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Before genetics came into the picture, researchers interested in introducing agriculture to Europe had only the archaeological record to go on – a limited collection of primarily stone and bone artifacts that left much room for interpretation. But as researchers began applying population genetics to the question of how farming spread across Europe, beginning with the work of <a id="yenv" title="Luca Luigi Cavalli-Sforza" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/258176?ordinalpos=7&amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Luca Luigi Cavalli-Sforza</a> nearly 40 years ago, there began to be hope for a better understanding of how agriculture spread through the continent beginning about 10,000 years ago.
<h2>The Spread of Agriculture</h2>
Decades of genetic research have produced some clarity. But geneticists have also created their own new sources of debate surrounding the spread of agriculture.
Over the years, two schools of thought have jockeyed for dominance: one argues that farmers from the Near East came into Europe around 10,000 years ago, spreading both their knowledge of farming AND their descendants throughout the continent.
Known as the &#8216;Demic Diffusion Model,&#8217; this hypothesis predicts that most of today&#8217;s Europeans trace their ancestry to early farmers from the Near East.   The alternative hypothesis, dubbed the &#8216;Cultural Diffusion Model,&#8217; argues that while the practice of farming likely spread from the Near East into Europe, the farmers themselves did not.   Instead, the technology was passed along from settlement to settlement until it reached northern Europe 5,000 years later. It predicts most modern Europeans should trace their ancestry to the original Stone Age inhabitants of Europe.
<h2>The Balkan Link</h2>
As the debate has continued, newer studies have begun breaking the puzzle down into more manageable pieces, looking at particular regions within Europe to see how farming changed the demographics on a more regional level.
This is precisely what new research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics seeks to do by examining the genetic history of the Balkans in Eastern Europe to work out what was happening there nearly 10,000 years ago.
The study&#8217;s authors, including Stanford professors and 23andMe scientific advisers Drs. Peter Underhill and Roy King focused on the Balkans chiefly because the archaeological record in this area hints at interactions between farmers from the east and the hunter-gatherers who were already living there.   The researchers chose to examine the Y-chromosome, which is passed down from father to son, to see if any traces of such interactions remained in people living in the Balkans today.   They sampled more than 1,200 men from Greece, Albania, Slovenia, and many other countries on the Balkan Peninsula and throughout Eastern Europe.
<h2>Early Haplogroups</h2>
They found three major Y-chromosome haplogroups (clusters of men with deep ancestry along the paternal line). One group pre-dated the arrival of agriculture into the region, a second arrived along with agriculture, and a third fell somewhere in between.
Specifically, more than 60% of those sampled belonged to branches of either haplogroup I or haplogroup R, both of which are believed to have arrived in Europe tens of thousands of years ago.   In addition, a unique branch of haplogroup E is found at levels of 15-25% among the men tested, but only in those people hailing from the southern Balkans (such as Greece or Macedonia).   Finally, up to one-fifth of the men tested fell into haplogroup J, which is common in the Near East and thought to be closely associated with Mediterranean seafarers and agriculture&#8217;s origin and spread.
What do these figures mean?
First of all, it is clear that over half of the men in the Balkans and Eastern Europe belong to haplogroups that pre-date the arrival of agriculture in the area.   These men&#8217;s paternal ancestors likely trace back to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.   On the other hand, the 20% of men belonging to Haplogroup J likely trace their ancestry to the same Near Eastern populations where agriculture originated.
<h2>Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers</h2>
So it stands to reason that &#8211; because the authors&#8217; samples contain both hunter-gatherer and farmer haplogroups &#8211; there was likely some kind of interaction between the two populations when they came into contact with each other nearly 10,000 years ago.   More importantly, it reveals that the spread of farming into Europe cannot be pigeonholed into either the Demic Diffusion or Cultural Diffusion Model.   Its spread is far more complex &#8211; and intriguing &#8211; than many initially thought.
But what about the men who traced their ancestry to that sub-branch of haplogroup E, which is typical of North or East Africans; what is it doing in the Balkans?   Haplogroup E has a unique history, stretching back some 40,000 years to East Africa. From where men carrying it expanded into the Nile Valley.   The authors believe this branch of Haplogroup E exited Africa almost 16,000 years ago, well before the arrival of farming, making it to the southern Balkans a few thousand years later.   Men bearing the haplogroup may have been among the first converts to agriculture when Neolithic farmers arrived in the area a few thousand years after that.
So it would seem that by using genetics to piece together ancient interactions between Mesolithic hunters and Neolithic farmers, we are actually left with new questions surrounding the arrival of Haplogroup E.
Who were these men who carried it?   What made them expand from the Nile Valley into the Balkans just before the arrival of farming?   And did their presence in the Balkans influence interactions between the hunter-gatherers and the farmers from the Near East?
Once again, research into the genetic signatures of the first farmers has given us both new answers and new questions.

