Paternal Haplogroup Question

[Batroun]

Hello all, I am relatively new to this world of yours. Being very interested in History and populations I ended up here on this forum. I tried researching on how Paternal Haplogroups are assigned and grasped a decent understanding of it. My question however is if someone is assigned say J-m267( correct me if I am wrong is the typical Arabian peninsula marker), does that mean they are mostly of an Arab origin? What if on GedMatch the Red Sea/Arabia admixture is only 9%. Forgive me for my lack of knowledge

Thanks

[Agamemnon]

My question however is if someone is assigned say J-m267( correct me if I am wrong is the typical Arabian peninsula marker), does that mean they are mostly of an Arab origin? What if on GedMatch the Red Sea/Arabia admixture is only 9%.

Well, J1-M267 is at least 20,000 years old while the Arabs emerged as a distinct group only during the Late Bronze Age (some ~3,500 years ago). Even though this marker is indeed widespread among Arabian populations nowadays, you'd need to carry a specifically Arabian branch of J1 in order to decisively pinpoint Arabian ancestry in your paternal line. Belonging to J1-FGC11 (which is the most prominent branch of J1 among Arabians today) might not even be enough as one of the Bronze Age Sidonians also was J1-FGC11, rather, you'd need to carry a subclade of FGC11 which is reliably Arabian both in terms of distribution, phylogeny and time span. Most of the J1 in Lebanon does not seem to be Arabian in origin, rather, it is more likely to be tied to the Phoenicians/Canaanites and to the Arameans as well as to the Hurrians and other populations from Anatolia.

Hope this answers your question!

[A Norfolk L-M20]

A haplogroup is only a marker for a very narrow line of ancestry. In the case of Y-DNA, it marks only the line that follows strictly along the direct paternal line. It does NOT represent your general ancestry. It does not even represent your father's half of your ancestry. Just a genetic marker passed from your father, his father, his father, and so on.

Otherwise my Y-DNA might make me Iranian, Iraq, Druze, Balochi, Syrian, or Pakistani. It doesn't. I'm an Englishman born in a local English family. It just so happens that sometime within the past few thousand years, I have a direct paternal ancestor that moved from Asia to England. Out of my 128 biological 5 x great grandparents for example, only one, my direct paternal grandfather, carried that haplogroup that was passed down to me.

[Agamemnon]

A haplogroup is only a marker for a very narrow line of ancestry. In the case of Y-DNA, it marks only the line that follows strictly along the direct paternal line. It does NOT represent your general ancestry. It does not even represent your father's half of your ancestry. Just a genetic marker passed from your father, his father, his father, and so on.

Otherwise my Y-DNA might make me Iranian, Iraq, Druze, Balochi, Syrian, or Pakistani. It doesn't. I'm an Englishman born in a local English family. It just so happens that sometime within the past few thousand years, I have a direct paternal ancestor that moved from Asia to England. Out of my 128 biological 5 x great grandparents for example, only one, my direct paternal grandfather, carried that haplogroup that was passed down to me.

What you just wrote is mostly true, however there are several factors that also need to be taken into account. One of these is endogamy, while what you just said applies to most societies where exogamy is the norm, inbreeding is a very serious issue in the Near East (Lebanon included), so much in fact that several countries perform pre-marital genetic screening on potential spouses. In this case, you can expect uniparental lineages to embody a significantly larger chunk of the genome as they are bound to show up several times in a person's family tree. The predominance of a given uniparental lineage is another factor, for instance if you were R1b-L21 instead of L1b-FGC51036 it would be wise to assume that this lineage actually accounts for a large chunk of your ancestry as it is bound to have been the most common paternal lineage in the British Isles since the Early Bronze Age. These factors are not mutually exclusive by the way, they often go hand in hand in the Near East.

[Batroun]

How can I find the subclade if say 23andMe only game me J M267? Thanks

[Agamemnon]

How can I find the subclade if say 23andMe only game me J M267? Thanks

You should consider testing with FTDNA and joining the J1 project, the moderators would assign you to a specific cluster based on your results and you can test the individual SNPs of the cluster you've been assigned to. If you're not willing to spend hundreds of bucks on this, I strongly suggest you do so. If not, just test with Full Genomes Corp. or take FTDNA's Big Y test.

Also, you should totally upload your raw data (from 23andMe) on Gedmatch.

