Discover your deep ancestry!
I recently got back the results of an analysis of my Y chromosome from National Geographic's Genographic Project. The project is tracing human migration out of Africa by means of genetic analysis, looking for markers (i.e. small neutral mutations) in mitochondrial DNA for female lineages and on the Y chromosome for male lineages. Humanity emerged in central Africa about 200,000 years ago, and the evidence suggests there were two major migrations into the rest of the world, about 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. Those would have been controlled by climate changes, mainly the advance and retreat of glaciers and concommittant effects like the spread of grasslands and deserts and so on, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors following the herds of animals. The database is good enough that it's known approximately when and where certain mutations first appeared, so the presence of them in your DNA indicates where your ancestors have been, and when. I got this neat little map (attached below) of the path of my Y chromosome over the last 50,000 years, and a 10-page report describing the details. The red line on the map is where my male ancestors went, the blue lines splitting off from it are where other populations separated from them. The labels on the map, like M168, M9, and so on, are the names of the markers used to trace it.
Some highlights: M168 is the only lineage that survives outside of Africa. That mutation appeared about 50,000 years ago in the area of Africa's Great Rift Valley; every non-African man has that marker. M45 appeared about 35,000 years ago on the steppes of central Asia, and the blue line arcing away to the northeast from it appears to be the population that made it across the Bering Strait and into North America. Almost every North American aboriginal man has the M45 marker. M173 appeared about 30,000 years ago, and the arrival of those people in Europe coincides with the demise of the Neanderthals and the creation of what archeologists call the Aurignacian culture. These are the Cro-magnons. Advancing glaciers pushed them south into Spain and Italy 20,000 years ago, and they moved back north around 12,000 years ago as the ice retreated. The map doesn't show all the details of the 10-page report of course. It concludes with my male ancestors being in what are now the Irish counties of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary at the end of the last ice age.
Anybody can get this done and I encourage everyone to do so, I think this is a fascinating and useful science project. You can order the DNA test kit online, it's about $100 U.S., you send in a couple of cheek scrapings and 8-10 weeks later you can logon to the National Geographic's web site with a code they give you in the kit and get your results. Find out all about it here: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html
I recently got back the results of an analysis of my Y chromosome from National Geographic's Genographic Project. The project is tracing human migration out of Africa by means of genetic analysis, looking for markers (i.e. small neutral mutations) in mitochondrial DNA for female lineages and on the Y chromosome for male lineages. Humanity emerged in central Africa about 200,000 years ago, and the evidence suggests there were two major migrations into the rest of the world, about 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. Those would have been controlled by climate changes, mainly the advance and retreat of glaciers and concommittant effects like the spread of grasslands and deserts and so on, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors following the herds of animals. The database is good enough that it's known approximately when and where certain mutations first appeared, so the presence of them in your DNA indicates where your ancestors have been, and when. I got this neat little map (attached below) of the path of my Y chromosome over the last 50,000 years, and a 10-page report describing the details. The red line on the map is where my male ancestors went, the blue lines splitting off from it are where other populations separated from them. The labels on the map, like M168, M9, and so on, are the names of the markers used to trace it.
Some highlights: M168 is the only lineage that survives outside of Africa. That mutation appeared about 50,000 years ago in the area of Africa's Great Rift Valley; every non-African man has that marker. M45 appeared about 35,000 years ago on the steppes of central Asia, and the blue line arcing away to the northeast from it appears to be the population that made it across the Bering Strait and into North America. Almost every North American aboriginal man has the M45 marker. M173 appeared about 30,000 years ago, and the arrival of those people in Europe coincides with the demise of the Neanderthals and the creation of what archeologists call the Aurignacian culture. These are the Cro-magnons. Advancing glaciers pushed them south into Spain and Italy 20,000 years ago, and they moved back north around 12,000 years ago as the ice retreated. The map doesn't show all the details of the 10-page report of course. It concludes with my male ancestors being in what are now the Irish counties of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary at the end of the last ice age.
Anybody can get this done and I encourage everyone to do so, I think this is a fascinating and useful science project. You can order the DNA test kit online, it's about $100 U.S., you send in a couple of cheek scrapings and 8-10 weeks later you can logon to the National Geographic's web site with a code they give you in the kit and get your results. Find out all about it here: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html
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