A slice of the Y-chromosome tree

[Swammerdami]

This week for show and tell I will outline part of the Y-chromosome clading tree in humans. It will take me several posts.

I am posting this in Social Sciences rather than Natural Science because the science and technology of DNA is of no interest in my topic. Let us instead interest ourselves in

Conclusions about Prehistoric Migrations and Societies . . . that can be deduced from the detailed human family tree, specifically the Y-Haplogroup Tree.​

In this thread we discuss the Y-chromosome only. It is SNP (single nucleotide) mutations which define the Y-tree, with a very few more major chromosome disruptions. (Decades ago, STR counts were much easier to test for; today the old STR database can be considered as hints about haplogroup.) Where DNA details become relevant we may be terse. (I may sometimes summarize technical considerations, perhaps inside Spoiler tags.) Those who carry an ancestor's Y-chromosome are called his agnatic descendants or simply agnates. (A woman is considered an agnate if her father is; her children won't be agnates unless she mates with an agnatic cousin.) mtDNA carriers are called uterine descendants. Estimate 30 and 25 years respectively for father-child and mother-child when estimating dates from number of generations.

In particular I want to present a quick overview of the Y-chromosome tree, following descent from Y-Chromosome Adam down to one particular King. I find some of these details intensely interesting, and I think some of you will too.

But before showing a slice of the Y-chromosome clading tree I want to discuss WHY it is an interesting type of DNA to look at. Three reasons are:

(1) Inheritance of Y-chromosome is simple. This means exact family trees can be inferred directly.

You have 275 billion g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g grandfathers (or rather 36-g grandfather SLOTS) who lived a thousand years ago but only ONE of those 275 billion is your agnatic ancestor: the man who gave you your Y-chromosome. Similarly the uterine (mtDNA) inheritance gives a long single line of grandmother-to-mother links.

On average there's about 1 SNP mutation per generation on the Y-chromosome. (Y-chromosome throughout actually refers to NRY -- nonrecombinant portion of Y -- to ignore the tiny runt end of Y which does do crossover with the tip of X.) mtDNA has 100 times the mutation rate per nucleotide, but Y-chromosome has 4000 times the number of nucleotides.

(2) The Y-chromosome map is "crisp" and therefore more informative than autosomal and mtDNA maps which are "blurred."
This is caused by patrilocality -- brides move to join their husband's setting. Tribes of Northeast Siberia tend toward matrilocality -- husbands join bride's family -- and indeed mtDNA maps have crisp tribe-related boundaries, while it is Y-haplogroup maps which are blurred. (Alleged rarity of matrilocality surprised me, as this is practiced in present-day rural Thailand! But indeed Google Search 'matrilocality' finds Thailand.)

(3) When caste or status is inherited from father, a Haplogroup can quickly dominate a population even if autosomal and mtDNA is largely unchanged from what it was prior to the new Y-Haplogroup.

 

[TomC]

Tom stumbles into a large and ferocious post.

He slowly backs away.
Tom

 

[Jokodo]

This week for show and tell I will outline part of the Y-chromosome clading tree in humans. It will take me several posts.

I am posting this in Social Sciences rather than Natural Science because the science and technology of DNA is of no interest in my topic. Let us instead interest ourselves in

Conclusions about Prehistoric Migrations and Societies . . . that can be deduced from the detailed human family tree, specifically the Y-Haplogroup Tree.​

In this thread we discuss the Y-chromosome only. It is SNP (single nucleotide) mutations which define the Y-tree, with a very few more major chromosome disruptions. (Decades ago, STR counts were much easier to test for; today the old STR database can be considered as hints about haplogroup.) Where DNA details become relevant we may be terse. (I may sometimes summarize technical considerations, perhaps inside Spoiler tags.) Those who carry an ancestor's Y-chromosome are called his agnatic descendants or simply agnates. (A woman is considered an agnate if her father is; her children won't be agnates unless she mates with an agnatic cousin.) mtDNA carriers are called uterine descendants. Estimate 30 and 25 years respectively for father-child and mother-child when estimating dates from number of generations.

In particular I want to present a quick overview of the Y-chromosome tree, following descent from Y-Chromosome Adam down to one particular King. I find some of these details intensely interesting, and I think some of you will too.

But before showing a slice of the Y-chromosome clading tree I want to discuss WHY it is an interesting type of DNA to look at. Three reasons are:

(1) Inheritance of Y-chromosome is simple. This means exact family trees can be inferred directly.

You have 275 billion g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g grandfathers (or rather 36-g grandfather SLOTS) who lived a thousand years ago but only ONE of those 275 billion is your agnatic ancestor: the man who gave you your Y-chromosome. Similarly the uterine (mtDNA) inheritance gives a long single line of grandmother-to-mother links.

On average there's about 1 SNP mutation per generation on the Y-chromosome. (Y-chromosome throughout actually refers to NRY -- nonrecombinant portion of Y -- to ignore the tiny runt end of Y which does do crossover with the tip of X.) mtDNA has 100 times the mutation rate per nucleotide, but Y-chromosome has 4000 times the number of nucleotides.

(2) The Y-chromosome map is "crisp" and therefore more informative than autosomal and mtDNA maps which are "blurred."
This is caused by patrilocality -- brides move to join their husband's setting. Tribes of Northeast Siberia tend toward matrilocality -- husbands join bride's family -- and indeed mtDNA maps have crisp tribe-related boundaries, while it is Y-haplogroup maps which are blurred. (Alleged rarity of matrilocality surprised me, as this is practiced in present-day rural Thailand! But indeed Google Search 'matrilocality' finds Thailand.)

(3) When caste or status is inherited from father, a Haplogroup can quickly dominate a population even if autosomal and mtDNA is largely unchanged from what it was prior to the new Y-Haplogroup.

Looking forward to it. One caveat though: while the crispness is an advantage, the picture of migration painted by Y alone is necessarily incomplete.

That's not always a bad thing - incompleteness in the sense of your (1) isn't always a big loss. The fact that a potential Alaskan grandfather of a guy from Chukotka who made it to Kamtchatka and whose great- great-7-grandfather joined the 6th century trek of the Avars from Manchuria and Mongolia to Hungary and Austria doesn't show up as the ancestor of me or any other Austrian isn't a bad thing. While he plausibly existed, his existence doesn't make "Austrians descend from Alaskan Natives" a particularly meaningful statement, and he's unlikely to show up in autosomal data either.

It becomes a bit more problematic due to your (3): In other venues ve had the misfortune to engage in discussions with posters who, due to the scarcity of Y- chromosomal markers corresponding to Anatolian Neolithic Farmers in contemporary populations of many parts of Europe, felt justified in postulating a complete genocide at the turn of the Bronze Age, and continued to claim that at least the men must have been killed off instantly when presented conflicting autosomal data. (So thanks for bringing up the potential role if heritable caste/ status over a few generations); not that it couldn't have been genocide too, we just don't, I think, have evidence that it was.

