E-Y179930 (Y-DNA)

The E-Y6923 SNP has only been known since 2014, so many to most Jewish men who have been identified as E-M34 or E-L791—old branches which are are ancestral to E-Y6923–are probably members of our branch. In 2019, it was discovered that E-Y6923 shares the upstream branch E-Y6926 with a collection of Baluch/Arab families from the United Arab Emirates and Oman, and that they and all E-Y6923 men share a single direct male-line ancestor who lived around the year 1100 BCE. All men who belong to haplogroup E-Y6923, the main focus of this project, go back to a single direct male-line ancestor who lived around the year 350 CE.

Our haplogroup’s Ashkenazi branch, called E-Y6940 at FTDNA and E-Y6938 at YFull, goes back to an ancestor who lived around the year 750 CE, and is one of the largest Y-DNA branches among Ashkenazi Jews. It is found in Ashkenazi Jews from across central and eastern Europe, but is notably rare among western (i.e. German) Ashkenazim, compared to other major Ashkenazi Y-DNA lineages.

In the last few years, two additional branches of E-Y6923 have been discovered. One, E-Y102667, has been confirmed in a Libyan Jew, a Tunisian/Turkish Jew, and a Puerto Rican family—and its estimated members include Libyan Jews, Algerian Jews, Tunisian Jews, Sicilians, and Puerto Ricans. Another, which is defined by a Mexican-American member of our project, is so far unnamed, but is estimated to also include a Peruvian individual.

Given the structure of E-Y6923 and its historical context, it can be said that the Latin American and Sicilian members of our branch are descended from Sephardic and Sicilian Jews who converted to Catholicism before, during, or immediately after the Inquisition.

This distribution pattern, along with the TMRCA (time of most recent common ancestor) date of 350 CE, allow us to conjecture that the shared ancestor of all E-Y6923 men lived somewhere in the Western Roman Empire, during its final stages. Given known patterns of Jewish settlement in the 4th century CE, the likeliest location for this common ancestor is Italy, though North Africa and Iberia are also possibilities. From this common point, three branches set out—one to Iberia, one (E-Y102667) to North Africa and Sicily, and one (E-Y6940/E-Y6938), at a later date, to the German and Slavic lands.

The structure of E-Y6940/E-Y6938 has been clarified by extensive Big Y testing over the last 5 years. Most of E-Y6940/E-Y6938 falls under the Z36123 branch (not recognized by FTDNA), under which there are 6 named branches (ranging in age from 750 CE to 1600 CE) and 1 unnamed one. The 3 larger branches, E-B405, E-Y15561, and E-BY36392/Y15937, each contain many layers of substructure. In time, we are hoping to link these downstream sub-branches (some of which are as young as 200 to 400 years old) to historical migration patterns and common surname

Branches

• E-A10728
  • E-A10729
• E-BY141576
  • E-FT404282
• E-FT425822
  • E-Y69346
• E-FT17034
  • E-Z36140
    • E-Y67770
      • E-BY185250
        • E-Z36139
      • E-FTC23678
  • E-Y134217
    • E-FT383174
      • E-FTA87963
    • E-Y133118
      • E-Y134218
    • E-BY173375
      • E-FTA44515
      • E-BY173377
        • E-FT416638
        • E-FTA30730
          • E-FTA32550
• E-BY36962
  • E-FT13434
    • E-FGC41315
      • E-FGC62615
      • E-FT248712
    • E-Y134440
      • E-FTA88354
      • E-BY167660
        • E-FT246034
  • E-Y15936
    • E-FTC5946
    • E-BY178397
      • E-FTB40541
    • E-Y22842
      • E-Y134415
      • E-FT137951
        • E-Y190039
      • E-Y22843
        • E-FT74661
          • E-FT186494
          • E-BY211492
          • E-BY164652
            • E-FT404899
            • E-BY165218
        • E-FTD35658
          • E-Y194370
    • E-Y18347
      • E-Y69619
      • E-Y266246
      • E-BY45231
• E-Y15561
  • E-BY36960
    • E-Y112149
      • E-BY86583
    • E-FT169611
  • E-FT76416
    • E-BY36959
      • E-Y79962
  • E-FT85246
    • E-BY176308
    • E-FT178002
      • E-FTA8512
  • E-FTA16773
    • E-FTA16243
    • E-A11309
      • E-FT77393
        • E-Y76436