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This project is a meeting place for users who share the H16a1 Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup, which means they are related along their maternal 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.
H16A1 is a rare sub-clade of the major European Haplogroup H. It represents about one in a thousand mitochondrial tests by FTDNA and the Genographic 2.0 project. H can reach levels as high as 30-50% or more in some populations in Europe and is at least 30% of all European mitochondrial dna.
It is believed to have originated around 1100 C.E. with the Most Recent Common Ancestor born around 1200 C.E.
H16a1 is believed to be most common in Germanic countries but is also found in large numbers in the United Kingdom and might be more common in parts of the UK than in Germany itself. Scots Irish and German immigrants carried it to the Atlantic Coast of North America, where it can be found from Newfoundland to Georgia. It is also found in many British colonies around the world.
In the UK it seems to be concentrated in areas settled by the Angles and Saxons on the North Sea coast and along the English Channel although it can be found over much of Great Britain. It is found in Northern Ireland, having been carried there by Scots and English settlers in Ulster Province.
The Mother Clade of H16a1, H16a, may have originated in Yorkshire around 500 B.C.E. and may have spread across the North Sea to the Continent or it may have be carried by Angles (from Anglia, a former tribal area in Denmark traditionally related to the Danes) and Saxons to the British Isles. H16 may have been carried to the British Isles from France and the Low Countries during prehistory. It is likely that all of these H haplotypes travelled across the English Channel and the North Sea, perhaps even when much of it was dry land due to glaciation. H haplotypes are represented in very high levels in Wales, Denmark and Albania, places where the ancient population of Europe (especially females) were able to take a stand against more recent invasions and colonization.
H16 originated in prehistory and probably somewhere in France or Northern Iberia (Spain). It may have spread with the Atlantic Modal Y Chromsome haplogroup (part of the R1b Haplogroup) as its distribution is similar to this Western European haplogroup.
H16A1, H16A and H16 can be found in very small numbers across Europe and into Central Asia. It can also be found in North Africa, probably due to European colonization and Mediterranean slavery at various times as far back as prehistory.
Sources: FTDNA, National Geographic Genographic 2.0, Eupedia.com, others