Rueda y Fingerhut Family DNA (Updated 11/27/2024)

Tormented by the certainty that he was his wife's brother, Aureliano ran out to the parish house to search through the moldy and moth-eaten archives for some clue to his parentage ... lost in the labyrinths of kinship, trembling with uncertainty ...
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

"My Grandparents, My Parents, and I" (1936) by Frida Kahlo

I am Edward A. Rueda, a journalist working in New York City, and this blog covers my longest investigation — my search for my family history. This expands upon an original genealogy website I created in 2006, and the families I cover include:

Paternal Grandfather's Side:
• Rueda, de la Prada, Gómez Farelo, Gómez Romano, Inga, Ortíz Galeano, Ortíz de Zárate, de la Parra, de la Plata, Quijano, Sarmiento, Serrano.
• Originally from San Gil, Barichara, Galán, Zapatoca, Girón, Vélez, and other towns of Santander Department, Colombia. 

• Spanish towns of origin include Priego de Córdoba (Rueda), Jérez de la Frontera (Sarmiento), Azuaga (de la Parra).

Paternal Grandmother's Side: 
• Vásquez, Cohen, Gelis, Lara, Martelo, Herrera Leiva, Pimienta, Ecker, Savignano, Noguera, Mejía, Molina, Juliao, Pacheco, Esquivia, Blanquiceth.
• Originally from the Caribbean coast of Colombia, including:
- Barranquilla (Atlántico Department)
- Cartagena, Villanueva, Mahates, Galerazamba (Bolívar Department)
- Remolino (Magdalena Department)
- San Bernardo del Viento (Córdoba Department)
- Sincelejo (Sucre Department)

Maternal Grandfather's Side:
• Fingerhut, Fischer, Bergtraum, Tafel, Niedrig, Schreiber, Hopfen, Spatzner, Siegel, Haspel, Goldberg, Kikenis, Treibitsch.
• Originally from Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine), the broader region of Galicia, Austria-Hungary

Maternal Grandmother's Side:
• Davis / Divinsky, Karasov / Karasik, Scher, Brumer, Turner, Rayman, Zaslavsky, Axelrod, Feitlowitz.
• Originally from:
- Lokhvitsa, Lubny, and other towns of Poltava gubernia, Ukraine (formerly Russia)
- Bila Tserkva and other towns of Kiev and Cherkasy gubernia, Ukraine (formerly Russia)
- Stryków, Głowno, and Lodz, Poland (formerly Russia)

This first entry explores what my DNA tells me about my most remote ancestry, and I break it down into: 

1) Family Brick Walls and Whitewash

2) The Footsteps in Our DNA

3) My Prehistoric Ancestry Is Also Your Prehistoric Ancestry

4) The Stories In My Genes: Ancient DNA

- I. Ancient hominin DNA

- II. Stone Age and Bronze Age DNA
- III. Ancient DNA stories from MyTrueAncestry 

5) The Stories in My Genes: Deep Ancestry

- I. Maternal mtDNA haplogroup

- II. Paternal Y-DNA haplogroup

- III. Other deep ancestry lineages

6) The Stories in My Genes: Ethnic Admixture 

- I. My PCA chart

- II. My AncestryDNA & 23andMe results
- III. My AncestryDNA Genetic Communities

7) The "Plot Twist" in Nearly Half of Our DNA

8) The Next Generation

Note: My other genealogy blog "Genetic Funhouse" has more in-depth analysis of my DNA and the insights I have gained from AncestryDNA, GEDmatch, and other genetic genealogy databases.


1) Family Brick Walls and Whitewash

The cliche is that DNA tests help genealogists break through "brick walls" in their family history. However, these brick walls sometimes seem deliberate rather than happenstance, designed to cover up ugly truths of prejudice and oppression. With DNA tests, we can start to recognize the ancestors whose memories were oppressively silenced or deliberately forgotten. Our particular genes also provide a way to understand our place in the larger human family. One scientific estimate says that a person who lived only a few thousand years ago is the most recent common ancestor of all 7.5 billion-plus people living today. That unknown but crucial ancestor should inspire all of us to learn more about our highly interwoven origins.

Galitzianer Jews in a French engraving. 

I first wrote down my grandparents' stories in the early and mid-1990s, and in 1998 I found my first historical record — the Ellis Island passenger list for my Grandpa Alfred's parents, dating back to 1906. Through that record I learned my great-grandfather's Hebrew first name, and that he brought his wife, two oldest daughters, and $24 in cash to America. From the very beginning, history came alive for me through these stories and records. As the 21st century progresses, the family history resources available have ballooned from microfilm and Cyndi's List to immense online repositories like FamilySearch and Google's digitized books and newspapers. I now have a much better sense of how the brave dreams, happy accidents, and terrible sorrows that guided my ancestors through the centuries fit into the broader saga of human history.

Yet despite all my gains, there are still "brick walls." On my mother's side, there are no records about our Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors before the 1790s, when the Austrian and Prussian imperial authorities tried to force Jewish assimilation. They made Jews take Germanic last names and no longer use patronyms, and started to keep secular vital records, in part to track potential military recruits. Russia similarly started tallying Jewish families for potential military recruits in the 1790s and required surnames for Jews starting in 1804. Before the 1790s, Eastern European authorities simply did not care about keeping vital records of their Jewish subjects. Jewish community records like the pinkes book were mostly lost in the wake of pogroms, mass emigration, and the Holocaust. Now, postwar yizkor books are the main source for glimpses of the vanished Ashkenazi Jewish world.

Castas (mestizaje) painting

On my father's side, "brick walls" surround many of our Colombian ancestors between the 1500s to the 1800s. The original conquistadors and subsequent Iberian settlers rarely preserved their family backgrounds for posterity, in many cases to hide low social standing, or Jewish or Arab ancestry. Genealogists like Juan Flórez de Ocáriz list conquistadors' children but often omit their mothers, implying that they were Indian women. 

Very few records document the mixing of European, African, and Native American races that occurred in my family. On my grandfather's side, a 1726 marriage dispensation record from San Gil, Colombia, which is meant to disclose impediments to holy matrimony, notes how the bride and groom not only had mothers that were sisters, but those sisters had a great-grandmother who was "a female Indian who [the witness] did not remember how she was named and that the said Indian was from the town of Guane." What is a fascinating genealogical detail today was seen as somehow problematic three centuries ago. Both sides of my father's family shunned their multicultural past and told stories about their "pure" Spanish descent. Such whitewashing of family history begs the question raised by Puerto Rican poet Fortunato Vizcarrondo — "¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?" (And your grandma, where she at?)



