Deep ancestry!

[lethargic_man]

I posted recently about getting my DNA analysed for my birthday. I mentioned there that it's been shown that many cohanim do derive from a common ancestor, "Y-chromosomal Aaron". It's struck me that working on the assumption that I share this priestly genotype (to be proved when I get the DNA analysis done [edited to add: Now proven!]), I can already say interesting things about my deep ancestry...

Interestingly, the above-linked Wikipedia page suggests, if I understand it correctly, that Sephardi and Ashkenazi cohanim may have distinguishable haplotypes, so it will be interesting to see what that says about our patrilineal family's Sephardi heritage:

At the moment, I've only got one relative's word for it, and against that is the fact that her great-aunt, who was born in England shortly after her parents came here from the Ukraine at the start of the last century, used the Ashkenazi pronunciation in the tape recording my Grandpa made of her in 1978. She also did not mention that the family came from Istanbul before "Russia", and talked about Russian-sounding foodstuffs. Now, all of this may merely indicate that the family became accultured during its sojourn in the Ukraine, but given that our great-grandfather allegedly got kicked out of the family for marrying an Ashkenazi, the family becoming Ashkenazified beforehand doesn't make much sense. Against that in turn is the fact there was both a father and son with the names Bernard Benjamin, which is something Ashkenazim don't do. (The former was known as Benjamin, the latter as Bernard or Boruch.)

[ETA: As it turned out, whilst the DNA evidence ended up supported my family's claim to be of cohanic descent, it also said my patrilineal line was Ashkenazi. Which means either that an Ashkenazi ancestor of mine migrated to Constantinople (I now have documentary evidence the family came from there), married into a Sephardi family and became more Sephardi than the Sephardim—or that the story about the family being Sephardi was a cover-up for the real reason my great-grandfather got kicked out of the family, which we'll never now know.]

J1 Distribution

Looking further back, Wikipedia says that Haplogroup J1, the wider ancestral clade of the Cohan Modal Haplotype, arose 8,000–10,000 years ago, and contains the genetic signatures of the historical expansion of Arabian tribes in northern Africa. (However, it says, some think J1 may have originated 24,000 years ago in the Middle East and spread by means of at least two temporally distinct migratory events.) It is associated today with Semitic speakers in North Africa, and in Jewish populations is found with a frequency of 19.0% amongst Ashkenazim, and 11.9% amongst Sephardim.

J Distribution

The ancestral clade of J1, Haplogroup J, is believed to have arisen roughly 30,000 years ago in the Near East. J and J1 are predominantly found today in Semitic-speaking region—Arabia, north Africa (carried there by the Arabs), Ethiopia, and a little in the surrounding regions.

Distribution of I (the other child clade of IJ)

With the next ancestral clade, IJ, things get more interesting. It arose between 30.5–46.2 kyears ago in West Asia or the Middle East, and is found over much of Europe today, in addition to the above distribution.

IJ is a child clade of IJK, about which Wikipedia says little; it in turn is a descendant of Haplogroup F. This haplogroup and its subclades "contain more than 90% of the world's extant male population, including almost everyone outside of Africa, except for Tibet, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Japan, Polynesia, and communities of indigenous Australians, while also including many men within those regions."

F Distribution

"This ancient haplogroup may have first appeared in North Africa, the Levant, or the Arabian Peninsula as much as 50,000 years ago." (It gives different estimates of 50,300±6500 and 38,700–55,700 years ago.) "However, the location of this lineage's first expansion and rise to dominance appears to have been in the Middle East or somewhere close to it within South Asia; all of Haplogroup F's descendant haplogroups also show a pattern of radiation from South Asia (haplogroups H and K) or the Middle East (haplogroups G and IJ)."

So, assuming I am part of the priestly haplotype clade, it would appear my ancestors have, until less than two thousand years years ago, lived within five hundred miles of Israel. I find this amazing, both that it's possible to discover this, and that they stayed in the same place for so long.

