Hugh Bowling (1591-1651) – DNA Rare as Hen’s Teeth – 52 Ancestors #14

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Roberta Estes

Thomas Speake, the immigrant that founded the Maryland line of the Speak(e)(s) family America, was born about 1634, had immigrated by 1660 and was married to Elizabeth Bowling by November of 1663. They lived in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. They had only two known children, John, known as John the Innkeeper, born in 1665, and Bowling Speak born in 1674. We know about their children, because Thomas died August 6, 1681 and he appointed James Bowling, his brother-in-law, guardian of his minor children, naming them.

The Speak family who descends from Thomas Speak who married Elizabeth Bowling carries as many genes from the Bowling family as from the Speak line. We just don’t think of it that way because the Speak surname has been passed down, and of course, the Bowling name, except as a first name, Bowling Speak, and then a middle name, Thomas Bowling Speake, did not get passed to future generations.

The Bowling Y-line DNA would be that of Elizabeth’s father who is believed to be Hugh Bowling, christened August 6, 1591 in Chorley, Lancashire, and died Sept. 7, 1651, buried in Standish, married to Ellen Finch in 1616.

Before our trip to England, we located some Bowling males, and thanks to Shirley Platt, Jerry Bowling agreed to have his Y DNA tested for a special kind of mutation called a SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) that tells us about his haplogroup or his deep ancestral clan.

About 50% of the men of Europe descend from one group of settlers, but in our case, we’ve twice been lucky now, because our Speak line comes from the Dinaric area of the Alps and our Bowling line is even more unique. The Bowling males from Chorley, in Lancashire, carry haplogroup T1. What is T1, you ask? Rare, that’s what it is!!! We’re talking hens-teeth rare here.

And not only is it rare overall, it’s extremely rare in England.

Jerry has a total of 15 low resolution DNA matches, and of those, 3 are other Bowlings, 6 are to other English surnames, of which 3 are Dutton, and the balance are to men from either Portugal or Spain. All of the English surname men match Jerry exactly, and all of the Spanish/Portuguese matches carry one mutation difference. This indicates that the Bowlings are more closely related to the English men than the Spanish/Portuguese men. For example, the Stockton family is from just up the road, in Cheshire.

As we move to higher resolution markers, meaning matches closer in time, the other surnames all fall away and the Bowling men only match other Bowling men. They should be more closely related to Bowling men than men who match genetically but carry different surnames, unless an “adoption” of some sort, name change or illegitimate birth has occurred in the line.

This match with Iberian men doesn’t necessarily mean that the ancestors of the Bowlings were Iberian. It could mean that the Bowling men and the Iberian men both share a common ancestor from elsewhere, with both groups having migrated from that central location. Or, it could mean that the Bowling ancestors were Iberian. Perhaps we can find clues in the history of the population migration pattern of haplogroup T1. Let’s see what we can find.

At Family Tree DNA, there are haplogroup as well as surname projects. People who share a common haplogroup join the haplogroup project that matches their haplogroup designation in order for the population spread and migration pattern of the haplogroup to be studied. Generally, the haplogroup project administrators know more about their haplogroups than almost anyone else. Often they have a personal interest, carrying that haplogroup themselves. They are also often out in front of the scientists who define subgroups. Science is slow-moving by its very nature, and in genetic genealogy, sometimes scientists move so slowly that the science is obsolete by the time it’s actually announced. In other words, the field sometimes moves faster than the scientists can keep up.

In this case, Family Tree DNA, who waits for academic consensus before assigning new haplogroups, shows the SNP marker M70 as defining haplogroup T1, but the administrators, based on both STR markers and SNPs, have grouped Jerry with a small subgroup of people who are from ….are you ready for this….Egypt, Saudi Arabia (2), Bangladesh, Spain, Yemen (2), Bulgaria and the United Arab Emirates. Of this entire grouping, Jerry Bowling is the only individual from the British Isles or even from Europe except for Spain and Bulgaria. This group is labeled at the Alpha-1-Y group. Keep in mind, however, that not all testers join haplogroup projects and it’s obvious from this information that Jerry’s English matches have not joined.

So, in timeline order, the Bowlings are the most closely related to other Bowlings males, then the English non-Bowling men they match, then the Iberian men they match, then the Alpha-1-Y haplogroup T group. On the map above, showing the Bowling matches, the location in Turkey is believed to be the birthplace of haplogroup T.

What do we know about haplogroup T, the parent of subgroup T1?

Haplogroup T is very rare in Europe, with less than 1% of European men carrying haplogroup T. It is much more common in the Middle East, portions of South Asia and portions of Northern and Eastern Africa.

In addition, the distribution of haplogroup T is very spotty, with some areas virtually devoid of this haplogroup, while in other locations we find rich pockets. The map below shows the distribution of haplogroup T.

On the map above, haplogroup T is found most often in Northern and Eastern Africa, in the Middle East and South Asia and in spotty locations in Southern Europe. It’s believed that haplogroup T originated in the Taurus Mountains in Eastern Turkey about 25,000 or 30,000 years ago, with subgroup T1 being born in the Middle East between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago.

A Relief of the Taurus Mountains is shown below. Cyprus is the island just to the south of the mountain range.

So how, then, did our haplogroup T ancestors get to Europe? And not just Europe, but the western periphery of Europe?

There are four scenarios that have historical evidence and fit what we know of the migration path of haplogroup T. Any or all of these could have come into play, or perhaps another scenario we don’t know about today.

Scenario 1 – The Phoenicians

The Neolithic period, as the introduction of agriculture was known, began about 12,000 years ago in the Levant and had arrived in Europe by about 7,000 years ago. It took another 3000 years to spread across Europe from Southeast to Northwest, moving at the rate of .6 -1.3 km per year, or between a third and 4/5^ths of a mile, or between 400 and 1400 yards, just enough for the next generation to move next door to find available, unoccupied farmland.

The path to Europe was originally thought to be through the Caucus region, present day Turkey, Georgia and countries East of the Black Sea, but alternate routes are a probability and for our haplogroup T1 ancestors, a certainty. Another route was likely a coastal Mediterranean route or a slightly different route that bypassed the northern Caucus area for the easier coastal route, crossing into Turkey at Istanbul and then taking the overland route in Europe. These routes would also explain the frequency of haplogroup T found in the Balkan area, into Italy, the Iberian peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean in addition to northern Europe.

The coastal route associated with Phoenician trading is a strong possibility. Phoenician traders, whether they settled or regularly visited, would have deposited their Y-line DNA for centuries in various trading and settlement areas, as shown in the following map from the paper “Identifying Genetic Traces of Historical Expansions: Phoenician Footprints in the Mediterranean”.

As you can see, illustrated on the map below from the National Geographic Genographic project, the population migration route for haplogroup T parallels these settlements.

The Phoenicians were dominant traders 2000-3000 years ago. The following map shows both Phoenician (yellow) and Greek (red) trade routes in 500 BC. The route is extremely suggestive of correlation when compared with the frequency charts compiled from research papers. Many of the locations with the highest frequencies in the Mediterranean today were trade destinations of the Phoenicians or Greeks.

Scenario 2 – The Jews

Haplogroup T is found in very low levels throughout Europe, but they tend to be clustered and are often significantly higher in areas where Jewish families are known to have settled. Below, we see a haplogroup breakdown within the Ashkenazi Jews. This, of course, implies that even if haplogroup T was already resident within Europe, additional families were part of the Jewish diaspora. Clearly not all European men who are haplogroup T were of the Jewish faith, but many are. Haplogroup T dates much further back in time than the Jewish faith, so many people will be distantly related to those of the Jewish faith, but not Jewish themselves.

The Rapalye/Rapparlie Family

We have actual evidence of a haplogroup T1 family found in Germany, France and the Netherlands and having a history of being a Sephardic Jewish from Spain who left with the edict of Nantes in 1492 evicting all Jews. I am intimately familiar with this family because my family in Mutterstadt, Germany is the Rapparlien family, referred to in the Bible, originally from the coast of France at Calais.

The Rapparlie family crest, shown above, is taken from the Rapparlie family Bible in Mutterstadt. The information on the family crest translates as follows:

“Rapparlie. An ancestral Spanish family which came in the 16th century to the Netherlands. From where (our ancestor) Josef Georg, who lived in Leuven, came to Frankfurt (the one of the river Main). He obtained citizen rights there in 1820.”

The translator adds information telling us that the Rapparlie family is likely to have fled from Spain to the Netherlands because of the Decree of Alhambra of 1492, an edict expelling all of the Jews from Spain.

Estimates are that between 165,000 and 800,000 people were evicted with about 28,000 displaced individuals migrating to what is today France, Holland, Germany and England. These displaced Jews became the Shepardic Jews, and were forced to convert to Catholicism before the expulsion, becoming therefore known as Conversos. Their conversions were often insincere, only a method to survive persecution, and therefore they would have been ripe pickings for the rebellion against Catholicism accompanying the Protestant reformation some years later.

The Rapparlie (and variant spellings) family in Valenciennes were known to be silk weavers, and historical records are full of references to Jewish silk weavers in Spain and other Middle Eastern and Northern African locations in the Middle Ages and prior to their eviction from Spain in 1492.

Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews

The Ashkenazi Jews were known to have been in Europe as early as the Middle Ages in the 4^th century. It is unknown if this early group survived intact, but Jews are again prevalent in the records by the 10^th century. Most of the Jews were clustered in cities, trade centers, as their high rates of literacy and knowledge of trades made them successful and desirable, if sometimes looked down upon because the Christian church forbade Christians from participating in usury (money lending in exchange for interest), which the Jews embraced heartily.

