This is my personal “Out of Africa story”, my ancestral migration 200.000 thousand years ago from North East Africa to Western Europe and finally sending my name to Mars on the NASA Perseverance Rover, 18-02-2021.
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“Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA, the language of molecular genetics and the narrative is unmistakable.
– Kenneth R. Miller –
Homo sapiens
The species that you and all other living human beings on this planet belong to is Homo sapiens. During a time of dramatic climate change 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. Like other early humans that were living at this time, they gathered and hunted food, and evolved behaviors that helped them respond to the challenges of survival in unstable environments.
Humans (Homo sapiens) are the most abundant and widespread species of primates, characterized by bipedality and large complex brains enabling the development of advanced tools, culture and language. Humans evolved from other hominins in Africa several million years ago.
In his book The history of the human brain, Bret Stetka writes: “By human, I don’t just mean Homo Sapiens, the species we belong to, but any other member of the genus Homo. We have gotten used to being the only human species on Earth, but in our not-so-distant past – probably a few hundred thousand years ago – there were at least nine of us running around. There was Homo habilis, or “the handy man” and Homo erectus, the first “pitcher”.
The Denisovans roamed Asia, while the more well-known Neanderthalers spread through Europe. But with the exception of Homo sapiens, they are all gone.”
Homo sapiens emerged around 300,000 years ago, evolving from Homo erectus and migrating out of Africa, gradually replacing local populations of archaic humans.
Early humans were hunter-gatherers, before settling in the Fertile Crescent and other parts of the Old World. Access to food surpluses led to the formation of permanent human settlements and the domestication of animals.
Out of Africa
In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans, also called the “Out of Africa” theory (OOA), recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), replacement hypothesis, or recent African origin model (RAO), is the dominant model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens). It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis.
The model proposes a “single origin” of Homo sapiens in the taxonomic sense, precluding parallel evolution of traits considered anatomically modern in other regions, but not precluding multiple admixture between H. sapiens and archaic humans in Europe and Asia. H. sapiens most likely developed in the Horn of Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. The “recent African origin” model proposes that all modern non-African populations are substantially descended from populations of H. sapiens that left Africa after that time.
There were at least several “out-of-Africa” dispersals of modern humans, possibly beginning as early as 270,000 years ago, including 215,000 years ago to at least Greece,and certainly via northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula about 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. These early waves appear to have mostly died out or retreated by 80,000 years ago.
The most significant “recent” wave out of Africa took place about 70,000–50,000 years ago, via the so-called “Southern Route”, spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia and reaching Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago, while Europe was populated by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago.
In the 2010s, studies in population genetics uncovered evidence of interbreeding that occurred between H. sapiens and archaic humans in Eurasia, Oceania and Africa indicating that modern population groups, while mostly derived from early H. sapiens, are to a lesser extent also descended from regional variants of archaic humans.
There are three types of DNA
- Y-DNA
Because Y-chromosomes are passed from father to son virtually unchanged, males can trace their patrilineal (male-line) ancestry by testing their Y-chromosome.
Since women don’t have Y-chromosomes, they can’t take Y-DNA tests (though their brother, father, paternal uncle, or paternal grandfather could). Y-chromosome testing uncovers a male’s Y-chromosome haplogroup, the ancient group of people from whom one’s patrilineage descends. Because only one’s male-line direct ancestors are traced by Y-DNA testing, no females (nor their male ancestors) from whom a male descends are encapsulated in the result.
- Autosomal DNA
Autosomal DNA tests trace a person’s autosomal chromosomes, which contain the segments of DNA the person shares with everyone to whom they’re related (maternally and paternally, both directly and indirectly.
The autosomal chromosomes gives you information that is most useful in looking back a couple of centuries.
Because everyone has autosomal chromosomes, people of all genders can take autosomal DNA tests, and the test is equally effective for people of any gender. With an autosomal test, your results won’t include information about haplogroups
- mtDNA
Mitochondrial DNA tests trace people’s matrilineal (mother-line) ancestry through their mitochondria, which are passed from mothers to their children.
Mitochondrial DNA testing uncovers a one’s mtDNA haplogroup, the ancient group of people from whom one’s matrilineage descends.
Because mitochondria are passed on only by women, no men (nor their ancestors) from whom one descends are encapsulated in the results.
Since everyone has mitochondria, people of all genders can take mtDNA tests.
What and where did I test and an explanation of some important used DNA concepts
My Autosomal DNA
If you look at the map, my Autosomal results indicate that my very early ancestors lived in geographic lands later occupied by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Danes, Vikings, Scandinavians and Normans. If you read on you will see that my Y-DNA and mtDNA haplogroups probably reconfirm these findings.
