Your
Y-chromosome results identify you as a member of
haplogroup R1b.
The genetic markers that define your ancestral
history reach back roughly 60,000 years to the first
common marker of all non-African men, M168, and
follow your lineage to present day ending with M343,
the defining marker of haplogroup R1b, and also
the markers P25 (R1b1), M73 (R1b1b),
M269 (R1b1c), M153 (R1b1c4), M167
(R1b1c6), and M222 (R1b1c7).
If you look at the map highlighting your ancestors'
route, you will see that members of haplogroup R1b
carry the following Y-chromosome markers:
M168 > M89 > M9 > M45 > M207 > M173 > M343
Today, roughly 70 percent of the men in southern
England belong to haplogroup R1b. In parts of
Spain and Ireland, that number exceeds 90 percent.
What's a haplogroup, and why do geneticists
concentrate on the Y chromosome in their search for
markers? For that matter, what's a marker?
Each of us carries DNA that is a combination of genes
passed from both our mother and father, giving us traits
that range from eye color and height to athleticism and
disease susceptibility. One exception is the Y
chromosome, which is passed directly from father to son,
unchanged, from generation to generation.
Unchanged, that is unless a mutation—a random,
naturally occurring, usually harmless change—occurs. The
mutation, known as a marker, acts as a beacon; it can be
mapped through generations because it will be passed
down from the man in whom it occurred to his sons, their
sons, and every male in his family for thousands of
years.
In some instances there may be more than one
mutational event that defines a particular branch on the
tree. This means that any of these markers can be used
to determine your particular haplogroup, since every
individual who has one of these markers also has the
others.
When geneticists identify such a marker, they try to
figure out when it first occurred, and in which
geographic region of the world. Each marker is
essentially the beginning of a new lineage on the family
tree of the human race. Tracking the lineages provides a
picture of how small tribes of modern humans in Africa
tens of thousands of years ago diversified and spread to
populate the world.
A haplogroup is defined by a series of markers that
are shared by other men who carry the same random
mutations. The markers trace the path your ancestors
took as they moved out of Africa. It's difficult to know
how many men worldwide belong to any particular
haplogroup, or even how many haplogroups there are,
because scientists simply don't have enough data yet.
One of the goals of the five-year Genographic Project
is to build a large enough database of anthropological
genetic data to answer some of these questions. To
achieve this, project team members are traveling to all
corners of the world to collect more than 100,000 DNA
samples from indigenous populations. In addition, we
encourage you to contribute your anonymous results to
the project database, helping our geneticists reveal
more of the answers to our ancient past.
Keep checking these pages; as more information is
received, more may be learned about your own genetic
history.
Your Ancestral Journey: What We Know Now
M168: Your Earliest Ancestor
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: Roughly 50,000 years ago
Place of Origin: Africa
Climate: Temporary retreat of Ice Age; Africa moves
from drought to warmer temperatures and moister
conditions
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens:
Approximately 10,000
Tools and Skills: Stone tools; earliest evidence of
art and advanced conceptual skills
Skeletal and archaeological evidence suggest that
anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa around
200,000 years ago, and began moving out of Africa to
colonize the rest of the world around 60,000 years ago.
The man who gave rise to the first genetic marker in
your lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the
region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day
Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000
years ago. Scientists put the most likely date for when
he lived at around 50,000 years ago. His descendants
became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa,
making him the common ancestor of every non-African man
living today.
But why would man have first ventured out of the
familiar African hunting grounds and into unexplored
lands? It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may
have provided the impetus for your ancestors' exodus out
of Africa.
The African ice age was characterized by drought
rather than by cold. It was around 50,000 years ago that
the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt,
introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister
climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara
briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert
changed to a savanna, the animals hunted by your
ancestors expanded their range and began moving through
the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. Your
nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and the
animals they hunted, although the exact route they
followed remains to be determined.
In addition to a favorable change in climate, around
this same time there was a great leap forward in modern
humans' intellectual capacity. Many scientists believe
that the emergence of language gave us a huge advantage
over other early human species. Improved tools and
weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with
one another, and an increased capacity to exploit
resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all
allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new
territories, exploit new resources, and replace other
hominids.