Conversely, the Jews maintained their separate living quarters, communities and family units, practiced endogamy (married only within their Jewish community) and they too looked down up on their neighbors. Unfortunately, this mutual distrust and antipathy was the seed of eventual anti-Semitic discrimination and ultimately, attempted genocide.

The Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and again in 1497, and many settled in Europe, but the two Jewish groups tended to maintain separate communities as their beliefs, practices and languages had come to differ in the centuries they had both been separated from their motherland.

Following the Roman takeover of Judea, the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem in 70AD. They continued to be residents of Palestine for several hundred years, but groups began to look for opportunities elsewhere and they began to be found in other locations in Mesopotamia and dispersed within the Mediterranean region. The largest concentrations were in the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, including Rome itself. Smaller communities are recorded in Gaul (France), Spain and North Africa. Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople (current day Istanbul) in 380 and Jews were increasingly marginalized.

The Germanic invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 5^th century by tribes such as the Visigoths, Franks, Lombards and Vandals caused massive economic and social instability within western Europe, contributing to its decline. In the late Roman Empire, Jews are known to have lived in Cologne and Trier as well as in what is now France. However, it is unclear whether there is any continuity between those Roman communities and the distinct Ashkenazi Jewish culture that began to emerge about 500 years later.

After 800 AD, Charlemagne’s unification of former Frankish lands with northern Italy and Rome brought a brief period of stability and unity in western Europe which created new opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle once again north of the Alps. Many Jewish merchants embraced occupations in finance and commerce. From that time to the present, the Ashkenazi are well documented in Europe.

Unfortunately, their lives in Europe were not always stable, and with the onset of the Crusades, they were evicted from England in 1290, France in 1392 and parts of Germany in the 1400s, pushing them eastward into Poland, Lithuania and Russia. By the 1400s, the Ashkenazi Jewish Communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This area which eventually fell under the domination of Russia. Austria and Prussia (Germany) would remain the center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust. A painting on the previous page of Ashkenazi Jews praying on Yom Kippur was painted in 1878 by Maurycy Gottlieb in his hometown of Drohobych.

During the Holocaust, of the 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, about 6 million, more than two-thirds, were systematically murdered because of their Jewish faith or heritage. More than 91% of the Polish Jews died, 82% in
the Ukraine and between 50 and 90% in other European nations (Germany, France, Hungary and the Baltic states). Sephardic communities suffered similar depletions in a few countries including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia. At this time, many Jews began to immigrate, to the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia and Argentina where they and their descendants are found today. At right, refugee Jews are portrayed arriving in London, poor and destitute, but alive.

Scenario 3 – Phoenician, Jewish or Maybe Moors?

First, let me say we simply don’t have the definitive answer to this question, but let’s use what records we do have to try to narrow the possibilities.

The Bowling family first has records from 1520 in Chorley, in Lancashire, England. This Bowling family was, indeed, Catholic, as was the rest of England in 1520. The Protestant Reformation had not yet happened and wouldn’t until in the 1530s, specifically, 1534 when Henry VIII declared himself the head of the church in England and broke ties with Rome.

After that, the Bowling family, along with the Speak family, the Finch family and others would staunchly refuse to become Protestants.

It’s hard for me to believe that the Bowling family was Jewish in 1492, when only 28 years later, or one generation, we find them in England, and not coastal England, but in the middle of Lancashire. Even harder for me to believe is that they would become Catholic, the religion that persecuted them so terribly and forced the Jews to leave Spain in such desperate straits. If they were going to become Catholic, they would simply have converted and stayed in Spain. It would have been a lot easier that way.

They could have been Phoenician. They could also have been Moorish, as the Moors from the Middle East and North Africa invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and called the territory Al-Andalus, an area which at different times comprised Gibraltar, most of Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. There was also a Moorish presence in what is now southern Italy, primarily in Sicily which also has a significant amount of haplogroup T, although none that matches the Bowling line.

This 13^th century painting depicts Moors in Iberia.

Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Al-Andalus sent periodic raiding expeditions to loot the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives. In a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, the governor of Córdoba took 3,000 Christian slaves.

Similarly, Christians sold Muslim slaves captured in war. The Knights of Malta attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a center for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turks. Malta remained a slave market until well into the late 18th century. One thousand slaves were required to man the galleys (ships) of the Order.

The religious difference of the Moorish Muslims led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe called the Reconquista. The Fall of Granada in 1492 saw the end of the Muslim rule in Iberia.

Perhaps the history of Lancashire itself can help us understand how our ancestors might have settled in that region.

History of Lancashire

In the Domesday Book, written in 1086 after William the Conqueror conquered England in 1066, some of the lands now within Lancashire had been treated as part of Yorkshire. The area in between the Mersey and Ribble Rivers (referred to in the Domesday Book as “Inter Ripam et Mersam”) formed part of the returns for Cheshire. Although some have taken this to mean that, at this time, south Lancashire was part of Cheshire, it is not clear that this was the case, and more recent research indicates that the boundary between Cheshire and what was to become Lancashire remained the river Mersey. Once Lancashire’s initial boundaries were established in 1182, it bordered Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, and Cheshire.

Lancashire takes its name from the city of Lancaster, which itself is means ‘Roman fort on the River Lune’, combining the name of the river with the Old English cæster, which referred to a Roman fort or camp. The county was established some time after the Norman conquest when William the Conqueror gave the land between the Ribble and the Mersey, together with Amounderness, to Roger de Poitou. In the early 1090s Lonsdale, Cartmel and Furness were added to Roger’s estates to facilitate the defense of the area south of Morecambe Bay from Scottish raiding parties, which travelled round the Cumberland coast and across the bay at low water, rather than through the mountainous regions of the Lake District.

Scenario Four – Roman Soldiers, Slaves or Conscripts

From this information, we know two things. First, there was a Roman fort in this area, and second there were Scottish raiding parties. This DNA is not Scottish, so we can discount that but what it does tell us is that the fort was very probably heavily fortified and the soldiers patrolled throughout the region to protect it from the Scots.

We also know, from our visit to Chester, that a Roman fort was also located there. A little additional research yields even more interesting information, revealing a Roman fort right in the Ribble Valley at a location called Ribchester, shown below, which is located on the Ribble River half way between Gisburn, the home of the Speake family and Charnock Richard, the home of the Bowling family, about 10 miles from each.

Furthermore, this fort is much older than the Domesday Book. The first fort at Ribchester was built in timber in AD 72/73 by the Roman Twentieth Legion. The fort was renovated in the late 1st century AD and was rebuilt in stone in the early 2nd century. During the life of the fort, a village grew up around it becoming Ribchester. A fort remained at Ribchester until the 4th century AD and its remains can still be seen around the present village.

Romans also settled Sarmatians at Ribchester. In those days Ribchester was known as Bremetennacum and is known chiefly as the retirement home of the Sarmatians. Checking the distribution map, there is a high concentration of haplogroup T along the southwest Caspian Sea and a less dense concentration in western Iran and Iraq. Areas either long Iranian for millenia or well within the sphere of Iranian influence.

The map below shows the following locations:

The Lowbarrow Bridge location of the Roman fort recorded in the Domesday Book
Gisburn – home region of the Speak family
Ribchester, location of the Roman fort in the Ribble Valley
Charnock Richard, home region of the Bowling Family
Chester, location of a third Roman fort

In other areas in England, in particular, along the line of Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland, where we find several Roman forts and fortifications, we also find Mediterranean and North African DNA, quite a bit of it, and concentrated in pockets surrounding the forts. We know that not all Roman soldiers were Roman citizens, some were slaves and some were conscripted. Many slaves volunteered for military duty. And the Romans, of course, as soldiers will do, sometimes left their DNA behind, if they didn’t marry outright with the local females.

So Who Are We???

I really don’t think the Bowling family has a Jewish history. In part because they have no Jewish matches at all, nor matches in highly Jewish areas. Also, the known history of the family does not mesh with what would have happened historically at that time. England was not a Jewish haven, especially not the countryside. London might be another story, but Lancashire, in the Ribble Valley? I don’t think so as there is absolutely no evidence to support this.

The Bowling ancestors could have been Phoenician and found their way to the Iberian peninsula in that manner, but if they were, I would think we would see a path of matches throughout the Mediterranean, particularly on Greece, the southern end of Italy and on Sicily, and we don’t. We see Middle Eastern matches, Iberian matches and then English matches with only a couple of exceptions.

The Bowling men could be Moors, except the Moors didn’t invade the Iberian peninsula until about 300 years after the Roman occupation of England ended, meaning the Romans were no longer sending troops to England so the dates with Moors are problematic.

The scenario that fits best is that the Bowling ancestors were likely slaves or conscripted soldiers of the Roman legion that conquered England beginning in AD43. The Roman occupation continued until about the year 500 when the Saxons invaded. This means that Romans lived in Britain, among the British for about 400 years which equates to about 16 generations, plenty of time to assimilate with the local population.

The Roman empire from the year 43AD to 409 is shown below.

In time, slaves and captives became part of the Roman army, willingly or not, conscripts or otherwise, that invaded and subsequently ruled England for the next 400 years. Slavery was part of Roman life and captive soldiers and their family were traditionally sold into slavery. Note, on the map above, that the entire Mediterranean basin fell under the Roman rule, including several Middle Eastern locations where Bowling haplogroup matches are found.

This relief below, from Smyrna, present day Izmir, Turkey, shows a roman soldier leading 2 Turkish slaves away in chains.

Regardless of whether the Bowlings paternally are Moors, Phoenicians, Roman soldiers, Roman slaves or Jews, we share a common heritage between all of these groups – back in the Middle East before these groups were separately defined as such. Our origins are firmly tied there, for tens of thousands of years, in the land of sand and forbidding mountains, the Holy Land and the religious well from which Christianity, the Muslim faith and the Jewish religion all sprang. The Taurus Mountains and the Middle East. This is the land of our Bowling forefathers, before Lancashire…this is our homeland.

