As I mentioned in my previous post, Haplogroup J is thought to have diverged around 31,700 years ago in the Near East.. What is modern day Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, northern Iran. You can read the primary science paper that figured this out over here, if you want but the lingo maybe a bit much… it is for me!

Some members of this haplogroup moved out of this area and into other areas such as Europe and north Africa during the last 30,000 years. The sub-Haplogroup that your cousin carries, J2, is found in 6% of Europeans and its frequency drops dramatically as one moves northward away from the Mediterranean. So it is very interesting that your family from Norway are carriers of this haplogroup — but do not be surprised… Almost all Europeans share a deep ancestry to the Middle East.

To answer your question about the Neolithic revolution, let me first tell you that the revolution is a big part of this migration. During this transitional period, prehistoric people changed from hunting and gathering food to farming and raising animals. Technology completely changed as did lifestyle. People began moving not to follow herds of wild game and food sources, but to find fertile land to sow crops.

The revolution happened at different and independent times in the world — but the major event occurred about 10,000 years ago when people in the Middle East developed agriculture and pretty advanced animal husbandry technologies. Again these people, some being Haplogroup J carriers, moved out of the Middle East and settled in Europe — of which were your very deep paternal ancestors.

Kambiz

I’d love to help you out but I need more information about your results. Let me first disclaim that I am not employed nor sponsored by Ancestry.com… just someone with a knack for genetic genealogy and a graduate degree in biology.

Anyways, I have looked at the details of the Paternal Lineage Test. There are two tests — the Y-DNA 33 or Y-DNA 46, which did your cousin pick? And what haplogroup does he belong too? I can probably tell you more about your ancestry if I know what haplogroup he belongs too.

That being said, I’ll try and explain to you what I know about the major European haplogroups. Let me first define haplogroups, in a very basic essence they are chunks of DNA that are inherited as blocks. As you know DNA varies between person to person… but more related people have more similarities in their DNA. When genetic ancestry tests type one’s DNA they compare these chunks of DNA to others and try to observe patterns. When large groups of people share a certain chunk, or haplogroup, they are said to share an ancestry.

Additionally, changes in a halpogroups happen as populations of a shared ancestry split off and radiate. We can still compare the patterns and figure out where more recent haplogroups came from… in otherwords which original haplogroups more recent haplogroups branched off of.

I am assuming that the Paternal Ancient Ancestry is telling your cousin that his ancient ancestors originated from Turkey. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’ll also take a wild guess and suggest that the group that your cousin is related to belongs to the major clade, haplogroup F which makes up for 90% of the Y-chromosome makeup of the world’s population outside of Africa.

Narrowing this down, a branch off of haplogroup F are the haplogroups I and J, which both originated in the Middle East or Caucasus somewhere around 30,000 years ago, and spread to Europe with the Neolithic Revolution. There’s also an R1 branch too. I don’t know which he’s a carrier of really, I’m guessing and giving you some prehistorical background. Oh yeah there’s also haplogroup G, which is less common in Norwegian males, but still noticeable. These are the other Y-chromosome haplogroups found in Europe that can be traced to the Middle East.

Without more information from you I can’t really tell you anything more. It is possible that you have a relatively recent 100% Norwegian paternal lineage. By recent I mean like the last 5,000 or so years… But you got to consider that even ancient Norwegians didn’t suddenly appear in Norway — they came from somewhere. Most modern day Europeans came from ancient populations that migrated out of the Middle East, from modern day places like Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc. It is possible that your Norwegian paternal lineage has been in Norway for as long as your family knows about, but they most likely can be traced to a group of prehistoric people who radiated out of the Middle East.

If you want to tell me which haplogroup your cousin belongs too, let me know in the comments here or if you rather not share this information on a public thread you can email me at kambiz@anthropology.net.

Kambiz

P.S. This graphic illustrates what I just said of the different migrations of all subgroups off of haplogroup F.

P.P.S. Please also tell me if the terminology is confusing… I can rephrase it.

Ray Maxson

I want to introduce a new guest blogger here at Anthropology.net, his name is Jon Entine and he’s a very well known producer and writer. You should be interested in his work.
His new book, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the C…