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J-M172 (Y-DNA)

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Attribution: CC-BY 2016 J2-M172, Team. J2-M172 Haplogroup Research website. Source: http://j2-m172.info/2015/05/world-j2-haplogroup-population-size-2015/
This project is a meeting place for users who share the J-M172 Y-DNA haplogroup, which means they are related along their paternal lines. Users in this group may want to share their family trees with each other to find overlaps and merge duplicate profiles in order to join or expand the World Family Tree and discover new relatives.

This project is about a Y-haplogroup, which defines a group of men by a shared set of inherited features in the DNA of their Y-chromosome. This implies they have a patrilineal ancestor in common, because only males carry a Y-chromosome, which they inherit from their father. The major Y-haplogroups were formed thousands of years ago, and therefore each group can today include thousands to millions of men. For an introduction, you can visit the Y-DNA Haplogroups project, the DNA Testing project, or start at the beginning with the DNA Primer project.

History

The J-M172 haplogroup, also called J2-M172, is an ancient haplogroup estimated as first appearing 24,000 to 19,000 years ago but perhaps earlier. The first J2-M172 man was a member of the J-M304/P209 haplogroup, and almost certainly lived in Southwestern Asia, most likely the region of east Anatolia and south Caucasus. But unlike his recent ancestors, his descendants did not all stay, instead migrating east toward what is now India, and west along the north and south coasts of the Mediterranean Sea toward what is now France and Algeria. Most living J2-M172 descendants can trace their ancestry to this broad east-west band or are still living there today (see inset map).

The early J2-M172 descendants were mesolithic or epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers, without agriculture or domesticated food animals. They ate wild cereal grains, nuts and fruit, and (sometimes with domesticated dogs) hunted the sheep, goats and antelope found in this region, as exemplified by the Kebarian culture. Those who were particularly brave would have also hunted wild boar or aurochs, the huge but now-extinct ancestor of modern domestic cattle. The region was wetter than the Middle East today, as the most recent Ice Age drew to a close.

About 12,000 years ago, the societies around where J2-M172 men lived were among the first humans to develop a sedentary culture, since their small villages could rely on the nearby surroundings for food. They hunted animals and gathered the bountiful edible plants that were ancestors of some of today's major crops. These native, undomesticated plants included cereal grains like emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, rye, and oat, pulses like lentil, pea and chickpea, nuts like almonds, acorns and pistachios, and fruit including grapes, dates and olives. This lifestyle was exemplified by Natufian culture, and later the Khiamian culture with its innovative chert arrowheads. Their villages grew in size and they invented a new stone tool, the sickle, specifically for harvesting grains.

In the area where J2-M172 descendants were living around 10,000 years ago, people learned to efficiently plant and grow some of the wild grains they'd been eating, creating convenient fields around their villages for a more reliable food source. Their own descendants would help spread this revolutionary agricultural technology with their migrations, expanding into areas already occupied by strictly hunter-gatherer societies. By this time, most J2-M172 men probably belonged to one of the two major descendant haplogroups derived from J2-M172, either J2a-M410 or J2b-M12.

Details

If you are new to learning about Y-DNA and its haplogroups then the Y-DNA haplogroups project here at Geni will help introduce you, and guide you toward a deeper exploration of your patrilineal heritage. Below are some details specific to the J2-M172 haplogroup.

Naming. The J-M172 (Y-DNA) haplogroup is defined by the M172 SNP DNA marker. It is also known as J2, which is its designation under the older hierarchical naming scheme for Y-DNA haplogroups. To indicate the correspondence, this haplogroup is often designated J2-M172.

Anthropology. The J2-M172 haplogroup is estimated to have appeared in the region of the Middle East and Western Asia, as did its ancestral haplogroup J-M304. There are varying estimates for its founding date, but a range of 19,000 to 24,000 years ago was proposed in a recent analysis (Batini 2015). Another estimate is earlier, around 32,000 years ago. Ancient J2-M172 men migrated east and west, and their patrilineal descendants are well represented today in a broad swath from Spain to India, and North Africa to Europe (see inset map).

J2-M172 men are very rarely the majority in those areas today, but typically are a substantial minority of roughly 5-35% of the male population. An exception is the north Caucasus, where a majority of the Chechen and Ingush men are J2-M172 haplogroup members. When J2-M172 and J1-M267 populations are combined, they are together often the major ancient haplogroup in living populations of the Middle East, with haplogroup E being the other major representative, and haplogroups R, G and I filling in most of the rest.

As of late 2016, rather few ancient Y-DNA samples have been successfully collected from the region where the J-M172 haplogroup appeared and grew, because the climate is so warm. However, a new technique reported in 2015, and others yet to be developed, may allow more ancient humans' haplogroup information to become available in coming years.

Phylogeny. J2-M172 is a subclade (i.e. descendant, branch) of the J-M304 haplogroup. All living J2-M172 men tested so far have belonged to one of the haplogroup's two derived subclades: J2a-M410 or J2b-M12 (source). Current Y-phylogeny research is filling in the gap between the anthropology of ancient societies, and the genealogical time period generally considered to begin around 500 years ago. See the Y-DNA Haplogroups project for more details.

In breadcrumb notation, the descent of J2-M172 from the "Y-chromosomal Adam" ancestral human haplotype is characterized by these haplogroups, established by cumulative mutations: Y-chromosomal Adam > A1-V168 > A1b-P108 > BT-M91 > CT-M168/M294/P9.1 > CF-P143 > F-M89 > GHIJK-F1329/M3658/PF2622/YSC0001299 > HIJK-F929/M578/PF3494/S6397 > IJK-L15/M523/PF3492/S137 > IJ-M429/P125 > J-M304/P209 > J2-M172

Defining SNP. This haplogroup's defining SNP, M172, has the synonyms Page28 and PF4908, the accession number rs2032604 (SNPedia | dbSNP | yBrowse), and is located at Y-chromosome position 14969634 (GRCh37) with the mutation T->G (source: ISOGG Y-DNA SNP Index). The SNP L228/PF4895/S321 is considered phylogenetically equivalent to M172 as of Jan 2017.

Subclades

The tree below of haplogroups that descended from J2-M172 is based primarily on ISOGG 2017 1-Jan-2017, although the most up to date and detailed version of the J2-M172 tree is at the J2-M172 Research Project and some SNP information from there was incorporated. Some intermediary haplogroups have been omitted for simplification.

Note that the hierarchical part of the name (e.g. "J1a" in J1a-Z2215) is subject to change and should not be used alone without at least providing the STR part of the name (e.g. the "Z2215" in J1a-Z2215). The hierarchical portion of haplogroup names are limited here to three letters, since beyond that they're subject to frequent change.

ISOGG-recognized haplogroups are in bold (ISOGG 12.1, 1-Jan-2017), with the full hierarchical name given as of that version in square brackets, but which may have changed since. The number in parentheses is how many profiles (not necessarily of living people) were specifically associated with that haplogroup at Geni as of 30-Dec-2016, and are presented to give just a rough idea of how rare or common each haplotype is among those who have taken Y-DNA tests. Remember that subclade members are also members of all their ancestral haplogroups.

Ancient J2 People

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