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Houston Chronicle Article Features Gene by Gene Founders

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Roberta Estes

On Sunday, March 16^th, 2014, the Houston Chronicle features an article about Houston’s own entrepreneurs, Max Blankfeld and Bennett Greenspan who founded Gene by Gene, parent company of Family Tree DNA. Below, in a photo from the Chronicle, they hold samples of DNA trayed and ready to run in their Gene by Gene lab.

How many of you know that the pair began as a photographic film salesman and a watchmaker? This just proves what passion and innovation can and will do. Impossible is not a word either man knows.

Begun in 2000 as a retirement business, today Family Tree DNA has tested over 600,000 people directly and another half a million people through National Geographic through the Genographic and Geno 2.0 projects.

Their business model: Buy what you can afford. Don’t hire anyone you might have to lay off. Invest in automation and technology.

This seems to be working, as they are profitable and have provided a total of over 5 million discrete tests, between Family Tree DNA and the other Gene by Gene testing companies which provide medical and paternity testing.

The story of how the company began is legendary in DNA circles. Bennett Greenspan, a frustrated genealogist who had hit a dead end approached Dr. Michael Hammer at the University of Arizona. One might suggest that approached isn’t really the correct word. Hounded might be better. Bennett understood that his Y chromosome would match that of someone else who shared a paternal ancestor, and he wanted to find a lab to do that test. Michael Hammer finally simply acquiesced to get rid of Bennett, with the now infamous throw away line, “You know, someone should start a business doing this.” Never, never say that to an entrepreneur.

As reported in the Chronicle, reflectively, Dr. Hammer, an adviser to Gene by Gene and a regular speaker at the Family Tree DNA annual genetics conference, says today, “It was just the right time, right place. No one thought this was going to turn into anything.” Michael had obviously never met a man like Bennett.

I’ve known Bennett for 13 or 14 years now. It’s easy to see him as a successful businessman. But to know Bennett is to remember that he is truly a genealogist at heart, and everything he does with Family Tree DNA has genealogy as its heart and soul. If you walk into his office, you will be immediately reminded of this fact, and it’s hard to see Bennett as anything else other than one of us – just a kind-hearted genealogist seeking answers. In the photo below from the Chronicle, Bennett stands in front of his ancestor timeline which resides on his office wall. I wonder how many of these ancestors he has represented by DNA haplogroups today.

Thank you so much Bennett, for pushing that envelope, hounding Dr. Hammer and birthing genetic genealogy. Today, Max and Bennett are truly shepherding consumer genetics to the next step.

“We took science that was performed in a stuffy lab and brought it into the general public,” Greenspan said.

Thank Heavens they did. We are all the beneficiaries.

To read the rest of the article and for more photos, click here.

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Clannishness, Clans and Locating Ancestral Origins?

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Roberta Estes

JayMan in Jayman’s Blog which focuses on Human BioDiversity (HBD) has recently been writing a series about clans, clannishness and where the people in these groups came from. His focus has really been on differences between groups of people, but it occurs to me that this information can also be used in reverse. For example, if your ancestors are found in a particular location, you can use these tools to perhaps gain some insight into their origins, or at least where you might want to first look, and why.

Let me also say that exceptions are always possibilities. For example, my line of Estes family came from Deal in Kent and settled in Virginia. But one of my Abraham Estes’s cousins did settle in New England. So take a look and enjoy.

Ranking of the Clannishness of the Founding Fathers

Maps of the American Nations

There’s a Facebook Group for Surname Distribution Mapping as well you might want to follow.

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Cavendish Lab at Cambridge University

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Roberta Estes

The old Cavendish Lab at Cambridge University, where Watson and Crick discovered DNA, is kind of like Mecca for people who love genetics. So is the Eagle Pub where they ate lunch daily and announced their discovery. I’m not convinced which is the more important.

Our family tour in September, 2013 was scheduled to visit Cambridge, England, after leaving London. I’ve been truly blessed this trip with the most wonderful coincidences. In London, our hotel was located just across Hyde Park from the Science Museum where Watson and Crick’s original DNA model is housed. In Cambridge, we are staying right around the corner from the Cavendish Lab where Watson and Crick discovered DNA. Talk about literally walking in the footsteps of the masters.

I was pleased when I discovered Cambridge on the itinerary, and I googled to find the Eagle Pub. I was excited to find that it was indeed within walking distance of the Cambridge City Hotel where we were staying. Although I don’t drink, I would visit the pub and raise a non-alcoholic brew for Watson and Crick’s momentous discovery. Problem is, I discovered, that they didn’t have any non-alcoholic brew. In fact, most of England views non-alcoholic brew as “why bother.” While I agree in concept, sometimes it’s not by choice.

Wondering why the Cavendish Lab is important?

The Cavendish Lab at Cambridge University was the birthplace of the discovery of DNA. James Watson and Francis Crick discovered DNA in this lab in 1953. This year of course is the 60^th anniversary of that discovery and James Watson was interviewed in celebration. Crick passed away in 2004.

Before visiting Cambridge, I tried to find the Cavendish Lab on a map and it looked to be entirely across the campus, which is not small. That made no sense to me, since the Eagle Pub was close to the hotel, but I accepted that I might not be able to see the lab. I’d have to be satisfied with the Eagle Pub.

Why is the Eagle Pub important? It’s where Watson and Crick lunched and probably did a lot of brainstorming. Pubs are like that in England.

On our day of arrival, a walking tour of the city with a guide, a retired professor, was scheduled for that afternoon. After we began the tour, around the first corner, on a street that was only wide enough for one car, and then no cars, I remembered to ask the guide about the original Cavendish Lab. Given that he was a retired professor, I figured if anyone knew, he would.

He smiled broadly, and said “I’m so glad you asked…it’s right up ahead.” To say I was thrilled is an understatement. In fact, this is one of the few locations I’m actually IN the photos, um, actually, in most all the photos. My cousins were so excited because I was excited that they took pictures of me. This was definitely “my day” on the trip. This photo of me, taken in front of the Eagle Pub pretty much sets the mood.

The Cavendish Lab, it turns out, was on the right hand side, just about where the road narrowed too much for any vehicle. There was a sign mounted on the wall of the building that this was indeed the old Cavendish Lab. There is a new Cavendish Lab across campus, the one I had seen on the map. So far, my luck on the DNA trail had been remarkably good.

I, of course, was thrilled to be where Watson and Crick began what would be a blooming industry 60 years later with a world of promise. In another 50 years, DNA will be responsible for the cure of many diseases we feel are hopeless or nearly so today. Like at the Science Museum in London, I was very disappointed to see it relegated to not even the footnotes. I tried to find a DNA souvenir, t-shirt, hat, something to purchase and there was not one DNA thing in any store. For shame! Come on – Double Helix Ale anyone???

Cambridge is an ancient medieval city and it’s evident everyplace. The Cavendish Lab is arguably on the oldest “street,” or cartpath, in Cambridge. I say this because the oldest church is right across that cartpath and dates from about the year 1000. At that time, churches were always at the center of the village. Today, that cart-path is not wide enough for a car, and there is no room to expand.

Today, the ancient church is of course physically tied into several other buildings and abuts others, as all buildings here generally are, especially old buildings. This photo shows the oldest church constructed of chocolate brown stones, another very old church as well, and the spires of King’s College Chapel begun by Henry the 6th and finished by Henry the 8th in the distance to the far right. Note that this is a one lane street at this point that shortly narrows to exclude vehicles. To put this in perspective, the Eagle Pub is just about where the trees are on the far right, beside the King’s College Chapel spire.

In most of England, and assuredly in Cambridge, what we consider is the US to be old buildings, a hundred or two years old are considered to be rather new. Their old buildings were constructed before Columbus “discovered” the Americas.

I can only imagine the nurturing quality of studying and working among such history. I suppose one would get used to it, but I hope it would never be taken for granted.

There are two entrances to the lab. One is through this door.

Watson and Crick exited through this door, walked down this cartway every day for lunch and ate at the Eagle Pub, just a short walk away and around the corner in front of the church. It’s here that they fined tuned their DNA research as do both students and professors yet today.

The second entrance to the lab is through this archway which actually forms a tunnel under the building. Half way through the tunnel is an entrance to the buildings on both sides.

Walking a short distance down the cobblestone street, just past the chocolate colored church, you intersect a road and slightly to the left is the Eagle Pub, where Watson and Crick ate lunch most days and discussed their projects. Rest assured that DNA was indeed a hot topic of conversation here. In fact, it’s reported that they were so excited about their discovery that they told everyone in the pub that they had discovered the secret of life, only to have everyone ignore them and just go back to their pint of ale. It had to be an extremely anti-climactic day for them – but if any patron remembers the crazy men in the pub that day that announced the discovery of the recipe of life itself – they indeed were a witness to a momentous discovery.

Inside the pub, in a stairway to the loo (bathroom) we found this sign.

The Pub actually holds more information about the discovery of DNA than the university location does. I find this really unfortunate, as well as ironic, but maybe not as many people as I imagine might be interested in the history of DNA.

I would think they would at least mark the DNA “Double Helix Trail.” It could end, or begin, in London at the Science Museum where the helix model resides today.

The pub itself is in a very historic area, literally in the middle of the “old town”. Here’s a photo of the street itself, the pub, on the right.

Cambridge is a place of thinkers, and obviously, of doers as well. It turns out that DNA was not the only discovery in the Cavendish labs.

