December 01, 2005

S22 shared by Y-haplogroups I and J

Ethnoancestry has announced today a new SNP in the GENEALOGY-DNA-L list:
“Ethnoancestry is pleased to announce the launch of a new SNP, S22, which unites haplogroups I and J to the exclusion of G, H and K, within the F supergroup. This SNP may be interesting for anyone in the rare F* group, or anyone within hg I or J who is interested to confirm their status at this marker.”
The new internal branch of IJ-S22 is an exciting new development. We had previously known that the ancestors of haplogroup I arrived in Europe from West Asia in Upper Paleolithic times. Subsequently, haplogroup J bearers also entered Europe from the same region, during the Holocene.

The new discovery is the "missing link" between these two groups, establishing their common ancestry.

Interestingly, the regions inhabited today by I and J bearers are primarily found on a "corridor" from the Middle East through Asia Minor, the Balkans, Central Europe to Scandinavia. To the west of this region, haplogroup R1b is more important, and to the east, haplogroup R1a1.

This same corridor has also been identified by physical anthropologists in the past as the route by which leptoprosopic southern Europoids migrated into Europe, forming a "wedge" between the indigenous broad-faced northern Europoids. Thus, the strong metrical similarity between modern Nordics (found principally in Scandinavia, a nexus of I concentration), and modern Mediterraneans (from West Asia and Southeastern Europe, a nexus of J concentration) can be interpreted as a consequene of their common descent. This suggestion is not new, having been proposed by Carleton Coon in his Races of Europe in 1939, although dating this common descent was obviously inaccurate before the advent of carbon dating and the molecular clock.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

So does this mean R1a and R1b peoples are more broad-faced in comparison to haplogroup I Scandinavians? Britain is predominantly R1b and they seem to be long and narrow-headed.