Huntergatherer1066
11-06-2015, 05:35 PM
I intend for this thread to be used as a clearinghouse of information on this rather rare subclade of mtDNA Haplogroup H, which happens to be my own as well. I have been gathering information from all known H49a1 individuals who are able to trace their ancestry back to Europe (if they aren't still there) and have noticed an interesting pattern emerging. With a few exceptions, all individuals trace their mtDNA lines back to Swedish or German-speaking populations. Below are two version of a map I recently made. The location in present day Serbian is represented by an ethnic German who was resettled there by the Hapsburgs as part of their campaign to repopulate the Banat. My own H49a1 line goes back to Anna Rebstock of Ottersheim bei Landau (not to be confused with plain Ottersheim), Germany.
http://i.imgur.com/iyZiiKb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dBXoCkV.jpg
If you've come across this thread by googling H49a1 and are H49a1 yourself, please feel free to contact me, especially if you can trace your ancestry back to Europe and I'll add you to the dataset and include you in the mapping as this is all a work in progress and will change as we get more data. I would also recommend joining the H and HV mtDNA Haplogroup Project and the H Subclade Discovery project at FTDNA and consider submitting your FASTA file to Genbank.
Based on relatively compact distribution of H49a1 primarily in German-speaking populations, I would estimate that the originator of the final defining mutation of H49a1 was born sometime in the first millennium AD when the precursors of the different West Germanic languages like English, Dutch, and German were branching apart. I think that would give enough time for H49a1 to be found fairly broadly throughout the German-speaking world. The cases of H49a1 in non-German speaking populations are probably a result of low levels of gene flow from German-speaking populations into these areas. H49a1 could have actually originated in Sweden, and moved south into what is now Germany and beyond where the lineage was more prolific. I think the near absence of H49a1 in the British Isles is particularly striking, given how heavily tested they are compared to continental Europe. I am curious to see more results though and see where they lead.
The only other in-depth discussion of H49a1 I've encountered is this page on the Speak family genealogy page: https://speakfamily.wordpress.com/dna-of-sarah-faires-and-sarah-mcspadden/
http://i.imgur.com/iyZiiKb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dBXoCkV.jpg
If you've come across this thread by googling H49a1 and are H49a1 yourself, please feel free to contact me, especially if you can trace your ancestry back to Europe and I'll add you to the dataset and include you in the mapping as this is all a work in progress and will change as we get more data. I would also recommend joining the H and HV mtDNA Haplogroup Project and the H Subclade Discovery project at FTDNA and consider submitting your FASTA file to Genbank.
Based on relatively compact distribution of H49a1 primarily in German-speaking populations, I would estimate that the originator of the final defining mutation of H49a1 was born sometime in the first millennium AD when the precursors of the different West Germanic languages like English, Dutch, and German were branching apart. I think that would give enough time for H49a1 to be found fairly broadly throughout the German-speaking world. The cases of H49a1 in non-German speaking populations are probably a result of low levels of gene flow from German-speaking populations into these areas. H49a1 could have actually originated in Sweden, and moved south into what is now Germany and beyond where the lineage was more prolific. I think the near absence of H49a1 in the British Isles is particularly striking, given how heavily tested they are compared to continental Europe. I am curious to see more results though and see where they lead.
The only other in-depth discussion of H49a1 I've encountered is this page on the Speak family genealogy page: https://speakfamily.wordpress.com/dna-of-sarah-faires-and-sarah-mcspadden/