Iraq/Mesopotamia is the likely birthplace of majority of J2

[Principe]

Upon looking at the Iraq FTDNA project, I was astonished of how diverse the J2 subclades were in Iraq, the most basal of clades are found here, every single J2 subclade is found in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. There is no way this is all due to migration, especially not the basal clades, I am sure there is some that came from Iran most likely all clades under L25 and perhaps M241 (also no Z6048 has been found so far), but the rest seem to have expanded from Iraq, I am pretty convinced that the J-Y11200 found in Chalcolithic Caucasus are the result of earlier expansions of the Ubaid Culture, perhaps all this Iran Neo/CHL is actually a reflection of movements out of Neolithic/Chalcolithic Mesopotamia instead, in the broader sense I think it is almost certain that the majority of J1 branches were born in Mesopotamia as well and expanded from there.

Is there any news of ancient DNA papers coming out of Iraq anytime soon? Ancient DNA from Iraq will very likely answer many questions and fill out many holes for the history of both J1 and J2.

[Kelmendasi]

I agree, many J1 and J2 clades seem to have very high diversity in the Mesopotamia area. For J1 it would seem that it likely originated somewhere around the eastern Anatolia, Caucasus and Iran area. Though as you said many J1 clades originate in the Mesopotamia area, J-L862 itself seems to have originated in the Mesopotamia area and then expanded into the Levant during the Calcolithic. I would associate it with the Halaf-Ubaid cultures.

[Agamemnon]

I think this observation can also be extended to J1 at this stage. I would however be cautious with the results from the Gulf, oversampling clearly is an issue here.

[Principe]

I think this observation can also be extended to J1 at this stage. I would, however, be cautious with the results from the Gulf, oversampling clearly is an issue here.

Surely and it will be obvious in TMRCA's in the branches we see at Yfull, the most convincing proponent of this is that basal clades seem to be varied at least on the J2 aspects of things, when I stumbled upon the ftdna project I wasn't expecting a fairly large sample size, and surely not the variety, nevertheless I think Mesopotamia is at least the starting point for the vast majority of J2 and J1, ultimately it might end with which branches moved early to Iran/Caucasus/Eastern Anatolia.

[Helves]

I think this observation can also be extended to J1 at this stage. I would however be cautious with the results from the Gulf, oversampling clearly is an issue here.

I see a lot of Saudi and other Gulf state flags on Yfull under many different haplogroups and subclades, I'm thinking though how many of these people on Yfull are natives of the area?

[hartaisarlag]

I see a lot of Saudi and other Gulf state flags on Yfull under many different haplogroups and subclades, I'm thinking though how many of these people on Yfull are natives of the area?

I think a lot. The Arabic-language fora and discussion groups are dominated by Gulf and Peninsular Arabs very proud of their tribal lineages. And aside from Western Europeans and their New World descendants, and Ashkenazim I guess, they're the most overrepresented population in testing.

[Agamemnon]

I see a lot of Saudi and other Gulf state flags on Yfull under many different haplogroups and subclades, I'm thinking though how many of these people on Yfull are natives of the area?

They're definitely from the Gulf and the KSA, I've had the opportunity to check this many times. Like hartaisarlag said, they're heavily overrepresented, there are several Arabic fora dealing with genetics and the focus is almost entirely on Y-DNA and its relationship to one's nasb. This has clearly become an obsession which embodies very well the tribal aspects of Arab society, there are even several accounts on Twitter specifically dedicated to a single lineage or haplogroup (take this account for example).

J1 is arguably the most concerned by this sampling bias, since this lineage is by far the most common in the Gulf. I've watched this for many years, while new samples are always a good thing, oversampling from a single area poses a serious problem. To give you an example, even ZS241 (my lineage) which is extremely rare outside Jewish populations has several basal cases from Kuwait and the KSA, and only one from Egypt (which is much more informative than the previous ones for reasons I won't get into).

So as far as J2 is of concern, one must keep this problem in mind. On the other hand, I think an origin of J2 in Mesopotamia is entirely plausible and even quite parsimonious.

[jdean]

They're definitely from the Gulf and the KSA, I've had the opportunity to check this many times. Like hartaisarlag said, they're heavily overrepresented, there are several Arabic fora dealing with genetics and the focus is almost entirely on Y-DNA and its relationship to one's nasb. This has clearly become an obsession which embodies very well the tribal aspects of Arab society, there are even several accounts on Twitter specifically dedicated to a single lineage or haplogroup (take this account for example).

