I took a genetic test via saliva through 23 and Me a few years ago. The results made me happy for several reasons. I was curious about my matrilineal genetics. I knew these findings would mix well with my interest in women’s culture no matter what I found out.
I knew that as an anthropologist I would probably be able to extend my memoir related discussions back for thousands of years.
Reason 1: I have around 2% neanderthal DNA in my genome.
I had believed ever since my undergraduate days that Homo neanderthalensis was not an evolutionary dead end. It seemed obvious to me that physical characteristics of neanderthals continued on in contemporary human populations. We are all related. The genetics showed that I, just like everyone whose ancestors ventured out of Africa, after about 60,000 years ago interacted, and that usually means interbred, with neanderthals. Before that time humans migrated to the east, and northeast rather than the north, thus not interacting with neanderthals.
Reason 2. I also found out I have a fairly rare maternal haploid group.
Maternal Hapoid Groups (mtDNA)
My mitochondrial haplogroup is M1a3a. It is about 6,500 years old. M1 is about 24,000 years old. M1 has two daughter branches that probably split off of M1 about 20,000 years ago. M1a tends to be both the most frequent and the most diverse in Ethiopian populations. But it also occurs in Middle Eastern populations and geographically diverse Jewish populations.
Years Ago, when I first wrote a post about My Ancestral Eve, I was a bit naive per writing popular interest articles, and thought no one would read it. It is now fairly well-ranked in Google. So much for my suppositions. Be care not to generalize too much. At that point I read the info on 23 and Me to mean that my “clan mother” or the first woman with the mitochondrial mutation separating her as M1 from her mother as M was Ethiopian. I now have to read it that my first M1 maternal ancestor was either Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, or Jewish. Or maybe she was all three.
And while I had to throw out some family stories, my belief that race is a bogus concept was confirmed. Race is far too generalized to have meaning. Ethnicity probably is too. Splitting things to bits is destructive. Lumping things together emphasizes similarities. (See lumpers and splitters.)
I am neither a biochemist nor a geneticist so my understanding of what mtDNA really means is limited because the shorthand for haplo groups is really about allelic pairs (genes) and which amino acids are structurally arranged to make them.
In my previous article, I should have gone into more detail about genetics, mtDNA, clan mothers, and ancestral Eves. I kind of muddied the waters rather than clearing them up a bit.
Mitochondria is passed, intact, from mother to offspring. Mitochondria, or mDNA, is the energetic complex that powers our cells. The mDNA does not recombine with genetic material from outside the mitochondria, like other genetic material; mitochondrial DNA is inherited as a single unit, a haplo group. Due to this, the relationships between mitochondrial DNA from different individuals can be mapped out as a an evolutionary tree.
Back in 2020 I stated:
“Every living person traces back to a single woman in Africa about 200,00 years ago. Then once people started dispersing around the globe perhaps 70,000 years ago. There are between 13 and 30 women who were the “clan mothers” or the more modern Eves, or daughters of Eve, whose distinct mitochondria mutations live on, with every person tracing back to one of these Eves. Every living person can trace the mDNA within their cells to one of these handful of women.
Okay, let’s examine this poorly worded paragraph.
Continued research by people who know (scientists) would still agree with, “”Every living person traces their mt DNA back to a single woman who lived in Africa about 200,00 years ago. Then people started dispersing around the globe perhaps 70,000 years ago.” This is the person who is sometimes called our Mitochondrial Eve.
Then I said this: There are between 13 and 30 women who were the “clan mothers” or the more modern Eves, or daughters of Eve, whose distinct mitochondria mutations live on, with every person tracing back to one of these Eves. I should never have used the word Eve. It is just too loaded of a term.
‘…between 13 and 30 women who were the “clan mothers” ‘ should have mentioned why the terms Eve and Clan Mother were mentioned. There were books that were popular a few years before I wrote the post that used these terms in their titles, and were in everyone’s mind when mtDNA findings became popular. The 30 groups I alluded to were in reference to the “other Eves” that Sykes mentioned in his book.
- The 13 Original Clan Mothers: Your Sacred Path to Discovering the Gifts, Talents, and Abilities of the Feminine Through Ancient Teachings. By Jamie Sams.
- The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry By Bryan Sykes.
These books were not really about female migrations patterns. Sams was about her Grandmothers’ indigenous ways of knowing that applied to women. Sykes really only discusses and simplifies the migrating European mitochondrial groups by giving them cute names. The groupings themselves really do not closely match up with current understanding of hapogroups.
There were multiple migrations out of Africa. The first of these modern human migrations probably occurred about 70,000 years ago via the westernmost portions of Asia or the Arabian peninsula.
The standard dispersal pattern that I was taught in graduate school, back in the dark ages, corresponds to the blue pattern in the map below. The intermediate red arrows show the multi-wave dispersal that everyone, now, knows, happened. The new take on how humans dispersed into Eurasia from Africa allows for back migration from Asia to Africa shown by the green line. My maternal haplogroup is now thought to have followed the green line back into Africa after encountering the expanding glaciers of the last Ice Age.
Truth is not static. Our understanding evolves as we draw upon more and more data which allows us to see patterns we previously could not see. This population dispersal also maps onto the origination of mtDNA group L tracing originally to eastern Africa 180 thousand years ago, then and then mutating into the L3 group west of the Red Sea about 65 thousand years as humans began dispersing up through through the Arabian Peninsula where the M group evolved 50,000 years ago.