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New Genetic Discoveries Shed Light on the Spread of Farming in Eastern Europe

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In genetic anthropology, mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome are the major players.
Scientists use these regions of our genome most frequently when tracing ancient and historical human migrations, and they are important tools for genealogists who use DNA to piece together their family trees.
<h2>X Marks the Spot</h2>
But another part of the human genome has recently started to prove itself as a window into our species&#8217; past: the X-chromosome.
Like both the mtDNA and the Y-chromosome, the X is passed from parents to children in such a way that scientists can use it to trace the deep ancestry of our species. However, only recently has the X-chromosome been used this way, and some of the early research has been somewhat inconsistent.
Now, the authors of a paper published in this week’s <a href="https://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ng.303.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nature Genetics</a> believe they have perfected a way of using the X-chromosome to unravel details about the initial migration of humans out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago. Their results suggest that more men than women were involved in the exodus that initiated the peopling of the entire globe.
<h2>Why the X and not the Y?</h2>
One of the reasons analysis of the X-chromosome has not proven straightforward compared to the mtDNA or the Y-chromosome is that the way the X is passed down from one generation to the next differs depending on the child&#8217;s sex. Fathers pass on their X chromosomes to their daughters, but not their sons, while mothers pass one X chromosome to their children of both sexes. So, while any person&#8217;s X-chromosome came down to them along a specific lineage – just like their Y-chromosome and mtDNA – that path is impossible to trace.
<h2>The XX</h2>
However, the X chromosome does have one distinctive quality. Since men have one and women have two, any population with a 50/50 sex ratio will have three X chromosomes for every four of the 22 paired chromosomes. That means all other things are equal, and genetic diversity on the X-chromosome should be about three-quarters as much as on the non-sex chromosome.
To see if all has been equal in the history of the human species, researchers from Harvard, the Broad Institute, and the National Human Genome Research Institute analyzed the genotypes of people from around the globe. They looked for differences among the populations of Africa, Europe, and East Asia. Though they found the expected 75% X-chromosome diversity ratio within Africans, there was considerably less diversity among European and East Asians on the X compared to their 22 non-sex chromosomes.
Genetic Variation
<h2>What could all this mean?</h2>
First, a decrease in genetic variation is usually a sign of decreased population size.   Because it shows up in East Asians and Europeans but not Africans, the authors believe the decreased variation is a signal of a population bottleneck that occurred after humans left Africa for the first time nearly 60,000 years ago – but before the non-African populations diverged from each other.
However, the decreased genetic variation only seems to show up on the X-chromosome.   This, the authors speculate, may be due to some sort of sex-biased migration.   In other words, when humans first ventured outside of Africa and into Europe and Asia, there may have been more men on the move than women.   Scientists have long observed the same phenomenon when comparing the Y-chromosome to mtDNA; now researchers see the same phenomenon here with the X.

Using X-Chromosome to Trace Prehistoric Human Migrations

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Archaeologists rarely agree on anything.   So it&#8217;s no surprise that for years two groups of scholars have drawn completely opposite conclusions about the relationship between the ancient people of Thailand and China.
Some experts argue that, thousands of years ago, people from Thailand migrated into East Asia, becoming the ancestors of present-day Chinese peoples.   Others argue the exact opposite: that it was people from East Asia who migrated south into Thailand.   Unfortunately, the sheer complexity of languages and cultures in the region, combined with conflicting archaeological reports, makes it next to impossible to draw concrete conclusions.

