Sponsored by National Geographic, Powered By IBM and
underwritten by The Waitt Family Foundation.
A few months ago, I submitted buccal cells in order to
participate in the The Genographic Project. What is that, you ask? You can read my initial post HERE and read
about my concerns regarding the quality of this study HERE. I was able to print out the results of
my genetic lineage directly from the Genographic website. There are no surprises to be
had here as the result of my DNA testing identifies me as belonging to Haplogroup H.
According to this study, my ancestral line goes something
like this:
“Eve”>L1/L0>L2>L3>N>R>Pre-HV>HV>H -
not the best scanned image....
Here are a few interesting facts I’ve discovered about the H
haplogroup:
This wave of migration into Western Europe marked the
appearance and the spread of what archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture.
The culture is distinguished by significant innovations in methods of
manufacturing tools.
15,000 to 20,000 years ago, colder temperatures and a drier
global climate (READ: GLOBAL COOLING) locked much of the earth’s freshwater in
the polar icecaps, making living nearly impossible in the northern hemisphere.
Early migrants retreated to the warmer climates of the Iberian Peninsula, Italy
and the Balkans. Their population sizes were drastically reduced.
Beginning around 15,000 years ago when the ice sheets had
begun their retreat (READ: GLOBAL WARMING) humans moved north again and
recolonized Western Europe. By far the most frequent mitochondrial lineage
carried by these groups was haplogroup H.
Today haplogroup H compromises 40-60 percent of the gene
pool of most European populations. In Rome and Athens, for example, the
frequency of H is around 40 percent of the entire population, and it exhibits
similar frequencies throughout Europe.
The age of haplogroup H lineages differ quite
substantially between those seen in the West compared with those found in the
East.
