Genealogy has been a favorite hobby of mine for about 18 years now, and in the past year or two that has expanded into an interest in deep genetic ancestry. (Here we’re talking time scales of thousands of years and large, genetically-related population groups, not just recent family members.)
So I took the Geno 2.0 test offered through the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. There are four fascinating pieces of information about your deep genetic ancestry that this test will tell you:
Your paternal y-chromosome haplogroup designation (if you’re male);
Your maternal (mitochondrial-DNA) haplogroup designation;
The percentage of your genome inherited from Neanderthal and Denisovan populations.
My paternal haplogroup designation is R1b-Z295. R1b accounts for a HUGE percentage of western European males, and the deep subclade Z295, which is roughly about 2,500 years old, is found in light concentrations running from the Pyrenees/Aquitaine region, northeast towards the Benelux and NW Germany. My ancestors are English, so it’s fascinating to speculate on which historical migration to Britain they might have entered the Isles as part of. A pre-Romanic migration? The Belgic incursions of the 1st centuries BCE/CE? Or maybe with the Saxon invasions of the 5th centuries? Who knows?
My mother’s mitochondrial haplogroup is K1a15. This is a rather uncommon group that’s found throughout northern Europe, stretching westward from Poland and Germany to Ireland, where it seems to reach its highest relative concentration.
As far as geogenetic admixture goes, my closest regional population matches were Britain and Germany. This makes sense, given what I know of my ethnic ancestry.
Oh, and lastly, I’m only 95% modern human. The other 5% breaks down as 2.3% Neanderthal and 2.7% Denisovan. My wife is now fond of cracking “subhuman” jokes at my expense.
What did you think of that outfit? I’ve heard some good things, and I wonder if I couldn’t have saved myself some $$ by doing it instead of Geno 2.0.
Did they give you deep mtDNA (and yDNA) subclade designations? And how accurate do you think their ethnic admixture tool is?
Ethnic mix spot on. Pegged me at 95% Ashkenazi jewsh. They do offer Y haplotyping, but I’m female. mtDNA haplotyping gave me a maternal line of H1. Neanderthal DNA as well.
I liked that they link trait predictions with the research articles that up port the data.
I have been interested in this but can’t justify the expense at this time. It looks like 23andMe is $99 and Geno is $159 (they claim that’s a discount from $199, but I don’t know if that’s permanent). Question: do you get all the tests for one price?
My dad did it through Ancestry.com, $99 too. He is basically 3/8 Irish 1/2 Italian 1/8 Scottish. I don’t know the full results as apparently they update it when they get more data? Has some of the obvious. Very little Southern European, which might be weird but then again they’ve very, very Ligurian so that might be Central European. Interestingly, it says 9% Persian/Turkish/Caucasus (?) that number might’ve changed since what he showed me. Celtic (or whatever you want to call it) wasn’t represented, but if I read correctly that’s because it goes way back, when they came from Central Europe and were named Vercingetorix and Segovax and other -x names.
There are several different clades of R1b-L11 which appear mainly in Britain or Ireland, and even the non-Britain clades often have oldest branches in Britain. I don’t think there’s a consensus on whether the original R1b-L11 homeland was near the Atlantic coast, or if instead old clades just survive in Britain due to its isolation.
To relate specific subclades to specific migration dates, one would want the Y-chromosome mutation rate calibrated, but AFAICT this is still controversial.
What a coincidence (to me) that you started this thread now. I just sent mine off to 23andme about 8 days ago, so I don’t have the results yet. I’m really curious about the outcome. I expect my results will be similar to yours, Cyningablod, because all my ancestors (as far as I know) also come from northern/northwestern Europe and the British Isles (German, French, English, Irish, Scottish).
I thought from my very brief reading that 2.3% Neanderthal was pretty much average for Europeans at least. But this is the first I’ve heard of Denisovians. I didn’t notice any mention of Denisovian as a separate item on the 23andme website.
I first heard about 23andme through an NPR story, and it seemed like an interesting idea. I also allowed them to share my information, maybe I’ll find some odd relatives somewhere. I have also been interested in genealogy for a little while.
Roddy
I’m really interested in this topic. One of my kids was adopted. We know his birthmom’s family history but no info for birthdad. Kiddo appears Asian ( birth mom is not). Do you know if this sort of test would answer specifically which part of Asia his family is from ( if he is indeed Asian)?
