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!

By Baluchistan on Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence. No, this young man is not the SK1414 tester, but the mandolinist in me found this photo kind of cool.  A young man from Makran.  The other SK1414 tester was also a male Makrani Baloch.

I'm hot on the trail of my Y or paternal line, following my FTDNA Y111 STR, then Big Y tests.  These tests analysed the DNA on my Y chromosome.  It is passed down strictly from father to biological sons.  the mutations (SNP and STR) that can be identified in the Y-DNA, can be used to assess relationship, and in some cases, to date the time of most recent common ancestry.  So, with the assistance of Gareth Henson, administrator of the FT-DNA Y haplogroup L Project, and with help from my new distant cousins, what have I learned over the past few weeks?

The Smoking Gun of Y-DNA

Between 45,000 and 13,000 years ago, my paternal ancestors most likely were hunter-gatherers, that lived in the region of what is now Iran and Iraq, during the last Ice Age.  Some sharp changes in glaciation, and cold extremes towards the end of that period, may have generated a number of adaptations, and subsequently, split new sub clades of my Y haplogroup L.

13,000 years ago (based on the Big Y test), I share a common paternal great x grandfather with a number of distant cousins, that descend from Pontic Greek families from the Trabzon region in Turkey.

Between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago (based on the less accurate STR evidence at 111 marker), I share common paternal great x grandfather with another cousin, who's paternal line Habibi, can be traced back to the 1850's in the town of Birjand, Southern Khorasan, Eastern Iran, close to the modern Afghanistan border.  This closer cousin now lives in Australia.

My Big Y test produced no less than 90 previously unrecorded or known SNP (pronounced "snip") mutations.  That might be because my Y-DNA is rare, or / and, that it is mainly found in parts of the World where very few people test at this level.  The last SNP on the roll that had been seen before, has been called SK1414.  Because now two of us have tested for this SNP, it is my terminal SNP, so at the moment (although it still has to be submitted to the YFull Tree), I can declare my Y haplogroup sub clade designation to be L-SK1414.  Only one of two so far recorded in the World.

So, who is this Y cousin that shares my SK1414 mutation?

My Baluchistan Cousin

By Baluchistan on Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence.  Another photo from Makran, Balochistan.

The other SK1414 turned up during an early survey, back in the early 2000s by the Human Genome Diversity Project.  It turned up in a sample of the Baluchi in Makran, South-west Pakistan.  Could this cousin be closer than the Habibi tester?  Could my Habibi cousin, from an eastern Iranian family also carry SK1414?

The Baluch, are an Iranic people, that speak Baluchi, an Iranian language that belongs, as do most European languages, to the Indo-European linguistic family.  According to the Iran Chamber Society website, they moved to Makran during the 12th Century AD.  Traditionally the Baluch claim that they originated in Syria, but a linguistic study has instead suggested that they actully originated from the south east of the Caspian region, and that they moved westwards between the 6th and 12th centuries AD in a series of waves.  No other Y sub clade L1b (L-M317) have been found in Southern Asia outside of two samples of this survey, so perhaps the tester did have ancestry from Western Asia.

It would seem likely that I do have a number of Y cousins, most likely in the region of Eastern Iran and South-Western Pakistan.  That doesn't necessarily follow though, that our most recent common Y ancestors lived there.  As I said above, the Baluch of Makrani, Pakistan are said to have migrated from further north-west, from the Caspian Sea region.

There is a tentative suggestion of a link to the Parsi. A Portuguese STR tester with a genetic distance (based on 67 markers) of 22, has (thanks again Gareth) "a distinctive value of 10 at DYS393. In the Qamar paper this value is found in the Parsi population".  So there is just the possibility also, of the Parsi ethnicity carrying L1b from Western Asia into Southern Asia.  Perhaps this marker was picked up by a Portuguese seafarer link to Southern Asia.  It could even be the link to my English line, via the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance.  A lot of speculation.  I don't think that M317 has been found yet in India.

Into England

I have found STR links with four people that carry the surname Chandler.  They live in England, Australia, and the USA.  These cousins appear to descend from a Thomas Chandler, that lived in Basingstoke during the 1740s.  That is 32 miles away from my own contemporary surname ancestor, John Brooker, who lived at the same time at the village of Long Wittenham in the Thames Valley.