J1 is arguably the most concerned by this sampling bias, since this lineage is by far the most common in the Gulf. I've watched this for many years, while new samples are always a good thing, oversampling from a single area poses a serious problem. To give you an example, even ZS241 (my lineage) which is extremely rare outside Jewish populations has several basal cases from Kuwait and the KSA, and only one from Egypt (which is much more informative than the previous ones for reasons I won't get into).

So as far as J2 is of concern, one must keep this problem in mind. On the other hand, I think an origin of J2 in Mesopotamia is entirely plausible and even quite parsimonious.

Got a very rare J2b group in my surname project, they've been in Scotland for a good few hundred years, prior to that I've no idea but I suspect there's a Polish link there somewhere, the SNP panel currently places them at the J-Z1827 level but I'm very patently waiting for a BigY.

[Helves]

They're definitely from the Gulf and the KSA, I've had the opportunity to check this many times. Like hartaisarlag said, they're heavily overrepresented, there are several Arabic fora dealing with genetics and the focus is almost entirely on Y-DNA and its relationship to one's nasb. This has clearly become an obsession which embodies very well the tribal aspects of Arab society, there are even several accounts on Twitter specifically dedicated to a single lineage or haplogroup (take this account for example).

J1 is arguably the most concerned by this sampling bias, since this lineage is by far the most common in the Gulf. I've watched this for many years, while new samples are always a good thing, oversampling from a single area poses a serious problem. To give you an example, even ZS241 (my lineage) which is extremely rare outside Jewish populations has several basal cases from Kuwait and the KSA, and only one from Egypt (which is much more informative than the previous ones for reasons I won't get into).

So as far as J2 is of concern, one must keep this problem in mind. On the other hand, I think an origin of J2 in Mesopotamia is entirely plausible and even quite parsimonious.

Wow that twitter account is pretty cool but a bit scary at the same time if you know what I mean. I suspected that the extreme overrepresentation of Gulfers on Yfull had maybe something to do with the tribal mentality of the area but to think that there are so many people from countries such as Saudi Arabia who trust and are willing take DNA tests is kinda surprising.

[IronHorse]

They're definitely from the Gulf and the KSA, I've had the opportunity to check this many times. Like hartaisarlag said, they're heavily overrepresented, there are several Arabic fora dealing with genetics and the focus is almost entirely on Y-DNA and its relationship to one's nasb. This has clearly become an obsession which embodies very well the tribal aspects of Arab society, there are even several accounts on Twitter specifically dedicated to a single lineage or haplogroup (take this account for example).

J1 is arguably the most concerned by this sampling bias, since this lineage is by far the most common in the Gulf. I've watched this for many years, while new samples are always a good thing, oversampling from a single area poses a serious problem. To give you an example, even ZS241 (my lineage) which is extremely rare outside Jewish populations has several basal cases from Kuwait and the KSA, and only one from Egypt (which is much more informative than the previous ones for reasons I won't get into).

So as far as J2 is of concern, one must keep this problem in mind. On the other hand, I think an origin of J2 in Mesopotamia is entirely plausible and even quite parsimonious.

Agamemnon, what you said is so true.

There is also the issue of people not joining projects because they're not J1, they hide their results because they think they're not descended from the tribal patriarch described in Arabic genealogy books, that patriarch has to be J1 for some reason.

Any result other than J1 is considered not originally Arabian (E1b1b is associated with the pseudo-scientific concept of archaic Arabs mentioned in the Quran and other myths), and so your ancestors are either slaves, bastards, or pretenders.

My case, I know of two other I2c2 in my tribe, both chose to keep their results private, one of them was quite racist, he said at least Europe (I remember him saying Vikings) is better than Africa (we're not E1b1b)

this is a project: https://www.familytreedna.com/groups...es/dna-results

can you spot the only I in this ocean of J ? that's me, notice how many are they, I know one of the Admins, he told me that many of them are tribal Arabs, but when you go to the A-B-C-R-Q-L-j2 section, most don't post their tribal name, first name, a grandfather maybe, but not the tribe, I know that the Q guy is from my tribe, the same as the Jewish branch.