Marker M168

M168

The very widely dispersed M168 marker can be traced to a single individual, Eurasian Adam. This African man, who lived some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago, is the common ancestor of every non-African person living today. His descendants migrated out of Africa and became the only lineage to survive away from humanity’s home continent.

Population growth during the Upper Paleolithic era may have spurred the M168 lineage to seek new hunting grounds for the plains animals crucial to their survival. A period of moist and favorable climate had expanded the ranges of such animals at this time, so these nomadic peoples may have simply followed their food source.

Improved tools and rudimentary art appeared during this same epoch, suggesting significant mental and behavioral changes. These shifts may have been spurred by a genetic mutation that gave Eurasian Adam’s descendants a cognitive advantage over other contemporary, but now extinct, human lineages.

Marker M89

M89

Some 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans are descendants of the second great human migration out of Africa, which is defined by the marker M89.

M89 first appeared 45,000 years ago in Northern Africa or the Middle East. It arose on the original lineage (M168) of Eurasian Adam, and defines a large inland migration of hunters who followed expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East.

Many people of this lineage remained in the Middle East, but others continued their movement and followed the grasslands through Iran to the vast steppes of Central Asia. Herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other game probably enticed them to explore new grasslands.

With much of Earth’s water frozen in massive ice sheets, the era’s vast steppes stretched from eastern France to Korea. The grassland hunters of the M89 lineage traveled both east and west along this steppe superhighway and eventually peopled much of the continent.

A group of M89 descendants moved north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country. Though their numbers were likely small, genetic traces of their journey are still found today.

Marker M9

M9

Some 40,000 years ago a man in Iran or southern Central Asia was born with a unique genetic marker known as M9, which marked a new lineage diverging from the M89 group. His descendants spent the next 30,000 years populating much of the planet.

Most residents of the Northern Hemisphere trace their roots to this unique individual, and carry his defining marker. Nearly all North Americans and East Asians have the M9 marker, as do most Europeans and many Indians. The haplogroup defined by M9, K, is known as the Eurasian Clan.

This large lineage dispersed gradually. Seasoned hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along a vast belt of Eurasian steppe, until the massive mountain ranges of south central Asia blocked their path.

The Hindu Kush, Tian Shan, and Himalaya, even more formidable during the era’s ice age, divided eastward migrations. These migrations through the Pamir Knot region would subsequently become defined by additional genetic markers.

Marker M45

M45

The marker M45 first appeared about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago in a man who became the common ancestor of most Europeans and nearly all Native Americans. This unique individual was part of the M9 lineage, which was moving to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and onto the game-rich steppes of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia.

The M45 lineage survived on these northern steppes even in the frigid Ice Age climate. While big game was plentiful, these resourceful hunters had to adapt their behavior to an increasingly hostile environment. They erected animal skin shelters and sewed weathertight clothing. They also refined the flint heads on their weapons to compensate for the scarcity of obsidian and other materials.

The intelligence that allowed this lineage to adapt and thrive in harsh conditions was critical to human survival in a region where no other hominids are known to have survived.

Marker M242

M242 – Haplogroup Q

Haplogroup Q, defined by marker M242, appeared on the M45 lineage and includes most Native Americans. Its origin lies in Siberia some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago—during the savagely cold climate of that period.

The adaptable descendants of M242 survived by hunting large mammals and inventing cold-weather living techniques still employed by their modern Arctic descendents. They developed new shelters, new types of clothing, and new tools for an increasingly challenging environment.

In the ice-free regions of Siberia these people sat poised to enter a new world. About 15,000 years ago they did just that. With much of Earth’s water locked up in ice sheets, period sea levels were some 350 feet (100 meters) lower than at present. Consequently a land mass called Beringia connected present-day Siberia and Alaska and provided a crossing for the peopling of the Americas.

The genetic data coincide with archaeological evidence for a Beringia crossing that enabled North American settlement only after about 15,000 years ago.