2) The Footsteps in Our DNA

The particular ethnicity you might put on a census form is really a composite of waves and waves of people who migrated and intermingled. Review anyone's genetic markers and mutations, and you can start to piece together which populations contributed which markers over time. Even families that stayed in one place over hundreds of years of recorded history probably have a sweeping migration story over the last few thousand years. The main migration of modern humans out of Africa (the majority of the ancestors of today's non-Africans) began only 70,000 years ago, which means on a biological timescale we spread worldwide at a breakneck pace.

The main modern human migration out of Africa, based on mitochondrial DNA. The numbers/colors represent thousands of years before the present.

I first learned my maternal DNA haplogroup through National Geographic's Genographic Project and paternal DNA haplogroup through Ancestry DNA in 2007. Then in 2017 I ordered National Geographic's Geno 2.0 kit for its completeness, as it tested the direct lineages passed down through my paternal Y-chromosomal DNA and maternal mitochondrial DNA, and scoured my autosomal DNA for traces of ancestral source populations (including archaic humans like Neanderthals and Denisovans). Note that public participation in the Genographic Project ended in May 2019.

Our understanding of human evolution forever changed the same day that I got my DNA admixture results back — June 7, 2017 — with the bombshell announcement that the oldest fossils of Homo sapiens, dating back roughly 300,000 years, were found alongside flint blades in a site in Morocco. These fossils, coupled with DNA evidence, indicate that modern humans did not just live in the Rift Valley in eastern Africa, but spread all throughout Africa and probably Eurasia long before their main migration to other continents.

In the 2010s, sequencing of ancient DNA started to provide major insights into prehistoric human ancestry and migrations. David Reich, who runs a Harvard lab at the forefront of this rapidly expanding scientific field, published in 2018 "Who We Are and How We Got Here," a pioneering book that explains how DNA evidence is rewriting our common origin story.

A member of David Reich's lab extracting ancient DNA from a petrous bone. (HarvardMagazine.com)

Let's review 4.3 billion years of life quickly. In the beginning (more on the origin of life here and here) were self-replicating RNA molecules, which evolved by 2.2 billion years ago into eukaryotes, single-celled organisms with organelles that sexually reproduced, and to a certain extent died. Around 575 million years ago (Ediacaran Period) our ancestors had evolved into simple organisms with muscles, nerves, and a form of eyes and mouth. During the big biological leap forward known as the Cambrian explosion, our fishy ancestors developed spinal cords, brains, blood, skin, eyes and ears, senses of smell and taste, and a heart.

Around 420 million years ago (Silurian Period) our fishy ancestors developed lungs, which lead to Tiktaalik taking its first steps on land around 375 million years ago (Devonian Period), about 100 million years after plants and insects first settled the shoreline. Amphibian and reptile ancestral phases led to our ancestors having warm blood, hairy skin, and milk glands by 230 million years ago (Triassic Period). By 170 million years ago (Jurassic Period), our ancestors had replaced eggs with live birth and marsupial pouches — they were true mammals.    

By the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, our shrew-like ancestors had started to take on the traits of modern lemurs. Our primate ancestors lost their tails by 35 million years ago (Eocene Epoch), and by 20-15 million years ago (Miocene Epoch) our ancestors were great apes.    

"Human Evolution: From Protocells to People" — This stunning chart by Mark Belan shows our ancestors' evolutionary path from mere cells to Homo sapiens. Definitely click on it to view the details. (VisualCapitalist.com)

The ancestors of all hominins split from chimpanzees between 7 million to 5 million years ago. Our genetics also indicate that at least two archaic human populations separated from and later rejoined our ancestral line. The first group split c.1.4 million–900,000 years ago and contributed to the ancestry of Denisovans. The second group split c.700,000 years ago and then interbred with modern humans in Africa c.35,000 years ago. Since Homo erectus had reached the Caucasus by 1.8 million years ago, it is unclear whether these archaic humans lived in Africa or originated in Eurasia and migrated back to Africa. This happened amid the near-extinction of ancestral humans around 900,000 years ago. Given that our ancestral populations were so small and struggling to exist, it's clear why admixture, or interbreeding, took place when it could.

Homo sapiens ancestry and admixture since 600,000 years ago (Wikipedia)

Geneticist Razib Khan gives the helpful metaphor of "vines around the trees," that over the last 2 million years there were many gene flow events (vines) among the main human lineages and some ancient human lineages (tree trunks), and more ancient DNA samples will make the big picture clearer.

Palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger, who led the team that discovered the archaic human Homo naledi, created this chart in 2021, saying "I suspect that as we develop better accuracy with molecular biology and we improve the fossil record the braided stream will, in the not-so-distant future, be rather complex. Yes, I think Homo naledi is part of the introgressive hybridization that makes up "us" … we shall wait and see!" He added, "Homo naledi shares features with Homo sapiens that it does not share with other archaic forms such as Homo erectus and "archaic" sapiens. Unless it's incredible homoplasy [similar evolved traits not resulting from a common ancestor] — well..."

Human population gene flow as a "garden trellis" (from Whit Taylor's comic "What Is Race?")

Around 770,000–550,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern humans split from the common ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans. The split between Neanderthals and Denisovans came c.470,000–380,000 years ago, with Neanderthals settling west Eurasia and multiple populations of Denisovans settling through Siberia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The oldest DNA evidence, dating back 430,000 years, comes from a boy found in Sima de los Huesos, a cave in Atapuerca, Spain. This boy’s genome is similar to later Neanderthals but his mitochondrial DNA is similar to Denisovans.

Ancient humans in Africa and Eurasia (Nature.com)

All the genes in the 22 autosomal chromosomes of present-day humans point back to common ancestors no older than c.320,000 years ago, according to Reich. Around this time anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa, and Reich says during this period our ancestors probably lived in multiple, disparate populations. The two people who happen to be the most recent common patrilineal ancestor and matrilineal ancestor of all humans living today seem to have been spread out in time and location. Scientists believe "Y-chromosomal Adam" lived maybe 200,000 years ago in possibly west-central Africa, and "Mitchondrial Eve" lived maybe 160,000 years ago in possibly east Africa.

"Reconstructed Eve" by Stephen Oppenheimer
from the Bradshaw Foundation

Our Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA do not explain the total story of human migration, but these two direct genetic lineages richly illustrate the "Out of Africa" theory of how we spread worldwide. Like everyone whose direct maternal ancestors left Africa in prehistoric times, my maternal line survived a population bottleneck c.90,000-50,000 years ago. My maternal ancestor was among the fewer than 1,000 people with the mitochondrial haplogroup L3 who left Africa c.70,000 years ago and (amusingly) crossed the Red Sea. An interesting but controversial theory says these humans migrated due to climate change brought on by the Toba supervolcanic eruption in Indonesia a few thousand years before. This small group of modern humans was not the first population to enter Eurasia, but it was the most prolific, eventually spreading worldwide.