I wonder what other discoveries were made in these hallowed halls. Did you know that Mitochondrial DNA was first mapped at Cambridge in 1981, hence, the CRS or Cambridge Reference Sequence? What is it with DNA here? Rosalind Franklin, pioneer molecular biologist and a key contributor to the discovery of DNA studied at Newnham College at Cambridge, but when she made her x-ray diffraction images of DNA, utilized by Watson and Crick, she was at King’s College in London.

Cambridge is steeped in history never more than a few feet away. In the photo of the pub, above, if you turn right when the street ends, you’ll be greeted with this scene, the King’s College Chapel with its rich history of starting and stopping construction through the reigns of 3 kings and the English Civil War. This is the steeple you saw in the distance in the photo of the street where the Cavendish lab is located.

The architecture of this building is utterly stunning.

The first part was built by Henry the 6^th for the 70 professors at Cambridge at the time. The second part to the rear was finished many years later by Henry the 8^th, after the War of the Roses and was very opulent with carvings on all the walls, heraldry, etc. The first part was very simple by comparison. The picture below is of the second part.

One of the most impressive aspects of this chapel, aside from the stunning windows, is the ceiling made of carved stone flying buttresses itself. Because of the ceiling construction and the amount of glass in the windows, it’s actually very light inside and I could take these photos without flash photography which was prohibited.

The church forms part of a 4 building complex that is connected in a square and inside is a courtyard.

I can’t even imagine going to school is this wonderfully nurturing environment. No wonder DNA was discovered here. No one wanted to leave. My university was constructed of concrete blocks, for the most part, and everyone left as soon as possible.

Bachelor degrees at Cambridge are 3 year degrees, not 4, and if you live in Europe, it’s about 9,000 pounds which would be about 14,000 US dollars without lodging and food which is about another 8,000 pounds. If you’re from elsewhere, it’s 18,000 pounds plus lodging. Nurturing and inspiring, yes, but not inexpensive.

Cambridge is a beautiful and inspirational medieval city sprouting seeds for the future. There is a beautiful, ethereal umbilical connection between its past, my present and mankind’s future. It is truly awe-inspiring. As I pondered and reflected upon all of this, I was struck with the weight of responsibility that all of us who work with DNA carry.

DNA is a gift, indeed, a map, of the past, of the present and a cartographic key to the future. We have the responsibility and obligation to work with this Divine gift, ethically, morally and with only the best and most honorable of intentions. We now have the key to the genome, the Holy Grail of humanity. What will we do with it? What does the future in another 60 years, 2073, hold? Everyday in this new field, as we work individually to create a better whole, we are weaving our genetic legacy.

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Finding Family the New-Fashioned Way

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Roberta Estes

When I first started doing genealogy, I didn’t even realize “it” had a name, or that I was doing “it.” I am truly the accidental genealogist. I simply wanted to find out something about my father’s family. He died in a car accident when I was in grade school and we didn’t live anyplace close to his family. I think the nesting instinct had set in. I was pregnant for my second child.

I did discover some information, but that ended with the memory of older family members. And then, my genealogy endeavors took a decade long holiday while I finished my master’s degree and other life events happened.

One day, I saw an announcement in the newspaper that the local Mormon Church was having a genealogy workshop. They invited you to bring your sticky problem and come on by. I took that same child with me that evening, somewhat apprehensive about the session being a “trap” to get folks into the church. The Mormon people never use genealogy as a way to entrap non-Mormons – so no worry there.

As genealogists have discovered, one discovery leads to two at least more questions. I was hooked that night at the Mormon church. We found the marriage record of my Lazarus Estes and Elizabeth Vannoy on microfiche. I still remember the awe and thrill of that moment, looking at that scratchy old record. Anyone who asks when you’re going to be finished with your genealogy just doesn’t understand the blank noncomprehending stare they receive in reply.

What I expected to find, after my initial foray to find some living relatives, was history. I didn’t expect to find a lifelong obsession. And I had no idea I’d find other, more distant family, that I would become very close to.

My cousin Daryl comes to mind. We met over the internet researching a common family line a decade ago. She has become my sister-of-heart and my travel companion. In fact, here’s a photo we took, trapped inside a cemetery in Tennessee. Thankfully, it WAS fenced and the fence was between us and the bull, even if we were trapped inside. I’m still not sure if that bull was unhappy with our presence in HIS field or hopeful of adding us to his harem. Yep, these are things you only do with very close friends or family! And what great memories we’ve made.

I was thinking this morning about how genealogy has changed. For years, we wrote letters. Remember watching for the mailman to arrive and running to the mailbox? I surely do, especially when you had written someplace for a record and were expecting its arrival. All genealogists knew exactly what time the mail was supposed to arrive!

As time evolved, the advent of e-mail has been a huge boon to genealogy. Now, we very seldom write letters and we interact in the space of minutes or hours with new and old cousins.

I’ve also stopped trying to quantify “cousin.” If we’re related and not a parent/sibling aunt/uncle niece/nephew, then we’re “cousins,” kin, and that’s all that matters. With the advent of DNA testing, I’ve discovered I’m “cousin” to more people than I’m not! My, how the world has both grown and shrank in one fell swoop. I am so very blessed to have so many genealogically discovered cousins, here, as well as many who live in other countries – Marja in Finland who I met in November, David in Australia, Doug in New Zealand who I met up with in England, John in Japan, Yvette in the Netherlands who I’ll meet this year, and the list goes on.

The next big connector was and is Facebook. Now, the first question you ask a new cousin is “are you on Facebook.” While e-mails are personal, directed to you individually, you can get to know your cousins on Facebook in another way, by watching what they do and say. I have a new cousin Loujean, discovered just before Thanksgiving. We are Facebook friends, and I think I know her better than I know my nieces and nephews who are not on Facebook. And yes, I’m dead serious. I have no idea what those nieces and nephews are doing, but I can tell you all about Loujean:)

So, now I’m curious about your experiences with both genealogy and genetic genealogy. Aside from the answers to historical questions, has genealogy or genetic genealogy enhanced your life by adding people to your list of family that you care about? Has it changed your life? If so, how? You can answer the polls below, or leave comments, or both.

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36 Wives and the Ambassador

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Roberta Estes

A few days ago, I introduced you to Said (pronounced Sigh-eed) Zahouani, “my chauffeur” who lives in London. Jim and I spent a lovely day with Said, who literally “saved the day.” It went from a really bad day to a wonderful treat. Not only did he take us wonderful places, he was just so nice and friendly. We chatted and one topic led to another and we talked, of course, about families and DNA testing. I mean, did you expect anything else?

I love to learn about other cultures, and Said was born in Morocco. The farthest back he knew was about his grandfather, who never left Morocco. I asked him how people in Morocco obtained last names – in relation of course to Y DNA testing – and he told me a fascinating story.

Said’s last name, Zahouani, was his grandfather’s nickname. His grandfather’s nickname meant “womanizer” in Morocco, in the native language.

Why was that his nickname?

Because he had 36 wives.

Yes, I said 36 wives.

No, that is not a typo.

The first thing I thought of was a harem, but no, Said said his grandfather did not have a harem. He was married 36 individual times, to 36 different women attempting to have a male heir. His 36^th wife indeed succeeded in producing such, Said’s father.

Yes, I did the math.

No, I didn’t ask….

But I had questions, so many questions, that I just couldn’t bring myself to ask….like, for example….how did he keep their names straight??? Did he refer to them as “my 25th wife?”

I remember all too clearly my bigamist relative (who got caught, twice no less) whose two wives had the same first name and the terrible jokes the rest of the family made about that….but I digress.

What did Said’s grandfather’s family think of this? Were there female children? Did he get divorced between marriages? Moroccan culture permits multiple marriages, generally up to 4, so long as the first wife gives permission, although today this traditional way-of-life has pretty much gone by the wayside in Morocco. And 36 is a lot more than 4.

Which begs another question. How, simply how, does one convince 36 women to do this? I mean, maybe the first and second weren’t too tough….but how do you convince number 20, or 30, or 36?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I figure either Said’s grandfather was phenomenally wealthy, incredibly handsome or unbelievably silver-tongued, or maybe all three.

No, I simply couldn’t bring myself to ask. But just think of how many people he might be able to DNA test.

Needless to say, I was fascinated, both with the idea of 36 wives and also by the fact that his grandfather’s nickname then became the family surname. I thought I had heard just about every type of surname acquisition story in existence by now, but I was obviously wrong!

Said is fascinated too. He is going back to Morocco to find out more about his ancestors and to preserve this heritage for his children and grandchildren. He is interested in DNA testing as well and what additional ancestral information it might hold. I told him I’m guessing he’s E1b1b1 – given that this haplogroup is so prevalent in Morocco – but he might be something else quite exotic. I’d love to know, and so would he.

So I left Said that evening, thinking I would never see him again. We exchanged cards. However, that was not the case, because a few days later, our plans for getting from London to Dover failed to materialize and not wanting to repeat our London arrival experience, we called Said once again who personally came to drive us to Dover.

He also forgave me for spilling my coffee in his beautiful black Mercedes. The man is a Saint, I swear. And a very gracious one as well. And he didn’t even say Bloody Hell. I, on the other hand, was utterly mortified….

On the way to Dover, we had the opportunity to chat once again, and he took me to another quilt shop too, on the way, even after I spilled my coffee. He had told his friends and family about DNA testing and several are interested.

I had told several people about Said as well.

As I’ve thought about this experience, I’ve realized a few things.

First, we are all ambassadors, whether we realize it or not. What we say and do reflects not only on us, but what we represent – be it a country, a culture, our family, a product, an employer or our passion. We either influence people positively or negatively, all of the time, whether we realize it or not. All of us reading this are ambassadors for genetic genealogy.

Second, there is always an interesting story just waiting to be found. Just ask. After all, how many people do you know whose grandfather had 36 wives???

