When I envisaged this post last night, I was simply going to make it an easy, simple little table of the L haplogroup variants on my Y Chromosome. I had a few problems with that, and therefore consulted for a while with Google Gemini AI. Before I knew it, my post grew and grew. I know that I have a particular kind of mind. One that hyper-focuses, sees patterns in data, and buries itself into whatever science, history, or nature that currently catches my attention. As this blog is intended only for me to enjoy making my observations, I shouldn't be apologizing.

Gemini helped me a little with organising the dating, and contexts of the yDNA. When I was happy with it, I then felt that the beginning of the story was far older than yDNA Adam, and therefore I asked it to add some information on earlier human evolution. But then that wasn't enough, because humans are only the recent end of just one lineage of life, so I asked it to add the story of Life on Earth. But then I knew that wasn't enough. You see, we are star dust. We see ourselves as selves. As individuals that matter the most. We make our own ego. Yet all life is entwined, and interdependent. Every several years, every cell in our body is replaced. Even as an individual I am no more than a chain of events, a process rather than a thing. A small percentage of my bodyweight isn't even the same species - it belongs to countless micro-organisms of a biome. We are also a lichen,

We interbeing not only with life, but with the universe. The matter in the fingers that punch this keyboard have been a part of other lifeforms before me. My existence has consequence for everything. Enough of the profound thoughts, let me get this list of my process down.

​The Dawn of the Y Chromosome

• ​Age: c. 180 Million Years Ago

• ​Context: A normal chromosome in early mammals mutates to hold the SRY gene, creating the very first Y chromosome and starting the paternal line we track today.

​The "Y-Chromosomal Adam" (Root of all Y-DNA)

• ​Age: c. 230,000 to 270,000 Years Ago

​Context: This is the theoretical single male in Africa who passed down the Y-chromosome that all living men carry today.

yDNA Variants

​A01

• ​Age: 125,500 YBP (c. 123,550 BCE)

• ​Context: Africa. The root of all human paternal lines.

​F

• ​Age: 42,500 YBP (c. 40,550 BCE)

• ​Context: Southwest Asia. Parent of most non-African lines.

​LT

• ​Age: 37,050 YBP (c. 35,100 BCE)

• ​Context: West Asia. Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.

​L / M20

• ​Age: 20,100 YBP (18,150 BCE)

• ​Context: Caucasus to Iranian Plateau. In Ice Age refuges of West Asia. The birth of the L super-clade. LGM Ice Age Hunter-gatherers.

​M317

• ​Age: 11,050 YBP (9,100 BCE)

• ​Context: Eastern Fertile Crescent. Controlling wild herds of ibex, mouflon. Gathering wild cereals.

​SK1412

• ​Age: 10,050 YBP (8,050 BCE)

• ​Context: Zagros (Iran) foothills and valleys. Early Neolithic Farmer population herding and cultivating cereals.

​FGC51074 / SK1414

• ​Age: 7,800 YBP (5,880 BCE)

• ​Context: Branching out to Anatolia, Caucasus, Near East, Iranian Plain, Gedrosia, and Indus Valley, but my specific line possibly remained in the Zagros region.

​FGC51041

• ​Age: 7,130 YBP (5,180 BCE)

• ​Context: Early Copper Age expansion. If still in Zagros region, likely in contact with Elamite, Indus Valley, and Sumerian civilizations. Exploiting soils of floodplains for agriculture 

​FGC51040

• ​Age: 6,000 YBP (4,050 BCE)

• ​Context: West Asia. Continued Copper Age movements. Possible link to Assyrians, Hurrians and Mittani dispersals.

​FGC51036

• ​Age: 3,130 YBP (c. 1,180 BCE)

• ​Context: End of Bronze Age. Anatolia, Levant or Mediterranean. Greek world?

​Arrival in England

• ​Age: 600 YBP (c. 1350–1400 CE)

• ​Context: Late Medieval period; potential entry into Britain. Most likely through the port of Southampton. Suspect Genoese or Venetian galleys. My yDNA ancestor may have been recruited as a crewman from the Levant.

​Brooker / Chandler split

• ​Age: 400 YBP (c. 1550–1600 CE)

• ​Context: England. Tudor era. Surnames become solidly fixed. Suspect that the surname split between Chandler and Brooker occurred around the area of Basingstoke, Sherfield Upon Loddon, or Kingsclere in Hampshire, England.

