The private Yahoo Group that our Brooks R1a DNA testers use to communicate has been pretty quiet for the last year or so and I wanted to check in with surname project administrator Nigel Brooks to see if there had been any new developments for our specific Brooks researchers. Although Nigel is descended from a different Brooks family, he does a wonderful job of keeping track of all of the different lines and letting us know when anything significant has been discovered that affects our group.
I've been out of the DNA loop for the last few years and advances have occurred that can help us understand more about different haplogroups and surname origins in general, and our testing lines in particular. But as much light as these new advances have shed in some areas, they seem to throw other areas into even more shadow.
For example, a 111-marker surname match was at one time considered proof positive of a very close relationship within a very recent genealogical time period. Now we know that that might not always be the case, as Nigel tells me that he's seen results of "very close STR 111-marker results [within the R1b Haplogroup] with different SNP results which can branch thousands of years ago," and he fears that that might also hold true within our R1a Haplogroup.
Seems like nothing is ever straightforward in DNA analysis, and you just have to keep trying the different pieces of the puzzle to see what fits. Even when you think a piece fits now...as we learn more about DNA, it might not fit quite as well later, as we learn more. That's the bad news.
The good news is that we do have a number of solid matches within the family lines of our R1a Haplogroup of Brooks testers. We are sorting ourselves out (slowly) into a cohesive, proven family group, and into distinct lines within that group.
We also have a couple of mysteries to work through.
Three testers with non-matching surnames of Bradberry, Perry and Walkland continue to match some of our Brooks testers at 111-markers. Did you catch that? These three non-surname matches are matching some Brooks testers at 111 markers, but not all of our R1a Brooks testers. Nigel is now trying to determine if these three non-Brooks testers are a result of the same sort of coincidental SNP matching he has observed in the R1b Haplogroup projects.
Take a look at this chart. You see the purple group titled "R1a1a1b1a3b2 [CTS8277+] "Cocke County TN" testers? That's us. All in all, our matches are pretty consistent. Just a couple of mutations here and there over the past centuries. But where are these Bradberry, Perry and Walkland testers coming from? Are they actually Brooks NPE's (non-paternal events) or are they random, coincidental relatives showing up out of the deep mists of time? We just don't know yet. I have recently upgraded my great-uncle's test to 111 markers and the odd birds continue to match us. This seems to be narrowing the mutation down to the line of the Brooks who doesn't match the odds.
Confused yet? Don't worry about it, because all of that wasn't really even what I was writing to tell you.
What I'm really writing to tell you is that Nigel has identified our group as part of an ancient Viking cluster! We descend from subclade CTS8277 which is classified as "Norsemen." So yeah, Vikings! Well, to be technically correct, our origins in Norway long pre-date the age of going a' viking, (we're not talking about the sacking of Paris, here, more like 4,500 years ago), but you get my point. Have a look at the information (and chart) on this page to learn more about the deep origins of the CTS8277 subclade. This is very exciting news as we had previously classified our deep ancestry rather vaguely as "eastern European."
So now we know. Norway.
No comments:
Post a Comment