Third, sometimes a bad day really isn’t a bad day. The day with Said was the best day we had in London. And yes, angels do walk among us, or maybe come to fetch us with their contemporary flying carpet, a black Mercedes.

Said’s and his company are waiting to serve people in London and onto the continent through the Chunnel as well. I’ve suggested to Said that he put together a “Quilt Tour” for London visitors and I’ll be sending him quilt shop information. I introduced him to shop owners as well as we threaded our way through London. I would feel absolutely safe with this man anyplace, with or without my husband. I’d send him to retrieve my daughter, or granddaughter, without a second thought. In fact, I’d insist that he retrieve them! There are 25,000 other cab drivers in London and I’m convinced that not one is as good as Said!!!

So, if you’re planning a visit to London, please call Said. He can turn a bad day into a good one and he will rescue you from whatever pickle you are in. What a wonderful ambassador!

Here is his contact information:

Inside UK Phone: 07 930 133 584

Outside UK Phone: 004479 30 13 35 84

Personal e-mail: saidzahouani@hotmail.com

And no, by the way, this is not a paid commercial. It’s called a “good turn” and paying it forward. You just never know when you might need to be rescued in London. Maybe at the Who Do You Think You Are Conference held each winter???

Maybe, if we are lucky, in a future story we’ll see what Said’s DNA has to say about his ancestors! If you see him, ask him, and tell him the DNA Lady said hello!!! He’s entirely too much a gentleman to say anything about that spilled coffee in his car….but I guarantee you…he’ll remember me!!! Knowing Said, he’ll just smile and say something very gracious:)

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London, the Palatines and…well….Bloody Hell

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Roberta Estes

You know, I manage to make friends wherever I go in the world. Sometimes, serendipity happens, and I am ever so grateful and always somewhat amazed when it does. That’s how I met Said, in London, on a very bad day. Grab yourself “a spot of creamed tea,” because I’m going to tell you a story and we’re going on an adventure….so come right along!!!

When Jim, my husband, and I arrived in London, we had flown all night and attempted to sleep on the plane. The infamous red-eye flight. Now just doing that is enough to make one a bit grouchy. Of course, it’s substantially cheaper, which is why we booked that flight. And first class….we only know about that section because it holds the restrooms we can see (without the line) and can’t use.

After we arrived in London, we eventually found the right train station at the airport and drug our suitcases onto the train, and off the train, and on, and off. That little sign that says “mind the gap” means that there is a space between the train and the platform and it’s the perfect size for suitcase wheels. Need I say more??? I’m sure there’s a candid camera someplace filming unsuspecting tourists. I quickly learned how to swear in Brit:) – Bloody Hell.

Yes, Bloody Hell….I love it. I just sounds so British, especially with that nice Cockney accent thrown in….and it’s just so much NICER than what I used to say. Nothing to do with bodily functions, or body parts, or any deity, and, well, Bloody Hell is just cute. You could say it in front of your grandkids and no one would get offended. I mean, even Ron Weasley said it, repeatedly, in Harry Potter. Listen for yourself.

In any case, we arrived outside Paddington Station relatively unscathed and ready for our adventure to begin.

However, we didn’t exactly have what happened next in mind. We had been told that our hotel was “just a couple blocks straight down the street” from the station, an easy walk. Never believe what the Brits tell you in the way of distance – they are the ancestors of many of the people in Appalachia that tell you that whatever destination you are looking for is “just over yonder” too, and believe me, yonder can mean a wide variety of things.

And did I mention that London was having a heat wave? Bloody Hell.

So off we went, with only a phone map that was, shall we say, less than helpful. We walked and asked and walked and asked (well, I asked, Jim didn’t) and drug our luggage along behind, which got progressively heavier. We did eventually find our hotel, several blocks away and nothing resembling a “straight shot” only to discover that the travel agent, or so she calls herself, had not booked us in to the hotel. Well, she had…just 2 days later. And no, they did not have a vacancy. Ahhhhh….Bloody Hell.

Did you know that British English and American English are only distant cousins, much as we are to them? You can only understand about half of what they are saying. So here we are in London, now about noon, hot and sweaty, sleep deprived, in a place with no reservation and no place to go. We were trying to understand the hotel clerk to whom neither English, nor British, was a first language which means we could understand maybe 25% of what she said. However, “no” was unmistakable.

Thankfully, the hotel did help us find another location, just down the street a couple blocks. Does this sound familiar? Everything in London is either “just a couple blocks” or “far away.” So off we went again dragging our luggage. By the time we found the hotel and got settled, we had missed the tours for the day that we had planned to take, all of which left before noon. BLOODY HELL!

One minor hiccup was that the hotel we found did not have air conditioning. They passed out electric fans at the front desk when you checked in. Seriously. And there was literally about 18 inches clearance around the bed between the walls. No chair, no nothing, except the “water closet” which was about 3X5 and explains vividly why they called it a “water closet” in the first place.

When you say you have to go to the bathroom in England, you say you are going to the “loo.” I wrote an entire article about the “loo” for my family Sunday Story, but since there is absolutely no DNA connection to it, I can’t really find a way to work it in Just suffice it to say that in one location, in order to make the shower work, you had to turn on a switch on the wall, turn a knob on a box in the shower and then pull a red string attached to the ceiling over the toilet….but I digress.

By now, I was in a seriously bad mood – otherwise known as an unhappy camper – but I was unwilling to sacrifice the entire rest of the day because we only had two additional days in London and this is one of those trip of a lifetime experiences, it turns out, in more ways than one. In other words, I don’t ever expect to be back in London, except to leave at the end of this trip. And by now, I had already backslid from cute-as-a-duck Bloody Hell to something decidedly less cute and way more American.

So, we decided to call a cab and have them take us to a quilt shop. I’m a quilter and while quilt shops aren’t quite the same as a heritage tour, they are certainly interesting in any country. My husband was game for anything as long as it was in a cool location (read had working AC) and made me happy.

The hotel called us a taxi and not two minutes later, a man in a business suit and tie shows up in the lobby and announced he is here for us. We walked outside to see a beautiful black Mercedes – not a taxi, per se – with both air conditioning and chilled bottled water waiting for us. Things are definitely looking up!

Talk about our lucky day. We had managed to be fortunate enough, luck of the draw, to get a private driver, a chauffeur, for our taxi. And before you choke on the thought of the cost, when they aren’t doing chauffeur service, they do taxi runs for the local hotels, at taxi prices.

We managed to get even luckier. Our driver’s name was Said Zahouani. He took us to the quilt shop, and then he said he would wait for half an hour, no charge. Well, one thing led to another, and he knew some other quilt shop locations too, and off we went for a wonderful afternoon, one shop after another – plus a bakery and coffee.

But that wasn’t all. When he discovered what had happened. He drove and narrated the “tour” that we missed, between quilt shops. He’s specially licensed for that – part of the 3 year process of becoming a licensed “cab driver” in London. Guaranteed, you’ll never look at London cabbies the same way again. They’re amazing!

But it gets better yet – my ancestors – the 1709 “Poor Palatines” lived at a location in London called St. Katherine’s, today known as “St. Katherine’s by the Tower.” I’ll do a future article about the Palatines. Theirs is an amazing story of both resilience and stubbornness. You can see St. Katherine’s to the right of the Tower of London, below, on this 1746 map. In 1825, the area where the church was located was “redeveloped” into a much larger dock area. The church and houses on 23 acres were all demolished.

In 1709, St. Katherine’s was the poorest dock section and the Palatines lived in tents there for nearly a year, waiting for a way to America. The Londoners would come down to view the “Poor Palatines” who were living in a pathetic state. The document below shows a woodcut of the Palatines living in tents, nearly 30,000 of them in a very small area, about 23 acres, plus another 11,000 of the poorest English residents as well. I shudder to think of how it must have smelled in that area and the conditions under which these people lived.Today, as irony would have it, this area is very upscale condos on the River Thames.

Here I am, at St. Katherine’s, standing by one of the rope ties from when the ships used to unload there. Behind me are some of the condos, where the tents that the 1709ers lived in were located. That small circular building to the left of my head – it’s a Starbucks. My, how things have changed!

Said, of course, knew all the back ways everyplace and he took me to where my ancestors lived. This location was on NO TOUR of course. By now, I’ve decided that this isn’t a bad day after all, but my lucky day indeed. He took me to where I could get this wonderful view of the Thames River and Tower Bridge, located very close to the Tower of London.

It’s a moving experience to stand where your ancestors stood, to see what they saw, even if they were living in desperate straits. The plight of the 1709ers was one of poverty, stubbornness and resilience. It’s hard not to at once admire them and shake your head about their overt stubbornness too. I have to wonder, is that genetic??

I had more than one family among these refugees seeking land and resettlement in the American colonies.

When I was planning this trip, I looked to see if any of these lines had DNA tested, and I wasn’t able to find any…..so I’m officially looking for the surnames Kobel, Egli, Schaeffer and Suder from these families and there’s a DNA scholarship for a Y-line descendant of any of these families!

Jacob Kobel born 1682 Hoffensheim, Germany, died 1733 Philadelphia, married Anna Maria Egli who was born in Germany in 1684 and died in Tulpehocken, PA in 1774.

Their daughter Maria Barbara Kobel married Johann Jacob Schaeffer who was born in 1709 in Relsburg, Germany, just before leaving Germany for London, and who died in 1789 in Schuylkill Co., PA.

Jacob Schaeffer’s parents were Johann Nicholas Schaeffer born 1670, Relsburg, Germany, died 1745 Tulpehocken, Berks Co., PA, married Maria Catherine Suder, born 1670 in Relsburg and died in Tulpehocken.

The 1709ers aren’t my only connection to these docks in London.