[Awale]

What you just wrote is mostly true, however there are several factors that also need to be taken into account. One of these is endogamy, while what you just said applies to most societies where exogamy is the norm, inbreeding is a very serious issue in the Near East (Lebanon included), so much in fact that several countries perform pre-marital genetic screening on potential spouses. In this case, you can expect uniparental lineages to embody a significantly larger chunk of the genome as they are bound to show up several times in a person's family tree. The predominance of a given uniparental lineage is another factor, for instance if you were R1b-L21 instead of L1b-FGC51036 it would be wise to assume that this lineage actually accounts for a large chunk of your ancestry as it is bound to have been the most common paternal lineage in the British Isles since the Early Bronze Age. These factors are not mutually exclusive by the way, they often go hand in hand in the Near East.

Quite true, especially in this context. But I think it's also important for one not to disregard all the other more basal ancestries they have that probably did not have anything much to do with their particular lineage. While it's true that my E-V32 was probably carried by the Proto-North-Coastal Somali speakers and even the Proto-Somali speakers as well as the Proto-Agaw-East-South Erythraeic speaker community in droves. It would be weird, for example, for me to assume it correlates perfectly with all of my more basal ancestry before even that like my Dinka-like and Natufian-like ancestry:

[1] "distance%=0.7585 / distance=0.007585"

Somali

Dinka 53.70
Israel_Natufian:I1072 41.45
MA1:MA1 2.75
Mota 2.10
AfontovaGora3:I9050.damage 0.00

It's also quite possible in a region like the Near East to be carrying an Arabian paternal lineage but not actually seem very Arabian-like in terms of autosomal DNA due to your family later practicing endogamy with non-Arabians in the Levant or wherever else itself for a prolonged period of time even though that lineage is likely to appear all over your family-tree thanks to generations of endogamy. Great points, though. I never stopped to think of it this way, especially in a Near Eastern context.

[Agamemnon]

Quite true, especially in this context. But I think it's also important for one not to disregard all the other more basal ancestries they have that probably did not have anything much to do with their particular lineage. While it's true that my E-V32 was probably carried by the Proto-North-Coastal Somali speakers and even the Proto-Somali speakers as well as the Proto-Agaw-East-South Erythraeic speaker community in droves. It would be weird, for example, for me to assume it correlates perfectly with all of my more basal ancestry before even that like my Dinka-like and Natufian-like ancestry:

[1] "distance%=0.7585 / distance=0.007585"

Somali

Dinka 53.70
Israel_Natufian:I1072 41.45
MA1:MA1 2.75
Mota 2.10
AfontovaGora3:I9050.damage 0.00

It's also quite possible in a region like the Near East to be carrying an Arabian paternal lineage but not actually seem very Arabian-like in terms of autosomal DNA due to your family later practicing endogamy with non-Arabians in the Levant or wherever else itself for a prolonged period of time even though that lineage is likely to appear all over your family-tree thanks to generations of endogamy. Great points, though. I never stopped to think of it this way, especially in a Near Eastern context.

I very much agree with everything you just wrote. The bolded part especially, if our friend Batroun ends up carrying a typically Arabian branch of J1 (they exist in Lebanon, though they do not make up a majority of the J1 lineages back there), odds are he'll still owe the vast majority of his ancestry to the Phoenicians at the end of the day.

[Batroun]

Definitely and thank you both for your inputs. I already uploaded my DNA to GedMatch. I mainly tried the Eurogenes ones. Which calculator do you think is best for someone of Lebanese origin? Unsurprisingly East Med always constituted around 38-40% across most of the calculator models but I struggled to understand what the term Near East meant? I scored 15-17% in that group. The rest I got were Italian10%, Caucasian N/W 11%, Armenian 8%, and 9-10% Arabian or Red Sea, 4-5% West Med(Whatever that means) this is for K36 Eurogenes. Others I would get Atlantic, South Asian, or higher/Lower scores of the above but always a big chunk East Med.

[Agamemnon]

Definitely and thank you both for your inputs. I already uploaded my DNA to GedMatch. I mainly tried the Eurogenes ones. Which calculator do you think is best for someone of Lebanese origin? Unsurprisingly East Med always constituted around 38-40% across most of the calculator models but I struggled to understand what the term Near East meant? I scored 15-17% in that group. The rest I got were Italian10%, Caucasian N/W 11%, Armenian 8%, and 9-10% Arabian or Red Sea, 4-5% West Med(Whatever that means) this is for K36 Eurogenes. Others I would get Atlantic, South Asian, or higher/Lower scores of the above but always a big chunk East Med.

I'd try Eurogenes K13, K15, MDLP K23b, K16 Modern, PuntDNAL K13 Global and K15 if I were you. Don't forget to post the oracles!