Journals of a Time Traveller

The Teller at the Gate. The year is 3,800 BCE. A priest-administrator—a "teller"—stands by the oval enclosure at Godin Tepe, assessing and recording goods as they pass through the settlement. A caravan carrying Lapis Lazuli, on its long journey from the mines of Afghanistan to the Uruk civilization of Sumer (modern-day Iraq), unloads its precious cargo for inspection.

As I visualize this scene, I have to wonder: could this teller be my direct paternal ancestor?

We are currently in the Late Chalcolithic (Godin VI), the final chapter before the dawn of the Bronze Age. This is Godin Tepe, a pivotal settlement in the Kangavar Valley of the Central Zagros Mountains. Positioned in what is now western Iran, it served as a high-altitude "dry port" for the ancient world’s most valuable commodities.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

Discussion

I believe that in 3,800 BCE—after many thousands of years—my direct paternal ancestors were likely still situated in the region of the Zagros Mountains. They moved from ibex hunters to gatherers, then to goat herders, and eventually to administrators in a bustling Zagros settlement along the Great Khorasan Road, a vital artery between the Mesopotamian floodplains and Central Asia.

Sites like Godin Tepe have since been rediscovered by archaeologists, proving that these mountains were not inhabited merely by the "savages and barbarians" suggested by early Mesopotamian propaganda. Instead, townships were flourishing within the valleys, especially along these trade routes. These communities were built on a blend of local traditions and the increasing influence of the Sumerian city-states.

While cousins of my direct paternal line radiated eastward across the Iranian plateau toward Gedrosia, Makran, and the Indus Valley—or northward and westward into Anatolia, the Levant, and eventually Europe—my specific line remained. It became what geneticists might call a "ghost" Y-DNA lineage; it never founded a massive, expansive population. The sons carrying L-FGC51040 > FGC51036 never moved in great numbers across Eurasia. Our lineage has always remained rare, perhaps occupying restricted or specialized hereditary roles. Perhaps I truly did have an ancestor who served as a priest or an accountant in a settlement like Godin Tepe.

The Cradle of the Zagros: 7,500 BCE In a mountain valley in Southwest Asia—modern-day Iran—the Aceramic Neolithic is in full bloom. As I visualize an early goat herder in this landscape, I have to ask: is this man my direct ancestor?

Roughly 9,500 years ago, my paternal lineage (identified by the Y-DNA marker L-FGC51036) likely moved through this transformative agricultural culture. A few millennia later, as the Aceramic period evolved into the Sarab and Guran cultures of the Pottery Neolithic, the next genetic variant appeared: SK1414. Following this mutation, "cousins" of my direct line radiated outward, eventually establishing separate paternal lineages in the Levant, Anatolia, the Indus Valley, and Europe.

My ancestors here were the heirs to accidental selection processes initiated much earlier by the Zarzian culture. Having survived the harsh climatic collapse of the Younger Dryas, these people emerged from their refuges to find their relationship with wild grasses deepening into a state of total interdependence. Over generations, wild flora adapted into domestic strains of einkorn and two-row barley—crops that now relied on human threshing to survive.

Simultaneously, the wild bezoar ibex was being transformed into the world’s first domestic goat. It is highly probable that this region saw the very dawn of goat domestication. These animals were perfectly evolved for the Zagros terrain, turning rugged scrub into high-quality protein for Aceramic farmers. Beyond meat, these goats may have already been exploited for dairy, supplemented by gathered legumes and wild nuts.

However, domestication was neither intentional nor entirely beneficial. While agriculture anchored people to the land and allowed for more children, it also planted the seeds of the global population explosion. In time, humans were conditioned by these new species-to-species relationships. For millennia, early farmers suffered from malnutrition, stunted growth, and zoonotic diseases that jumped from livestock to humans. The status of women often declined; skeletal remains reveal the toll of increased childbirth and the grueling physical labor of milling grain on their knees. Yet, agriculture permits a viral, expansive growth that the old ways could never match.

The Material World of the Aceramic Zagros The inhabitants of the Aceramic Zagros clung to several ancient technologies even as they innovated. They continued to produce delicate flint microliths, though toward the end of the period, they began crafting polished stone axe-heads. They had not yet adopted fired pottery; instead, much like their hunter-gatherer ancestors, they relied on woven baskets and skin bags. Yet, a shift was occurring: they had begun partially firing the clay walls of their storage pits and sculpting small clay figurines. These figures suggest that their belief systems were evolving in tandem with their economy and their changing relationship with the landscape. As visualized in the accompanying images, my ancestors were already fashioning sun-dried clay bricks to build multi-level houses within the Zagros valleys.