Somehow the progeny of M242 migrated further south through the Americas. Just how they gained passage through the era’s prevalent ice cover is unknown. Some speculate that an ice-free Rocky Mountain corridor allowed safe travel, while others favor a hypothesis of coastal migration.

Whatever their route out of modern Alaska, the descendents of M242 were the first explorers of the New World.

Marker M242-Haplogroup Q

The Entire Migration – not quite

And that’s the whole journey…or what’s known so far.

I wonder, what point in time does my direct line turn back and return to India?

You can explore more off this at the official site.

§

91 replies
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  1. Tiffany
    Tiffany says:

    My dad is haplogroup Q-M242, and 100% Ashkenazi Jewish (family from Poland going back to Belarus) as tested by 23andme.

  2. Ian Harrison
    Ian Harrison says:

    I’m a Q-M242, and a fifth generation Australian. My British ancestors were living in North West Yorkshire (the Craven area) for hundreds of years. Stories from the past (Grandfather) was that we were originally from Denmark? The area in Yorkshire is close to York the Viking stronghold. Interestingly, we have Dupruytren’s Disease (Viking hand) amongst the older men.. We are physically tall, athletic and have found that we exist really well in the extreme cold in Alpine areas without much stress. We tan easily have green eyes and black hair, we row and sail……!

  3. George Shaw
    George Shaw says:

    Recently, I assisted a friend, Charles Chamberlain, to prove or disprove that his father was Native Indian through DNA testing, His father, born 1902, had been adopted as a baby. Growing up, his father as a youth was often called a half breed and Indian in his teen years. Calling someone an Indian doesn;t make someone a Indian. With the Y-DNA37 test, his results were Q – M242; with the Y-DNA67 test, his results were Q-L56 and his SNP s 940+

    Would someone explain to me what racial grouping would a person belong to with these results?

    Thank you, George Shaw

  4. Johnny Fountano
    Johnny Fountano says:

    Hi Ruben Salazar,
    I was looking at a show with Bill Gates, and he did a DNA test and geneology with Jessica Alba. She had similar situation. They found Iberian Spanish DNA also Jewish, and a little African. But it was a large percentage Native American. They had a unique project in Mexico and they actually pinpointed tribes. I think it was Potosi and mostly Mayan. That being said, it is a possibility that haplopgroup Q was introduced through central Asians into the European component, but more than likely it is from Native Americans from Mexico. Spanish men fathered children with Native women for about 3 or 4 generations before there were a small amount of Spanish women that came to Mexico and also Africans. So you could have had a Spanish male ancestor with Viking and Jewish roots that had a child with a Native, then they had a daughter, the daughter could have married or had a child with a Native American man who introduced the Y chromosome haplogroup Qm242. into the line.

    Johnny

  5. Johnny Fountano
    Johnny Fountano says:

    I fountd out I am haplogroup Qm242. I am thinking native American from Louisiana. I could see this haplogroup being introduced to Europeans and English in many ways. One way is Guinus Khan. Another is Attilla the Hun, Supposedly Central Asian. His genes got introduced to the Romans through eastern European invasion. Or through the Sami people who some of their ancestors migrated from western Siberia about the same time Siberians migrated across the Bering land bridge. And another way. English or French man fathered children whith Native American women in Canada or New England, etc, and they had daughters. The Daughters had children with Native American men where the Haplopgroup Q/Qm242 came from. The same thing could have happended in the Caribean Islands. An English, European man fathered children with native American women, they had daughters, The daughters had children with Indian, white, or black men they had daughters and married or had children with men whos fathers or grandfathers were Native Americans.
    Johnnyu

  6. AngloJew
    AngloJew says:

    “Dawn Says:
    May 28th, 2014 at 9:35 am

    My paternal marker is Q-M242 but we have no native americans on that side. My grandfather was from Germany, his father was from Germany, etc. My Y-DNA coming back Q-M242 doesn’t make any sense when we are all of German origin and didn’t come to the U.S. until 1923.”

    You’re almost certainly descended from assimilated German Jews.