In situations like this one researchers increasingly turn to the field of genetics to help fill in the gaps and piece together the history of various populations – and that is just what a team from Thailand has done.   In this month’s issue of the <a id="ruzb" title="American Journal of Physical Anthropology" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18615504?ordinalpos=2&amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">American Journal of Physical Anthropology</a>, a bipartisan team of archaeologists and geneticists from across Thailand describes how the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of both ancient and modern Thai populations can help us understand the peopling of the country.
Because the demographics of Thailand are so complex, the authors felt that just sampling modern Thai populations would not give a clear picture into the peopling of the region.   So, the researchers dug deeper by sampling archaeological remains as well.   They extracted DNA from 43 skeletons excavated at two sites in northeastern Thailand that date to about 3,500 years ago.   The authors chose these particular sites, called Noen U-loke and Ban Lum-Khao, because they represented typical ancient farming communities &#8211; some of the earliest settlements in existence.
Right away, the authors noticed the ancient and modern samples were very similar genetically – an indication that within the last 3,500 years, people haven’t moved around very much in northeastern Thailand.   Some of the modern people tested may in fact be descendants of these early Thai farmers — a very exciting prospect.
More importantly, however, the authors believe they have worked out the peopling of Thailand from the genetic information they gathered.   Their data support the hypothesis that many present-day Thai populations are actually descended from people who migrated from southern China only a few thousand years ago — an idea that has gained prominence in recent years among many archaeologists.
These results are compelling for a number of reasons – most notably the fact that the authors were able to use genetic data to resolve uncertainties about the peopling of Thailand when other types of data could not.   It also shows how useful it can be to compare ancient and modern DNA when tracing prehistoric migrations.   Many studies use only one or the other.   Finally, these authors were able to utilize genetics in a region – Southeast Asia – that has not seen much genetics research compared to other regions.   Hopefully future research on the genetic history of this region will continue down the path laid out by these researchers, following their lead of taking evidence from all disciplines in reshaping theories on ancient civilizations.   Perhaps we will even see more agreement from archaeologists.

New Approach Studying Genetic History of Southeast Asia

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With the return of Christian rule to Spain in 1492 after nearly 800 years of Muslim rule, hundreds of thousands of people – both Muslim and Jewish – were faced with the choice of exile, conversion or occasionally even death.
Exile or Conversion
Historical accounts estimate that nearly 400,000 Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain or Portugal within only 100 years.
But what about those who didn&#8217;t leave?
Many Muslims and Jews converted to Christianity, only to face the scrutiny of the Spanish Inquisition.   Can the descendants of those converts still be found among modern Spanish and Portuguese peoples today?   These very questions were at the heart of the <a id="h60k" title="new study" href="http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297%2808%2900592-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new study</a> by geneticist Mark Jobling and his colleagues at Leicester University.
In order to answer these questions, Jobling and his colleagues performed genetic analyses on 1,140 males from the Iberian Peninsula.   They focused on the Y-chromosome DNA, which is passed down from father to son and can be used to trace paternal ancestry.   Jobling and his team found a surprisingly large percentage of DNA types that can be traced back to either Jewish (19.8%) or North African Muslim (10.6%) populations.
These levels stand in contrast to historical accounts, which emphasize the expulsion of these two minority groups from Spain and Portugal.   According to Jobling, “These findings attest to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced) driven by historical episodes of religious intolerance.”
The genetic evidence lends support to the idea that most Jews and Muslims preferred conversion to Christianity, as opposed to expulsion from the region.   Ultimately, the descendants of those who converted began to integrate into the Christian population.   Today, most of these descendants remain unaware of their ancestors’ religious conversion.
The conclusions reached by Jobling and his colleagues illustrate how useful genetic analysis can be in assessing the historical record. Since researchers began using genetics to understand the past about two decades ago, they have focused their attention on prehistoric events such as the origin of the human species in Africa, the migration of people into new territories and the expansion of innovations such as agriculture and pottery.
But the gradual accumulation of data now allows scientists to tackle more recent and localized events. Just last month, researchers with the National Genographic Project used the genetic diversity of modern populations around the Mediterranean to piece together <a id="h_id" title="Phoenician" href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/ripples-in-the-mediterranean-tracing-the-genetic-origins-of-the-phoenicians" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Phoenician</a> trade routes from nearly 3,500 years ago.
This latest study shows that genetic data can actually be used to test historical claims and assumptions, and even to overturn conventional wisdom. In fact, the results of this research actually contradict some historians&#8217; beliefs about the fate of the majority of Jews and Muslims living in the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition.   Clearly, using genetic data to test hypotheses based on historical or archaeological evidence promises to be surprisingly informative in the future.
Photograph of &#8220;Auto de Fe&#8221; by Francisco Ricci from Wikimedia Commons.

