Ethnicity DNA Results; not one but two Indigenous Haplogroups!

I have used various companies to get my DNA results and find out what my ethnic background is. Many options were available, so I tested with the top three companies. Ancestry was the first company I tested since it is the most popular and extensive database. Then I uploaded my autosomal raw data with gedmatch. After that, I tested with Family TreeDNA. I started with the Y-DNA 36 marker. It resulted in two matches. However, two of my matches tested with the 111-Marker. Therefore, with a DNA specialist’s advice, I did the 111-Marker to understand my results better. And finally, I upgraded to the Big Y.

Comparing my Ethnic background with the various companies has been consistent with some variations in percentages. That is expected because it depends on the number of people tested in their database. Below I am showing the variations of ratios with each company.

This is part one of a two-part article. First, as I have tested my father and five of my siblings, I will upload their ethnicity results so you can see what we inherited.

Ancestry DNA Results

Family Tree DNA Results

• European Iberia 51%
• European Southeast%
• Europe 23%
• European British Isles 2%
• New World North and Central America 10%
• New World South America 2%
• African West Africa 7%
• Middle Eastern North Africa 4%
• Trace Results Oceania <1%

23 andMe DNA Results

Recent Ancestry in the Americas

We found evidence of your ancestry in the following locations. People from these regions often trace their ancestry to different, historically separate populations.

• Caribbean
• Puerto Rico: Highly Likely Match
• Cuba: Likely Match
• Dominican Republic: Likely Match
• Mexico & Central America: Match Confidence level, not detected.
• South America: Match Confidence level, not seen.

Maternal Haplogroup DNA Results, Haplogroup D1

You descend from a long line of women traced back to eastern Africa over 150,000 years ago. These women of your maternal line and your maternal haplogroup sheds light on their story.

As our ancestors ventured out of eastern Africa, they branched off in diverse groups that crossed and recrossed the globe over tens of thousands of years. Some of their migrations can be traced through haplogroups, families of lineages that descend from a common ancestor. For example, your maternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the women of your maternal line.

Migrations of Your Maternal Line 180,000 Years Ago

Haplogroup L

If every person living today could trace their maternal line back over thousands of generations, all of our lines would meet with a single woman who lived in eastern Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. Though she was one of perhaps thousands of women alive at the time, only the diverse branches of her haplogroup have survived to today. So the story of your maternal line begins with her.

65,000 Years Ago, Haplogroup L3

Your branch of L is haplogroup L3, which arose from a woman who likely lived in eastern Africa between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago. While many of her descendants remained in Africa, one small group ventured east across the Red Sea, likely across the narrow Bab-el Mandeb into the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

50,000 Years Ago Haplogroup M

Beyond Africa, your maternal-line story can be traced through haplogroup M. M is one of two branches that split from L3 soon after humans first expanded out of Africa. Over the 50,000 years since the branch’s rise, members of haplogroup M have ventured far and wide in southern and eastern Asia. Hence, where many diverse branches split off and are major haplogroups in their own right.

40,000 Years Ago Haplogroup D

One of those branches is haplogroup D, which traces back to a woman who likely lived in Central or East Asia nearly 40,000 years ago. Since then, her descendants have migrated far and wide across Eurasia. Over 14,000 years ago, women who belonged to the branches D1, D2a, D3, and D4h3 migrated from Siberia to the Americas even farther east.

17,000 Years Ago, Origin and Migrations of Haplogroup D1

Your maternal line stems from a branch of haplogroup D called D1. The common ancestor of D1 lived nearly 17,000 years ago in the northern reaches between Siberia and North America. Her haplogroup is one of only five carried by the founders of the American continents. D1 is a branch of the D4 haplogroup, which likely arose in East Asia as a subgroup of people who migrated north to Japan, Korea, and northern China.

Some of their descendants made their way farther north to Siberia and then into Beringia. This land bridge connected Asia and North America during the last Ice Age period, some 30,000 to 24,000 years ago. At first, they were isolated at the peak of the cold, glacier-dominated period. Still, eventually, the Ice Age began its retreat. Then, about 17,000 years ago, D1 split off from D4 as the population in Beringia found newly open routes into North America and down the coast.

Today, D1 is frequent among 23andMe customers.

Today, you share your haplogroup with all the maternal-line descendants of the common ancestor of D1, including other 23andMe customers. 23andMe customers share your haplogroup assignment 1 in 320

Paternal Haplogroup DNA Results Q-M3

“As our ancestors ventured out of eastern Africa, they branched off in diverse groups that crossed and recrossed the globe over tens of thousands of years. Some of their migrations can be traced through haplogroups, families of lineages that descend from a common ancestor. Your paternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the men of your paternal line.”

23andMe

Your paternal line stems from haplogroup Q-M3, a younger branch of haplogroup Q. The first man to carry this branch, your ancestor, likely lived between 15,000 and 17,000 years ago. Around that time, a relatively small number of his descendants crossed from Asia to North America via the Bering land bridge, a strip of land that connected Siberia and Alaska. The land bridge resulted from a lower sea level caused by the increased amount of water frozen in the polar ice caps at the time.

The first Americans spread rapidly in the uninhabited continent. Some pursued migrating herds of mammoth, bison, and prey over the North American grasslands. Others traveled southward along the Pacific coast, likely traveling in small boats. Archaeological evidence suggests they reached the tip of South America 13,000 years ago.

Today, Q-M3 is the most common haplogroup among South Americans. The paternal lineages of northern Native American men are far less uniform. Yet even there, the haplogroup still dominates, reaching up to 40% in tribes like the Cherokee.

Q-M3 is relatively common among 23andMe customers

Today, you share your haplogroup with all the men who are paternal-line descendants of the common ancestor of Q-M3, including other 23andMe customers.

You share a paternal lineage with ‘The Ancient One’ — a 9,000-year-old man from the Pacific Northwest.

When two college students stumbled upon a human skull on the banks of the Columbia River, neither the students nor the police who responded to their 911 call could have imagined the archaeological significance of this rare discovery. The skull — along with about 300 other bone fragments found near Kennewick, Washington — belonged to a 9,000-year-old nomad who Native Americans have dubbed “The Ancient One.” Based on skeletal clues, The Ancient One (also known as “Kennewick Man”) likely swam, wielded a spear, and hunted coastal fauna for the greater part of his life

Initial craniometric studies suggested he descended from ancient Japanese and Polynesian-like people and had little in common with living Native Americans. This claim — refuted by the Plateau tribes of the Pacific Northwest — became the center of a decades-long legal battle over the provenance of the remains. However, when The Ancient One’s genome was finally sequenced in 2015, the evidence revealed he was genetically most similar to modern-day Native Americans. Moreover, local tribes were direct descendants of a population closely related to The Ancient One; in 2017, he finally received a proper Native American burial. This critical discovery helps illustrate a genetic continuity between ancient and modern-day Native Americans. Furthermore, his paternal line belonged to haplogroup Q-M3, the predominant lineage among Native Americans today, from which your line also stems.

Sources:

• Lindo J et al. (2017). “Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 114(16): 4093–4098.
• Rasmussen M et al. (2015). “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.” Nature. 523(7561):455-458.
• Ancestry, 23andme, FTDNA