While archaic human populations died off either through indirect competition or direct conflict with modern humans, prehistoric admixture ensures that almost every person today has some percentage of ancient human DNA. Modern humans first interbred with Neanderthals in probably the Near East, then west Eurasian hunter-gatherers separated from east Eurasian hunter-gatherers. Among the east Eurasian hunter-gatherers, different populations interbred with different Denisovan groups, including the ancestors of native Papuans and Australians.

Potential genetic history of Europe and West Eurasia, sketched by Carlos Quiles (2018).

Insitome chart on how human population clusters are related.

David Reich's lab and other projects like the Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History are trying to connect genetic evidence of populations intermingling with archaeological and historical evidence, and even infer some historical interactions that were previously unknown. Some major migrations resulting in admixture (the interbreeding of populations) include:

• 37,000 to 19,000 years ago: Three successive hunter-gatherer cultures (Aurignacian, Gravettian, Magdalenian) settled westward in Europe.  

• c.8000 BC: Agriculturalists from the Fertile Crescent spread the raising of crops like wheat and barley throughout Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. Over the next 6,000 years, these Levantine farmers intermingled with Iranian farmers and western and eastern European hunter-gatherers, forming a single western Eurasian population during the Bronze Age that was very genetically similar. This was the first major migration in the Neolithic Revolution (c.10000 BC to 1000 BC), during which agriculture developed and spread through separate parts of the world.

• c.3000 BC: The Yamnaya herding culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe in central Eurasia began migrating, which led to the R1a and R1b paternal haplogroups of a few powerful Yamnaya men becoming extremely common in western, central, and southern Eurasia. The Yamnaya descended from eastern European hunter-gatherers and Iranian farmers, and their wheels, carts, and distinctive kurgans (burial mounds) were derived from the Maykop culture in southern Russia. With their horses and wheels, the Yamnaya brought along their warring culture, Indo-European languages, and probably Yersinia pestis (pneumonic plague). In David Reich's words, the Yamnaya "were extraordinarily successful, largely displacing the farmers of northern Europe in the west and the hunter-gatherers of central Asia in the east." Central Europe's Corded Ware culture (2900 BC) and Great Britain's Bell Beaker culture (2500 BC) had substantial Yamnaya ancestry, as did the ancestral northern Indian population, which mixed with southern Indians from c.2000 BC to AD 0.

• c.3000 BC: Chinese agriculture that separately developed by the Yellow River and Yangtze River spread independently to southeast Asia and Taiwan.

• c.3000 BC: Sahel cattle herders spread their Nilo-Saharan languages through northern and eastern Africa.

• c.3000 BC: Paleo-Eskimos spread the Arctic small tool tradition through Arctic Canada and Greenland and eventually contributed to the ancestry of North America's Na-Dene speakers.

• c.2000 BC to AD 1300: The Austronesian expansion, in which people from southeast Asia settled islands along the Pacific and Indian Oceans and spread the practice of farming rice and Austronesian languages. The initial migrant population was East Asian, but after 400 BC there were two separate waves of Papuan migration. An incredible 2020 genetic study has found that "contact between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group related to present-day Indigenous people in Colombia occurred as early as A.D. 1150," with the earliest genetic evidence coming from Fatu Hiva, an island in the South Marquesas.

• c.2000 BC to AD 1000: The Bantu expansion, in which farmers who spoke Bantu-related languages and developed ironmaking spread from west Africa to nearly all of central and southern Africa.

• c.1000 BC: Admixture in Somalia and Ethiopia of sub-Saharan Africans and western Eurasian farmers.

• c.1000 BC to AD 1500: Arawak tribes spread from South America throughout the Caribbean, and then Carib tribes migrated from the Orinoco River area and conquered much of the Antilles after AD 1200.

• 586 BC to present: The Jewish diaspora spread worldwide from the Middle East, especially following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem's Second Temple in AD 70. Sephardic Jews, who had been in Iberia since Roman times, fled to Mediterranean lands, the Levant, Holland, and the Americas following their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497. Ashkenazi Jews first settled in central Europe in the 800s, and then by the mid-1500s had mainly settled in the Kingdom of Poland, an area that remained a major center of world Jewry until the Holocaust.

• 264 BC to AD 476: Roman conquests, followed by the Roman Empire, which controlled the entire Mediterranean Sea ("Mare Nostrum").

• c.100 BC to AD 1450: The Silk Road, a trade network that stretched from China to the Mediterranean.

• AD 0 to 1000: Na-Dene speakers spread through western North America.

• 200 to 1100: Cattle herders speaking Khoe-Kawdi languages spread from eastern Africa to southern Africa.

• 622 to 750: The early Muslim conquests of the Middle East, central Asia, north Africa, and Iberia, which led to the development of:

• 700s to 1800s: The Arab slave trade, which mainly enslaved Africans, Eastern Europeans, and Turkic peoples.

• 700s to 1000s: The Viking invasions and then tamer trading across Europe.

• 1000: Ancestors of Eskimo-Aleut speakers spread from Asia to Arctic America, displacing the Paleo-Eskimos.

• 1206 to 1337: The Mongol conquests in Asia and Eastern Europe.

• 1492 to 1700s: The Spanish and broader European conquest and colonization of the Americas, which led to the development of:

• 1500s to 1800s: The Transatlantic slave trade, which brought an estimated 10.5 million Africans to the Americas. Another 1.5 million African died on the Middle Passage, before reaching the Americas.

• c.1950 to present: Global migration, especially with the rise of air travel, has had an "omnipresent yet overlooked" impact on our world and the future world of our descendants. In the United States alone, post-1965 immigration (including my father) has accounted for over half the country's population growth in the last half-century.


Phylogenetic tree contrasting Africans' vast genetic diversity (right) with relative lack of genetic diversity in the rest of the world (left). (Sources: here and here)



3) My Prehistoric Ancestry Is Also Your Prehistoric Ancestry

If we move beyond our individual genetic markers and consider all of our genealogy, we find an interesting pattern. Go back 800 or 900 years, and our family trees have more ancestors than there were people living at the time. This is due to pedigree collapse, where the same ancestors appear and reappear in our family tree, and human migration ensures that those few common ancestors had a broader and broader spread of descendants.