Genetics Sheds Light on the Spanish Inquisition

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About 4,600 years ago, in northern Germany, a small village buried 13 of its residents.
<h6>Violent Death</h6>
The deceased ranged in age from less than a year to nearly 60 years old and were buried in pairs or small groups. And virtually all of them had suffered violent, probably painful deaths.
Because the majority of the deceased were women or children, the archaeologists who discovered their remains have argued that these victims were likely the unfortunate casualties of a violent raid by a neighboring village – a common occurrence during this period.
Research on the skeletal remains of the deceased, as well as the grave goods with which they were buried, have revealed much about the lifestyle and culture of these early Europeans.
<h6>Using Genetics to Find Relationships</h6>
But many questions — especially about the relationships between the buried individuals themselves — were left unanswered.   So, a team of scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom decided to use the DNA preserved in these skeletal remains to discover what relationships — if any — existed between these 13 individuals.   The results of this study are reported in this week’s <a id="c_vf" title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/11/17/0807592105.abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>.
Specifically, the scientists were interested in whether the individuals buried closest to each other were also close relatives.   The 13 victims were found in four separate graves.
Each contained at least one adult, along with anywhere from one to three children.   As a result, some scientists have speculated that each grave might represent a separate family killed in the attack.     D
NA analysis, they argue, would allow them to fill the gaps surrounding the identities of the deceased.
Scientists extracted DNA from the teeth of all 13 individuals.   They focused on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed down from mother to child, the Y-chromosome, which is passed down from father to son, and small segments of the remaining chromosomes, which are passed down from both parents to their children.
<h6>A Family That Died Together</h6>
Even though ancient DNA is notoriously difficult to work with, the authors were able to extract usable DNA from nine of the 13 individuals.
The results from one of the four burials, Grave 99, were especially intriguing.   The grave contained the remains of an adult male, an adult female, and two male children.   DNA analysis revealed that the adult female had the same mtDNA type as the two male children (K1b).   Analysis also revealed that the adult male had the same Y-chromosome DNA type as the two male children (R1a).
Due to the ways that mtDNA and Y-chromosome DNA are passed from one generation to the next, these results suggest that the two adults in Grave 99 were husband and wife, and that the two male children were their offspring.   Indeed, the authors had originally hypothesized some sort of connection between these four individuals, because while the two adults adhere to normal burial patterns for the time period (lying toe-to-toe facing south), the two children face north, toward their parents.
The notion of these four individuals being buried together, as a family, raises many questions on the origins of the nuclear family in ancient times.   Even the authors admit that “our image of past family life and structure is still dominated by 19th century ideals, and reconstruction of prehistoric families even now adhere to these orthodox schemes.”
Indeed, there has been little evidence to precisely date the origins of the nuclear family, and this example hardly closes the book on how and when such a social unit developed.   However, it does show that using ancient DNA can be quite useful in determining ancient biological relationships.   Indeed, the results from Grave 99 reveal how important the nuclear family must have been to these villagers; that they chose to bury these four victims not as individuals but as a social unit, huddled together in a single grave.

Exploring Ancient DNA Insights

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Because their ancestors often were slaves during the 18th and 19th centuries, and therefore usually lacked birth or death certificates, it is very difficult for African American genealogists to trace their ancestors further than a few generations.
Even when they can trace their ancestry to the slavery era, it is virtually impossible to find exactly where their ancestors originated because slave ships did not keep passenger lists of the people they captured from Africa.
As a consequence, many have been turning to genetics as a tool to help trace their African ancestry. But how reliably can genetics trace a person&#8217;s ancestry back to a specific African location or ethnic group?
Using genetics this way is quite complex; even the most advanced analysis can&#8217;t provide all the answers.