The red lines show the population groups traveled from Asia back across the northern portion of western Asia then dispersed through North Africa’s Mediterranean coast, as well as traveled through Europe and back into Africa through the Iberian Penninsula back into North Africa the until the M1 group developed in north Africa or Arabian Peninsula about 24 thousand years ago. There was a lot of gene passage back and forth across the Straits of Gibraltar and around the Mediterranean and North Africa as early agrarian culture developed and specialized.
6,500 years ago a woman carried a new mutation that continues to this day with my maternal DNA. We all migrate, mingle, and mutate.
Perhaps most people would not be able to map out the story of the ancient women in their maternal groups, but to me this is just an extension of memoir and I can envision their stories and environments almost as clearly as I can for my Amish ancestors who escaped religious persecution in Switzerland 500 years ago.
When Doing Genetic Testing, Expect Surprises
I would not have gotten into the new and improved human migration theory except that my matrilineal history as told by my mitochondria is not what I expected.
My mitochondria is not the Amish group I expected it to be! I really do not know what exactly happened to my maternal ancestors between 6,500 years ago and 1788 when Anna Salome Seitz was born. Anna married a John G. Daniel and their daughter was Lydia Jane Daniel who married Jacob Brubaker. I suspect they were all Pennsylvania Dutch but I am not sure if they were Amish. Anna and Lydia did have the same maternal DNA as me.
I thought I would have the mitochondria typical of some of the Amish people who seem to age well that live in an area near where my mother’s family is from, Northeastern Indiana. They live 10% longer than groups with different mtDNA. Nope, mine is from a completely different group of people. I am actually glad that my family abandoned the Amish lifestyle and community long ago. There are lots of genetic problems in most of these small, closed communities as they suffer from the effects of in-breeding.
My great grandmother, Amanda Brubaker Palmer, knew she was Amish could speak German, but her family was not “observant” as I have known for ages as in image I have of her as a small child she is wearing a plaid dress with a bow at the neck. It is decidedly not Amish dress.
I hate to break it to you, but our cultural stories are for making sense out of things, not for telling the truth.
Over 200 Generations of Unknown Women
Culturally, I can trace my matriline back to Anna Salome Seitz born in 1788 in Pennsylvania. I’m working on finding out who her father was, so maybe I can figure out who her father married and thus who her mother was. That would be fun for me. I would like to find out where her family was located when they left Europe, or where-ever. I consider myself lucky that I can trace my matriline back 5 generations. Women’s cultural information is quickly lost. Our genetic information is well traced. It is sort of ironic.
The gap in ancestry information is between Anna and my ancient foremother from the area Africa somewhere around 6,500 years ago.
So how did that bit of DNA from a woman who was probably Ethiopian, and lived around the time Abraham or Moses and other men were figuring out how to segment the world into warring religious factions, travel to Pennsylvania in the late 1700s?
It is apparently rather rare for this haploid to show in European-derived groups.
Speculation While Falling Down Rabbit Holes
I am still trying to figure out how information I received from 23 and Me can be reconciled with my family history.
High level reconciliation will happen. Detailed nitty, gritty reconciliation will not happen.
I, being someone who loves women’s narrative, will fill up my back story incorporating the genetic results into a personal speculative fiction. I, however, do know no accurate timeline exists for tracing the exact travels of a bit of genetic material across the ages.
What I’ve Learned
I am not one of the Seven Daughters of Eve, my mDNA orginator, My Clan Mother, as I have already begun to think of her, was not European. This does not mean I do not have lots and lots of European women in my genetic tree. I do.
To reconcile these two things, European ancestry and African mtDNA, you have to understand what I have said before, that I do not give any credence to the validity of race.
What I Do Know / What I Can Say
- Genetic race does not exist.
- Cultural race exists in people’s minds and it a hot mess of otherness and hatred.
- I have no idea what shade of skin my Clan Mother was, but she almost certainly was not white.
- Women have traveled around the world for millennia.
- At some point the carriers of my mtDNA took on an appearance of lighter skin
- My DNA that originates from sequences of Neanderthal genetic material is probably not related to my mtDNA.
- my Clan Mother (what I call the person who first carried M1a3a had a daughter or female descendant who probably migrated up through Iberia as a Jewish woman, or as the mate of an Arabian trader, or as a trader of the Maghreb herself.
I recommend using caution when undertaking and interpreting genetic tests. You will find out surprising information. You might find out things that unsettle your understanding of who you are or find out distressing health-related information. Be aware. But if you are of an analytical bent, DNA and Ancestry records can be really fun. Yes, I’m a nerd.
References:
2001. Sykes, Bryan . W. W. Norton & Company, New York; 2001. 306 pp.
1993. Sams, Jamie The 13 Original Clan Mothers: Your Sacred Path to Discovering the Gifts, Talents, and Abilities of the Feminine Through Ancient Teachings. Harper, SanFrancisco.
https://you.23andme.com/reports/maternal_haplogroup Accessed: Monday , April 15, 2024. Reports can only be accessed by members of 23 and Me.
https://www.livescience.com/mitochondrial-eve-first-human-homeland.html
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