Examples of pedigree collapse are easy to find, especially if your ancestors lived in isolated areas. My paternal grandfather's entire family came from the mountainous, remote region of Santander, Colombia. All of my grandfather's great-great-grandparents, who were living around 1750, could trace their ancestry back five or six generations to Juan Sarmiento de Olvera, a Spaniard who settled in Santander around 1590 and took a local mestiza bride, Francisca González de la Nava. Juan and Francisca had five daughters and two sons. One son became a priest, but the other siblings married and had families, and almost all santandereanos who can trace their ancestry back to the 17th century have at least one of the Sarmiento siblings in their family tree. So far, I've found that (hoo boy) five of the seven Sarmiento siblings are my direct ancestors.

Humanity's "identical ancestors" have always been a subject of mythology, but a 2004 study by Douglas Rohde and other MIT researchers used computer simulations to determine the reality. Up until around 5400 BC, every person "was either an ancestor of all of humanity, or of nobody alive today." By 5400 BC humans had migrated to every continent except Antarctica, domesticated the cat, cultivated silk in China, and spread agriculture from the Levant to the entire Mediterranean coast and from Iran to the Indus Valley.

The seated woman of Çatalhöyük (c.6000 BC), a remnant of the time of our "identical ancestors."

Rohde's team estimates that the most recent common ancestor of everyone living today probably lived around 1500 BC, potentially in East Asia. In the Book of Genesis, God gives Abraham the poetic promise that in return for their covenant: "I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky." Abraham's saga has inspired people for millennia, but there's the blasphemous possibility that Abraham's anonymous idol-worshipping neighbor has just as many descendants living today.

Other genealogy experts, following this line of logic, believe that all Eurasians probably have common ancestors from the era "after Christ," and all Europeans may have common ancestors through AD 1000 or even later. Historical figures with known lines of descent -- Egypt's pharaohs, Abraham, Confucius, Muhammad, Charlemagne -- are probably ancestors of a majority of humanity, along with many more unknown common ancestors.

Rohde's paper concludes with this beautiful sentence: "But to the extent that ancestry is considered in genealogical rather than genetic terms, our findings suggest a remarkable proposition: no matter the languages we speak or the colour of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who laboured to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu."

Moving from the history of our species, now it is time to look at my individual genome.



4) The Stories In My Genes: Ancient DNA

I. Ancient hominin DNA
The Geno 2.0 DNA test found I am 1.4% Neanderthal, a slightly higher percentage than the average non-African person. Another defunct DNA company, Insitome, said I am 1.8% Neanderthal, toward the middle of the average range of 1.3% to 2.1%. Finally, 23andMe gives the unspecific amount of under 2% Neanderthal DNA, leaving me at the 20th percentile of people with Neanderthal DNA. 

Around 765,000 to 550,000 years ago lived the most recent common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, survivors of an extreme bottleneck, or die-off, between 930,000 to 813,000 years ago. The lineage that led to modern humans spun off around 460,000 years ago. The ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans entered Eurasia, with Neanderthals mostly heading to Europe and the Levant and Denisovans mostly spreading through Asia. As seen above, modern humans were living in Morocco and probably many other parts of Africa by 300,000 years ago.

A genetic study from 2017 showed how admixture played a large part in the Neanderthals' evolution. Scientists believe that some modern humans (or a population very closely related to Homo sapiens) crossed into Europe and interbred with the Neanderthals. By 270,000 years ago there lived a hybrid daughter of a male Neanderthal and a female modern human who eventually became the common matrilineal ancestor of all Neanderthals. In other words, the mitochrondrial DNA of later Neanderthals reflect a hybridity not seen in earlier Neanderthals.

Modern humans and Neanderthals both lived in the Near East and probably interbred c.130,000-100,000 years ago, but the main period of admixture took place in the Levant c.50,050-43,500 years ago. Neanderthals became extinct c.39,000 years ago, but the cause is still a mystery. From a post-Covid pandemic perspective, pathogens seem like a likely culprit for Neanderthals' extinction. It's easy to focus on Neanderthals' demise, but I really recommend Rebecca Wragg Sykes's amazing book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art to reflect on our ancestral Neanderthals' achievements: ingenuity, art, culture, parenting, physicality, and survival. Sykes also notes that human accomplishments are Neanderthal accomplishments — people have brought Neanderthal DNA as far as outer space.

Neanderthal genes, including some beneficial ancient African gene variants, live on in modern humans like myself. An app by Insitome shared which particular Neanderthal genes I have in my genome, like genes associated with visual learning and memory, genes aiding the skin's repair process for UV damage, and a modified dystrophin (DMD) gene for muscle development. This Neanderthal version of the DMD gene is found in about 20% of Native Americans and about 10% of Europeans, so it potentially came from either part of my ancestry.

"The Feathered Neanderthal," by Fabio Fogliazza. Neanderthals harvested bird feathers, probably for personal adornment.

II. Stone Age and Bronze Age DNA
The expanding study of ancient DNA has demonstrated how our prehistoric ancestors bridged the gap between genetically disparate peoples. David Reich writes that the four populations living in West Eurasia 10,000 years ago — hunter-gatherers in Western Europe and Eastern Europe, and farmers in the Levant and Iran — were as genetically separate as modern-day Europeans and East Asians. Yet by 5,000 years ago, these four populations had combined, producing blended Bronze Age descendants that are genetically similar to modern people in West Eurasia.

A similar convergence can be seen in my DNA. This fascinating tool takes your Eurogenes K36 results from GEDmatch and shows how approximately different populations of hunter-gatherers and early farmers contributed towards your genome. Here is the chart for my ancestors around 15,000 years ago:

My ancestors around 15,000 years ago. Click to enlarge.

The biggest group is 1) northern and eastern European hunter-gatherers, followed by: 

2) Anatolians

3) Levant and Arabian peoples

4) Caucasus and Zagros mountains peoples

5) Siberians and Amerindians

6) Africans

7) Asians

By 4,500 years ago, when Egypt's Great Pyramids were being built, most of my ancestors were impacted by the Neolithic revolution. The Yamnaya migration to Europe also had a major impact on my genome:

My ancestors around 4,500 years ago. Click to enlarge.

The largest group is 1) Indo-European peoples, followed by:

2) Early European Farmers

3) Copper Age peoples of Anatolia (who also contributed genetically to the Early European Farmers)

4) Levant and Arabian peoples

5) Siberians and Amerindians

6) Copper Age peoples of Iran

7) Africans

8) Asians

9) The smallest group was the remaining European hunter-gatherers, who tried to live separate lives but were eventually absorbed into the farming communities.

So my DNA reflects the larger stories of how Asian and European populations were formed, but what individual histories are written in my chromosomes?