 

[Swammerdami]

In this post I just mention a few agnatic tribes or families to motivate further discussion. These examples may seem tedious; best may be to skip this post and wait for a more interesting post!

When did H. sapiens first understand that copulation led to pregnancy, birth and fatherhood? Many ancient cultures had the concept of agnatic inheritance. Celts were well aware of the names of their fathers, paternal grandfathers, paternal great-grandfathers and agnatic cousins. Hindu India is just one of many other examples where caste is inherited from the father (making Y-chromosome very predictive of social status). The Bible has frequent mention of agnatic tribes, and schisms when two brothers founded different tribes.

Some agnatic tribes proliferate hugely. Others disappear. Sometimes it is almost random which Y-chromosomes persist.

For example, Charlemagne is a "go-to" example for being ancestral to Europe in billions of ways, yet has no known living agnate. (The 11th-century Counts of Vermandois were senior agnates of Charles the Great but Eudes "the Insane" (fl. 1085) was a simpleton or such and the County was given to his brother-in-law Hugh de Crepi the Great, Leader of the First Crusade.

The "Plantagenet Dynasty" has living agnates with tested DNA but at least three different Y-haplogroups show up. With secret cuckoldings etc. official pedigrees do not always match the genetic facts. The skeleton of King Richard III revealed Y-haplogroup G-Z1815, not a match with other Plantagenets: (It was via mtDNA and NOT the Y-chromosome that the skeleton was confirmed to be that of the Yorkist King.)

Similarly the Bourbon agnatic family now dominates the aristocracy of several Western European countries; they in turn are agnatic descendents of Hugh Capet (941-996). Or rather, would be such agnates IF official pedigrees were correct. Recent Kings of Spain have refused to have their DNA tested IIUC; presumably instead of being actual Bourbon agnates, they have the Y-chromosome of one of Queen Isabel II's lovers, rather than the Bourbon Duke of Cadiz (Francisco, 1822-1902) to whom she was married.

Other "dynasties" and tribes show up clearly in DNA.

• Many Irishmen have the R1b-M222 SNP; this gives them a common ancestor who lived only 2000 years ago. Presumably that ancestor was a King, rather than some well-endowed stable boy who made the rounds of lonely brides!
• Those with surname of Cohen (or Kaplan, Kahana, or dozens of other spellings) can claim a common ancestor who lived about 2700 years ago: Was this common ancestor indeed a High Priest in Jerusalem?
• The proto-Basques arrived in Spain many centuries before Bell Beaker; and Basques survive today with their unique language, culture, and autosomal DNA. Yet almost all Basques today have the Bell Beaker (R1b-P312) Y-haplogroup. One can only speculate about exactly how the procreative success of male Bell Beaker invaders played out.
• From the semi-mythical 9th-century Rurik to the 16th-century Ivan the Terrible, the Rurikid Y-chromosome was prerequisite to be a high Prince in Russia; this haplogroup is still present among Ukrainian nobility who fled after the 1917 Revolution. (Some of those Rurikids have a different haplogroup: Genealogists have used those discrepancies to track down which ancient Rurikid Prince faked his pedigree.)
• A HUGE number of Brits, including many surnamed Stewart, are agnates of the 12th-century Walter FitzAlan, 1st Lord High Steward of Scotland. (The 6th Lord High Steward married the daughter of King Robert I, and fathered King Robert II of Scots.)
• Some powerful tribes are implied from the Y-haplogroup tree. For example R1b-U152 is a huge clade that we can infer was dominant in the Urnfield Bronze Age, but it split into a multitude of subclades before any specific surname can be identified.

Regarding my claim that a caste system can amplify the density of an agnatic class, I did some simulations. If we assume that some high-prestige foreigners arrive, are outnumbered 250-to-1 by indigenous males but enjoy greater procreative success than lower-prestige males, they will come to dominate the Y-haplogroup, while having almost no effect on autosomal. If they beget on average 1.25 thriving sons for every 1.0 thriving sons of the lower-prestige males, their Y-haplogroup density will reach 50% after 25 generations (750 years). This advantage can come from better medical care, better nutrition, or simply the tendency of wealthy men to take multiple wives or concubines.

 

[Swammerdami]

The Y-chromosome tree is divided into twenty clades, labeled with the letters A through T. Clades A, F (aka FT), K (aka KT) and P are paraphyletic; i.e. they contain subclades with a different letter. Here is the tree, rendered in the usual very terse way:

H. sapiens = (A00 (A0 (A1a (A1b1 (B ((D E DE*) (C FT)))))))​

FT = (F* F1 (G (H (((I1 I2) (J2 J1)) KT))))​

KT = ((M S) (K* (L T) ((N O K*) (P* P1 (Q (R* (R1a R1b) R2))))))​

The "slice" I present below is much more informative since it shows the dates of separation. With a few exceptions I don't break apart lettered clades in the above summary. But I did want to depict R1a and R1b, the two haplogroups which dominate Europe. These two clades separated 23,000 years ago, so are only distant relatives despite the close clade names. As an example of the crispness of the Y-haplogroup map, near the border of Germany and Poland, males with German-speaking ancestry are almost all R1b, while males with Slavic-speaking ancestry are mostly R1a.

Geography plays a role in the propagation of the Y-chromosome. India served as a "sink": Haplogroups H, L, R2 headed South when they arose, entered India and never left. India has also accumulated branches of clades E, G, J1, J2, and Q. (An exception is the Romani "Gypsies", a branch of H which fled India about 1000 years ago). Central Asia and the steppes of Eastern Europe served as "sources" of Y-chromosome migrations.

Without further ado, here is the "Slice of the Y-chromosome Tree", showing the descent of Robert II King of Scots from Y-chromosome Adam.

|_ Homo heidelbergensis? (700??) --> Neanderthal, Denisova
|_ H. sapiens? (390??) --> infiltrated Neanderthal
|_ A00-T (236) --> A00: Bangwa, Mbo
|_ A0-T (161) --> A0: Bakola Pygmies
|_ A1 (133) --> A1a: (Revis surname, Yorkshire)
|_ A1b (131) --> A1b1: Bushman, Khoisan, Falasha etc.
|_ BT (88.0) [aka A1b2] --> B (Pygmy, Hadazbe, Nubian)
|_ CT (68.5) --> DE: D (Tibet + Andaman + Ainu), E, DE*

E = very bushy, source Ethiopia, incl. M2-Bantu, M35-Berber​

|_ CF (65.9) --> C: C1, C2 (Mongol, Navajo, etc.)