M89: Moving Through the Middle East
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: 45,000 years ago
Place: Northern Africa or the Middle East
Climate: Middle East: Semiarid grass plains
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tens of
thousands
Tools and Skills: Stone, ivory, wood tools
The next male ancestor in your ancestral lineage is
the man who gave rise to M89, a marker found in
90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. This man was born
around 45,000 years ago in northern Africa or the Middle
East.
The first people to leave Africa likely followed a
coastal route that eventually ended in Australia. Your
ancestors followed the expanding grasslands and
plentiful game to the Middle East and beyond, and were
part of the second great wave of migration out of
Africa.
Beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted
once again and became colder and more arid. Drought hit
Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert, and for
the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was
effectively closed. With the desert impassable, your
ancestors had two options: remain in the Middle East, or
move on. Retreat back to the home continent was not an
option.
While many of the descendants of M89 remained
in the Middle East, others continued to follow the great
herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other
game through what is now modern-day Iran to the vast
steppes of Central Asia.
These semiarid grass-covered plains formed an ancient
"superhighway" stretching from eastern France to Korea.
Your ancestors, having migrated north out of Africa into
the Middle East, then traveled both east and west along
this Central Asian superhighway. A smaller group
continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia
and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests
and high country.
M9: The Eurasian Clan Spreads Wide and Far
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: 40,000 years ago
Place: Iran or southern Central Asia
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tens of
thousands
Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic
Your next ancestor, a man born around 40,000 years
ago in Iran or southern Central Asia, gave rise to a
genetic marker known as M9, which marked a new
lineage diverging from the M89 Middle Eastern
Clan. His descendants, of which you are one, spent the
next 30,000 years populating much of the planet.
This large lineage, known as the Eurasian Clan,
dispersed gradually over thousands of years. Seasoned
hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along the vast
super highway of Eurasian steppe. Eventually their path
was blocked by the massive mountain ranges of south
Central Asia—the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and the
Himalayas.
The three mountain ranges meet in a region known as
the "Pamir Knot," located in present-day Tajikistan.
Here the tribes of hunters split into two groups. Some
moved north into Central Asia, others moved south into
what is now Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.
These different migration routes through the Pamir
Knot region gave rise to separate lineages.
Most people native to the Northern Hemisphere trace
their roots to the Eurasian Clan. Nearly all North
Americans and East Asians are descended from the man
described above, as are most Europeans and many Indians.
M45: The Journey Through Central Asia
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: 35,000
Place of Origin: Central Asia
Climate: Glaciers expanding over much of Europe
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens:
Approximately 100,000
Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic
The next marker of your genetic heritage, M45,
arose around 35,000 years ago, in a man born in Central
Asia. He was part of the M9 Eurasian Clan that
had moved to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and
onto the game-rich steppes of present-day Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia.
Although big game was plentiful, the environment on
the Eurasian steppes became increasing hostile as the
glaciers of the Ice Age began to expand once again. The
reduction in rainfall may have induced desertlike
conditions on the southern steppes, forcing your
ancestors to follow the herds of game north.
To exist in such harsh conditions, they learned to
build portable animal-skin shelters and to create
weaponry and hunting techniques that would prove
successful against the much larger animals they
encountered in the colder climates. They compensated for
the lack of stone they traditionally used to make
weapons by developing smaller points and blades—microliths—that
could be mounted to bone or wood handles and used
effectively. Their tool kit also included bone needles
for sewing animal-skin clothing that would both keep
them warm and allow them the range of movement needed to
hunt the reindeer and mammoth that kept them fed.
Your ancestors' resourcefulness and ability to adapt
was critical to survival during the last ice age in
Siberia, a region where no other hominid species is
known to have lived.
The M45 Central Asian Clan gave rise to many
more; the man who was its source is the common ancestor
of most Europeans and nearly all Native American men.