III. Ancient DNA stories from MyTrueAncestry 

MyTrueAncestry is an exciting website taking advantage of recent advances in the field of ancient DNA. MyTrueAncestry describes its method as "combining the latest archaeogenetic techniques with powerful admixture algorithms and cloud computing." 

To oversimplify it, MyTrueAncestry measures the genetic differences between my DNA and ancient DNA samples from various millennia. As you can see below, the ancient populations "closest" to my DNA are Roman: 



Not too surprisingly, a lot of my ancient DNA matches are from southern Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the ages.  

The website also gives me percentages of my ancestry from various historical periods. It's unclear how these populations are defined or how the percentages are calculated, but I include the laundry list of matching populations to show how our ancient ancestry is a patchwork of peoples.  

Early Bronze Age: Illyrian, Hittite, Minoan, Proto-Gaul, Proto-Thuringii. 

Late Bronze Age: Ancient Greek, Illyrian, Thracian, Philistine, Proto-Gallo-Roman. 

Roman Era: Roman, Roman Hispania, Hellenic Roman, Gepid, Thuringii, Pontic, Gallo-Roman, Hittite, Illyrian, Ancient Greek, Phoenician, Minoan. 

Dark Ages: Roman, Hellenic Roman, Frank, Gaul, Gallo-Roman, Visigoth, Roman Hispania, Illyrian, Ancient Greek. 

Medieval Age: Roman, Byzantine, Guanches, Ottoman, Al-Andalus, Illyrian, Roman Hispania, Hellenic Roman, Gaul, Visigoth, Gallo-Roman. 

MyTrueAncestry also includes some Indigenous population samples, including the Guanches of the Canary Islands and Native Americans, which are among my matching populations:  

5) The Stories in My Genes: Deep Ancestry

Deep genetic ancestry is one of my favorite parts of genetic genealogy! Thanks to all of us inheriting mitochondrial DNA from our mothers and some of us inheriting Y-chromosomes from our fathers, we can know our exact lines of descent from the common maternal and paternal ancestors of all humanity. Isn't that amazing? Our family trees can go back hundreds of thousands of years, and ultimately they all converge in Africa. Yes, they're two literal threads of the full tapestry of our ancestry, but they show our biological connections to broader human migration. 

As I said before, I learned my Y-chromosomal haplogroup and mitochondrial DNA haplogroup through National Geographic's Geno 2.0 test, which is no longer available. The 23andMe DNA test tells people their deep ancestry as well as their ethnic admixture, so that is the test I recommend if you are want percentages of your ethnic admixture and nothing else. 

I. My mtDNA haplogroup is H26c
This is my matrilineal line of descent, according to mutations in my mitochondrial DNA:

• Mitochondrial Eve - lived around 150,000 years ago in Africa.
• L3 haplogroup - around 67,000 years ago in East Africa.
• N haplogroup - around 60,000 years ago in East Africa or Asia.
• R haplogroup - around 55,000 years ago in West Asia.
• HV haplogroup - around 30,000-15,000 years ago in West Asia.
• H haplogroup - around 28,000 years ago in West Asia.

Haplogroup H is found today in 40-60% of all European populations, 20% of people in southwest Asia, 15% of people in Central Asia, and about 5% of people in northern Asia, according to Geno 2.0. This probably reflects the first migration wave of farmers from the Levant around 10,000 years ago. Studies suggest that Ashkenazi Jewish matrilineal lines with Haplogroup H probably stem from women in southern or central Europe.

Geno 2.0 notes my "Genius Matches," or degrees to which I am maternally related to certain historical figures:

• 65,000-45,000 years ago: last common maternal ancestor with Petrarch, Abraham Lincoln.
• 25,000-8,000 years ago: last common maternal ancestor with Nicolas Coperincus, Benjamin Franklin, Queen Maria Theresa, Queen Marie Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Victoria.

My Mom was most thrilled to learn that she is related to Queen Victoria.


II. My Y-DNA haplogroup is R-CTS4065
This is my patrilineal line of descent, according to mutations in my Y-chromosomal DNA:


• Y-Chromosomal Adam - lived over 180,000 years ago in Africa.
• P305 branch - over 100,000 years ago in Africa.
• M42 branch - around 80,000 years ago in East Africa.
• M168 branch - around 70,000 years ago in East Afrca.
• P143 branch - around 60,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.
• M89 branch - around 55,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.
• M578 branch - around 50,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.
• P128 branch - around 45,000 years ago in South Asia.
• M526 branch - around 42,000 years ago in South or Southeast Asia.
• M45 branch - around 35,000 years ago in Central Asia or South Asia.
• M207 branch - around 30,000 years ago in Central Asia.
• P231 branch - around 30,000-25,000 years ago in Central Asia.
• M343 branch - around 22,000-17,000 years ago in South Asia or West Asia. The R1b [M343] haplogroup was especially fruitful, first living as hunter-gatherers on grasslands spanning from Korea to central Europe, and then after the Ice Age dispersing their genes throughout Europe, the Middle East, northern Africa, and even South and East Asia. Geno 2.0 says about 55% of Western European men, 43% of Central Asian men, and 23% of men in Africa's central Sahel belong to this haplogroup and its many branches.
• M269 branch - around 15,000-6,500 years ago in West Asia.
• P310 branch - originated in West Asia in a still undetermined time.
• P312 branch - around 14,000-5,500 years ago in West Asia. Geno 2.0 says P312 includes about 1-2% of men in Lebanon, Iraq, and Kazakhstan, about 16% of men in France, and about 15-17% of men in Spain and Portugal.
• Z40481 branch
• ZZ11 branch
• DF27 branch - c.2200 BC in northeast Iberia, according to a 2017 genetic study (Solé-Morata et. al, 2017). DF27, according to this study and 1000 Genomes Project, is found in 49% percent of Iberian men, 70% of Basque men, 40% of Colombian men, 36% of Puerto Rican men, 10% of Mexican men, 8% of Peruvian men, and 6-20% of French men.
• Z195 branch
• Z272 branch
• Z220 branch - c.1300 BC in north-central Iberia
• Z295 branch
• S25783 branch
• R-CTS4065 is my particular R1b subclade, also known as R1b1a1a2a1a2a1a1a2.

It's interesting to note that my male genetic line probably lived in Spain for nearly 4,000 years, stemming from the notably Celtic region of north-central Spain. (Here is more on Iberia's last 8,000 years of genomic history.) My direct male ancestors settled in Andalucía, perhaps after Castilla-León reconquered Córdoba in 1236, and by 1593 my forebear Cristóbal de Rueda had settled in Colombia.

