J1 according to 23andme but not middle eastern

[pantheratigris]

I am south asian by ethnicity but 23andme indicates my Y-haplogroup as J1, which came as a surprise to me since I do not have any known middle eastern ancestors. I am new to this, but my question is that does J1 predate the arrival of islam in south Asia?

[Agamemnon]

Are you J1e or just J1? And yes, technically-speaking it's quite likely that J1 predates the arrival of Islam in South Asia.

[pantheratigris]

Thank you Agamemnon. I only got a J1 estimate with no further information about sub divisions. I looked at where it is more frequent and it appears to peak in Caucasus and in Yemen with a little bit of NorthWestern part of the Indian subcontinent along the Indian Ocean coast, where my ancestors were from.

[ADW_1981]

I'm not sure if the later 23andMe chips report J1e or just J1.

[Agamemnon]

OK, go to "Browse Raw Data" and search the following SNP: rs34043621

If you get a "no call", you could still be P58+ (J1e).

[pantheratigris]

I searched for that SNP and got a result. Could you help me understand what that means?

[Agamemnon]

I searched for that SNP and got a result. Could you help me understand what that means?

Sure, just tell me the result.

[pantheratigris]

Genes: ARSDP1
Marker (SNP): rs34043621
Genomic Position: 14486667
Variants: C or T
Your Genotype: T

[Agamemnon]

You're definitely P58-, that's for sure. I'm asking because we had an Indian member here who carried a relatively basal branch of P58 (ZS3668). P58's TMRCA is about 10,000 years old so despite comprising an overwhelming majority of SW Asian J1, it really doesn't mean much by itself. I've just checked the J1 project and I noticed that we have an Indian -from Gujarat- and a Pakistani -Balochi- sample under F1614 (TMRCA ~14 kya old), this is intriguing since F1614 is a branch of F4306, Satsurblia (the 13,500 year-old Epigravettian hunter-gatherer from Georgia) was FGC42175 which is another branch of F4306. At first glance, this suggests that J1 was present in South Asia during the Neolithic at the very least, if not earlier than that, and this is seemingly consistent with the high CHG scores in NW India and Pakistan. On the other hand, the Indian individual seems to share a common ancestor with two Omani samples roughly a thousand years ago, it isn't exactly clear where this common ancestor came from so this individual's paternal ancestors potentially could've come from SW Asia (alternatively, the Omani individuals' paternal ancestors might've come from South Asia).

Either way, I think it's pretty safe to conclude that your ancestors were in India thousands of years before Islam even existed... We just can't be entirely sure for the time being. 23andMe uses ISOGG's 2009 haplotree, needless to say it's seriously outdated, I can only encourage you to test with FTDNA if you want to learn more, that would really shed light on your paternal line's origins.

[pantheratigris]

Thank you for the useful information Agamemnon. My ancestors were from Sindh which is now in modern day Pakistan. In your opinion is there any more information that I can get from the 23andme data without further testing for now?