C1: Australia + New Guinea + India + Japan + Cro-Magnon)​

|_ FT (48.9) --> F*
|_ FT (48.8) --> F1 (Tamil, Georgian)
|_ GHIJK (48.6) --> G: (Cardial Ware, Alan, Georgian, SE Asia etc.)
|_ HIJK (48.5) --> H (India, Romani)
|_ IJK (47.2) --> IJ: I1, I2, J2, J1
|_ K (45.4) --> K*, LT (L, T)
|_ K2 (45.4) --> K-M2335 (NO, ancient Siberia), K2c, K2d, K2e etc.
|_ K2b (44.3) --> K2b1 (MS, etc.), K2b*
|_ P (41.5) --> Jahai (Malaysia)
|_ P-V1651 (41.5) --> P (Luzon Negritos)
|_ P-M1254 (40.2) --> Andaman
|_ P-P337 (37.6) --> Yana1
|_ P-P284 (37.5) --> Yana2
|_ QR (37.0) --> Q (Amerind, Hunnic, etc.)
|_ R (28.2) --> R*
|_ R-Y482 (28.2) --> R2 (Kshatriya etc.)
|_ R1 (22.8) --> R1a (Early CW, Sintashta, Brahmin, Scythian, Balto-Slav)
|_ R1b (20.4) --> R1b*
|_ R-L278 (18.9) --> L278* (ancient Samara), PH155 (present-day Levant)
|_ R-L754 (17.2) --> L754* (anc. Serbia)
|_ R-L761 (17.0) --> V88 (Chadic-Cameroon)
|_ R-L389 (15.6) --> Y1636: Kura-Araxes?
|_ R-P297 (13.3) --> M478 (Tocharian?, Samara elite), etc.
|_ R-M269 (6.4) --> M269*, PF7562 (Botai?)
|_ R-L23 (6.1) --> Z2103 (Bagvalal. Hittites?, East Yamnaya)
|_ R-L51 (5.8) --> Z2118: (Italo-Venetic)
|_ R-P310 (5.5) --> FT123498, FT186340 (anc. Albania), FT377377
|_ R-PF6538 (5.3) --> Y215377
|_ R-L151 (5.0) --> U106, DF100 (Adams Parker), etc,, proto-Nagyrev

The High King of Late Western Corded Ware was U106​

U106 > Z2265 > BY30097 > Z381 > S264 > S497 > S265​

S265 > DF98 (Bourbon) > S22069 (Bathory) > S8350 (Wettin)​

|_ R-P312 (4.7) --> L238 (Nordic), DF19 (Germanic), and ten other branches

Z46516 > ZZ11 > DF27+U152; DF27 = Ibero-Atlantic; U152 = Italo-Gaulish​

Z40481 > DF99 (Eastern Beaker)​

|_ R-S461 (4.6) aka R1b1a1b1a1a2c aka Z2290 --> BY22760 (Reynolds)
|_ R-L21 (4.5) --> A5846, M37, Amesbury Archer's Companion
|_ R-S552 (4.5) --> DF63, A5846, L21*, BY2899, 4 other groups
|_ R-DF13 (4.1) --> 12 groups

includes DF1 (MacLean), FGC17906 (McAlpin?), FGC5494 (Hesse etc.)​

|_ R-Z39589 (4.1) --> DF49 (O'Neill etc.), LL1335 (Campbell), 36 other groups
|_ R-DF41 (4.0) --> 14 groups
|_ R-S775 (4.0) --> A600 (Ryley+Matthews)

... Flaald > Alan > Walter > Alan > Walter (3rd Lord High Steward)​

|_ R-L745 (0.8) --> Y138948 (Menteith)
|_ Alexander 4th Lord High Steward (0.8) --> S781 (John of Bonkyl)
|_ Z38845 (0.8) --> 12 groups

... James Walter > Robert II > Robert III​

I've tried to find a good compromise between being informative and being too cluttered. Sections of the slice can be quoted and annotated. I will do this, especially if there are questions.

Here repeated is the beginning of the Y-tree:

|_ Homo heidelbergensis? (700??) --> Neanderthal, Denisova
|_ H. sapiens? (390??) --> infiltrated Neanderthal

Prior to A00-T, we show Neanderthal and Denisova branching off from their common ancestor with Homo sapiens. And just as the Basque population was eventually overwhelmed by the Bell Beaker Y-chromosome, so Neanderthal man eventually was overwhelmed by a H. sapiens chromosome. We don't know when that "overwhelming" occurred, but the new chromosome split from the ancestor of A00-T about 390,000 years ago.

|_ A00-T (236) --> A00: Bangwa, Mbo
|_ A0-T (161) --> A0: Bakola Pygmies
|_ A1 (133) --> A1a: (Revis surname, Yorkshire)
|_ A1b (131) --> ...

One man we call "A00-T" was the agnatic ancestor of all living males that have been tested. He lived 236,000 years before the present and had TWO sons with living agnates. One son began the A00 line and gave rise to some males of the Bangwa and Mbo tribes of southern Morocco. The other of A00-T's two sons gave rise to the A0-T line. From 236,000 years ago to 161,000 years ago -- a span of 75,000 years or 2500 generations, this Y-chromosome was passed along a single line, father-to-son. We won't try to imagine details of their early society, but we will call these males "Kings", each agnatic ancestor to 99.9999% of living males (all except Bangwa and Mbo).

161,000 years ago, the last "King of A0-T" had TWO sons each with living agnates: A0 led to the Bakola Pygmies, A1 led to everyone else.

Especially astounding to contemplate is the HUGE fan-out of L151 between "5.0" (5,000 years before present; i.e. 3000 BC) and "4.0" (2000 BC). A tribe of Bell Beaker princes procreated VERY quickly.

|_ R-L151 (5.0) --> U106, DF100 (Adams Parker), etc,, proto-Nagyrev

The High King of Late Western Corded Ware was U106​

U106 > Z2265 > BY30097 > Z381 > S264 > S497 > S265​

S265 > DF98 (Bourbon) > S22069 (Bathory) > S8350 (Wettin)​

Two large noble families, Bourbon/Capet and Saxony/Wettin, each descend from the same Copper Age King of prehistoric Germany.

|_ R-P312 (4.7) --> L238 (Nordic), DF19 (Germanic), and ten other branches

Z46516 > ZZ11 > DF27+U152; DF27 = Ibero-Atlantic; U152 = Italo-Gaulish​

Z40481 > DF99 (Eastern Beaker)​

|_ R-S461 (4.6) aka R1b1a1b1a1a2c aka Z2290 --> BY22760 (Reynolds)
|_ R-L21 (4.5) --> A5846, M37, Amesbury Archer's Companion
|_ R-S552 (4.5) --> DF63, A5846, L21*, BY2899, 4 other groups
|_ R-DF13 (4.1) --> 12 groups

includes DF1 (MacLean), FGC17906 (McAlpin?), FGC5494 (Hesse etc.)​

|_ R-Z39589 (4.1) --> DF49 (O'Neill etc.), LL1335 (Campbell), 36 other groups
|_ R-DF41 (4.0) --> 14 groups

I've reddened "Amesbury Archer's Companion" because it is very interesting how archaeology and genetics focus together on that ancient skeleton.