Relying on genetic data for genealogical purposes can be problematic, especially if your expectations are too great.
For example, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had his Y-chromosome genotyped by two different companies. The first told him that his ancestors likely traced back to Nubia or Egypt, while the second test more accurately placed his paternal ancestry in Europe.
As an African American, Gates believes that the first company may have simply &#8216;told him what he wanted to hear&#8217;: that all of his ancestry traced back to Africa. But, as is often the case, one&#8217;s genetic ancestry can be more complex than meets the eye.
One problem is that genetic analyses predominantly trace deep ancestry. Because genetic information does not change significantly within one or two generations, genetics generally shows where a person’s ancestors lived thousands of years ago. This is hardly useful to genealogists who are looking for information about ancestors who lived only a few hundred years ago.
That isn&#8217;t to say we can’t learn anything useful about the deep ancestry of many African Americans — in fact, studies of genetic ancestry have yielded much information about prehistoric population movements across the continent. For example, there are clear genetic ‘footprints’ in modern Africans – and African Americans – indicating massive expansions of Bantu-speaking peoples from West Africa into the eastern and southern part of the continent over 4,000 years ago. This has helped archaeologists understand the extent to which not only the Bantu culture and language, but the people themselves, spread throughout the continent.
Most African Americans have the signature of this Bantu migration in their genes because they are descended from populations that were affected by it. But many, including Gates, have the genetic signature of another widespread group: Europeans. Indeed, European ancestry is not uncommon among African Americans, whose ancestors can include white slave owners who fathered children with their slaves.
The use of genetic data can be useful in confirming anecdotal evidence of a non-African ancestor in an African American&#8217;s family tree.
Many African American genealogists want greater detail and resolution from their genetic information, even a link to a specific nation or tribe. But in many cases this is simply not possible. The population history of Africa — especially sub-Saharan Africa — is older and more genetically complex than that of any other region of the world. Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa more than 150,000 years ago, and has been living throughout Africa continuously since that time.
There have been countless migrations, dispersals, and expansions of African peoples to all parts of the continent — in addition to the Bantu expansions. As a result, the genetic diversity of present-day Africans is incredibly complex.
In many cases, scientists are unable to associate a specific genetic classification with a specific tribe or ethnic group. There are of course a few exceptions — isolated hunter-gather groups like the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert and the Pygmies of the Central African Rainforest have lower levels of genetic diversity as a result of their relative isolation. But in West Africa, where the majority of slaves were captured, there is significant genetic diversity both within countries and within tribal or ethnic affiliations.
The high level of diversity means that scientists have a difficult time pinpointing where a particular person&#8217;s genetic roots trace beyond a more general geographical region (i.e. West Africa). For example, the paternal haplogroup E3a, found in more than half of African American men, is just as common in Africa itself &#8211; and spread throughout the continent. So, for an African American male who&#8217;s paternal ancestry falls within the E3a haplogroup, it could be virtually impossible to narrow down the place of origin of his African ancestors.
Still, when traditional tools are unavailable or incomplete genetics can reveal useful genealogical information, whether a person&#8217;s roots trace back to Africa, Europe, or someplace else entirely.

African American Roots: What Genetics Can Reveal

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Like many Americans, Vincent Vizachero knew only bits and pieces about his family history.   He knew, for instance, that his paternal grandfather emigrated to America from Italy in 1914. But because his grandfather died long before he was born, Vincent did not hear a lot of family stories growing up.   So he had to dig them up himself.   In his research, Vincent discovered that many people with his surname seemed to have come from the same small region in Italy.   He wanted to find out if all people with the Vizachero surname are somehow closely related.
The more he dug, however, the more roadblocks appeared in his way.   Three generations of civil and parish records in his grandfather’s hometown from the late 19th century were destroyed during World War II.     There was a gap between 1860 and 1910 where no information existed.
Problems like these often arise with genealogical research. But instead of giving up, Vincent decided to turn to another method – genetics.
As it turns out, Vincent is not alone.   Many genealogy buffs use genetics to enhance their research on family history.   In 2005, a group of genealogists formed the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), kicking off a grassroots effort to incorporate genetic data into the fold of genealogy.   By this time, companies like <a id="oi03" title="Family Tree DNA" href="http://www.familytreedna.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Family Tree DNA</a> had been offering genetic testing for about five years, giving genealogists who had pored over historical records for years a completely new kind of information.