My paternal cousins (people you can trace to with only this male line) were probably among the first (re)settlers of Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia as the ice sheets receded.
The result of my Autosomal DNA analysis shows that my origins are 100% Western Europe.
Scandinavia 21%
From about 44,000 years ago, humans intermittently lived in the northwestern region of Europe between periods of glaciation due to the Ice Age. Around 13,000 BCE, they returned to the northwestern region of Europe including the British Isles via a land bridge connecting them.
Towards the end of the 4th millennium BCE, Hunter-Gatherers cultivated crops, domesticated animals, and made tools such as hand axes and pottery. The construction of large stone monuments, such as those found at Stonehenge, began by 3000 BCE.
Anglosaxon migration.
Credit: Jones and Mattingly’s map
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain spans approximately the six centuries from 410-1066 AD. The period used to be known as the Dark Ages, mainly because written sources for the early years of Saxon invasion are scarce. However, most historians now prefer the terms ‘early middle ages’ or ‘early medieval period’.
It is speculated that Celtic languages arrived in Britain with the influx of the Bell Beaker culture from Central Europe, which was defined by bell-shaped vessels.Anglo-Saxons is the collective name for the various Germanic tribes that settled in England after the departure of the Romans in 407, in the course of the 5th century and later.
The later invading tribes came from northwestern Germany and the Netherlands (the Angles and the Saxons and also the Frisians) and from Denmark (the Jutes).
Climate change had an influence on the movement of the Anglo-Saxon invaders to Britain: in the centuries after 400 AD Europe’s average temperature was 1°C warmer than we have today, and in Britain grapes could be grown as far north as Tyneside. Warmer summers meant better crops and a rise in population in the countries of northern Europe.
At the same time melting polar ice caused more flooding in low areas, particularly in what is now Denmark, Holland and Belgium. These people eventually began looking for lands to settle in that were not so likely to flood. After the departure of the Roman legions, Britain was a defenceless and inviting prospect.
The Saxons settled in the south of the country, the Jutes in the southeast (Kent), the Angles occupied the largest area: the center and north. Around 840 the invasions of the Danes (also called Vikings or Normans) started and at the time of King Alfred the Great they controlled a large part of the country.
The attacks of the Normans ceased and the populations intermingled. At the end of the 10th century, the Danes resumed their attacks. Later Norman influence increased, culminating in the Norman conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066.Low Countries and Vikings
Many Viking longboats were fast ships that had the strength to survive ocean crossings while having a draft of as little as 50cm (20 inches), allowing navigation in very shallow water.
Before the Netherlands was the Netherlands or even Holland, it was known as Frisia. According to historians, Vikings came to Friesland in the 9th century. They established control over all of Friesland.
During the last years of Charlemagne’s reign (768-814) the emperor took measures against the danger of Viking raids. He stationed fleets in the major rivers and organized coastal defenses. After 820, the defense system in the northern part of the Carolingian state collapsed. Between 834 and 837 the city of Dorestad (near present-day Wijk bij Duurstede, about 70 km from where I live, Dordrecht) was destroyed four times. Without much opposition, Walcheren in Zeeland (where the Kloosterman Family originated) was taken in 837.
Already before 840 the Danish Vikings Harald and Rorik became vassals of Lothar (grandson of Charlemagne) and received Walcheren and Dorestad as fiefs. This tactical move did not bring peace.
Until 873 there are regular reports of Viking attacks and in 863 Dorestad was again destroyed. This time the city was not rebuilt, also because the river became sandy. Bishop Hunger of Utrecht fled in 858 to Roermond and later to Deventer. In 873, the Normans in Oostergoo, Friesland (Friesland) were defeated by an army led by an immigrant Viking.
In Flanders, the Vikings regularly sailed up the Scheldt from 851 to 864 and attacked the cities of Ghent and the districts of Mempiscus and Terwaan. countries from Denmark) turned their attention to England.
The impact of the raids on everyday life must have been great, but perhaps not as great as ecclesiastical sources suggest. Churches and monasteries were almost always visited, for the simple reason that they had valuable property. Of course, the clergy described the Vikings as fierce pagans who turned the coastal areas into ruins. Politically, the Vikings stimulated the further disintegration of the Carolingian Empire. Because they encountered little resistance, they preferred robbers to traders. As vassals they played a role in the conflicts between Lotharius and Charles the Bald (ca. 840) and later (ca. 870) between Charles the Bold and Louis the German.