I doubt they would have been living in Israel the whole time: Stephen Oppenheimer points out that during interstadials in the Ice Age what's now the Fertile Crescent was then desert, so it would not easily have been possible to get between Israel and Mesopotamia; and during glacials Israel itself turned into desert. (This resulted in the first modern humans to leave Africa, 120,000-odd thousand years ago, dying out in Israel when the next glacial started 90,000 years ago, and they were trapped with the whole area turning to desert.)

Still, it does mean that I can now know that what they had to deal with during the Ice Ages was deserts, not glaciers or tundra or woolly mammoths [edited to add: unlike my matrilineal ancestors, whom it turns out were building houses out of mammoth bones in Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum]. It further means they were nowhere near India 70,000 years ago when its entire population got wiped out by a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia, an event which leaves its genetic signature in the population to this day.

Going back further, Haplotype F is a subset of CF, about which Wikipedia says little, and CF of CT, which is the common ancestral type of all early migration out of Africa [after the ill-fated attempt mentioned above]. This is believed to have arisen 60,000 years before the present in East Africa.

To complete the story, "Haplogroup BT split off from haplogroup A 70,000 years BP, probably originating in North East Africa. It contains all living human Y-DNA haplogroups except for A (found in the Southern Nile region & South Africa)." The most recent common Y-chromosomal ancestor of living humans, "Y-Chromosomal Adam", lived in Africa between 60 and 90,000 years ago. (Of course, there was nothing special about Y-chromosomal Adam; he merely represents the head of the oldest patrilineal lineage to reach down to today.)

So that's what I now know about the deep ancestry of my putative patrilineal ancestors. I wonder if the deep ancestry of my matrilineal line in any way matches it. Now I have to wait to find out.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The wikipedia article thinks J1 is associated with two migration events - one 'in neolithic times' the other 'more recent'. Any idea if the latter one corresponds to the C7th-and-later spread of Islam or is older than that (and quite possibly much slower and less dramatic!)

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Hmm; I'm assume that's what it meant given the line about being associated with Semitic speakers in North Africa. That could also refer to the Phoenician colonisation of the Mediterranean, but then you'd expect genetic evidence to be left in Spain too. (Actually, it's slightly odd that you don't get Spain from the Moorish conquest either; Ferdinand and Isabella chucked the Moors out of Spain, but I'm surprised they didn't leave any substantial genetic trace.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Oh, by 'associated with semitic speakers' I'd assume a straightforward statistical correlation in living people, without necessarily inferring cause. I actually have no idea what sorts of languages were spoken in North Africa prior to the 7th century (other than guessing that Phoenician and Latin were probably popular amongst the elite at various points, for reasons quite unconnected to the longer-term origins of the bulk of the population).

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Oh, by 'associated with semitic speakers' I'd assume a straightforward statistical correlation in living people, without necessarily inferring cause.

In general, yes; in this particular case knowledge of the Arab invasion tends to imply the two might go together.

I actually have no idea what sorts of languages were spoken in North Africa prior to the 7th century (other than guessing that Phoenician and Latin were probably popular amongst the elite at various points, for reasons quite unconnected to the longer-term origins of the bulk of the population).

Hamitic languages, I believe; principally Berber. (Hamitic languages are the other main branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, formerly known as Hamito-Semitic.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

And yes, interesting that they don't find significant spread into Spain.

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

It's rare for me to say this, but I do hope you find what you expect because I get the feeling you're going to be very disappointed if you don't.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I'll be happy whatever the result is provided it's in enough detail to be interesting.

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

As long as you're prepared to be declared Patagonian Welsh.

I've never believed in any kind "racial purity", Jewish included.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Judaism is not, and has never been, racially defined (which is why I'd be happy to marry anyone from an Afghan to a Zambian provided they're Jewish). I'm quite prepared to discover my lineage has non-Jewish roots. Admittedly, the possibility of Patagonian Welsh is pretty much zero (Cossack or even Khazar is rather more of a possibility).

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

* distracted by linkage *

I love the fact there's there's a "Mega-colossal" on the "Volcanic Explosivity Index".