Geno 2.0 notes my "Genius Matches," or degrees to which I am paternally related to certain historical figures:

• 120,000-65,000 years ago: last common paternal ancestor with Napoleon Bonaparte.
• 65,000-45,000 years ago: last common paternal ancestor with Genghis Khan, Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy, Nikola Tesla.
• 45,000-25,000 years ago: last common paternal ancestor with Sir Francis Drake, Abraham Lincoln.
• 25,000-8,000 years ago: last common paternal ancestor with Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Nicolas Copernicus, Charles Darwin.

• 3,500 years ago? - last common ancestor with Presidents George Bush I and George Bush II.  

My Dad was most amazed to learn that he and King Tut are distant relatives.


III. Other deep ancestry lineages in my family tree

a.) Indigenous mtDNA of the Martelo Pimienta family

This is my Dad's direct maternal line, stretching back to my great-great-grandmother Benjamina Martelo Pimienta (c.1864-1896) of Mahates, Colombia. A maternal great-granddaughter of Benjamina on 23andMe has the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup of B2d, which has Indigenous/Native American roots.

Benjamina Martelo's earliest-known maternal ancestor is her great-grandmother, Petrona Simancas, who may be the daughter of Petrona Sánchez, who appears in the 1777 census of Mahates. At some unknown point, Petrona's maternal ancestor was an Indigenous woman who had at least a daughter (if not more children) with a probable Spanish man.

Haplogroup B2d is a subset of the larger mtDNA haplogroup B2, one of the "four major haplogroups of Asian origin shared by North, Central and South American populations." An individual belonging to haplogroup B2 dating from roughly 11,500 years ago was found in the Upper Sun River site in Alaska. DNA belonging to haplogroup B2 was also found in the 14,300-year-old human feces found in Oregon's Paisley Cave. That suggests that the B2 maternal lineage was among the initial group of Indigenous people who crossed Beringia and started the main peopling of the Americas. 

Genetics researcher Phillip Melton wrote about my ancestral subhaplogroup: "B2d is frequent in lower Central and northern South American populations and has been detected in both the Wayuú from Colombia and the Ngöbé from Panama." This lineage eventually leads to my female ancestors in Mahates, Colombia.

Map by Jennifer Raff marks with blue dots some Indigenous North and South American populations with over 40% mtDNA belonging to haplogroup B2, as well as some ancient DNA samples belonging to haplogroup B2. (source)

b.) Cohen Y-DNA
A direct-male descendant of my 4th-great-grandfather Juan Cohen (born c.1790 in Great Britain; died c.1865 in Colombia) verified that our Cohen ancestors belong to the Cohen Modal haplotype. The official name of this haplogroup is J-Z18271 or J1c3d.

Stock photo of gravestone with sign of Kohanim priestly blessing

This lineage, which includes a majority of Kohanim, the Jewish priestly caste, is part of the larger J1 (or J-M267) haplogroup, a branch of our Y-chromosomal family tree:
• Y-Chromosomal Adam - lived over 180,000 years ago in Africa.
• P305 branch - over 100,000 years ago in Africa.
• M42 branch - around 80,000 years ago in East Africa.
• M168 branch - around 70,000 years ago in East Africa.
• P143 branch - around 60,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.
• M89 branch - around 55,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.
• M578 branch - around 50,000 years ago in Southwest Asia.
• J haplogroup - around 48,000 years ago in western Asia.
• J1 haplogroup - around 24,000-17,000 years ago in western Asia.

The J1 haplogroup may have accompanied the spread of agriculture from Anatolia and Iran and then later trade routes through the Middle East and northern Africa. Today, a sizable portion of men in the Middle East, northern and eastern Africa, and the Caucasus belong to J1 haplogroup, including many Semitic subgroups. The Jewish diaspora later brought some Kohanim and their male descendants to Roman territory in Europe, becoming some of the founders of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish populations.

c.) Davis / Divinsky / Divinskiy Y-DNA

Two male descendants of the Divinskiy family of Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, which Americanized the last name to Davis, belong to the same Middle Eastern J1 haplogroup seen directly above. 

d.) Karasov Y-DNA

The Karasov (originally Karasik) family of Lokhvytsya, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine belongs to the Y-DNA haplogroup E-L791. Haplogroup E arose around 65,000 years ago in East Africa, and by 20,000 years ago this paternal line had moved to the Middle East. Haplogroup E-L791 probably arose in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago, and the spread of Neolithic agriculture probably spread this male line throughout Europe and North Africa. Today, Eastern Europe has a high concentration of this haplogroup. 

d.) Prada Y-DNA

A male descendant of the Prada family from Piedecuesta, Santander, Colombia belongs to a subhaplogroup of R-DF27 haplogroup. This is the same Bronze Age lineage that arose c.2200 BC in northeast Iberia and traces back to the Yamnaya settlers from Central Asian steppes belonging to R1b haplogroup. I assume that this is the same Prada family as my 7th-great-grandfather Melchor de la Prada Arenas (c.1711-1789), the founder of Zapatoca, Colombia. As discussed above, my patrilineal Rueda ancestors belong to another distant offshoot of the R-DF27 haplogroup.

e.) Vásquez Y-DNA
A male descendant of the Vásquez family on 23andMe belongs to the R-L44 haplogroup. Again, this is a Western European branch of the R1b haplogroup, stemming from Yamnaya settlers from Central Asian steppes. 

6) The Stories in My Genes: Ethnic Admixture 
Here comes the part of genetic genealogy that everyone knows: the ethnic admixture test and its resulting percentages and pie charts. Yet these tests do not reveal your actual ancestry, but the degree to which your DNA markers resemble the markers from the DNA testing company's samples of modern populations. There's a murkiness in admixture tests, as continent-level admixture results tend to be extremely accurate, but the percentages from regions within continents can vary depending on which DNA test we take.

I've taken tests from the defunct companies Genographic Project and Insitome, as well as AncestryDNA and 23andMe, and then uploaded the data onto other companies' websites. Overall, my autosomal DNA admixture results are mostly pleasing validation, with some mild surprises. It was a joy to see confirmation of my majority Jewish ancestry, and my Native American and West African heritage. My non-Jewish European genetic markers are not only Iberian but from a broad section of Western Europe, which is surprising.

Before I get into my AncestryDNA results, there is one genetic test that gives completely accurate results: The PCA chart. 
  

I. My PCA Chart

MyTrueAncestry's PCA chart tool shows the genetic distance of my DNA from other modern populations. Below, you can see I am closest to Italian and Greek populations, probably reflecting on the partial southern European origins of my Colombian and Ashkenazi Jewish families.  

Another PCA chart from GEDmatch, seen below, shows me closest to the Ashkenazi Jewish population, but drifted a little in the direction of Greeks and Italians. 