After the victory of Alfred the Great of Wessex (878) the Vikings returned to the lowlands. This time they also fought as land soldiers and were equipped with horses. Flanders was particularly hard hit (Ghent, Terwaan, Atrecht, Kamerijk). Louis III defeated the Vikings in 881 at Saucourt on the River Somme.
This battle was described in Ludwig’s Lied (Ludwigslied). According to the Fulda Annals, Louis’ army killed 9,000 Danes. As a result, the Vikings returned to Flanders and Dutch Limburg. From Asselt (north of Roermond) they attacked cities in Germany (Cologne, Bonn) and Limburg (Liège, Tongeren). In their attack on Trier they were opposed by the bishops Wala and Bertulf of Trier and by Count Adelhard of Metz. Following the example of Trier, other cities began to defend themselves effectively.
The new emperor Charles the Fat sent an army to Asselt. The two Viking leaders, Godfried and Siegfried, were forced to negotiate. Godfrey chose to stay. He became a vassal of the emperor and, after being baptized, married Gisela, daughter of Lothair II, the first king of Lorraine. Siegfried was paid off with 2,000 pounds of silver and gold and set out for the north with 200 ships. Emperor Charles felt threatened by Godfried and his (Godfried’s) brother-in-law Hugo (Gisela’s brother).
In June 885 Godfried was invited for talks in Spijk, near Lobith. This turned out to be a conspiracy and Godfrey was murdered. Hugo was blinded and transferred to the monastery of Prüm for the rest of his life. Here the monk Regino wrote the story of his downfall. In September 891 the Vikings lost a battle at the river Dyle, near Leuven against King Arnulf of Carinthia.
The Fulda Annals tell us that the bodies of dead Vikings blocked the flow of the river. The poor harvest of 892 and the threat of famine caused the Vikings to move north again. After 892 their role in the low countries was limited to occasional raids (particularly in Nijmegen, Groningen, Stavoren, Tiel and Utrecht). After 1010 the raids came to an end.
Vikings disease (hand)
Dupuytren’s contracture (also called Dupuytren’s disease, Morbus Dupuytren, Viking hand and Celtic hand) is a condition in which one or more fingers become permanently bent in a flexed position. Dupuytren’s disease is currently called a Viking disease on the assumption that the disease was spread to Europe and the British Isles during the Viking Age of the 9th to the 13th centuries. From a literature search, it is proposed that Dupuytren’s disease existed in Europe earlier than the Viking Age and originated much earlier in prehistory.
There is a strong genetic component, certain HLA haplotypes also appear to be associated with the disease. It is strongly associated with northern European ancestry, and could have arisen from a genetic mutation in the Viking population originally.
- Well I have Dupuytren’s contracture and my father and grandfather, so this genetic mutation certainly runs in my family.
So were some of my early ancestors Pre-Viking?
The ubiquity of the term “Viking” masks a wide variety of constructions of Vikingism: the old northmen are merchant adventurers, mercenary soldiers, pioneering colonists, pitiless raiders, self-sufficient farmers, cutting-edge naval technologists, primitive democrats, psychopathic berserks, ardent lovers and complicated poets.
- Wow … that sounds just like me, so do I have some Viking in my DNA?
Well, considering that 56 % of my Autosomal DNA origins are from England, Wales and Scotland, 23 % from Scandinavia and that my main Y-DNA I-FGC151505 haplogroup is most commonly found in England and Denmark makes it an interesting idea and certainly not a far-fetched possibility. But there’s plenty of reason to take those results with a grain of salt, myancestors’ actual history is probably more complicated — and more diverse — than it looks on paper.
Doggerland during the Anglian glaciation
Land bridge between the mainland and Britain – Doggerland and Dogger Bank. Comparison of the geographical situation in 2000 to the late years of the Vistula-Würm Glaciation. Map made by: Francis Lima“
Until the middle Pleistocene Great Britain was a peninsula of Europe, connected by the massive chalk Weald–Artois Anticline across the Straits of Dover. During the Anglian glaciation, about 450,000 years ago, an ice sheet filled much of the North Sea, with a large proglacial lake in the southern part fed by the Rhine, the Scheldt and the Thames.
Doggerland was an area of land, now submerged beneath the southern North Sea, that connected Great Britain to continental Europe. It was flooded by rising sea levels around 6500–6200 BCE. Geological surveys have suggested that it stretched from what is now the east coast of Great Britain to what are now the Netherlands, the western coast of Germany and the peninsula of Jutland. It was probably a rich habitat with human habitation in the Mesolithic period.
