Wading into the Family Gene Pool

My sister and I recently participated in the National Geographic Genographic Project.

The Genographic Project is primarily interested in human migration patterns. It is not an ethnic test. I understand there are DNA testing groups that can determine ethnicity. My sister has done enough research of our family's genealogy to have a good picture of our ethnic makeup, we were interested in where our ancient ancestors came from.

Genetic research is a relatively new field. Most genetic studies date from 2004 to the present. I have learned about haplogroups, subclades, alleles and short tandem repeats. Because the research is so new, much of the terminology is still in flux. But it makes for fascinating study.

My sister Cathy knows from her research that our father's family is from southern England and our mother's family is from Ireland. The question was, how did they get there?

Cathy had her DNA tested for MtDNA (mother's line) and I tested for the Y chromosome (father's line).

The results were surprising. All women can trace MtDNA to a woman (called Eve) in East Africa 150,000 years ago. MtDNA is mitochondria DNA, passed down from mother to daughter untouched by fertilization.

All men trace their Y chromosome to a man (called Adam) living in East Africa 60,000 years ago. The Y chromosome is passed untouched from father to son. Over time, human DNA has mutated and different groups have mutated differently. These mutations, called genetic markers, can be used to trace human migration patterns.

My father's group left Africa around 45,000 years ago and headed for the Middle East. They were part of the second wave of migration out of Africa. When drought hit Africa 40,000 years ago, my ancestors headed for the steppes of central Asia. The next marker is found in an ancestor in Iran, whose descendants in the next 30,000 years populated most of the planet.

Our ancestors moved to southern Siberia 35,000 years ago to a region where no other hominid species are known to have lived. This explains why my family thinks Minnesota winters are mild.

The first human migration into Europe began 30,000 years ago. My ancestors stuck around in northern France and northern Spain during the last Ice Age (12,000 years ago) and were the first to repopulate southern England.

Ninety percent of the people in Wales and eighty percent of those in Devon/Cornwall have the same genetic markers as my father. Basically, we found out my father's folks were Celts.

My mother's folks were the first group to leave Africa (Cathy says they got kicked out). They wound up in northwest Siberia as a rare subgroup that then moved into Scandinavia. They must have liked cold weather, too.

Cathy's question was 'how did they get into Ireland?'

We don't know that answer. There is this small gap from 1800 CE to 6,000 BCE that we need to fill in.

I also have an unanswered question. If Eve lived 150,000 years ago and Adam lived 60,000 years ago, what did Eve do for 90,000 years?