Historically, there has been a significant emphasis on the western "leg" of the Fertile Crescent—the Natufians, early Levantines, and Anatolians. However, the importance of this eastern leg in the Zagros has long been underrated. Many population genetics enthusiasts now suggest that Zagros Neolithic Farmers form a distinct genetic cluster that later radiated outward, carrying these foundational agricultural practices with them. I am but one of many descendants of this influential lineage.

Early Fertile Crescent. Home of West Eurasian agriculture.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

The Zarzian Return: 18,000 BCE I visualize the Zarzian hunter-gatherers of the Zagros and ask: is this my great-grandfather?

The unbearably harsh conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) once drove the Baradostian Ice Age hunters out of these mountains and into lower-altitude refuges. However, after 20,000 years ago, the climate began to stabilize, permitting a slow return to the Zagros valleys. Unlike many other groups of the era, my paternal ancestors do not appear to have traveled far; they remained rooted in the Zagros or South Caucasus region for an immense span of time. I would conjecture that they return to the same valleys:

13,000 years ago. Zagros Mountains and valleys (now in Iran) South West Asia

The Zagros and South Caucasus mountains (now in Iran), South West Asia. © OpenStreetMap contributors".

These were not the first humans to inhabit the region. Anatomically modern humans arrived circa 40,000 years ago, but Neanderthals had made these valleys their home long before. While my 23andMe results suggest I have more Neanderthal DNA than 98% of their customers, I take that specific metric with a grain of salt. Regardless of that ancient admixture, these modern humans in the Zagros—likely my direct ancestors—are known to archaeologists as the Baradostian Culture.

The Baradostians are often linked to the Aurignacian Culture of Europe, the famous pioneers who trekked across the European continent between 40,000 and 33,000 years ago. While the European Aurignacians left behind splendid cave paintings and sculptures—often featuring lions—the Baradostians of Southwest Asia left a more subtle mark. Some researchers even suggest that the Aurignacians were actually Baradostians who had migrated into Europe.

While we find fewer examples of Ice Age artwork in the Zagros, this may simply be due to sampling bias; modern politics and conflict often hinder archaeological investigation in the region. Instead, we look to their flint assemblages. The Baradostians were adept at knapping small bladelets and crafting burins—sharp, chisel-edged tools used for piercing hides. They utilized massive limestone caves and rock shelters, such as Shanidar and Yafteh, as seasonal basecamps. Inside, archaeologists have found evidence of large, central hearths where families would gather to cook, repair tools, and perhaps pass down the oral traditions that kept their culture alive.

John Brooker of Long Wittenham, born circa 1720 in Berkshire area? My 6 x great granddaddy. Gemini AI visualised this image based on my own features and on his recorded life.

Why so much hyper-focus on my Y chromosome just recently?  I guess because I have made a few breakthroughs on other lines of the family tree. I had a long conversation with AI about my paternal line and we came to agreement that I had made an error. That had to be put right. After removing those errors, this is where I got back to on my direct paternal line (aka surname line):

1. My 6x great grandfather was named John Brooker.
2. My 6x great grandmother was named Mary Gardiner. She was born in 1717 at Hagbourne, Berkshire.
3. This couple married 1st November 1746 at Oxford College, Oxfordshire. They were both described as residing at Long Wittenham, Berkshire. I have discovered that the reason that they were married at Oxford College was that their parish had been allocated to a vicar living in Oxford College. It was cheaper for them to be married at Oxford, than to call the vicar back to their parish.
4. Following marriage, John and Mary Brooker proceeded to have at least six children born at Long Wittenham - Mary, Anne, John, Edward, Martha, and a Sarah Brooker. John was a copyhold tenant of St John's College, Oxford, who were one of the two main land holders at Long Wittenham. As a copyholder, John would have cultivated a number of strips in the open-field systems still being used at Long Wittenham. He wasn't a pauper, but neither was he likely to be particularly wealthy.
5. Before 1746, I have baptism and ancestry for his wife Mary nee Gardiner, but for John, it's the Great Genealogical Dead End.

What were these errors that I deleted for 6 x great grandad John?  I had found numerous John Brookers baptised circa 1720 in the local area. After much deliberation, I settled for the closest village to Long Wittenham, the parish from which his bride had also moved from, I chose a John Brooker baptised at East Hagbourne. But in my heart I knew that there were issues with this choice. For one thing, a lack of correlation in the names of children. Then I became convinced that the John Brooker of Hagbourne, had lived a separate existence from the John Brooker of Long Wittenham. Genealogical crisis!