My mtDNA is type H, which is pretty common for a European (descended) female. What I find interesting is that the other users who are identified as close matches to me – ie fairly recent genetic cousins in the female line – a surprising number of them are Jews. I say surprising as my family isn’t Jewish nor do I know of a single Jewish ancestor. Jews from Ukraine, Jews from Belarus, Jews from Poland, Jews from Lithuania… you get the idea. Of my matches I’ve say 1/3rd are from families with obvious Jewish roots.
Maybe not the ISOGG tree, but the researchers who have been following the DF27 tree most closely (Richard Hulan, Mike Walsh, and Chris Morley, et al) have it on page 41 of Morley’s SNP tree now that enough results have come in to establish its position underneath Z209.
Under R1b-P312 subclade DF27, the SNP tree goes like this.
L11 might have been born near the Atlantic Coast, but it almost certainly wasn’t born in Britain. For that to be the case, you’d have to have MASSIVE, millennia-long back-migration to the continent, such that L11 subclades P312 and U106 could dominate the continental R1b the way they do today.
Yes. But Z220/209, which is upstream of Z295, has been roughly calibrated to be about 2,700 in age. So whatever the true ages of these SNPs are, Z295 will always be younger.
Hi Mander. Geno 2.0 would be able to tell you if your adopted son has geogenetic admixture from NE Asia, SE Asia, SW Asia, or some admixture that shares some traits with Native American genotypes, but that’s as far as current commercial DNA technology could take you.
So in a word, yes, it could confirm Asian ancestry, but no, it couldn’t tell you a specific country or anything.
For those that have done the 23andme test, what did you think of the health info provided?
I’m adopted and know nothing about my birth parents - never wanted to. But now that I’m over 50 I am sort of wondering about potential health problems, though I’ve been disgustingly healthy all my life so far.
And in truth, should markers come up for cancer(s), I’m not really sure what I’d do with that information. And I’m not even sure if being “forewarned” is a good thing or not, since markers don’t equal actually getting the disease.
Anyway, I’m rambling, sorry for the hijack Cyningablod. But thanks foir the topic, it’s interesting and I will probably end up doing one of the two tests.
AFAICT, calibration of Y-haplogroup dating is still very controversial. The second chart from this page is from the recent Francalacci paper; he thinks the huge fanout in I2a1a1 can be dated to the early Sardinian farmers and calibrates from there. With those dates, the FT Y-chromosome bottleneck can be linked to the alleged Toba supereruption 73,000 years ago. With this calibration, R1b-L11 may have arrived in Western Europe with the earliest Danubian farmers.
Other researchers relate Toba to the CT Y-chromosome bottleneck, moving R1b-L11 to the Copper Age.
I’ve been browsing the web, and am still unable to decide which dates are reasonable. But 700 BC (roughly founding of Rome) seems much too late for Z220/Z209. Most Basques have Z220 Y-chromosomes; surely the almost-complete replacement of their male population didn’t happen in nearly historical times?
Here’s an excerpt from my own summary of R1b-L11 clading, which, unless I’ve erred, shows Z295 in relation to Basque haplogroups.
I don’t have a good one. As you say, this is still quite controversial. Even if you go with the current consensus ages (eg, 2.7 - 2.8K for Z209/220), there’s still a HUGE margin of error, like +/- 700 years or so!
But I don’t personally have much doubt that Z295 will be younger than Z209/220, because there are gents that have been found to be Z209/220+ yet Z295-. So it’s definitely downstream.
Having said that, Mike Walsh (?) and/or the other DF27 researchers have come up with these estimates based on predicted mutation rates of the main 67 and 111 y-SNPs. Here’s an interesting forum conversation where the age estimates of the DF27 subclades are discussed (Mike is in this conversation). There are also lots of great discussions about L11 subclade dates on the R1b forums at anthrogenica.com.
I don’t know, I could see a founder effect taking hold in the Basque country quite easily. No need for Z220 to have moved into the region all at once and replaced the non-Z220 male population. In fact, Z220 might itself have arisen in the Basque country; again, as you rightly point out, dates and points of origin are still very controversial.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the consensus at this point, except that most folks are pretty sure Z295 is downstream of Z209. Again, there are testees who have been found to be Z209+/Z295-.
Just sent off for mine. Since most of my ancestry is German, then French, English, Scots, Irish, I expect it to me more of the same. Where and how the 1/16 Ojibwe fits in will be interesting. It will also be interesting if Italian or thereabouts shows up since my mother traces ancestors back to immigration from Italy to Germany in the 1500’s.