M207: Leaving Central Asia
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: 30,000
Place of Origin: Central Asia
Climate: Glaciers expanding over much of Europe and
western Eurasia
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens:
Approximately 100,000
Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic
After spending considerable time in Central Asia,
refining skills to survive in harsh new conditions and
exploit new resources, a group from the Central Asian
Clan began to head west towards the European
subcontinent.
An individual in this clan carried the new M207
mutation on his Y chromosome. His descendants ultimately
split into two distinct groups, with one continuing onto
the European subcontinent, and the other group turning
south and eventually making it as far as India.
Your lineage falls within the first haplogroup,
R1, and gave rise to the first modern humans to move
into Europe and eventually colonize the continent.
M173: Colonizing Europe—The First Modern
Europeans
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: Around 30,000 years ago
Place: Central Asia
Climate: Ice Age
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens:
Approximately 100,000
Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic
As your ancestors continued to move west, a man born
around 30,000 years ago in Central Asia gave rise to a
lineage defined by the genetic marker M173. His
descendants were part of the first large wave of humans
to reach Europe.
During this period, the Eurasian steppelands extended
from present-day Germany, and possibly France, to Korea
and China. The climate fostered a land rich in resources
and opened a window into Europe.
Your ancestors' arrival in Europe heralded the end of
the era of the Neandertals, a hominid species that
inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about
29,000 to 230,000 years ago. Better communication
skills, weapons, and resourcefulness probably enabled
your ancestors to outcompete Neandertals for scarce
resources.
This wave of migration into Western Europe marked the
appearance and spread of what archaeologists call the
Aurignacian culture. The culture is distinguished by
significant innovations in methods of manufacturing
tools, more standardization of tools, and a broader set
of tool types, such as end-scrapers for preparing animal
skins and tools for woodworking.
In addition to stone, the first modern humans to
reach Europe used bone, ivory, antler, and shells as
part of their tool kit. Bracelets and pendants made of
shells, teeth, ivory, and carved bone appear at many
sites. Jewelry, often an indication of status, suggests
a more complex social organization was beginning to
develop.
The large number of archaeological sites found in
Europe from around 30,000 years ago indicates that there
was an increase in population size.
Around 20,000 years ago, the climate window shut
again, and expanding ice sheets forced your ancestors to
move south to Spain, Italy, and the Balkans. As the ice
retreated and temperatures became warmer, beginning
about 12,000 years ago, many descendants of M173
moved north again to repopulate places that had become
inhospitable during the Ice Age.
Not surprisingly, today the number of descendants of
the man who gave rise to marker M173 remains very
high in Western Europe. It is particularly concentrated
in northern France and the British Isles where it was
carried by ancestors who had weathered the Ice Age in
Spain.
M343: Direct Descendants of Cro-Magnon
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: Around 30,000 years ago
Place of Origin: Western Europe
Climate: Ice sheets continuing to creep down Northern
Europe
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens:
Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic
Around 30,000 years ago, a descendant of the clan
making its way into Europe gave rise to marker M343,
the defining marker of your haplogroup. You are a direct
descendent of the people who dominated the human
expansion into Europe, the Cro-Magnon.
The Cro-Magnon are responsible for the famous cave
paintings found in southern France. These spectacular
paintings provide archaeological evidence that there was
a sudden blossoming of artistic skills as your ancestors
moved into Europe. Prior to this, artistic endeavors
were mostly comprised of jewelry made of shell, bone,
and ivory; primitive musical instruments; and stone
carvings.
The cave paintings of the Cro-Magnon depict animals
like bison, deer, rhinoceroses, and horses, and natural
events important to Paleolithic life such as spring
molting, hunting, and pregnancy. The paintings are far
more intricate, detailed, and colorful than anything
seen prior to this period.
Your ancestors knew how to make woven clothing using
the natural fibers of plants, and had relatively
advanced tools of stone, bone, and ivory. Their jewelry,
carvings, and intricate, colorful cave paintings bear
witness to the Cro-Magnons' advanced culture during the
last glacial age.
This is where your genetic trail, as we know it
today, ends. However, be sure to revisit these pages. As
additional data are collected and analyzed, more will be
learned about your place in the history of the men and
women who first populated the Earth. We will be updating
these stories throughout the life of the project.