Many used DNA from the Y-chromosome, which is passed from father to son the same way surnames are passed down from one generation to the next.   Communities began to form, taking genetic data and trying to relate it to their own family histories rather than the broader scale addressed by academic researchers.   ISOGG began developing a ‘family tree’ based on genetic data from thousands of Y-chromosomes from hundreds of families around the world.   Some genealogists, like Adriano Squecco, have worked tirelessly to organize these data together into a <a id="x055" title="sharable format" href="http://daver.info/ysub/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sharable format</a> for anyone to view.
As data from thousands of individuals began rolling in, communities realized that many of the results coming back were quite similar — most people were being classified within very common branches of the Y-chromosome tree.   The people with the most interesting or unique DNA were usually not getting themselves tested.
Instead of waiting for academic researchers to find and genotype these individuals, a few enterprising genealogists, including Vincent Vizachero, decided to take matters into their own hands.   They started a fundraising effort, where people can donate money to buy the 23andMe Personal Genome Service for individuals with potentially interesting or unique genetic ancestry.   At first they tested more people of western European ancestry, to add detail in that already well-known part of the Y-chromosome tree. Now they are focusing their efforts on testing people of African descent, in an attempt to flesh out the genetic ancestry of the notoriously under-studied continent.   The major organizers of the effort have set up a website to keep track of their fundraising, along with periodic updates on their progress.
But why have Vincent and the other organizers chosen <a id="bxu8" title="23andMe’s Personal Genome ServiceTM" href="https://23andme.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">23andMe’s Personal Genome ServiceTM</a> , when there are so many different companies that test genetic ancestry?   “The decision was really about cost-effectiveness,” says Vincent.   “23andMe is including over 1,800 usable Y-SNPs for less than $400.   So the 23andMe service allows us to cover a lot of ground much more quickly than any other method of testing would allow.”
In addition, 23andMe allows customers to download their raw data.   While the casual customer may not use this feature, genetic genealogists relish the fact that their raw data is available for them to examine and manipulate.
What&#8217;s more, 23andMe provides other hereditary information that can be of interest to genealogists.   Some are using 23andMe to examine hereditary health and traits issues within their family trees.   And with the Family Inheritance feature, customers can see how various traits have been passed from generation to generation.
For genealogists, a thriving community is vital.   Such communities have been the cornerstone of traditional genealogical research for many years, and the addition of genetic data has only compounded their importance. Genealogists have even been able to contribute to science by helping identify new branches to the genetic family tree.   As their fundraising project continues to gain steam, Vincent and the other project organizers are pleased with the amount of information they have been able to extract, and how important the genealogy community is in fostering its development.   We at 23andMe recognize the importance of working with the genetic genealogy community and ISOGG to provide our customers, and we are thrilled that we can help this community flourish!

Building Roots from the Ground Up:  Genealogy 2.0

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About 3,500 years ago, the Phoenicians expanded from their homeland in present-day Syria and Lebanon, using their superior maritime technology to establish trading posts across southern Europe and North Africa.
<h2>The Rise and Fall of the Phoenicians</h2>
They traded silver from Iberia, copper from Cyprus, and textiles from Morocco. They built cities in Sicily, Malta, and Tunisia that rivaled those in Greece and Rome. However, by the 1st century BC, nearly all evidence of their power and authority over Mediterranean trade routes had vanished.
The Phoenicians&#8217; fate as a maritime power is well documented. The Persians conquered the Phoenician homeland in 539 BC. Two centuries later, Alexander the Great&#8217;s army swept in from the west. Finally, the Roman Empire conquered—and destroyed—the Phoenician city of Carthage in 146 BC following the Third Punic War.
<h2>The Disappearance of the Phoenicians</h2>
But what happened to the Phoenicians themselves? Were they wiped out, too? Or are their descendants still alive today?
In a study published this week, researchers identify Phoenician-specific DNA markers in present-day Mediterranean populations, demonstrating that genetic traces of the ancient civilization still exist in some modern-day peoples. These people could be descendants of the Phoenicians themselves.