Two bodies are interred near Stonehenge in a VERY lavish grave. IIRC there is no earlier tomb in the British Isles as rich as that one. A 40-year old man is called "The Archer." The "Archer's Companion" is even younger. Although buried in England, forensic analysis shows that the Archer was raised near the Swiss Alps. And Y-haplogroup study shows that L21 originated near the Rhine about when the Archer did, and traveled to the British Isles where it is now the most common haplogroup of those Isles. I don't know if the Archer's Y-haplogroup is fully known, but the Companion has L21! If the date estimates are correct, that Companion may be the son or grandson of the very "King" who first had the L21 SNP mutation. No wonder he got such a rich burial!

 

[bilby]

the tendency of wealthy men to take multiple wives or concubines.

...such individuals being known as "concubine harvesters".

 

[Jokodo]

Regarding my claim that a caste system can amplify the density of an agnatic class, I did some simulations. If we assume that some high-prestige foreigners arrive, are outnumbered 250-to-1 by indigenous males but enjoy greater procreative success than lower-prestige males, they will come to dominate the Y-haplogroup, while having almost no effect on autosomal. If they beget on average 1.25 thriving sons for every 1.0 thriving sons of the lower-prestige males, their Y-haplogroup density will reach 50% after 25 generations (750 years). This advantage can come from better medical care, better nutrition, or simply the tendency of wealthy men to take multiple wives or concubines.

This seems a rather simplistic simulation, though. An elite class of kings and dukes will have a much higher relative fitness when they're at 1% than their descendants at 10%. There is going to be a point where the society is saturated with dukes that live off the land without working it. After that point, most of the descendants are ging to be farmers like everyone else (at best wealthy ones with a posh surname and better access to communal hunting grounds/logging rights/ water rights), who are unlikely to maintain the same relative procreative success as their dukely forefathers.

And that's before we look at unacknowledged illicit offspring with lower class women, who surely make up a good share of the original dukes' excess sons. Those won't inherit their fathers' status, and to the extent that they are mothered by unwed women, may sometimes even have below average success, unless their fathers play favourites with their families even in the absence of official acknowledgement.

If I had more time for leisure coding at my hands, I'd love to enrich the simulation with parameters representing these factors (any other important and easy to model ones I'm missing?), and compare the outcomes of a few different plausible settings; maybe I will. Unless you want to do it, or know of a paper that has done something like this, in which case I won't duplicate anyone's work and would be happy to read about it here!

The Norman conquest of England might be a good as it gets for historical models, or maybe Arab-Berber relations in Morocco, though in that case an ongoing trickle of "reinforcements" for the high status group over the course of many centuries may complicate the picture. Possibly that even makes it a better analogy for some prehistoric examples, though. And it's yet another parameter to model and play with!

 

[Swammerdami]

Yes, that simulation was much too crude. It was just a stab at "proof of concept." I thought it especially interesting that the Y-chromosome could undergo large-scale "replacement" while autosomal DNA remained almost unchanged. I do not plan on improving the simulation -- it's too difficult.

(Once I was curious how many Americans were my 6th cousins or closer. There's an easy way to guess at an answer, but I needed a parameter that related family size to the rural/urban divide. Mobility also might play a big role. Google pointed me to a paper, but its model was even more simplistic than mine.)

So rather than addressing your good questions, I'll just post more on the remarkable (and largely unexplained) fact that most of Western Europe are agnates of Bell Beaker.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Here are some references for the following:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170927082706/http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/adnastr.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populations_of_Europe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84915-1

Spain is about 70% R1b: Almost everyone is an agnate of the early "King of Bell Beaker." How did that happen? Some suggest that Bell Beaker migrants arrived on a Western Europe that had been depopulated by "climate change." I am doubtful.

(Much of the R1b in Western Europe -- though not Spain -- comes from R1b-U106 (Late Corded Ware) who were close agnatic cousins of Bell Beaker.)

For unknown reasons, the replacement of Copper Age Western European Y chromosomes made up mainly of haplogroups I2, G2, and H by R1b Bronze Age chromosomes was more dramatic in Iberia. This sex-specific replacement suggests a higher contribution of incoming males than females, which is also supported by a lower X-chromosome input from the STEPPES. Today this Y chromosome turnover is particularly pronounced in the Basques, which exhibit 87% R1b.

Present-day non-R1b Spaniards are mainly from three haplogroups: I (ancient hunter-gatherers, I call this group "Solutrean"), E-Berber and J.

E-Berber and J were associated with early farmers, but I think Islamic invasion in historic times may have been the main source.

What happened to the G2 associated with early farmers? G2 is rarish in Western Europe today, and what there is is mostly associated with the Alans invading from the East during the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, with the more ancient G2 farmers persisting mostly in places like Sardinia.

Ireland and Wales have even higher R1b concentrations than Spain has. Non-R1b there is mostly I (Paleolithic Europe).

There's something that confuses me. The Copper Age fortress at Los Millares, Spain was built "by copper workers" a few centuries BEFORE the arrival of Bell Beaker haplogroup. Was it built BY proto-IndoEuropeans or to protect FROM proto-IndoEuropeans? Was there an influx of proto-IndoEuropeans (whose Y-chromosome has since gone extinct) a few centuries before the arrival of the Bell Beaker elite? Some hypothesize that some Bell Beaker cultural traits (e.g. the bell-shaped beakers themselves) may have originated in Spain BEFORE the arrival of the R1b-P312 Bell Beaker elite.

Los Millares is a Chalcolithic occupation site 17 km north of Almería, in the municipality of Santa Fe de Mondújar, Andalucía, Spain. The complex was in use from the fourth millennium BC (c. 3000 BC) to the end of the third millennium BC (2000 BC) and probably supported somewhere around 1000 people.[2][3] It was discovered in 1891 during the construction of a railway. It was first excavated by Luis Siret in the succeeding years. Excavations are ongoing. Los Millares is the type site of the Chalcolithic Millaran culture.

 

[Jokodo]

There's something that confuses me. The Copper Age fortress at Los Millares, Spain was built "by copper workers" a few centuries BEFORE the arrival of Bell Beaker haplogroup. Was it built BY proto-IndoEuropeans or to protect FROM proto-IndoEuropeans? Was there an influx of proto-IndoEuropeans (whose Y-chromosome has since gone extinct) a few centuries before the arrival of the Bell Beaker elite? Some hypothesize that some Bell Beaker cultural traits (e.g. the bell-shaped beakers themselves) may have originated in Spain BEFORE the arrival of the R1b-P312 Bell Beaker elite.

Los Millares is a Chalcolithic occupation site 17 km north of Almería, in the municipality of Santa Fe de Mondújar, Andalucía, Spain. The complex was in use from the fourth millennium BC (c. 3000 BC) to the end of the third millennium BC (2000 BC) and probably supported somewhere around 1000 people.[2][3] It was discovered in 1891 during the construction of a railway. It was first excavated by Luis Siret in the succeeding years. Excavations are ongoing. Los Millares is the type site of the Chalcolithic Millaran culture.

