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The Pearsall Family DNA – Surname
Project
RESULTS
As this family DNA surname project
develops, more information for family member results will be posted.
Individuals will not be identified by name to protect privacy; we will
use surname, location, and a code.
GENOGRAPHIC PROJECT (12-MARKER) RESULTS
Since this project is just starting, I
will share my results so you can have a peek at what you might find. My first
introduction to genetic testing was from the National Genographic’s –
Genographic Project in October 2005.
The 12-marker test results for myself are below:
Type: Y-Chromosome
Haplogroup: I (M170)
Your STRs
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DYS393:
13
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DYS439:
11
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DYS388:
15
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DYS385a:
12
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DYS19:
15
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DYS389-1:
14
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DYS390:
23
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DYS385b:
15
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DYS391:
10
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DYS389-2:
16
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DYS426:
11
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DYS392:
11
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How
to Interpret Your Results
Above are results from the
laboratory analysis of your Y-chromosome. Your DNA was analyzed for Short
Tandem Repeats (STRs), which are repeating segments of your genome that
have a high mutation rate. The location on the Y chromosome of each of
these markers is depicted in the image, with the number of repeats for
each of your STRs presented to the right of the marker. For example,
DYS19 is a repeat of TAGA, so if your DNA repeated that sequence 12 times
at that location, it would appear: DYS19 12. Studying the combination of
these STR lengths in your Y Chromosome allows researchers to place you in
a haplogroup, which reveals the complex migratory journeys of your
ancestors. Y-SNP: In the event that the analysis of your STRs was
inconclusive, your Y chromosome was also tested for the presence of an
informative Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP). These are mutational
changes in a single nucleotide base, and allow researchers to
definitively place you in a genetic haplogroup.
Your Genetic
Journey
Your Y-chromosome results
identify you as a member of Haplogroup I.
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 M170, the defining marker of Haplogroup I.
If you look at the map
highlighting your ancestors' route, you will see that members of
Haplogroup I carry the following Y-chromosome markers:
M168 — M89 —
M170
Today, members of this
haplogroup can be found throughout southeastern and central Europe. Relatively high concentrations exist in two
distinct regions of Europe: among
Scandinavian populations and those in the northwestern Balkans. Some
studies suggest that up to 40 to 50 percent of the men in Nordic
populations of Scandinavia belong to
Haplogroup I. A similar frequency is found around the Dinaric Alps, a
mountain chain in southern Europe spanning areas of Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Serbia and Montenegro, and Albania. Men carrying marker
M170 can also be found in relatively high frequencies in some parts of
southern France and Normandy.
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 is the case for your Haplogroup I, since this branch can be
defined by two markers, either M170 or P19. What this means is that
either of these markers can be used to determine your particular
haplogroup, since every individual who has one of these markers also has
the other. Therefore, either marker can be used as a genetic signpost
leading us back to the origin of your group, guiding our understanding of
what was happening at that early time.
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: Semi-arid 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 semi-arid 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.
M170: Occupying
the Balkans
Fast Facts
Time of Emergence: 20,000 years ago
Place of Origin: Southeastern
Europe
Climate: Height of the Ice Age
Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Hundreds of thousands
Tools and Skills: Gravettian culture of the Upper
Paleolithic
Your ancestors were part of
the M89 Middle Eastern Clan that continued to migrate northwest into the
Balkans and eventually spread into central Europe.
These people may have been responsible for the expansion of the
prosperous Gravettian culture, which spread through northern Europe from about 21,000 to 28,000 years ago.
The Gravettian culture
represents the second technological phase to sweep through prehistoric
western Europe. It is named after a site in La Gravette, France, where a
set of tools different from the preceding era (Aurignacian culture) was
found. The Gravettian stone tool kit included a distinctive small pointed
blade used for hunting big game.
The Gravettian culture is
also known for their voluptuous carvings of big-bellied females often dubbed
"Venus" figures. The small, frequently hand-sized sculptures
appear to be of pregnant women—obesity not being a problem for
hunter-gatherers—and may have served as fertility icons or as emblems
conferring protection of some sort. Alternatively, they may have
represented goddesses.
These early European
ancestors of yours used communal hunting techniques, created shell
jewelry, and used mammoth bones to build their homes. Recent findings
suggest that the Gravettians may have discovered how to weave clothing
using natural fibers as early as 25,000 years ago. Earlier estimates had
placed weaving at about the same time as the emergence of agriculture,
around 10,000 years ago.
Your most recent common
ancestor, the man who gave rise to marker M170, was born about 20,000
years ago and was heir to this heritage. He was probably born in one of
the isolated refuge areas people were forced to occupy during the last
blast of the Ice Age, possibly in the Balkans. As the ice sheets covering
much of Europe began to retreat around 15,000 years ago, his descendants
likely played a central role in recolonizing northern Europe.
It's possible that the
Vikings descended from this line. The Viking raids on the British Isles
might explain why the lineage can be found in populations in southern France
and among some Celtic populations.
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.
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The Genographic results
above provide plenty of clues to deep ancestry (e.g. Haplogroup I), but
not more recent ancestry. To learn
about more recent ancestry, a larger number of markers need to be
tested. Geneticists have
sub-divided Haplogroup I into smaller “branches” based on growing research
into Y-chromosome mutation rates and calculations of MRCAs, thus the
genetic trail does not end… it continues.
The next two diagrams below show how the many
Haplogroups are related and their prevalence throughout the world:
As the map below indicates, haplogroups are not evenly distributed
across all populations. Certain haplogroups are more common to one
population versus another.
Based on the genetic evidence, science is in the process of
mapping human migration across time and distance. The color code below
indicates time in thousands of years haplogroups separated. Thus,
Haplogroup I precursors (M168/M89), branched away from other Middle
Eastern populations about 50,000 years ago:
From the maps below, Haplogroup I can be seen as a European
haplogroup that is largely concentrated in central and northern Europe
(the Balkans, Britain,
Germany, Ukraine, and Scandinavia).
Haplogroup I differs significantly from
other common haplogroups found in Europe,
Haplogroups E3b, R1a, and R1b. Modals (or typical marker values) for
these haplogroups are:
Map of Haplogroup I distribution in Europe:
The diagram below shows how Haplogroup I
can be sub-divided into Haplotypes (also known as sub-clades):
Naming conventions for sub-clades are
currently being revised. The map below shows concentrations of Haplotype
I1a, I1b, I1b2, and I1c prior to renaming to the new convention above:
I1a – [M253, P40, P30, M307 SNPs]
I1b (I1b1*) – [P37.2 SNP]
I1b2
I1c (I1b2a*) – [S24, M223 SNPs]
Scientific report below entitled,
“Phylogeography of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup I Reveals Distinct Domains of
Prehistoric Gene Flow in Europe.”
Haplomaps do not prove where a
particular ancestor once lived due to possible migration and genetic
drift; however, it is a very strong indicator. Over time both genetic
drift and genetic diversity play very important roles in population
genetics:
 
To find out more, especially in order to
test more recent familial relationships, a higher number of STR markers
need to be tested. A 43-marker test is recommended to get adequate
resolution on specific branches to the family tree. With your
participation, there will be more exciting information to share…
TO 43-MARKER RESULTS --à
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