  7. D Shrimpton
    D Shrimpton says:

    Hi Nick

    Just read your message. Your marker and subtype without the downstream is the same as mine……………I am led to believe only 0.2% of the population carries this. My family came from Norfolk but can only be verified as living there form the early 1800’s. There may be a link (undocumented fully) back to 1650 on the Suffolk/Norfolk border area but it is all difficult to track due to name changes.

    I believe, like you that the background is sea based. There appear to be a group with the same markers in Sweden

  8. Ruben Salazar
    Ruben Salazar says:

    Interesting I am also Q-m242. I also have Spehardic Jew roots through my mother (not my father, I thought) but it now appears that some of the Q m242 went west. I have not found any traces of Sephardic Jew on my fathers side but am I Jewish through my father as well?? My father’s family originates from Northern Spain which was invaded and colonized by Vikings. Could I be related to the Vikings?. We helped colonized Mexico therefore I could have Native American blood. Now, if Q m242 could be Native American, Sephardic Jew or Viking which is it?? What am I?? I participated in the National Geographic Genographic/IBM study in 2005. I understood this to be the most highly funded, most professional study with the most sophisticated compuers available. What went wrong??

  9. Nick
    Nick says:

    Hi D Shrimpton and other relatives, I am S324 without the downstream S326 marker. As mentioned in October last year, my paternal line (Young) goes back to the Bristol area for about 400 years and may well have been there before that – to 1300’s. Quakers like Thomas Young (wave theory of light, Rosetta Stone, etc) are paternal relatives and so should have had the same Q M242 background unless something untoward was going on.

    My guess is the most likely origin is Viking, given their seamanship and eventual access to the English west country. Norman is another reasonable possibility.

  10. Ashutosh
    Ashutosh says:

    This page has really interesting information on haplogroup Q.

    I was specifically fascinated by one of the comments by “Ash”. I reside in United States, but similar to Ash, I belong to the Saraswat Brahmin community from Konkan region in western India and have more Mediterranean physical characteristics.

    I know that the haplogroup Q is found at lower frequencies in India. I was curious, if it is found in relatively higher frequencies in Saraswat Brahmin communities. 🙂

  11. Alice in Q-Land
    Alice in Q-Land says:

    My male ancestor have also Q-M242, we live in Central Europe(Slovakia), but origin, we was from Germany, since cca 1680 in Silesia.

  12. Dawn
    Dawn says:

    My paternal marker is Q-M242 but we have no native americans on that side. My grandfather was from Germany, his father was from Germany, etc. My Y-DNA coming back Q-M242 doesn’t make any sense when we are all of German origin and didn’t come to the U.S. until 1923.

  13. Keyo Ghettson
    Keyo Ghettson says:

    I did the Geno 2.0 DNA test in 2014. According to the Geno 2.0 test I’m Q-F1161. I transferred my Geno 2.0 test results to Family Tree DNA. According to Family Tree DNA I’m Q1a3. I can trace back my roots 7 generations to a man who was born in Östergötland in Sweden around 250 years ago. I want to come in contact with people that are Q-F1161 (Q1a3) like me.

    Info about Q and Q-F1161: http://www.keyoghettson.com/2014/04/y-dna-haplogroup-q-and-snp-q-f1161.html

    Email: info@keyoghettson.com

  14. etadnas
    etadnas says:

    Amuse myself with finds. I’m also Q242. I agree that 20,000 have made a huge difference on how I how look. Doesn’t matter to me. My x mark is L2a 50,000 years ago. My great grandmother was light skinned blue eyes. Marker from Africa. Again it really doesn’t to me.

  15. D Shrimpton
    D Shrimpton says:

    Q – S324 without the downstream S326 marker.
    Has anyone got this? I am lead to believe that the lack of the S326 means that I am not related to the native indian and did not go with most of the Q’s across the Bering Strait. This is one of the reasons that this is an unusual one.