That's just me bragging so please ignore, but I visited Los Millares last month!

 

[Swammerdami]

Here is the "Slice of the Y-chromosome Tree", showing the descent of Robert II King of Scots from Y-chromosome Adam.

|_ Homo heidelbergensis? (700??) --> Neanderthal, Denisova
|_ H. sapiens? (390??) --> infiltrated Neanderthal
|_ A00-T (236) --> A00: Bangwa, Mbo
|_ A0-T (161) --> A0: Bakola Pygmies
|_ A1 (133) --> A1a: (Revis surname, Yorkshire)
|_ A1b (131) --> A1b1: Bushman, Khoisan, Falasha etc.
|_ BT (88.0) [aka A1b2] --> B (Pygmy, Hadazbe, Nubian)

The A and B haplogroups are widely dispersed in sub-Saharan Africa: the ethnic groups shown are just suggestive of where concentrations are high. In fact, however, the large majority of Africans do not have haplogroups A or B, but rather E (see below).

Note that A1b2 split from A1b1 131,000 years ago but didn't split itself until 88,000 ybp, 1433 generations later. For a whopping 1433 generations, each "King" of A1b2 had only a single son (the next "King" with living agnates. There was probably lots of foliation along the way, but all Y-chromosomes except the single line of "Kings" went extinct. This pattern repeats throughout much of the y-Haplogorup tree.

The volcanic super-eruption ("Toba") occurred at 74.0 and is perhaps associated with a population bottleneck. Sometime after the bottleneck, haplogroup CT (ancestral to everyone not in A or B) suddenly split into four branches: C, D, E, F. It was only after DNA study advanced that this 4-way branch was resolved into binary splits.

|_ CT (68.5) --> DE: D (Tibet + Andaman + Ainu), E, DE*

E = very bushy, source Ethiopia, incl. M2-Bantu, M35-Berber​

DE, and its parent clade ((DE) (CF)), probably thrived somewhere near Ethiopia or Yemen. D followed the Indian coastline IIUC and made its way to SE Asia, while E remained in Ethiopia. Haplogroups C, F, and D remained single-line for a while, but E began foliating to form a bushy tree. Although there are many clades of E, in terms of population counts, almost all Africans today are in either E-M2 (associated with the Bantu expansion in historic times) or E-M35 (associated with speakers of Berber and Semitic in north Africa.

D distanced itself very quickly from its sibling E and is relatively rare today. In addition to a small population scattered around SE Asia, there are three main locations of D: Tibet, Japan (25% of Japan has this haplogroup) and the Andaman Islands.

A few living men have turned up (denoted DE*) with the DE mutations but neither the D nor E mutations. These men have turned up in both Tibet and Ethiopia!

|_ CF (65.9) --> C: C1, C2 (Mongol, Navajo, etc.)

C1: Australia + New Guinea + India + Japan + Cro-Magnon)​

CF split into two clades, with C following D around the coast to SE Asia, while F (aka FT) made its way to Central Asia, perhaps near Afghanistan.

About 48,000 years ago C split into C1 and C2; and C1 split into several clades (Australian aborigines, 25% of Japanese, some New Guineans, some Indians, and the prehistoric Aurignacian people who conquered Europe from the Neanderthals. When very ancient European skeletons are tested they usually have this haplogroup.

C2 is ancestral to some northern Asian tribes, e.g. the Mongols, and to the Athapaskans (including Apache) of North America. Although this is the first North American haplogroup we mention, the "Na-Dene" Athapaskans were preceded by the Amerindians with haplogroup Q.

|_ FT (48.9) --> F*
|_ FT (48.8) --> F1 (Tamil, Georgian)
|_ GHIJK (48.6) --> G: (Cardial Ware, Alan, Georgian, SE Asia etc.)
|_ HIJK (48.5) --> H (India, Romani)
|_ IJK (47.2) --> IJ: I1, I2, J2, J1

As you see, the people in Central Asia with F haplogroup began a rapid expansion, spinning off branches F1, G and H. Finally the tribe bifurcated with IJ moving West, and K moving East.

I list four branches of IJ in a "funny" order (I1, I2, J2, J1). This is a geographic mnemonic: I1 is found in Western Europe, I2 Central Europe, J2 in the Levant almost adjacent to I2, and J1 centered near the Arabian peninsula.

I2 (associated with Solutrean culture?) dominated Europe prior to the arrival of farmers. (When farmers did arrive they were mostly J2, G, F1 and E-M35.)

ALL living I1, on the other hand, are descended from a single "King of I1" who lived (in NE France?) about 2600 BC (I1 is also rare among ancient skeletons.) It's a minor mystery how this one isolated clade survived during the ferocious Bell Beaker expansion. Today, I1 has highest concentration in Scandinavia.

|_ K (45.4) --> K*, LT (L, T)

L went to India. T is very wide-spread but especially common in the Middle East. T's in Europe are believed to descend from Phoenician explorers and colonists.

|_ K2 (45.4) --> K-M2335 (NO, ancient Siberia), K2c, K2d, K2e etc.

N is rarish (outside of Finland where it is a majority) and found in Asia's far North, and among the Saami of Scandinavia. N is the haplogroup of Russia's famous Rurikid dynasty.

O is a huge haplogroup, now dominant throughout China, SE Asia, the Pacific, the remaining 50% of Japan, etc.

|_ K2b (44.3) --> K2b1 (MS, etc.), K2b*

M and S are both haplogoups of New Guinea and its neighbors. Setting aside the various rarish K subclades, everything left is in PQR.

|_ P (41.5) --> Jahai (Malaysia)
|_ P-V1651 (41.5) --> P (Luzon Negritos)
|_ P-M1254 (40.2) --> Andaman
|_ P-P337 (37.6) --> Yana1
|_ P-P284 (37.5) --> Yana2

Some of the early branches of P are are recent discoveries. Early P seems to be centered near SE Asia? But Yana1 and Yana2 are ancient skeletons found in Siberia.

|_ QR (37.0) --> Q (Amerind, Hunnic, etc.)

Q is a rarish haplogroup, except among pre-Columbian Americans where it is dominant. Two different sub-clades of Q are found in Scandinavia, one closely kin to the Amerindians. Q is found (at low concentrations?) in some Siberian tribes. In one (far-fetched?) hypothesis, after Attila Huns accompanied some Goths in a retreat northward to Scandinavia. (This is compatible with some elements of Norse myth.)

|_ R (28.2) --> R*
|_ R-Y482 (28.2) --> R2 (Kshatriya etc.)