I have another ancestor, Henry Bolton, born about 1759, who is alleged, along with his brother Conrad Bolton, to have been abducted on the London docks as lads and sold into indentured servitude in the colonies, an unscrupulous practice not terribly uncommon at that time.

Henry Bolton is reported by the family to have arrived on the ship Calvert in 1775 which did, indeed, depart from London. If this is true, then it’s likely that Henry was abducted from this dock area as well. I can just see two teen-age boys messing around, getting themselves into trouble and making a nuisance of themselves – just before they were nabbed. And I can hear their mother warning them against doing just that….can’t you? In fact, maybe they were enticed onto the boat with the promise of a treat, food or payment for some odd job. Maybe this is the same place that they lived and unwillingly departed for America. The tenements, the poor area, were adjacent the docks and everyone left the stench of the overcrowded quarters in the day. I’d love to find any records for Henry and Conrad, anyplace in England.

We spent several hours in and out of the car with Said, and we discovered even more. Said’s parents moved to London when he was a small child, so he was raised a Londoner. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and worked overseas in Brazil for a British firm for several years before meeting his wife and returning to London to start a business of his own.

He owns the Mayfair Chauffeurs – a self-made man – and he drives one day a week to stay in touch with his clients. He is the most courteous, genuine, gracious person you would ever want to meet – and his business is built on exceptional customer service, referrals and repeat business.

Being a history, culture, genealogy and DNA junkie, I of course had to ask him a lot of questions about his family, which he was gracious enough to answer.

If you’d like his contact information, here you go:

Said Zahouani – Inside UK Phone: 07 930 133 584
Outside UK Phone: 004479 30 13 35 84
Personal e-mail: saidzahouani@hotmail.com

______________________________________________________________

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Thanksgiving Conundrum

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Roberta Estes

First Thanksgiving at Plymouth Bay (1621) by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914)

Justin Petrone, like me, is a mixed race person with Native American ancestry, although unlike me, initially, he never thought of himself in those terms. I’ve always known and since I was a child, self-identified myself in that way. Like me, Justin has spent years searching for his elusive ancestors, more often than not, hidden in the mists of time with only suggestions of who their ancestors are by words on tax lists and census records like “free person of color.”

Most of the time, Native people were transparent, until they became at least “civilized” enough to be counted on the census, or taxed or they did something else to bring them into the white man’s realm. More recently, Justin and others like us have been able to confirm, or deny, that heritage via DNA testing. So even if we don’t know exactly who our ancestor is, we are positive THAT our Native heritage is real. In some cases, through DNA testing we can learn which of our ancestral lines is Native.

Most of us who grew up knowing we were mixed blood Native learned years ago that if our ancestors’ tribe survived at all, meaning it was not annihilated by warfare or disease, they don’t accept us. We are not one of “them” and there is no welcome home party. We don’t have the blood quantum necessary to be a tribal member, and therefore, to them, we don’t exist either. Not at all, we’re persona non grata. Yep, you’re “Indian” right up until your admixture level crosses over that magic political line, whatever that is in whichever tribe, and then you’re not Indian at all – don’t exist. All of your Indianness just evaporates that day I guess. Apparently, it’s only in our blood, in our genes and in our hearts that we remain Native after that, because the European culture originally tried to kill off the Native people and the “official” Native people today don’t want any more “members” than they already have clamoring to divide a limited size pie. So we don’t exist.

For many, being denied and relegated to “wannabe” status by “our own people” is devastating, especially for those who really don’t want any part of the financial pie. Many simply want to belong, to understand the culture and their heritage – to have an educational avenue to recover in some small way that which was stripped and taken from their ancestors so violently. To have this cultural travesty being perpetrated a second time by the very people who mixed blood descendants feel are their cousins, “their own people,” by being rejected, mocked, and turned away as “not good enough, not Indian enough” is an unexpected emotional blow, a very cold slap in the face and the faces of our Native ancestors.

After all, the tribal members today are the ones who survived comparatively intact, while the descendants of non-tribal member Indians were the ones often most tragically victimized….the ones where the systematic de-Indianization worked. Logic would suggest that those who survived “as Indians” would welcome the descendants of those who did not and in vindication for what was done to their Indian brethren, would want to share the lost culture with their descendants, to resurrect the Indian in the descendant, and to insure that the cultural heritage continues into posterity. But that’s not how it works, in the real political world.

I think of this as we approach Thanksgiving every year. I think of what was taken from our people, my ancestors, and ultimately from me and my children. I think of the sanitized, feel-good stories we were told as we cut and pasted Indians and Pilgrims in grade school as children. I think of the heritage we don’t have, what we don’t know, what is lost forever.

I think of how the culture of denial today has played into exactly what those original Europeans wanted – to strip the Indians of their life, often in order to obtain their land, and if they couldn’t kill all of them, then to strip them of their religion, their language and their culture. There is more than one way to kill an Indian. The government had an official plan for how to do just that….and now the official Tribes are helping them complete the act by denying that heritage to their descendants. Soon, in another generation or two, there will be fewer and fewer, and then no official Indians, as they continue to marry outside of the tribes and the blood quantum drops. Ultimately, the government will have won….by the very hands and rules of the Tribes themselves based on their own blood quantum level required for tribal membership, unless, of course, the tribes change their rules. In that lies the ultimate irony.

It’s terribly unfortunate that a middle ground can’t be found, where descendants can be “affiliated” with ancestral tribes, not full benefit-receiving members. In that way, they could be educated in the traditional way, regain and celebrate their culture and heritage. I would think it would be politically beneficial to the tribes too, because in sheer terms of numbers, there are a whole lot more of “us” non-tribal member descendants than official tribal members. I would think the tribes would see the benefit in having the large contingent of “us” firmly on their “side” of any political argument, not having been flatly rejected and turned away. There is tremendous power in numbers. Just saying….

I try not to feel righteously indignant, but as Thanksgiving approaches and I see the storybook pictures of the Pilgrims and the Indians, and knowing what happened, and continues to happen, I can’t help but feel some level of sadness, anger and sometimes, outrage, at the way the systematic annihilation of the Indian people has been whitewashed and the way their descendants are treated today. This was what motivated me to begin the Native Heritage Project and the Native Names Project to document the names of the Indian people buried in reams and reams of records. This is in addition to various DNA projects to find and document those elusive Native ancestors.

And then, there’s Justin. Poor Justin. Justin has known for some time that he was a Native descendant. He has been searching for that connection, exactly which one of his ancestors was the Native person – not easy to discern in colonial America. So often, Indian heritage was very well hidden due to the various insidious forms of discrimination that were inflicted upon these people and their families well into the 1900s. Justin and I have exchanged e-mails, back and forth, as he has shared finds and I’ve shared information from the Native Names Project.

But then, Justin found it…and “it” wasn’t at all what he expected. In addition to being descended from Native people, Justin is also descended from one of the most notorious Indian killers in American history.

“In 1637, in the service of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Captain John Underhill led an attack, together with Mohegan Indians, on the Pequot fortified village near modern Mystic, Connecticut. They set fire to the village, killing any who attempted to flee. About 400 Pequots died in what came to be called the Mystic Massacre. But Captain Underhill’s soldier of fortune Indian killing was only just beginning. In the service of New Netherland, he slaughtered between 500 and 700 individuals thought to be of the Siwanoy and Wechquaesgeek groups of the Wappinger Confederacy. And in 1644, he cleared Fort Massapequa right here on Long Island, killing about 120 Indians. According to historical accounts, after the Natives were dead and stacked up, Underhill and his men sat down and ate their breakfast.”

So what does Justin do with this horrible event that occurred just 16 years after that first celebration of Thanksgiving? I mean, most of us have developed this life-long love affair with our Native ancestors, even if we don’t know who they were, exactly. They were victims, betrayed by European promises, and we have spent untold hundreds, probably thousands or tens of thousands of hours and dollars trying to resurrect them in some small way from the nameless oblivion of history. Part of who we are is defined by who they were. We love our ancestors, all of them. Many of us feel an obligation to do what we can to right the wrongs done to our ancestors in any way possible, even if the only thing we can do is identify them, maybe recover their name or something about them to give them a voice, a definition, a tangible memory to record for posterity. It’s something, better than nothing, and it defines them as more than an almost anonymous disappearing footnote in history where the European’s put them and the Native tribes of today condemn them to stay.

But never, never do we expect to find an Indian killer, and not only that, a no-excuses, non-penitent repeat offender….so desensitized to human death that he and his cronies sat by the bodies of those families, including women and children, systematically, genocidally murdered and ate breakfast, probably covered in their blood.

In my family story, I know who the good guys are, and the bad guys. I know who to love and who to hate, who to root for and who were the oppressors. And I’m not descended from really “bad guys,” at least not Indian Killer type bad guys. I’ve got a few other colorful people, some slave owners, a couple bigamists, a wife-murderer and a moonshiner…but not people who systematically, unemotionally, slaughtered entire tribes of people. And in those tribes of people were Justin’s ancestors too. So now, what does Justin do with this? Who does he love and who does he hate? How does he come to terms with this, that he carries the genes and ancestry of both? Do they fight within him from time to time? Who is Justin?

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Watson, Crick and Spotted Dick

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Roberta Estes

In September, 2013, my husband, Jim, and I visited the British Isles. This trip was planned around various aspects of genealogy and family history – all of which pertain to and were enabled by DNA. I’m going to be sharing portions with you over the next several weeks. These stories will all include DNA, but I’m also going to share other photos with you. The culture, so different from ours, is critically important to understanding our ancestors and these areas are simply beautiful. I’d like to share the entire experience, not just the DNA piece. So I’m inviting you along on my day in London. Come on….we’ll have fun!

