplotypes, including recent migrations. I aggregated the
values of these 10 tables to obtain the results presented
here.
Maps of Haplogroups
in Europe
-
European Map 1.
This is based on a map by JD McDonald from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I modified
the map to emphasize the distribution of my haplogroup
(G-M201).
-
European Map 2.
Map by by Roy King and Peter A. Underhill from Stanford
University.
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