Around 7000 BC the Ice Age had ended and Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers had migrated from their refuges to recolonize the continent, including Doggerland which later submerged beneath the rising North Sea.
When scientists from Imperial College released a simulation of a tsunami, triggered by a vast undersea landslide at Storrega off the coast of Norway around 6000 BC, it probably came as a surprise to many in north-west Europe that their reassuringly safe part of the world had been subject to such a cataclysmic event.
The researchers suggest that this succession of destructive waves up to 14 metres high may have depopulated an area that is now in the middle of the North Sea, known as Doggerland. However, melting ice at the end of the last ice age around 18,000 years ago led to rising sea levels that inundated vast areas of continental shelves around the world. These landscapes, which had been home to populations of hunter gatherers for thousands of years were gradually overwhelmed by millions of tonnes of meltwater swelling the ocean. Doggerland, essentially an entire prehistoric European country, disappeared beneath the North Sea, its physical remains preserved beneath the marine silts but lost to memory.
The majority of western European males belonged to Y-haplogroup I and northeast Europeans to haplogroup R1a. Other minor male lineages such as R1b, G, J, T and E would also have been present in Europe, having migrated from the Asian Steppe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Videos
Videos
Historical and geographic information about my Autosomal DNA
Percentages of autosomal DNA that I still carry with me
My Y-DNA
Out of Africa migration to Western Europe of my Haplogroup I-FGC15105
FTDNA Globe trekker EUROPE view of the lineages through time and place and to uncover the modern history of my (I-FGC15105) direct paternal surname line and the ancient history of my shared ancestors. In addition to my own (I-FGC15105) ancestral line (thick red line), the thin red lines shows lineages that went other ways and the migration paths leading up to my Ancient Connections.
The Y-DNA chromosome is passed on from father to son, remaining mostly unaltered from generation to generation, except for small trackable changes from time to time.
By comparing these small differences in high-coverage test results, we can reconstruct a large Family Tree of Mankind where all Y chromosomes go back to a single common ancestor who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.
- My Y-DNA Terminal SNP is I-FGC15105, subgroup of I-FGC15109, which is a subgroup of haplogroup I-M223, which in itself is a subgroup of I-M170.
- Age of I-FGC15105: ± 1900 years BCE.
Region: Sardinia and Balkans; one of the first haplogroups in Europe along with haplogroup G.
The paternal line of I-FGC15105 branched off from I-FGC15109 and the rest of humanity about 1900 BCE. The man who is the most recent common ancestor of this line is estimated to have been born around 1850 BCE.
He is the ancestor of at least 4 descendants known as I-BY18, I-BY3802, I-FT137244 and 1 unnamed line.
At the moment there are 152 DNA tested descendants, and they specified that their earliest known origins are from England, United States, Ireland, and 12 other countries.
- I-BY18‘s paternal line was formed when it branched off from the ancestor I-FGC15105 and the rest of mankind around 1850 BCE. The man who is the most recent common ancestor of this line is estimated to have been born around 800 BCE.
- I-BY3802‘s paternal line was formed when it branched off from the ancestor I-FGC15105 and the rest of mankind around 1850 BCE. The man who is the most recent common ancestor of this line is estimated to have been born around 1700 CE.
- I-FT137244‘s paternal line was formed when it branched off from the ancestor I-FGC15105 and the rest of mankind around 1850 BCE. The man who is the most recent common ancestor of this line is estimated to have been born around 1300 CE.
All human male lineages can be traced back to a single common ancestor in Africa who lived around 230,000 years ago, nicknamed Y-Adam. Here we show the SNP route from my ancestral haplogroup I-M223 (estimated to 15.000 BCE) to me I-FGC15105 and my closest connections found in ancient DNA from archaeological remains.
But the story does not end here!
As more people test, the history of this genetic lineage will be further refined.
FTDNA Globetrekker enlarged EUROPE view of my Y-DNA path to I-FGC15105
FTDNA Globe trekker EUROPE view of the lineages through time and place and to uncover the modern history of my (I-FGC15105) direct paternal surname line and the ancient history of my shared ancestors. In addition to my own (I-FGC15105) ancestral line (thick red line), the thin red lines shows lineages that went other ways and the migration paths leading up to my Ancient Connections.
Notable Y-DNA connections
- The notable Y-DNA haplogroup connections are based on direct DNA testing or deduced from testing of relatives and should be considered as fun facts.
Yes, Yes fun …, but remember DNA does not lie, DNA never lies, so they are real facts!
Ancient Y-DNA connections
Here are some very ancient connections who share a common paternal ancestor with me. They were found in the regions now known as:
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