    Would be interested in any thoughts

  16. Sara Beth
    Sara Beth says:

    My brother took this test and we also got these results! Which is exciting because the male line in my family is Ashkenazi Jewish, so we weren’t expecting this at all! We like to put our love of rare steak down to all the woohly mammoth hunting business =)

  17. *~Gipsy~*
    *~Gipsy~* says:

    To Anglojew;

    My haplogroup is, Q-M346
    L474+, L58+, L933+, L938+, L940+, M242+, M346+, MEH2+,
    L213-, L331-, L527-, L529-, L53-, L936-, L937-, L939-, M265-, M3-, M323-, M378-, P89.1-

    …not Q1b

  18. Reg
    Reg says:

    Baiju,

    The Q yDNA Haplogroup Project is one of the haplogroup Project of Family Tree DNA:
    “As a Haplogroup Project, The Q yDNA Haplogroup Project serves the Genetic Genealogy by:

    Exploring the history of the Haplogroup since its members’ most distant shared ancestor.
    Tracking the geography the Haplogroup and its subclades.
    Examining the age of the Haplogroup and its subclades…”

    There is also a facebook group to contact them: Q yDNA Haplogroup Project

  19. Baiju painadath
    Baiju painadath says:

    Reg,
    Baiju, I am Q1b and I match a syrian christian. Have you joined the Q haplogroup project?
    what should I do?and what it meant for?

  20. Nigel
    Nigel says:

    Just got my results back today and I’m Q-M242. I have traced my paternal line back to the 18th century in East Yorkshire (where I still reside). I’m white but not at all ‘Scandinavian’ looking – for what it’s worth my skin is olive and I have dark brown eyes. I’m wondering how Qs made it into England. If my looks are anything to go by, reading the above posts, I’d probably plump for Jewish but there’s no evidence of it in the 3 hundred years’ [scant] info we have on my father’s lineage.

  21. Nick
    Nick says:

    Dear Cousins!

    I received my result about a year ago: Q – M242 subtype S324.

    All of your comments are really interesting. For what it’s worth, my story is that my male ancestry is English back to the early 1600’s, at least, being early Quakers living just to the north and east of Bristol. I suspect that my forebears on this line were living in and around Bristol before this but I’m not absolutely sure. Many Bristol Quakers left the City for the countryside to avoid the more extreme punitive behaviour of the City authorities in the mid-1600’s. Some left for N America, of course. Lkely relatives were in Bristol in the 1300’s.

    The area in/around Bristol has been occupied by waves of different immigrant populations over the last two thousand years – from the Roman (and associated) presence onwards. My guess is that my immigrant Q ancestor was a Viking or Norman but it’s only a guess. The DNA tester observed markers common to Scandinavia. It seems that the Q haplogroup is most obvious there along the shores of Sweden and Norway, rather like a thin coastal beard. I have read David Faux’s piece and the idea of Q people forming part of The Men of Aesir is interesting. My wife, who is actually part Swedish (haplogroup T), already had a copy of the Edda at home containing this story. She has put up with my speculations with good humour!

    Christoph Baumer’s book, The Age of the Steppe Warrior, is a fascinating and relevant history of the Altai and surrounding peoples and areas.

    Nick.

  22. Reg
    Reg says:

    “All the Q’s are decendent from one of the many Canaanite tribes”

    That’s science!
    Even Q (Q1a-MEH2*) has been found for a 4 ky-old Palaeo-Eskimo individual of Saqqaq culture. It’s well known that Eskimo are descendent of a canaaite tribe…

  23. Robert
    Robert says:

    The reason why Q is a mystery is because it makes up majority of the worlds population when its cluster with it’s brothers D, E, and C. The Q Y-chromosomes represents the Phonecians. If you goggle the “Solomon Islands” you will a group of black people with blonde hair and blue eyes that also carry the Q Y-chromosome. The Vikings were black. If you read any dna company articles written about the Vikings, they never mention the Y hapologroup. Almost every time when documentaries are done on things that could easily be put to rest, the critical things are skipped. All the Q’s are decendent from one of the many Canaanite tribes

  24. *~Gipsy~*
    *~Gipsy~* says:

    Religion and DNA? Really? “Jewishness,” is a matter of Jewish law, not a biological or a psychological category. What we tech our children at home, they will follow. …In the beginning there was man. So the saying goes. Man follows man since then. Follow+Teach=learn. We are a broken record, repeating.
    -Do this: When there is a person/or more than one around, look directly at them with no thought. Don’t say a word -> Scratch the side of your nose, see how many will follow by doing the same thing.