I didn’t plan my trip to England with Watson and Crick’s DNA model in mind – that part just kind of evolved, a positive mutation, so to speak.

Jim and I traveled with a family group that indeed did make this trip as a result of DNA – but that is another story for another article, several, in fact. In any case, we weren’t really in charge of where we were staying in London – the tour company took care of that – supposedly. That is a long and sorry saga which I’ll spare you. Let’s just say we weren’t staying at the hotel where we were SUPPOSED to have reservations and the one where we were staying didn’t have air conditioning. It was “broken.” It should have been an aha moment when they handed me a fan when we checked in. At least they did that much. It was very hot.

Suffice it to say, we were close to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in London. The idea was that we could take a walk in the park if we wanted to. Flowers often grace every nook and cranny in Europe and the thought of walking and viewing was quite enticing to me. Here is a rose garden in front of a private home near Hyde Park. Just lovely.

The London subway is a bit overwhelming, but it really a good transportation system once you get used to it. You can get places far more quickly by subway than by car on the surface streets.

Still, you stand a high probability of getting lost, at least initially, and it’s pretty intimidating. So we opted to walk when we could. Plus, you get to see a lot more of the area that way. After all, it’s not always the destination. Sometimes, it’s about the journey.

Before we left for London, I searched for the location of the double helix model created by Watson and Crick in 1953 when they discovered DNA. I found that it is in the British Science Museum.

After arrival in London, looking at the map, I discovered that the Science Museum was just on the other side of Hyde Park. I asked and was told that it’s about a 10 minute walk. Have I mentioned never to believe a British person about distances??? It must be genetic – they seem to have a distance judgment impairment gene!

Jim and I set out to walk to the Museum because it seemed like a much better option than three different subway transfers. And after all, it was only 10 minutes away and only drizzling.

We cut across the park and enjoyed the walk and found the museums, further away than we thought, of course. We discovered we were walking on the Princess Diana Memorial walkway, and only after we got home and looked at the photo did I realize that Kensington Palace is behind me.

British parks and gardens are really quite remarkable. There are a lot of them and they have beautiful statues and flowers. This statue is of Prince Albert.

Half an hour or 45 minutes later, we arrived at the Science Museum. It’s quite large, and we asked where the DNA exhibit was located, received directions, and off we went. We were pleased to see that they had an entire exhibit area devoted not to DNA but to what makes people unique. Of course DNA had a prominent position in that exhibit.

The “books of genes” shown above and below is actually the top back of a seat in the museum exhibit.

But we were unable to find the Watson/Crick model. We asked a second time and the guard told us that it was downstairs “by the autos.” We had just come through that area and we didn’t quite believe it would be there, but since it wasn’t where we were, we went to look. Sure enough, in with the 1950s cars and the earliest computers, in a display case but not near anything else similar, we found the double helix model with only a small display description. In fact, we had walked right past it earlier and didn’t notice it because where it is located and how it is displayed is so nondescript.

The helix model itself is kind of difficult to see because it’s small and kind of thin and in the middle of a case with glass on all sides. Jim is trying to get a good picture, but that is almost impossible between its position and the glass and lighting.

The model is constructed using clamps.

It’s actually difficult to see because the aluminum templates, shown below (wiki photo) are on a flat plane so they are being photographed sideways.

I was thrilled to see the model, but saddened that it has been relegated to the section of “vintage cars” when it was the discovery that fueled many of the life-changing medical discoveries of the past few years and nearly everything in the exhibit we had just seen about what makes people unique. If not DNA, then what?

The Crick/Watson double helix model should be the crown jewel of these types of exhibits, not relegated to a place in the footnotes of the 1950s.

The model itself is elegant in that its simplicity belies the complexity of DNA. Yet, that complexity is comprised of simplest of elements combined in the simplest of manners. It’s hard to believe sometimes that we are looking at the recipe for reproduction, for all of life itself.

Here are Crick and Watson with the model.

Of course, we walked back to our hotel, but we took a bit of a different route, past both sets of palace gates (below) and up some side streets.

Glory be, we also found a Starbucks!! We discovered a beautiful old church on Kensington High Street and slipped into the courtyard which is also the cemetery.

It’s hard to believe that just a few feet away on the other side of the fence the London traffic and hustle and bustle are in full force.

This courtyard is a tiny haven of tranquility. Of course, I had to look at the stones to see if there were any familiar names. After all, some of my ancestors were here – however, they weren’t wealthy enough to have stones in churchyards.

Some things have no equivalent here.

Humps, in case you are wondering, are speed bumps. The even more interesting sign was the one that had a picture of two humps, side by side, on the same sign.

We passed this lovely pub that is just so quintessentially English and so beautiful. Surely looks inviting doesn’t it. Want to have an ale???

That evening, we met up with my cousins from New Zealand (more about that later) in The Swan Pub, a very quaint and very English old coaching pub across from Hyde Park, and had an English dinner of what else, fish and chips.

But that wasn’t the end of the adventures. Nosiree….there was what we term as “adventure eating” left to be done. There was Spotted Dick on the dessert menu. Yes, we did, we had to order that and try some. Here’s Jim getting ready to try Spotted Dick. Looks kind of apprehensive doesn’t he. I must admit, it was very, very good.

I hope you’ve enjoyed coming along with me on my day in London visiting Watson, Crick and Spotted Dick.

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Native American Gene Flow – Europe?, Asia and the Americas

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Roberta Estes

Pre-release information from the paper, “Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans” which included results and analysis of DNA sequencing of 24,000 year old skeletal remains of a 4 year old Siberian boy caused quite a stir. Unfortunately, it was also misconstrued and incorrectly extrapolated in some articles. Some people misunderstood, either unintentionally or intentionally, and suggested that people with haplogroups U and R are Native American. That is not what either the prerelease or the paper itself says. Not only is that information and interpretation incorrect, the paper itself with the detailed information wasn’t published until November 20^th, in Nature.

The paper is currently behind a paywall, so I’m going to discuss parts of it here, along with some additional information from other sources. To help with geography, the following google map shows the following locations: A=the Altai Republic, in Russia, B=Mal’ta, the location of the 24,000 year old skeletal remains and C=Lake Baikal, the region from where the Native American population originated in Asia.

Nature did publish an article preview. That information is in bold, italics and I will be commenting in nonbold, nonitalics.

The origins of the First Americans remain contentious. Although Native Americans seem to be genetically most closely related to east Asians^{1, 2, 3}, there is no consensus with regard to which specific Old World populations they are closest to^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8}. Here we sequence the draft genome of an approximately 24,000-year-old individual (MA-1), from Mal’ta in south-central Siberia⁹, to an average depth of 1×. To our knowledge this is the oldest anatomically modern human genome reported to date.

Within the paper, the authors also compare the MA-1 sequence to that of another 40,000 year old individual from Tianyuan Cave, China whose genome has been partially sequenced. This Chinese individual has been shown to be ancestral to both modern-day Asians and Native Americans. This comparison was particularly useful, because it showed that MA-1 is not closely related to the Tianyuan Cave individual, and is more closely related to Native Americans. This means that MA-1’s line and Tianyuan Cave’s line had not yet met and admixed into the population that would become the Native Americans. That occurred sometime later than 24,000 years ago and probably before crossing Beringia into North America sometime between about 18,000 and 20,000 years ago.

The MA-1 mitochondrial genome belongs to haplogroup U, which has also been found at high frequency among Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers^{10, 11, 12}, and the Y chromosome of MA-1 is basal to modern-day western Eurasians and near the root of most Native American lineages⁵.

The paper goes on to say that MA-1 is a member of mitochondrial (maternal) haplogroup U, very near the base of that haplogroup, but without affiliation to any known subclade, implying either that the subclade is rare or extinct in modern populations. In other words, this particular line of haplogroup U has NOT been found in any population, anyplace. According to the landmark paper, “A ‘‘Copernican’’ Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root,” by Behar et al, 2012, haplogroup U itself was born about 46,500 years ago (plus or minus 3.200 years) and today has 9 major subclades (plus haplogroup K) and about 300 branching clades from those 9 subclades, excluding haplogroup K.

The map below, from the supplemental material included with the paper shows the distribution of haplogroup U, the black dots showing locations of haplogroup U comparison DNA.

In a recent paper, “Ancient DNA Reveals Key Stages in the Formation of Central European Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity” by Brandt et al (including the National Geographic Consortium) released in October 2013, the authors report that in the 198 ancient DNA samples collected from 25 German sites and compared to almost 68,000 current results, all of the ancient Hunter-Gatherer cultural results were haplogroup U, U4, U5 and U8. No other haplogroups were represented. In addition, those haplogroups disappeared from the region entirely with the advent of farming, shown on the chart below.

So, if someone who carries haplogroup U wants to say that they are distantly related to MA-1 who lived 24,000 years ago who was also related to their common ancestor who lived sometime prior to that, between 24,000 and 50,000 years ago, probably someplace between the Middle East where U was born, Mal’ta, Siberia and Western Europe, they would be correct. They are also distantly related to every other person in the world who carries haplogroup U, and many much more closely that MA-1 whose mitochondrial DNA line is either rare as chicken’s teeth (i.e. never found) or has gone extinct.

Let me be very clear about this, there is no evidence, none, that mitochondrial haplogroup U is found in the Native American population today that is NOT a result of post-contact admixture. In other words, in the burials that have been DNA tested, there is not one example in either North or South America of a burial carrying mitochondrial haplogroup U, or for that matter, male Y haplogroup R. Native American haplogroups found in the Americas remain subsets of mitochondrial haplogroups A, B, C, D and X and Y DNA haplogroups C and Q. Mitochondrial haplogroup M has potentially been found in one Canadian burial. No other haplogroups have been found. Until pre-contact remains are found with base haplogroups other than the ones listed above, no one can ethically claim that other haplogroups are of Native American origin. Finding any haplogroup in a contemporary Native population does not mean that it was originally Native, or that it should be counted as such. Admixture and adoption have been commonplace since Europeans first set foot on the soil of the Americas.