R became dominant in North Central Asia (and is found in ancient skeletons not shown here). R2 went South to India where it eventually formed a part of the Kshatriya (warrior) caste.

|_ R1 (22.8) --> R1a (Early CW, Sintashta, Brahmin, Scythian, Balto-Slavic)

R1a split from R1b. Both these clades are associated with the Indo-European people. While both R1a and R1b are found both East and West among ancient skeletons, eventually they split East-to-West, with R1a dominant among Indo-Aryan and Balto-Slavic "Satem" languages in the East, and R1b dominant in the West, particularly among Bell Beaker. The R1a who entered India formed the core of the highest-prestige (Brahmin) caste (priests). Exactly how that conquest played out is a mystery.

The invention of the spoked-wheel war chariot about 1700 BC in Sintashta is an historic turning-point.

|_ R1b (20.4) --> R1b*
|_ R-L278 (18.9) --> L278* (ancient Samara), PH155 (present-day Levant)
|_ R-L754 (17.2) --> L754* (anc. Serbia)
|_ R-L761 (17.0) --> V88 (Chadic-Cameroon)

V88 is an important clade which found its way to the Cameroons; it may have been dominant among early speakers of Chadic. IIUC it is thought it made its way to Africa via Europe.

|_ R-L389 (15.6) --> Y1636: Kura-Araxes?
|_ R-P297 (13.3) --> M478 (Tocharian?, Samara elite), etc.
|_ R-M269 (6.4) --> M269*, PF7562 (Botai?)
|_ R-L23 (6.1) --> Z2103 (Bagvalal. Hittites?, East Yamnaya)
|_ R-L51 (5.8) --> Z2118: (Italo-Venetic)

Almost all R1b today are descended from L51.

|_ R-P310 (5.5) --> FT123498, FT186340 (anc. Albania), FT377377
|_ R-PF6538 (5.3) --> Y215377
|_ R-L151 (5.0) --> U106, DF100 (Adams Parker), etc,, proto-Nagyrev

The High King of Late Western Corded Ware was U106​

U106 > Z2265 > BY30097 > Z381 > S264 > S497 > S265​

S265 > DF98 (Bourbon) > S22069 (Bathory) > S8350 (Wettin)​

|_ R-P312 (4.7) --> L238 (Nordic), DF19 (Germanic), and ten other branches

Z46516 > ZZ11 > DF27+U152; DF27 = Ibero-Atlantic; U152 = Italo-Gaulish​

Z40481 > DF99 (Eastern Beaker)​

|_ R-S461 (4.6) aka R1b1a1b1a1a2c aka Z2290 --> BY22760 (Reynolds)
|_ R-L21 (4.5) --> A5846, M37, Amesbury Archer's Companion
|_ R-S552 (4.5) --> DF63, A5846, L21*, BY2899, 4 other groups
|_ R-DF13 (4.1) --> 12 groups

includes DF1 (MacLean), FGC17906 (McAlpin?), FGC5494 (Hesse etc.)​

|_ R-Z39589 (4.1) --> DF49 (O'Neill etc.), LL1335 (Campbell), 36 other groups
|_ R-DF41 (4.0) --> 14 groups

The rapid fan-out of the R1b haplogroup in Western Europe was ferocious!

|_ R-S775 (4.0) --> A600 (Ryley+Matthews)

... Flaald > Alan > Walter > Alan > Walter (3rd Lord High Steward)​

|_ R-L745 (0.8) --> Y138948 (Menteith)
|_ Alexander 4th Lord High Steward (0.8) --> S781 (John of Bonkyl)

A very large number of living men are agnates of the Lords High Steward of Scotland. Many carry the surname Stuart or Stewart; but many do not. I wonder if hitherto-unknown cuckoldings have been identified by studying this tree? The S781 SNP first occurred in John of Bonkyl specifically. Several Kings of Scotland descend from John of Bonkyl's brother James, but Mary inherited the throne via the cognatic rule, and married an agnate of Bonkyl (among other husbands), so her son (and King Charles I etc.) are in the R1b-S781 haplogroup

|_ Z38845 (0.8) --> 12 groups

... James > Walter > Robert II > Robert III​

 

[Jarhyn]

I know I said this elsewhere but this is a fascinating discussion.

 

[Swammerdami]

There's something that confuses me. The Copper Age fortress at Los Millares, Spain was built "by copper workers" a few centuries BEFORE the arrival of Bell Beaker haplogroup. Was it built BY proto-IndoEuropeans or to protect FROM proto-IndoEuropeans? Was there an influx of proto-IndoEuropeans (whose Y-chromosome has since gone extinct) a few centuries before the arrival of the Bell Beaker elite? Some hypothesize that some Bell Beaker cultural traits (e.g. the bell-shaped beakers themselves) may have originated in Spain BEFORE the arrival of the R1b-P312 Bell Beaker elite.

The westward movement of the Indo-European people was not a sudden single thrust, but rather continual westward migration in what Gimbutas calls Kurgan waves 1, 2 and 3. Early Corded Ware had high populations of R1a and R1b from branches that later went extinct. Glancing at Jean Manco's data, Globular Amphora was mostly I2. (Was the Y-chromosome being "upgraded in stages" -- I2, Misc R1, R1b-P312 elite)?

Is there a DNA study of "copper-working" Spanish skeletons circa 3000 BC? There was a (4th? millenium BC) westward-movement south of glob amphora, with some doll or figurine as motif, but I forget the culture's name and gave away my copy of Manco's book.

Los Millares would not be the first time locals built a fortress to protect from the Indo-Europeans. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Civilization (5000-3500 BC) in present-day western Ukraine built the largest cities of its day, with tall walls as protection from raiders and animal herders to their east. I don't know if Cucuteni-Tripolye would be considered "copper workers" but copper tools show up in the diggings.

 

[Jokodo]

There's something that confuses me. The Copper Age fortress at Los Millares, Spain was built "by copper workers" a few centuries BEFORE the arrival of Bell Beaker haplogroup. Was it built BY proto-IndoEuropeans or to protect FROM proto-IndoEuropeans? Was there an influx of proto-IndoEuropeans (whose Y-chromosome has since gone extinct) a few centuries before the arrival of the Bell Beaker elite? Some hypothesize that some Bell Beaker cultural traits (e.g. the bell-shaped beakers themselves) may have originated in Spain BEFORE the arrival of the R1b-P312 Bell Beaker elite.

The westward movement of the Indo-European people was not a sudden single thrust, but rather continual westward migration in what Gimbutas calls Kurgan waves 1, 2 and 3. Early Corded Ware had high populations of R1a and R1b from branches that later went extinct. Glancing at Jean Manco's data, Globular Amphora was mostly I2. (Was the Y-chromosome being "upgraded in stages" -- I2, Misc R1, R1b-P312 elite)?

Is there a DNA study of "copper-working" Spanish skeletons circa 3000 BC? There was a (4th? millenium BC) westward-movement south of glob amphora, with some doll or figurine as motif, but I forget the culture's name and gave away my copy of Manco's book.