I immediately recovered from the shock, and started anew with fresh 2026 research. After all, I started out on this quest in 1989, and things have moved on a tad since then. Not only with digitalised, indexed, and online genealogy, but also with genetic genealogy. This is where I shall take this discussion next.

Around 12 years ago, I tested my y-DNA - the DNA that is contained in my Y Chromosome. This can only be passed from biological father to son. Trace it back, and it follows the direct paternal line, all the way back to Y-DNA Adam in Africa. You can use its variants (aka mutations) to tell a story of that one narrow line of descent, way back into prehistory. It does not ALWAYS follow the surname line perfectly, because of illegitimacy as it was previously known, adoption, affairs, and more. People sometimes change name to escape from their past. In the long term, the y-DNA surpasses the origination and adoption of surnames as they occurred during the Medieval.

I've discussed to death the route this genetic evidence tells me that my paternal ancestors must have taken in the past, and will continue to do so:

1. 28,000 years ago Ice Age hunters of ibex and mouflon in the Zagros mountains of South-West Asia.
2. 11,000  years ago, hunter-foragers still in the Zagros, or in the Caucasus mountains, who were selectively hunting wild herds, and milling gathered wild seeds in ways that would eventually evolve into the earliest agriculture.
3. 8,000 years ago my paternal ancestors were aceramic neolithic farmers, herding goats, and sheep. Keeping pigs. Growing emmer and einkorn wheat, barley and more. They may have remained in the area of the Zagros, on its foothills where they founded the ancestry of the Hurrians and Kassites. Or perhaps they had moved immediately southwest, onto the floodplains of early Sumer (Iraq) where they would give birth to a great civilisation?
4. 4,000 years ago. They would have been in contact with great cities in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylonia, the Indus Valley, the Levant.
5. 3,000 years ago. Perhaps swept westwards to the Levant by the fall of the Mitanni, and the dispersals of the Hurrians.
6. 600 years ago. Maybe a Genoese or Venetian galley docked at Beirut, Acre, Jaffa or Tripoli and took on my paternal ancestor as crew. My yDNA finally leaves Asia, and heads for Europe.
7. 600 years ago. A galley docks at Southampton in England, where Genoese and Venetian merchants have a permanent presence, interested in English wool. My last Asian ancestor leaves a son in England.
8. 400 years ago. Our line has taken the surname Brooker, or is it Chandler? Perhaps a child is born outside of wedlock. He takes his mother's surname. The yDNA is consequently divided among two families in the area of Basingstoke, Kingsclere, Sherfield Upon Loddon, and Newbury across the Hampshire/Berkshire border. Chandlers and Brookers.
9. 280 years ago. My 6x great grandfather, John Brooker lives in Long Wittenham, Berkshire.

The above is a hypothesis based on those variants on my Y DNA, along with the fact that it survives only in Europe, among two small families who were living only 32 miles apart during the 18th century. Thomas Chandler of Basingstoke, and John Brooker of Long Wittenham. Comparing the DNA, there is a 78% probability that the two families shared the same great grandfather line until circa 1600. Our type of DNA (L-FGC51036) is not found anywhere else in Europe. Our closest Y-DNA cousins are from Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Further back in the variants we have Y-Cousins from Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, in the Druze ethnicity, in the Parsi ethnicity.

Getting back to the documented record. Our John Brooker. Where did he come from? The DNA does keep pointing south in Berkshire, and to the Hampshire border. A meeting with the Chandlers of Basingstoke. I investigate all of the 'John Brookers' baptised circa 1720 to the south. There can't be many can there? Wrong. I found at least 9 candidates in that part of Berkshire. I have eliminated several from the search, but Berkshire genealogical records are not the best online! I'm usually limited to indexes of transcripts. Transcripts are often wrong. More dead ends.

So I turned to trying to trace back from the Chandlers of Basingstoke hoping that might put me on to the right track for the early Brooker family. I keep hitting more dead ends.

However, here is the thing. Parishes like Chieveley, Newbury, Kingcslere, Sherbourne St John, Sherfield Upon Loddon. I often see entries for baptisms, marriages, and burials for both 'Chandler' and 'Brooker' families. In same villages, registers, sometimes even same pages!

I can smell consilience. Documented trail, and Genetic trail. So close.