  25. Anglojew
    Anglojew says:

    Also, to European posters commenting on looking European so being surprised. This haplotype developed 20,000 years ago or 800 generations ago. It’s possible it was before modern races evolved even. It’s been in Europe for at least 40 to 60 generations. Even assuming one an ancestor 1000 years ago was Central Asian its no surprise you don’t look it after so many generations of presumably intermarrying Caucasians.

  26. Anglojew
    Anglojew says:

    Hello Gypsy,

    You’ll find you’re actually a Marrano Sephari Jew not a Gypsy (at least on that line of ancestry). After being officially expelled many crypto-Jews who remained pretended to be Gypsies. This is consistent with Ladino and the often Jewish haplotype Q1b.

  27. Hi there
    Hi there says:

    My father did take a DNA 37 sequence test. And it shows that he also are Haplogroup Q M242. And we are Norwegians :o)

    Jan-Erik

  28. joshua
    joshua says:

    Hi malayali christian, I am a syrian christian’ my son is a q-242. There is ftdna project kerala and one for syrian christians’ you can transfer your results and find some matches there.

    Josh

  29. champ
    champ says:

    Hi Elanjickal,

    I am also Q M346 like yours and also from a christian family(Syro Malabar) from Kerala,India. I just cant figure why we are Q !!

  30. Reg
    Reg says:

    Hi Kim,

    I think the same than you. The steppic tribes like Huns, Alans or others were a mixture of different populations because they assimilated part of other tribes into their confederation. So some Qs were assimilated into different tribes and were dispersed in Europe and middle east.

  31. Kim
    Kim says:

    Hi Joshua

    You have a point regarding the arrival of Q in Europe. Someone with the same surname as ours tested and came out as a branch of R, his dna showed a germanic origin with a close match in Toledo Spain, once a Visigothic Capital. It could be way back the ancient tribes were a real mixture of peoples.

  32. Malayali Christian
    Malayali Christian says:

    My parents are from South Indian state Kerala and we are Syrian Christians. I just found out that mine is Q-M147. Eager to know if anyone share my marker ?

  33. Joshua
    Joshua says:

    Hi Q’s,

    I read about Hunnic Q influnce thru the Gotes in Scandinavia. But isn’t it possible that Q appeared in Europe just because some Q’s came along with R’s and I’s to Europe some millenia ago?

    Why so strictly R went westwards and Q went to the east? Nobody then knew about the difference so they went all together R and Q to the east and to the west.

  34. Kim Dawtry
    Kim Dawtry says:

    Hello Gipsy, it seems us Qs are a very nomadic people. I found your message really interesting and I think it helps explain how Q came to be found in Scandinavia. Maybe the route they went was through Turkey, Hungary, Poland and then across the water to Sweden and onwards to Norway. It seems there is very little, if any, Q in Denmark and Finland. Blessings to you too.

  35. *~Gipsy~*
    *~Gipsy~* says:

    I’m a Q-M242 -> Q-L938+. My family is Portuguese/Spanish Gipsy. My great, great, grandpa left Braga, Portugal in the yearly 1800’s. My family has always been told we are of old Turkish/ Hungarian gipsies that left India. There are many-many Hungarian Gipsies in Spain today. We speak ladino which is a Sephardic Judeo which is odd for Gipsy. But, then and again we follow the law of the land. Be it language or religion. I feel my family picked-up ladino by living in Portugal/Spain or Turkey at one point. Yes, we still have some of our gipsy traditions. Our family has always played an musical instrument. To be gipsy one must have a mixer of lands ->Africa/ Middle Eastern/ Mediterranean/ India/ Asia – for we travel to live. Many blessings my cousins.

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