Unfortunately three of the Chandlers have only 12 markers tested, and the fourth at 37 markers.  Therefore time of most recent ancestor is not accurate, but it looks as the Chandler and Brooker Y hg L testers of Southern England, most likely shared a common paternal great x grandfather sometime between 800 and 350 years ago.

That only these two lines have turned up, and that they are geographically and genetically so close, might suggest that our Y-DNA lineage arrived in Southern England around the late medieval, perhaps from between the 13th and 17th centuries AD.  It could just be through a Portuguese navigator link, or it could be through thousands of other routes.  More L-M20 testers could turn up in England in the future, that could push the arrival to an earlier date.

Today

I could have any number of cousins from south England.  The Brookers and Chandlers may well have other paternal line descendants living in the Thames Valley, Hampshire, London, or elsewhere.  I'd love to prove a Brooker from the Berkshire / Oxfordshire area, as sharing ancestry.  I believe for example, that the journalist Charlie Brooker descends from one of the Thames Valley families, although not necessarily from mine.  Do they carry the Y hg L?

My great great grandfather Henry Brooker, did not appear to have any more sons, other than my great grandfather John Henry Brooker - who in turn, only had one son, my grandfather Reginald John Brooker.

I have one Y haplogroup first cousin.  He has I believe, a son, and a grandson.

Link to STR data for Southern English L M20 (Brooker / Chandler)

My Family Tree DNA Y111 STR test results are in.  Only yesterday, I predicted that ftDNA kit number 29369 could be of particular interest.  That prediction has now been proven correct.  Here is what I have learned since yesterday.

The 12 marker STR kit belonged to a descendant of a Thomas Chandler, that lived 1728 to 1782 at Basingstoke, Hampshire.  Although only 12 markers - it proved a perfect match for my first 12.  100%.  Family Tree DNA rated it's genetic distance as zero.

Basingstoke, Hampshire by modern road is only 32 miles (51 km) from Long Wittenham, Berkshire (now Oxon), where my surname ancestor, John Brooker lived, at the same time.  Based on the limitation of a 12 marker comparison, FTDNA give 71% confidence to the testers sharing a common Y ancestor within 12 generations, and 91% confidence of us sharing a common Y ancestor within 24 generations.  I'd say that suggests that myself and the present day descendant of Thomas Chandler, shared a common Y ancestral lineage until between circa 1500 and 1700.

So most likely, between the 16th and 17th centuries inclusive, the Y chromosome moved between two surnames, what we call an NPE (non parental event).  Usually either illegitimacy, where the Y-DNA detached from the surname of the biological father, or simply, the biological father of an ancestor, was not the husband of their mother.  This event most probably occurred in England, somewhere in the Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire area.  Both my Brooker lineage record, and the Chandler record, merge somewhere in that area.

It gets better.  Searches on FT-DNA, ySearch, and an email trail, revealed more Chandler Y cousins with an L haplogroup. All together, I have today found two 12 marker STR tests, that match my first 12 markers perfectly, with a prediction of zero genetic distance.  I have found another 12 marker with  slight difference, and a genetic distance of 1.  I have found a 37 marker test with some differences, but that still gives a genetic distance of 3.  A comparison with the Y37 test result, predicts 78% confidence of sharing a most recent common ancestor with me within 12 generations, and a 99% confidence of us sharing common Y descent within 24 generations.  This correlates quite nicely with the two perfect 12 marker testers.  All four testers are descended on the paternal line from Chandlers in the Basingstoke area.

The Chandlers of Basingstoke

Origins of the Chandler-Brooker L1b Y haplogroup

Family Tree DNA (ftDNA) is a commercial genetics genealogy company, with a reputation for cornering the market in Y-DNA testing, and in accumulating references for haplogroups.

That map above, that is the sum total of Y haplogroup L submissions on their database for the UK.  All four of them.  The two to the east are L2 and L2a.  The one in Oxfordshire represents my own pending results (expected L1b or L-M317).  Just to the south of that, the SW representative, is kit number 26369.

The cluster in Central Europe, is the "Rhine Danube Cluster", but that is L1a (L M349).

So you see, except for kit 26369, my Y haplogroup is way out here, like a distant satellite on it's own.  So what is Kit 26379?  Well, it is only a Y12 STR test result.  Predicted to M20, but it has been assigned to L-M317 un-clustered.  Up to now!  It's located only 32 miles south of my surname line during the 1740's.  Could it relate to our line?

STR: