Reading the Ht Leaves

Reading the Ht (Haplotype) Leaves

Many customers are starting to get their results for the Basic Haplotype Test, as well as their free copy of Unlocking the Past, by Martin Jones.  This is a novel DNA test and without a doubt can be difficult to understand. Users must lead the way in unraveling the diverse stories it tells about human migrations in the past 20,000 years.

We mention that figure, because the Core CoDIS STRs or microsatellites of DNA are treated as though they are unchanging within any meaningful time frame. Variation in markers is mostly due to migrations and genetic drift; it does not come from mutation. Though we might be curious about all of human history, archeology and genetics can reach only so far back. Twenty thousand years ago (18,000 BCE), the Ice Age was beginning to loosen its grip and people were just beginning to settle in towns and villages. All the continents and landmasses we study today had been colonized. The world and its regions that we are familiar with were slowly beginning to take shape.

Of course, like every other DNA marker, an STR value, or haplotype, can originate  and enter the gene pool in any generation during the human past, from the mothers and fathers of a population back to the foremothers and forefathers. The stories of human migration across the surface of the Earth can go back to any time frame, eventually encompassing our population, our family and our individual DNA. A plethora of matches and widespread distribution presupposes a very ancient history. We are dealing with ancient DNA. Let us look at one haplotype as an example.

The haplotype D5S818 is located on chromosome 5 and has a range of values of 6-17 repeats—the repeated sequence is four base pairs, GATA. Those people who happen to have 9 as their value on this locus account for less than 10% of all humans alive. Many more people, especially if they are European, have the values of 11, 12. You can therefore consider D5=9 a rare haplotype. Only a tenth of all people have it. If you got a double dose of it from both parents, you are among 1% of humans alive today with this rare gene. But the fact it is fairly evenly distributed thoughout the world suggests it is an old, old player in the scheme of things.

Where is D5=9 common and where is it less common or lacking? This is the key to reconstructing a picture of its travels through history around the globe. Although it is least common (4-5%) in Africans, it nevertheless has a small showing there, confirming that all variations of human DNA, just like all humans, came from Africa. It is not very common in Europeans. And in Tonga and Samoa, it is unknown.

But where is the D5=9 haplotype common? The answer to this question may be a clue to how you received your copy of the gene, which parent you got it from and what population it is a marker for.  By a process of denying the opposite, it is likely you did not get this particular value from African admixture (though you may have African in another haplotype).

D5=9 is most common in East Asian, Armenian, Jewish, Australoid and American Indian populations. Taiwanese Chinese is the no. 1 match among metapopulations and India – Indo-Mongoloid – Naga (n = 106)  the no. 1  country match, with a frequency of 25%. Following India is Mexico – Oaxaca – Zapoteco del Valle (n=40) at 16.3%. This is approximately the same level for six other Mexican or South American indigenous groups in a row (Huichol, Mixteco, Triqui, Nahua or Atocpan or Otomi with  Cuetzalan Indians, Ecuadorian Kichwas  and another group of  Huichols. Significantly, Shawnee occurs a bit lower down the list and has the allele at a rate of just over 10%.

On the basis of these matches, we can theorize that a test taker today in North America got at least a small measure of their more proximate genetic heritage from a Shawnee ancestor. The gene trail leads back to Mexican indigenous groups and thence to the East, to China, Japan, Korea and India. This is the most likely scenario. In the context of American demographics, D5=9 could be dubbed a Shawnee or at least an American Indian marker, although in origin, farther back, it is obviously an Asian gene. The 24 enrolled Shawnee had it at a level of 10.4%. Unless you have some sort of foreign parentage or a recent emigrant in your family tree, if you got it from your mother, it was she who probably had Shawnee heritage. If you got a double dose of it, you may have gotten it from both parents. Such are the practical deductions from haplotype testing, based on plausibility and most likely connections.

So beginning in Africa, where the highest level of diversity has always been situated, this single rare haplotype moved around the world. It may be traced to Arabia (hence in Jews), the Caucasus, Armenia, China, India and Australian Aboriginals, but left no tracks in North Asia or the Pacific. It apparently crossed the ocean with seafaring societies from very ancient Chinese centers of population but did not replicate the more familiar Polynesian route.

D5=9 peoples (if we can call them that on the basis of a single haplotype out of 30), probably left East Asia on the Kuroshio Current, which forms off Taiwan, runs up the eastern coast of Japan and arcs over to the Pacific Coast of the Americas. Jones calls it the Kelp road or Northern Arc (pp. 12-13). Turning downward or south, this oceanic conveyor belt brushes against the Pacific Northwest, Oaxaca and Peru. Every so often in modern times, a Japanese fisherman and his boat are captured by the Kuroshio Current and shipwrecked on the coast of British Columbia. Among the Northwest tribes, the Japanese were considered valuable slaves.

Over thousands of years, “D5=9” Asian people settled in large numbers in Oaxaca in South Mexico and Ecuador and Peru in South America, where they blended with local Indians. The marker became salient through genetic drift, though never of very high frequency. Its highest frequency remained in China and India.

That’s the story we can tease out of the distribution of this particular haplotype. If you get a similar result for another haplotype, it may have been a fellow traveler of D5=9, particularly if Indian and Mexican matches coincide. But don’t look for this theory of “Amerind” genetics in any textbook. To our knowledge, one German cultural historian, among the thousands who have thought about “the peopling of the New World,” has written about this prehistoric movement, which undoubtedly came from early matriarchal societies. Her name is Heide Goettner-Abendroth.

 

Links

Did Kon-Tiki Sail in the Wrong Direction (blog post, Apr. 13, 2024)

New Haplotype Test is ‘Must Have’ for DNA Mavens (news, June 11, 2024)

Indians from India in Ancient Mexico (blog post, August 20, 2023)

Basic Haplotype Upgrade—Report Only Version

Single Haplotype Test

Three King-Sized Books on His-Story (blog post, Feb. 4, 2022)

DNA Consultants Adopts New Human Migration Map (news, Sep. 19, 2020)

The Sundaland Gene

Back to Africa (blog post, Sep. 6, 2013)

The Yellow Emperor