Los Millares would not be the first time locals built a fortress to protect from the Indo-Europeans. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Civilization (5000-3500 BC) in present-day western Ukraine built the largest cities of its day, with tall walls as protection from raiders and animal herders to their east. I don't know if Cucuteni-Tripolye would be considered "copper workers" but copper tools show up in the diggings.

Do you have any particular reason to assume that the people at Los Millares were protecting themselves "from the Indo-Europeans"? Or is that just an assumption derived from an all too literal reading of Gimbutas' ideas about the peacefulness if pre-Kurgan "Old Europe"? We do find, in Central Europe, evidence of evidence of fortifications, and evidence of gruesome massacres, all the way back to the Linearbandkeramik culture in the early neolithic period, don't we?

On a tangent, I find the origin of the LBK in Greater Pannonia* a fascinating part of prehistory. For the first 700 years or so after arriving in Greece, the Anatolian farmers spread North rather seemlessly all the way to Serbia and Southern Hungary (the Pančevo culture) without radically changing their lifestyle and way of subsistence, but they ran into a fuzzy ecological barrier around Lake Balaton north of which their inherited neolithic package was no longer adaptive. It took the descendants of the Pančevo people a few centuries and ab exceptionally warm period to adapt their lifestyle and subsistence to Central European circumstances - the formative phase of the LBK culture, known only from a handful of sites most in Hungary, the westernmost being in Brunn am Gebirge just outside Vienna (the site is known as "Brunn-Wolfsholz" in the literature). Once they had invented the wooden longhouse and shifted from goats and sheep to pigs and cattle as the primary livestock - characteristics that would continue to distinguish Central/ Northern Europe from Mediterranean cultures for millennia to come and across several major migrations - they rapidly colonised an area from France to Ukraine within a short span. But for those few centuries, Brunn seems to have been the westernmost inland (the Cardial Ware Culture was spreading west at the same time, but they kept hugging the coasts) agrarian settlement of Europe, while anything west of Vienna was still mesolithic. Here's a 2019 paper from "nature scientific reperts" about the genetics of the people from Brunn during the earliest phase of occupation, also detailing the admixture with local mesolithic populations: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41...B07xT1k-8qrnuue9NJTZDdpMzOIhiYRg-h92lGVa94X3a

Embarrassingly (at least I feel so), there's practically nothing at the site in Brunn, and most Austrians have never heard of it. As far as I know, the only thing on site is a plaque at the local playground explaining the neolithic in child directed language. Other than that, it's just a suburban interchange with a Burger King and a couple gas stations.

*Referring here to Western Hungary, Eastern Austria, Western Slovakia, maybe Moravia, that is Eastern Czechia; the Romans never conquered the parts north of the Danube so obviously the Roman province of Pannonia doesn't cover all of the area I'm talking about, but the ecoregion doesn't stop at the river. Maybe that's just my local pride talking, but I find the history and prehistory of the region one of the most fascinating ones in Europe and beyond, as it's been a frontier and simultaneously at the crossroads of various influences throughout the millennia. Its as far West as the Huns and Avars got, as far East as the Franks got, as far North as the Romans and Ottomans got, and it's where the Danube and the "Amber Road", a major (pre-)historic trade route from the Baltic to the Adriatic meet.

 

[Jokodo]

The area is also the site of a major genetics-linguistics mismatch: Hungarians are genetically inconspicuous Central Europeans, and not at all close to other Uralic speakers, - and the German speaking Austrians are closer to them than to Germans!

 

[Swammerdami]

Thanks Jokodo for participating in this discussion! You are obviously much more expert on this prehistory than I am.

Is there a DNA study of "copper-working" Spanish skeletons circa 3000 BC? There was a (4th? millenium BC) westward-movement south of glob amphora, with some doll or figurine as motif, but I forget the culture's name and gave away my copy of Manco's book.

Los Millares would not be the first time locals built a fortress to protect from the Indo-Europeans. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Civilization (5000-3500 BC) in present-day western Ukraine built the largest cities of its day, with tall walls as protection from raiders and animal herders to their east. I don't know if Cucuteni-Tripolye would be considered "copper workers" but copper tools show up in the diggings.

Do you have any particular reason to assume that the people at Los Millares were protecting themselves "from the Indo-Europeans"? Or is that just an assumption derived from an all too literal reading of Gimbutas' ideas about the peacefulness if pre-Kurgan "Old Europe"? We do find, in Central Europe, evidence of evidence of fortifications, and evidence of gruesome massacres, all the way back to the Linearbandkeramik culture in the early neolithic period, don't we?

Some of my comments were UNeducated guesses. Perhaps I've bought in to the cliché that sedentary farmers were collectivist and pacifist compared with the rugged individualistic culture of semi-nomadic horse breeders.

What did the Indo-Europeans invading Western Europe arrive with? Even oxen-driven wagons would give them advantage. Did they also arrive with horses?

ETA: Here's a paper on "Y-chromosome bottlenecks."

Patrilineal segmentary systems provide a peaceful explanation for the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck - Nature Communications

Prior work has identified a male-only effective population size bottleneck 3-5000 years ago. While violent competition has been proposed as a cause, the authors here show that a segmentary patrilineal system with lineal fission provides a peaceful alternative explanation.

www.nature.com

 

[Jokodo]

Thanks Jokodo for participating in this discussion! You are obviously much more expert on this prehistory than I am.

Is there a DNA study of "copper-working" Spanish skeletons circa 3000 BC? There was a (4th? millenium BC) westward-movement south of glob amphora, with some doll or figurine as motif, but I forget the culture's name and gave away my copy of Manco's book.

Los Millares would not be the first time locals built a fortress to protect from the Indo-Europeans. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Civilization (5000-3500 BC) in present-day western Ukraine built the largest cities of its day, with tall walls as protection from raiders and animal herders to their east. I don't know if Cucuteni-Tripolye would be considered "copper workers" but copper tools show up in the diggings.

Do you have any particular reason to assume that the people at Los Millares were protecting themselves "from the Indo-Europeans"? Or is that just an assumption derived from an all too literal reading of Gimbutas' ideas about the peacefulness if pre-Kurgan "Old Europe"? We do find, in Central Europe, evidence of evidence of fortifications, and evidence of gruesome massacres, all the way back to the Linearbandkeramik culture in the early neolithic period, don't we?

Some of my comments were UNeducated guesses. Perhaps I've bought in to the cliché that sedentary farmers were collectivist and pacifist compared with the rugged individualistic culture of semi-nomadic horse breeders.

What did the Indo-Europeans invading Western Europe arrive with? Even oxen-driven wagons would give them advantage. Did they also arrive with horses?

It's widely assumed they did. The Yamnaya are one of a couple contenders for the first people to have domesticated horses, and I think the top contender for the first people to ride them (horses were in all likeliness originally bred for meat), and lived in close proximity to the other contenders. Although their horses where nothing like modern or even iron age warhorses, we'd probably count them as ponies.