I discuss PCA charts a little more in my other blog, "Genetic Funhouse." These fascinating charts find the "sum" of our ethnicities, but there's no way to parse out the parts. For that we turn back to admixture tests. 

II. My AncestryDNA & 23andMe results

It's no accident that my map of genetic admixture (above) resembles the tragic Triangle Trade fueled by the Transatlantic slave trade and Middle Passage (below).

I took the AncestryDNA test in July 2019, mainly to gain access to the vast genetic databases of Ancestry and GEDmatch, and then I took the 23andMe DNA test in August 2023 to access their separate database. "Genetic Funhouse," my other genealogy blog, talks about my genetic matches and other DNA discoveries that may be hard to fit into this blog's existing family narratives.

As I said earlier, Ancestry's DNA test does not really show my ancestral populations, but rather finds modern populations around the world that I match genetically. Ancestry often uses contemporary political borders to define populations, but the genetic difference between two neighboring countries can be pretty slight.

Ancestry's caveat phrases it well: "[G]enetic ethnicity estimates are based on individuals living in this region today. While a prediction of genetic ethnicity from this region suggests a connection to the groups occupying this location, it is not conclusive evidence of membership to any particular tribe or ethnic group."

The upside is that AncestryDNA updates its database and resulting ethnic calculations at least once a year, and now tests customers' DNA against 1,800+ regions. I notice my resulting map of populations I genetically resemble seems pretty accurate and has narrowed down to five regions: Colombia and Ecuador, West Africa by the Bights of Benin and Biafra, Iberia, northwestern Europe, and Eastern Europe. 

I'm most excited about AncestryDNA narrowing down my West African DNA as resembling the peoples of "Nigeria - East Central" and Côte d'Ivoire / Ghana. This could reflect a larger Latin American trend found in a 2020 genetic study of Africans and African diaspora. There is an "over-representation of Nigerian ancestry in the US and Latin America when compared with the recorded number of enslaved people from that region. Researchers say this can be explained by the 'intercolonial trade that occurred primarily between 1619 and 1807.' They believe enslaved Nigerians were transported from the British Caribbean to other areas, 'presumably to maintain the slave economy as transatlantic slave-trading was increasingly prohibited.'"

I won't give exact percentages of DNA admixture, since they are subject to margin of error anyway. 23andMe gives a whole range of percentages, showing what can be determined with 50% through 90% certainty. The higher the certainty, the more percentage of DNA is unassigned to a geographic region. 

Instead, I will share my admixture amounts through the metaphor of 128 ancestors, the same number as my 5th-great-grandparents (who in reality were likely racially mixed). Ancestry and 23andMe interpret them as:

• 68-69 ancestors of European Jewish descent (Previous tests ranged from 58-80)
• 40-42 ancestors of other European descent (Previous tests ranged from 30-46) 

• 10-14 ancestors of Native American descent (Previous tests ranged from 8-14)

• 3-4 ancestors of African descent (Previous tests ranged from 3-5) 

23andMe's results with 50% certainty assign all but a trace amount of my DNA to geographic regions. However, when the results are increased to 90% certainty, there are 7 ancestors with unassigned descent. Use this same caveat with my Ancestry results, which do not have any unassigned DNA, and therefore must have a lower percentage of certainty.  

 (source)

A. My European Jewish genetic history
Ancestry has stopped using the term "Ashkenazi Jews." While Jews were found throughout cities in the Roman Empire, the Ashkenazi Jews' forebears probably settled in Italy and southern Europe during the Early Middle Ages, married local women, and formed a population with ancestry derived equally from Middle Eastern and European sources. The Ashkenazi Jews were in northern France and the Rhineland by AD 1000 and eventually settled in the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania, which later became the Pale of Settlement. Following a population bottleneck in medieval times (probably due to anti-Semitic violence), the Ashkenazi Jews had a low level of admixture with northern or Eastern Europeans. Insitome called the Ashkenazi a "classic middleman minority," with niche roles like tax collectors, money-lenders, and peasants in non-profitable areas. 

Ancestry says the DNA inherited from my Mom is entirely European Jewish, and I inherited some additional European Jewish DNA from my Dad. 23andMe also sees a trace DNA resemblance with Levantine populations, but Ancestry does not list that.

B. My Other European genetic history

Subgroups in decreasing order:
1. Spain (extending into Portugal)

2. Basque [only on Ancestry]

3 & 4. England & Northwestern Europe and Wales? [only on Ancestry]

My DNA resemblance to Basque people is interesting. My grandmother's maiden name is Vásquez, a surname that derives from Vasco/Velasco, which like the name "Basque" all reference the Vascones, a pre-Roman tribe that lived in the western Pyrenees, an area the Romans called "Vasconia." There are several Basque surnames on my grandfather's family tree: Wandurraga, Orejarena, Uribe Salazar, Ortíz de Zárate. Insitome said the Basques (or as they call themselves, the "Euskara") have a language that predates the Indo-Europeans, and their DNA stems from the Cardial culture that spread agriculture from the Middle East to Europe 7,500 years ago, as well as native European hunter-gatherers.

The "England/Welsh" DNA markers assigned by Ancestry are labeled as "Spanish and Portuguese" by 23andMe, which shows how picking apart these Western European subgroups can be difficult. So I won't be trading my flamenco shoes for a Welsh hat!

C. My Indigenous South American genetic history

Subgroups in decreasing order:
1. Indigenous Americas - Colombia & Venezuela
2. Indigenous Americas - Ecuador [only on Ancestry]

While small groups of humans may have lived in Latin America over 30,000 years ago, the main populated that settled Latin America formed 20,000 years ago from "two strains of Pleistocene Siberian heritage" and crossed from Eurasia to the Americas around 15,000 years ago. The larger part of this Native American ancestry is Northeast Asian but there is a small Siberian component as well. Around 10,000 years ago these Native Americans started the domestication and cultivation of maize and potatoes.

A note on Colombia's Indians 

A major study of Colombian Indigenous mitochondrial DNA suggests at least two major migration waves to northern Colombia. Ancient mummy DNA from Muisca and Guane Indians -- the two documented tribes on my grandfather's family tree -- indicate that an older non-Chibchan-speaking population with mtDNA haplogroup B first came to the Andes. Then in the first millennium AD, Central American Indians with mtDNA haplogroup A who spoke Chibchan languages settled in the region. Note that my Dad's mtDNA haplogroup is B2d, which belonged to the first population to reach Colombia.