Now let’s talk about the Y DNA of MA-1.

The authors state that MA-1’s results are found very near the base of haplogroup R. They note that the sister lineage of haplogroup R, haplogroup Q, is the most common haplogroup in Native Americans and that the closest Eurasian Q results to Native Americans come from the Altai region.

The testing of the MA-1 Y chromosome was much more extensive than the typical STR genealogy tests taken by consumers today. MA-1’s Y chromosome was sequenced at 5.8 million base pairs at a coverage of 1.5X.

The resulting haplotree is shown below, again from the supplementary material.

The current haplogroup distribution range for haplogroup R is shown below, again with comparison points as black dots.

The current distribution range for Eurasian haplogroup Q is shown on the map below. Haplogroup Q is the most common haplogroup in Native Americans.

Similarly, we find autosomal evidence that MA-1 is basal to modern-day western Eurasians and genetically closely related to modern-day Native Americans, with no close affinity to east Asians. This suggests that populations related to contemporary western Eurasians had a more north-easterly distribution 24,000 years ago than commonly thought. Furthermore, we estimate that 14 to 38% of Native American ancestry may originate through gene flow from this ancient population. This is likely to have occurred after the divergence of Native American ancestors from east Asian ancestors, but before the diversification of Native American populations in the New World. Gene flow from the MA-1 lineage into Native American ancestors could explain why several crania from the First Americans have been reported as bearing morphological characteristics that do not resemble those of east Asians^{2, 13}.

Kennewick Man is probably the most famous of the skeletal remains that don’t neatly fit into their preconceived box. Kennewick man was discovered on the bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington in 1996 and is believed to be from 7300 to 7600 years old. His anatomical features were quite different from today’s Native Americans and his relationship to ancient people is unknown. An initial evaluation and a 2010 reevaluation of Kennewick Man let to the conclusion by Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist, that Kennewick Man most closely resembles the Ainu people of Japan who themselves are a bit of an enigma, appearing much more Caucasoid than Asian. Unfortunately, DNA sequencing of Kennewick Man originally was ussuccessful and now, due to ongoing legal issues, more technologically advanced DNA testing has not been allowed. Nova sponsored a facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man which you can see here.

Sequencing of another south-central Siberian, Afontova Gora-2 dating to approximately 17,000 years ago¹⁴, revealed similar autosomal genetic signatures as MA-1, suggesting that the region was continuously occupied by humans throughout the Last Glacial Maximum. Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans.

In addition to the sequencing they set forth above, the authors compared the phenotype information obtainable from MA-1 to the Tyrolean Iceman, typically called Otzi. You can see Otzi’s facial reconstruction along with more information here. This is particularly interesting in light of the pigmentation change from darker skin in Africa to lighter skin in Eurasia, and the question of when this appearance change occurred. MA-1 shows a genetic affinity with the contemporary people of northern Europe, the population today with the highest frequency of light pigmentation phenotypes. The authors compared the DNA of MA-1 with a set of 124 SNPs identified in 2001 by Cerquira as informative on skin, hair and eye pigmentation color, although they also caution that this method has limited prediction accuracy. Given that, they say that MA-1 had dark hair, skin and eyes, but they were not able to sequence the full set of SNPs. MA-1 also had the SNP value associated with a high risk of male pattern baldness, a trait seldom found in Native American people and was not lactose tolerant, a trait found in western Eurasians. MA-1 also does not carry the mutation associated with hair thickness and shovel shaped incisors in Asians.

The chart below from the supplemental material shows the comparison with MA-1 and the Tyrolean Iceman.

The Tarim Mummies, found in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China are another example of remains that seem out of place. The earliest Tarim mummies, found at Qäwrighul and dated to 1800 BCE, are of a Europoid physical type whose closest affiliation is to the Bronze Age populations of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Lower Volga.

The cemetery at Yanbulaq contained 29 mummies which date from 1100–500 BCE, 21 of which are Mongoloid—the earliest Mongoloid mummies found in the Tarim Basin—and eight of which are of the same Europoid physical type found at Qäwrighul.

Notable mummies are the tall, red-haired “Chärchän man” or the “Ur-David” (1000 BCE); his son (1000 BCE), a small 1-year-old baby with brown hair protruding from under a red and blue felt cap, with two stones positioned over its eyes; the “Hami Mummy” (c. 1400–800 BCE), a “red-headed beauty” found in Qizilchoqa; and the “Witches of Subeshi” (4th or 3rd century BCE), who wore 2-foot-long (0.61 m) black felt conical hats with a flat brim. Also found at Subeshi was a man with traces of a surgical operation on his neck; the incision is sewn up with sutures made of horsehair.

Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate a common origin with Indo-European neolithic clothing techniques or a common low-level textile technology. Chärchän man wore a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, discusses similarities between it and fragments recovered from salt mines associated with the Hallstatt culture.

DNA testing revealed that the maternal lineages were predominantly East Eurasian haplogroup C with smaller numbers of H and K, while the paternal lines were all R1a1a. The geographic location of where this admixing took place is unknown, although south Siberia is likely. You can view some photographs of the mummies here.

In closing, the authors of the MA-1 paper state that the study has four important implications.

First, we find evidence that contemporary Native Americans and western Eurasians shareancestry through gene flow from a Siberian Upper Palaeolithic population into First Americans.

Second, our findings may provide an explanation for the presence of mtDNA haplogroup X in Native Americans, which is related to western Eurasians but not found in east Asian populations.

Third, such an easterly presence in Asia of a population related to contemporary western Eurasians provides a possibility that non-east Asian cranial characteristics of the First Americans derived from the Old World via migration through Beringia, rather than by a trans-Atlantic voyage from Iberia as proposed by the Solutrean hypothesis.

Fourth, the presence of an ancient western Eurasian genomic signature in the Baikal area before and after the LGM suggests that parts of south-central Siberia were occupied by humans throughout the coldest stages of the last ice age.

The times, they are a changin’.

Dr. Michael Hammer’s presentation at the 9^th Annual International Conference on Genetic Genealogy may shed some light on all of this seeming confusing and somewhat conflicting information.

The graphic below shows the Y haplogroup base tree as documented by van Oven.

You can see, in the lower right corner, that Y haplogroup K (not to be confused with mtDNA haplogroup K discussed in conjunction with mtDNA haplogroup U) was the parent of haplogroup P which is the parent of both haplogroups Q and R.

It has always been believed that haplogroup R made its way into Europe before the arrival of Neolithic farmers about 10,000 years ago. However, that conclusion has been called into question, also by the use of Ancient DNA results. You can view additional information about Hammer’s presentation here, but in a nutshell, he said that there is no early evidence in burials, at all, for haplogroup R being in Europe at an early age. In about 40 burials from several location, haplogroup R has never been found. If it were present, especially in the numbers expected given that it represents more than half of the haplogroups of the men of Europe today, it should be represented in these burials, but it is not. Hammer concludes that evidence supports a recent spread of haplogroup R into Europe about 5000 years ago. Where was haplogroup R before spreading into Europe? In Asia.

It appears that haplogroup K diversified in Southeast Asian, giving birth to haplogroups P, Q and R. Dr. Hammer said that this new information, combined with new cluster information and newly discovered SNP information over the past two years requires that haplogroup K be significantly revised. Between the revision of haplogroup K, the parent of both haplogroup R, previously believed to be European, and haplogroup Q, known to be Asian, European and Native, we may be in for a paradigm shift in terms of what we know about ancient migrations and who is whom. This path for haplogroup R into Europe really shouldn’t be surprising. It’s the exact same distribution as haplogroup Q, except haplogroup Q is much less frequently found in Europe than haplogroup R.

What Can We Say About MA-1?

In essence, we can’t label MA-1 as paternally European because of Y haplogroup R which now looks to have had an Asian genesis and was not known to have been in Europe 24,000 years ago, only arriving about 5,000 years ago. We can’t label haplogroup R as Native American, because it has never been found in a pre-Columbian New World burial.

We can say that mitochondrial haplogroup U is found in Europe in Hunter-Gatherer groups six thousand years ago (R was not) but we really don’t know if haplogroup U was in Europe 24,000 years ago. We cannot label haplogroup U as Native because it has never been found in a pre-Columbian New World burial.

We can determine that MA-1 did have ancestors who eventually became European due to autosomal analysis, but we don’t know that those people lived in what is now Europe 24,000 years ago. So the migration might have been into Europe, not out of Europe. MA-1, his ancestors and descendants, may have lived in Asia and subsequently settled in Europe or lived someplace inbetween. We can determine that MA-1’s line of people eventually admixed with people from East Asia, probably in Siberia, and became today’s First People of North and South America.

We can say that MA-1 appears to have been about 30% what is today Western Eurasian and that he is closely related to modern day Native Americans, but not eastern Asians. The authors estimate that between 14% and 38% of Native American ancestry comes from MA-1’s ancient population.

Whoever thought we could learn so much from a 4 year old?

For anyone seriously interested in Native American population genetics, “Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans” is a must read.

It’s been a great month for ancient DNA. Additional recent articles which pertain to this topic include:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131120143631.htm

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/11/ancient-dna-from-upper-paleolithic-lake.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/11/long-first-age-mankind/#.Uo0eOcSkrIU

http://cruwys.blogspot.com/2013/11/day-1-at-royal-societys-2013-ancient.html

http://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/day-2-at-royal-societys-2013-ancient.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131118081251.htm

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