​Recorded genealogy

• ​Age: 277 years ago (1749 CE)

• ​Context: Clear paper records begin. My 6x great-grandfather, John Brooker, married Ann Gardiner at Oxford College while residing at Long Wittenham, Berkshire, England. Copyhold farmer on open fields held by St Johns college, Oxford.

​Relocation to Oxfordshire

• ​Age: 211 years ago (1815 CE)

• ​Context: My 4x great-grandfather John Brooker takes the yDNA from Long Wittenham to the Rotherfield Peppard, Shiplake, Harpsden, and Henley areas of Oxfordshire. Agricultural labourer.

​Relocation to London

• ​Age: 144 years ago (1883 CE)

• ​Context: My 2x great-grandfather Henry Brooker takes the yDNA from Harpsden, Oxfordshire to Fulham, Bethnal Green, Deptford, and then Lewisham, London. Cart driver.

​Relocation to Norfolk

• ​Age: 120 years ago (1906 CE)

• ​Context: The yDNA is taken to Norfolk with my grandfather Reginald John Brooker. Labourer.

​My Birth

• ​Age: 60+ years ago

• ​Context: I am born.

​The DNA Test

• ​Age: 10 years ago (2016 CE)

• ​Context: I took a DNA test and discovered my terminal yDNA branch was L-FGC51036, linking our personal story back through the thousands of generations listed above!

Above image of my ancestor Johannes Heinrich Sherz aka Henry Shawers, visualised by Google Gemini AI

Forty years ago I bought a marriage certificate for my great great grandparents, Henry Brooker and Elizabeth Rosina Shawers. There were no 'online' genealogical services then, and in order to find this certificate, I had to personally reference the paper indexes at the registry office in London, and order the paper certificate there. I thought that 'Shawers' was an unusual name, and suspected Huguenot. As bride, she declared on the certificate that her father was a narrow weaver named Henry Shawers. I later found out that a narrow weaver, was a lace weaver, who specialised in making fine lace e.g. for collars and sleeves. Over the forty years, I continued to make occasional attempts to learn more about Henry:

https://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/henry-shawers-a-weaver-in-the-tree

I discovered that he was actually a Swiss-born immigrant, and that he was illiterate, only about 163 cm tall, slight, fair, with blue-grey eyes. But I never could find anything about his Swiss roots. Not his first language, canton, etc. All that I knew was that on record the original names of himself and his father (John Shawers, coppersmith) had been anglicised.  To help my search, I built a life time-line for him here:

https://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/henry-shawers-timeline-of-an-ancestor

I had an immigration record of a Henry Shawers from the 11th August 1852, as a passenger on the Lord Warden, that disembarked at Folkestone docks. I found him in prison records and on a census. But no Swiss roots.

Well, AI has helped me to change that situation!

I am now proud to announce that our ancestor Henry Shawers, was born on 26th July 1827 at Köniz, Bern, Switzerland as Johannes Heinrich Sherz, son of Johannes Sherz and his wife nee Rosina Zürcher. Their first language was most probably Bernese Deutsch, and Canton was Bern.

Gemini AI has proposed further ancestry for my Swiss 4th great grandparents, but on that, I am hesitant to claim without discovering more evidence for myself. Gemini has portrayed social decline in recent centuries for the Swiss family in the countryside close to Bern. Napoleonic wars, Independence, civil strife between political fractions. This followed by the price competition of goods being factory manufactured in British cities, and finally, by a potato blight and the 'Hungry Forties'. This was the background to Johannes aka 'Henry' applying for a permit to emigrate, found in the Bernese District Records (Amtsbezirk Bern) from late 1851:

​Status: Heinrich Scherz, born 1827, weaver. ​Action: Granted a Wegzugsurkunde (Departure Deed). ​Context: The record implies he was traveling "nach England." This perfectly aligns with your August 1852 arrival on the Lord Warden. He likely spent the winter of 1851/52 working his way through France (Boulogne) before crossing to Folkestone.

Gemini also suggests why records later show him moving between London and Brighton. He was almost certainly tramping for work. I asked the AI if it would generate a portrait of my ancestor, and gave it an age, social conditions that he was living through, and a prison description. Gemini gave my the image above.