Incredibly, Colombia's Indigenous heritage spread through the Pacific Ocean. A 2020 genetic study found evidence of contact from around 1150-1300 between a Native American group related to the Zenú Indians of Colombia and Polynesians related to the residents of Fatu Hiva, an island in the South Marquesas. Hopefully one day we will learn if the Polynesians first reached South America, or if South Americans sailed into the Pacific. The sweet potato hints at possible cross-cultural exchange, as it was domesticated in Peru and its Polynesian name "kuumala" comes from the Andean Quechua root words "kumara" and "cumal."

D. My West African genetic history 

Subgroups in decreasing order:

1. Nigeria - East Central (African DNA specialist Fonte Felipe really dislikes Ancestry's breakdown of Nigerian populations.) 

2. Ivory Coast / Ghana (extending into Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo)

3. Angolan and Congolese [only on 23andMe]

West Africans separated from San hunter-gatherers c.300,000 years ago and East African hunter-gatherers c.70,000 years ago. The region began farming c.5,000 years ago and making iron around 500 BC. Later, they established extensive trading networks that crossed the Sahara Desert to the Middle East and Europe. Islam came to the region in the 10th century AD. The area became home to many empires, including the Ghana Empire (c.800s?-c.1240), the Ife kingdom (1100s-1400s), the Benin kingdom (1100s-1897), the Mali Empire (1230-1600), the Songhai Empire (1464-1591), the Oyo Empire (1500s-1896), the Dahomey kingdom (1600s-1894), and the Ashanti Empire (1670-1957).

III. My AncestryDNA Genetic Communities

The most impressive part of AncestryDNA is its "Genetic Communities," subgroups of ethnic groups that "likely descend from a population of common ancestors" that migrated to or from the same place around the same time. Initially I was not assigned to any Genetic Communities, but then in summer 2020 I was assigned to two very specific and accurate communities. 

One is the "Colombia" Genetic Community, with the impressive details that my family is from the Caribbean region (matching my paternal grandmother's side), and the Northern & Central Colombia region and Andean North region (matching my paternal grandfather's side). When I uploaded my AncestryDNA results to MyHeritage, I was assigned to two similarly accurate and specific "Genetic Groups" — Colombia (northern Santander Department) and Colombia (Atlántico and Bolívar Departments).

I also belong to the "Western and Central European Jewish" Genetic Community, and my family likely comes from Western Ukraine, Moldova & Eastern Romania (matching my maternal grandfather's side) and Poland, Slovakia, Hungary & Moravia (matching part of my maternal grandmother's side). 

It's incredible that AncestryDNA's database can pick up on my tell-tale ancestral markers with such accuracy! 

23andMe also assigned me to genetic subgroups in Colombia, as well as two subgroups in Spain: Salamanca and Zamora provinces in southwestern Castile and León, and "Eastern La Mancha," defined as Albacete Province and southern Cuenca Province. At this point I can't tell if that is accurate.

7) The "Plot Twist" in Nearly Half of Our DNA

I told some nice stories with conjectures about geographic ancestry based on my DNA. But these DNA tests look at a small portion of my genome -- of my 3.2 billion base pairs maybe only hundreds of thousands of markers. If I were to classify all of my DNA, a good portion would resemble viruses and bacteria.

That's because roughly 44% of our genome is made of transposable elements, DNA from viruses, bacteria and other microscopic forms that became incorporated into our sex cells' chromosomes and passed down the generations. Most of this "transposable" DNA does not serve a clear purpose, like the Alu element, particular stretches of DNA from a particular bacteria that appear over a million times in the human genome.

One contribution from a virus, part of roughly 8% of the human genome that comes from retroviruses, proved crucial to mammalian evolution. Around 160 million years ago, a retrovirus infected an ancestor of most mammals and injected its DNA into the ancient animal's sex cells. This viral DNA eventually got repurposed to make a protein called syncytin. These animals from the Jurassic period used syncytin to build the first placenta, an internal barrier between an organism and its offspring, which allowed for birth of live offspring instead of laying eggs. 

Different groups of mammals have additional, varying DNA for syncytin production, which researchers think is due to repeated retroviral infections. Primates began making their distinct form of syncytin around 40 million years ago, cows and sheep first made their own form of syncytin around 30 million years ago, and rodents' syncytin dates back around 20 million years.

Various branches of mammalia, with red arrows showing when they received differing retroviral DNA for syncytin production. (Source)

For more on transposable elements in our DNA, read David Quammen's 2018 book "The Tangled Tree."

8) The Next Generation

Back in the mid-1990s, I was a frustrated boy in my local library, failing to find my ancestors in a hardcover copy of the "Passenger and Immigrant Lists Index." Now I have a wealth of family history to share with my children, gleaned during the expansion of digital databases and personal genetic tests. 

Genetically, my son and daughter received from their mother mostly Eastern European markers, a smaller portion of Western European genetic markers, and possibly her traces of Finnish and Southern European populations. Family Tree DNA's "ancientOrigins" feature says at about half of their mother's autosomal DNA comes from European Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, about 40 percent comes from Neolithic farmers from the Levant, and about a tenth comes from the Bronze Age Indo-European pastorialists.

Six of my children's maternal great-great-grandparents emigrated from Russian-controlled Poland and Lithuania and Austria-Hungary between 1906 and 1913, and entered the USA through Ellis Island. Their Polish ethnic ancestors include members of the "szlachta," petty nobility who had ruled their villages since the days of the Kingdom of Poland. For example, a 5th-great-grandfather of my children was described in his 1827 marriage record as the "heir" of Wnory-Wandy, a tiny hamlet in Podlaskie Voivodeship, now northeast Poland.

My kids' 3rd-great-aunt, Teofila Zendzian Swiatkowski, in Poland, c.1950.

My children's other two maternal great-great-grandparents were an Englishwoman who emigrated in 1920 and an American born to English parents who immigrated around 1875. These English bloodlines include many farmers, yeomen, and pub owners, like these 4th-great-grandparents from the 1800s, or these 11th-great-grandparents from the 1600s.

Mary Bland Nelson (1698-1789) and the Rev. Edmund Nelson (1693-1747), 8th-great-grandparents of my kids.

One couple among my children's 8th-great-grandparents, the Reverend Edmund Nelson (1693-1747) and Mary Bland Nelson (1698-1789), became footnotes to history as the paternal grandparents of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), who defeated Napoleon at sea multiple times, became a peer of the realm, and died during the Battle of Trafalgar.  

Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), 1st cousin 8 times removed of my children. 

As my children and their progeny see the remainder of the 21st century and beyond, I hope that all their family histories and genetic legacies inspire their sense of identity and belonging, strengthen their compassion for others, and fuel their admiration for all that humans have accomplished and endured.

The 10-generation genealogy chart of my children

Questions? Comments? Please email me at ruedafingerhut [at] gmail.com.