It has always been difficult to use genetics to trace specific historical migrations, such as the Jewish Diaspora, the Norman invasion of Britain, or even the Viking expansions into Western Europe.
<h2>Using DNA to Tell a Story</h2>
Attempting to trace migrations across the Mediterranean is even more arduous, as there have been multiple migrations at different times throughout history. How do scientists sort out each unique migration event over the long and complex population history of the region? A team of geneticists from National Geographic and IBM’s Genographic Project believes they have found a way to do just that. They discuss their research in the latest American Journal of Human Genetics issue.
Traditionally, when scientists want to understand the genetic history of an area, they collect DNA samples from the entire region of interest. But in this case, the authors of the AJHG paper collected samples from specific towns and cities that are believed to have been built on or near ancient Phoenician archaeological sites, including Carthage, Cyprus, and Sicily. They reasoned that if descendants of the Phoenicians do indeed exist, they would more likely be found near these sites.
<h2>Tracing Paternal Lines</h2>
Armed with this newly collected data, the authors focused on the Y-chromosome to trace the Phoenicians’ genetic history. According to Chris Tyler-Smith, one of the study’s authors, “We chose the Y-chromosome because its male-specificity means that it would have been carried by the predominantly male Phoenician traders.” They then used a newly devised analytical method of distinguishing any Phoenician migration from other geographically similar migrations. Their results are surprisingly informative.
The authors found a weak — but significant — genetic signature among their samples that could not be explained by chance. Many of the samples belonged to a particular branch of haplogroup J2, which the authors believe points back to distinct migrations by Phoenician traders from the Middle East into Europe and North Africa more than 3,000 years ago.
The applications of the authors’ new approach to studies of population history are incredibly far-reaching. Perhaps similar analyses could be used to trace the genetic footprints of Alexander the Great and his army into Persia during the 4th century BC or migrations along the Silk Road from China during the Middle Ages. The authors even propose that their technique could be used within populations to discover historical migrations that we never even knew existed.
Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ripples in the Mediterranean: Tracing the Genetic Origins of the Phoenicians

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Even though European populations have been studied for years, there are still many lingering questions as to the continent’s population history — especially with regards to isolated peoples.   Understanding the history of the Basque of northern Spain has long been a topic of interest among geneticists, as has the origins of the indigenous Saami of northern Finland.
Now, a study published by geneticists at the University of Helsinki supports the conclusion of <a id="k1oa" title="Some recent studies" href="../2008/08/13/a-different-kind-of-gene-mapping-comparing-genetic-and-geographic-structure-in-europe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">some recent studies</a> that have hinted that the Finnish people themselves are more genetically isolated than other European populations.
Traditional methods of examining genetic ancestry are focused on two areas of our genome: our mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mothers to children, revealing information on our maternal ancestry, and the Y-chromosome, which is passed down from fathers to sons, revealing our paternal ancestry.
But these are only two relatively small regions of our entire genome, and geneticists have often said that to truly understand a person’s ancestry we must examine human DNA much more broadly.   One way to do this is to use a genome-wide analysis, examining hundreds of thousands of genetic markers.   The new University of Helsinki <a id="bt3m" title="study" href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003519" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> did just that, analyzing more than 250,000 unique SNPS across the entire human genome.
What the researchers found was quite intriguing.   First they investigated German and British populations as a basis for comparison and found them to be genetically close to one another – hardly a surprise considering their historical closeness.   But when the researchers looked at populations from Finland in comparison to other parts of Europe, they found few enough similarities to conclude that Finnish people are genetically isolated from other parts of Europe.

This study is important for a few reasons.   First, it illustrates that using genome-wide analysis, rather than only using the Y-chromosome or the mitochondrial DNA, can reveal much about population history.   Second, it confirms previous hypotheses that Finland — which is both geographically and linguistically isolated from other parts of Europe — is genetically isolated as well.
The ancestors of the modern Finns, once they arrived in this cold land thousands of years ago, remained relatively separate from even their closest European neighbors.   Although modern travel and telecommunications have likely reduced this isolation, the remnants of it are still evident in the genetics.

Ancestry Service — Page 29