ETA: Here's a paper on "Y-chromosome bottlenecks."

Patrilineal segmentary systems provide a peaceful explanation for the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck - Nature Communications

Prior work has identified a male-only effective population size bottleneck 3-5000 years ago. While violent competition has been proposed as a cause, the authors here show that a segmentary patrilineal system with lineal fission provides a peaceful alternative explanation.

www.nature.com

 

[Jokodo]

Thanks Jokodo for participating in this discussion! You are obviously much more expert on this prehistory than I am.

Is there a DNA study of "copper-working" Spanish skeletons circa 3000 BC? There was a (4th? millenium BC) westward-movement south of glob amphora, with some doll or figurine as motif, but I forget the culture's name and gave away my copy of Manco's book.

Los Millares would not be the first time locals built a fortress to protect from the Indo-Europeans. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Civilization (5000-3500 BC) in present-day western Ukraine built the largest cities of its day, with tall walls as protection from raiders and animal herders to their east. I don't know if Cucuteni-Tripolye would be considered "copper workers" but copper tools show up in the diggings.

Do you have any particular reason to assume that the people at Los Millares were protecting themselves "from the Indo-Europeans"? Or is that just an assumption derived from an all too literal reading of Gimbutas' ideas about the peacefulness if pre-Kurgan "Old Europe"? We do find, in Central Europe, evidence of evidence of fortifications, and evidence of gruesome massacres, all the way back to the Linearbandkeramik culture in the early neolithic period, don't we?

Some of my comments were UNeducated guesses. Perhaps I've bought in to the cliché that sedentary farmers were collectivist and pacifist compared with the rugged individualistic culture of semi-nomadic horse breeders.

That cliche is likely true for Cucuteni-Tripolye, but not necessarily for all of neolithic and copper age Europe. When we find evidence of warfare in Southern Spain that seems out of sync with the Indo-European invasion(s), I think the most parsimonious explanation is that it isn't true for copper age Southern Spain.

If you want evidence for sedentary agrarian societies with stone age technology and endemic warfare, look no further than the highlands of New Guinea in the 20th century.

 

[Swammerdami]

What makes Y-chromosome clades especially interesting is when they can be directly related to specific families.

|_ R-L151 (5.0) --> U106, DF100 (Adams Parker), etc,, proto-Nagyrev

The High King of Late Western Corded Ware was U106​

U106 > Z2265 > BY30097 > Z381 > S264 > S497 > S265​

S265 > DF98 (Bourbon) > S22069 (Bathory) > S8350 (Wettin)​

The "Wettin" family is one of the most pervasive noble families of Germany, with titles like Markgraf of Meissen, Landgraf of Thuringia, and especially Herzog (Duke) of Saxony. Five Wettin agnates sat on the throne^* of the U.K. (every monarch from the death of Queen Victoria to the death of Elizabeth II). The Wettin family descends from the 11th century Thimo the Brave who built Wettin Castle. The S8350 SNP dates to, perhaps, a few generations AFTER Thimo the Brave. So every bearer of that SNP who does NOT have a surname based on "Sachsen" or "Saxe" or "Meissen" descends from some illegitimate son of a Wettin nobleman. Several such surnames show up, e.g. Templeton and Holmes. I wonder if genealogists have been able to guess where the bastardy or cuckolding occurred.

* - According to official pedigrees. Some suspect Victoria's Prince Albert was the result of a cuckolding; I don't know if his agnates have published their DNA test results.

|_ R-P312 (4.7) --> L238 (Nordic), DF19 (Germanic), and ten other branches

Z46516 > ZZ11 > DF27+U152; DF27 = Ibero-Atlantic; U152 = Italo-Gaulish​

Z40481 > DF99 (Eastern Beaker)​

|_ R-S461 (4.6) aka R1b1a1b1a1a2c aka Z2290 --> BY22760 (Reynolds)
|_ R-L21 (4.5) --> A5846, M37, Amesbury Archer's Companion

But this is the one that really impresses me! As seen on the maps below, a HUGE percentage of today's inhabitants of Great Britain, Ireland and Brittany descend from L21. The date of the L21 mutation is estimated to be about "4.5" -- 2500 BC. A SINGLE male, a few centuries before the Atlantic Bronze Age, is the agnatic ancestor of most of Britain! Even without knowing much else about him, we might call him a Great King.

But that's not all! A young man with the L21 mutation was found in a high-prestige grave near Stonehenge; the grave is dated to 2300 BC. The "Archer's Companion" must have been a gt-gt-gt-grandson (or such) of the Great King himself. Nifty? (Or am I just easily impressed?)

Here are two maps showing how L21 dominates the British Isles and Brittany. (Some Britons fled from Cornwall to Brittany during the Anglo-Saxon invasions: Is that where the L21 in Brittany comes from?)

(S145 may be considered a synonym of L21. I don't know if this is two different names for the same SNP, or two SNPs that always occur together.)

 

[Jokodo]

According to official pedrigees, aren't most members of Western and Northern European old nobility ultimately agnatic descendants of Odin/Wodan/Wotan? It sure was a thing among pagan Germanic kings of the migration era to claim descent from him through some mythical demigod founder.

 

[Swammerdami]

According to official pedigrees, aren't most members of Western and Northern European old nobility ultimately agnatic descendants of Odin/Wodan/Wotan? It sure was a thing among pagan Germanic kings of the migration era to claim descent from him through some mythical demigod founder.

I don't know if legendary descents from mythical figures play a role in any "official" pedigree. I was thinking of cuckoldings -- well known but not discussed in polite society -- like these two examples from the 19th century:

• Alice von Battenberg is grandmother of the present King of the U.K.; she is shown in official pedigrees as an agnate of the House of von Hesse. However her gt-grandmother Wilhelmine of Baden is said to have preferred the company of August von Senarclens-Grancy (1794-1871), her husband's stable master over that of her husband, Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse.
• Alphonso XII (1857-1885), King of Spain and agnatic ancestor of every Spanish King thereafter, is shown in official pedigrees as the son of Francisco de Asis (Bourbon), himself the agnatic grandson of King Carlos IV, and uterine grandson of Carlos IV's putative daughter Isabel. Francisco, already inbred, married his own double cousin Isabel II Regent Queen of Spain. Fortunately Alphonso XII is thought to be the natural son of one of Queen Isabel's several lovers: The official pedigree would make Alphonso XII severely inbred.

But even if the ancient legends of agnatic descent are pure fiction, they do reflect that Kings were, or wanted to be, agnates of some ancient elite "race." The Anglo-Saxon Kings were likely descendants of R1b-U106, shown in the "slice" above as also ancestral to Bourbon and Wettin.

Do the Anglo-Saxon Kings have any living agnates that can be tested? Are there ancient skeletons that can be exhumed and tested? Am I correct that today's nobility often refuse DNA testing, perhaps out of fear the results will point to illegitimacies as in the examples above?